Two things, both a pain

First, many Dutch schools have banned the display of the Dutch flag by students; they fear it may "provoke other students, mainly Moroccan students". This is not being 'sensitive', this is surrender. When you do not allow students to display the national flag because it might 'provoke' immigrants... get that fork ready, 'cause you're just about done.

Check the wording from one school: "They deny access to students who have flags on their bags or cloth. The school says they need to do this because of the new social climate. But they say prohibition is a big word, they do it in consent with the pupils..." Hey, butthead, if you 'deny access to student who have the flag', that's not in 'consent' with the pupils, that's a command from on high. You just don't have the balls to admit it.


Second thing, the noise about the Marine general who said it's fun to shoot terrorists. Here's what he said at a news conference:
"Actually it's quite fun to fight 'em, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling," Mattis said.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said during a panel discussion. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

And the predictable sources have been pissing and moaning about it ever since. "It's a bad example, We have to have a Higher Standard", etc. Shut the hell up! This is a man who has been leading troops in combat, providing leadership in & out of combat for years. And you know what? Have fun, General Mattis. Your targets are murdering terrorists who are wasting oxygen that could be breathed by more deserving organisms; like the women they murdered, for instance. So shoot them with a smile on your face. And if you're ever in Oklahoma City, I'll buy you a drink. Hell, I'll buy you dinner. You're doing a nasty job that has to be done, and doing it well, and I thank you.

Further on weather

Yesterday the prediction was for rain last night, ending by about noon, clearing in the afternoon.

It's now 4p.m., it's still cloudy and spitting rain occasionally. Yeah, they can predict what'll happen in the next hundred years or so.

By the way, remember the last couple of years during hurricane season? There would be monstrous storms and more of them, the destruction would be awful! All caused by global warming!

Horsecrap.

It's just beautiful! Kevin says it well

Over at Smallest Minority, Kevin has a couple of posts on and in response to the comments of a history professor named Cornell. Prof. Cornell basically says the 2nd Amendment means that someone may bear arms only as part of a militia unit, that there is no individual right to arms, the group he's part of (Second Amendment Research Center, John Glenn Institute) is only trying to help with some 'common-sense' restrictions needed for the public safety(sound familiar?) and so forth. Kevin's reply is long, fact-filled and comprehensive. I'll not excerpt from it, it ought to be read in its entirety. I will include this:

"(Citizenship) "would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citazens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State." (My emphasis)"

That's from the Dred Scott case, one of the worst decisions to ever come out of the Supreme Court. It specifically denied fundamental rights to a whole people. But it a way, it's useful; it lists just what a lot of people were scared of blacks having equal access to.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Yeah! Here's how to do it!

From Free Iraqi:
"Citizens of Al Mudhiryiah (a small town in the "death triangle") were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars.3 citizens were injured during the fire exchange. The Shiekh of the tribe to whom the 3 wounded citizens belong demanded more efforts from the government to stop who he described as "Salafis". "

Yes! These people have a chance to build a free country for themselves and their children, and they're grabbing it. And thank God they were armed; gave them the most effective way to fight the bastards.

To all the people who said the Iraqis could not really make it in a free society; screw you. They seem to be taking to the ideas of freedom from terrorists and self-defense and voting quite well.

Very important statement: "I consider it good even if the government forces were not there at the time to do something about it, because it shows that Iraqis are no longer paralyzed by fear from the terrorists and are able to organize themselves and defend their town when it's necessary." Exactly.

All honor to them

Clayton Cramer has this about one of the Iraqis that Moore & Co. don't mention:
"one story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese id.
Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today."

And from FreeWill:
"I want to refer you to this incident from right at one year ago.That was when Iranian and Lebanese terrorists went on an early-morning rampage through Iraqi police stations and administrative offices, killing numerous officers, until they were finally caught at one station near Fallujah that made a stand. Despite being caught badly short on ammo, the Iraqi cops there fought back with everything at hand, and even when they ran out, did not flee. Fighting dragged on for an hour, and Coalition forces, only 10 minutes away, could hear the explosions and sent out a radio call to ask if the Iraqis needed reinforcement.

