Officials Search for Taliban Recruiter - Hey, Where Do I Apply?

According to the Sunday paper headlines officials are searching for a Taliban recruiter.  As a good card-carrying conservative, I decided rather than actually reading the article, I'd just go ahead and go off on a rant if that's okay with you.

The economy sucks.  Nearly one in five of us is out of work if you count the guys that flat gave it up and are hibernating for the winter. I saw that headline about them needing a Taliban recruiter and I thought, "You know, I could do that."

I could send those boys some real prizes to trick out as suicide bombers.  America is such a fertile ground for finding candidates for a job as a one way mystery shopper.  Besides, I've got the hat! I can imagine the interviews with the fellers I'd send old Achmacrankypants the Terrorist Human Resources Director.

SCENE: A Cave in Afghanistan
(Achmacrankypants the Terrorist Human Resources Director enters and seats himself behind a dead water buffalo that is serving as a desk.)

Achmacrankypants:  Miss Farouch, send in first Amerikan jihadist applicant!  And bring me coffee – extra goat milk.  My stomach is making noise like camel.

Miss Farouch:  Infidel number 1. Approach!

Cletus: “Howdy there.”

Achmacrankypants: You are Mr. Cletus Hogwallow

Cletus: Yup!

Achmacrankypants: You wish to join the Taliban and kill imperialist Yankee dogs?

Cletus: Jest point me toward them rascals.

Achmacrankypants: You will wage jihad!

Cletus: Yeeha!

Achmacrankypants: It is called Jihad!

Cletus: Yeeha!

Achmacrankypants: No, it is Jihad!

Cletus: That's what I said. Yeeha!

Achmacrankypants: I am admiring your spirits.  Let's try on special vest.
(Hands vest with dynamite and detonators to Cletus)

Cletus: Hey, I like this outfit there Mr. :Poopypants.  Hoo, boy, that there's some big old shotgun shells on this thang.

Achmacrankypants: Now, we just plug this wire in here like this.  Now you hold this little box like this.....

Cletus: I gotcha. This is one o' them radio thangs or somethin' ain't it?

Achmacrankypants:    Yes, Mr. Cletus. You must go and stand in the Yankee Imperialist Swine Market and push this button when I say to push it.

Cletus: Like this?

Achmacrankypants: No, no, no.  You must wait until I say “Push” on the radio.

Cletus: Push?

Achmacrankypants: Push

Cletus: Push?

Achmacrankypants: Yes, Push!

Cletus: Okay................

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

I bet I can find a bunch of really exciting new Taliban recruits for 'em.

Tom King – Flint, TX

Sustainable Communities - Comfortable Ant Hills

Relying heavily on designs inspired by anthills and termite mounds, the modern sustainable communities movement calls for a radical restructuring of the American Dream Home. The Sustainable Communities folks call for smaller, more energy efficient cities with jobs and services placed closed to large apartment like complexes. The single family home will go the way of the dinosaur and nature will fill in all the new open spaces left when everyone moves into these human hives.

This concept for the future makes several assumptions that I think make some of their ideas untenable as a practical policy for the future of our nation.

1. This model assumes a pretty thoroughly socialist political system in order to work. Residents of these communal cities will inevitably give up many of their rights and freedoms that they now take for granted. You won't be able to go where you want, when you want. The proximity of neighbors limit what you can do on your own property, if you, in fact, own your own property in the first place. Public ownership of all property seems to be embedded in the sustainable communities concept.

- I don't think socialism will ever be acceptable to a significant portion of Americans. The right to independent movement, the right to property, the right to make decisions about how and where you live and what your home looks like is precious to a lot of us. I don't expect many will be willing to give that liberty up on the notion that we'll be saving the planet.

2. This model assumes that technology will not catch up with demands in key areas like power and transportation sufficiently to allow independent movement and that society must inevitably move in the direction of mass transit.

- Technology is expanding geometrically. It doubles every ten years or so in this fashion 1 > 2 > 4 > 8 > 16 > 32 > 64 . At the current rate, technology will seem magical within a very short time. We can adapt to what we have or we can innovate till we have what we want. The question is, "What will be best for humankind as a whole?" The lesson of history is that hive cities don't work out very well on the whole. They tend to violence, human sacrifice and citizen on citizen aggression.

3. This model assumes that placing everybody in close-packed utopias will result in peace and safety and free us from dependence on cars and trucks thanks to a well-managed universal public transit system.

- The problem with staking everything on short walks and subways is that mass transit leaves us terribly vulnerable to terrorism in a way that is unacceptable to many Americans. Our lifestyle and success has earned us many enemies among poorer nations, not because the ordinary people believe we are robbing from them, but because their dismal leadership must needs make us the villains to draw attention from the fact that their own tyranny and mismanagement has led to the appalling conditions in their own countries. Unless governments worldwide suddenly renounce tyranny and embrace capitalism, I don't see much chance of that changing anytime soon. Therefore terrorism will increase and it always seems that the best place to set off a bomb is on a bus or subway. I figure they can't get as many of us at a time if we're each alone in our cars.

3. The model assumes a growing paucity of resources for power.

- While it is true that resources can be depleted, there are obvious alternatives available out there that are infinitely renewable and I see no reason for pessimism. The man who finds a cheap and reliable energy source will be a millionaire. The oil companies can only hang on to their dominance in energy so long as they provide cheap energy. They can't do that any longer and unless they find another kind of energy, they aren't going to remain on the top of the heap much longer. It may be that something else is already on the horizon and that that is why they aren't interested in drilling and building new refineries. Maybe they know something we don't know.

