Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

Dire Consequences

...for the United States (military in Iraq, I presume) if we don't force Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire, says the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani.

Hmmmm....would this be the same Grand Ayatollah who would be preaching to empty mosques were not that same US military propping him up and keeping the Sunnis off his ass?

Would this be the same Grand Ayatollah who plays at keeping a leash on Muqtada Al-Sadr, but that leash is so long that Al-Sadr's hard boyz are reportedly off to fight Israelis in that same south Lebanon where Al-Sistani demands the cease fire (so they can get into position to attack Israel without being blown away by the Israelis first)?

Fuck you and the ass-abused camel you just rode in on, Al-Sistani. If you ain't with us you're against us. There are no shades of gray here: you either support Israel's right to exist in peace or you support Hizbollah's intent to eliminate Israel.

I'd hate to see any US troops get radiation burns when Israel opens the can of nuclear whoop-ass you and your Iranian Shiite buddies forced upon yourselves, but if Israel can end the Shia menace to their nation that way, they have MY permission to fire (as if they needed it).

Do you suppose the Shia would get the message if we pulled all the US troops into their compounds one day, and had them start digging nuke protection shelters?

BTW, on a related note, the word on the Israeli street is that "Sheik" Asshollah Nasrallah is holed up in the Iranian embassy in Beirut, and has been ever since the IDF took control of Lebanon's skies. I'm betting that said embassy is still standing ONLY due to the US' good offices with the Israelis.

I wouldn't have had the restraint, had I been the Israelis. Flatten the building, and when Iran cries "War", just politely ask them "which flavor?" Everyone, but everyone, familiar with the rules of civilized warfare knows that when a ranking belligerent enters a supposedly-neutral embassy and does ANYTHING but ask for asylum and internment for the duration, that embassy becomes a legitimate target of war.

Dire consequences? Yep, we got your dire consequences right here. They're flavored with Gamma radiation.

Moderate Muslims

In this blog, I've almost continually ranted against radical Islam, because it has hurt us physically, and also because it seeks to deny all modern thinking, some of which is actually valuable and advances all species. I've raved on about Moderate Muslims, and beseeched them to show themselves and reclaim their religion from the tiny proportion of radicals that has hijacked it.

This morning, I applied more thought, and less attitude to the problem:

What if I was a Moderate Muslim speechwriter?

Well, for starters, I'd be real lonely in my profession, since only the radical Muslim speechwriters seem to garner any ink from the leftist press with their work.

What if a miracle happened, and all of a sudden, I had the opportunity for one of my products to actually be broadcast by the MSM?

Would I be ready?

Would I have something in the can, or at least roughed out that I could slam out and get that burst of attention that might just be the tipping point away from the radicalization of my entire religion?

Maybe I would.

Let the cover-up begin

In Seattle.

As my good friend Analog Kid points out the details here and here.

As AssPress points out the details here.

Can't link to TeeVee of course, but MSNBC took a new "slant" on the attack this morning, leading with and totally emphasizing the mental illness reports on the suspect.

Let me emphasize several other facts.

• The suspect's father is the Founding Imam of a local Pakistani Islamic outfit.
• There's almost ZERO "moderate Muslims" (if they exist at all) in Pakistan, so the suspect is sure to have been exposed to the usual hate women/Jews spew all his life.
• The suspect declared at the scene that he had made the attack to punish Israel.
• The Seattle police have referred to the attack as "politically motivated" and a "hate crime".

So, why is the press trying to convince us all that this is a case of a deranged sex fiend (the suspect has a recent arrest for indecent exposure)?

Well, let's consider the alliance of the press with the loony left, for one thing. That same loony left refuses to believe the facts of political reality, that Israel is correct in it's firm stand against the Hizbollah jihadis who want to end that nation's existence, and that Bush is correct in pursuing Islamist terrorists around the world, PRECISELY SO WE DON'T HAVE MORE OF THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE AT HOME!

So, the press apologizes for the suspect. Very natural thing for the traitorous press to do. Fits their pistol, as it were.

I can't leave this without some criticism of Jews.

WHEN, IN THE NAME OF JEHOVAH, ARE YOU ALL GOING TO WISE UP AND REALIZE THAT YOU ARE ALL TARGETS?

Every Jew that openly practices their religion, visits synagogues or Jewish community centers, or otherwise openly advertizes their religious affiliation, should be armed, to the teeth.

Every Jewish organization that operates a building of any kind associated with that religion should take precautions to properly secure their buildings, and one layer of those precautions should be ARMED MEN.

After the Holocaust, you all swore "Never Again". Most of you have sworn it in vain, as you consistently refuse to take the simplest actions to protect yourselves.

I weep with you, and I weep for you, but mostly I am disgusted at your failure to appreciate YOUR OWN HISTORY.

Quick draw

I hate spiders. They infest my house, and I do constant war with them and their webs, using up to 15 feet of nested wands coupled to my built-in vacuum.

Still they invade and breed.

Just now, I'm reading Mr. Completely's exploits in pin-shooting over in MT, and a smallish but very fast spider runs across my computer desk.

I am handicapped in the battle to come.

Spider is young, fast, and has plenty of will to survive.

I'm old, slow, and have imbibed several Air-Gunners (Jim Beam and Coke).

Spidey crosses from right to left and prepares to do a web-slinging bailout off the desk towards my vulnerable left leg (I'm blogging in my Sailor's Pajamas and my legs are uncovered).

I uncork an open-left-handed slap at the spidey, but he is only stunned and ducks into a little cornice in the moulding of the desk.

