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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

The System That (Didn't) Work

On Christmas Day Abdul Farouk Umar Mutallab tried setting of exploives hidden in his pants while onboard a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit.

Our DHS Mistress, Janet Napolitano, initially claimed the "system worked."

Not according to anyone who hasn't sampled the PC-Koolaid:

http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2009/12/she-said-it.html

Once again, as with the Ft Hood shooter, numerous red flags were missed or ignored. (I love Holton's term "Islamikaze").

Despite Napolitano's recanting of her initial statement, any official response will mean only one thing--more inconveniences for law abiding travelers.

Mark Steyn rolls-in:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDA3OTVlMTZmMjUwYzU0M2Q1MDNhNGY4NWRiYmFkZGE=

Mark also rolls-in on our lack of real progress in our anti-terrorism security:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzQxZWJhNjhmZTVmNmU2MDMyNmYzNzdlYmE3ZDQ4OTY=

Michelle Malkin lambastes Napolitano:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/27/clown-alert-janet-napolitano-says-the-system-worked/

(At the time of this posting, I was unable to log on to Debbie Schlussel's website).

Thanks to Jasper Schuringa, who jumped over some passengers and subdued Mutallab, (not the DHS system), we didn't have a Christmas tragedy.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A couple of nights ago, two Pierce County deputies responded to a domestic disturbance at the house pictured above. These are the most dreaded situations for law enforcement officers because they never know how people react. And it can end badly--like this one did.

David Cable shot Deputy Mundell and Sgt Hausner, but was killed when the officers returned fire.

Here's the story from the morning after (22 Dec 09) in the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010568047_webshooting22m.html?syndication=rss

Police officers in this area are stressed out and for good reason. Here's today's story, also from the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010572291_shootingmain23m.html

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

"Martha F***ing Stewart"

My high school friends on Facebook are in a state of shock over a girl we all knew. Danielle Chiesi was remembered as a sweet and beautiful girl. But looking at the picture of her above (in the white sweater) and reading the wiretaps, she's now anything but.

Her and her partner-in-crime were arrested for securities fraud back in October.

NY Post, among other news agencies, had the details:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ll_be_like_martha_ing_stewart_9n71CbyvmIuVubuIhW9VpL


Yesterday, "Martha F. Stewart" and Raj Rajaratam, were in court yesterday and pleaded innocent:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BK2TC20091221

I have fond memories of Danielle and her two friends at the time, Miylae (sp) and Jackie. My friend Harry & I met them while on a trip to Quebec with the high school French Club. Since this was our second trip to Quebec, we showed the girls around town in gentlemanly fashion. Harry and I were seniors and the girls were freshmen, so we didn't want to attend our graduation wearing prison jumpsuits. Although, Danielle may have to get use to such fashionable attire.

I hope Jackie and Miylae are doing better with their lives.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Carbonhagen, Climategate and Eco-Friendly Prostitutes


(I found this image on Bristol Indy Media, titled Leaders-Useless).

For the past two weeks something was rotten in Denmark. The Climate Change Summit was attended by such luminaries as Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chaves of Venezuala and Mugabe of Zimbabwe. (Funny, I don't see any of their mugs posted on the above image).

The Climate Summit farce was a bonanza of blog fodder for all our favorite commentators.

Mark Steyn on the "Emporer's Carbon Credits (and eco-friendly prostitutes!):


Which he followed up with a piece in NRO:


Gerald Warner of the UK's Telegraph, rolled-in with a scathing commentary:


I love how he borrowed the term "Danegeld":


And then there's VDH, comparing California's nightmare to Copenhagen's dream:

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-long-march-from-california-to-copenhagen/

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

It's About Time!

A second jury finally did the job the first one wouldn't do--convict Naveed Haq is murder during his rampage at the Seattle Jewish Community Center:

The first jury couldn't reach a verdict because they couldn't determine if his crime was premeditated.
Despite the fact that Naq loaded his weapons and drove 3 HOURS to Seattle to commit his crime!