4. The model assumes that rising energy costs will drive us to bunch up and submit to "planning" by a powerful central government run by really smart people. They've even gone so far as to deliberately drive up costs to force people to use public transit or cut auto use.

- In doing so, they threaten to collapse our economy in the name of a theory that at best has limited evidence that it's a good model for human cultures. Human nature is what it is. Our society's most innovative and productive citizens also tend to be independent and freedom loving. If you naturally select a society for members that are docile, non-threatening and accepting of authority, you inevitably reduce productivity, innovation and drive to excel or you drive your best people elsewhere and they take their talent for problem-solving with them. My suspicion is that they'll move off planet if Jesus doesn't come soon.

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for such communities and some people will fit nicely within them. At the same time, there's also a place for folks who want to live amongst the woods and lakes and we have the ability to make that an environmentally rational choice as well. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for mankind's problems.

Human socio-political systems never work well when powerful individuals and groups exercise absolute or near absolute control - not in governments, not in churches, not in cultures. You can't simplify a society through rigid rules and ubiquitous public planning enough that planners and rulers can effectively control a society. You create an illusion of safety and security, but not the thing itself.

As you remove personal liberty and personal responsibility and replace it with group think and group action, you sew discontent in the populace and set your society up for disaster. Human eco-systems work best when decentralized and a high level of personal liberty granted and a high level of personal responsibility expected.

You can still do innovative work on eco-friendly communities and sustainable communities, but just lets not get carried away and try to legislate them into existence. Good ideas are always sellable if the marketplace is free and available to all.

That said, however, I think we're headed for big trouble in the next election, I'm here to tell you.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Okay, I've Had IT!!!!

I'm getting tired of the spleen being vented against President Bush by the media, left wing bloggers and every self-appointed arbiter of the American conscience. I can hardly turn on the TV or open a paper without someone screaming about what a horrible president that George W. Bush has been. He gets blamed for the economy which, seemed to be coming back up until about 18 months ago when what exactly happened?

Anyone?

That's right, the sheep who make up the American electorate decided that it was time for a change and elected a Democratic majority to the House and Senate. It takes about a year and a half for the effects of a new congress to be felt in the economy.

But President Bush, who cannot pass any bills or laws on his own hook, gets the blame for the collapsing stock market (which hasn't collapsed yet despite the hysteria) and the housing market and soaring oil prices. OPEC is merrily sticking it to us and guess what the Dem's want to do? Hey, let's revisit the 70's and do a Windfall Profits Tax to punish the evil oil companies.

We've got a gang of chuckleheads running things in Washington who have initiated policies that have strangled energy companies by prohibiting new oil exploration, new refinery construction, new nuclear energy projects and other sensible approaches to increasing energy availability and saddled us with expensive bio-fuels, windmills, geo-thermal and solar energy schemes that are nowhere near ready for primetime. Remember who was in the White House last time they tried ethanol? That's right - James Earl Carter. Remember the gas lines?

They still blow off the Iraq war as some sort of insane plot to get oil for Haliburton. That evidently didn't work. There's no recognition that the Iraqi people want us there, that our soldiers are defending those people from attacks from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other of their Arab brothers. I believe that it is a good thing that we are there. With the other Arab countries sending bombs and foreign terrorists in a stead stream across Iraq's border, somebody needs to help those people win back their country from the sick fundamentalist Islamo-facists that would turn their country into a genocidal bloodbath if the U.S. pulls out.

There is some evidence in scripture that an alliance of Arab countries and a powerful nation to the north will strike out against Israel and a nation that never did them harm. Interestingly, the only nations not mentioned as members of this attacking alliance are Iraq and Egypt. It's found in Ezekiel and it's really interesting.

For the first time I can remember, the national news media is asking on the air, "Is the end coming?" I heard a news anchor talking about Jesus coming the other day. It's incredible.

I believe the vitriol that's become endemic in our politics today is evidence that the end is at hand. Jesus said at the end of time, the world's people would be divided into sheep and goats. I think we're seeing that happening right now. I think we're seeing it manifest as the irrational hatred of one political viewpoint or the other. Christianity is ridiculed and attacked openly in the media, on the Internet and throughout the Arab world. You read things and see movies and TV shows that foster the idea that all Christians are vicious, self-righteous, gun-toting bigots.

Our president is on the receiving end of a lot of that kind of anger. It makes me think he must be doing something right.

Is the Iraq and Afghanistan war hard on us? Yes. Is it worth it? Well, I haven't seen any planes flying into large American buildings lately. Why?

Is it because terrorists think we're nice people all of a sudden? No. It can't be that because the left says that President Bush's policies make everyone hate us. So why, if they hate us more, have we not been attacked?

Could it be because we're decimating Al Quaeda's ability to make war. Is it possible they are destroying themselves trying to attack us in Afghanistan and Iraq?

No that can't be because that war is a "disaster". Nothing good can be coming out of it says the press so it therefore must be a disaster. NBC says it is so.

I'm sick of the stupid rhetoric and even more sick of the way people sit slack jawed in front of the boob tube and accept utterly blatant self-serving propaganda dished out by folks that obviously have an agenda.

Therefore: I'm going to continue my practice of praying for the safety of this country. God put us here to protect the remnants of his people from oppression and the evil designs of those who would wipe them off the face of the earth. The very existence of the United States is the reason that the Christian church remains alive in any form whatsoever. No one would attempt a total genocide of Christians simply because the U.S. might do something about it and the bad folks are afraid of us.

