Will this be the straw...

that breaks the camel's back?  Horrific news from London today. WARNING, the links contain graphic details.

When are we going to finally do something?  As I posted on FB:

There is absolutely no reason now, nor was there ever, to appease these barbaric bastards. Sorry Cameron but your "Britain will never buckle to terrorism" is a huge effing lie...you already have. Could we please find a world leader somewhere with half the balls of Churchill...he was right then and he's right now "There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety."

More incredible details here and here.

And really, is this any surprise?

RIP brave Soldier and thank you for your service.

A Thing of Beauty

Fay and I need to buy a lotto ticket, for we are on a roll. On two of televisions talent competition programs, our favorites won.  To be precise, the people who should have won, won.

Last week, Candace Glover won American Idol in what had to have been the finest final three in the history of that show.

Tonight, American Idol alumnae Kellie Pickler won the Mirror Ball Trophy on Dancing With the Stars.

Before this season on DWTS I had not been impressed with Pickler. She struck me as a ditzy blond who skated by on her looks. I was wrong. She is talented, hard working, and very personable, all with a sense of innate intelligence. Maybe she is not the most educated person in the world, but there are more than enough of stupid educated people around. She is humble and has worked hard to get where she is.

Did I say she was talented? Pickler was fortunate enough to be teamed with the best dancer/choreographer on DWTS: Derek Hough. Hough choreographed some amazing dances, and he pushed Pickler to the limit. Pickler delivered. 

The two sealed the win last night with what has to be the most beautiful dance ever seen on the program. No one else in the finals came anywhere close. When the judges gave there scores, two of them said that they should have gotten elevens.

This dance is almost a ballet. Please enjoy it, but have the Kleenex close by when you do.

An Emotional Response

I received a short note from my wife that she had had to turn the news off after five minutes.  Since I had just done the same thing myself, I shot her the following reply, written in a state of deep anger.

Oh, I know, it’s getting ridiculous. Here are these people in a diplomatic building, guarded by a Welsh “private security” contractor, who pocketed the USG money and hired a few locals with rifles to sit in chairs near the compound, under attack, calling Embassy Tripoli, the DCM calling Washington, the Secretary calling the DCM back and Washington does….nothing.  The President tells the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chief to do whatever is necessary and heads off to a Las Vegas fundraiser.  Now, their excuse was that there were no military assets that could have gotten there in time, so it doesn’t matter. 

How did they know how long the attack was going to be?

Did someone in the terrorist group call them and say “Hey, we’ll be done here no later than 5am local time.” 

No.  Only after-the-fact of the ten-hour ordeal do we know when the attack ended.  But it could have gone 12, or even 17 or 24 hours.

And in the middle of it, four special forces guys told their “leaders” to fuck off and engaged the enemy.  Two of them died as a result.  Once again, we see the brilliant perversity of this system, which leads the good people to sacrifice and the bad people to profit.

And our ridiculous press is still stuck in the 1970s. Watergate. Special Prosecutors. What did they know and when did they know it? Bob Woodward.  It’s laughable, really.

They are so out of touch with reality that all one can do is gape at the sight.

The Justice Department is spying on reporters and editors, we have “law enforcement agencies” striving to deploy surveillance drones in the U.S., the IRS is targeting white, middle-class conservative organizations, the black cities, like Detroit and Birmingham, are complete and utter failures, millions of legal and illegal immigrants are pouring in every year without end, practically all of New England, the upper-Midwest and the West Coast are one-party states with no real political opposition, and overseas our military engagements and foreign policy meet failure after failure.

And, since all of this is starting to make even the most average American question the legitimacy of the regime, I could not be happier about it.  

Enemies of Enemies, etc...

I just noticed this series of finance/economy posts by Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica, published in the NYT "DealBook" section.

Recall that ProPublica is the progressive agit-prop outfit that received (and published) confidential information on Tea Party groups which it received (improperly and arguably illegally) from the IRS.

Not hard to see how they aren't exactly on "our side"... except... check out some of the post titles: 

• The Problem With the Fed’s Easy Money Policies
• Why Fund Managers May Be Right About the Fed
• Efforts to Revive the Economy Lead to Worries of a Bubble

If these headlines turned up at Reason or National Review or PJ Media or The Blaze, they'd look right at home.

Of course the posts themselves have to ritually excoriate "the rich" and hedge fund managers and the like as intrinsically evil - no need to impugn motives, we all know they're bad. Full stop. 

And poor Jesse has to genuflect a few times in the direction of Paul Krugman and his minions - that or be digitally lynched. The Gods of the Left must be propitiated.

But if you read the posts - basically what he's saying is that Bernanke and Krugman are wrong, and that the insurgents on the Right are correct - current monetary policy is ineffective and helping only rich people. At best. At worst, it is sowing the seeds of the next crisis.

The true insurgency, it seems, is the edge against the center.

