Persecution in India.

Amidst all the news reports of the election, war, and the economy, one subject that always flies beneath the MSM radar is the persecution of Christians around the world. Lately, it has been particularly bad in India.

World Net Daily is reporting that another vicious round of attacks is expected after the murder of a Hindu activist by Communists.

Pray for these believers, who risk so much for the Truth, that they will be strong and steadfast. Let their faith be a beacon for those who don't believe, and may God deliver them.

Link to image source.

What Next?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Score another one for the Nanny State.

A London street is experimenting with padded lampposts to protect those not
paying attention from banging into them, ITN reports.

These are not just for the benefit of anyone distracted by a pretty girl or an ice cream truck. These are for people too busy texting on their phones to watch where they're going. Oh yes, it gets better:

The survey found that almost two thirds of respondents lost peripheral vision
while texting, and more than a quarter wanted lines on the pavement to create
routes for texters to walk while using their phones.

What next, lead dogs? You would think that a bump on the head would be fair punishment for not being attentive, but not in a society that thinks it can protect us from ourselves.

Sheesh.

I'm Outraged!

I saw this "cartoon" from a Jordanian newspaper on the MEMRI Blog the other day, and it has stuck in my mind.

It's offensive on so many levels, I can't think straight. First, it implies that the Israelis are committing genocide a la the Third Reich by retaliating against Hamas terrorists dropping bombs on towns like Sderot. Thus the evil Israel is built on the bodies of "innocent" Palestinians. Never mind that the Israelis experience daily missile attacks. Second, as an American I'm offended that the artist has modelled his scribble on an image of true heroism. How is it that these guys get away with it, yet pictures like these spark international riots?

The Arab press and the Mainstream Media would have you believe that groups like Hamas are freedom fighters and that the Israelis are the aggressors. This post gives a different picture.

Yanai asks me, “Why does it happen? Why are the Arabs so bad? Why do they
want to kill us? We want peace.

When I try to teach him that even in the Gaza Strip you have innocent
children and innocent civilians he says, “If they are innocent, why do they go
to military summer camps? You never send me to military summer camp, with a
uniform; with weapons, and they are younger than me.”

More:

I supported the [2005] Disengagement from Gaza, from Gush Katif. The
Palestinian government promised, “Give us Gush Katif and there will be peace.”
And I am an optimistic person. I really hoped that it would be peace. Everyone
in Sderot was screaming at me, “No! Why do you say the Disengagement is good?” I
answered, “They promise it will be peace!” And even our mayor, Eli Moyal, told
me: “I am going to run after you and tell you all the time, ‘I told you so.’” We
had a lot of argument for I supported the disengagement but he didn’t. And now,
when we have parents’ meeting with the mayor, he all the time tells me: “I told
you so! You have something else to say?”

I really wanted to hope that there will be peace one day. And I am in
confusion now because on one side they tell us they want peace but on the other
side they send their children to military summer camp; they teach them hate in
school; they teach them that Israel does not exist on the map - there is only
Palestine; that the Jewish people are the devil; that we want to destroy their
life. They teaching hate in the school, in the house; in every place.

Brigitte Gabriel describes an experience remarkably similar to this in her book. That was thirty years ago.

Not much has changed, huh?

Link to first image source.

Link to second image source.

Game Over.

The original Dungeon Master Gary Gygax has died. When I first discovered Dungeons and Dragons, I was amazed by the amount of creativity and research that went into the creation of the fantasy game, and amused by the humor of it all. I began actively gaming when I was in high school, using the 2nd Edition rules, which still bore great resemblance to Gygax's original ruleset. I only gamed for a few years, but I remember them fondly, and still take an interest in it, albeit as a spectator. These days I get my fantasy fix from Neverwinter Nights.

Via Michelle Malkin, you can discover your D&D character here. My results? Lawful Good Elf Cleric. Amusing, considering that the character I most enjoyed playing was a Chaotic Neutral Wizard (my, how times change!).

Link to image source.

Musician Jeff Healey Dead at 41.

Canadian rocker Jeff Healey, perhaps best known for his hit "Angel Eyes," has lost his life-long battle with cancer.

Via Wiki:

Healey was never particularly enamored with the world of rock music,
however, and soon left it for music he preferred, vintage jazz. Jeff had been
sitting in with traditional jazz bands around Toronto since the beginning of his
music career.

In his later years, he released three CDs from his true passion,
traditional American jazz from the 1920s and 1930s. He was an avid record collector and
amassed a collection of well over 25,000 78 rpm records. For many years
Healey ran his music-based club Healey's on Bathurst Street in Toronto,
where he played with a rock band on Thursday nights, and with his jazz group,
Jeff Healey's Jazz Wizards, on Saturday afternoons. Healey had moved his club to
a bigger location at 56 Blue Jays Way and named it Jeff Healey's
Roadhouse.

