Rage

The article below, in its entirety from The Washington Post, fills me with rage.

This story fills me with rage at those on the left who believe there is no such thing as true evil in the world and who think that the problems of the world can be solved by group hugs and singing “Kumbaya.”

It fills me with rage at those on the religious right in America and elsewhere in the West who believe that all Muslims are out to destroy the West and our way of life.

This story should contain some cautionary insights for both groups.

For those on the left, including our “Hate America first – apologizing for American greatness - bowing to foreign heads of state - appeasement-minded sock puppet President,” it shows the dangers of appeasement. It certainly hasn’t worked for Pakistan. This Administration wants to expand the concept of appeasement to stateless thugs. It’s one thing to try appeasement with a government, even though that path has never worked in the history of mankind. This administration thinks that providing “economic opportunity” will make the Taliban a less attractive option for people. What sort of alternate reality and universe are these clowns living in?

Well guess what? The Taliban are already unattractive to anyone who has real experience with them. They are not about “economic opportunity.” The Taliban are not loved anywhere they go. Sometimes they are viewed as the lesser of two immediate evils by people who are otherwise let down by their government (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan), but no one really likes their policies, ideology, or methods. They take control and rule by fear and intimidation wherever they are allowed to take root. Period.

For those on the right, read carefully about the fear of ordinary human beings:

“We all said to each other, what sort of people have come here? And what kind of sharia is this? Cutting off people's heads has nothing to do with Islam," recounted Karim, 55, a bus driver. "The people were filled with great rage, and great fear.”

“People in Swat are angry and confused, because the government is reaching out to the Taliban and fighting them at the same time,” said Mohammed Riatullah, a relief agency official.

“They are not Muslims, they are criminals who are defaming our religion, and the people of Buner are not their friends.”

I’m not a Muslim, but for most of the last seven years I’ve lived and worked with Muslims in two war zones. Westerner fear of Islam is born of ignorance and misinterpretation every bit as egregious as the Muslim fanatics causing the mayhem. The so-called “Warriors for Islam” have killed far more Muslims than Christians or Jews, so why are we clinging to insane fears about all Muslims?

I’m also not a fuzzy-thinking liberal idiot who believes in the power of group hugs. I’m all for ruthless extermination of these zealots who seek to destroy both the lives of their fellow Muslims and the lives of everyone else. A bullet, not talk is the proper response for these murderers.

Look at the pictures. Read the article below, and then answer these questions:

Do you honestly believe that any of these people want to destroy your life?

Are you so blinded by ignorance and bigotry that you fear these people?

Or do you see what I see – ordinary people trying to go about their lives to make a better future without the fear of some madman blowing up in their midst?










'Great rage, and great fear' in Pakistan

Refugees fleeing Swat Valley tell of Taliban crimes, abuses
By Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan
The Washington Post
updated 3:21 a.m. ET May 7, 2009

GOLRA, Pakistan - Hajji Karim and his extended family of 70 were camped in a dirt-floor stable 10 miles outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. It was as far as they could get from the Swat Valley, where thousands of people are fleeing from the ravages of the Taliban and the imminent prospect of war with government forces.

When Taliban fighters first entered Karim's village last month, he recounted, they said they had come to bring peace and Islamic law, or sharia, to Swat. But the next day, two of the fighters dragged a policeman out of his truck and tried to slit his throat. Horrified, a crowd rushed over, shouting and trying to shield the officer. The fighters let him go, but the incident confirmed the villagers' worst suspicions.

"We all said to each other, what sort of people have come here? And what kind of sharia is this? Cutting off people's heads has nothing to do with Islam," recounted Karim, 55, a bus driver. "The people were filled with great rage, and great fear."

Authorities in North-West Frontier Province said that with the conflict intensifying, they expect half a million people to flee the once-bucolic Swat region near the Afghan border, much of which is now occupied by heavily armed militants. Officials announced Tuesday that they plan to open six refugee camps in the safer nearby districts of Swabi and Mardan, but until then, many who leave home to escape the violence are facing the arduous task of finding their own shelter.

