MSM Slant-A-Thon VII

Abortion is the litmus test issue for the left and right fringes. So today's AP headline?

"Supreme Court Backs Abortion Protesters"

The SCt is now is in favor of violent abortion clinic protesters?

Not so fast. This "inconvenient" fact is not in the AP's headline:

An 8-0 decision by the Court

Unanimous? The effete thugs* of the MSM hate anything unanimous.

The Court addressed the issue whether federal extortion and racketeering laws can be used to ban demonstrations. Hell no they can't. A foregone conclusion, punctuated here by a rare unanimous SCt decision.

But the MSM - here, the AP - simply must mount an ideological attack with its headline, hinting that Bush's recent appointments to the Court - conservatives Roberts and Alito - somehow caused the Court to suddenly become an advocate for anti-abortion clinic bombers.





The MSM - good riddance.



_______
* - The all-time classic example of MSM avoidance of the elegant word "unanimous", when applied to a court telling the MSM it is wrong:

"Seven judges participated in yesterday's decision, which noted only that a majority of the court's active judges had not voted in favor of a rehearing. Two active judges did not participate, for unexplained reasons. One judge, David S. Tattle, published an explanatory concurrence. None of the judges noted a dissent."

Give War A Chance - II

Bummer's pro-war stance bothers some. They believe that Bummer is nothing more than a sadistic fringe militant desiring some psycho-satisfaction out of witnessing death and destruction wrought upon people and parts of the Middle East.

Well, it's not like Bummer is gonna convince those adherents of some other truth... .

In any event, on the subject of Giving War A Chance, here is today's irony-free, shocker AP report:

Sunnis Said Ready to End Boycott of Talks

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Arabs are ready to end their boycott of talks to form a new government if rival Shiites return mosques seized in last week's sectarian attacks and meet other unspecified demands, a top Sunni figure said Monday.

Let's see ... militant Sunnis believe that popular sentiment matches their own militancy -- "The Arab Street Will Rise in Jihad !!! " -- and a faction blows up a Shite mosque. (Without looking it up, I'll bet that's a crime worth getting your head sawed off.) Shites spend the next day punishing the Sunnis. In other words, the Sunnis get hammered.

Low and behold, Sunni Arabs announce they are ready to cooperate and form an Iraqi government. "Just return our mosques." Readers of this and other pages know that such is a tactical surrender. I wonder whether the unnamed "top Sunni figure" referenced in the story really exists.

A little war, judiciously rendered, tends to settle irreconcilable differences.

Port Deal: '77 Fonseca for a '63 Taylor?

Last week, I opined that the facts of the UAE port deal should govern whether it goes forward or not. As of last week, there were no facts apparent that would be just cause to scuttle the deal.

A week later, I still don't see any facts warranting killing the deal. There sure is a lot of inflamed rhetoric from the Left and the Right, though.

Jim Geraghty at TKS has a "just the facts" viewpoint that matches up nicely:

"[T]here is an organized disinformation campaign going on in the discussion of the Dubai Ports World deal. [P]lease do not buy into these blatant misrepresentations, and please don’t spread them in your discussions. ... I do begrudge someone for not having their facts straight. ...[A] particular group of people continue to dramatically misrepresent – aw, hell, let’s call it what it is – continue to lie about what it entails."

I'm not really following the daily rhetorical battles, as they are pretty much devoid of material fact. Hot air.

Simple question: What specific fact(s) warrant the disqualification of an entire nation from ownership of the port management company?

"With specificity," as the lawyers say. I haven't seen those facts emerge, yet. I'm not against a closer look at the issue, by Homeland Security or otherwise. But I'm not buying into the anti-UAE hysteria.


[Did I mention that I am rabidly in favor of killing islamo fascists? I am. As many as possible.]

Will Fight For Oil

Recall that Bummer said the oil might have something to do with it.

***

Famous redhead Ted Koppel pens a nice overview today:

Will Fight for Oil

By TED KOPPEL

"The American people ... know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people."

— President Bush, Jan. 10


Let us, as lawyers say, stipulate that the Bush administration was genuinely concerned that weapons of mass destruction, which they firmly believed to be in Saddam Hussein's arsenal, might be shared with the same Qaeda leadership that planned the horrific events of 9/11. That would have been a reasonable motive for invading Iraq; but surely now, three years later, when the existence of those weapons is no longer an issue, it would be insufficient reason for the United States to remain there.

Let us further acknowledge that continuing to put American lives at risk in Iraq purely for the protection of Israel would arouse, in some quarters, anti-Semitic murmurs, if not growls.

But the Bush administration's touchiness about charges that we acted — and are still acting — in Iraq "because of oil"? Now that's curious. Keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz has been bedrock American foreign policy for more than a half-century.

Fifty-three years ago, British and American intelligence officers conspired to help bring about the overthrow of Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.... Following a military coup, Mossadegh was arrested, imprisoned for three years and then held under house arrest until his death in 1967. Power was then effectively concentrated in the hands of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

The shah's unswerving commitment to the free flow and marketing of Iranian oil would, by the end of the 1960's, become a central pillar of the so-called Nixon Doctrine, in which American allies were tapped to be regional surrogates to maintain peace and security....

That reliance on Iran to maintain stability in the Persian Gulf enjoyed bipartisan support. On New Year's Eve in 1977, President Jimmy Carter, visiting the shah in Tehran, toasted his great leadership, which he said had made Iran "an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas in the world." By January 1980, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had driven the shah from the Peacock Throne, President Carter made absolutely clear in his final State of the Union address that one aspect of our foreign policy remained unchanged:

"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

[Did I mention that oil might have something to do with it all? I thought so.... -- ed]

The Reagan administration announced its intention to continue defending the free flow of Middle East oil, by whatever means necessary. In March 1981, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger clearly signaled that the United States was seeking a new base of operations in the Persian Gulf:

"We need some facilities and additional men and materiel there or nearby, to act as a deterrent to any Soviet hopes of seizing the oil fields or interdicting the line."

Subsequently, the United States began establishing military bases in Saudi Arabia and, to much criticism, selling Awacs aircraft to the Saudi government. In 1990, when Saddam Hussein appeared likely to follow his invasion of Kuwait by crossing into Saudi Arabia, the defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, laid out Washington's concerns:

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy."

What Mr. Cheney said was correct then and remains correct now. The world's oil producers pump approximately 80 million barrels a day. The world's oil consumers, joined today by an increasingly oil-hungry India and China, purchase 80 million barrels a day. Were production from the Persian Gulf to be disrupted because of civil war in Iraq, the freezing of Iranian sales or political instability in Saudi Arabia, the global supply would be diminished. The impact on the American economy and, indeed, on the world economy would be as devastating today as in 1990.

If those considerations did not enter into the Bush administration's calculations when the president ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it would have been the first time in more than 50 years that the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was not a central element of American foreign policy.

