Swashbuckling bureaucrats.

Let Me Put Out My Cigarette In Your Palm to Show You My Contempt for Pain Department:

Islamism: A Muslim teen who fled from Ohio to Florida after becoming Christian swears her father will kill her if she goes back home. Florida authorities appear willing to take that chance.

I love the style of Investor's Business Daily editorials. It’s dry and understated and invariably there’s a clever point contrasting government or media/leftist lying, obfuscating, shading, concealing, distracting, temporizing, pandering, and groveling, on the one hand, and, on the other, realities requiring adult attention.

"Fathima's Fears." Investor's Business Daily, 9/21/09.

Getting real.

The existing paradigm — a system of lawfully-constituted democratic governance — has failed us.

"Hellish Saviors." By Baron Bodissey, Gates of Vienna, 7/29/09.

Our fatal fantasy -- the permanence of order, decency, and freedom.

J.R. Nyquist is not encouraged by the role of fantasy in our society. In the pursuit of fantasy we are willing to risk absolutely everything:

Here is the distilled essence of our fatal fantasy. Everything in this world is breakable, destructible and mortal. Everything passes away. Everything is overturned. Everyone dies. What is precious, what is breakable, deserves to be handled with care. Yet we are determined to break the foundation of all that we possess as a people [by, inter alia, being blithely accepting of bona fide native-born citizens who are actually hostile to our Constitution].

Mr. Nyquist writes also of the “residue of degenerates” always present in civilized societies that is restrained by the police in good times but which is set loose to murder and plunder when revolution removes all outward restraint.

“The human mind craves fantasy,” says Mr. Nyquist, the truth of which statement is borne out by the unwillingness of liberals to confront the reality of hostility on the part of other citizens, religions, and cultures.

To confront that reality requires preparation for zero-sum contests where advantage is won by sacrifice and fierce resistance -- not by fawning, feeble smiles, endless one-sided "compromise," nifty tattoos, and groovy ear rings.

Far better to pretend there is no threat, order another cardamom/nutmeg chai, and read some more poetry.

"When Fantasy is Fatal." By J. R. Nyquist, 9/11/09.

Wrong lesson from that “teachable moment.”

As Harvard Prof. Gates’s reaction to the assistance of Officer Crowley in Cambridge, Mass., shows, there are some bizarre attitudes that blacks have toward law enforcement.

This is not quite the lesson from that “teachable moment” in that encounter that certain persons had in mind.

The officer came to assist the professor by investigating a possible illegal entry of his residence and was met with an outburst from the professor that sounded like something that would come out of the mouth of a crack dealer being rousted for the 50th time in one month by a beat cop, not something from the mouth of a safe, well-off professor of something or other at Harvard.

Robert Weissberg has some interesting ideas why blacks (in high black-on-black crime areas) have similar attitudes to police officers trying to deal with horrendous crime in their neighborhoods. After a high-visibility crime, the black community responds positively to increased police efforts, but when there is an inevitable mistake by the police, the response of the community is -- almost invariably -- misdirected into pathological pathways seemingly designed to restore crime rates to “normal.”

This skewed response is so tragic because of the horrendous violent crime rates in the slums inner city:

[B]lacks commit an inordinate amount of violent crime. In 2005, for example, blacks were seven time more likely than whites to commit a homicide. Second, blacks themselves are typically the victims of this violence—between 1976 and 2005, 94 percent of all blacks killed in a homicide were killed by other blacks. In 2008, homicide was the leading cause of death for black males aged 10-24 and the second leading cause of death for women of that age. This pattern is true for other violent crimes . . . .

Entire neighborhoods, whole cities like Newark, NJ, and Detroit, MI, resemble bombed-out Berlin in 1945 due to self-inflicted mayhem, while law-abiding black residents suffer unemployment, boarded up stores, vandalized housing, dangerous schools, and all the rest thanks to rampant criminality.

When Sharpton and Jackson go back home after putting on their morality plays, the killing revives and the despair settles back in.

But the Mafia teaches a lesson . . . .

"Black on Black." By Robert Weissberg, Takimag.com, 9/14/09.

Played for suckers.

Paul Sperry about the Islamic threat to the U.S.:

I wrote [my book Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington] in the hopes that my kids and their kids won't have to live under terror alerts. Washington hasn't leveled with us about the full scope and depth of the Islamic threat not only inside America but inside the government, just as it hasn't leveled with us about the true nature of Islam. We've been lulled into a false sense of security, and we're just inviting another 9/11. So I wrote this book to expose the elaborate fraud that's been orchestrated by our leaders in the Washington establishment and the leaders in the Muslim establishment, who are playing us all for suckers.

Base of operation of “Muslim mafia”: the Wahhabi Corridor (visual tour) in Northern Virginia.

"Infiltration." By Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com 4/12/05 (emphasis added).

Edward Kennedy -- liar, traitor.

We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this [1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act].^[1]

And:

Senator Kennedy was a vicious partisan opportunist. A man prepared to betray his country for partisan gain. In 1983 this man offered his services to Andropov, the then current dictator of the Soviet Union. Andropov was a former chief of the KGB and was instrumental in Nagy's arrest in 1956 and his murder in 1958 in the KGB's Lubyanka prison. And this is the man Kennedy admired and whose help he sought in an effort to bring down the Reagan presidency. And the treasonous mainstream media spiked the story.^[2]

Notes
^[1] "Ted Kennedy's Legacy: Genocidal Immigrationist." Age of Treason. 8/26/09. Kennedy worked to pass a comprehensive amnesty bill in 2007.
^[2] By John Ray, "Elsewhere," Dissecting Leftism, 9/11/09 (with apologies to Mr. Ray for just lifting his words; I couldn’t see how to link to his post without making interested readers work hard to search for his words on his site).

