Asking For A Mulligan

Realizing he faces the rest of his natural life sitting alone in a maximum security hole, Zacarias Moussaoui is begging for a chance to try again. The brave Jihadi (in the very best Brave Sir Robin tradition), so soon after shouting that he had won and America had lost just figured out who the real loser was.

We knew all along, Zack baby.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports the motion for a new trial was summarily dismissed by the judge.

Pointing Out The Obvious

Well, I'm not sure if it's at all helpful at this point, since the Iranian President appears to be completely deranged, but Shimon Peres today pointed out the obvious. Iran will face a payback for any nuclear attack. If Israel dies, it will take Iran with it. The people who are sitting on their hands right now are making that scenario more, not less, likely. This is a time for a unified front from the whole world. Iran is playing Russian roulette with a loaded automatic pistol with one in the chamber. It's their turn first.

Jimmy Carter could have prevented it from getting to this point.

Speaker Of The House?

In Oz?

Quick, get a bucket of water!

Video Of Journalist’s Murder Is A Hoax

Jawa Report has the details. Someone sent the hoax tape to the Sunday Times and the reporter who viewed it believed it to be real. We posted about it yesterday. Atwar Bahjat was, indeed, murdered by someone, but the horrid beheading is actually a cell-phone video of a (quite real) beheading of a Nepalese man.

The hoax doesn't change the fact that Atwar Bahjat was murdered. I also have no word on whether the Times' report that an electric drill had been used on her are true or not.

Speculation

There's an article in today's Wall Street Journal speculating on the possibility that Al Gore might enter the 2008 Presidential race.

For former Vice President Al Gore, a rash of favorable publicity surrounding this month's opening of his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," and the growing political resonance of its subject — global warming — are stoking the most serious speculation about a Gore political comeback since his loss in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

In 2008, that could mean a once-unimaginable battle for Democrats' nomination between Bill Clinton's former vice president and his wife, Hillary Clinton. To some pro-Gore Democrats, worried about Mrs. Clinton's electability, that is part of the appeal.

Gore's spokesmen are denying it, but many people aren't so sure.

In recent weeks, he has been on the covers of Vanity Fair, Wired (its headline: "The Resurrection of Al Gore") and American Prospect, a liberal Democratic magazine. Defeated politically, he nonetheless makes Time's list of the world's 100 most influential people; Mr. Gore is featured under the headings "Heroes and Pioneers" and "America Takes a Fresh Look at 'Ozone Man'" — the derisive nickname coined by the first President Bush in 1992 after Mr. Gore's previous environmental book, "Earth in the Balance," came out.

"His star will never be higher than it is right now with his movie coming out," says Democratic consultant Karen Skelton, Mr. Gore's former political director.

The Gore buzz reflects a sense among even some pro-Clinton Democrats that Mrs. Clinton, considered the prohibitive favorite for the nomination given her support in the party's base of activists and donors, can't win the general election because she is a polarizing figure to many voters. These skeptics believe only someone such as Mr. Gore with the celebrity and fund-raising potential to match Mrs. Clinton could stop her.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are just tickled pink at the prospect of the fun and festive air a Gore announcement would add to the normal fun of the primaries. We're so tickled that we commissioned our resident artist, Skippy, to produce a very special piece of art for us. Skippy came back with a picture entitled: "Hurricane Al launches his loyal gigantic robotic flightless waterfowl to savage the Carpetbagger Princess at her own game." Which we thought was a little overly long and didn't fall trippingly from the tongue. So we call it: Hillary and the Penguin.

Let the games begin!

New Jersey: We’re Not Just Chemical Plants

New Jersey has rejected it's second tourism slogan in less than one year. "Come See For Yourself" lasted only a little longer than "We'll Win You Over". Then acting-Governor Richard J. Codey rejected the first slogan because he said it reminded him of when he was single and asking women out on dates. Officials have no idea what will replace the two rejects.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are always happy to help, so we thought it would be fun to ask for suggestions for a slogan. Our humble suggestion is in the title of the post. We were trying to work in "exit" but couldn't quite make it fit.

Choices

I think this will be my 101st Fighting Keyboardist blog of the day. 