That is not to say that the United States invaded Iraq to take over its oil supply. But the construction of American military bases inside Iraq, bases that can be maintained long after the bulk of our military forces are ultimately withdrawn, will serve to replace the bases that the United States has lost in Saudi Arabia. There may be other national security reasons that the United States cannot now precipitously withdraw its forces from Iraq, including the danger that the country would become a regional terrorist base; but none is greater than forestalling the ensuing power vacuum and regional instability, and the impact this would have on oil production.

H. L. Mencken is said to have noted that "when someone says it's not about the money — it's about the money." Arguing in support of his fellow Arkansan during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, former Senator Dale Bumpers offered a variation on that theme: "When someone says it's not about the sex — it's about the sex."

Perhaps the day will come when the United States is no longer addicted to imported oil; but that day is still many years off. For now, the reason for America's rapt attention to the security of the Persian Gulf is what it has always been. It's about the oil.

[Did I mention that oil might have something to do with it all? I thought so.... -- ed]

$25 Million Per Day

RatherGate platform CBS:

CBS Records $9B Loss on TV, Radio Charges

You have to try very, very hard to lose $25 million per day.

You also have to work very, very hard to authenticate obvious forgeries .... oh, never mind.

Tipping Point with Iraq

Sunni terrorists blow up a Shite mosque. Shites retaliate. Civil war looms?

Iraqi imams call for peace. Of course, for the last 3 weeks, other imams have been encouraging muslims to riot and kill, over cartoons.

So when a mosque is deliberately blown up, it's sorta hard to keep the "muslim street" down on the farm.

***

I don't fear an Iraqi civil war - it already existed. It was a sometimes cold war, sometimes hot war. Now it will be hot.

I see it as a tipping point, and an important one (for the U.S.). The U.S. and Israel are the subjects of the Big Lie propagated by the islamic fascists. Now, many (in Iraq, at least) will see that it is the islamic militant fascists who are the real enemy. Hopefully, the quiet masses will chose sides and will begin to tip off their government to the various terrorist and insurgent operations. It is now a matter of their own life and death. Big Lies tend to die when your own life or death is knocking at the door.

THAT is the tipping point.

***

UPDATE: Iran - the worst of the despots - tries again to play the Big Lie card: Iran: U.S., Israel Destroyed Iraqi Shrine

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States and Israel on Thursday for the destruction of a Shiite shrine's golden dome in Iraq, saying it was the work of "defeated Zionists and occupiers....They invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice."

Babel or Something Else?

Bush, regarding the UAE purchase of a port management company, which was OK'ed by the US administration:

"It sends a terrible signal to friends around the world that it's OK for a company from one country to manage the port, but not a country that plays by the rules and has got a good track record from another part of the world," Bush said.

United Arab Emirates?
Plays by the rules?
Has got a good track record?

OK, let me P.O. the '23: I have no idea if UAE is "playing by the rules" or "has a good track record."

If it doesn't, then the deal should be killed. If it does, then the deal is OK.

We'll learn more in the coming days about UAE.

I give zero credence to the allegation that some "9/11 money moved through the UAE." That is specious. 9/11 money "moved through" many countries - at least, any with a bank.

I am sure a hijackershad a Wells Fargo account, and ate a meal at Denny's, and made a call on Verizon. I do not blame Wells Fargo, Denny's, or Verizon for 9/11. This talk of "money moving through UAE" is Babel talk. It is dumb-dumb talk.

Further, what matters are post 9/11 actions by UAE, not the pre-9/11 situation.

So let's see. Maybe the UAE is the poster child for evil middle east islamo fascism. Maybe not. My guess is, it is not. But let's see what specifics get bandied about in the next few days.

If there are no hard fact(s) showing UAE to be a problem, then let them have the port contract. There are no such fact(s) yet, on the table. Let's see.

If there appears some fact(s) showing UAE to be a problem, then the Emirates and their port deal can go to hell.

Yes, the Tower of Babel, in its glory.

Cartoon Rioting in Harvard Yard

How can you criticize Muslims for rioting over cartoons at the urging of their spiritual leaders, when the leading spiritual leaders of 'progressive' western thought - i.e., Harvard - forces the resignation of its president for making a comment about the statistical significance of outlyer data?

Think it's crazy to riot over a few cartoons? Harvard faculty has rioted over a statistic.

Leftist media won't reprint Summer's speech.

Summary (edited for ease) version of transcript is here.

Short (BummerSubjective) recap:

Summers does not say that men generally have a greater innate science ability that women. Rather, he makes a narrow observation about the statistical data, corrected for differences in a family's economic means and ethnicity, at the VERY HIGH END - e.g., 4 standard deviations above the norm, at the edge of the bell curve where high-end specialists reside.

Summers states that at such extremes, in certain sciences, the sex of the persons receiving those aptitude scores skews 4-1 male, and maybe 5-1 male. That is, 4 or 5 men for every woman. Summers notes that small, perhaps insignificant differences between the sexes in the middle of the bell curve (remember taking 8th grade algebra class?), nonetheless become highly pronounced when you run data in the far extremes of the bell curve. Every stat person knows this.

Summers suggests that if science institutions continue to use "highest scores" as the key aptitude qualifier for these science jobs (which might not be a good idea, certainly a fair argument and apparenlty one of the conference themes), then society has locked itself into the decision that this statistical difference in aptitude between the sexes, in the outlier 4x standard deviation area, will render the upper level science corps as lopsidedly male.

So long as Leftists believe they have the right to punish science (when they don't like the facts), why shouldn't Muslim leaders have the right to fight, and punish, scientific thought (when they don't like the facts) or cartoonery?

I'm now fully on board with the RoC's battle plans to expose and attack the Leftist cabals running the nation's universities. The Leftist MSM has been exposed; time to expose the useful idiots hiding in the ivory towers.

RIP

Barney Fife will be passing soon. RIP.

Wolfowitz and the Million Iraqi Pieces

Now, Bummer ain't all that modest. 'Specially when he sorta nails it, before others.

You've read here before (here, here, here, here) that under the Wolfowitz Plan - the strategic reason for invading Iraq - that a "unified Iraq" was neither necessary nor sufficient, respecting the ultimate efficacy of the Wolfowitz Plan in Iraq.

Michael J. Totten's blog, "Middle East Journal," runs a good analysis explaining that the Kurds have already left the Iraqi building:

"In January 2005 the Iraqi Kurds held an informal referendum. More than 80 percent turned out to vote. 98.7 percent of those voted to secede from Iraq. Not only have the Kurds long dreamed of independence, when they look south they see only Islamism, Baathism, blood, fire, and mayhem. If Middle Easterners had drawn the borders themselves, Iraq wouldn’t even exist. Blame the British for shackling Kurds and Arabs together when they created the new post-imperial and post-Ottoman map."

Don't fear the Balkanization of Iraq. Realize that it is part of the intellectual underpinnings of the Wolfowitz Plan. It will take a generation (or two) for the Plan to fully work its way, exposing the various Big Lies of the Middle East, sufficient to break the intertia.