A warning from 1759.

In the 18th century, a prescient Samuel Johnson wrote of Rasselas, prince of Abissinia, who was confined to an idyllic place until it would be his time to be called to the throne. From this place, ringed by mountains, there was no escape.

Rasselas is determined to find a way. He approaches a man with great mechanical skills who believes that man might use wings to travel rather than ships and chariots.

The mechanic suggests that the prince support him in his plan to use a design based on the wings of bat to permit them to fly over all the earth, but he insists that prince agree to two conditions:

“If you will favour my project I will try the first flight at my own hazard. I have considered the structure of all volant animals, and find the folding continuity of the bat's wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task tomorrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice or persuit of man. But I will work only on this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves."

"Why, said Rasselas, should you envy others so great an advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received."

"If men were all virtuous, returned the artist, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the cloud neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the southern sea."

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), ch. 6. By Samuel Johnson. Edited by Prof. Jack Lynch, Rutgers University.

Choice.

The Local Malcontent is a Choctaw and invites everyone to attend the Choctaw Labor Day Festival in Tuskahoma, Okla.:

Come early, + 1 hour, to any event you want to be a part of,
and Bring your own lawnchairs, or
your smallpox-free blankets to sit on...

"Ya'll Come Hungry~!" The Local Malcontent, 9/3/09.

Federal expenditures: 60% unconstitutional.

He [David Walker, the former head of the Governmental Accountability Office] notes that today the role of the federal government has grown such that last year less than 40% of it related to the key roles the Founders envisioned for it: defense, foreign policy, the courts and other basic functions. "What happened to the Founders' intent that all roles not expressly reserved to the federal government belong to the states, and ultimately the people?" he asks.

"Warning: The Deficits Are Coming!" By John Fund, WSJ, 9/4/09.

Islam in one sentence (1861).

The sword of Mohammad and the Kor'an, are the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty and Truth which the world has yet known.

Passage from The Life of Muhammad (1861) by Sir William Muir quoted by Bookworm in comment on "The book I really can't put down." By Sebastian Faulks, telegraph.co.uk, 8/24/09.

Different breed of cat.

[West Point analysts] identified key [Syrian] facilitators, how much they charged people who wanted to become suicide bombers, and where many of the fighters came from. Fighters from Saudi Arabia, for example, paid the most -- $1,088 -- for the opportunity to become suicide bombers.

This has nothing to do with Islam, right? That some guy would pay money for an opportunity to obliterate himself is something that is just part of, well, some sick personal fantasy unrelated to any Islamic doctrine.

Right!!! It's just a coincidence that bunches of these guys are signing on to this fantasy for the last few years.

I like to ask, on what day exactly did each one of those guys wake up and say to himself, “You know, I really need to move forward on that great idea I’ve had for some time to strap on some Semtex and kill myself and some other guys.” How does that work for a guy?

I want to know this. I do.

Meantime, Syria goes unpunished for operating multiple suicide bomber networks in Iraq.

Completely untouched. Like Iran.

"How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade." By Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, 9/4/09 (emphasis added).

Cognitive dissonance.

Vanishing American discusses the issue of requiring certain people in one country to return to their native countries:

And the [issue] of repatriation, of simply sending people home, is one that has become radioactive in our day, whereas nobody thought it amiss back in 1950 or so. We live in an age of cognitive dissonance as ideas that are declared anathema in one situation are considered good and appropriate in other cases. I suppose, again, it's all about the 'victim' groups versus the 'villain' groups, and the left is writing the script, as always.

She makes the point that now it's instant Speakcrime for anyone who suggests that illegals present in the U.S. should be sent home but, after 1945, for example, no one blinked an eye when Dutch people and Dutch-Indonesian mixed race people in Indonesia were "repatriated" to the Netherlands -- which they'd never seen and didn't want to live in.

Worse than mere repatriation took place, of course.

"It all depends..." By Vanishing American, 8/17/09.

Republicans then and now.

About congressional Republicans in general [President Reagan] wrote: "We had rabbits when we needed tigers."

"The Triumph Of Optimism." By John Fund, Wall Street Journal, 9/2/09.

An unsettling difference.

The difference between Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama is one between an ass kicker and an ass kisser.^[1]

It’s a mistake to get this distinction wrong. Mr. Obama’s experience as a community organizer in Chicago and Alinsky-style smoke artist prepare him for precisely nothing in the deadly serious business of statecraft. On the other hand, Mr. Putin’s service in the KGB was, I’m guessing now, quite unlike that of being a Harvard Law Review editor.

Better Pee Wee Herman’s grasp of geopolitical fundamentals than Obama’s but . . . it’s Obama whom we’ve got.

Sometime in the next three years he’ll be getting some OJT in matters as to which eloquence and being cool are irrelevant. I don’t wish this on him -- or us -- but I fear it’s inevitable, especially given the weakness that Obama shows to the world.

Mr. Putin is a serious player with a serious agenda and Mr. Obama wastes his capital on a cop-professor-president garden party and a stupid attempt to wreck the U.S. health care industry.

I’d give a lot to see him hanging out with some guys from the 82d or bench pressing 150 lbs. but that would be asking for Obama to be a different man than he is. He’s probably in the Oval Office right now polishing another apology to the world or some directive to force the Hondurans to get on board with the Chavez-Cuban agenda. Or checking with Holder on the progress of his investigation into CIA officer interrogation methods.

The U.S. of Truman, Eisenhower, McArthur, Patton, Halsey, Nimitz, Jackson, and McCarthy (PBUH) it isn’t.

No, it really isn’t.

Notes
^[1] "The Strong Horse vs. My Little Pony." By Vanderleun, American Digest, 8/31/09.