But once U.S. voters hand the leadership of this nation to those who hate us, hate God and love themselves above all, then the end will come soon. Without the existence of the most powerful Christian nation in the world, it will be open season on the people of God.

Fortunately, the cavalry is on the way and Jesus said we shouldn't worry.

So I won't. I may complain in this blog a little bit, but I won't worry.

Just one man's belief...

Tom King

Forget Their Very Names

When I wrote this, in the wake of the Omaha Mall shooting, the news media is rushing to get the killer's image on their front pages as quickly as possible. In the next two weeks we will be treated to an exhaustive study of the young man who killed 8 innocent people - his history, his psyche and his motivation. 

 

Endless television, radio and print media reporters will beat their chests and cry "Why, why, why?" As I return to update this blog, a tatted up, drug-addled skinny white kid who fancied himself a progressive anarchist rapper opened fire on a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, killing 6 and putting 24 in the hospital including children. So far in this second year of Joe Biden's administration, we're already over 300 mass shooting so far this year.

Why? The media is answering its own question.

The news media will now trot out pundits who cry for more gun control and for less gun control because political fights are fun for reporters, who enjoy tossing raw meat in amongst the hyenas and watching the fun that follows. The wise men amongst us will speculate as to who is to blame as though the issue were entirely black and white.

It is not. I have extensive experience confronting violent people. I worked for many years with violent children and teens. I've stood nose to nose with a young man who had a 6 inch hunting knife pointed at my unprotected belly and talked my way out of it. Violent behavior cannot be understood in black and white. Many speculate about whether allowing mall patrons to carry guns would have made a difference and in the ensuing verbal smoke, we all ask ourselves whether, if we had been there and we had been armed, would we have been able to fire the shot that ended that young man's life - even if it might have saved the lives of the innocent bystanders.

I know that answer for myself because of my training and experience with violent people. If I were the only one in the line of fire, I would think twice. I used to work with mental patients and with a patient who was having a violent episode, I would always try to talk him down before doing any sort of restraint of physical intervention. I am prepared to turn the other cheek so long as that cheek is my cheek alone.

However, if there is another person, in danger, threatened especially by an armed individual, I would not hesitate to take the attacker down. The large teenage boys I dealt with in the psych facilities where I worked, soon learned that so long as they only threatened me, they were not likely to suffer the indignity of being taken to the ground by a paunchy old guy and were more likely to walk away with some dignity in tact. They also knew that if they continued to attack or seriously threaten someone else, especially someone smaller, it was the quickest way imaginable to find themselves pinned to the floor by said paunchy but surprisingly strong and agile old guy. The sudden ignominious end to the confrontation entirely spoiled the drama for them, so they quit threatening others in those situations and confined themselves to shouting obscenities at me - much more dramatic and satisfying for them.

There is a reason every major massacre in recent years has taken place in a gun-free zone. No homicidal killer wants to raise his gun and have someone shoot him in the head before he can start killing people. This actually happened recently at a graduation party where a gunman drew his weapon on a crowd and a lady reached into his purse, extracted a large and impressive pistol, took careful aim and put an end to a potential bloodbath. It totally ruined the effect he was aiming for and saved lives. It takes away all the drama for reporters when nobody but the bad guy dies. All that's left for them is naval gazing and "what iffing" in an attempt to serve the anti-second amendment narrative.

 

My work with deeply troubled teens gave me a real insight into what goes on in the minds of people who resort to large scale violence to cope with their unhappiness. I actually had kids in therapy who told me that their career plan was to "die in a hail of police gunfire". They wanted to die spectacularly and to become famous. For them a mass shooting was the best way to get their suicide note to the largest number of people possible. It's a pathetic search for a way to leave a mark in a world that they feel they have no stake in.

But, if we deny them the fame, then we deny them the very thing that motivates them to kill. The most effective tool we have to prevent this sort of mayhem is to make sure that whoever does this kind of thing is wiped from our collective memory - their names forgotten for all time. It's the only thing that will work. To ever do this, we would need to re-invent our culture and make our morbid curiosity generally unacceptable. We could still allow for the morbidly curious to get their news fix about the perps - simply use obviously fake names.

Those who want to die in a hail of gunfire have a deadly fear of being anonymous. The last thing they inevitably say in this life is something to the effect that "I'll show them. They'll never forget me."

How about let's show them? How about let's forget them? Let's not even remember their names. It would be a kindness to their families. It would be a kindness to the victims' families. It might even dissuade others from copying these young men's examples. It might just save some lives and all it requires is that we give up our morbid fascination with mass murders. How hard is that?

Sure, with a free press, you'll always get bloggers and sensational newspapers that won't go along with it, but even then, if they are in the disapproved of minority, the killer still loses his or her desired fame and attention and, more importantly, sympathy. If you're only going to be remembered by some obscure blogger or weekly gossip rag, what's the point. These guys are going for national news media and front page headlines, not a place beside Bigfoot and that space alien that tells the presidents what to do.

I'm doing my best to forget them all. When I read a news story, I deliberately avoid paying attention to the name of the killer at all. To this day I couldn't tell you who the Virginia Tech guy was or name a single high school shooter or the McDonald's guy, the Killeen shooter or any of the other mass murders of the past 20 years. You can deliberately forget someone if you try hard.

So....

What if every one of us pledged to never say or write the name of a mass murderer again? What if we each told ten friends and asked them to do the same and they, in turn, told ten friends and so on and so on. In just a few repetitions, you can wind up with an astronomical number of people who have heard the idea. If half of us took the pledge, we could create a cultural phenomenon where a culture (or at least a sizeable chunk of that culture) consciously decided to change itself and renounce the glorification of these people.