I remember seeing Jeff Healey in concert when I was in high school. He was the opening act for Bon Jovi, and put on a heck of a show. It was interesting because they completely shut off the arena lights when he came on and left the stage, so that the audience wouldn't see him being led to his guitar stand. I enjoyed his act almost as much as the Bon Jovi performance.

I never knew until now that the cause of Healey's blindness was cancer. Music lost a good one today, and he'll be missed.

Link to image source.

Breaking: Ann Coulter to vote for Clinton! Update: Video Added!

If the Republican nominee is John McCain, that is. Video, via HotAir:



I've been half-listening to Hannity and Colmes, and just heard Colmes wring this confession from Ann Coulter: that if John McCain is the Republican nominee, she'd actually vote for Hillary Clinton. I missed the exact reasoning, I was nearly as flabergasted as Colmes was, though I'd hesitate to call it an endorsement. But it's no secret that her candidate of choice is Mitt Romney (she admitted as much on the O'Reilly Factor months ago).

(I've been preparing some thoughts on the presidential race as it stands now that my man Fred has dropped out, and it seems that a two-man race is shaping up. I'll share them once I've gotten them into fairly coherent shape.)

Now, I'm no big fan of Ann Coulter, but I think it's interesting that stalwart conservatives are in such dire straits.

[Apologies for the Drudge-like headline. I just thought it was so funny I'd try to drum up a little traffic. Back to sanity next time.]

News Flash: It Might Not Be Global Warming...

...that's melting the Antarctic, at any rate.

"Western Antarctica "is losing ice to the oceans, and the volcano could be
contributing to that effect.""

But don't get too excited, kids:

"Global warming is still the main culprit behind the overall
loss of ice from western Antarctica, researchers say."

Of course, the reality of what is going on in Antarctica is murkier than that, and these news stories seem intended to fan the flames of climate change alarmism. I'll accept that the climate changes (it's an inherently dynamic system, after all), but I'm not convinced that human beings are the cause of it.

Link to image source.

Use The Force.

An eleven-year old in England demonstrates that guts and Jedi are not extinct.

"Police said the boy hit the man with his toy after the man had punched and
verbally abused his mother as she approached her car."

Beatification.

As predicted, commentators of all stripes are hastening to raise Benazir Bhutto to political sainthood.

"Sipping tea with her was an experience I shall never forget. She knew the
risks of returning to Pakistan, but accepted them because, "I love my country
and my people." That's something else we don't see much of today: patriots.
There are many politicians who, for reasons of ego and a need to satisfy their
own narcissism, seek power, but hide their hunger with bows toward more noble
objectives. Like all politicians, indeed like all humanity, Bhutto was flawed,
but she was less flawed and more principled than many others in her country.
Women with a husband and children don't jeopardize comfortable and relatively
safe lifestyles for what awaited her in Pakistan. True heroism is to know the
risks and to take them in spite of danger."

She has been compared to the Aquinos of the Philippines for her determination to return home in the face of danger. The comparisons continue now that the inevitable assassination has happened. But the comparison doesn't hold water:

"Sytangco, who was also Aquino's spokeswoman when she was still president,
recalled that both Aquino and Bhutto came to power in 1986 as first women
democratic leaders.
She said that while Aquino did not make any state visit
to Pakistan when Bhutto was still prime minister, both leaders met twice --
first in 1989 when they attended the centennial of Paris and in Manila when
Bhutto paid a visit on Aquino after attending a conference here.

"They both
had similarities except that Aquino was never charged with corruption," Sytangco
said." [Emphasis added]

Further evidence comes from those who knew her, such as David Warren:

"She was my exact contemporary, and I met her as a child in Pakistan, so let me
jump on this bandwagon. I remember her at age eight, arriving in a Mercedes-Benz
with daddy's driver, and whisking me off for a ride in the private aeroplane of
then-President Ayub Khan (Bhutto père was the rising star in his cabinet). This
girl was the most spoiled brat I ever met."

Such testimony paints her less as a crusader for democracy than as a crusader for her own power. This is bolstered by the dynastic succession of her party's leadership.

The resistance to Marcos by the Aquinos was fueled by genuine democratic fervor and religious conviction, and change was largely peacefully. Saint Bhutto? I don't think so.

What's Next, Serfdom?

Hoosiers upset by the recent property tax hikes had better hope our sluggish legislature doesn't wake up and hear about this idea.

"The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for
$7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.

"People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a place
with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends," said Town Supervisor
Paul Feiner."

Now, few government solutions to problems government has caused can ever be accused of being grounded in common sense, even in a place like New York, but this takes the cake!

The Hoosierpundit is right on target:

"I don't think that grandma should have to be a greeter at Wal-Mart just so
that she can pay the property taxes for a house she and grandpa built forty
years ago. And grandma shouldn't have to engage in indentured servitude to the
government just to pay off property tax debts either."

