"A poll released this week of more than 16,000 people in 17 nations revealed that “majorities in only nine countries believe al-Qaida was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.” A mere 46 percent of individuals overall said they believed al-Qaeda executed the attacks — despite all the back-patting, fist-pumping video productions from AQ’s media arm, al-Sahab, claiming credit."
Friday, September 12, 2008
How pissed they must be...
Blame America First
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Lots...
Instapundit
"I wonder what other beliefs, widely shared among right-thinking people today, will turn out to be similarly wrong in 50 years?"
Please take the time to read the whole thing....
LILEKS
"The world will not end. It will roll around in its orbit until Sol expires of famine or indigestion. In the end we’re all ash anyway - but even as ash, we matter. The picture at the top of this page is a sliver taken from a 9/11 camera feed. It’s the cloud that rolled through lower Manhatttan when the towers fell. Paper, steel, furniture, plastic, people. The man who took the picture inhaled the dust of the dead. Somewhere lodged in the lung of a New Yorker is an atom that once belonged to a man who went to work two years ago and never came back. His widow dreads today, because people will be coming and calling, and she’ll have to insist that she’s okay. It's hard but last year was harder. The kids will be sad and distant, but they take their cues from her, and they sense that it's hard - but that last year was harder. But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesn’t remember daddy at all anymore. And she's the one who has his eyes."
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Read the whole thing...
The Foreign Policy Difference
"For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is 'cool,' and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications. The lightning overseas trip, the quick briefing, and above all a breezy knowingness. Mr. Obama's way is the way of his peers among the liberal, professional elite.
Once every four years, ordinary Americans go out and choose the standard-bearer of their nationalism. Liberalism has run away with elite culture. Nationalism may be out of fashion in Silicon Valley. But the state -- and its citadel, the presidency -- is an altogether different calling."
I'll take the pit bull...
Honestly:
"Either Sarah Palin is a pit-bull, or she’s a fragile woman with delicate sensibilities whom we’ll all need to tiptoe around for the next four years.
She can’t be both."
The Schmuck Olberman gets his due...
Hard Fall: What Happened to NBC?
"Behind the scenes, Mr. Brokaw had been saying the same thing to NBC bosses for months. He could accept that cable news was all about opinion. But shouldn’t you at least try and balance opinions from both sides of the political aisle? “After Russert died and Brokaw appointed himself the custodian of the Russert legend, he began beating on Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt that MSNBC was an embarrassment,” said the aforementioned source familiar with the inner workings of the newsroom. “It wasn’t a platform that Brokaw found dignified enough for his presence.”"
One of those "Good News / Bad News" things...
Living to Bomb Another Day
AMONG all the bombs, explosives and guns, the number of martyred dead is rising. Though this is the will of Allah, it is nevertheless possible to cause the enemy greater damage without exposing the Muslims to danger. How is it to be done?
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Soma is on the way...
Gandhi Pills? Psychiatrist Argues for Moral Performance Enhancers
Could the right drug make you a better person?
A British psychiatrist raises and argues for that possibility in a new paper in a prominent psychiatry journal. In fact, he says that in many clinical settings, moral steroids are already being used.
Do ya' think?
Taliban urges next Canadian prime minister to pull troops out of Afghanistan:
"KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The Taliban say they know that an election campaign is underway in Canada and that's why they have stepped up attacks against Canadians in Afghanistan.
Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yussef said Tuesday the insurgent movement wants Canada's next prime minister to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan.
'Yes, I know that the election is being held in Canada. That is why our attacks on Canadians are increased,' Yussef said through a translator.
'One of the Canadian soldiers, who has won a medal as well, was killed in our recent attacks.'"
Silly man....
Which Candidate Can Better Protect Us From the Terrorists’ Nuclear Attack?
"THE next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Everything else — Fannie Mae, health care reform, energy independence, the budget shortfall in Wasilla, Alaska — is commentary. The nuclear destruction of Lower Manhattan, or downtown Washington, would cause the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands; a catastrophic depression; the reversal of globalization; a permanent climate of fear in the West; and the comprehensive repudiation of America’s culture of civil liberties."
Many proliferation experts I have spoken to judge the chance of such a detonation to be as high as 50 percent in the next 10 years. I am an optimist, so I put the chance at 10 percent to 20 percent. Only technical complications prevent Al Qaeda from executing a nuclear attack today. The hard part is acquiring fissile material; an easier part is the smuggling itself (as the saying goes, one way to bring nuclear weapon components into America would be to hide them inside shipments of cocaine).
This could explain a lot....
Study Links Age of Fathers and Bipolar Disease in Offspring:
"The older a man is, the more likely he is to father children who develop bipolar disorder as adults, a large Swedish study reports."
Once again, "conventional wisdom" ain't necessarily so...
Friendly Invaders
Exotic species receive lots of attention and create lots of worry. Some scientists consider biological invasions among the top two or three forces driving species into extinction. But Dr. Sax, Dr. Gaines and several other researchers argue that attitudes about exotic species are too simplistic. While some invasions are indeed devastating, they often do not set off extinctions. They can even spur the evolution of new diversity.
“I hate the ‘exotics are evil’ bit, because it’s so unscientific,” Dr. Sax said.
Dr. Sax and his colleagues are at odds with many other experts on invasive species. Their critics argue that the speed with which species are being moved around the planet, combined with other kinds of stress on the environment, is having a major impact.
Hard to imagine....
Memo From Cairo - 9/11 Rumors That Harden Into Conventional Wisdom
"Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too."
Monday, September 8, 2008
Read it.... and wonder why we want to hear all this nonsense from our politicians:
When Did Freedom Become an Orphan?
"Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.
You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' but Barack Obama has a different idea."