Refugees confused and trapped
As the refugees begin streaming out of Swat and the neighboring Buner district in northwest Pakistan, they carry with them memories of the indignities and horrors inflicted by occupying Taliban forces -- locking women inside their homes, setting donkeys on fire -- as they tried to force residents to accept a radical version of Islam.

The government has not helped, refugees said, with its erratic, seesawing efforts to appease and fight the militants. Some said they felt confused and trapped, unsure whether to trust the peace deal forged by the government and Taliban leaders last month, or to flee in anticipation of the fighting that has begun as the peace accord collapses.

Sher Mohammed, a property dealer from Mingora, the main town in Swat, was one of the first people to reach a new refugee camp in the Mardan district with his wife and children Tuesday night. On Wednesday, he kicked the dirt outside their tent despondently, saying that after enduring two years of fighting and Taliban abuses, he had had enough.

"I feel like I have lost my mind," he said. "I work hard to make a respectable life and educate my children. Now we are living in a camp, and my sons are talking of guns."

Mohammed said he did not understand why the country's powerful army had not been able to defeat the militants before they took over the valley. Even now, after a week of sporadic fighting, military officials have not announced an offensive against the militants who occupy much of Swat and Buner. The Taliban has repeatedly rejected government overtures to salvage the peace deal, in which the militants agreed to disarm if sharia courts were made the exclusive form of justice in Swat.

Army officials said 35 militants and three soldiers were killed Wednesday in Swat in sporadic fighting, including a shootout near several emerald mines that Taliban forces are using as hideouts. They said militants looted three banks and occupied police and civil administration buildings in Mingora. The military reported that an additional 50 militants had been killed in Buner.

Not enough help
The United Nations humanitarian office in Islamabad said it has already registered more than 2,200 families in new camps, "many of them arriving with little more than the clothes they are wearing." In a statement, the office said it would also increase assistance to help about 6,000 additional families in existing camps for Afghan refugees.

One private relief agency based in Swat said that it has been relocating hundreds of families at scattered sites in the cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi but that no local government or international agency had offered to help. Its officials said they were concerned that Taliban fighters would try to recruit displaced people relocated in large camps.

"People in Swat are angry and confused, because the government is reaching out to the Taliban and fighting them at the same time," said Mohammed Riatullah, a relief agency official. "There are huge numbers of people with nowhere to go. We are trying to provide them with decent shelter and support, but we need more help so they won't fall into Taliban hands."

Fears of camp infiltration
Pakistan has hosted millions of refugees from conflicts in Afghanistan during the past two decades, with networks of camps in the northwest and in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. There have been frequent accusations that militant groups infiltrate the camps to use them as sanctuaries and recruiting pools. Military analysts say they suspect that the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan uses refugee camps in Baluchistan for these purposes.

Since militants began staging attacks and occupying territory inside Pakistan several years ago, thousands of inhabitants of the northwest tribal region have been displaced by fighting and have relocated to camps around Peshawar.

In Buner, army forces have been battling Taliban fighters for the past week, and the army said Wednesday that the operations were going smoothly. But several people who have fled from Buner to the provincial capital of Peshawar, or who were reached in Buner by cellphone, said that the situation was dire and that Taliban forces were still occupying many homes.

They said Buneris were especially vulnerable to Taliban attacks for several reasons. The district is famous for its Sufi shrines, where people practice a mystical form of Islam that is anathema to the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. In addition, residents formed militias to resist the Taliban last year, and one village paid dearly for its defiance when voting stations were bombed in December, killing 42 people.

"When the militants entered our area, the people held a jirga to discuss what to do. They said they would never accept them and vowed to fight to the death," said Sirmir Khan, director of an educational charity in Buner who fled to Peshawar last week after Taliban forces occupied his offices. "They are not Muslims, they are criminals who are defaming our religion, and the people of Buner are not their friends."