Indentured servitude is right. However, it is also no surprise when even local governments have swelled into monsters that must feed on themselves to survive.

Violence in Pakistan.

I've been at work all day and missed most of the story, so I'll have to send you to HotAir for all the details. Since I got home, I've been skimming the blog posts and news articles.

The big question in the US now is, obviously, what does this mean for us? Pakistan has been somewhat of an ally in our war on terror, or rather Musharraf has. Because of this, President Bush has reason to attempt to be supportive of the embattled Pakistani president, inviting cries of 'hypocrisy!' for championing freedom while climbing into bed with a dictator. Ally or no, however, when 46% of a country thinks favorably of Public Enemy #1, that country is no friend, making calls for justice empty.

Time will tell if the assassination of Bhutto will spark a civil war or hold pat with the current outbreak of riots. In either case, the main concern for the US should be Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and who ends up with control of them. That alone should govern any response we consider. I agree with Bryan Preston on the initial damage:

"But the most obvious beneficiary of Bhutto’s death is al Qaeda and its various
allies who create chaos and revel in death in the name of their twisted
ambitions. A Pakistan in turmoil is a Pakistan that is weakened as an enemy of
jihad."

Bhutto is being described as a martyr for democracy, perhaps rightly so. She certainly had courage, and had dodged several other assassination attempts before today. Keep that 46% figure above in mind, however, when pining for the cause. The media have portrayed Bhutto as a shining crusader against tyranny. Both Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens point to the tarnish on the halo.

Another Point in the Case for Marriage.

It could just save your life.

"A shot was fired as Register threw up his left hand, and his wedding ring
deflected the bullet, police said."

File this one under "Amazing story of the day."

XP vs. Vista.

This story posted on the headlines at HotAir got my attention the other day. Researchers at Devil Mountain Software pitted Windows Vista (SP1 beta) head-to-head with Windows XP (SP3). The results:

"Vista, both with
and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test,
taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced
XP's 35 seconds."

Naturally, Vista-haters everywhere are celebrating their vindication with hearty gusto, and "I told you so" is flying around the 'net. IT Blogwatch at Computerworld has a tech-blog round-up of the brouhaha.

There's a catch, however: the computer they tested the operating systems on had only 1GB of RAM. To my mind this takes unfair advantage of Vista's weak spot, which is its appetite for RAM. 1GB is the bare minimum needed to run Vista at all, with 2+ being recommended. I know, the testers tried it with 2GB RAM and got no appreciable boost in performance. Oh, the calamity!

I'm no shill for Vista or Microsoft. In fact, I think the marketing campaign for Vista has been a giant flop, not to mention the speedy release left the rest of the tech industry scrambling to ensure that every one's old hardware would work with the new system. As a result, users had to endure months with inoperable peripherals or go shell out more hard-earned cash for new, "Vista-ready" hardware and software. Or just buy new computers. Some programs and hardware still don't work, and probably will never work without 'net cobbled workarounds.

But I missed the whole XP boat. I'm a geek, but I am by no means cutting-edge. I stayed with Windows 98 because some of my older games were difficult to make run on XP and I saw no reason to spend the money to upgrade and open myself to all the worms that were crawling around a few years ago. So all the XP worship out there is alien to me and strikes me as a little silly. I have Vista now, because I decided it was time to buy a new PC, and since Vista was the new thing, and games for the next few years figure to make use increasingly of DirectX 10, I figured why not get Vista? It won't be long before Bill Gates forces all the XP lovers to commit OS adultery anyway.

So, I have Vista, and guess what? I like it. I don't care how much it looks like XP, or how much slower it is. As I said, my frame of reference was Win98SE. The security features bug me, but I understand that they were a problem on XP, too.

So flog Vista all you want, it's here to stay. Love XP? Keep using it until it coughs, rolls over, and dies. Or gets hit by a virus.

Schools Gone Wild.

First it was teacher/student sex scandals, then birth control for pre-teens, and now this.

"It states: "Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any
time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the
school and to the persons involved.""

The vagueness of the policy makes it a stretch to think that detention for a hug is an appropriate punishment. Especially since the 'incident' occurred at a football game. It's not an isolated occurrence, either.

""It was made to be something ugly and it wasn't," Muir said.
She says the
hug wasn't meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend
who recently lost a parent."

It's frightening to think that those who are entrusted with the education of our youth have such poor judgement. There have always been rules against "PDAs" at schools; such rules were designed to prevent excited teenagers from playing tonsil-hockey in the halls and encouraging appropriate behavior. Now the goal is different:

"In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled schools could be held liable by ignoring
claims of sexual harassment. Some say the ruling puts schools between
a rock and a hard place. By not identifying all suspect behavior, they risk
liability."

