Archive for August, 2007

Dutch Gunships Over Afghanistan

Posted by: Ion | August 29th, 2007 · 5:32 PM

Fairly interesting little clip of our friends from the Netherlands in action:

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The Omega Man Gun Battle

Posted by: Ion | · 2:49 PM

I love the scene in the first part of this clip from 1971’s The Omega Man. When Neville is battling the Luddite pseudo-vampires with his S&W M76, the gentle mournful music is so lovely.

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Clinton Fundraising

Posted by: Ion | August 28th, 2007 · 10:26 PM

While we’ve been preoccupied with Quranic literalism, exploding washing machines and the nature and political consequences of homosexuality, the rest of the blog world has been feasting on the WSJ piece about Hillary Clinton’s unlikely financiers. Yes, it appears that the Clinton campaign’s fundraising is….well, Clintonian.

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

[…]

It isn’t obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative. Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker. The couple’s grown children have jobs ranging from account manager at a software company to “attendance liaison” at a local public high school. One is listed on campaign records as an executive at a mutual fund.

The Paws’ political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.
(The Discerning Texan)

In a word, it looks pretty ugly for our girl. Like Hsi Lai Temple ugly…only worse and in San Francisco. Come to think of it, given the sums involved, this may turn out to be a scandal which will acquire its own coveted “gate” suffix. Paw-gate? Hsu-gate? Postman-gate? We’ll have to see. The total intake:

On four separate dates this year, the Paw family, Mr. Hsu and five of his associates gave Mrs. Clinton a total of $47,500. In all, the family, Mr. Hsu and his associates have given Mrs. Clinton $133,000 since 2005 and a total of nearly $720,000 to all Democratic candidates.
(WSJ)

Yep, I’d have to say that’s more than a little suspicious.

Looking for Hillary defenses, I haven’t found much so far. For what little there is, Opinionated Geek’s reaction is perhaps somewhat representative:

You know, I look at this story and I cannot help, but wonder… Is the right THAT desperate to keep a Democrat out of the White House, that they would use the Right Wing Propaganda machine, that is now the Wall Street Journal, to keep Hillary out of Office? It boggles my mind.
(Oppinionated Geek)

Ugh. That’s going to need some work.

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Grenade + Washing Machine = Fun…

Posted by: Ion | · 5:02 AM

….if you can run. Takes nerve to pull this one.

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A Cult of Dawkins

Posted by: Ion | August 27th, 2007 · 11:39 PM

When the chairperson of a debate intended to seriously examine Richard Dawkins’ views on religion shows up on stage in a Dawkins t-shirt and introduces the discussion by precluding it (in saying flatly that Dawkins has already “closed the discussion” on his subject), you know there’s an astonishing amount of stupidity and arrogance running amok under the guise of wisdom and empiricism. But such was the scene, at of all places, the Edinburgh International Book Festival in an Institute of Ideas debate chaired by Muriel Gray.

The astonishing episode left Ron Ferguson more than a little worried about this “new atheism” of Richard Dawkins and the manner in which sympathetic atheists seem to uncritically adulate him. That’s troubling for Ferguson –an admirer of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion– as he can find some very obvious things to criticize.

Ferguson notes that in reading Dawkins, the author appears curiously theologically unstudied, even illiterate. Dawkins rarely seems to read or seek conversations with the serious theologians of our day (preferring instead contests with the most undistinguished hacks he can find to mock) and his cultish treatment by sycophantic acolytes seems positively religious:

When I encounter some of Dawkins’s more extreme writings, I catch a whiff of other literature I have read. Yes, extreme evangelical Christianity. Have a look at his website (www.richarddawkins.net) and you’ll see that it’s a mirror image of some rather zealous and dogmatic religious sites. Richard Dawkins is an obsessed evangelistic atheist autodidact, a dogmatist whose extremism is even starting to irritate some of his fellow unbelievers - such as philosopher Thomas Nagel, who described The God Delusion as “a very uneven collection of scriptural ridicule, amateur philosophy, historical and contemporary horror stories, anthropological speculations and cosmological scientific argument”.
(The Herald)

Ferguson thinks evangelistic atheism is starting to take on a troubling and potentially sinister aspect. I agree entirely.