Afsar Khan, the mayor of a town in Buner who had also fled to Peshawar recently, said that the militants had burned many houses and fields in his area and that last year he had joined an armed posse that attempted to drive them out. "We only had about 100 men, and the militants were coming down from the mountains," Khan recounted. "They fired on us from 5 p.m. to midnight and we were running out of ammunition. We called for help, and the officials kept telling us helicopter gunships were coming, but they never did. Finally we told all the farmworkers to run away, because we could not protect them, and we had to give up."

'Everyone was very afraid'
In a relief agency office in Islamabad on Wednesday, two teenage sisters from Buner huddled on a flour sack next to a few cooking pots, covering their faces with veils. They said they had fled their village four days ago after their father, a farm laborer, was warned by his landlord that the Taliban was coming.
"I don't know what the Taliban are, but everyone was very afraid," said one of the girls, who gave her name as Abzanan. "I am very worried because my father went back to get my brothers, and we don't know what happened to him."
Khan reported from Mardan.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Open Letter to Mother Nature

While this is a climate skeptic topic which some might think belongs on my climate blog, the fact that it includes political commentary, satire, heavy doses of sarcasm and punditry is why I’m posting it here. I'm trying to keep the climate blog more science-based.

Dear Mother Nature,

It seems you missed or otherwise misunderstood our earlier memo.

According to our complex and sophisticated computer models, CO₂, though only .038% of the atmosphere, is the dominant factor in climate change. As we spew out CO₂, temperatures are supposed to skyrocket, ice caps melt, cities flood and polar bears drown, but we are observing that you are failing to perform to the standards our models demand.

Additionally, you have failed to safeguard key information. This information, in the wrong hands, has the potential for confusing the ignorant masses (especially those who cling to guns, religion and the US Constitution) and making them think that you, not our complex and sophisticated computer models, are in charge of climate.

This must not happen. Terrorists working for the fossil fuel companies and other right-wing extremists have acquired some of this information and are already using it to sabotage our excellent work. The ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses are getting more and more confused.

The purpose of this memo then is to point out some of your specific deficiencies in this regard and the corrective actions you must take forthwith. Your failure to comply may result in our reporting your failure to perform to your higher authority, the Obamasiah. We certainly would not want bring you such embarrassment as he has ultimate power in all things. We know this to be true because he told us so in not one, but two autobiographies written before he even ascended his throne or had otherwise accomplished anything of substance.

Temperatures. While we understand that the attending special effects such as hurricanes, melting polar caps and drowning polar bears may take time to organize, temperature should have been simple.

Let us reiterate. According to our complex and sophisticated computer models as CO₂ goes up, so does temperature – by a bunch! This is a very simple concept that even you should be able to grasp. What do you not understand?

A group of us got together and voted on it. We formed a consensus. You are obligated to adhere to that consensus. You may have heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? This is a powerful political organization consisting of fifty-two individuals who have faith in our complex and sophisticated computer models. They are capable of getting ignorant scientifically illiterate politicians to move large sums of money around in directions we desire. Don’t cross them or you won’t ever get published again or ever see meaningful funding for any research!

We even had them draw you several nice pictures that simplify the complex workings of our highly sophisticated models so that there would be no misunderstandings. We had them liberally sprinkle these pictures throughout their reports. Being tolerant of those like you who have no formal schooling or understanding of such complex things like computer models, we will assume (we’re experts at that) you did not see the pictures. Here again is one of those pictures, so that there is no confusion.



Information Security. This is closely tied to temperature. According to our sources, you left past code unsecured, namely the Vostok Ice Cores. According to this code, CO₂ increases after temperatures increase. While this may have been how you did things in the past, our complex and sophisticated computer models mandate a new paradigm.

It is easy to see how such careless security can cause confusion in the minds of the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses who are not computer modelers. Armed with the information of how you used to do things, the fossil fuel terrorists and right-wing extremists are telling people that that is how things are.

While it is painfully obvious that our complex and sophisticated models are correct and your old code is wrong, we must spend inordinate time, resources and energy countering the misconception. Al, James and Rajenda are burning up a lot of jet fuel putting out the “fires”, so to speak, that your carelessness caused.