Think about it: The crack-up of Iraq is almost a given. The original Wolfowitz Plan was a plan to break up Iraq, into Saddam-controlled and U.S.-controlled (free) parts. The gamble was that Iraqis would prefer the U.S.-controlled part, and that process would topple Saddam from within. (Hey, it worked in Iron curtain Europe...)

Now, Iraq is in a mini-civil war. But let's level with ourselves - that is pretty much what the Wolfowitz Plan intended - internal strife as Iraqis battled their despots. We visualized a "revolution" where Iraqis overthrow Saddam. The US military sorta turbo-charged the TV images of that revolution - the difference now is that the revolution is a low-grade civil war, and the despots are in the minority, rather than in control.

The Kurds, who are not centrally embroiled in the civil war, are quietly setting up their own country. An arab, muslim democracy, amidst a "revolution."

Exactly what was prescribed.

Quarter Million BummerBurgers Served

A quarter million visits. Yeah, I know, that's the daily traffic count for some other blogs. But still, a quarter million visits in a year and a half.

Roughly 500 per day.

Let's see, that means each of the 23 must check in 20 times per day.....get back to work !

Thanks,

-Bummer

Three Religions. Which One Riots and Kills?

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have rules about how their god may be represented.

To my knowledge, in the 21st century, only one of those religions has leaders who demand that their adherants riot and kill infidels in the name of the issue.

Judaism and G-D

The most important name of God in Judaims is the Tertragrammaton, the four-letter name of God. This name is first mentioned in the book of Genesis and is usually translated as 'the Lord'. Because Jews have for a long period of time considered it blasphemy to pronounce it, the correct pronunciation of this name has been forgotten—the original Hebrew texts only included consonants. The prohibition of blasphemy, for which capital punishment is prescribed in Jewish law, refers only to the Tetragrammaton. (Soferim iv., end; comp. Sanh. 66a).

Christianity and the Ten Commandments

1: Thou shall not take any god except one God.
2: Thou shall make no image of God.
3: Thou shall not use God's name in vain.

Islam and the Qu'ran

No Muslim visual images or depictions of God exist because such artistic depictions may lead to Idolatry and are thus disdained. Such aniconism is substantiall the same as in the Judeo-Christian theology.

"There is no other god beside God."(47:19)
"My Lord, make this a peaceful land, and protect me and my children from worshiping idols." (14:35)
"Do not subject God's name to your casual swearing, that you may appear righteous, pious, or to attain credibility among the people." (2:224)

Who Are We Kidding?

Article 5 of the NATO treaty provides:

"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

***

Let’s see…in the past 2 weeks:

Denmark (a NATO member) had its embassies attacked and burned by organized Islamic fascists.

Norway (a NATO member) had its embassy attacked and burned by organized Islamic fascists.

Sweden (not a NATO member ... but commonly mistaken for one ! ooops) had its embassy attacked by organized Islamic fascists.

The United States (a NATO member) had its embassy attacked and burned by organized Islamic fascists.

Italy (a NATO member) had its embassy attacked by organized Islamic fascists.

France (a NATO member) had its embassy attacked by organized Islamic fascists.

***

There are 12 original NATO members (more have since joined). Half had their embassies attacked in an organized fashion in the past 2 weeks. Not all attacks were located in the North Atlantic treaty area (as required to trigger NATO Article 5) , although embassies are considered sovereign territory.

Who are we kidding?

Pictures

6 decades of fascism:

***

"Perhaps we could put aside our national, ongoing, post-9/11 Muslim butt-kissing contest and get on with the business at hand: Bombing Syria back to the stone age and then permanently disarming Iran ... . Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences" - ac 2.15.06

ChappaGunnick

VP Dick Checney's gun accident has become surreal.

Honestly. Remember how the 12-ish days of denial and stonewalling by CBS over Memogate became comical? TragiComedy, actually.

The MSM swarming over Cheney has become surreal. Personally, I thought the entire affair had affected the Average Joe - to wit, it had revealed the MSM to be goaded by Bush-hate. Honestly, though, the MSM was dealt a get-out-of-jail-free card by the disclosure that Cheney had drank a beer at lunch that day. It gave the MSM some saving grace with the Average Joe - "See, we would have never learned this had the press not been so diligent with these lying liars," or the like.

Surreal.

Brit Hume of FOX News, who did an exlusive interview with Cheney, nailed it:

"If my e-mail is any guide, and the things I'm hearing from just people in the street that you talk to and people that you know, I don't think much of the nation feels particularly deprived that they found out about this on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening instead of Saturday night or Sunday morning," Hume said.

I give the partisan MSM some credit for avoiding a revealing debacle, as the MSM has successfully injected a Chappaquiddick comparison into the mix. It seems to have been a thumb-in-the-dike talking point for the Leftist MSM's credibility here. They may be partisan leftists, but they aren't stupid. There are enough surface parallels between the two incidents to keep the MSM from appearing to be ... infected by rabies.

Granted, the incidents are not even close, in substance. Death of a woman, no witnesses, cover-up; vs. shooting of a hunting partner in a group of... a dozen (?) or more people, plus secret service entourage, etc.? Anything can be made to appear similar, if you abstract it enough. "Politician, had some alcohol, someone ends up dead or seriously injured, unexplained delays..." Etc. etc.

You'd think the MSM would have have some similar interest in Vincent Foster's death. The shoot-down of Flight 800. Or Citizen Soldier Kerry's dishonorable military discharge. But that would gore the wrong ox... .

Double-Barrelled Logic

Can't figure out the whole Cheney shotgun affair?

Sure, the MSM loathes Cheney. This is a rare - perhaps the only - shot the MSM will get at Cheney during two terms as VP. That explains a lot, if not most, of the silliness. (Cheney is front page, lead article NYTimes fodder this morning.)



Beneath the snarky loathing, though, is this morsel of substance:

-Imagine a gay man, engaging in constitutionally protected gay sex for leisure, and having "an accident."

-Similarly, imagine a teenaged woman engaging in legal sex for her own pleasure, and having "an accident."

In both cases, a conservative group of people at the country club would be abhorred. Yes, the activity was technically legal, but ... and then comes the ideas of morality, natural law, etc. etc. Fair to say the conservative country club crowd would draw a direct link between what they view as morally questionable behavior, and the "accident."



***

This is exactly how leftists feel about guns:

-Imagine a crusty white male, with other crusty white males, on a trip using a gun that is constitutionally protected to kill animals for pleasure, having an "accident."


Emotionally, this gun loathing is a partial driver of the story. Toss in that most Leftist minds automatically equate "gun discharge hitting person" with "shooter intending to shoot victim" -- that is, Leftists do not have the emotional connection that shooting inanimate or non-human objects, in and of itself, can be pleasure. It doesn't register.

Just like gay sex doesn't register as "fun" for most of us. (I won't touch the "sex with young woman" example......)

____
* - Yeah, some are hiding their loathing behind a claim that Cheney lacked a $7 upland game bird stamp.

Whatever.

