New User Interface
This is pretty cool.
Kid Various wants one.
Can You Grok It? Free Grokistan!
Anyone who thinks the U.S. needs to leave Iraq now should read this news:
US forces raided an Al-Qaeda prison camp north of Baghdad on Sunday and rescued 41 Iraqi captives showing signs of having been tortured or mistreated, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly said.Putting aside the question of whether the going to war in Iraq was justified in the first place, Iraq is where the War on Terror now needs to be fought because that's is where Al Qaeda is as this news chillingly shows.The camp was holding 41 people, all thought to be Iraqi civilians, many of them showing signs of mistreatment ranging from broken bones and bruises to heat injuries caused by being held with insufficient water, he said.
Some of the prisoners had been held for several months.
"It was evident that they were extremely overjoyed to see us," Donnelly said, adding that the camp had been found after a local tip off, something he saw as a good sign in an area traditionally suspicious of the Americans.
"One of the biggest blows to human rights has been the attempt of Western democratic states to roll back some fundamental principles of human rights — like the prohibition of torture," Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan told The Associated Press before the report's launch. She also criticized the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition.Glad to see AI has its priorities straight. Oh, the irony.
Cindy Sheehan finally gets it. She has "resigned" as the face of the American "peace"movement after being confronted by political reality. She helped the Democrats get elected to end the war in Iraq, but now that the Democrats control Congress nothing has changed. The Democrats and Republicans are not so different after all.
When Sheehan first took on Bush, she was a darling of the liberal left. "However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the 'left' started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used," she wrote in the diary.Cindy Sheehan has all along been just a useful idiot of the Democrats, someone any political hack would derisively label a "true believer," someone helpful to the party, but no one you want anywhere near the controls. It's all about winning elections. Now she understands this.
She said she sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life."
Holy crap! Matchgame PM star Charles Nelson Reilly is dead!via pajamas media
Well, after some time of hearing about how Annie Jacobsen had hysterically overreacted in her description of events on Northwest Airlines flight 327 on June 29, 2004...
The inspector general for Homeland Security late Friday released new details of what federal air marshals say was a terrorist dry run aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29, 2004.
Paul McCartney, in a desperate bid to remain relevant, releases his latest video on YouTube instead of MTV.
Saigon. Shit! I'm still only in Saigon...
Kid Various was toodling around the revamped John Edwards Virtual HQ just recently (no cyber-poop to be seen) and ran across the Edwards’ Plan for
Remember you read it here first. A John Edwards presidency is not only going to be War on Terror freetm – it ain't going to be cheap either!
Mr. Surly pointed out to The Kid yesterday that we seem to have a long running thread going on in the comment section to this post about the insanity of
The problem with DYFS, as with all state family services bureaucracies, is that it has a bias towards family unification. Now family unification is not necessarily a bad thing, but what the bureaucracy has to understand is that it is not ipso facto a good thing either. Going the extra mile to put children back into the hands of crazed nut-cases (of which many families are comprised – look at Mr. Surly’s!) is most assuredly not a good thing. It’s destructive.
Kid Various understands this bias to be an ancient one. It’s why traditional cultures fight so fiercely against interference in what is referred to as, in typical UN-speak, personal status law. Laws dealing with marriage, spousal rights, raising of children, etc. You can regularize and modernize most
Even in the western Enlightenment cultures, we still have remnants of these ancient tribal biases; spousal privilege against testimony, the right to kill your children through medical neglect if you are a Christian Scientist and the bias towards family unification at all costs by state bureaucracies.
Which brings us to why Kid Various supports the current draft immigration bill that currently has everyone’s panties in a wad.
What did he say?
Lost you? Stay with The Kid. His segue skills are dazzling to behold.
The immigration bill as it stands right now is a monster with many components; z-visas for illegals already in the country, touchbacks, fines, amnesty for taxes and social security payments, new employer penalties, tamper-proof ID, the wall, etc.
Some of these are agreeable to The Kid, some are not. Before we go any further, Kid Various has to mention that he has always been pretty much of an “open borders” type of guy. He’s all in favor of free movement of labor and capital. Immigrants have been the life blood of our culture and our national narrative, and for those who say we’re full and can’t take any more – Kid V. says: Take a drive out West sometime. We got plenty of room.
