"ALLAH FUBAR!!!"

Ok, I'm taking even the title from Michael King's article, but it can't be beat!! He points to Wizbang for the video, but it really is funny as hell!!!

The ad, a hoax viral ad not unlike last year's Ford Ka web ads that depicted a cat being beheaded and a pigeon being smacked into the street, is making it's way across the internet. The spot shows a man stepping out of a house in a nameless cosmopolitan European city and getting into a black VW Polo (a European-only sedan, similar to the American VW Golf). After driving the Polo through the city, he stops in front of a sidewalk cafe packed with diners. Inside the car, you see that he is a suicide bomber with a bomb vest on and a detonator in his hand. Outside the car again, the bomb detonates, and is completely contained within the car. A muffled "whumpf" sounds as the car remains intact. One diner
looks up at the car casually.

The captioned tag reads, "Polo. Small but tough."

So priceless, even the better half laughed out loud!!!

A World without Israel

Josef Joffe at Foreign Policy has an unbelievably illuminating article on the world if Israel didn't exist. As I've mentioned before, I am an undying believer in the right of Isreal's existence. Those who believe the Arab world would not be rife with strife if Israel was not around just don't have a clue.

Since World War II, no state has suffered so cruel a reversal of fortunes as Israel. Admired all the way into the 1970s as the state of those plucky Jews who survived against all odds and made democracy and the desert bloom in a climate hostile to both liberty and greenery, Israel has become the target of creeping delegitimization.

It's amazing to me that when a country has to repeatedly defend itself against overwhelming odds it winds up becoming demonized. I will accede some of her actions have had a deleterious effect. It is the actions of a paranoid and fearful society surrounded by openly hostile regimes.

The denigration comes in two guises. The first, the soft version, blames Israel first and most for whatever ails the Middle East, and for having corrupted U.S. foreign policy. It is the standard fare of editorials around the world, not to mention the sheer venom oozing from the pages of the Arab-Islamic press. The more recent hard version zeroes in on Israel's very existence. According to this dispensation, it is Israel as such, and not its behavior, that lies at the root of troubles in the Middle East. Hence the statocidal conclusion that Israel's birth, midwifed by both the United States and the Soviet Union in 1948, was a grievous mistake, grandiose and worthy as it may have been at the time.

[...]

Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians is a tremendous obstacle to democratization because it inflames all the worst, most regressive aspects of Arab nationalism and Arab culture. In other words, the conflict drives the pathology, and not the other way around which is like the streetfighter explaining to the police: It all started when this guy hit back.

The problem with this root-cause argument is threefold: It blurs, if not reverses, cause and effect. It ignores a myriad of conflicts unrelated to Israel. And it absolves the Arabs of culpability, shifting the blame to you know whom.

Pathology . . .that says it all. The Arab world can cry all they want about Palestine, but it is a 'strawman' aguemnt. According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "early in the 20th century a list of no less than fifty languages" that "it is therefore no easy task to write concisely ... on the ethnology of Palestine."

Now to the hard version. Ever so subtly, a more baleful tone slips into this narrative: Israel is not merely an unruly neighbor but an unwelcome intruder. Still timidly uttered outside the Arab world, this version's proponents in the West bestride the stage as truth-sayers who dare to defy taboo. Thus, the British writer A.N. Wilson declares that he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Israel, through its own actions, has proven it does not have the right to exist. And, following Sept. 11, 2001, Brazilian scholar Jose Arthur Giannotti said: Let us agree that the history of the Middle East would be entirely different without the State of Israel, which opened a wound between Islam and the West. Can you get rid of Muslim terrorism without getting rid of this wound which is the source of the frustration of potential terrorists?

So let us assume that Israel is an anachronism and a historical mistake without which the Arab-Islamic world stretching from Algeria to Egypt, from Syria to Pakistan, would be a far happier place, above all because the original sin, the stablishment of Israel, never would have been committed. Then let's move from the past to the present, pretending that we could wave a mighty magic wand, and poof, Israel disappears from the map.

What's amazing about this pipe dream? It's if this ever happened the Arabs would still blame all their problems on ghost of Israel.

Civilization of Clashes

Let us start the what-if procession in 1948, when Israel was born in war. Would stillbirth have nipped the Palestinian problem in the bud? Not quite. Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon marched on Haifa and Tel Aviv not to liberate Palestine, but to grab it. The invasion was a textbook competitive power play by neighboring states intent on acquiring territory for themselves. If they had been victorious, a Palestinian state would not have emerged, and there still would have been plenty of refugees. (Recall that half the population of Kuwait fled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's liberation of that country in 1990.) Indeed, assuming that Palestinian nationalism had awakened when it did in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinians might now be dispatching suicide bombers to Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.