There is an excellent post up over at the Middle Ground. Kat has a lengthy essay up on choice and on a common fallacy - that one side makes the choice to go to war. As human beings we tend to interpret another person's motivations and desires based on our own motivations and desires. Some people are better than others at understanding that not everyone thinks as we do. Our side alone did not choose war. It was thrust upon us when airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a lonely field in Pennsylvania. In truth it was thrust upon us before that.

We saw this same behavior directly after the attacks on 9/11. Within hours, people were talking about "why". Experts were trying to tell us about OUR actions that led to this moment. It was a natural response. Victims often do it after a violent crime because they could not control the violence or the damage done to them or their loved ones. Instead, they look at every action to see if they could have changed the outcome. If they could find that moment, that choice that led to this, they could know they were in control of the situation the whole time, that in the end, it was they who chose to be robbed or shot, it was they who chose the planes to be hi-jacked, the buildings to be destroyed, the thousands of dead; not the choice of the "other". They need that sense of control in order to gain back the ability, the confidence, to continue with their life. Thus the "other" rarely factors into it accept where we try to determine how our choices made them "react".

We rarely see the "other" as a sentient being who makes their own choices and cares little for our own. We do not see them as capable of interfering with our own control. If we have to believe that others control some aspect of our lives, we may lose all ability to function.

The arguments that we should withdraw out troops are based on the premise that we alone started the war. It is a false premise. Our choice comes down to understanding the threat and meeting it or choosing to wait for death to come for us.

It makes it easier to believe that we can choose to withdraw and not participate. The truth is that we do not control this war. We are not the only ones who choose. The "others" have chosen before we even realized that there was something to make a decision about. This decision was made long ago in the words of Qutb in 1955 when he wrote that the freedom of the West infiltrating the lands of Islam would bring about this crisis. This was long before we even considered the idea of Islamist terrorists or their dreams of war and domination. He wrote that, one day, the existence of Islam as they knew it would be demolished if Islam did not rise up and destroy the West or push every idea, product, book, or thought that was not from Islam out of Islam.

Yet, we still believe that it was only our choice, that WE choose war. To believe otherwise would mean we have to accept we have no control and that WE did not choose war but it was chosen for us. In other words, it is WE who react to an action, not the other way around.

We can choose to reject this, but it doesn't matter what we choose because the "others" still have a will of their own. They still have their own thoughts, desires and demands. In all of these things, we believe we can choose differently because we do not hold what we believe is the final prize, the "political objective" as Clausewitz once wrote, in the same high regard as the "others". We have deduced that this final objective is simply that we do not inflict our society on, set foot on, participate with governments, purchase products from or otherwise have any interaction with Arab, Persian or Islamic nations.

In the end we have to recognize that we are not in control of the other person. Our choice is not ours alone to make. If we simply withdraw, the others will not choose to leave us alone. That is not their way. We need to recognize that.

The murder of Atwar Bahjat is not a lone act that will never be repeated again if only we withdraw from Iraq. Men do not wake up one day, choose to cut off the head of a bound woman after torturing her unmercifully and then go home never to do it again. They made a choice and have committed to it. Something that we want to pretend cannot happen. We want to pretend that, if we were not there they would not have a reason to do it; that they would not choose to do it to another or to us. We need to pretend this or we must accept that we do not control our world. Our perception of invulnerability will be shaken, our world will be chaos and we will not know what to do next.

But, we do have a choice. Even if it is only a reaction to the choices of others, we can choose war. We can choose to fight and keep fighting until the “others” have chosen a different political objective that we can agree on short of world domination or until they have decided that Islamist ideology and the caliphate are dead. Or, we can choose to be Atwar Bahjat, bound, gagged and finally beheaded.

Choosing to do nothing means we surrender. It is not principle. It is not control. It is death, today or tomorrow when the killers of Atwar Bahjat finally choose us.

I think we'd all rather not to have to choose war. But we have to realize that sometimes it is chosen for us, therefore we have no real choice in the matter at all. 

Update On Alaa Abd El-Fatah

The Egyptian blogger arrested over the weekend. Rantings of a Sandmonkey has all the latest news and contact information, along with several handy letter templates for people who need a model for an effective letter. (That's not a bad thing, some people are better at correspondence than others. I always had a template book around when I was first starting out in the world.)

Come on bloggers, whatever your politics. This should be something everyone can support.

UPDATE: Global Voices Online linked back to my original post on this topic, here.