Read the rest of Ferguson’s commentary on Dawkins>>>

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Buried in Stone

Posted by: Ion | · 7:13 PM

A pretty striking little anti-Iranian art project from Spartakism:

(image: Spartakism)

This image was made in support of Pegah Emambakhsh, a lesbian Iranian woman who escaped from the theocracy to the United Kingdom. The barbaric Iranian treatment of her and her family for the crime of her sexuality, has been rather predictable:

Pegah escaped from Iran, claiming asylum, after her lover was arrested, tortured and subsequently sentenced to death by stoning. Her father was also arrested and interrogated about her whereabouts. He was eventually released but not before he had been tortured himself.
(BipolarBisexual)

From what I understand, she was scheduled to be deported back to Iran yesterday, until a stay was granted at the 11th hour after a campaign by the public. Evidently her original application for asylum was rejected on her inability to “prove she was a lesbian.” How that test is administered I’ve no idea, but apparently her love letters from other women weren’t sufficiently persuasive to the British Home Office.

Now as you know, I’m no opponent of efforts to prevent the further demographic destabilization of Britain through enervated immigration control enforcement. Yet it does seem to me that in this instance, that Britain is highly unlikely to be importing a jihadist fanatic in the person of Pegah Emambakhsh. Or, for that matter, one who is likely raise a family of such sorts.

I doubt very seriously that as many as half of the recent Muslim immigrants to Britain possess such a sterling case of potential death and torture upon return to their homeland. One should not penalize the deserving for being recent, because the past policy was too permissive.

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Penalties of Inexperience for Thompson? Nah.

Posted by: Ion | · 5:55 PM

Dean Barnett over at Townhall has a rather sharp little pitch against Fred Thompson today. He observes that with the departure of another key aide (Linda Rozett, Communications Director), the campaign is starting to take on the public perception of bad personnel management.

Barnett takes the opportunity to slip the dreaded dagger of “executive inexperience” into the flank of the Thompson campaign over it too. He suggests that managerial experience (or the lack thereof), is the key to separation in the pack for both parties:

Here’s my big concern about Fred: I’m very worried about entrusting the most complex CEO job in the world to someone or anyone who’s never run anything bigger than a six person law firm. Thompson has no executive experience, and it shows in the way he’s run his campaign. The indecision, the lack of direction, the organizational incoherence – these are hallmarks of a rookie CEO. Anyone who’s ever run anything knows what I’m talking about. You get better at it as you go along, and there’s a pretty steep learning curve.
(Townhall)

It’s not an uncommon or unpersuasive argument against any senator running for the presidency. It wasn’t that long ago when we were all zealously applying it to John Kerry’s maladroit 2004 campaign. As Dean notes too, we’re all doing it to an extent with Barack Obama.

But a straight and early firing of an incapable agent is rarely indicative of the “dithering” and indecisive sort of campaign that Barnett wants to paint Thompson as. Indeed, I would consider Rozett’s departure a cause for considerable optimism for Thompson supporters. An indecisive and poorly managed operation would have kept Rozett in her job well past when it had become clear she was performing badly (and she was).

If you want dithering, remember a girl by the name of Stephanie Cutter, Kerry’s communications boss in ‘04. Her email address was scutter@johnkerry.com and the internal campaign staff soon made a verb of it. To “scutter,” was to mess things up beyond all recognition.

In March of 2004 reporters were already complaining as a group that she was obnoxious, incompetent and ineffective (the press is always available for a little pro bono Democratic consulting). Poor Harold Wolfson, hired to work with her, quit after just two days in total frustration. Yet it wasn’t until July that Kerry decided to do something about it…and I’m not sure they ever actually fired her either. As I recall, Mary Beth Cahill’s solution was to move Cutter’s office to the campaign plane, where she set up her own little competing messaging operation.

This is poor management. Good management fired Cutter well before March. Kudos to Thompson for doing just that to Rozett prior to the announcement.

Supplemental Update: The DNC does seem a little too ready with the anti-Thompson press release too. You don’t see too much interest in Romney’s support personnel coming out of their communications center. Check out Huffpost too (if you can bear it), they’re all over this story like a pack of starving hyenas. There’s a reason for that.

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Building Barriers to Work Through Regulation

Posted by: Ion | · 4:40 PM

Here’s an illuminating little study. The Reason Foundation ranked the states based upon the government regulation of careers. That is, based on the number of professions which required a state license. As the study demonstrates, many of these license requirements are totally frivolous and doubtlessly affect low income unemployment. Do you really need a license to sell flowers, or require 1,500 hours of training to be a professional hair braider? Preposterous.

If you’ve been regulated out of a job, Missouri is apparently the place to be and California is to be avoided.

(Reason Foundation via Club for Growth)

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Matryoshka Monster

Posted by: Ion | · 3:36 PM

A superb poster for the Museum of Communism in Prague.

(image: pyeh99)

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