There is much, much more. Joffe goes through the five levels of conflict inherent in the Middle East which have nothing to do with Israel. Just remember the term...Pathology...it is the true definition of the Arabs of today.

Don't Change Social Security!!

Wow, according to this quiz by the Healthspan Calculator, I'm expected to hang around until just shy of 70. So, all bets are off!!! Don't touch the eligibility for Social Security!! In fact, move it down some. After all I want to reap what I've sown.

Thanks Kate, you've harshed my buzz . . .

Partisan Pundity for 2004

Q and O refers to Lying in Ponds to bring us the Partisan Pundity for 2004. I can't argue with either site when they award Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman for being the partisan hacks that they are.

For Ann Coulter:

Ann Coulter easily won her second consecutive partisanship title, mostly because of her relentlessly one-sided criticism of the Democratic Party. Her ratio of 70 negative references to Democrats for every positive reference (1058 to 15) is unprecedented in the three years of Lying in Ponds statistics. Ms. Coulter was simultaneously the most positive pundit toward George W. Bush and the most negative toward John Kerry. In addition to extreme partisanship, Ms. Coulter stands out because of her array of nasty personal attacks -- she referred to various Democratic presidential candidates as a "pacifist scaredy-cat", "crazier than a March hare", a "two-faced weasel", a "coward", a "cad and a gigolo", a "low-born poseur", a "poodle to rich women", and "boobs". In addition to partisanship and incivility, Ms. Coulter is a master of deceptive and irrational rhetoric.

For Paul Krugman:

Paul Krugman completed another year as a New York Times columnist, making it five full years of punditry without once finding a reason to write a column consisting mostly of substantive criticsm of any Democrat on any topic or substantive praise of any Republican on any topic. Although Mr. Krugman's utterly predictable criticism of Republicans is unsurpassed, his high ranking also depends on a careful protection of Democrats. He expressed a strong preference for Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, but once John Kerry took the lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Krugman turned on a dime and was more favorable toward Mr. Kerry than any of our 33 pundits. He has carefully avoided any mention of Democratic scandals, adding disgraced former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey to a long list of names which must not be mentioned -- Marc Rich, Al Sharpton, Robert Torricelli, etc. Back in March, I wrote a five part series exploring various aspects of Paul Krugman's amazing record of extreme partisanship.

These two belong together in a padded cell. They are ones who poison the waters of discourse. The shame, the shame...

Iraq Civil War?

Iraq the Model has an entry on the possibilities of a Civil War in Iraq after the elections.

...The theory of the civil war doesn't match any of the facts on the ground and it's based on visions of people who have never lived among Iraqis and have no real-if any-experience in the region.

[ ... ]

Most of such theories are based on the assumption that the Sunni will not approve the outcome of the elections if the She'at got the majority of votes and that this disapproval would take the form of a widespread insurgency in all the areas inhabited by a Sunni majority and then the She'at would be forced to fight to defend their existence and the whole country gets into an endless circle of violence.The above theory looks strong and points out a possibility that can not be ignored (in the eyes of the theorists). I don't call this over-pessimism but I attribute it to a lack of clear vision and to looking at the case from one angle.

[ ... ]

During the past 18 months, the She'a and the Kurds had the majority (about 80%)of seats in the interim government with most of the decision making positions in their hands but that didn't lead to a civil war and I want to remind you here that the voices that are expecting the boycott and the civil war to happen are the same voices that expected the eruption of an uprising when the government decided to attack the terrorists in Najaf and Fallujah but we saw in both cases that only the terrorists who started the war remained fighting in the cities while the people, the citizens of the cities whether Sunni or She'at didn't show any support to the terrorists and left them to fight alone. So why would we now expect the Sunni to join the terrorists in a widespread insurgency?

I think this has touched on some valid points that seems to be glossed over for the negativity by the MSM. I have no doubt the danger the election poses for those who want to participate in the Sunni Triangle. Intimidation is a powerful tool in Iraq today. I can't image the every day folks just trying to survive to make a better country. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't; except this is for real and for keeps. But until the locals stand up and turn in the 'insurgents', their expoitation of the soft targets will continue even after the election.

I do not agree with the opinion that if the Sunni's boycott the vote, it election is invalid. Nor do I agree the Election should be postponed. The Sunni are given the opportunity to vote. If they choose not to vote, that is their choice. They are a minority with a history of oppressing the masses. Now they want to take their votes and go home...Let them.