Special Effects. The ice caps. Why aren’t they melting? The obvious answer is your failure to perform on the first item, temperature.

According to our complex and sophisticated computer models, the Arctic is supposed to be gone last year, but we were willing to accept somewhere around 2012.

The Goracle put his immense reputation on the line with this promise. He won a Nobel Prize! Have you? He made an award winning science fiction movie! Have you? How dare you contradict this immense man!

You will have a difficult time meeting the approved timeline given your current performance as the graph below demonstrates. Note that this year’s Arctic sea ice is rapidly approaching intersect with the 1979-2000 average. It was supposed to be well below the 2007 average. This is a public relations disaster of the highest order and totally unacceptable.



You’ve also failed at the other end of the planet. According to our models, Antarctica should be melting. Creating minor ice shelf collapses in regions where there are other plausible explanations cannot mask your serious failure to warm the Antarctic in accordance with our precise instructions.

In fact, not only have you not raised temperatures over Antarctica, there is evidence that you have actually been lowering temperatures over all but an insignificant peninsula on the western side of the continent!

The Polar Bears. They deserve special mention. They are cute, cuddly, and like to drink Coke and party with penguins while watching the Aurora Borealis. They are supposed to be drowning and going extinct! I know it is difficult to do in one of your precious critters, but they were specifically chosen as the poster children of our project because of the above factors.

They can’t drown if the ice doesn’t melt and the ice won’t melt if you don’t raise the temperatures.

Worse yet, it appears that during the selection process for our global warming poster child, you failed to inform us of the following facts about how you engineered polar bears:

      1. Polar bears can swim – a LONG way. Like about a hundred miles. Have you any idea how many islands exist in the Arctic? At the rate you are melting the ice up there the bears will have no problem migrating to these islands or Siberia for that matter.

      2. Polar bears don’t only eat seals. We were led to believe that the only way the bears could get food was to ambush seals as they surfaced through holes in the ice that shouldn’t be there because the ice should be gone.

It turns out polar bears are very adaptable and eat other things too. They not only forage in human garbage for very rich food, but they also hunt humans! Now the latter part isn’t all bad since humans are the cause of all problems (according to our complex and sophisticated computer models). However, this adaptability means the bears don’t go extinct. In fact, there is evidence that their population is actually going up, not down.

This is totally unacceptable. Tossing three or four bears ashore after a storm was a good press release, but the numbers are insufficient to cause world-wide panic for the cuddly lovable bears.

The eating people part also diminishes their cuteness factor even though in doing so they do the planet a great service. To make matters worse, Knut’s buddies at the zoo in Germany tried to eat a woman who wanted to hug them and the whole affair was caught on film! People-eating poster children are bad for the program.



You’ve even embarrassed a team of crack publicity hounds sent forth on Arctic ice, sponsored by Royalty mind you, to demonstrate that Arctic ice is nearly gone and the polar bears have all drowned. First you nearly froze them to death with below normal temperatures which broke all of their complex and sophisticated ice-measuring equipment.

Then your polar bears started stalking them. This poor team has spent 53 days on thick, thick first-year ice in appalling freezing conditions trying to prove that the ice is melting and your bears, who are supposed to be drowning, are stalking them! Why, they’ve been dragging their little inflatable boat thingies and carrying immersion suits around for nothing. They expected to paddle the last 500km to the North Pole!

It has become clear that you are taking independent steps to direct climate in accordance with your own antiquated plan instead of following our modern plan based upon complex and sophisticated computer models. You’ve deliberately flipped the switches on virtually every major oceanic cycle to negative. This has had an almost immediate impact on local weather (lowering temperatures) which in turn confuses the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses and encourages right-wing extremists.