Time was when harassment was dealt with by either a slap across the face or the intervention of a gentleman. Some guys wolf-whistled a girl in my high school band class once, and the director went ballistic. In the '70s, a teacher actually slammed a football player against the wall for inappropriately grabbing a girl. Unfortunately, the sexualization of our culture means that such actions are either acceptable or grounds for a lawsuit.

Fear of liability has neutered school officials and robbed them of the capacity to judge for themselves.

Link to image source.

Emergency Rule.

The big news story of the day is President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan in an effort to stay in power. He's fired the Chief Justice and surrounded the Supreme Court with the military. His claim is that it's for the good of the country.

""Extremists are roaming around freely in the country, and they are not scared
of law-enforcement agencies," the president said."

This presents a Catch-22 for the United States. On the one hand, Musharraf has been a fairly reliable ally in the war on terror. By contrast, the opposition is increasingly Islamist and anti-American. The sticking point is that Pakistan is a nuclear power. Americans naturally wish for free elections and do not like cozying up with dictators, but you have to consider having a nuclear arsenal in the hands of a jihadist government would be far worse. In this light, the U.S. response is predictable.

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the declaration of
emergency rule was "highly regrettable" and called upon Pakistan to have
free and fair elections."

One thing not reported however, is that neither side is friendly to the Christians in Pakistan. Persecution tends to increase in times of political upheaval, so keep the Pakistani Brothers and Sisters in your prayers.

Diplomacy Needed; Diplomats Chicken Out.

Michael Yon's latest dispatch is sure to give the MSM palpitations. Sheik Omar Jabouri boldly proclaims that Al-Qaeda Iraq is defeated; a little premature perhaps, but events are definitely moving in that direction. Clearly, AQI's strategy of fomenting a sectarian civil war is failing. Tribal leaders, like Sheik Jabouri, are turning from AQI and are working with American forces to root out the terrorists. Now, pay attention:

"In fact, more and more meetings in Iraq are turning to day-to-day business, and
less time is required on military and security topics like targeting and
addressing intelligence-type matters, which until recently monopolized most
meetings across Iraq."

This means two things: 1) that the military is succeeding in its mission. 2) with the emphasis turning to non-military matters, more diplomats are needed to help work through these issues.

They're not exactly lining up in droves.

""It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and
volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced
assignment," Croddy said. "I'm sorry, but basically that's a potential death
sentence and you know it. ... Who will raise our children if we are dead or
seriously wounded?""

Indeed. Probably the same people who will raise the children of the nearly 4,000 brave men and women who have already given their lives. They already know the meaning of bravery and sacrifice.

Second Chances.

Michael Yon is an independent writer and former soldier working in Iraq. He chronicles the war from the soldier's viewpoint, telling the story as it is, in a way that is not reported by the Mainstream Media. I like to think of him as a modern-day Ernie Pyle.

By now, the Scott Thomas Beauchamp/TNR story is old news, but I wanted to share with you Yon's follow-up to the story.

"In fact, the commander said Beauchamp, having learned his lesson, was
given the chance to leave or stay."

He stayed. I don't have any other comment on this; read Yon's piece, and undertsand why our troops are the best of the best.

Too Fast, Too Furious.

I've written here before about my enthusiasm for import tuners. I also pointed out the dark side to that hobby, namely illegal racing and personal excess.

Alicia asked me the other day if I had heard about a little girl killed by street racers. I hadn't, as most of the news sites and blogs I read cover political news, and such stories rarely get any play. It piqued my curiosity, though, because I love racing and driving, and bad examples of this outrage me.

It turns out that such instances are on the rise, and stupidity does not discriminate. What are these guys trying to prove? I understand the desire to go faster than the other guys, and I've accumulated my share of speeding tickets. What any serious driver knows, however, is that there is nothing safe about pushing a car to the limit of its performance, and it shouldn't be done anywhere. Fortunately, these criminals may soon get their reward.

If you've got to prove something, then go to the local racetrack, most of which host street-legal drags on the weekends. You can race in a controlled and (reasonably) safe environment. Life isn't a video-game; there is no reset button, and no second chances.

Link to image source.

Babysitting.

This, my friends, says it all.

Link to image source.

FOP Endorses Republican Candidate.

An illustration of how bad things have gotten here in Indianapolis appears in this morning's Indianapolis Star.

"The union's Monday night vote to support Ballard in the November election
was unanimous."

Bart Peterson, mayor of Indianapolis, ran for office a few years ago pledging to hire 200 more officers to reduce crime. Since then, the administration has refused to maintain those levels of police manpower, and crime has risen dramatically in the past year.

In addition, Peterson pushed through his proposal to save money by consolidating the city and county police departments. This came after a more than year long contract dispute with the FOP about IPD's contract, in which our brave officers had to work without a contract.

I don't blame the FOP for turning against Peterson. I hope Ballard listens, and gives our officers the respect they deserve.