My brain tells me to go for another weapon besides my open hand, which is stinging mightily with the blow to the sharp cornice of the desk.

At my right hand is my trusty canned air, which I regularly use on the computer keyboard and monitor to keep the effects of static-attracted dust down.

I give the canned air two shakes, and fire at two inches range at spidey, which causes a liquid freezing of his ass into immortality.

Victory is not always measured by spire-point boat-tail 30-caliber bullets fired from a 1/8 minute-of-angle weapon.

Have I violated the Geneva Convention?

Lawn mowing and BEER

Mowing and Beer

On Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in my lawn chair, drinking beer and watching my wife mow the lawn. The neighbor lady from across the street was so outraged that she came over and shouted at me, "You should be hung!" I took a drink from my can of Busch Light, wiped the cold foam from my lips, lifted my darkened Ray Ban sunglasses and stared directly into the eyes of this nosy ass neighbor and then calmly replied,

"I am. That's why she cuts the grass."

No apologies. NONE.

Testosterone rules. Got yours?

H/T to a Texan who shall remain anonymous, 'lest 'Liz'beth finds out.

Tick, tick, tick.....

End of the line

For the venerable C-141 Starlifter.

They are probably all in the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, AZ by now, but I put in some 278 hours navigating them around the world for two years, 1978-79 as part of the USAF Reserve, 446th Military Airlift Wing, 97th Military Airlift Squadron, McChord AFB, Tacoma, WA.

When I got posted to the squadron, largely because the USAF was gearing up from too-deep cuts in the post Vietnam drawdowns and needed more C-141 crews, I was one of the last navigators ever assigned to the bird. The Navs were replaced by several Delco Carousel inertial navigation sets on each aircraft, and on the crews by a second Flight Engineer who had been taught rudimentary navigations skills sufficient for pushing the buttons on the black boxes. When reliable software mods could be made to the early "black boxes", the job of Navigators, who guided these birds around the world by Celestial Navigation and Dead Reckoning (and Loran when available), was done.

There may be one squadron of these birds left flying, in the Air Reserve in Ohio, but mostly they have been recycled into beer cans by now.

The airplane was hell for stout, as we discover with this little ditty:

Been a little down lately?

This'll get you pumped back up, to the sound of Johnny Cash's "When the Man comes around"

Thanks Mike, it made MY day. Goes to show you can take the man out of the Corps, but you can't take the Corps out of the man...

The Kettle is Black (says the Pot)

Howard "the Scream" Dean is at it again, this time, accusing Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki of anti-semitism because he hasn't denounced Hizbollah.

He hasn't supported Hizbollah though, and that's the important thing.

Dean is an idiot, looking for the village that he got separated from. That village may not be the Democratic Party that he was elected to lead the Central Committee of. More and more evidence is surfacing of Democrats who are going their own way without Dean, such as Hillary, with her recent push to re-define what the Democrats stand for.

What the Democrats have stood for in the recent past includes that same antisemitism that Dean passes along so handily. In his remarks, Dean fails to note the important fact that most Arab leaders have decided to not support Hizbollah against Israel in the current war, and that is a significant departure from past practice, and probably indicates those Arab leaders' de-facto acceptance of Israel.

The attitude of four thousand years is not going to be changed in a fortnight. Most of us who are properly horrified at antisemitism and it's effects are quite satisfied with the progress that Arabs have made (or been forced to make by a strong Israel) in recent years. The recent pan-Arab decision to NOT back Israel's present opponents is a large step in that history of progress.

Dean is out to lunch, as usual. Methinks he protesteth too much....those aren't jackboots on HIS feet, are they?

The Second Amendment and militias in today's context

Over at Paratus, we're considering the effect of the Second Amendment, as it might apply a wee bit into the future...

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

In these pages, we're used to the Second Amendment as our shield of armor, protecting all of our rights to Keep and Bear arms. We aren't so used to considering it for it's original great purpose: the raising of militias to protect the Constitutional rights of citizens to live in an orderly society.

A quick historical peek (warning! a fairly "wobbly" site!) will show us numerous examples of militias being  used to combat civil disorder in the first 100 years of our nation. Not all of the militias were  "well-regulated", but they were all there for one purpose: quell civil disorder.

How do you suppose a "well-regulated militia" might operate today? Who might they operate against?

Step right on over to Paratus where we'll answer this intriguing question, and, of course, pose a few more.

The UN mission?

PawPaw has a fine piece of proof about why the UN observers at the Lebanese border got killed. It seems that their observation post might have been flying a Shizbully banner in addition to the UN Blue Flag. If the banner flies, do the hostiles also occupy the observation post (from where they can look quite a ways into Israel and observe the fall of their barrage rockets)? Apparently, the Israelis thought so, because they leveled one of these observation posts, killing several UN observers.

This brings up a forest-for-the-trees question: If the UN is chartered to protect the integrity of member governments (according to THEIR favored model, Socialism, but that's another story), why does it tolerate a heavily-armed private army in a protected nation, when that army is sworn to conduct offensive warfare across the nation's borders?

If the UN were worth a damn, they, and not the Israelis, would be engaging Shizbully now. The UN would be enforcing it's own Security Council mandate # 1559 to disarm Shizbully, and taking offensive military action now that Shizbully has attacked another member state from positions right under it's nose (and maybe co-located with some UN positions).

The complete failure of the Uninted Nations to live up to it's own charter and mission in this case is reason enough to push it from our shores. The fact that the outfit just tried to draft a treaty abrogating part of our Constitution is another good reason.

The United Nations has no "raison d'etre" anymore. No reason to live.

Put it out of it's misery. Completely defund it and require it's immediate departure from our nation.