MacroFusion II: The Leftist MSM and Amorphous "They"

Gosh Bummer, you'd think you'd focus on important stuff, like some Texas hunter getting some 28-gauge BB's in the head during a quail hunt. Never mind the front-page NYTimes and LATimes headlines - the LA Times is of particular humor - "Cheney Lacked $7 Hunting Credential." Front page, no kidding.

Instead, Bummer did the unthinkable; he read an LA Times editorial. Alas, a wonderful liberal / leftist petri dish. And a great instance of MacroFusion:

Massacre Valentine's Day

ST. VALENTINE WAS SUPPOSEDLY a martyred 3rd century priest, not a shill for the flower industry or a marketing genius for a certain Kansas City, Mo., greeting-card titan. Still, with all due respect to his martyrdom, we think it's high time the holiday [sic] bearing his name be abolished.

Hmm. Abolish Valentines Day? Well, Valentines Day is not a government-declared "holiday" -no government has proclaimed that post offices or banks close. Valentines is a cultural event. Sure, its genesis is purely commercial. Irrelevant, really.

How, exactly, does the leftist thinker at the LA Times believe that this "holiday" [sic] - that is, cultural event -- could, or would, be "abolished?" What person(s) would "abolish it?"

Yeah, it's a little thing. But the fabric of specious thinking covers a lot of ground. There is no "them" running Valentines Day. It's a communal, decentralized, cultural affair, not directed by any cabal. Fringe thinkers don't believe in communal markets; they believe in centralized control. The kind of centralized control that can "abolish" cultural events.

Again, a little thing. But the little things, reveal.

"They" and the Bad Argument: MacroFusion

Openly British and openly gay actor Ian McKellen, gave a speech in which he claims that "Hollywood" resists gay US actors, and that openly gay US actors are "prevented" from having successful Hollywood careers:

"It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It's very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California."

Bummer's radar activates whenever an advocate uses the concept of "they" or "the system" or "the man." When humans (without any evidence) illogically apply human or animal characteristics to explain effects in inanimate objects, it is called anthropomorphism. Similarly, "evolution" (a collection of market-like concepts charting mutation and survival of species over long periods) is often erroneously explained by incorrectly believing that evolution is related to an animal "learning" a trick; that is a fallacy often termed Lamarckism.

I don't know if there is a word for it, but a similar logical error occurs when people confuse the existence of a cummulative (or, "market") effect, with the belief that such market effect "must be designed and intended by an individual person or group." In other words, when "macro-economics" are confused with "micro-economics." For example, that a stock market moves (long term) becomes someone decides that ... the price needs to move.

I'll call it, "MacroFusion" - the inability to differentiate causality at the individual vs. the community level.

Whenever this mistake is made, there is almost always a specious argument being made.

McKellen's claim is incorrect and absurd, even though it may have emotional appeal to a very proactive gay rights community in film and TV. In fact, the so-called Hollywood "Velvet Mafia" (numerous high-powered gay film, TV and music executives) actively champions gay causes in Hollywood, and (one can argue) tends to over-select effeminate and/or gay actors and directors for gigs. The (obvious) reason that openly gay (or, effeminate) actors have less chance of hyper-success is because American audiences, in general, do not prefer gay or effeminate actors in "leading man" roles; such roles typically call for traditional male attributes (tough guy; love interest with actress; etc.). The audience must "suspend its disbelief"* in order to identify with the story and characters.

When audiences fail to connect with film stories and/or characters, the film is a flop; millions of dollars are lost. Studios know this; and studios don't like to lose millions of dollars launching product that they know is highly likely to fail with mainstream/mass audiences. Such films are, basically, art-house fare, with limited (albeit, devoted) audiences.

American audiences reject gay actors, for high-profile leading man roles. Audience dis-approval is the reason, not some nefarious discrimination against gays. There is no "hollywood committee" that decides which actors have success, and which don't. There is no hollywood committee - "they" - who punish gay actors.

McKellen is MacroFused. Many zealots are.

***

'They' are keeping the black man down.
'They' are conspiring to destroy the American Family.
'They' took my pension away.
'They' manipulated the price of Google stock.

Etc. Etc.

A good topic. It transcends left/right divides. Methinks it tends to correlate with the illogical "appeal to the true blue" on any fringe.


_____

* - "Suspend the disbelief" - When one watches an actor in a film, one must believe (for example) that one is watching a Naval officer involved in a story on a submarine, despite one's knowledge that he is actually watching a film of Denzel Washington dressed in a costume on a cardboard set. The viewer has to let go and allow himself to be fooled.

If an audience member doesn't "suspend disbelief" -- that is, buy into the story and character -- the viewer typically forms an opinion that s/he "dislikes the film." When a gay actor is pursuing a female, for example, audiences almost always get jolted out of their state of disbelief -- "There is NO WAY that Julia Roberts will fall for that guy." The characters and story collapse; the viewing experience is now about the dis-connect between two celebrities.

The gay leading man effect tends to call into question, and then destroy, the entire belief/disbelief construct underlying a film, and once destroyed during a 90-minute film, there is typically no way to reverse that disbelief in the mind of the viewer. Bad word-of-mouth kills the film's prospects. THAT is why gay men are not cast in traditional leading man roles.

Archive II: Bummer's Pre-Afghan Memo

The U.S. was shortly to attack the Islmaofascists in control of Afghanistan. War was in the air, and the anti-War crowd was kicking into gear. A memo, written October 2001:

***

Monday, October 04, 2004
WW 4
By Average Joe
11.06.01

Start exercising your brain the way your Grandfather did. The Cult of the Gray wants to censor you from a critical historical analysis.

WWI: 1914-1918
WWII: 1939-1945
WWIII: The Cold War: 1947 – 1989
WW IV: The Islamo Fascist War 2001 - ?

Don’t submit to the historical censors.

The Japanese Fascist/Nazi.

The Japanese military took over the Japanese government in the decades prior to WWII. The militarized regime indoctrinated a generation of Japanese with militarized schooling as to the need of Japanese youth the give their lives for their god-on-earth Emperor. They were brainwashed in a false perversion of vague Samarai code, that death in service of the god-emperor ensured honor to family. Martyrdom, as a religion. Genocide as an objective.

The brainwashing centered on the teaching that the Japanese were the superior race, and that other races were inferior. The Japanese military warlords sought the twin objectives of building a military empire, and controlling raw materials. The Japanese invaded and overran various countries in Southeast Asia. After invading, the Japanese killed millions in a war of genocide – the systematic mass murder of others because they are not of your race or religion or tribe. Distinctions between civilians and military were only in the mind of western apologists. Atrocities were numbing; soldiers’ wagers on the sex of fetuses hacked out of pregnant women, etc. The Japanese used what fledgling bioterrorism was available, such as breeding and spreading diseased rats in order to cause a pandemic. The Chinese city of Nanking was one target. A few months after invading, the Japanese had exterminated 350,000 civilians in that city, alone. Any living being not Japanese was worthy of slaughter, somehow in the name of the Emperor god, and the purity of a Japanese military empire.

The Japanese sought to control their entire side of the globe, as a vast empire to further their race and control raw materials – oil and other necessities.

