TODAY'S MUST-READ: Bill Whittle on that rarest of commodities...
9/03/03:
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AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: I don't do many plugs on this blog; that's a function
fulfilled by my "personal" website.
But on Sunday night, Marla and I went to the Iowa County Fair and saw a
wonderful artist--Andy
Griggs. I had first heard Andy just the week before, on the radio while
driving up through southern Illinois, and had liked his singing (while having no
idea who he was). Well, lo and behold, there he was up on stage at this modest
county fair in southwestern Wisconsin.
Not only does Andy have a great voice and a superb band, he writes
memorable songs and is the picture of personability--just about the polar
opposite of many of the musical celebs you see today (Your Alois was a
semiprofessional musician for years, but dropped out because he couldn't stand
to hang out with musicians). Does great covers, too--everyone from Waylon
Jennings to Bob
Wills.
I look forward to picking up Andy's CD. And if you like real
country music, I would suggest that you do the same! End of plugging for today.
posted by Alois 09/03/03
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9/04/03:
9/05/03:
9/08/03:
FIRST, READ THIS (Andrew Sullivan's capsule critique of Bush's
speech last night).
Now... Speaking of hubris, we are all on the outside looking in vis-a-vis
the the Bush administration's decision making process regarding Iraq. We are not
privy to the daily tidal wave of intelligence and we are not on the ground in
Iraq. Just perhaps, if the commander of US forces in Iraq repeatedly claims that
we do not require more forces, he may be right.
posted by Klaus (mit mein Deutsche Schaferhund HellMutt)
09/08/03
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It
is a dark day for Americans when one of their two ruling parties cannot be
counted on to support the flag when it is committed in battle, and when the
battle is America?s response to a bloodthirsty aggressor with access to
biological, chemical and perhaps even nuclear weapons." -- David Horowitz, How to Look at the War on Terror (make sure you read the whole
thing, schnell! )
Nothing to me today is as profoundly disturbing as the realization that
one of our country's two major political parties has decided that it is
more important to deride our President--during a time of war, yet--than to own
up to the very real stakes that we are playing for here... merely the survival
of the civilized world. It is a complete abdication of responsibility to suggest
that, in the absence of Republican prosecution of the War On Terror, the
Islamofascists will simply "leave us alone," we can pump all of our war dollars
back into the national kitty, and the party can go on just like it did before
September 11, 2001. Do they really believe that--or, worse, do they even care?
posted by Alois 09/08/03
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THE SERMON ON THE
MOUNT: The American Christian left (lamentably, most of the offialdom of most of
the mainstream Protestant churches, with quite a few Catholic clergy weighing in
too) has been having a field day quoting Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." This is
their favorite biblical excuse for sucking up to dictators like Saddam Hussein
and letting the poor, misunderstood Islamofascists have their day in the sun.
Well, of course, I don't claim to speak for Jesus. But I don't think He
might take much issue with my own interpretation of His quote in the light of
present-day events:
Blessed are the peacemakers--the ones who intend to make this world
much more peaceful by hunting down and eradicating every single last
Islamo-murderer on the planet.
I believe in free will, like any good Protestant, and I cannot believe
that Jesus would have wanted us to relinquish our free will to a throng of
satanic mass murderers.
(Just an aside--in the same Sermon, Jesus mentioned that anyone divorcing
his wife causes her to commit adultery, and that anyone who marries a divorced
woman commits adultery. You don't hear many of our liberal Protestant friends
thumping on that line, now do you?)
posted by Alois 09/08/03
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OH, GOOD GRIEF: I'm so
glad I don't live in this city anymore (I left in the late seventies, before the
Microsoft boom, before Starbucks, even before grunge rock). I can't believe
these people can't find something more worthwhile to bitch about.
posted by Alois 09/08/03
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9/09/03:
CLARIFICATION: I
wouldn't want anyone to misunderstand what I was trying to say in the post
above, so let me spell out what I meant:
Fuck the Palestinians. They don't deserve a state.
Alles ist klar, Kommissar?
posted by Alois 09/09/03
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9/10/03:
HOW ABOUT: "RIYADH,
Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's religious police have declared Barbie dolls a
threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the 'Jewish' toy ?
already banned in the kingdom ? are offensive to Islam.
"The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as
the religious police are officially known, lists the dolls on a section of its
Web site devoted to items deemed offensive to the conservative Saudi
interpretation of Islam.
"'Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful
postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West.
Let us beware of her dangers and be careful,' said a poster on the site."
I always said they were afraid of their women, but this is ridiculous.