However, in the post September 11th world, it’s patently obvious that we can’t have open borders. We just can’t have millions of people entering the
Similarly, we have about 12 million illegals already in the country. Any hope that we are going to round them all up and deport them is a fantasy. This we do not have the capacity to do. Yes, it’s unfair to those people who are trying to emigrate legally. Yes, it sends the wrong signal. But sometimes, the law just has to reflect the reality on the ground. This is not always a bad thing. In the 1840’s, laws were put into place to recognize and regularize squatters’ claims to land in the states west of the Appalachians. Basically, the squatters did not own those lands, they were held by eastern land owners who were often granted huge chunks by royal charter (before the Revolution) or bought up afterwards.
It was unfair to the landlords, but the laws recognizing the claims of the squatters simply reflected a ground truth that could not be changed by that point. Besides, it also recognized that the squatters were *improving* land that was just lying fallow because the eastern owners weren’t doing anything with it.
But for all the hoo-hah over all these various components to the immigration bill, the most important provision has hardly been discussed in the media frenzy. That provision being that it scraps the family unification bias in current immigration law.
And you thought The Kid wasn’t going anywhere with this.
Charles Krauthammer talks about this in his column today. In the competition for the world’s talent pool, the
Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into
The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance.
If you want to emigrate to the
However, if you want to get your brother over here to help you with the honor killing of your daughter, that’s no problem! Just get him on the next plane over from
This has been the process since the immigration reforms of the 1960’s and the insane priorities have greatly contributed to the Third-Worldization of
In fact, we want people who are willing to leave their families behind. It’s a self selection process. People who are willing to travel to
There are literally millions of these people across the globe. They believe in liberty and freedom. They believe in hard work. They believe that if they apply themselves, nothing is beyond their reach. They are Americans. Because
Kid Various knows a man from
Kid Various knows a woman from
Kid Various knows a man from
All over the world, there are Americans who simply lack the paperwork. There are Americans out there who it would be our honor to welcome across the border. There are Americans who desperately want to come here and contribute to and keep the American experiment going into the 21st century.
As long as the draft of the immigration bill contains the point system engine rather than the family unification bias (and we know that this is not a given,) Kid Various will support it warts and all.
It’s time to bring those Americans home.
Good lord! The UK truly is turning into a police state...
That Britain suffers from rampant anomie, concealed by low murder rates, is arguable. That the place is becoming a police state isn't. The last laughable "measure" to be seen there was CCTV cameras which issue orders to passers-by. The next will be hovering drones, fitted with cameras, speakers and microphones, to hum around the streets, looking for criminals.
Exhibit 'A' in why we're all doomed. The initial reaction of the NJ clerk who tipped of the Feds to the Ft. Dix Six. via Instapundit
At first, the teenage clerk didn't know what to do, his pal said.
"Dude, I just saw some really weird s-," he frantically told his co-worker. "I don't know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?"
Kid Various didn't even know Mr. Surly read Bill Whittle. Whittle's latest essays are indeed magnificent - as they all are. But The Kid was more intrigued by the concept of the Remnant.
Albert was a very highly educated fellow. He observes that, strangely enough, Plato himself used precisely the same word – Remnant -- when referring to the same group, the people whose force of character was the mortar that held ancient Athens together. Curious…He clarifies that he is not talking about an educational or aristocratic elite:
I have been, and remain, a staunchly anti-elitist individual. I find the idea of belonging to a special group the most dangerous philosophical ground you can stand on. But what is remarkable about this Remnant is that the people that compose it seem to be drawn completely at random. It is not a philosophy. It is a frequency. You are on it or you are not. And this is not a million-dollar lottery win, either: it is a call to face unpleasant facts and impending hardship. It is a quiet summons to duty. It often makes one uncomfortable, and, most often, this unfocused, vague desire – this need – to do something useful most often makes one feel very much alone.As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.
Dear Jon Corzine,
The Pew Research Center just released a study based on a survey of 1,050 Muslims, conducted from January through April. Among the findings:
I'm so gald New Jersey legislators have got their priorites straight. While everyone with any means to pay is being taxed to death in this state, you can rest easy knowing that the Legislature is tackling the tough issues. Case in point Assembly Bill 4217 which allows pet owners to sue for negligent infliction of emotional distress if a pet food company accidently poisons a pet. That's right, if your pet is poisoned and dies, the state wants you to know that you are not expected to get over it, instead you can revel in your grief and sue for damages for emotional distress. . .you goddamn pansy.
Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! has an interesting new post:
Everything the West has achieved – all the science, prosperity, security and freedom – is based upon the free exchange of ideas. We tolerate offensive ideas so that this free exchange of information may continue. Disagreement is the crucible of wisdom. The price we pay for this cooperation is the daily offense we suffer at the exposure to ideas we find distasteful. However, when radical Muslims living in the West demand that their religion not undergo these same stresses and trials and turns violent – burning buildings or killing those who disagree with them – well, we as a society have a choice. We can be “always cooperating,” which rewards that behavior, or we can retaliate, which punishes it.
Which do you think – reward, or punishment – is likely to produce more of this savagery, and which less?
Interesting study concerning the fused nasal bones found in Tyrannosaurs. It strengthed their snouts to avoid dislocation of the bones and allowed them to apply more power to the bite. They may have made them bigger, but they didn't make better killing machines than the KING!
So this is what they're doing with all that free time.
Frustrated fidos can now have a fling with the ultimate play thing for pampered pooches...the first sex doll for dogs.
The ultimate in sexy doggy accessories - sex dolls to keep any pet pleasured - comes from the land of love, France.
The Indians are learning from the Democrats!
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - A villager is campaigning in northern India for the rights of people declared legally dead by cheating relatives seeking to steal their assets.
Hey guess what? Remember last year when the CIA announced (to the unrestrained glee of the NY Times) that Iran was 5 to 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon? TIME'S UP!
Until recently, Iran had been having difficulty in making the centrifuges work together in production lines known as “cascades,” IAEA Director General Mohammad ElBaradei has been telling IAEA Board members.
But presto! In just a few months time, the Iranians have mastered this challenging technology. “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich,” ElBaradei told the New York Times in an interview that appeared on May 15. “From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.”
Basically, our intelligence system, which brought to you previous hits such as the Iraqi WMD, had thought Iran was having trouble with the cascade process. Well, seems as if the Iranians aren't as stupid as the CIA thought they were!
With Porter Goss gone, the CIA has returned to a delicious slumber when it comes to Iran. And they have been led back to Dreamland by their overseers at the Director of National Intelligence, whose brilliant analysts – many of whom are proud alumni of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research – concluded last year that Iran would not succeed in building a nuclear weapon until “early to mid- next decade.”
That five to ten year estimate is meaningless, of course. Its relationship to reality was similar to a child’s relationship to counting: one-two-too many!
Five to ten years, of course, meant never. Not soon. Not on my watch.
And yet it’s here. Now. On their watch.
Kid Various doesn't know why anyone bought the 5 to 10 year estimate. That's total CIA-speak for "How the fuck should we know?"
North Korea? 5 to 10 years. Oops!
Pakistan? 5 to 10 years. Oops!
More so, as Kid Various has noted before, why is 5 to 10 years supposed to be comforting? Any official estimate of Iran getting the bomb that is short of NEVER should scare the bejesus out of us.Recording Industry Association of America is sending letters to college students who illegally download music and threatening to sue them unless they agree to a settlement. Sara Barg, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore, is one of those college students. The RIAA accused her of illegally downloading 381 songs.
Sigh. How has it come to this? I'm not refering to widespread illegal downloading. The fact that so many college students download music illegally does not surprise me. People always like to get something for nothing, even if it involves a little larceny. Instead of getting a sound system below cost off the back of a truck, you have illegal downloads. I can almost forgive the lame excuses about how everyone else was doing it, because millions of people are. Though you would think everyone should know by now that you don't jump off a bridge just because their friends are doing it.Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room. Besides, the 20-year-old had friends who had downloaded thousands of songs without repercussion.
"Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it," Barg said. . . .
Barg's parents paid the $3,000 settlement. Without their help, "I don't know what I would have done. I'm only 20 years old," she said."Technically, I'm guilty. I just think it's ridiculous, the way they're going about it," Barg said. "We have to find a way to adjust our legal policy to take into account this new technology, and so far, they're not doing a very good job."
Well this is disturbing... via The Weekly Standard Blog
It's on! The War on Terror rages in the Garden State. Jihadi pizza deliverymen try to deliver a pizza . . . with a topping of holy war! No tip for them.
Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack the Army's Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers. . . .The best part of this story is how these idiots got caught:
The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base.
In court documents, prosecutors said the suspects came to the attention of authorities in January 2006 when a Mount Laurel, N.J., shopkeeper alerted the FBI about a "disturbing" video he had been asked to copy onto a DVD.That will teach these Islamofacists to learn how to burn their own DVD's. Way to go unknown patriotic clerk! Maybe we should send some of the guys down at 7-11 to Pakistan to go after Osama Bin Laden next.