The Japanese were taught that Westerners were weak and immoral and stood for nothing.

WWII Japanese soldiers were trained to ignore any semblance of “just war” theory or treaties, including the slaughter of prisoners of war. Battlefield medics were particularly targeted by Japanese snipers. Allied medical workers did not wear the “Red Cross”, as it simply ensured special targeting by snipers. (Even the Nazis gave lip service to respect of the Red Cross….).

The Japanese commenced WWII with a peacetime Sunday morning sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. 2400 were killed.

A few years later, the Japanese military concluded that they could not win the war with the U.S. They decided that inflicting massive casualties on the U.S. – military or civilian – during the eventual U.S. push to counterattack Japan, was needed in order to cause the U.S. public to withdraw support for attacking Japan. Thus, a peace treaty could be arranged without Japan bearing retaliation.

A year later, U.S. carpet bombing and firebombing of 60 Japanese cities, in which ½ to 2/3 of the cities were destroyed, did not cause either the Japanese military to capitulate, nor did the Japanese population rise up to stop the war.

The U.S. issued an ultimatum, which was ignored by the Japanese, and then the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. Then another. At that point, the Japanese surrendered. Perhaps the only way the fascist military dictatorship would surrender was to witness the ruthless resolve needed to drop an atomic bomb.

The Japanese people suffered their military overlords, U.S. firebombing and U.S. atomic strikes.

Yet a generation after the atomic bombings, the two countries and its peoples, despite racial, cultural and religious dissimilarity, are close economic partners who interact freely with each other and interlink their cultures and peoples by wholesale adoption of ideas and customs from the other. They have a lasting peace, and a lasting interdependent linkage of the two groups.



The Islamo Fascist

Since the success of the radical takeover in Iran in 1979, other militant racist islamo-fascist cults have been trying to take over Middle East and Muslim countries. Coming out of a Soviet war and civil war, the Taliban cult, sponsored by a Pakistani fundamentalist regime and Saudi money, took over Afghanistan. The Taliban and its islamo-fascist allies are indoctrinating a generation or Muslims with militarized schooling as to the need of Muslim youth to strike the Great Satan (currently the U.S.) and give their lives for their cult religion. The brainwashing includes that the Muslim religion dictates a radical authoritarian racist regime ruthlessly suppressing the population, as necessary to support the dogma that radical Islam is the superior race/religion, and that other races and religions, particularly Jews and Christians, are inferior and need to be exterminated.

The islamo-fascists teach and dictate that a war of genocide – the systematic mass murder of infidel Jews and Christians and others – is one’s duty. Any living being not of the radical islamo-fascist cult is worthy only of slaughter, somehow in the name of the religion and the purity of a radical cult regime. The islamo-fascists seek the twin objectives of building a fascist Islamist empire of the Mideast, and controlling all Mideast raw materials --oil. Various Islamist factions continue to attack Mideast countries under various names – Hamas, Jihad, Martyr’s Brigade, PLO, Taliban, etc. The islamo-fascists in particular target the killing of civilians in a war of terror. The islamo-fascists and their supporters actively seek biological and nuclear weaponry.

The radical islamo-fascists teach that Westerners are weak and immoral and stand for nothing.

Islamist “jihad” warriors, or terrorists, are trained to ignore any semblance of “just war” theory or treaties. They are brainwashed that a heaven is waiting to reward their martyrdom, complete with scores of virgins there for their pleasure. Martrydom is the cost of entry. When such is accepted, it then a small matter to accept slaughter of civilians. Suicide bombings of school buses and retail stores is of particular interest to them.

The islamo-fascists commenced the war in America with a peacetime morning sneak attack on civilians in New York and Washington. Over 3000 civilians were killed.

The islamo-fascists, in their quest for a Mideast empire and control of oil, know that they cannot win any conventional war with the U.S., or any other nation state. Instead, their strategy is to inflict massive civilian terror casualties on the U.S., in order to cause the U.S. public to withdraw support for a) preventing Islamist dictatorial hi-jacking of Mideast countries in order to turn them into cultist death camp regimes, like Afghanistan, and b) any US resistance to the islamo-fascists blitzkrieg, since the US is the only remaining international policeman.

In the near future, after U.S. carpet bombing and firebombing of Taliban strongholds and perhaps other terrorist camps, cities, countries, etc., it is unlikely that all the islamo-fascists will be eradicated, and unlikely that the islamo-fascists will call off their genocide jihad. It is also unlikely that the vast moderate yet brainwashed populations of the Mideast countries will rise in anger to stop the islamo-fascists.

The Average Joe in the U.S., just like the Average Joe in 1945, needs to jolt himself from the decade of Pax Americana and begin to address in his own mind that there is a war going on, not a “police action”, but a war. Jihad soldiers across the planet would without hesitation drop genocidal biochemical or nuclear weapons on any America city at the first opportunity. Our words or ultimatum will likely be ignored.

Tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of civilians will eventually die in this US – islamo-fascist war. Just as the Japanese suffered under their warlords 5 decades ago.

Yet a generation later, despite racial, cultural and religious dissimilarity, history shows that a lasting peace, and a lasting interdependent linkage, can nonetheless follow between the US and the Muslim side of the globe.



***

The Cult of Moral Grayness wants you to not exercise your brain the way the Greatest Generation did. Don't buy into it.

Archive I: Bummer's September 12 Essay

Somehow, Bummer knew he wasn't over-reacting on September 12, 2001.

Bummer's (pre-blog) memo written that day:

***

Memo

To: The Ordinary People of the Developing World
From: An Ordinary Joe in America
Date: September 12, 2001

Yesterday I woke up to the real time viewing of about 10,000 [ed: turned out to be 3000+] American civilians in various stages of their fiery deaths, incinerated in terrorist sneak attacks upon the most populated buildings in our most populated city.

Just ordinary Joes and Janes.

A government building and an American mass transit bus, known as a jetliner, also served fiery deaths to hundreds more in the attacks.

The life of ordinary people living in the developing countries of the Islamic world just changed.

I want to express my regret to the ordinary people of the Islamic world, for the unlucky card they were dealt in life. In the coming years, there will not be much regret expressed for the Islamic poor by the ordinary Joes or Joses. And the wrath of an awakened giant will end up destroying much of what the Islamic poor have in their daily lives. So here it is: “I regret what cards you have been dealt.”

But there is nothing I can – or will – do about it. But I will tell you a bit about it, so you understand my regret.

Like most of the 6 billion on Earth, you live your life more or less trying to get shelter, get food, battle disease and salvage a little happiness for you and your family. Unfortunately, the genetic lottery put you in a place on Earth where dictators and thugs still rule, or fight to rule.

You are less than a mule to them. Less than a barrel of oil. To them, you are a mere tool that is best kept dull and under control. The dictators who are your masters, under the excuse of some religious nonsense, know that you feel powerless and desperate. The dictators also know that they are the cause of your desperate straits.