What if we threatened to stop watching news media that ran endless photographs and profiles of the killers. I noticed today that I haven't seen one single photo of the victims, yet, but that smarmy delinquent that murdered 8 innocent people is on the front page of everywhere. It makes me sick and it's cruel to his family.

So, let's just stop it. I'll write my ten letters. How about you?

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

PS:  Since I first wrote this a large number of mostly conservative news outlets have ceased telling viewers the names of mass shooters and terrorists. It seems others have had the same idea. It's a good sign....

© 2007, 2022

Creative Sentencing for Hackers

I've just spent the better (or worser if the truth be known) part of a week trying to rebuild my computer after malware got in and ran amok in the danged thing.

I just don't get it. Where's the fun in writing a program that totally screws up someone's computer? You don't get to see the frustration you cause. You don't profit from the damage you do. You don't even know the people who's lives you hijack while they are going through the incredible hassle of reinstalling Windows and all their programs.

Who would have a reason to do something like that? Here is may personal list of suspects:

1. Terrorists - You want to screw up the American economy, shut down business and personal computers and make it hard for us to get our propaganda about freedom out there, that would be one way to do it.
2. Anti-Virus software companies - If they were to release new viruses regularly, then you'd have to "update" your software and then you'd have to pay them renewal fees every year. Sounds kind of like paying tribute to the Romans doesn't it? Nobody has ever proved that occurs. Also, if it worked, you'd see similar schemes cropping up in other areas. Oh, wait..... I just realized I have anti-spyware software, anti-malware software and a firewall on my computer to protect me from other "threats". That's part of the reason they tell me that my computer takes half an hour to boot up.
3. Juvenile Delinquents - Yes, I know some of them are in their 40's now, but some people never get over being anti-social. Little twerps at their computers spraying graffiti across the Internet just because they can do it and it makes them feel powerful!

A bunch of us on the banjohangout forum came up with some interesting consequences for these guys, in case the government ever gets around to catching them. It's too bad that you can't sue these folks for the full value of wasting your time.

Bailiff: Will the defendent please rise.

Judge: You have been found guilty of willfully creating computer software which deliberately hijacks and ruins computers costing tens of thousands of citizens of this country millions of hours of lost work and recreational time just trying to get rid of this pernicious garbage.You are hereby sentenced to ...............

1. Estimate the time he's wasted, double it for the aggravation, that's the time he spends being made to watch Tina Turner and Michael Bolton videos. - Scarecrow
2. Make them listen to Barbara Streisand 24/7 for the length of their sentence. - Fiddlebuster
3. Since exposure to Vogon poetry is not possible in reality, how about 1 day in solitary for every 1 megabyte of storage found on his hacker machine, with 20 or so different renditions of Rocky Top piped into the cell 24 hours a day, at least 5 of which include a bass solo. - MrNatch3L
4. The worst punishment I can think of is making them listen to clawhammer banjo playing 24-7.. - Stelling Man
5. Since we'd rather not be visited by Vogons for obvious reasons, play recordings of the poetry of the Famed "Worst Poet on Earth", Scottish Bard William McGonagall. "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say. That ninety lives have been taken away. On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember'd for a very long time." About 3 months of that the poor guy would be gnawing off body parts trying to escape...-Tom King
6. Hopefully they are into grundge or heavy metal rock or something. Then, what you do is play Ralph Stanley records and Alan Lomax's field recordings, some Earnest Tubb and some Wagner. By the time they got through the ring cycle....... Can you imagine?
7. I agree that the punishment should fit the crime so my suggested punishment would be to force them to continually eat spam until they were puking out of their eyeballs. -Wheatstraw
8. Polka music. Nothing but polka music. - anonymous
9. Locked up in a cell with nothing but a Sinclair 1000 computer and a broken tape recorder. - scruggsfiend
10. Chain them up in a music school in a practice room with the beginning fiddle, accordion, banjo and bagpipe students. - mandoguy
11. Something creative with chains, syrup, ants and aardvarks. - banjoman

It goes on like that for some time, but you get the idea.

Too bad judges can't do that anymore.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

A Rose by Any Other Name - Wouldn't Have a Festival....

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a real problem. It's not worldwide opposition to his nuclear program. It's not the collapsing Iranian economy. It's not unrest in his own country.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's name is too daggum hard to pronounce.

I'm serious. How'd this guy every expect to be an evil dictator with a name like that.

Look at all the really great evil dictators in history. Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Atilla the Hun, Nero, Napoleon, Ramses and Idi Amein. All great evil dictator names. Even the old Persian kings were named crisp clean names like Darius and Cyrus. The Macedonian, Alexander, and his dad, Phil. All the really good ones had names that were short and easy to pronounce. Even Osama Bin Laden is one of the easiest Muslim names to pronounce I've seen.

President Ahmadinejad just doesnt' strike fear. Too many convoluted syllables.

You just watch. Before it's all over, he's going to be replaced by somebody named Bobama or Fredmoud or something and then watch out! Those wacky Iranians are just liable to do something rash if they get a leader with three syllables or less in his name!

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Let's Stop Giving Mass Murderers What They Want!

My wife was becoming more and more upset as the day's news about the massacre at Virginia Tech went on. I turned off the TV to calm her down, but something she said made more sense than anything any of the pundits had to say.

The shooter in this situation got exactly what he wanted. He took out his anger on as many people as possible, he got his message read to millions of breathless TV viewers, he became famous and he set a new record for carnage in the process.