(Hat tip to Charles)
posted by Alois 09/10/03
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OR HOW ABOUT: "America
has a super plural society having many religions (Christian, Hindu, Muslim,
Jews, Buddha?s etc). Every day, every hour or every minute?we are sick and tired
of hearing in the radio, TV, or newspapers some very common (colorful)
adjectives, such as: Muslim militants, Muslim terrorists, Islamic terrorists,
Islamic radicals, and Islamic militants, Islamic fanatics, Al-Qeada, and
Taliban. My question is that, why do not we hear about terrorists or radicals of
any other religions? Why do not we hear these kind of ear-soothing colorful
adjectives about those millions of atheists, agnostics or even Homosexual guys?
Why it is always attached with the peaceful (?) ISLAM?" (Syed
Kamran Mirza, Yahoo News Groups)
Uh, you're kidding. Right?
(Hat tip: Zee)
posted by Alois 09/10/03
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Iran
Watch:
YEAH, BUT AT LEAST OUR ISLAM IS
PURE: Heartbreaking piece in the Washington Post about the mindset of
young people in the Islamic Republic. Can the mullahs still actually believe
that their revolution was for the good of the country... or have they just
accepted that their country's future are simply incapable of being good
enough Muslims?
posted by Alois 09/10/03
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YAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWN.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. CNN put this at the top of the news?!? For shame!
posted by Alois 09/10/03
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...AND SPEAKING OF
BROWN ACID: "Recently, in the news, (I don't remember where or why) some women
threatened to protest some awful law or policy by disrobing and walking naked
through the streets of their village - the men in power were so horrified by the
thought that they bowed to the women's demands. Is it because we women have been
oppressed by men that our power is in refusing to be ashamed of who we are; of
our naked bodies? As we were photographed this morning I felt empowered by the
Sisterhood and the tide... Women and Nature - so exploited by men..."
-Rebecca, who Strips For Peace
I think that a bunch of naked women could even march through Provincetown
without horrifying the male occupants.
And they're certainly welcome to do it in my hometown any old time. We'll
be the ones with the lawn chairs and the brewskis.
On the other hand... maybe this really happened--in the Islamic world?
Nah, wait a minute, no way. Certainly in the multicultural Islamic world they
are much more sensitive to the needs of women than they are here in the
bad old male-chauvinistic West, right Rebecca?
posted by Alois 09/10/03
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9/11/03:
posted by Alois 09/11/03
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9/12/03:"My friend Lawrence Kaplan had a terrific little piece in the Wall
Street Journal yesterday. Terrific because it put its finger on how quickly a
cultural and political divide emerged in the war on terror. By and large, the
Democratic party is now opposed to continuing this war, as currently
envisaged, and want to wind it down as fast as possible, seeking diplomacy
over force, denying the nexus of terror in the Middle East, eager to undo the
new mechanisms law enforcement has to prevent future terrorist attacks, while
engaging in Dowd-like attempts to embarrass and infantillize the men and women
with the dreadful responsibility for our security. Listening to the Democratic
debate earlier this week, I was amazed at how few had any strategic plans for
taking the war to the enemy, how the very concept of 'enemy' seemed to unnerve
and embarrass them. Similarly, the New York Times, a paper that witnessed
first-hand the terror, now prefers to use the occasion of the anniversary for
a classic piece of moral equivalence, comparing the murder of 3,000 innocents
to the U.S. complicity in a coup in Chile thirty years ago. For these people,
the first instinct is always, always, always, that the United States is
morally suspect. They haven't changed. The moral clarity after 9/11 terrified
them. They wanted it to go away so badly so they could switch the conversation
back to the faults and evils of America.
"CLARITY FATIGUE: And they have, of course, partly succeeded - not
because they managed to inflate, say, Enron's collapse into the greater event
(though that was one of the more comic Raines-Krugman gambits). They succeeded
in the end not by argument but by the effect of sheer fatigue. No democracy
wants to believe it is under dire threat; no one wants the abnormality to
endure; no one wants to absorb the truth that the war is still in its infancy
and that greater atrocities lie ahead, unless we act forcefully to pre-empt
them and build the kind of societies in the Middle East that are alone
guarantees of our and their future peace and stability. I have made plenty of
criticisms of this president; and will do so again. But he's currently the
only leader in this country who actually gets the depth of our predicament and
the need for innovative, enterprising and ruthless action to improve it. The
paradox is that the more he succeeds and the more the threat of terror
recedes, the more his opponents will take the calm as evidence that nothing
much has to be done, that nothing much has been done, that America, by acting,
is the real source of world conflict, and that retreat and amnesia are the
cure-alls. I don't think most Americans believe this. I think they are still
angry and still afraid and still determined. But they will suffer more than a
thousand cuts from the September 10 brigades in the coming months and years. I
remember thinking two years ago that support for the war was easy then; but
the real test would be in a few years when forgetfulness would set in and
complacency revived. Which means, of course, that the real test of our mettle
is now. So the question is not, once again: what have we done wrong? It is:
Where are we going to hit those bastards today?"--Andrew Sullivan
posted by
Alois 09/12/03
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APOLOGIES... I didn't
post much yesterday. Same as last year--I was just too pissed off to put
anything into words.
