Posts from — February 2006

Even the media at the gaggle are beginning to notice that the grim fairy tales of the Shrubbery don’t make sense.

The mayor of Los Angeles wants to know why the city wasn’t informed of this danger.

The Indonesian Philippine government discovered and broke up this plot before it really got moving.

For those who are wondering, setting off a “shoe bomb” in a pressurized aircraft will probably cause sufficient damage to make it crash.

This was another dirty bomb, Brooklyn Bridge, wild-eyed plot that had zero chance of working. This is the kind of thinking you can read at a lot of the wingnut discussion threads whenever someone mentions Hillary Clinton.

While they are out rounding up the guys coming up with this foolishness they are missing the calm and capable people like Atta who can actually come up with realistic goals and the step by step plans to attain those goals. We are very fortunate that Atta was suicidal, because he knew how to get things done.

I can only hope that someone is following the people with the training and experience to actually carry a plan to its conclusion. My fear is that some of the experienced Iraqi military people will decide to join the al Qaeda movement and provide the expertise that is currently missing.

This speech was an attempt to deflect attention from the fact that these people are using the military to spy on the American people in violation of the law and Constitution. If this were just about terrorists, there would be no need for this charade.

Update: John McKay posts on this with Another Bush lie? and in the comments the farmer covers an earlier plot in the Philippines that was probably the genesis of the plot.

The Philippine and Malaysian security forces fighting Jamal Islamia, a separate organization but associated with al Qaeda, broke up the plot and continue the battle against the organization that is responsible for the Bali bombings and unrest in the Philippines.

Because it is due to get cold again and the blooms may not survive.

The flowers will all be in trouble if the temperature stays at 30° for long.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Matthew 25:40 [KJV]

If you are going to attend the funeral of a lady who was married to a preacher, has children who are preachers, has friends who are preachers, you had better be prepared to hear about the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

I realize the core message of Christ is not comfortable to the ears of many in the so-called conservative punditry, and that message is inherently “liberal”, but it is rather difficult not to include the message of Christ in a Christian service.

Mrs. King spent her life advocating the message of Christ: non-violence, caring for the less fortunate, and love for everyone.

This isn’t battle between free speech and religious freedom, this is a petty political battle between two groups of mudslingers that has gotten out of hand. The easiest way I can think of characterizing this for Americans is to imagine the Minute Men taking on James Dobson.

The newspaper commissioned these cartoons. The specification was for anti-Muslim cartoons to run in a newspaper that is part of the “Denmark for Danes” movement.

Fearing that the actual cartoons might not be enough, the Danish imams “sexed up the dossier” with some photoshopped graphics that were never published anywhere when they visited Muslim countries for support.

The BBC tried to have a discussion by inviting on a moderate Muslim member of Parliament and a hard-line imam. It went nowhere. At one point the hard-liner called the MP a Blair puppet, and the MP asked why the hard-liner hadn’t moved to Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban if he was such a fan of Islamic law.

The people doing the rioting haven’t seen the cartoons. All they know is what they were told. If the people doing the telling were the Danish imams, they were lied to, but why should anyone be surprised, it’s not as if governments in the West don’t lie to people so they can kill Muslims and destroy their homes.

While everyone hopes that their cat(s) will occasionally be found in the top box, Schrödinger might have a bit of a problem getting a cat into the lower box.

Many cats like boxes. Some even take trips to exotic locations like Vermont, Indiana, and France because of their love of boxes, but if you try to put a cat in a box, a different set of reflexes moves to the fore.

The absence of blood spatters and claw marks indicates that no one has put a cat in that box. Of course, Heisenberg now becomes important. Just because no one put a cat in the box, doesn’t prove that there is no cat in the box. The probability of a cat being in that box is inversely proportional to how much a human wants a cat to be in that box.

Most days I think that Heisenberg has the edge, but when you are informed that you have posted an article but can’t access your blog to see if it’s there, I tend towards Schrödinger.

Oops, point to Heisenberg, we’re Bloggered Again.

But this time they have the Blogger Status site hosted by Google to say that they are down.