Hardly had the last spent cartridge hit the floor before the news media were calling it possibly the worst such incident in history. Within 24 hours, the copycat bomb threats had begun. If I were a student on an American college campus today, I'd be packin' heat, so that I could shoot back if anyone marched into my classroom bent on imitating the evil man in Virginia!!!! There are going be other mentally unbalanced individuals out there in the coming weeks that will want to challenge the new record. The massive media coverage of the V-Tech incident will almost demand a response from any number of unbalanced individuals.

The Beatles had the right idea about how we should respond to murderers like this. After John Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan, they agreed among themselves never to mention the name of his killer. He's referred to as "he who must never be named" by many of Lennon's fans as well. Such an approach should be taken to every mentally deranged person that shoots up a school, blows up a bus or kills another human being. Their names should never be spoken again and they should be erased from public memory.
I would like to see just one news outlet have the courage to change their policy on reporting of terrorism and mass murder. It's true that the American public has a morbid curiousity to know why these things happen. So what! Who says we have to know everything.

How about let's use the forces of political correctness to do some good for a change. Let's make it politically incorrect to EVER mention the name of any psychotic individual who slaughters others. The Colombine Murders would be a fine way to refer to the boys who marched into their high school and started shooting their friends. "The 9/11 terrorists" would be all we'd ever need to refer to those guys. If you need to talk about one of them in a documentary, you could say, "One of the 9/11 terrorists".

You don't read their manifestos. You don't negotiate with them. You don't spend months blaming everyone else for the misdeeds of these miscreants. You only have to say the Virginia Tech Murderer was a seriously disturbed individual who senselessly killed his classmates and friends. That's all anyone needs to know about him. We don't need to know his race or to talk about how many he killed or discuss his statistics versus someone else's. No news media outlet should announce any part of any note, manifesto or weblog created by the perpetrator. His purpose should be forgotten. After all, getting his message out there was why he did this in the first place. If we make mass murder unprofitable, maybe they'll quit. If doing this will get you absolutely forgotten, why would you go to the trouble. No one will know it was you, will know why you did it or will care what terrible thing you thought was done to you that justified your murdering people.

If anyone does anything like this ever again, his or her name should be blotted out of existence and never spoken again as a sign of respect and reverence for the victims. Heroes like the professor who held the door while his students escaped out the windows, a Holocaust survivor who died with his hand on the doorknob is who should be remembered, not the tortured psychopath who killed him.

Our culture should begin a tradition of erasing mass murderers from existence by general agreement. It should be considered the height of disrespect to the victims of serial killers to mention the killer's name ever again. We could do that. If you want to punish someone like the cult leader who killed Sharon Tate and her friends, you forget him. No attention, not even his name should survive. He should be purged from our collective memory.

Would it work? You know I bet it would. You see, I couldn't tell you the name of the guy who killed John Lennon. I've actually forgotten.

If I were President of the U.S. I would suggest just such a thing from the bully pulpit he occupies as our nation's leader. It would be risky, but I guarantee if he asked the American people to do it, there would be a whole lot of us who would adopt the practice of refusing to say the name of the evil ones.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be forgiving and try to understand that an unbalanced mind can sometimes snap. That's helpful. It helps us watch for others who are in danger of coming apart at the seams. If we do that, maybe we can catch them in time to get them some help. But for the sake of other folks with schizophrenia, bipolar and other psychoses, lets not help feed their delusions by giving them a national stage on which to act out their tortured delusions of grandeur.
I will start taking my own advice by refusing to watch any newscast or documentary that mentions the name of the Virginia Tech Murderer. I would urge you to do the same and encourage your friends to do so.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

Everybody seems to know how to solve the Middle East problem, and yet it's still a problem

I stumbled on an article in a British newspaper that is utterly typical of a whole species of journalist I call criticus knowitallus. They all seem to know all there is to know about how to fix the problems of the middle East. It is remarkable how many people see themselves as experts on how to fix things in Iraq. They snipe constantly at Bush and Blair. It's not that hard. They are wonderfully easy targets because they actually did something about the butchery that was going on in Baghdad. And despite the civil unrest and fighting, the death toll is still nowhere near that generated by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and his progeny, though to listen to criticus knowitallus, you'd think Bush and Blair were just mean old guys that were picking on the poor Iraqis without any provocation.

In the US, we have a huge number of folks that would prefer that we just pull our military out of everywhere in the world, seal up our borders and shove our heads in the sand (or somewhere else equally dark). There was a guy on the Roger Gray radio show this morning, literally screaming about how Bush is stupid and evil and we should bring all our troops home and stay out of everybody's business.

I remember the last time the isolationists got that rowdy. I remember a certain world leader (British) who kissed a dictator smooth on the bottom at the conclusion of 'negotiations' and came home to wildly cheering mobs as he proclaimed "Peace in our time."

The head-in-the-sand crowd over here praised his foresight and wisdom. Then when the gentleman with the toothbrush moustache started driving tanks all over Europe, that same crowd of isolationists turned on on Mr. Chamberlain. They still called for us to "stay out of it" and kept it up till Britain was backed up against the wall, our ships were being sunk by the hundreds and the Japanese were blowing up naval bases all over the Pacific.

My only comfort is that my children are here on the far side of the world from Iran and Iraq and that Arab missiles (so far) will only reach as far as Europe. I can run my car on East Texas moonshine and I've got room for a garden, just in case we decide to try isolationism.

It amazes me that so many supposedly intelligent people just totally dismissed it when radical Muslims declared war on the west and promise to keep fighting until they kill us or turn us into Muslims by force. Even more incredible, you assume (on what basis I can't imagine) that if some of the middle eastern nations get nukes, that, of course, they'd never use them and of course, they'd never share these awful things with the terrorists that have their training camps out there in their deserts.