Stories Like This

Tick me off to no end. In today's Washington Post, Christopher Lee writes that Bush's appointments are "less diverse" that Clinton's were at the same point in their presidencies. The firs few paragraphs explain how Bush only has 37% women and minority appointments as opposed to Clinton's 47%. Then it goes on to also tell readers that Bush has numerous cabinet level minority and female appointees, which Clinton did not. The data comes from the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee.

So more is better? Quantity over quality is the new measure? If Bush appointed 100% minorities and women in lower level positions and kept the cabinet level positions staffed only by white males that would be okay? Since Clinton did such a relatively poor job in appointing minorities and women into cabinet jobs, isn't that a bad thing? This is a non-story, about an insignificant and quite meaningless difference in numbers. If we rate raw head count above quality, we all lose.

But we should be asking a simple question here. Why is the Democratic staff generating data for the Post to write non-stories on? If they have no real work to do, why are we taxpayers supporting them?

Just asking.

Immigration Reform

Michael Barone, writing in Real Clear Politics, discusses the problems congress has had and is still having with the issue of immigration. While there is more than enough blame on this issue to go around, something has got to be done.

No wonder Congress and the White House didn't bring the issue forward till the fifth year of Bush's presidency, even though he campaigned on it in 2000. And no wonder that members of Congress keep shifting positions on the issue. The House passed a border-security bill, with no guest-worker or legalization provisions, last December. Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill touching on all three issues. But Minority Leader Harry Reid kept the bill off the floor. The issue seemed dead on Capitol Hill.

Huge numbers of voters want something done about this issue. If the Democrats block the reforms, as Reid has been doing, they will pay a heavy price for it in November. Likewise, if the Republicans allow themselves to be rolled and agree to amnesty, they will pay for that. The solution is somewhere in the middle, as it so often is.

The route to agreement is to give all of these conviction politicians much of what they want. A fence, high-tech border-security and identification devices, some compromise on guest workers and legalization — all could be part of an omnibus measure. As for the calculation politicians, as they try to assess the political landscape and reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings of various polls, they appear to be coming to the conclusion that inaction — or blocking action now that the issue is so visible — poses a higher political risk than taking action.

The fence must be built, and soon. If Bush backs a fence, many other compromises can be reached and the voters will accept them. Both parties should see that. The first one that does stands to win in November. The party that fails to act will pay a price. 

This Is Very Sad

John Hawkins reports that Andrea Clark has passed away. He does not have any word on cause of death yet. Andrea's sister posted this on DU:

"Andrea passed away peacefully a little before 3pm today, with her family and her friends at her bedside. We love her so very much and we are going to miss her terribly. We hope that the battle that we fought for our sister will bring to light and bear witness to the horrible acts committed in the name of ethics in hospitals across the state of Texas.

The fact that we had to fight this battle is both frightening and a sad commentary on the so-called "ethics" now being practiced in medical facilities in this state. The battle for life is a difficult one, in the best of situations, but when a family is put through what we had to go through at such a time, it is especially agonizing.

We wish so much that we could have spent more time at our sister's side, when she was living and fighting for her life, rather than having to visit our attorney's office, give interviews to radio and television stations to let the public know of the atrocity about to befall Andrea, and literally stand outside the hospital and beg them not to kill our sister. In attempting to deprive Andrea of the most basic of her human rights–life–St. Luke's Hospital managed to deprive her family and her of that which is most dear to us all, when we are faced with the death of a loved one: a proper goodbye.

How, in the name of God, anyone can call putting someone to death when they are at their most helpless and begging for their lives "ethical," we cannot imagine."

Yes, the battle to stop the hospital from executing her should not have been necessary. Let's hope the battle itself forces changes to that horrible law.

Still More On the November Elections

John Fund, writing in the Opinion Journal, has some important points about the November elections. His analysis comes down to it really being the Republicans election to blow more than the Democrats chance to win. He points out that spending and immigration are the two biggest issues for voters right now. He also points out something I have said before: the Democrats in congress are not really better thought of in the opinion polls. All the politicians have a problem this year.

The other problem Democrats still face is that the public thinks almost as badly about them as they do the Republicans. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds just 33% have a positive view of the Democratic Party, with 39% having a negative view. Republican numbers are worse, but just barely: 35% positive, 43% negative. Just after the 2004 elections, Democrats had a 44% favorable rating while Republicans had a 46% rating, numbers that came close to matching that year's election results. Even Howard Dean, Mr. Mehlman's Democratic counterpart, admits that his party has to "earn the public approval of our right to govern again."