The Dreamliner Finally Flies


Boeing's Dreamliner, the 787, took it's maiden flight today:

1 Key Element


According to most analysts, Iran now has a key component in it's nuclear program--and it's not for peaceful purposes:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6955351.ece

This article garnered a couple noteworthy comments from friends:


Yeah, as the article says, there is exactly ONE use for a neutron initiator and it ain't baking cookies!

I see based on Obama's speech to the Nobel folks that he is starting to realize that his rainbow and unicorn foreign policy is not only not working, but has really emboldened our enemies. Now maybe he will spread some of the good old Chicago style politics around the place for a change we can believe in.


From Comrade Karla:

I could go for some Sean Connery "Chicago Way."

K-12 Indoctrination

(Image Photoshopped by Leo Alberti, from Michelle Malkin's website)

We've been dealing with revisionist history since the '60s. Now no subject, even math, is immune from being used as a tool to indoctrinate our young. From Michelle Malkin's website (posted 11 Dec 09):

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/11/hollywood-howard-zinn%e2%80%99s-marxist-education-project/

The above link is a follow-on story to this one posted on 8 Dec 09:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/08/social-justice-for-grade-schoolers-the-howard-zinn-education-project/

This is no better than "Palestinian Math:"

If Achmed (the up & coming terrorist) has 17 rounds for his AK-47 magazine, how many more rounds will he need to kill 30 Zionists?

One of my friends dug-up a quote from Abraham Lincoln: "What is taught in the classroom today will be tomorrow's government."

God help us!

The Unchangable Nature of War

Victor Davis Hanson (VDH), discusses the nature of warfare as it pertains to our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan:


http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson121409.html

Saturday, December 12, 2009



Happy Hanukkah! Best wishes to all those celebrating the Festival of Lights.


A short history of the 8-day Jewish holiday:



From Debbie Schlussel's post, 11 Dec 09:

..."it is a holiday of triumph of good versus evil and Jews versus their oppressors." (Ruth S. King of the Americans for a Safe Israel).


While I'm not Jewish, this sounds like my kind of holiday!

Here's a link to what would be my favorite Menorah:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000K7FH56?tag=debbischlu0b-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B000K7FH56&adid=0X5MS3PET8VW1XD9KQW7&

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Memorial Service for Lakewood's Four Fallen Officers

Yesterday, the memorial service for the four Lakewood police officers was held yesterday. I was recovering from night shift, (that is sleeping), during most of it. It was televised throughout the afternoon on all the local stations, so I got to see bits & pieces of it:

Monday, December 7, 2009

Jihadis Make Terrible Roomates


A few days ago Richard Antoun, a professor of middle east studies at Binghamton University, was stabbed to death by graduate student Abdulsalam al-Zahrani.
One of my friends on Facebook posted the news article, but I didn't check to see who the perpetrator was.
It wasn't until I came across Mark Steyn's in The Corner post this morning that I noticed Zahrani's name:
Here's a link to the initial story via WBNG-TV:
Apparently, Zahrani's radical religious beliefs made him a less-than-ideal roomate (apartment pictured above):
According to WBNG's site, details about the murder are still sparse:

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Surge II--Afghanistan

Last night Obama announced a surge of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Commentators on the right and left are not happy with this.

First from the left:

Days prior to the announcement, Michael Moore sent Obama pleading with him not to be a "War President."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-michael-moore

Now from the right:

Ralph Peters of the NY Daily Post rolls-in.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/setting_up_our_military_to_fail_lBlTIHm69SM02Lly5JbNaO


From somewhere in the center, Thomas Friedman of the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/opinion/02friedman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

And since I'm not a fan of Michael Moore, here's a post from "Uncle Jimbo" from Blackfive lambastes some of Moore's assumptions & outrageous comments:

http://unclejimbo.com/blog1/?p=71

The impending "surge" in Afghanistan sparked a lot of message traffic among my friends:

This is a pretty good summation. Of course, Ralph has not really espoused a coherent counter-strategy. Sad thing is that there probably is no right answer, but some are certainly worse than others (witness the final result of a bazillion hours of indecision).

I'm not unhappy with the idea of a surge-type strategy. But adding expiration dates is always stupid (at least publicly--they can talk about it all they want in private, and probably should). It's like having FDR say in his Pearl Harbor speech "We will win through to absolute victory…as long as it doesn't take longer than January 1943."