The Iraqi cops politely refused: Despite death and hellfire raining down around them, they didn't want reinforcements. This was their fight, and they wanted more ammo. They got their wish, and ultimately repelled the murderers, taking their RPGs as trophies.

(After the battle, the commander observed, somewhat prophetically in hindsight, that "there has to be a foreign agency that is financing this type of thing". You can read more about the battle in that article, or this one. Numerous related photos here.)"

I repeat, all honor to them. And screw Pelosi and Reid and company.(metaphorically, that is; you think I'm that crazy?)

Computer modeling and weather

I wrote once before on the subject of 'global warming', just touching on it. Last night & today is a fine demonstration as to why so much of the crisis-mongering means nothing.

There was a snow advisory for the area. We were supposed to get 1" to 3" here; south & west, up to 6". Every meteorologist in the area, and the National Weather Service, was warning of this. What did we get? Some wet flakes and some rain. Of the predicted 6", some areas of southwest & east central OK had some icy spots on bridges. That was it.

This mess was less than 24 hours into the future, and they blew it bigtime. And it's not the first time, and won't be the last. Snow, thunderstorms, tornados... with multiple Doppler radars scanning a mesocyclone, they can say there might be a tornado, and they're often wrong. And sometimes they still don't spot one until someone reports it on the ground.

Correction: it's 'State of Fear'. What, you want perfection?

When the models cannot reliably predict what's going to happen within 24-48 hours, why in the hell do people believe it when someone says "My computer models predict the earths temperature will rise X degrees in the next century", or whatever the time frame is they're using? But a lot of people do. And they're scared to death by it; so they demand Changes Be Made, and Now! Don't tell me what it will cost in how many ways, don't tell me there's nothing to replace what I want to get rid of, we have to DO SOMETHING!!!

I just finished reading 'Climate of Fear', Michael Crichton's newest book. Not a bad story. In some ways the most interesting things were the charts included. Real charts, showing the results of studies of temperatures, of sea levels, etc. Guess what they indicate? That the crisis-mongers are full of crap.

Oh, he also references exactly where the data came from. Including Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish researcher whose former colleagues at Greenpeace want to hang. You see, he wrote a book pointing out just how full of crap all the predictions of crisis are, and they can't stand it. Pretty good book. No, I didn't understand everything in it, I still got the gist of it.

If someone used data like most of the modeling studies to sell their services to predict the stock market, they'd be in jail for fraud. But since they're 'only' predicting the weather a century away and scaring hell out of people, they get away with it.

At this point I've been up for 21 hours, with about 6 hours sleep before that, and I'm beat. But I wanted to get this down now. No particular reason, just needed to do it. Now goodnight, all, I'm for a shower and bed.

(Sondra K, where are you when I need you? Heh, heh, heh.....)

We're paying how much for these schools?

The Geek linked to this, demonstrating the ignorance of so many schoolkids about our freedoms.

Is this really surprising to anyone? There was just a story about some Massachussetts schools with 'multi-cultural math' that had nothing to do with teaching math, and everything to do with making people 'feel good' about everyone. Math and science scores tend to suck, but kids are taught that they're not allowed to say anything that might hurt someones feelings(obviously, feelings are more important than actually KNOWING anything), and when they do teach the Constitution or Bill of Rights, it's through a pretty set of P.C. filters to teach it the say the squirrels decide that they 'ought' to be.

My daughter had a class in high school called 'street law' that was apparently some teaching about the Bill of Rights, and out of the entire class she was the only one who could accurately name more than one or two of them. (she also had an interesting discussion one day on the distance at which someone with a knife is a threat; the teacher was impressed and the other kids wanted to know 'where do you find out this stuff?') It was discouraging then, and it's apparently gotten worse.

Bah. I need to hit the range today.

Long list of quotes

FreedomSight has the link, lots of good stuff. There's one in particular that really ticks me off:

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." -President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993.

That quote demonstrates quite well why Kim du Toit said he never wants to read another news story about Clinton unless it contains the words "died suddenly".