Those numbers are virtually a tie and may actually be worse for the Democrats given that most of the polls are heavily over-sampling Democrats. I think this is shaping up to be a rough year all the way around.

Europe Falling

The Roman Catholic Church does many good works all over the world. They help feed, clothe and shelter people. I suspect that the Cardinal in charge of the diocese in Brussels may have gone a bit overboard, though.

Essentially, he's allowed churches to be changed into mosques by Muslim squatters. The pictures should be enough to make anyone realize there is a huge problem there. This is not charity, this is an occupation.

One can't help but wonder whether the Vatican is aware of this situation.

Performance Anxiety

The Washington Post reports that young male college students are increasingly having performance issues. Not in classwork, but in more intimate settings. The story is really anecdotal since there is little if any experimental data to back up the assertion that this is becoming more common. All the usual suspects are named as possible causes; drinking, drugs, smoking, stress and lack of exercise.

I wonder if it's really just that people are more willing to talk about it rather than a real increase. It seems to me things are really no different than when I went to college. In fact there's likely a higher percentage of health conscious people today than there were back when I went to school.

Or maybe we were just more studly back then.

Decadence

Ace over at The Ace of Spades HQ has a post up that pretty well completely wraps up whats wrong with the far left. The inability to afford primacy to their fellow citizens or, in extreme cases, even their own species.

I've had this argument with a dozen leftists and hard liberals. They insist, among other things, that Americans should not be afforded by other Americans any special regard as concerns matters of life and death; they will insist, for example, that the collateral deaths of foreigners on a battlefield are just as important, if not more important, than deaths of American soldiers, and that the rules of engagement should be much more strict to avoid causing any foreign civilians harm, even if it results, as it must, in an increased death toll among American soldiers.

They do not see this as a question of American lives versus foreign lives. They only view it "objectively" as a question of soldiers versus civilians, with no weighting of soldiers' lives due to the fact they are their fellow American citizens.

Imagining they can and should remove natural human irrational and subjective sympathies from the equation — i.e., first duty to self and family, second duty to friends, third duty to community, fourth duty to nation, fifth and final duty to all others — they fetishize their own "enlightment" by refusing to prioritize the safety of their countrymen over non-countrymen.

This is, indeed, where the left departs from the majority in this country. It becomes particularly extreme in cases where someone refuses to put the human race itself ahead of the rights of non-humans. Ace cites the example of shark apologists:

The amateur webzine Slate had a good piece about an extreme form of this psychotic condition. Remember back during the "Summer of Shark" attacks, before 9/11, when all we thought we had to worry about was a spike in shark attacks (which really wasn't a spike at all; it was just a spike in news coverage) and Gary Conditt?

Some people actually chose to become, as Slate dubbed them, "shark apolgists." In a territorial dispute between sharks, which wanted to eat people, and human swimmers, who wanted to not be eaten, some biologists and environmentalists actually argued in favor of the sharks' "right" to chow down on 11-year-old boys. After all– it's their territory. They have to eat too, right?

There are even more extreme examples I think. The people who cheerfully argue that 90% of humanity needs to die off to save the earth. PETA and ELF both take these extremes to a whole new level. I think Ace makes a lot of sense.

At some point, we just don't have the luxury of decadent philosophical inquiries as to who the real monsters are, us or them. When someone's trying to kill you, you don't have the luxury of exploring whether or not your would-be killer feels justified in his efforts at murder, or has legitimate grievances against the US or Israel, or whether there are "root causes" which mitigate his evil. You either defend yourself or die.

A lot of people in this country just don't seem to understand that. They are unwilling to simply say, "We are at war; it is time to defend ourselves." And by rejecting that simple, unnuanced, "jingoistic" notion, they instead choose death.

And not just their own deaths, of course; they choose death for their fellow Americans, to the extent they can put their desires into practice.

And while these peacocks strut about to show off the pretty feathers of their "enlightened morality," men of real morals and genuine courage are, of course, dying in order to protect them. Better men die so that they can wallow and luxuriate in their presumed righteousness and then scorn those who make their decadance, and very continued existence, possible.

I choose to support the people who protect us. Who do you support?