On The Third Hand

Warblog Archives

Friday, 07 Dec 2001

"The CIA has been getting a lot of grief lately over our lack of quality human assets in the Al Qaeda and Taliban ranks. But what are our spooks supposed to do? Send some fresh-faced American kid over to Afghanistan, have him knock on the cave door and say, 'hey, I wanna join!'?"

"I mean, c'mon! Let's be realistic." Yeah.. let's.

Despite the undeniable right-bias by Fox News, and despite my total disgust with Geraldo's "talk show" .. I still like his ever-so-bouncy macho reports from the front lines.
Is this a female-chauvinist point of view? If so... too bad, It's MY point of view, and I'll stick with it.

Thursday, 06 Dec 2001

Why bloggers are successful and Salon is not: This is the formula: The secret of our success is this: "zero expenses combined with just above zero revenues (thanks to the tip jar, over to your left!)." In my case the tip jar is to the right, but he's got it spot on. I doubt I'd get that billion dollar cap, but I promise I'd be happy to have a million...

The gentleman who runs "Rantberg" has done it again. I truly love the "absolute paragon of honesty" bit. And I have nothing to add.

"America the Beautiful" is our national anthem, despite what the 'official' song may be. The second verse is not often sung, but it does more to show the American attitude than any other in that song. It goes like this:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

The inimitable Instapundit is threatening to: "switch to what I'm calling a "reverse camgirl" model -- send me stuff, or I will post pictures of myself." Now why didn't I think of that?

Steven Den Beste had an interesting article on media slant this morning (though he didn't call it that). He compared headlines from AP, Reuters and BBC on what Colin Powell said to Turkish allies. That made me a bit curious, and I've collected the headlines for that news on all the (online) major international news sources.

• Powell Says No Plans for Iraq Attack -- Reuters
• Powell denies Iraq in U.S. sights -- CNN
• Powell rules out early Iraq strikes -- BBC
• Powell says Bush has yet to decide on Iraq -- AP
• No decision on Iraq: Powell -- MSNBC
• Powell: Iraq Remains a Concern -- Fox News

The bodies all basically reported the same thing (that Powell said Bush had not yet decided), but the headlines show the slant (MSNBC and AP got it right).

My friends over on Quasipundit are having some problems with their forums (which I cannot fix)... so I've put up an area on my forums as a temporary refuge. I've left it open to anonymous posting, but you can also become a member (and get an avatar and all the fancy stuff). If we can get their forums up and running again, I'll cut and paste any posts back there for you, so nothing will get lost.

The problem is with their host site, not the forum program, so it may take a while to get things fixed (if it is possible at all).

Via a reader of the Instapundit. I wish I had some of his readers sending me these links!

The site is muslimpundit.co.uk and his (very apt) blog description is: Going after starry pan-Islamic futurists with a rubber glove and a sharp stick. As an example... a quote from one of his posts:

These fundamentalists cannot bring themselves to believe that, through 14 centuries of Islamic scholarship, many famous classical juristic scholars who wrote and spoke often about Islam could be entirely ignorant, even incredulous, of the most basic ideas. But they often are, and so are their protagonists. This makes the task of explaining the exposition of an intellectually honest version of Islam somewhat harder, nonetheless, it also means that it is remarkably easy to make fools of your opponents, catching them in elementary errors of logic and fact. This is playing dirty, and I advocate it strongly.

Wednesday, 05 Dec 2001

It seems we have now killed more of our own in Afghanistan than they have. Considering that "the bomb hit very near or on the temporary headquarters of Hamid Karzai, an anti-Taliban leader who had just been named to head Afghanistan?s interim government," I'm beginning to wonder if we've got a few terrorist sympathizers in the military? Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.

Update: three dead

Tuesday, 04 Dec 2001

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times seems to think that Fox News is just a tad biased to the right. Gee, I never would have guessed. I wouldn't even bother mentioning the article, if it weren't for the comparisons he makes with CNN, (which he seems to consider unbiased) and the quote from David WEstin of ABC News. Mr Westin said: "The American people right now need at least some sources for their news where they believe we're trying to get it right, plain and simply," he said, "rather than because it fits with any advocacy we have." Oh yes, I surely believe that.

And in other (surely unrelated) news by Matt Drudge,"Emotions are running high inside of CBS NEWS over the pending release of a tell-all book written by a 28-year veteran of the organization -- a veteran who has documented what he sees as "consistent and outright bias" in the network's news coverage!" No comment.

