Islamophobia?

Sean, over at Everything I Know Is Wrong has some interesting thoughts this morning as regards what the leftist pres in the UK is calling Islamophobia. says the ironicly named “Independant”:

“Growing Islamophobia in Britain in the wake of the September 11 attacks could lead to a dangerous backlash of riots and extremism, it was reported today.”

Sean has some issues with that;

“People in Western countries are justifiably afraid of Islamo-supremacists. We are told that Islamo-supremacists are a small minority of Islamic people in general, but it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wheat won’t decry the actions of the chaff. Islamic leaders, and rank and file Muslims, must stand up and abhor the acts of Islamo-fascists loudly and continuously for them to have any credibility when the time comes to draw a distinction between themselves and radical Islamists. So far this has not happened. I’m sure there are individual Muslims who are horrified by Al Qaeda and their ilk, some of my very favorite bloggers are writing from inside Muslim countries, but that only serves to make the point sharper. Where are the Western Muslims who should be expressing their horror? How are we to know that they are not Al Qaeda sympathizers when they won’t even whisper that they aren’t? It’s time to shout it from the rooftops!

It would be easy to get Westerners on the side of Western Muslims. All they have to do is show us that they are on our side.
Just say so.”

I’m not so sure it’s that easy, Sean.

Look, part of the problem we face with the Islamofacists is like any other terrorists, they mix in with the general population, often by lying about their feelings and goals. Which, in turn, is why the Muslims who are against AlQquieda and it’s actions and beliefs are silent on the matter; they know that the chances are very high some of these animals are lurking amongst them, posing as muslims who are happily pro-western… and that, therefore, speaking out against such people could be a fatal act. That’s why they call them terrorists, you see.

I do agree that calling the reaction of the British people “ignorance and intolerance” is so far off base… but it’s sadly predictable. So is the outcome, if these people are ever taken seriously.

NewsMax is a part of my daily reading because they run hard truths…. stuff nobody else will run. Imagie if you will, the New York Times covering THIS event:

I was interested to see Billy Beck echo my reading of Sullivan.

The Smoking Gun has the good on Jose Padilla.

What the papers TSG has do not reveal however, is that Jose Padilla was recuited by a radical arm is Islam while in prison.

Do the math.

The United States Army Birthday is on June the 14th.

Cheney on the Patriot Act, day before yesterday:

“In a statement supporting the Patriot Act, Senator Kerry said the law would, ‘make it a lot more difficult for new terrorist organizations to develop.’ I won’t be saying this very often in the next few months — but Senator Kerry was right…The Patriot Act has been crucial in many of our successes.

Yet Senator Kerry has chosen this moment, after these victories, to share his second thoughts on the Patriot Act. He now calls the Patriot Act a ‘blind spot in the American justice system.’ He now says he wants to let vital elements of the Patriot Act expire at the end of next year. What he hasn’t shared, however, is a single example of the Patriot Act actually being abused.”

You see more clearly, I think, the problem Kerry faces.

He’s gotten to where he is by chasing popularity numbers, shifting position based on ‘Finger in the Wind’ politics, rather than actually having a core belief and following it.

Using the finger gauge to see which way the wind blows at this hour politics does not engender trust in the electorate, and trust is what the American people are about, these post 9/11 days, particularly.

Victor Davis Hanson stating the obvious this morning:

” If the Spanish appeasement directs predators elsewhere for a time in search of similar easy meals, so in contrast do the defiance and deterrence of other, quite different potential victims, who prove that they will fight rather than capitulate. After September11, it is not so easy to attack a US, UK or Australia that crafted increased vigilance and made it clear that they will strike back tenfold when hit.

In contrast, Saudi appeasement, coupled with little record of deterrence, invites opportunistic probes. Indeed, we will only see more of such assaults until the kingdom eradicates terror, turns with a fury on its own subsidised Islamic extremists – or capitulates. ”

Read it, as always with VDH, it’s worth it.

The National Post is reporting a poll that spells trouble for the current government in Canada:

“More than half of Canadians support a parallel private health care system that would let patients pay for speedier service, according to a new poll on an issue that has been largely ignored in the current campaign.”

The liberals don’t dare mention this poll; governmental monopoly being their goal… and Steven Harper’s conservatives don’t dare mention it because the polling on the matter is isn’t stong enough yet, in the eastern provinces where the majority live. Says the pollster:

“Support was lowest in the Atlantic provinces, at 42%, Ontario, at 45% and British Columbia, at 49%.

So, next time someone holds the Canadian Healthcare joke up as an example to follow, point them to this link.