Most egregious of all, you’ve fiddled with the dimmer switch on the sun! What were you thinking? How can we continue to scare everyone into thinking that temperatures will forever rise, if you are messing with the sun's dimmer switch! Crank it back up! We need an active sun and sunspots! The sun creates solar winds that blow away nasty galactic cosmic rays that may influence cloud formations. Our complex and sophisticated computer models do not take clouds into account (because we don’t understand clouds) and as a result your actions are making us look wrong!

You are costing us a lot of other peoples’ money. We’ve already spent billions of dollars of other people’s money in research and marketing to convince them that a trace gas controls climate. We want to continue spending this money as long as we can squeeze it out of them, but your actions are shortening our horizons for accomplishing this.

We had them believing that, even though this trace atmospheric gas occurs naturally in quantities far greater than humans have produced throughout the Industrial Age, they are to blame. We had them believing that nothing except CO₂ can cause temperatures to go up or down, as indicated by our complex and sophisticated computer models.

All is not lost and you can regain your credibility with us. We still have some people convinced that CO₂ is a pollutant, even though it is essential to life as we know it. We got some of their most scientifically illiterate judges to vote on it and got their equally scientifically illiterate EPA administrators to take it from there. We have some of them convinced that they need to commit economic and national suicide so that we can control everything.

However, time could be running out. This disaster may be wasted if you don’t immediately get temperatures going up again in accordance with our complex and sophisticated computer models. Otherwise, their legislators may ignore our models and decide to wait us out. There are signs that the ignorant gun/religion-clinging Constitutionalist masses are stirring and threatening to throw the bums out under the massive disinformation campaign being waged in the main stream media by the right-wing extremists.

Some of us have a lot riding on this whole global warming project. We own/participate in companies that will make us personally much richer if we can sell carbon credits and your poor performance is cutting into the profit margin. Others of us who are geeky computer types, mostly just want to keep playing with our complex and sophisticated computer models, but that takes LOTS of money because we need new super-super-computers. The old ones just aren’t cutting it.

Our allies in the IPCC hate the West (especially the USA) and want us to commit economic and national suicide, but if having them on our team gets the rest of us what we want, they’re OK with us. But their help, as powerful as they may be in the funding process, won’t be enough if actual observations continue the current downward trend. The right-wing extremists are watching your performance!

Oh, and jet fuel costs a lot too. Having to fly all over the world explaining to everyone why you are not cooperating is getting expensive. You could help us reduce our carbon footprint for this crusade by simply following our script.

Mother Nature, get with the program or we will be forced to report your intransigence to the Obamasiah. If he waves his hands, things will happen and it won’t be pretty!

Sincerely,

Failed Divinity-Journalism Student/Failed Presidential Candidate, The Team, A Rich politically motivated financier who hates America, UN politician Pseudo-Scientist and other nitwits who simply want to control other people’s lives.

Why Are We in Afghanistan?

I must confess complete incredulity when I hear that question, especially when uttered by an American. Nothing demonstrates our short attention span as a nation more than that question. Will we ever learn? So for all those who ask the question, "Why are we in Afghanistan?"

THIS IS WHY!

They won't just go quietly into the night, even though the Obamasiah has "Hussein" as his middle name. Electing this bumbling fool did nothing to improve our situation on the world stage. His recent idiotic idea about talking to "moderate Taliban" was met with derision by the Taliban. Their official spokesman called it a "lunatic idea" and observed that there is no such thing as a "moderate Taliban." Uh duh!

One of the Afghans I work with asked, "Who are these moderate Taliban? I've never heard of such a thing. Is this something like a moderate murderer? This is insane!"

The Obamasiah's talk about an "exit strategy" is defeatist. In typical leftist fashion it is cover for moving the goal post. Change the definition of victory so that expectations are lowered. When we meet the more easily attained "exit strategy" goals, pull the plug and run.

The Taliban are NOT winning here, but we could be maneuvering ourselves into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Taliban are NOT resurgent, but they are reslient. There is a difference. If we cut and run, if we cede this country to these animals, these scenes will be repeated again.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) Photo.
Beatings of women in the streets were an everyday occurrence under the Taliban.

