ushanka.us: December 2009

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Shock on Christmas Day

Some were shocked that the threat of ~~terrorism~~ man-made disaster still exists, and that they would choose a religious holiday to attack.

The rest of us were shocked to learn people still want to fly to Detroit.

Shoe/ankle bombers are 0 for 2 now. Is there anyone in our national security agencies that think our luck may be running out? Or, are they too busy tracking all those right-wing extremists?

Stewart Baker from blog Skating on Stilts - his first of ten points:

1. According to early reports, the suspect is 23-year-old Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his name "appears to be included in the government's records of terrorist suspects, according to a preliminary review." The first question, then, is how he managed to get a visa to come to the United States.

Jules Crittenden:

If Al Qaeda is an idea in the hearts of jihadis everywhere, and he thinks he’s a part of it, why not grant him the full rights and privileges? Off to Guantanamo, give him a dunking, some AC/DC and Barney, you know, a little of the old “I love you, you love me,” and a military tribunal … oh yeah, never mind. Bungled attack by a wannabe in the post-post-9/11 era? Sounds like a suspended sentence, a couple years of probation, community service and maybe some counseling.

Comments from President Obama:

Not available. On vacation in Hawaii.

Check out Steven Crowder's recent visit to Detroit:

UPDATE 1.8:

UPDATE 1.9:

U/T: DougM at SondraK

UPDATE 1.10:

Labels: Losing a War

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Thursday, December 24, 2009

A Soldier's Christmas

The most appropriate 6 minutes for Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas!

U/T: NewZeal

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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Victory or Death

Found this part 5 video at HotAir. All five parts are at David Horowitz's site.

Labels: DNC

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

Central Planning Preview

We are just days away from free healthcare.

The site, English Russia, has a post on the horrors of Moscow traffic.

Only closed-minded conservatives will connect these dots.

Those who chose this path will have to figure it out somewhere along that 6-month wait for an MRI...

Welcome to the new America. Welcome to Obama's America.

Labels: Healthcare

posted by Karl @ 10:43 AM Permalink 0 comments Post a comment

Guns, and Liberal Logic

This bulletin board posting was photographed at Fort Benning - home to the Army's Infantry and our alma mater, The Benning School for Boys.

Of course, this is in response to the Fort Hood shooting.

If you're not a lib, let us explain: The US military is more interested in diversity than the safety of their personnel.

First, bases are designated 'gun-free' zones where only criminals may possess firearms. Only criminals may defend themselves. Besides, who's going to trust America's fighting soldier with a gun?!

Second, despite fighting a war started by religious fanatics, that same religion is embraced within our military. Those that find this a problem are clearly intolerant and don't belong in our multicultural military.

And now, because a muslim fanatic and criminal who was allowed to co-exist with America's best decided to shoot them, the law-abiding soldiers must now register their firearms. You see, this would have stopped the Fort Hood shooting and will identify those who have similar plans.

Now do you get it?

Pic from gun blogger Curtis Lowe.

Labels: Gun Rights

posted by Karl @ 10:27 AM Permalink 0 comments Post a comment

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Copenhagen Watermelons

Green on the outside, red on the inside!

U/T: NewZeal

UPDATE 12.20:

We're starting to wonder if Earth temperature fluctuations aren't the real motivation behind the global warming hysteria...

U/T: iOwnTheWorld

UPDATE 12.24:

Aren't you glad the Internet isn't scratch-n-sniff yet?

U/T: iOwnTheWorld

Labels: Crisis as a Means, Hammer/Sickle

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Real Media

Remember when the US media asked tough questions?

Neither do we.

Here is a 10-minute tutorial for our MSM, in case they wish to reverse their viewership/circulation rates...

One more question: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? Hmmm???

U/T: iOwnTheWorld

UPDATE: 12.15

More of the fine English gentlemen, this time outnumbered by the modern version of "Hitler Youth". Its still not a fair fight...

Labels: MSM

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Ben and Karl Agree!

U/T to Glenn Beck for animating the obvious!

Labels: Healthcare

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

YouTube now does translations

Found at iOwnTheWorld:

Is it possible that technology made by and provided by bay area liberals will be what saves us?

posted by Karl @ 5:51 AM Permalink 0 comments Post a comment

Friday, December 11, 2009

Karl's Weekend Reading

Our work schedule has kept us from posting our Weekend Reading posts in recent weeks. It'll still be off-n-on for a while. Please excuse the inconsistency.