Tilted Headgear to Dodd Harris

Jay Bryant wonders about our liberal press and it’s inability to tell the truth in domestic issues…

“Right now, there are a number of truly important news stories that are receiving vastly less coverage than they deserve, including the United Nations Oil For Food Program scandal, the vitriolic opposition to John Kerry by a majority of the officers who served in his boat squadron in Vietnam and Al Gore’s hate-filled speech at MoveOn.org, which has been treated as a one-day story (on interior pages in both the NY Times and Washington Post, with the most inflammatory parts left out.) ”

And international ones, as well:

“The mother of all underreported stories is the growing evidence for a conspiracy between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.”

This column focuses on the latter, and is a must read.

Apparently things are not all sweetness and light at the left end of the spectrum. Who’d have guessed it, huh?Donald Lambro Identifies at least part of the problems:

“The argument apparently began when the DLC declared war on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean early last year and helped to defeat him, while the NDN eventually embraced Dean, despite his antiwar, pro-tax-hike, trade protectionist agenda.”

However, Duck Dean wasn’t the breaking point; it was in fact Bill Clinton, as I predicted in my column in 1992. Lambro says:

“Dean’s insurgency, seen by most New Democrat strategists as the anti-Clinton candidacy, was the event that split the two groups apart. “A serious rift has opened between the two groups,” political pundit Joe Klein wrote in Time last week.”

But despite the left’s best efforts, or perhaps because of them the Democrats know they’re in hot water.

“To his credit, Rosenberg is brutally honest when discussing his party’s present problems.

“Our standing as a party today is objectively much weaker than when we began this (New Democrat) reinvention 20 years ago,” he told a recent NDN conference. “The Republicans have more political control today than any time since the 1920s. They control the presidency, the Senate, the House, more governorships, more state legislative chambers and more legislative seats.

“And our standing with the American people has continued a several generation-long decline,” he said. When President Kennedy was elected in 1960, nearly half of all voters “considered themselves to be Democrats. In the last year, in one poll more Americans identified themselves as Republicans — 33 percent to 32 percent. This means that since 1960 we’ve lost one out of every six Americans from the party.”

Encouraging reading.

I’ve been getting a lot of E-mail over the weekend… a lot of it directed at the idea I’m not saying much about Halliburton.

Neal Boortz : must be getting a lot as well. He’s written about it this morning. This coincidence between the mail I got and his comments in his site this morning are no accident, I think; The timing would make one think it an orchistrated attack from the anti-war nutcakes. I’ll give Boortz credit, he’s usually on top of this kind of stuff… I’ll post a paragraph of his this morning, in answer to the mail I got over the weekend. It addresses about all of the major points in the stuff I got, and dispatches them.

“Once again … Halliburton was awarded this services contract under the Clinton administration.  In the 1990s the Army wanted to get outside help handling the logistics associated with actions overseas.  That’s when the Army came up with LOGCAP, the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.  Halliburton first won the competitive bid for LOGCAP in 1992.  It lost the contract in 1997.  Who was president in 1997?  Someone named Bill Clinton.  Halliburton was out, but Clinton needed help with his logistics efforts in Bosnia.  Who did he turn to?  Halliburton?  He gave another contract to Halliburton with NO COMPETITIVE BIDDING.  Halliburton then won the competitive bidding process again in 2001.  So .. which party seems to favor Halliburton?  In 1992 and in 2001, under Republican presidents, Halliburton wins competitive bids for LOGCAP.  In 1997, under a Democratic president, Halliburton gets the contract without a bid. ”

Look, Gang, it’s not just another day off, or a day to look for bargains at the megamall.

Rather, it is a day to recall the sacrafices that have been made… that are still being made… so as to allow Americans, and for that matter, people around the entire world, to live the lives we lead.

You know this, of course.
But, reminders don’t hurt.

Anyone who thought that the New York Times had a hope in hell of ever being factual, fair and political unbiased; your hopes have just been nuked. 

In column footnoted that “The public editor is the readers’ representative.”… the Public Editor himself one DANIEL OKRENT, invokes the apologies issued from the Times last week, and wails that there’s still a problem; the Times allowed itself to be used as a right-wing tool:

Apparently the person supposedly representiung us at the Times is a complete idiot, else a tool of the left-wing Times itself. When even the so-called reader-rep… The guy whose job it is, supposedly to call out the Times when it gets out of line, … when such a person assumes a leftist tilt is the way things ought to be, it’s clear that the NYT is a totally lost cause…. They will never employ anyone rooted in reality.

It therefore needs to be discounted by us all as a legit news source.

The Instant one quotes of all places, the Boston Herald, which has carried Kerry’s water for him for many years, speaking of Al Gore’s speech

“He never mentioned Nicholas Berg. Or Daniel Pearl. Or a single person killed in the World Trade Center. Nor did former Vice President Al Gore talk of any soldier by name who has given his life in Iraq. And he has the audacity to condemn the Bush administration for having “twisted values?”

Gore spent the bulk of a speech before the liberal group MoveOn.org Wednesday bemoaning Abu Ghraib and denouncing President Bush’s departure from the “long successful strategy of containment.”