RAWA Photo. The execution of Zarmeena.
After enduring years of brutal abuse, Zarmeena killed her husband while he slept.
She was sentenced to death.
Under Islamic Law, the victim's family may forgive the murderer.
Her husband's family forgave her.
However, since they had already announced the execution
and invited thousands of guests to attend, the Taliban refused to spare her
in violation of the very Islamic Law they pretend to follow.
Zarmeena's seven children were forced to watch the execution.

Shared Sacrifice

US, Afghan, French, Turkish and UK flags at half-mast.
Sometimes we have a bad week, but we have a saying here:
"One Team, One Fight!"
Implicit in that is shared sacrifice.
Note to the defeatist media and others of that ilk:
Our soldiers have the guts and patience to do what is necessary.
Do you?

The Government We Deserve...Part II

The article below lays out a good reminder about who works for whom under our system of government. While our elected officials are responsible for creating much of today's governmental mess, we the people are responsible for electing these clowns in the first place. Our greed at looking for what our Senators and Representatives can bring home to us and our indifference about qualifications for the highest office in the land have led us to where we are today.

545 PEOPLE vs. 300,000,000 PEOPLE

By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations, the House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred Senators, 435 Congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court Justices…545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a Senator, a Congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the Speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto, if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ. If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone, are responsible. They and they alone, have the power. They and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

The Government We Deserve

During the recent US elections, I made no secret of my disdain for Barrack Obama. There were a number of reasons for this including the fact that the man has absolutely no record that we can look to in order to discern his intentions. He has no body of work to balance against his “spread the wealth” comments that might allay fears that he is really a Communist intent upon destroying the US. I still don’t trust the man and so far, he’s proving to be every bit as dangerous as some on the far right postulated.

So where are we now? One month into his Presidency we have a $787 billion “Porkulus” Bill that targets very little money into anything that will actually stimulate the economy and which virtually no member of Congress, or the President bothered to read. To top it off, only about 15% of that monstrosity will even be spent in the coming year…too late to have any impact on saving the economy in 2009. Given that last bit, what was the bloody hurry?

That same bill is also one of his broken campaign promises. During the campaign, Obama talked about the wonderful “transparency” we could expect from his Administration. All spending bills would be posted on the White House website for five days before he’d sign them. Well, the bill was not posted on the White House website and he signed it within three days. He would have signed it even sooner but this bill, without which the entire free world economies would collapse, had to await the Obamesiah’s leisure due to his vacation plans. You can get a copy of this theft by Congress here. Read it and weep.

Other goodies coming out of this Administration and the Pelosi and Reid cabal in Congress include an additional $410 billion that the House passed on 25 February, an Obama proposal for and additional $634 billion for nationalizing healthcare as part of his over $3 TRILLION budget, and an additional $2.5 TRILLION to nationalize the nations banks, as proposed by his Treasury Secretary. Can you say, “DRUNKEN SAILORS?” I would have posted a link to the actual budget, but in this new age of complete transparency in government of The One, the budget is not available to the public yet. The Budget is now available on the White House web site.

Allies in the MSM say all this is to pull the economy out of the “deep” recession. Except that it’s not a deep recession and most analysts were already predicting that the upswing indicators started at the end of December and the country would begin pulling out of the recession as early as the second half of 2009. This is hardly the catastrophic scenario sold by Obama to justify all this profligate spending of other people's money.

Obama is also not very good with history. Let’s leave out the possibility that his misrepresentation that this is the worst recession since the Great Depression was deliberate. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt of simply not being all that bright on history, since he’s demonstrated that on numerous occasions already. Then again…

Point being, the recession in 1991 had unemployment at 7.8% (higher than today) and during Jimmy Carter’s recession unemployment hit 10.2%. The current recession is nowhere near the levels of economic misery of the Great Depression, but Congress and this Administration are doing their best to make it so.