Domestic Partnerships

Thanks to Daou Report for this.

One of the egregious examples of the second class treatment of same-sex partnerships will be battled in the New York State of Appeals Court. Lambda Legal will be arguing for the surviving partner of a flight attendant that died on board American Airlines Flight 587.

The couple had been together for 21 years, had set up elaborate financial agreements to care for each other, and had been among the first to register as domestic partners in New York State when the option became available in 1994. In 2003 the plaintiff was denied benefits because he failed to produce a marriage certificate.

This is why marriage should be separated from Church and State. If the many church organizations want to deny some people the ability to have a partnership within their organization, fine let `em. But the State should dis-associate itself from the supposed 'moral' dilemma by treating partnership as a legal agreement.

If you get married with the Justice of the Peace, it is completely non-sectarian and should have all the benefits under the law. It's not going to impact little Timmy or little Debbie any more if we have same-sex marriages, oops, partnerships than the inter-racial marriages now logical and legal in our land.

Geez, people . . . get over it!!! What are you suppressing???

Religious Justification for Tsunami

If there's something I love more than college football . . . it's watching religious 'leaders' try to justify God's 'actions' in causing this massive loss of live.

I was watching USC dismantle OU, when during half time, I switched to Joe Scarborough. I landed into a bee hive. He had Jennifer Giroux and Billy Graham's daughter, Ann telling us just how loving God is and that this action will be a beacon of hope . . . I'm sorry. I think Billy Graham is a great man who is nothing like the other TV preachers, but I just wanted to bitch slap BOTH of those brainless twits and tell them to stop spewing such tripe. When normal people hear this nonsense, it should turn your stomach.

If you can't tell, this is where I have a hard time with religion. Having been raised in the Baptist church (hence my affection for ol' Billy) and a current weekly attendee at a Catholic church, yet not a member (I do it for the family), I've heard a lot of religion in my day. This is what has caused me to be believer in Zen... Yet I hear Ann repeat as if she's brainwashed how if we believe in the Cross all suffering will be relieved. Tell that to a man who has lost his wife, had his children ripped from his arms and lost all he's worked for. Jennifer Giroux spouted that it was our life styles of abortion and homosexuality which caused this type of catastrophe. She is the stupidest person alive. God would wipe out hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Buddhists and Christians for the sins of Americans. What arrogance, what an idiot!!!

This is why I can not believe God is a personal God. Jesus may have said God knows every hair on the head of every person, but if that's the case God is not the loving God espoused in the New Testament. No personal God that I know of would allow such mass extinction. This sounds more like the vindictive, vengeful God of the Old Testament. However, even then God always gave the people a chance. I mean if God would give Lot a chance to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if Lot could find 50 good people, ya think God would have given someone a chance to spare South Asia...

I'm sorry, but after an event like this their rationalization of a Just, Loving and Personal God rings hollow. Just as their rationalization of dinosaur or other fossils ring empty by saying God placed them there to test us after the flood. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a God-less heathen, well after reading this some folks may think so... But since I don't believe in Hell, I guess I'm OK!!!!

I do believe in a Divine Power, just not a personal one. It's more like a Supreme Powersource, not an Old Man with a Beard who listens to the prayers of people asking for things. Petition the Lord with prayer??? Petition the Lord with PRAYER!!! That's as bad as having an athlete tell us God helped him win his game!!! Cuz that implies God wanted the other person to lose or maybe it's just that the other person was just not worthy enough....Please.

Sorry to go off like this, but I love discussing religion since it is so personal.

Remember the root of all suffering is desire!

Revolting Example of Exploitation

Alright, I admit it. I may be guilty of hyperbole, but I find the Networks exploitation of the tsunami disaster just disgusting. This cries of the ugly American. Who wants to see Diane Sawyer 'showing' sympathetic cow eyes as she 'comforts' the less fortunate. Better yet, what do ya bet, Dan 'memogate' Rather will repeatedly mention just how 'stingy' the US govt really is...

I just am disgusted at the pandering of sorrow. . .

Puget Sound Politics

Thanks to LGF for pointing to a new site on Puget Sound politics called Sound Politics. I saw Stefan Sharkansky's name in the News Tribune this morning in fact in an article on Sam Reed's handling of this debacle. His site was labeled a "right-wing blog", but so far he's been concentrating on the Washington Governor's race. He brings up some interesting voting anomalies, but I think the fate has been sealed... Gregoire is the new Governor of King County. I mean, she is the new governor of Washington.