Happy 2010

...from Old Grouch.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Dear Diary... at 23:21:02 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Check your toolbox

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:56:54 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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People, not Things

Lorne Gunter, Edmonton Journal:

No matter what we screen for, no matter how much we irritate and inconvenience passengers at airports, the bad guys will figure out new ways to bring potential death aboard our planes.

The real trick is screening out bad guys.  But to do that would require a cultural will the West has not yet shown itself capable of.  It would require us to admit that young Muslims -- mostly young Muslim males [with radical connections] -- see themselves at war with the West, so they require a special level of scrutiny from security and intelligence forces.

It’s not “the West” that lacks the cultural will, it’s “the West’s Progressive political establishment.”  Otherwise, I’d agree.  (And Gunter isn’t saying “profile all the Muslims,” either... RTWT.)

The Israelis, who know something about airline screening, use the concept of keeping  people, not things, off of planes.  We waste our time on “stuff,” to avoid offending the folks who might put it to evil uses.

Sort of like gun control, innit?


Via: Kathy Shaidle, via American Power

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Clipfile - December 30, 2009

“The most you're buying from a RINO is time.  The RINO’s non-command of principles will feed the Progressive decline, albeit more slowly than a Democrat’s.  In a way, the Democrat is more admirable, because he’s not blowing any sunshine up the public bottom about his task.” - Smitty (at The Other McCain)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 23:33:55 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The “Protest Culture”

Those who lean toward viewing the administration’s lapses as stemming from incompetence rather than malice^[1] may find this pair of comments^[2] by “cfbleachers” a useful hook on which to hang their explanation:

We (at least, those of us in the center or rightward part of the political spectrum) still expect our government to respond in a strong and reflexive manner against any declared enemy who attempts mass murder of our countrymen.

But this current administration is made up of individuals belonging to a “protest culture.”  If they have a reflex, it is toward not away from, other protest cultures.

When actions by the current leadership seem incongruous to us, we must remember that they are the outcome of their own worldview.  Try viewing them through the eyes of an American “Protest Culture Club” member and things will crystallize.

To be fully cognizant of the impact of each step in the process, understand that there is an even further left, lefter, leftist spot on the protest culture spectrum.  Michael Moore not only views the war on terror to be a ridiculous notion, he considers our sworn enemies to be heroes.  And Ward Churchill believes that the innocents who died on 9/11 to be “little Eichmanns”.

Most (not all) of those nominated or selected for positions in this administration don’t go quite that far.  The “inner circle” seem to be quite content to stop at watering down the “enemy” to merely a “fellow protest culture, that, through circumstance, has us as its main target”.

PC responses are not just political correctness any longer, but rather, are protest culture guidelines.  Example: Protesting sometimes leads to raised emotions;  occasionally some individual gets so wrapped up in “fighting the establishment” that he gets carried away and commits a violent act.  But (so the thinking goes) we don’t want to condemn a whole “group” of Protest Culture participants for the acts of a tiny minority.  Instead, the ones who “gets out of hand” in “expressing themselves” should be handled within the confines of policing and “keeping order”.

Therefore, you don’t prepare in advance, because it is not a war.  You react after the fact, like calling the police…to keep order.

And…you search for “root causes.”  (Like blaming Bush, which is basically the “original sin” of the religion of Protest Culturists.)  Apply this mindset to every…every…instance, where this administration said or did something that caused you to shake your head in disbelief.

And, in the future, expect more the same.  If the reaction by the masses is too strong, expect lip service to what our eyes consider normal.  Then, watch every action/reaction revert to precisely the same as before.

We are living under the rule of a leadershp of Protest Culture club members: This is what it looks and feels like.  And if you are not a member, YOU…are more the enemy, than those who mean to kill us.

Remember, O. referred to “the alleged” perpetrator. “Alleged”??? Tell that to the passengers and the Dutchman who subdued him. “Alleged”?? In that one word the President conveyed all the subtext we need to know.

This is the difference between seeing a combatant caught in the act of guerilla warfare against us, and a “protest culture” participant engaged in an act against “the establishment”.

You would never say that an “alleged” soldier, was firing an “alleged” weapon from an “alleged” clock tower, at our men in uniform, on an “alleged” theater of operations.

When you start to “lawyer up” the defendant for his “misdemeanor” of trying to mass murder 300 or more of our countrymen, you come up with some pretty mind-bending, pretzel twisting phrases to water down the act to fit the alternate reality of the protest culture.

o-o-O-o-o

...20% of the population (or less) accounts for the vast majority of the Protest Culture.  However, that 20% DOMINATES the Democratic leadership, legacy media, academia, hollywood and entertainment.

And being in a constant mental state of protest (it being their reflexive response, as opposed to, say, patriotism), explains why one would fake weather data, why one would need to “redistribute” wealth by invasive hidden tax mechanisms, why one would overhaul the nation’s health care system to shred the elective options for the sick and elderly, why one would champion Mao, Che, Fidel (all seen as comrades in arms, not as brutal dictators).

It explains Van Jones, it explains Mike Klonsky, it explains William Ayers.  And Frank Marshall Davis.

It explains the New Party.

It explains the comment about “not being proud”, it explains the comment about “bitter clingers”.

It explains the reaction to the Gates altercation with the police and it explains the Ft Hood and Detroit Nigerian Nightmare situation reaction…such as it was.

It explains the flag pin as the “wrong kind of patriotism,” and the no hand over the heart for the Pledge of Allegiance.

It explains the Apology Tour and the deep bows to Arab princes.

What it doesn’t explain, is how 80% of the country allowed our culture to be swarmed by the pervasive effects of this in every corner where we disseminate our information and form our opinions and get our facts.

-----

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:08:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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A way home...

St.Petersburg Times:

The posters were hung, search parties formed, Craigslist notified. All the neighbors were on the lookout for the little gray kitty that went on daily walks with its owner, seven other cats and two dogs.

But the hours and days passed...

The old familiar story, except this time there’s a happy - if painful - ending.

Via:  Meryl

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They’re not going to use it on the Islamists, and they’re SURE not going to use it on the Mexicans, so...

...wotthehell does the Department of Homeland Security want 200 million rounds of ammunition for?

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Catch-n-release

ABC News/The Blotter:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents...

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Thanks, W.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:53:38 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Hey Janet! Got a question here...

Breda wants to know:

Tell me again why I have to bear the humiliation of being groped.and.swabbed every time I fly? ... Can’t they just put me on a terrorist watchlist so that TSA will leave me alone?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:38:50 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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And oh, by the way...

“Seabecker”, in a comment at Michelle Malkin’s:

Actually the system does work.  It worked exactly as designed.

The system is designed to inconvenience as many people as possible in the worst way possible, without looking for specific threats (i.e. profiling).  After all, it would have gone against the system to search a young Nigerian Muslim with known terrorist ties any more carefully than they would search your 90 year old WWII vet grampa.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:21:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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