One of the big reasons the surge worked in iraq is because it showedthat the U.S. was resolved to stick it out to the end. That broke the logjam and allowed the Iraqi populace and the Sunni insurgents to jumpon the bandwagon and crush al Qaeda and the Shiite insurgency. Obamahas utterly negated that angle by putting a deadline on things. He really screwed himself on that, because if he does not pull out on thisschedule, he will be beat over the head with it in the 2012 elections byBOTH sides. If he DOES pull out on schedule, and things are not goingwell, he will be the president of defeat. (the third possibility, thateverything in Afghanistan will be resovled by then is not bloody likelyand not worth considering). I don't always agree with Ralph, but he is pretty much spot on in thiscase. When memory of Obama's glorious speech fades and reality sets in,he is going to be in real trouble (and so are the troops deployed toAfghanistan).

I'm far more worried about them than I am him. It's clear from some of the post-speech comments in news articles that those who are on the deployment list know all to well what a s**t sandwich this is likely to be.Tom Friedman (an erratic, but sometimes spot-on commentator) did a piece on why he felt this surge effort was not worth it and why. I didn't agree with it. But it was honest and not completely illogical. I'd have more respect for the president if he'd at least take a definitive stand, defend it, and stop trying to have his cake and eat it too. But he can't. None of them can. They're too fixated on the next election cycle and that drives all.I suppose that's what separates a politician from a statesman. Lord knows we don't have many statesmen around these days.

I don't think a surge will work anyway...Afghanistan is not Iraq: Iraqis are urban, Afghans are tribalIraq is a flat desert with good infrastructure, Afghanistan is amountainous mess with hardly even any roadsIraq did not have a significant cross-border terror issue (Irannothwithstanding), Afghanistan and Pakistan are interlocked Iraq had 3 major groupings of people, Afghanistan has many Iraq has a history of central leadership, Afghanistan is a political wreck. Iraq allows easy access by land, sea, and air; it is a bitch to getanything into AfghanistanEtc. None of this bodes well for any strategy.

I could be wrong but I'm not buying the exit strategy talk. It doesn't make logistical sense - by the time we get all of the troops in place it will be time to start pulling them out. Also, the sheer inertia generated by this type of commitment generally doesn't permit that type of approach. It's like Clinton talking about our how our troops were going to be in Bosnia for a no more than a year or Eisenhower saying in the 1950s that if we still had troops in Germany in ten years then we will have failed or for that matter Obama's campaign talk about getting out of Iraq. That kind of talk is all well and good but it never works that way in the real world. The fact is, regardless of what was said last night, President Obama has just created significant commitment of a large number of American troops and unless the situation goes so far down the shitter that the public demands a pullout or an implosion in Pakistan means we can no longer support a large footprint logistically, we are going to be in Afghanistan for a very long time. With regard to the exit strategy nonsense, I think somebody (James Jones, Bob Gates, Rahm Emanuel, etc) told Obama that he needed to check that box in his speech so he did because thanks to Colin Powell, whenever a President is going to commit American troops to a mission, there always has to be an exit strategy - I also think this was a way for Obama to cover himself with the stooges on the left who are against this. Whether it will work or not I don't know.

Ralph has been erratic from time to time, that's certain. He may be talking to people who have been telling him what they think is going to happen based on their experiences working with the new admin; or maybe he's just bitter. He is consistently harsh, however, but not always logically consistent. Perhaps he's taking the Prez at his word on this and assuming the worst--wouldn't be the first commentator to do this.

The Weekly Standard opinion was interesting in that it notes that Obama is now the first Democratic President to do a commitment like this since LBJ, which surely is some measure of actual change when you look back at Democratic presidents since then. I'm sure he's hoping he doesn't end up with a 1968 situation on his hands, though it's certainly possible.

"Room Temperature Clemmons"

I copied the above title from a friend's e-mail notifying us the Seattle PD shot and killed the suspected killer of the 4 Lakewood Police officers.

I wasn't able to post the news yesterday due to internet troubles.

Today, Darcus Allen, the alledged "wheels man" appeared in court:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010405277_webdarcus02m.html

The above link contains several other links for complete coverage of this tragedy.