We HAVE to start this post with WSJ's Bret Stephens' piece, The Totalities of Copenhagen. He uses the term "totalitarian impulse" much like we use the term "communist-inspirations" when describing the ~~liberals~~ ~~progressives~~ communists that are now running our country. He wears a tie to work where we're typing away in our jammies, but the message is the same. The impulses/inspirations he outlines include: "Revolutionary fervor, Utopianism, Anti-humanism, Intolerance, Monocasalism, Indifference to evidence and Grandiosity. He concludes:

Today, of course, the very idea of totalitarianism is considered passé. Yet the course of the 20th century was defined by totalitarian regimes, and it would be dangerous to assume that the habits of mind that sustained them have vanished into the mists. In Copenhagen, they are once again at play—and that, comrades, is no accident.

The more enlightened among us would say Bret's unspoken connection to communism suggests he has a screw loose. But Charles Krauthammer makes a call to action for Congress in today's Townhall, The New Socialism. That makes 2! Pretty soon right wingers are going to be launching blogs with hammers and sickles in the title bar - unless we put a stop to this nonsense!

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.
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Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

More comments on our Ditherer in DC. Charles Krauthammer reviews the West Point speech in his Townhall article from last week, Uncertain Trumpet. "...so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive".

Words matter because will matters. Success in war depends on three things: a brave and highly skilled soldiery, such as the U.S. military 2009, the finest counterinsurgency force in history; brilliant, battle-tested commanders such as Gens. David Petraeus and McChrystal, fresh from the success of the surge in Iraq; and the will to prevail as personified by the commander in chief.

There's the rub. And that is why at such crucial moments, presidents don't issue a policy paper. They give a speech. It gives tone and texture. It allows their policy to be imbued with purpose and feeling. This one was festooned with hedges, caveats and one giant exit ramp.

No one expected Obama to do a Henry V or a Churchill. But Obama could not even manage a George W. Bush, who, at an infinitely lower ebb in power and popularity, opposed by the political and foreign policy establishments and dealing with a war effort in far more dire straits, announced his surge -- Iraq 2007 -- with outright rejection of withdrawal or retreat. His implacability was widely decried at home as stubbornness, but heard loudly in Iraq by those fighting for and against us as unflinching -- and salutary -- determination.
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Remarkable. Go and fight, he tells his cadets -- some of whom may not return alive -- but I may have to cut your mission short because my real priorities are domestic.

Has there ever been a call to arms more dispiriting, a trumpet more uncertain?

Victor Davis Hanson chimes in at NRO, Has War Really Changed?

If our leaders today could consult great generals like the Roman Scipio Africanus or William Tecumseh Sherman — who won what were once near-hopeless wars — they might receive the following advice:

Prepare the public to shoulder human and financial costs.

Be candid about why enduring the horrors of war now is preferable to risking even costlier violence later.

Talk always of winning, never leaving or quitting a war.

Have no apologies for crushing the enemy. The quicker the enemy loses, the fewer get killed on both sides.

Inform the public of the other side’s losses just as you do your own.

And be magnanimous to the defeated — after the war, not during the fighting.
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President Obama talked of many things in his recent Afghanistan speech. But he never once mentioned the words “victory” and “win.” All that may seem like an out-of-date idea to postmodern Americans. But it is still a very real one to the premodern Taliban, who seem to understand the ageless nature of war far better than we do.

Labels: Losing a War, Weekend Reading

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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

A more enlightened culture

The Swiss:

U/T: Knowledge is Power

Labels: Gun Rights

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Sunday, December 06, 2009

To Dither or Not to Dither...

First - our apologies for our recent unannounced absence. Despite the end of capitalism, we've found reason to 'live in the past' in recent days. We can't multi-task like Tiger Woods hence the dust on the blog.

The big news of this past week was the Ditherer in Chief finally making a decision, sorta, regarding that troublesome thing he chose to inherent by becoming President - Afghanistan. We've collected some images and comments on this event and share with you below. The cartoons were found at Townhall.

President Obama visited West Point to give his speech. It was not lost on anybody that the rat sleeping under the stage knows more about national security than the guy reading the teleprompter.

From Der Spiegal:

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

Lib Bob Sheiffer doesn't have much good to say about the speech:

How do you on the one hand say we need to send these troops over there? It's critical. It's in our national security interests to do this. But, then say we're only going to keep them there for 18 months?

Sweetness & Light has the full transcript.

Iain Martin at the WSJ ponders the Taliban view of this speech:

...it sounds like you’re going to have to steel yourself for a year more of increased fighting. But what’s one more year in Afghanistan’s long and troubled history? And your opponent has just told you, on television in front of the world, that after that he’s going to start withdrawing.

Now, Taliban commander, do you feel depressed or perhaps rather encouraged?

Labels: Losing a War

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