What rises in my gorge nearly as much as the actual atrocity of 9/11 is
the rising chorus of my fellow citizens who want us to "move on!" MOVE ON?!? How
can we even begin to talk about moving on this early in the game? How can
we move on until the Islamofascists are on their knees, begging our forgiveness
(which, God willing, they will never get)? To me, September 11 happened only
yesterday. And I can't seem to get it through the heads of the
Dem/Lib/Clintonian nexus that the world as all of us knew it ENDED on
September 11, 2001--we are at WAR now and the WAR won't be over until every
last IslamoFuck is resting in pieces. Get it?
But they don't. And they won't. They think of the Clinton inaugural,
Billary and Hillary swaying (arrhythmically, like Navin Johnson in "The Jerk")
to the beat of Fleetwood Mac singing "Don't... stop... thinkin' about tomorrow!
Don't... stop... it'll soon be here!"
It's here, folks.
posted by Alois 09/12/03
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AND NOW, AS
PROMISED... the first of several pix I'm going to be posting from my recent
trips to the Great Plains and the Great Southland.
Travelin' Thru Texas
posted by Alois 09/12/03
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KLAUS GOES OFF... at
the "Fuck Bush" campaign started by a participant named "@" (gotta love the
courage of these moonbats) on New York Indymedia. Typical of the way the LLLs commemorate
events like 9/11. Klaus erupts thusly:
The typical indymedia (I will not dignify it with a capital I)
punk must be a macrobiotically undernourished, Chomsky addled, spoiled,
hypogonadic brat of SUV driving yuppie parents who just can't quite wrap their
minds around the simple connection between their OWN standard of living and US
power. You pathetic, ignorant ingrates. Please die.
The great thing about Klaus is that age doesn't mellow him.
posted by Alois 09/12/03
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9/17/03:Is, then, Madison perfect? Far from it.
Nearly everybody has suggestions for improvement, and most of the improvements
center on food and entertainment.
Most of all, you want better restaurants, and in particular better
ethnic restaurants--Indian, Thai, Italian, Chinese, German, Cuban, Hungarian,
Greek, Tex-Mex, soul food. As one reader put it, "authentic ethnic restaurants
that have not been homogenized into bland, plastic caricatures of the real
thing." You want a soft ice cream stand downtown, and a good hot dog vendor, a
popcorn stand that uses real butter, a sushi bar, Chicago-style Italian beef
sandwiches, a good hot pretzel stand, Philadelphia steak sandwiches and more
vegetarian food. You want outdoor cafes on State Street and a "chic restaurant
on the lake with a big veranda." You want a good, honest greasy spoon open 24
hours a day, and a woman's restaurant to replace Lysistrata.
You want better entertainment and more of it, especially in the winter.
More jazz, later bar-closing times, a new dinner theater, more dancing places,
clubs with comedy entertainment, late-night supper clubs and some good rhythm
and blues.
...You want warmer and shorter winters with more snow. At least five
readers wanted an ocean, and 12 wanted mountains, including one who specified
an 18,000-foot peak... one simply wanted a climate dome over all ov Madison.
...We also need an improved zoo with a hippoppotamus, more and cheaper
parking downtown, a Marshall Field's, nude beaches, an enclosed downtown mall,
train service to Chicago, later hours at the airport, more parks that welcome
dogs, more courteous and safer bus drivers, a drive-through beer depot, more
decent men, fewer hostile women, more Republicans, an organized left, more
blacks, fewer lawyers, more water fountains for joggers, bikers and walkers,
smoke-free bars and dancing places, public boat excursions on the lakes, a
good daily newspaper, an outdoor concert theater, a dome for the Muskies, a
Bascom Hill escalator (and a giant slide for coming back down), a parachute
jumping school, more hippies (the reader says we could import them), discount
cards for people under 65, better (or some) bus service to rural Dane County,
an east-side hospital, a real coffeehouse and some hang-gliding cliffs.
But our favorite response: "I'm so in love with this town, I really
can't think of what it needs. Oh wait! It needs some lighted tennis courts for
night play. And a cricket league."
So there you have it. Would you believe that there's a war going on? And
do you see why it's university-centered cities like Madison, Cambridge and
Berkeley that breed these out-of-touch leftist halfwits? Reading the above, you
can see what's really important to them
A zoo with a hippopotamus. A parachute-jumping school. A "woman's
restaurant" (?!?). Jesus Christ.
Thank God these lunatics live in America and not someplace else,
where--no, wait, I take that back. Completely.
posted by Alois 09/17/03
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BUT HERE'S MY
FAVORITE: "The encouraging fact is that there's remarkably little anti-Semitism
in the United States, and none that I've been able to detect on the American
left, which is amply stocked with Jews."