When people tell me they're for sensible policies, common sense; that they belong to the rational middle... I assume they're lazy, stupid, bought off, or my enemy. I may assume wrong but yeah, this is what it's come to. 

I'd much rather talk to a Jesse Eisinger than a Paul Krugman (or a Larry Summers or a Tim Geithner). At least we could find some common ground.

News You Can Use

Despite my best efforts, I find myself unable to keep up with the news at home the way I used to.  I’m overseas, I’m busy and, frankly, most of the stuff I used to read closely has lost its appeal.  Finding myself alone today at lunch, a very rare occasion, I decided to catch up.  Let me see if I have this right, in no particular order:

--  Young black men in New Orleans opened fire on a Mother’s Day gathering.

--  AP complains that the Obama Administration has been recording its top editors phone calls and monitoring both landline and cell phones at the press agency.

-- The Obama Administration’s IRS has been conducting investigations and audits on groups that appear aligned with the Tea Party movement.

-- The DCM at U.S. Embassy Tripoli testified that that attack on Benghazi was an orchestrated terrorist attack, that he spoke directly with Secretary Clinton and there was never any question raised as to what they were speaking about, yet the Obama Administration pinned the blame for the attack on a demonstration against an anti-Islam film on You Tube, whose maker was then arrested by L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies and is now in prison on Federal charges.

-- According to the Detroit City Manager, the capital of black America is bankrupt and may need a Federal bailout.

-- It is looking more and more likely that the Borat Brothers killed three people in Boston on Sept 11, 2011.  Police were stumped at the time, but it turns out that the nearly decapitated bodies covered in marijuana were the former friends, roommates and workout buddies with Borat the Elder, who was known widely to enjoy marijuana.

-- Latino men abducted and held three European-American girls as sex slaves for over a decade.

-- Malcolm X’s grandson, a career criminal, was murdered in a Mexico City nightclub after he refused to pay the (grossly inflated) bar tab for all the women and booze.

-- A black doctor in Philly is found guilty of butchering newborn babies, which the mainstream press calls “abortion.”

-- A Dominican gang in New York City was charged with stealing $45 million dollars from ATMs.

-- The Post Office lost 1.9 billion dollars in the Second Quarter of 2013 alone.

-- Civil Rights ground zero, Birmingham, Alabama, is bankrupt and wracked with violence. The Klan is nowhere in evidence.

-- Republican are big, lying liars and meanies and all of this is their fault.

See? I told you Obama winning was the best thing that could ever happen to us.  At this rate, we should have a sane country and a new government by 2030, at the latest. Meanwhile, I’ll be in France, in “dead Europe” where thousands of young people are partying for the National Front in Paris while I type this.

You know there's something wrong with the world when...

...you have to take private lessons to learn how to sit on your ass.

[Actually, it's a serious topic, my reflexive snark notwithstanding.]

We Need More News From Zimbabwe

Top story from the January 27 edition of NewsdzeZimbabwe, a UK website providing home news for ex-pat Zimbabwe...Zimbabweens...Zimbabweans?

A traditional healer and survivor of the  Chitungwiza blast claims the tragedy occurred during a cleansing ceremony in which an imported goblin was beheaded.

The survivor, Ms Clara Banda, who escaped with visible minor burns and eye injury, says the blast occurred soon after her counterpart, 24-year-old Speakmore Mandere, popularly known as Sekuru Shumba, beheaded the goblin.

She claims to have miraculously escaped after failing to land the major role of conducting the ceremony. In a state of shock, she ran to her nearby home soon after the blast.

According to Ms Banda, transport operator Mr Clever Kamuyedza approached Mandere seeking help to dispose of the troubling goblin. He was to pay $15 000 for the ritual.

To date, I had thought imported goblins superior to the domestic models, but now I'm really starting to wonder.

From: The You-Can't-Make-This-Stuff-Up Department

From the May 4, 2013 edition of the New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

Tulips!

Last year I decided that I didn't want to be schlepping heavy pots with tender plants into the garage every winter; it was time to simplify. So I ordered an assortment of tulips from John Scheepers in Connecticut. They are a great bulb company, I highly recommend them. After the bulbs arrived last fall, I planted 2 varieties outside and filled 4 big pots with the rest of the bulbs. This was my first experience with tulips and I think it turned out pretty well - it's a big relief to just leave the pots where they are. As a bonus, the deer have left them alone as well!

The first tulips to emerge were 'Orange Emperors' which I planted in a grouping in the ground, surrounded by Muscari armeniacum'Christmas Pearl'. The centerpiece is a red-twig dogwood, Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire'. It's puny now but in a few years it will shine (click on images to enlarge).

Sunday Silliness...

...because we need a break from more serious matters. For your listening pleasure, I have searched the internetz far and wide, unearthing two lost and hitherto mostly unknown musical gems. These videos must be seen-and-heard to fully appreciate the genius of musical composition, the fine timbre of voice, and the incredibly profound lyrics.

Here we go!


 

I can hear you Trekkies screaming for more! I aim to please...