To congratulate him for taking a leading role in hunting down Osama Bin laden.
And the moon became as blood…
Pelosi Thanks Bush
May 4th, 2011And Still More Bin Laden Fallout
May 4th, 2011A few more post-Osama postmortem tidbits:
Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”
Still More Bin Laden Fallout
May 3rd, 2011And now, in honor of Bin Laden’s demise, and stolen from Dwight’s pal Borepatch, here’s Achmed the Dead Terrorist:
Believe it or not, thought I had seen the “I Kill You!” pic, I had actually never seen the video before going to Borepatch’s site. Given that this video has over 133 million hits, I may be a wee little bit behind the curve on this one. Tune in next week when I cover such cutting edge Internet phenomena as Mahir’s website, an animated dancing baby, and cat pictures with funny misspelled captions…
More Bin Laden Fallout
May 2nd, 2011Ironically the circumstances surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden tends to confirm the theory that terrorism, rather than being a spontaneous meme that floats above the planet, is in fact deeply rooted in the intelligence agencies and regimes of certain states. Thus, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are creations of some kind of rage any more than than September 11 was wholly the result of some kind of amorphous resentment. Osama Bin Laden had backers; people with uniforms, ranks and the resources of bureaucracies behind them. Those who believe that the War on Terror is nothing but a law enforcement problem must ask themselves whether it is really rather larger than that.
And now I need to embed the totally sweet Tiawanese animation on the event:
(Hat tips: Ace of Spades, Instapundit, the Right Side of Austin.)
Give Our Regards to Hitler and Stalin
May 2nd, 2011So. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Good. If there’s an afterlife, he’s moved on to a place where his ideas about Jihad will be warmly received.
A few points:
When The Levee Breaks
May 1st, 2011Rains have been so heavy (at least and north of here; in Austin, we’ve gotten squat in the way of rain the last two months) that the Army Corps of Engineers is planning on blowing the levee at Bird’s Point, Missouri, to prevent Cairo, Illinois from flooding. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has refused to issue an injunction against demolishing the levee.
More here.
The issues are complex and daunting. However, that won’t prevent me from using that as thinly-veiled justification for posting the late Blues guitarist John Campbell’s version of “When the Levee Breaks.”
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
May 1st: Victims of Communism Day
May 1st, 2011Today I join forces with The Volokh Conspiracy and others in proclaiming May 1st as Victims of Communism Day. The fact that communism killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million people is not acknowledged nearly as often as it should be.
And given that communists are still in charge of North Korea, Vietnam, China, and Cuba (which launched a crackdown against dissidents today), Communist repression is still ongoing, with more victims every day.
(Hat tip for Cuba: instapundit.)
Having My Gun And Eating it Too
April 29th, 2011Last Saturday, I had a combined movie viewing/birthday party for Dwight and myself. Here’s Dwight’s report on the event, and here’s a picture of the cake, and the object depicted on the cake, which should seem familiar:
One is a beautiful object filled with things that will kill you if you don't treat them with respect. The other is a gun.
Important Day Coming Up May 1st: Victims of Communism Day
April 25th, 2011Every year on May 1st, there’s a single day set aside for the little guy, the poor, unfortunate common man ground beneath the boot-heels of faceless oppressors.
I am speaking, of course, of Victims of Communism Day.
Just like last year, we should take a day in memory of communism’s victims, especially given that there were somewhere between 85 million and 140 million people killed by communism.
There are a few memorials to those victims sprinkled around the world. Here’s the statue of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Washington, D.C.:
Here’s the online museum to the victims of communism, created by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Here’s a memorial to the victims of communism in Prague:
There’s also a Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Resistance in Romania. One of the statue groups found there is called “Cortege of the Sacrificial Victims.”
This wall of photos is from the same museum:
Here’s a memorial in Rakowicki Cemetery in Krakow, Poland:
And here’s a statue called “Crucified Again” in Ottawa, made by Czech artist Josef Randa.
And Cambodia features fairly dramatic reminders of the toll of communism at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek:
To the best of my knowledge, there are no memorials to the victims of communism in China, Vietnam, North Korea, or Cuba. But one day there will be.