So by striking “America,” portrayed to you as the Devil Incarnate, you feel a momentary power, a belonging, a virility. You are somehow connected to the images on CNN. You have power in the world. You must now be respected.

And your dictator is the one who brought you that feeling. Like an opiate. In the bleakness of your ordinary existence, this was something new.

Thugs have ruled the Earth since recorded time. Beginning about ½ way through the last millennium, that began to change, slowly, in a few parts of the world. About 200 years ago, rule-by-despot was done away with, on paper, in the New World, although the struggle is never over. Others followed. 50 years ago, dictators were again eradicated from more of the Western world, and 10 years ago, even more dictators fell.

This delivery from serfdom has been a 200, perhaps even a 600 year struggle, for the European and American peoples.

You are not so lucky. You and your friends live in the chains of a serf, and your master is a small group of men who rule you with an iron fist. Like a donkey. You are useful to them only to the extent that you keep them in power.

They use the same old story. Religious purity. Or racial purity. Or political/thought purity.

They use tried-and-true versions of the opiates to keep you dull. You are brainwashed that life on Earth is a burden to be endured, and that your god is waiting to reward you when you finish your horrible tasks on earth. Some of you are even brainwashed to believe that fields of luscious virgins await to pleasure you in heaven, if and only if you exit this paltry earth as a martyr.

None of this brainwashing is true, but my purpose here is to express regret, not to argue spiritual matters. In the West, we have fought, and many have died horrible deaths, to create a society where you can think and believe whatever thoughts you desire, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to do that.

Rather, brainwashing is used by your master for good reason - to maintain you as poor, uneducated proletariat (the dull tool), conditioned to equate the ruling dictator with god, or god’s agent, and therefore to be obeyed. The dictator also needs to be able to whip you into a frenzy, when needed, to defend the dictator from internal or external challenge.

During our hundreds of years of struggles, some succumbed to the same brainwashing forces. For example, every few years we have a mass murder episode perpetrated by some “religious cult,” typically made up of people who have fallen to, or below, the lower rungs of our society. They kill, or die, while brainwashed to believe that they are leaving their burdens of this earth to a better place. Maybe even one with beautiful luscious virgins waiting to attend to them.

We even had a whole group of dictators mid-century, one in particular, who was quite literally insane, brainwash entire cities and countries into believing that a small northern European race was the group chosen by god to rule over a third coming. Anyone not in that little group was a mule, or worse. Tens of millions died in the resulting battle. Some were even baked in ovens, like mule-pot-pie. That was good vs. evil. Luckily -- and way too close for comfort -- Good won. Those particular race killers were basically made extinct, except for a few little groups that survive today, sort of like a human zoo.

Most of the people who were around for that stuff are dead now. Most – yes most – of the new generations of Ordinary Joes don’t know what their grandparents lived through. Cannot identify what Kristallnacht or Nanking was. So they got a bit mushy. No need to pay attention to old stuff.

Anyway, the West has become a place of freedom. Life, liberty, and freedom from fear and destruction. You are not so lucky. Instead, probably through little or no fault of your own, you are a slave to (meaning, you are ruled by) the Taliban, or the Hussein posse, or any of the other Islamic fundamentalist dictators who constantly bombard you, since your youth, with messages that:

a) your fundamentalist leader is an agent of god,
b) everyone else must yield to your leader, or they are an instrument of the devil,
c) your life on earth was meant to be horrific due to some flaw beyond your control, and
d) if you act as a soldier for the leader, you will be delivered to heaven (and its luscious waiting virgins), special delivery.

I regret that, given the events of yesterday, your slavery to your dictators is going to become so hard on you and your family in the coming years.

Why are you not lucky? Because before yesterday, Americans (and other Western and democratic peoples) pretty much knew that you got born into an unlucky situation, dealt a bad hand in life, and that is wasn’t really your fault. Thus, we were willing to suffer minor, and major, detriment in order to protect you from the crazed actions of your master. Your master doesn’t care about you – you are just his mules – but Americans actually did care, at least a bit. Meaning, Americans were against your death or injury or deprivation, simply because you are the slave of a dictator.

So Americans, and their leaders, really did believe in things like “surgical strikes”, which are very expensive and result in Americans spending money on surgical strike tools rather than health care and the like, all in order to try – or at least, try a little – to spare you from the crazed actions of the dictators who rule you, and brainwash you so that you don’t know any better.

But that pretty much changed yesterday.

I still know that you are not at fault, or not much at fault, but that has moved way down the list of priorities for me. Way, way down the list. Many, many agree with this, I think.

Rather, my New Priority is to accept that the terrorist dictators, and their soldiers, and their suppliers and backers, simply have to be killed.

And the tools that assist them, destroyed.

And the nests where they breed, eradicated.

For years and years to come. Like the Cold War, which we fought for 40 years before victory arrived.

That is New Priority #1.

And I know that your terrorist dictators and their soldiers will use you as cover, or as tools, or as nests.

And due to brainwashing they have conducted on you, you are helpless to do anything about it.

So as the terrorist dictators are hunted and killed, they will use you and your families as a shield, and thus you shall also die or be injured or suffer.

As their tools are searched and destroyed, you will be in harm’s way, since unwittingly you are one of their tools. And as their nests are eradicated, you will become victims and refugees, since the dictators will sacrifice you first, before them.

I regret that these things will be brought to bear on you and your loved ones. But you are no longer my priority.

Sleeping at Night

Let's see.....

The leader of Iran's fascist party - who also happens to be the President of the country - said today, "[T]he people of the U.S. and Europe should pay a heavy price for becoming hostages to Zionists."

Yesterday, the top Imam of American allie Saudi Arabia said that those who drew cartoons of Mohammed should be put on trial and punished.

A few years before Pearl Harbor, Fascists and Nazis ran amok in Europe, making threats that soon morphed into racist genocide -- e.g., Kristallnacht, in 1938, marking the real beginning of systematic extermination of Jews and other minority populations. Most of the West refused to take the satanic verse seriously.

***
Bummer has a 9mm pistol in the drawer next to his bed. Sometimes Bummer doesn't lock the house doors. Yet, Bummer sleeps well, even when he knows a door is unlocked. Why is that? Bummer resides in L.A., a metropolitan area of millions of people, with no worries when the front door somehow didn't get locked.

Why? Bummer simply knows in advance what the endgame will be if any loon breaks in during the night. Dogs bark, and moments later the loon gets a clip of 14 hollowpoints in his head and chest. It's that easy.

Bummer's sole point: Sleep comes well.

***

Come the Islamofascists, who call upon their proles to riot, while ratcheting up their threats of violence and death to the West. But still, BummerSleep comes well. Why is that?

***

The poet Ridgway said:

John Wayne was always bald
And he had a woman's name

Valentino was a momma's boy
He cried in his tent all night long

And Harry Truman finally dropped the bomb
So they could go to sleep at night.