It's like these guys believe that if only the terrorists knew what nice people we all thought we were they, wouldn't want to kill us. I'm sorry. If you think that if we leave the nice megalomaniacs alone that they won't bother us, you're being a little bit naive. Hey, I tried that approach in 5th grade with the class bullies that regularly pounded my head and stole my lunch money. News flash! IT DOESN'T WORK!

Imagine if King George had told the British Navy, "Just leave those pesky pirates alone. Surely if they see that we're going to be nice to them from now on, admiral, then they won't steal our gold, sink our ships and rape our women, what?"

Aaaargh!

How many buildings have to fall on us before someone takes these guys seriously? If someone declares war on you, it's only polite to show up and drop a few artillery shells on 'em.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom

Bring Back Who?

Headline, LA Times Editorial Section:
Jonathan Chait: Bring back Saddam Hussein
Restoring the dictator to power may give Iraqis the jolt of authority they need. Have a better solution?

You know, you really have to be doing some serious crack to write stuff like this. I mean already you've got to know this guy has a serious screw loose, but, hey, let's visit this guy's reasoning for just a minute anyway. I haven't visited the wacky palace in years and I have this morbid curiousity. Okay, here goes the rationale (the italics are Jon-Boy's):

1. Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale

Excuse me? Probably on a wider scale. This guy is proposing to bring back Hitler's kid brother because he thinks things may be worse. Let's not do any actual research here. Let's just go by the amount of negative media coverage. After all, a peaceful evening news is much more important than how many people are actually being slaughtered in Iraq.

2. Here is the basic dilemma: The government is run by Shiites, and the security agencies have been overrun by militias and death squads. The government is strong enough to terrorize the Sunnis into rebellion but not strong enough to crush this rebellion.

Okay, so our failure is that we didn't create a government strong enough to CRUSH a rebellion. I am sensing a theme developing here.

3. We may be strong enough to stop large-scale warfare or genocide, but we're not strong enough to stop pervasive chaos.

Oooh, ooh! I get it. Chaos is bad, but nice orderly deliberate mass murder is not so bad.

4. Hussein, however, has a proven record in that department. It may well be possible to reconstitute the Iraqi army and state bureaucracy we disbanded, and if so, that may be the only force capable of imposing order in Iraq

Again the same theme. We must have order above all, even if it means putting the Butcher of Baghdad back in the catbird seat.

5. Chaos and order each have a powerful self-sustaining logic. When people perceive a lack of order, they act in ways that further the disorder.

So, let me make sure I understand this. Chaos and disorder are so bad that we must put Saddam Hussein back in power to scare the bejeebers out of the Iraqis so that they will quit being chaotic and march into the killing fields in an orderly manner.

6. Restoring the expectation of order in Iraq will take some kind of large-scale psychological shock.

Well, Jon-Boy, putting Saddam back in power would certainly accomplish that.

7. The disadvantages of reinstalling Hussein are obvious, but consider some of the upside. He would not allow the country to be dominated by Iran, which is the United States' major regional enemy, a sponsor of terrorism and an instigator of warfare between Lebanon and Israel.

Aha! So Saddam wasn't paying Palestinians to blow themselves up? There weren't terrorist training camps in the desert? He didn't run over a neighboring country to try and steal their oil? He wasn't a problem after all. We were just imagining things.

8. Hussein was extremely difficult to deal with before the war, in large part because he apparently believed that he could defeat any U.S. invasion if it came to that. Now he knows he can't. And he'd probably be amenable because his alternative is death by hanging.

So now that we've whupped up on him, he's going to be a good boy. Oh, yeah, I bet that would really work out well!

9. I know why restoring a brutal tyrant to power is a bad idea. Somebody explain to me why it's worse than all the others.

I don't think it will do any good, but here goes.

a. It would confuse the heck out of the entire Middle East
b. It would demonstrate once and for all to terrorists everywhere that terrorism against the U.S. works
c. It would trade one kind of brutality for another - the only change is that it would be Saddam's problem and not ours.
d. If we ever get out of there on those terms, do you honestly think Saddam will ever be afraid of us again. Who in the world believes the US Congress would ever let a president go back to Iraq if Saddam gets frisky again?

Jon-Boy is the poster boy for the idea that order is more important than freedom. What we need is a big powerful government that can frighten the stupid masses into submission. He believes that even a bad leader, so long as he makes everyone want to behave themselves (even if it's because he's so quick to murder the unruly) is better than chaos and disorder.

There was a similar level of social chaos in Germany in the 20's and 30's. A powerful leader arose to calm things down. And lo and behold, the stupid masses lined up and marched onto the killing fields. The chaos ended.

Do these guys never read their history books?

Just one man's informed opinion.

Tom King

Blame It On the Good Guys!

If you read the Old Testament, God comes off as rather a harsh character. On the one hand the writers talk about God's mercy and goodness and on the other hand they describe in detail, His vengence and anger. So which is it? Is God merciful or vengeful? Love and peace or war and revenge!

Does God, who tells us not to kill, for instance, kill people Himself in violation of his own law? What happened to the God of Love?

The best explanation I ever heard for this conundrum was given to a group of us by a brilliant theologian I knew. He explained the whole thing using gravity and a pair of glasses. His explanation went like this:

"If I let go of this pair of glasses," he explained extending his hand with a pair of reading glasses in them, "What would happen?" he asked.

We all looked down at the tile floor and answered, "They would break."

"Why would they break?" he asked again.