Yes, the very same strategy that, under Gore’s leadership, allowed al-Qaeda operatives to plan the horror of Sept. 11 for years, while moving freely within our borders. . . .
And this man – who apparently has so much disdain for the nature of the American people – wanted to be elected to lead it?

Glenn adds his own moan:

I was once a big Al Gore fan, but my attitude toward him has gone beyond disappointment. Now it’s something more like horror. He’s lost it.”

All I can say is, Most of us understand Gore never HAD it.

And still nobody makes the connection, here; Where is Kerry on all of this Gore nonsense? He’s being very quiet, of late. Will he have the testicular fortitude to denounce Gore’s raving, and with it, MoveOn? You know he won’t… because he agrees with them both.

UPDATE: The Brothers Judd are quoting yet another who has been carrying water for the far left for forever… that blithering idiot, Maureen Dowd, who suggests Kerry is in fact discomforted by Gore, and may in fact be in trouble because of a factor that Gore reveals:

To which, Orrin adds:

But the best note of the day on that blog is from a reader who apparently sees things my way:

“I have a great idea for an ad, should any Republicans decide to start using 527s.

Play the clip of Dean screaming, then the clip of Hillary screaming, the the recent Gore clip.

After these clips, a voice says, “Much as he would like to distance himself from these extremists, Mr. Kerry is being supported by them to do their bidding.

Don’t let MoveOn.org become MoveOn.gov”

Pass it on.

Indeed. The bottom line, here, gang, is they’re all connected at the hip. Look at those pictures in your mind’s eye; is this really what you want running our country?

Son of an Update:

Rich Lowrey, who has graced my “off the shelf” section previously, adds his voice to the throng of catcalls, suggesting that Gore apparently has no clue as to the purpose of the Geneva Convention he claims the Bush administration violated:

In short, it’s as I suggested; he is either nuts, or really wants America and the world to lose to the islamofacists.

On June the First, 2003, I started this Blog as an add-on to an already widely read website.  I said at the time;

“The main site of course has been running forever. But, I wanted a way to add a daily blog without the added space being taken up on my Roadrunner account. (Pain in the butt 5 meg limit!) So, here we are.

Fear not…I have no intention of not doing my weekly commentary at the main site. This will be in addition to the usual weekly Bit’s Bits.”

That was a full year ago, this weekend. And, after a full year of blogging, and an increasingly great readership… and I don’t mean just numbers, but quality of readers, too… I’m very happy with how this has worked out.  I want to take the time to thank my readers and my fellow bloggers, both of which who have helped this project along the way in ways even they don’t know about in many cases.

Yet, I’m not totally happy with the way the site as a whole is working, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to let you know what I’m thinking. In all honesty, I’m finding myself itching for a change in this Blog. I suppose that’s like anything you take seriously. It would and could always use some improvement in certain areas.

Mostly, I’m becoming disastisfied with the way the long form weekly items are working out. The writing’s not bad, but I’m finding the site to be a pain to maintain, given the space limits at my home site. I’ve been considering posting the long-form stuff as part of this blog instead of at the home site, and using the RR domain space for my graphics links for this Blog. It would be a better use of available space, I guess, but I’m resisting doing that because it’d make it harder for people like Terry Pearson, who’ve been running my longform stuff in syndication for months, now.

Plus, my older boy’s been on me to set up a web page for his railfanning pics, of which we have quite a few. That’s gonna need some serious space on it’s own. With the Blog and Longform as well… you get the idea.

And look, I don’t really have a great deal of complaint about Blogspot; they’ve been pretty good, the service is OK, particularly given what I’m paying for it, which is nothing.  If there’s a major complaint about it, is the response Blogspot blogs tend to get from other bloggers…. Rather like a Honda at a Harley convention.

The other complaints I have involve the lack of the premium service. I’ve sent several mailnotes to the Google team as to when the new hosting service will be running; it’s been offline for new customers for over a year now, and frankly, I get the idea it won’t be coming back.

Given Google’s hosting the thing for free at the moment, though, I’m not about to bitch about what limits Blogspot presents in terms of flexibility. But I must admit that with all these factors, for many months, I’ve been forced into considering a different blogger than Blogspot, (Bill Hobbs, for example, has been trying to talk me into MT, and offer to help in the transition…) but in most if not all cases, that means having to host the thing myself if I’m to see any improvement in the look and useability of the Blog.

So, with those factors, I’ve been considering finding a web host I can afford, so I can take this format to the next level.

Most hosts offer enough drive space… 100 megs seems about the norm for my price range. The major problem is the monthly bandwidth limits; Some yahoo wanting to shut me down could do so very easily by simply draining my wallet with mega hits.

I’m considering my options, here. I’m open to suggestions. (HINT!)

But once again, thanks for a year that has been a slow solid growth pattern. I’ve met some really great folks along the way.

Here’s to another year of it.