***

Sleeping at night while the Fascist factions within the Islamic world threaten, just isn't a problem for Bummer. Why? Because Bummer knows that the endgame to IslamoFascist jihad is pretty much 100% in the West's favor. Bummer was resigned to that on September 12:

(Bummer doesn't mean to alarm anyone. Just ruminating on the specific point as to why I sleep so soundly. Backscribe here, here, here, and elsewhere.)

Rêves Musulmans

I want it. Je le veux. But I don't have it. Why don't I have it?

It's so tall and thin and beautiful. Downright sexy. I want it.

But I don't have it. "They" won't let me have it. They have wronged me. They have stolen it from me. They have stolen me.

They have it, they keep it only for themselves. Thus they despoil it. I want it. They are the ones who conspire to prevent me from having what is rightfully mine.

These conspirators, they are my enemy. My enemies will be made to pay. They have wronged me. I want it. I don't have it. I want to hit it. I want to hit it so badly.

Questions? Answers...

Wow, that little bug posting caught some fire with BummerReaders. More so than the crusading rabbit.

So maybe a little evolution FAQ site would be of use. From a contrarian viewpoint.

Questions?*
You want answers?**
Do you deserve answers?***

Hmmm......let's see.....how about.....how about....this science organization FAQ page looks pretty scientific. Go for it.


____
References:
* - Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Bladerunner.
** - Col. Nathan R. Jessep (Jack Nicholson), A Few Good Men.
*** - Lt. Daniel Kaffee (tom Cruise), A Few Good Men.

Hat tip to the elusive William de Pough Boie. He no like it when foks rip his sh*t.

Albania and Those Italian TV Shows - Redux

Some of Bummer's best stuff was in this archive article - "Italian TV Signals in Albania." By all means read it all:

"But in pockets behind the [Iron] curtain, Western radio and TV signals could be received. And for decades, an alternative version of reality was provided to those behind the Curtain. Put simply: How can you expect two generations of semi-starving Albanians to accept the Soviet's Big Lie, when every night they view Italian TV commercials? To wit: The Big Lie gets exposed, continually and continuously, for a generation.

"At some point, the Big Lie no longer has much effect; the Albanians knew that they were being systematically lied to. And that is a critical pre-condition for an oppressed people to rise up and revolt against a dictatorship of thugs. It doesn't happen overnight, but the long fuse gets lit."

Compare that, with this week's story:

Iran demands halt to broadcasts from West; Dubai complies

ABU DHABI — Iran has forced the United Arab Emirates of Dubai to halt live Persian-language television broadcasts.

Western diplomatic sources said the broadcasts contained Western programming and discussed democracy. They said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his advisers regarded these broadcasts as part of a U.S.-led effort to foment unrest in Iran.

"There were harsh messages sent to Dubai by the Iranian president personally," a diplomatic source said. "In the end, neither Dubai nor the central UAE government sought a confrontation."

Looney Toons

Surreal.

Read the following AP wire story. I edited only one word. R. Crumb and Terry Zwigoff would be proud:

KABUL, Afghanistan - International peacekeepers clashed Tuesday with Afghans protesting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, leaving three demonstrators dead and prompting NATO to send reinforcements to a remote northern city.

Senior Afghan officials said al-Qaida and the Taliban could be exploiting anger over the cartoons to incite violence, which spread to at least six cities in a second day of bloody unrest in Afghanistan.

Demonstrations rumbled on around the Muslim world, and the political repercussions deepened, with Iran suspending all trade and economic ties with Denmark, where the drawings were first published. The Danish prime minister called the protests a global crisis and appealed for calm.

In a new turn, a prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition ... .

Wonder what would happen if the Tehran Museum of Art displayed a tank of urine with...oh, never mind.

Google Me Timbers

Why Google’s market value will decline in the long run:

Google is charging “high retail” for its services. It has no other competitors. The high cost and high value of its services has resulted in advertisers no longer seeking to do business with Google competitors, but rather in deploying techniques that game the Google system.

Google was built, and remains operating, on the premise that making a tidy list out of a chaos of information is worth something.

It is worth something.

But cutting in line is worth a lot, too. Line cutters don't care that they are crashing the system. If they cared, they'd stand in line. And it only takes a small % of line cutters to collapse a system into chaos.

Don’t believe Bummer?

Exhibit A: Google’s Risk Factor, from its own Prospectus:

"Index spammers could harm the integrity of our web search results, which could damage our reputation and cause our users to be dissatisfied with our products and services."

Exhibit B: Today’s news: BMW caught cutting in the Google line:

"Google confirmed on Monday that BMW had been removed from all search engine results. “We cannot tolerate websites trying to manipulate search results."

"The BMW website used “doorway” pages, which can be employed to trick search
engines into leading their users to websites that are not directly related to the search terms."

(By the way, Bertelsmann AG, a German conglomate, operates a large part of Googles network; think maybe a German techie got pissed off over the weekend?)

Bummer's Complete Military History of France

Bummer's Guaranteed 100% Absolutely True Complete Military History of France:

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by an Italian.

Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by teenaged female schizophrenic who established the First Rule of French Warfare: “French armies can avoid defeat when not led by a French man."

Italian Wars - Lost. France distinguishes itself as the first country to ever lose two wars to the Italians.

Wars of Religion – Lost. France goes winless in 9: Zero/5/4 against the Huguenots.

Thirty Years War – Too odd to classify. Although technically not a participant, France manages to get invaded. France later declares a tie, although no other participant cared.

War of Devolution - Tied. No one remembers this fabulous French draw.

The Dutch War - Tied. France proves its mettle against the menacing Hollanders.

War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - Lost, despite claims of a tie. Avoiding three defeats in a row forms the basis of French schoolbooks to declare this period as the height of French military power.

War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

American Revolution – Unable to classify. France is not a formal participant, although some of its military relish the thought of battle outside of a French army, and end up on the winning United States side. France decides to aid the Americans late in the war, establishing the Second Rule of French Warfare: "France wins when it joins the Americans late in a war, where America does most of the fighting."

French Revolution – Won or Lost is fiercely debated to this day. Although various French factions came to dominate from time to time in this civil war, each factional French winner created several French losers. As, the result of this fight for liberty was the installation of a Corsican dictator, Napolean - not exactly a resounding victory.

The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary early victories under the leadership of a Corsican dictator.

North American Westward Expansion - Lost. France was forced to surrender New Orleans plus the Louisiana Territory to America, yet France claims victory over Britain because French is spoken in Quebec. French dictator Napolean's naval invasion of North America was crushed by the loss of 70,000 troops on a refueling stop in ... Haiti?

The Franco-Prussian War – Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

World War I – Tied. France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein."

World War II – Lost, AND in record time. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain. Makes famous the phrase “Phoney War.” France does nothing for 9 months after war is declared, only to be overrun in hours once the Germans gas up their tanks. French military leaders mobilize in removing Maquis Resistance posters from cafe walls.

War in Indochina - Lost. France developes its Third Rule of French Warfare: "Surrendering to incoming American troops is preferable to most other forms of French surrender."

Algerian Rebellion - Lost, marking the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turk Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare: "We can always beat the French."