"Because you dropped them," we explained.

"And not because of gravity?"

"Well," we hesitated.

"And whose fault would it be that the glasses were broken?" he challenged us.

"Yours," we answered (we thought quite reasonably).

"And not God's?" he suggested. "After all God was the one who created gravity in the first place."

"Yeah, but you dropped the glasses..." someone protested.

"Yes, but without the law of gravity and without intertia, both laws of physics created by God, the glasses would never have broken would they?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Then the broken glasses are ultimately God's fault aren't they?" he asked.

"Well, uh..." We opened and closed our jaws, like a row of stunned goldfish.

Elder Lewis went on to say that he believed that God does not bring death, but that, in fact, the text that states, "The wages of sin is death" is quite literal. Sin and evil inevitably leads to death. This is a law like gravity. If we observe this world for any length of time, you can clearly see that unrestrained evil leads inevitably to death. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam, Napoleon - all purveyor's of massive death in an effort to satisfy their lust for power.

If God is the ultimate good, then he can hardly be responsible for death. He gave his Son specifically to conquer death and evil. Notice, it was we who took Christ's life, not God. In this world we have a choice. If we let go of the glasses, they will fall and break. That's what happens if you drop something fragile onto a hard surface. In the same manner if we choose to do something which we are warned will lead to death, who do we blame for our choice. If we place a gun to our head and pull the trigger, who killed us.

God was not responsible for the holocaust or Stalin's or Saddam's or Atilla's extermination of millions of innocent people. At the end of the world, I suspect He will not be responsible for its ultimate destruction either. God has told us what evil leads to just as my physics teacher told me what would happen if I released a fragile object from a height and let it fall.

It's funny how we are so quick to blame God when bad things happen. It effectively draws attention away from who is actually responsible - the one who chose to do the bad thing; the one who inspired the evil deed in the first place; the one who would assume the place of God.

Kind of reminds me of U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan's farewell speech this week in which he blamed the U.S. for pretty much all the bad things going on in the world. If things are bad, why do we always want to blame it on the good guys - never on the guys who are actually beheading and blowing up people willy nilly. Why is that?

Now who could be behind all that misdirection. Who would want to blame God or Christianity or the U.S. for all that nasty terrorism? Who, who who?

Could it be, uh............

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Trolls and the Free Market System

A peaceful farmer once lived and worked at the edge of a great forest. He went into the forest each day to find firewood with which he cooked his food and warmed his home. He collected herbs and game there with which to feed himself and his family and heal their illnesses.

In the wood there lived several trolls. The farmer, to avoid problems with the trolls, brought them gifts of food, clothing, blankets and other necessities. In exchange, the trolls allowed the farmer to gather firewood, healing plants and hunt game within the forest.

The trolls constantly fought among themselves for supremacy, though what any one of them would have done had he truly ruled the forest was never really thought through. At last, the largest and most powerful of the trolls got it into his head that all this fighting and strife among himself and his brethren was really the fault of the farmer - forgetting, of course, that trolls had been fighting among themselves for centuries before the farmer ever settled along the borders of ther forest.

It never occurred to the trolls that they were better off than they had ever been before the farmer came along. They had good food, clothing and warm blankets in the winter. They looked upon the farmer and his productive lands with envy and purposed to kill the farmer and take all that he had for themselves.

The farmer got wind of the plot (trolls tend to talk too loud) and gathered up his family in the middle of the night and fled with his tools and his knowledge of farming and went to stay in the next valley over. There he waited.

The trolls, disappointed that they had not had the pleasure of killing the farmer, were nevertheless happy to have his farm and goods. They struggled for days to figure out how to make the farm equipment work and to coax food from the farmhouse kitchen, but to no avail. Soon they had eaten all the stores from the farm and were forced to return to foraging for their sustainance.

Unfortunately, during the years of trading with the farmer, the trolls had forgotten how to forage for themselves. They soon began to starve. They began to fight among themselves and soon there were only a few trolls left alive in the forest.

Meanwhile, the farmer had been making secret forays into the forest to see what the trolls were up to. When he knew that the trolls' in-fighting had made them defenseless and weak, he gathered his family and returned to the farm. Hearing that the farmer had returned, the remaining trolls tried one last desperate attack, but they were met with dogs and guns and pitchforks and were driven back into the forest.

The next day, a large force of men from several neighboring valleys joined the farmer and together they cleared the forest of trolls. Those who survived were driven far away where they were forced to scavenge just to stay alive. The new land was poor and no one wanted to trade with them anymore because of their reputation for treachery. Over time, the trolls became extinct and were never seen in the world again.

The Moral of the Story: Probably the one about not doing anything uncouth in your own nest works best for this one.

Bye Bye Yourself!

U.S. News and World Report's Liz Halloran gleefully reported this morning that President Bush's phone surveilance program was going "Bye Bye" with the new Democratic majority in the Congress and Senate.

Cool! Now mean old George can't listen in when Osama calls his terror cells in the U.S. of A. anymore. I suppose this must be part of the Democratic plan to reduce their voter base on the East and West Coast - a cunning plan to put themselves on the "endangered politicians" list.

Once we open up communications a little bit, Al Quaeda can go back to its old throwaway cell phones and musical dummy phone numbers without endangering their operatives in the states. By the time someone issues a wiretap, they'll be long gone with their messages of peace and love safely delivered to their representatives here in the states. The FBI and CIA won't be able to peruse phone records and find out who's getting a lot of phone calls from bad guys. They'll have to guess who is getting phone calls from bad guys first and then they'll be able to get permission to look at that one person's records to find out if they were right. It's like getting a license to fish in a bucket. If there aren't any fish there, you've wasted your time and money.