Fox News online reported today that it is now possible to write letters to "any serviceman" from the web. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, that you heard it here first! Like the Instapundit, I do enjoy the occasional gloat.

Many thanks to my fellow bellicose woman, MommaBear, for drawing my attention to the Fox News story.

I have disabled the ability to comment on this blog. You may still send me comments in e-mail (see the 'contact' button above) or post in the forum, if you register. The reason for this? I was away from the blog for a while today, and came back to find a very long set of quotes from a white supremacist sitting here. The person who posted the stuf titled it Some interesting thoughts on "multiculturalism" from.... Interesting they were.. in much the same way as Osama bin Laden's speaches are interesting. I've taken some anti-nausea medication, and now feel much better, thank you.

I'm not certain whether the gentleman who posted this thought I would agree with it, or thought it would send me flying into the arms of the multicultural camp. I don't recall anywhere in this blog that I've ever mentioned what race(s) or religion I am, so if he thought I'd agree with that kind of stupidity it could only be because when he sees the word America, he hears the word "white". Since that is the exact opposite of the point I was trying to make, I hope it is because he can't read, not because I can't write.

I apologize to anyone who clicked to that post and saw that tripe.

Sunday, 02 Dec 2001

I've decided, after seeing the damage that the idea of "multiculturalism" has done, to stop calling myself multicultural. It really does not fit. The fact that I can 'blend in' (to some extent) in other cultures actually makes me the exact opposite of those who espouse the idea of "multiculturalism". What they want is for everyone in every culture to stick to their original culuture, and make no attempt to adapt.

I like learning proper table manners... whether it is which fork to use, or how to eat politely with my fingers. If I go to another country I make an effort to learn their language and social customs, and follow them. If someone else comes to my country I expect the same of them. That is simply courtesy.

This mulicultural "cult" results in people of other cultures being marginalised and put in little "cultural groups" that don't interact. That is not American. My neighborhood is American... my next-door neighbor lets off fireworks on the 5th of May... and on the 4th of July. We have a neighborhood watch, and that would make a nice piece for the Ad Council -- since we are all colors and religions and we are all Americans. We are not Africans or Mexicans or Chinese or Jamaican or Israeli or European or Arab or Indian (Hindi) first, we are Americans first.

We aren't exclusive, we are inclusive. That is the difference. That is what multiculturalism should be... but isn't.

I've been staying out of the whole tribunal controversy; I'm sitting back and waiting to see how it will be used. To some extent, I agree with both sides of the disagreement. Tribunals could be badly misused, and I have that same instinctive "yuck factor" on it that others have on the stem-cell issue. On the other hand, I'm not too sure I want to see millions in tax money spent on public defenders and appeals (since they would almost certainly get the death penalty).

On the third hand... I've had another idea. One of the most popular appeals by defense lawyers in really atrocious crimes has always been to use the "insanity" defense (see John Hinkley, who attempted to assasinate ex-President Reagan). If a defendent is proved insane before trial, he/she is committed to an insane asylum. Now... the basis of the "insanity" defense is the inability to tell right from wrong... the belief that one's acts were right in commiting a horrible crime will generally get one declared insane. El Qaida and other terrorists believe that murdering innocents is right. By our standards (and those of most countries), they qualify as insane.

So why not have them evaluated by a group of psychiatrists and commited to a nice high-security insane asylum? We could build one on Wake Island or some other out-of-the-way place. One advantage is that this would be terribly insulting and humiliating to them. The second advantage is that we could study these guys and find out what makes them tick, and after being fed some of the drugs that are routinely given to mental patients, I suspect we'd get lots of interesting information. Some of it we might even want to broadcast as anti-fundamentalist information.

Steven Den Beste has reserved "a place in the lowest pits of hell for the teachers in Pakistan who convinced the boys studying with them to run away and fight holy war against the Great Satan." I only wish we really could send them there.

I wonder if he's read Dante's "Inferno", though he didn't mention it. The lowest circle of hell, according to Dante, is reserved for those who betrayed trust. So, whether the USS Clueless Captain has read "Inferno" or not, he got it spot on!

"Secret US plan for Iraq war" announces a headline in The (UK) Observer. The usual: "...The Observer has learnt" "Sources say..." "...is believed to be" and other similar phrases are sprinkled throughout the article. Since the Guardian and Observer are almost always dead wrong in their predictions about America, I suspect this means we won't go to war with Iraq--at least not any time soon.