That's our old leftist buddy Alexander Cockburn, of
gonorrhea Cockburn n' Ridgeway fame. "None that I've been
able to detect"?!?! If that doesn't prove that the man has been asleep for
much of the past ten years, then I don't know what does. I could easily post ten
anti-Semitic statements from American leftists on this site every day, and I
wouldn't run out of statements until sometime in the next millenium. A good
place to start for Mr. Cockburn might be the website of International
A.N.S.W.E.R., for instance. But of course, he's too much of a coward, or a
nitwit, or both, to undertake such a task.
posted by Alois 09/17/03
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AND, FROM THE TRIP:
French Quarter scene, New Orleans
posted by Alois 09/17/03
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9/23/03:
DAILY
GAAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEEEN! AWARD goes to blogger Randal
Robinson for this :
Well, hell, that [secession of the liberal "blue" states] sounds
good to me. Without all that meddling from those damn socialists from the
northeast and the left coast the rest of us will be free to devote all of our
energy to pro wrestling, gun shows, revival meetings, cross burnings, and
whatever rudimentary education is needed to keep our pickup trucks in running
condition...
posted by Alois 09/23/03
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Iran
Watch:
Sure, it's all been orchestrated by thugs--there are no students with real,
legitimate grievances, it would seem. That's why the regime resorts to tactics
like this to win students' hearts:
Tehran
University, July 2003
I also liked the part about Tony
Blair's statement that the Iranian students deserve "our support" (speaking to
the House of Commons) being deemed irresponsible by the Iranian Foreign
Ministry. Yeah, very irresponsible.
posted by Alois 09/23/03
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CHICK BLOGS, Part I:
I've been wanting to write on this topic for quite some time now.
I don't know if your average man has clued into this yet, but the
blogosphere is an excellent, indeed unparalleled resource for
delving deeper into the female mind (& I know that there are quite a few
guys out there to whom this would sound like the ultimate torture, but I'm not
talking to those guys anyway--go back and play with your monster trucks,
laddies, you were always better at that than getting laid anyway).
The ladies like to talk about their feelings more than guy bloggers
do--this probably isn't much of a surprise, but what is surprising to me is how
much of the personal stuff some gals are willing to post on the Web. My
award-winners in the Up-Close-n'-Personal Dept. are Gina Marie of Size 18 Dream
and Statia of Pizza
Dreaming. Lotsa monologues about guys, ADD, buying stuff, and female anger.
Then there's the gals who are a little more coy and coquettish about the
personal stuff--which is balanced by a definite dose of pure geekiness. Prime
movers of this school include Gretchen Pirillo of Inside Gretchen's Head, Robyn
of the oft-blogrolled Ain't
Too Proud to Blog, Christine at Big Pink Cookie, and Lauri Mueller, the Minnesota Gardener.
In a category all by herself is Halley Suitt of Halley's Comment,
who is featured on our blogroll even though I detest her predictable lib-Dem
politics. Suitt is a study in complexity and contradiction--a good writer who
KNOWS she's a good writer, a sexual libertarian with an overarching libido, a
churchgoing Protestant, a working mother, and an absolute techno-goddess (her
tech talk is just way, way past me). I never know what Suitt will post on a
given day, and that's what makes her such an entertaining read.
Continued tomorrow.
posted by Alois 09/23/03
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9/24/03:
9/26/03:
AND DON'T MISS... Don Rumsfeld (the real one, not Frank's
Rummy) on our continued presence in Iraq. Excellent stuff.
posted by Alois 09/26/03
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COCKBURN ANTIDOTE,
PART I: Hey, I'm not going to take up 99/100 of my blogspace with examples of
anti-Semitism on the left (see September 17 posting) just to enlighten Alex
Gonorrhea and his followers. But I will continue to cite particularly choice
examples. This, from Rutgers University in New Jersey. (Hat tip: Charles)
posted by Alois 09/26/03
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WOW. I received the
pictures below (they're probably making the rounds of the Internet) this
morning. Title of the e-mail was "Pictures You Don't See On The News" and I had
to share them with you here:
'Nuff said.
posted by Alois 09/26/03
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9/30/03:
AND, FROM THE TRIP:
Downtown Wichita Falls at dusk
posted by Alois 09/30/03
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THANKS, HALLEY...
uh... I think? "A guy will date you even if you have no job, no brains, a husband,
have been paid to perform sex, have no money, hell ... even if you're a
convicted felon." Read the whole thing... insights like this are what make
Halley Suitt such a blast to read.
posted by Alois 09/30/03
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FAREWELL, SEPTEMBER...
I'm posting this picture just because I like this picture. Hey, a little
eye candy is good for the soul (photo courtesy Kate Lacey/The Village Voice):
posted by Alois 09/30/03
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