Now, with this reduction in ability to track terrorist communications (and Congressman Bob's corresponding relief that he doesn't have to worry about anyone finding out about those late night calls to 900-TEENSEX) where do you suppose they'll hit us first? Let's look at possible targets to nuke and look at what that means to the Democratic party if they hit those targets.

1. New York - Al Quaeda's perennial favorite, bastion of liberalism. They only have a one in five chance of catching Rush Limbaugh in town - he's usually in Florida somewhere and a little harder to hit! You might take out Fox News, but you'd also get CNN, ABC, NBC AND CBS AND the New York Times. We could paint a big "X" on 30 Rock - make it easier to find!

2. Los Angeles - Another symbol of American iniquity. You wonder how they've resisted this decadent target for so long. I mean Hollywood is the very icon of all they hate about America. Now, this is really terrifying. They could accidentally get Alec or Rosie or (gasp) Barbara! I wonder what the political demographic is like there? Want to guess?

3. Washington D.C. - Even when Republicans had the majority in the Congress, they were a minority in the population. You hit Washington (or any state capital for that matter), you are going to reduce the number of liberal Democrats drastically. That's where they all go to mate and eat Sushi.

4. Seattle, Washington - For some reason terrorists have a real jones for Seattle. I think it has something to do with the Space needle and phallic symbols, but I could be wrong. Once again, want to guess what the political demographic looks like?

Politicians and Christians are alike in one important respect; they're like manure! If you spread them out over a large area, they can do a lot of good, but if you heap them all up in one place, things begin to stink pretty darn quickly.

With the Democrats' love of government as the end-all, be-all solution for our woes, they are irresistably drawn to the seats of power where, once we loosen up on Al Quaeda and Hammas and all the rest of them, they'll be big fat targets. Oh, and when the bombs do start going off, guess who will be back in power next go-round?

Clever plan guys! How to make yourself extinct without really trying! Wish I'd thought of it.

(No I don't). To my Democrat buddies, I'm not mad at you, I just think you're not thinking this thing through. Now set your Mai-Tai's down and step away from the Sushi Bar!

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

Vietnam & Iraq: A Faulty Comparison

If you had accepted the convoluted mathematical extrapolations of many left-wing bloggers and even some reputable media outlets over the past couple of years, we should have had about 3,600 to more than 6,000 casualties by now in Iraq.

Instead we just hit 2500. Now 2500 is a terrible loss of life among our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, don't get me wrong. But it's nowhere near the carnage of Vietnam where 2500 was more like the monthly death toll. The left has gleefully predicted a spike in casualties in Iraq similar to the 1966 surge in carnage the military experienced in Vietnam. I don't believe that spike will happen and here's why.

1. We have Saddam Hussein sitting in a jail cell. Chairman Ho sat comfortably in Hanoi throughout the war, untouchable by the military who were prohibited from targeting him personally or crossing the border to take down the military machine that was supporting the guerilla war in the south.

2. Every time we win a battle in Iraq, (like dropping those two 500 pounders on Zirqawi's punkin' head), we get new information and then hit 20 to 50 other strongholds and knock them out too. Every time we won a battle in Vietnam, the VietCong retreated into the North, regrouped, got new men and equipment courtesy of China and Russia and then when they were rested up, came back south and picked another fight. To win a war, you have to find the enemies supplies and command/control centers and knock them out. In Iraq we're doing that. In Vietnam, it was doctrine to avoid doing that.

3. We ran the war in Vietnam from the Whitehouse. Commanders literally had to wait to respond to an enemy push until somebody woke up LBJ and got permission for them to do something about it. Commanders on the ground in Iraq have wider latitude to follow through in a combat situation than their brothers in 'Nam ever did.

4. In Vietnam, the doctrine was one of containment. In Iraq, we planned to win (which we did when Saddam's government fell) and then, once the nation is back on its feet, we do plan to get out. If we'd done that in Vietnam, the end would have been very different.

5. One of my liberal buddies suggested that we should declare war again because we were losing fewer men during the war than we have since Bush declared we had "won". That would be nice if the terrorists would line up in some tanks or jeeps or something and fight us out in the open, but that won't happen. We're at the part where you mop up the stragglers after the real battle. Guerilla forces have lost thousands of fighters in clashes with U.S. forces in the past year. If you think our losses are tough, you ought to see how hard the Al-Quaeda recruiters are having to work to keep up with their losses. The secret to winning a guerilla war (if you're a guerilla) is to win the confidence of the people so they don't rat you out, but protect you from the enemy. The problem the guerillas are having is that they are making the mistake of blowing up the regular folks so often that the general populace is tired of it and is ratting them out right and left in disgust at their mindless violence. How do you think we got the intel on Zarqawi?

6. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were never damaged beyond their power to recover. We never cut off their supplies from Russia and China and we never hit them in their strongholds across the border. By contrast, Iraqi terrorist Zarqawi's papers, found in his hideout after the bombing state that, "...the insurgency is being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants' financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks." Now that's how you win a war.

7. Finally, when the war in Vietnam was so obviously being mismanaged and needlessly risking our soldiers so they could use up and try out all sorts of new Army stuff (remember Ike warned us about the misuse of power by the Military Industrial Complex), I got fed up with it and even protested a little (not against the soldiers, but against the idiots in Washington that were getting them killed by the thousands). This time, the left doesn't have my support at all. So, I'm not out on the protest lines. That alone should give them pause!

Just one man's opinion....

Tom