Ivory Coast – Lost. The French surrender was dubbed a “peace treaty,” which worked until the villagers obtained guns, whereupon the French were promptly routed.

'05 Domestic Muslim Riots - Losing. But, since the rioters are technically French, most at the Quay claim a "TIE."

Mohammed the Islamic Attack Rabbit

"We'd better not risk another frontal assault. That rabbit's dynamite."

"It has a mean streak in it a mile wide."

(Yes, Bummer is well aware that with this little juvenile display, he has descended straight down to the 9th ring of hell.)

Oasis In A German Desert

Finally, some rationality from an "old Europe" leader:

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel likened Iran's nuclear plans on Saturday to the threat posed by the Nazis in their early days, as top U.S. officials urged a tough line to stop Tehran from making an atomic bomb. ...

Addressing the annual Munich security conference, Merkel said countries around the world had underestimated the Nazi threat as Adolf Hitler rose to power. "Looking back to German history in the early 1930s when National Socialism (Nazism) was on the rise, there were many outside Germany who said 'It's only rhetoric -- don't get excited'," she told the assembled world defense policy makers.

"There were times when people could have reacted differently and, in my view, Germany is obliged to do something at the early stages ... We want to, we must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program."

Les Nuits Ampulnex

As young Bummer caused the death ray to suddenly focus and destroy the enemy (i.e., burned ants on the sidewalk using a magnifying glass in the bright sun), Bummer contemplated the nature of the reactions of the enemy.

Instinct? Learned? Random? Random but adversely selected for via natural selection? Some Gouldian exogenous shock/punctuated equilibrium form of natural selection?

Burning them ants was good for something, though. Bummer smoked - and I mean smoked - college classes concerning ecology, evolution and the like; yet Bummer wasn't in the science college. Yes, it must be noted that many a young coed/wannabe "marine biologist/actress" types felt compelled to take those classes, and there sat Bummer, the curve-setter who could help them with their studies....

Bummer digresses, but for good reason.

How on Earth could a bug end up doing this ?

I mean ... wow. So, a killer genetic mutation occurs. But how did the little Ampulex end up / figure out /become enslaved to its programming / etc., how to perform this exact little surgical procedure?

Now that's a puzzler.

1. Typing monkey infinity? It's not the Ampulex trick itself that is so unique; it's the billions and billions of combinations (roaches and wasps are plentiful) over time that all failed, and only once, randomly, did it result in this little circus act, which was naturally selected and propogated better than the rest.

2. Non-Gouldian, non-Lamarckian accretion? Wasp stinging insect is no biggie. Over millions of years, variations on the basic process randomly resulted in natural selection of succeedingly effective versions of this little circus act? A wasp didn't just suddenly become the best MASH-unit surgeon in one fell swoop.

Wow.

Bummer will go with the accretion analysis here. But, if any of the Bummer 23 belong to the "creation scientist" movement, this is the kinda thing you should be using in your Powerpoint presentation.

Wow.

Thanks to the annonymous tipper on this... .

Les Nuits Musulmanes des Fenêtres Brisées III

Degenerate medieval PABY's have trouble distinguishing stick drawings from reality, and riot over cartoons all over the world.

Backscribe, here and here.

Mohammed's Radio

The words of the Superior Rock Poet haunt me:

Mohammed's Radio

Everybody's restless and they've got no place to go
Someone's always trying to tell them
Something they already know
So their anger and resentment flow

You've been up all night listening for his drum
Hoping that the righteous might just might just might just come
I heard the General whisper to his aide-de-camp
"Be watchful for Mohammed's lamp"

Don't it make you
want to rock and roll
All night long
Mohammed's Radio

-Warren Zevon, RIP

Mohammed's Inkwell

Above are a few of the cartoons published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten.

* - For the search engines: Muhammed cartoon; Mohammed cartoon; muslim anger cartoon; offensive cartoon islam; jyllands posten denmark; offensive cartoon muslim islam; islamic cartoons.

Anger Management

Sometimes, Right of Center pundits just fall off the logic rails. It occurs far less frequently, I think, than with Leftists, who rely more on emotional arguments and, accordingly, often have less vigorous forecasting ability as to multiple-pronged logic and outcomes.

So when a RoC pundit says something particularly enlightening, relying more on emotion than logic, it is of interest. Peggy Noonan, for example.

Hinderaker at Powerline does so today. The commonly spouted RoC wisdom is that Dem elites are stuck in Vietnam. I usually argue that, rather, they are Stuck on Clinton, who for Dems constituted an emotional bridge back to JFK. I point out (with no logical support, I admit) that the impeachment of Clinton was, for Dems, like the assassination of JFK, or even Bobby.

Hinderaker hits a similar bag:

I also think that a considerable part of the Democrats' current pathology dates from the impeachment of Bill Clinton. ... [W]hen the process was over, Republicans moved on. Many Democrats, somewhat ironically, did not. They remained enraged that the right to lie about sex had been infringed, and they've remained enraged, in many cases, right up to the present. So the current talk about impeaching President Bush was pretty much inevitable.

Now, Hinderaker is a first rate thinker and pundit. And Bummer thinks he is spot-on in his identifying the linkage between Dem/Leftist anger, and the Clinton impeachment.

But the logic train then crashes. Can you show your math on that "so" ? Why does Dem anger over the Clinton impeachment make talk about impeaching Bush inevitable? I think all the sex talk over-rode Paul's logic train. But I still read him every day.

One of These Things...

One of these cartoons is claimed to be the source of civil disturbances. Actually, "civil" might not be a correct term.


The other ... is not.






Can you correctly identify which is which?

***

I'm not in favor of rioting, per se, but I am in favor of cancers being detected and eradicated early. And if this rioting, coupled with the Iranian nuke insanity and Hamas victory, wakes up another 25% of the West to what many of us already realized after 9/11 - that there exists an Islamofascist cancer that must be eradicated - then the cartoons have done a good thing.

Not My Drug Buddy

Bummer has not been on the pro-Bush train for a couple of substantive reasons:

1. Out of control domestic spending - that is, the Medicare and prescription drug fiasco. Domestic bankruptcy and choking-level taxation will be required down the road. Shame.
2. Head-in-the-sand oil policy. A supply disaster will happen, changing the world. Shame.

But...

A. As to point #1, Bush did decide to use his '04 election political capital on Social Security reform. He failed, but Bummer gives him some credit for the attempt, albeit an "F" for lame execution.

B. As to point #2, Bush's "F" grade on oil got upgraded last night, via the State of the Union speech. He acknowledged* that the US is addicted to oil, and the addiction must be addressed. Good first step for an addict.

This is a very, very different stance than the previous delusional Republican Happy-Talk of, "Let's drill in the Arctic, that'll solve everything." Kudos to Bush for this huge about-face. It's a demand-side problem, along with a supply-side problem. Supply-side-only policies will ultimately fail.

But, let's see if he executes well, or crashes the car, as he did with Social Security reform.


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* - Is Rove a member of the Bummer23? You decide:

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, folks, but the US is a heroin (oil) addict."