They say 7-8PM PST, which is 9-10PM my time. We’ll see how it goes.

The real deficit is $625.4 billion dollars, more than half, $350+ billion, went to interest on the national debt.

Borrow and spend, and in an election year with the Republicans in trouble you know the pork is going to be packed into every bill.

We’re spending tens of billions on Iraq and Afghanistan, but they don’t put that in the budget. This is how they run businesses, so they are running the government the same way, quarter to quarter, hiding the real bottom line.

If they hadn’t done that I would never have been aware that the current government of Denmark is a coalition that has a rightwing party involved. I also learned there are neo-nazis in Denmark, there are about 200,000 Muslim immigrants in the country, and there is a fundamentalist imam in Copenhagen.

Some people say that the newspaper at the heart of problem is a supporter of the rightwing party, but I can’t verify that claim, because I can’t read Danish well enough and I’m not in the mood to crawl through a newspaper with a Dansk Ordbog.

There are people calling for immigration reform [Minut Mennesker?], to prevent a flood of “swarthy foreigners” from displacing native-born Danes, or some such foolishness.

All politics are local. This started as a collision between the Danish right and this troublemaking imam. I know the imam is a troublemaker not only because a member of the Danish parliament who is a Muslim told the imam to shut-up or get out, but because the guy delivers his rants in English. If you are the leader of a congregation of immigrants in Denmark, why would you assume that congregation speaks English? If you are speaking to the world media and not the congregation, English is very useful.

This pattern is being reflected all over Europe, the rightwingers and fundamentalist Muslims start fights to play to their base. This time the problem got out of hand and the hardliners in the Muslim world are running with this “gift”. Thanks to the re-printing of the cartoons in newspapers across Europe as the whole thing was dying down, it has gotten worse.

The part about the rightwing component of the Danish government goes a long way towards explaining why the Danish foreign minister has refused to meet with the ambassadors for Muslim countries. He has lost a couple of embassies since he made that decision, and should probably call all Danes home before they get kidnapped and/or killed in the current frenzy.

If it hadn’t been the cartoons, it would have been something else. This is a continuation of what happened in France. Europeans invited in all kinds people to do the grunt work during the good times, and many European groups are trying to solve their problems by ejecting the children and grandchildren of those immigrants.

This thing has provided cover for every religious extremist in the Muslim world and set back the moderate voices a decade. The cartoons, with the exception of the one about running out of virgins, weren’t even amusing.

Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming wants you to mark your calendar for the Shrubbery’s visit to the real Fanastyland, rather than the pale imitation he has constructed in Washington.

Tbogg cleaned out his box of Aggie jokes in his take down of George Deutsch, the recent Texas A&M graduate and political appointee who decided he had the chops to correct a NASA scientist.

This one is dated, which I blame on Blogger, but Shakespeare’s Sister has a great body slam on the Shrubbery by Charles Rangel.

Well, I’ve cleaned out my “pending” file.

Has anyone explained that it is bad form to use the tactics of the enemy, especially an enemy that had been declared in rebellion against the government and Constitution of the United States, as justification for your actions. This is really pathetic. Did any of these people take an American history course? Do they understand which side won the Civil War?

I’m sure someone can explain the difference between basing the civil laws of a society on the Bible, and basing them on the Qur’an. One of the things that bothers me is that if either were really the “revealed truth”, that “truth” wouldn’t have to be interpreted, i.e. the meaning would be obvious from the text and there would be no priests, ministers, pastors, imams, rabbis, etc.

Sorry, folks, but when it comes to civil law, I would just as soon not base laws on books that tell you not to kill and then almost immediately begin listing all of the reasons you are required to kill people. I sense a certain lack of consistency that is important in the law.

Via ‘Noz, the Black Iris, a Jordanian, offers: Instructions on How to Burn Denmark’s Flag Properly. Don’t assume anything from the post’s title, just go and read what one Muslim thinks about the cartoons.

Professor Cole adds his opinion on the reaction to the cartoons, and notes that while you can be arrested for wearing a t-shirt in the US, things aren’t quite that controlled in the third world. [Aside: I thought he drew blood with that one.]