Then there is the ongoing foreign policy train wreck. Sending John Kerry to talk to Hamas? Lifting high tech restrictions on Syria? Ceding nuclear power to Iran? Sending Nancy Pelosi…Pelosi…to Afghanistan? Closing Guantanamo with no alternatives to house the prisoners there? And wrapped in this, let’s return to the recently released budget where the military and intelligence services are gutted. And you feel safer with this man as Commander-in-Chief?

In the middle of all this are his continued efforts to destroy the nation’s economy through all his carbon reduction schemes based upon a rapidly disintegrating “consensus” about whether human emissions cause global warming. To this add efforts to restrict free speech by reimposing the “Fairness Doctrine,” find ways around the recent Supreme Court ruling on gun ownership, subject US troops to International Tribunal (where they would never get a fair trial), offer the UN over $65 billion in additional US taxpayer money, force US soldiers to serve in a proposed UN army, and provide billions in assistance to illegal aliens. Now to be fair, not all these are specifically Obama proposals. However, his allies in Congress are feeling emboldened by what they perceive as his “left-leaning” tendencies.

During the campaign, Obama promised “change,” but nothing more specific. He gave us sweeping hand waves of how he would accomplish things. The true believers in the socialist agenda were locked votes, but the sad thing is, the idiots in the middle fell for the smooth talk. He promised “ice cream” and no one bothered to ask how he was going to pay for it. 52% of the American electorate acted like nine-year olds drooling over promises of getting “stuff” from The One.

As you watch your rights get taken one-by-one by this cabal of Fascio-Communists who think they know better how to spend your money and run your life, remember that you got the government you deserve…the government you elected. You might have a chance to fix this come 2010, if they haven’t by then rigged things so that you can’t vote them out.

Feeling Changed Yet?

Attack on the Ministry of Justice in Kabul

On 11 February, attacks were staged on the Ministry of Justice and a Prisons Office. A third target seemed to be the Ministry of Education, which is near the Justice Ministry. However, it is possible that that lone attacker was simply lost. The attacker at the Ministry of Education was shot dead before he could cause any trouble.

Five attackers hit the Ministry of Justice, killing two policemen as they entered the building. One of the five was shot dead by a policman who followed them into the building. The remaining four then fanned out shooting at anyone who crossed their path. They managed to kill ten civilians and 57 were injured or wounded (many of the injured were hurt jumping out windows to escape the gunmen). Kabul police responded quickly, entered the building and killed all four assailants.

At the prisons office two attackers attempted to enter the building. One was shot dead immediately by a policeman. The second attacker shot the policeman dead, entered the building and detonated his explosive vest, killing himself and seven policemen.

The end tally was: terrorists 8 dead, police 10 dead, civilians 10 dead and 57 injured/wounded.

What is clear is that the attackers were trying to emulate a "Mumbai-like" attack. A key difference: Afghan police are not afraid to fight it out. The Afghans recognized the developing threat, killing three of the attackers as they entered the buildings. They did not let things turn into a prolonged siege, quickly closing in on the terrorists in the building, hunting them down and killing them.

Let us keep this in perspective. This was a bad day by Kabul standards, but only one of many far better and steadily improving days. There are days the bad guys will have success. While the attack momentarily grabbed headlines, it did not, contrary to some news reports, paralyze the city.

All of the buildings attacked on 11 February had little to no stand-off from the street. They are difficult to protect and there are large numbers of people in front of, entering and leaving these buildings all day.

A factor that angers me somewhat is that since no Westerners were killed or directly involved, it was only a passing headline in the Western media. Apart from some alarmists and Pat Buchanan ranting about how "the war is lost" the story vanished within hours. I would like to think that the excellent reaction of the Afghan police and the total annihilation of the attackers made this story not sexy enough. Perhaps if a Westerner had gotten in the crossfire, this story would have seen more play.

Below are some pictures taken less than an hour after the attacks in a different part of town.

Note the terrified women fleeing in blind panic.

Note the men in equal panic, trampling women and children in their paralyzed terror.

Thankfully there were balloon salesmen on hand to calm the masses.

Afghans are not wimps. They take bad events like Taliban attacks in stride. Afterall, they've got 30 years of experience with really bad times.