Well, this blows. The FDA is trying to prevent Redux frommarketing an energy drink using the name "Cocaine" because it glamorizes illegal drug use. The FDA issued a warning to Redux that it considered the drink illegal, saying it was being marketed as an alternative to an illegal street drug and making claims to treat or cure disease. Who's the FDA trying to kid here? Have they ever heard of a little soft drink called Coke? Are they trying to protect people looking to score a little Bolivan marching powder from accidently buying the drink because they are too stoned to realize that the Qwik-E-Mart doesn't stock cans of drinkble nose candy?
We tried to contact Yves Saint Laurent to warn them that Opium perfume could be next, but they were too busy enjoying the freedom of expression guaranteed by the US Constitution -- a freedom we here at Redux, sadly, lack."
The company's website was recently revised, with the page normally offering sales of the beverage covered with a black band saying "Banned by The Man."
A better review one won’t find:
At least 15 people have complained of feeling sick while watching the film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett since it was released in
No shit. After 2 hours in that movie, Kid Various was reaching for the plastic lined bag himself.
But a scene in which Kikuchi's character visits a night-club where strobe lights flash for about a minute has made some Japanese movie-goers queasy.
Believe us, it ain’t the strobe lights. It’s the intense self righteousness washing over you from every frame.
Compare this with what we consider this year’s most important film (not to mention actually entertaining – truly the antithesis of the
As Kid Various sat in the theater, engrossed in the retelling of the Spartans famous last stand at
How did this movie ever get made into today’s
Because a lot has been said about how 300 is a new type of film, the completely new and astounding grammar for future film-making that it explores with relish. But really, 300 is a throwback. It’s a touchstone to an earlier age where
And yes, we are all part of the human condition. And that human condition embodies things like good and things like evil. And it is the eternal responsibility of good, to stand up to evil. Because evil doesn’t care how sensitive you are. Evil only sees that as weakness. And in this age, where we face great evil in the world, we need stories about these Spartan-like heroes more than ever.
And we need people in
Miller, who obviously authored such important works as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and
NPR: […] Frank, what’s the state of the union?
FM: Well, I don’t really find myself worrying about the state of the union as I do the state of the home-front. It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants … and we’re behaving like a collapsing empire. Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because of everything that isn’t working out perfectly every time.
NPR: Um, and when you say we don’t know what we want, what’s the cause of that do you think?
FM: Well, I think part of that is how we’re educated. We’re constantly told all cultures are equal, and every belief system is as good as the next. And generally that
And in this interview recently in the LA Times via Michelle Malkin:
MUCH has been made of Miller's politics in the wake of "300." The deliriously violent and stylized sword film is based on a Spartan battle in 480 B.C., and although Miller wrote and drew the story for Dark Horse comics a decade ago, in film form it was received by many as a grotesque parody of the ancient Persians and a fetish piece for a war on Islam. Miller scoffs at those notions. "I think it's ridiculous that we set aside certain groups and say that we can't risk offending their ancestors. Please. I'd like to say, as an American, I was deeply offended by 'The Last of the Mohicans.' "
Still, Miller gets stirred up about any criticism of the war in
"What people are not dealing with is the fact that we're going up against a culture that finds it acceptable to do things that the rest of the world left behind with the barbarians in the 6th century," Miller said. "I'm a little tired of people worrying about being polite. We are fighting in the face of fascists."
Unlike most
In animated features, the story is king--and the stories that work are ones with clear moral conflicts in which flawed characters are called upon to sacrifice for the greater good. Stars don't like playing characters with flaws, or characters from different times whose views on social matters don't conform to our own. If semi- animated pictures aimed not at kids but at adult moviegoers now really take flight because of 300's smashing success, the future will not be so bright for
Lefty greens want you to believe the "inconvenient truth" that Hurricane Katrina is President Bush's fault. I wonder how they will blame Bush for this?
Methane emissions from flooded rice paddies contribute to global warming just as coal-fired power plants, automobile exhausts and other sources do with the carbon dioxide they spew into the atmosphere.
Fred Thompson gets it.
It bothers Americans when we’re told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up — and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we’d rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again. But we cool off. We’re big boys and girls, after all, and we don’t really bruise that easily. We’re also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there’s a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side — the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.
On Sunday's Face the Nation, surrender monkey Rep. John Murtha quiped:
"There’s three ways or four ways to influence a president. One is popular opinion, the election, third is impeachment and fourth is the purse.”
The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.