ApparatChick

I have been asked to be brave...

2008-06-12T16:44:00.003-05:00

...and I respond. Although I'm American, so I'm not at as much risk as some. You know, yet.

Homosexual Agenda Wicked

The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship. I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.

Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.

My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date - God and the "Moral Majority." Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage that you have caused. Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term "morality."

The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, "I'm just not sure where the truth lies," or "If they don't affect me then I don't care what they do," abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.

Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is have their future aggressively chopped at the roots.

Edmund Burke's observation that, "All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.

Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.

Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?

Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn't rooted in protecting homosexuals from "gay bashing." The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It's time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.

Rev. Stephen Boissoin

Hillary in Pennsylvania

2008-04-22T10:27:00.002-05:00

I am saying boldly (and I meant to post this yesterday so I'd look like Nostrodamus).

Hillary will win in Pennsylvania by 20-23 points.
She'll win Indiana by 5-11 points.
She'll lose in North Carolina, but only by 4 points.

You heard it here first, folks. (Although, I was saying the nominees would be Huckabee and Edwards back before Iowa, so what do I know.)

Motivated to post again

2007-12-02T22:18:00.000-06:00

The world has gone absolutely insane, and I've been busy.

Any way, I just read this by David Frum:

[O]besity is contagious — and the battle against obesity has to begin by fighting the contagion.... Perhaps what is needed above all is a crusading leader, somebody who will make obesity a cause like drunk driving and anti-smoking.

And as it happens, we have the very guy: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who lost —and kept off—100 pounds. Huckabee has moved from nowhere in the polls to the probable Republican vice-presidential nominee on the strength of his wit and charm. Now he needs a cause. Why not this?

Perhaps "why not this" because it's not the Miss America pagaent? Tossing it out there. Does the President not have anything better to do than fret over chunky grade schoolers? Sadly, I skimmed the article, and he is serious about recommending that Huckabee make this his platform.

Sigh.

Serves me right; just the other day, I was wishing President Bush would focus on school uniforms and midnight basketball like a good lame duck instead of messing with Israel's future in a desperate attempt at terrorist detente. Be careful what you wish for....

Time makes it all make sense

2006-04-16T17:26:00.000-05:00

I knew Time's list of the ten best senators (h/t the Corner) would make my worldly horizon's a little broader when I read what makes a good senator:

[T]here is a whole variety of skills that America's Senators have developed over 218 years to help them raise and spend tax dollars, oversee the operation of government and, in the case of the best among them, pass laws that benefit their constituents, their country and the world. TIME spoke to dozens of academics, political scientists and current and former Senators to pick the 10 best of the 109th Congress. One made it because he puts unsexy but important issues on the national agenda, another because his backroom negotiating turns conflict into consensus. A third got on the list for his diligent bird-dogging of Enron, Homeland Security and the Pentagon. Then there's the prodigious across-the-aisle dealer, the fierce defender of her constituents and the expert who sees around corners. As with any all-star team, we sought a broad range of gifts rather than settling on 10 great pitchers or middle linebackers.

Wow. Knowing how to spend other people's money, knowing how to bully innnocent citizens and other representatives into giving you even more money, manipulating other people, and attacking people who actually do things. I have my daddy's credit card and zero sense of personal responsibility -- maybe if I lose what residue of character and upbringing I have, I, too, can become a senator!

But here is the list of people who have apparently conquered those higher aspects of human nature to become great senators (and then a few who failed because they try so hard and can't get stomach-turning legislation passed - lusers!):

1. Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) - bravely broke ranks with Congressional Republicans to strong-arm billions of dollars of spending by threatening to block defense bills.

2. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota)- uses lots of charts.

3. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) - aka "the Debater." Argues with his fellow senators without using notes.

4. Ted Kennedy (D-Chappaquiddick: good one, Taranto!) -- he made the list - shocker! - by being willing to compromise his principles. (Good Lord, what is wrong with these people?)

5. John Kyl (R-Arizona) - lies to people to get them to do what he wants.

6. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) - hates Enron, likes hearings.

7. Richard Lugar (R- ) - disagreed with Reagan in the '80s, can sleep through Russian bag checks, and hates nuclear proliferation (in the rogue-state/terrorist kind, but close enough for Time) and disagrees with Bush's India deal.

8. John McCain (RINO-Arizona) - no brainer, this one, like Kennedy, but McCain has "moral authority," so he opposed torturing terrorists for information and is trying to keep voters, money, advertising, and all Americans who are not already members of the media or political establishment out of political discourse by any means necessary. And where he finds a loophole in McCain-Feingold, he tightens it.

9. Olympia Snow (RINO - Maine) - tried to thwart Bush judicial nominees and is opposed to eavesdropping on terrorists. But what sells her is her willingness to kiss constituental babies and strong-arm Thad-Cochran-esque spending bills back to her district.

10. Arlen Specter (RINO - Pennsylvania) - rude, abrasive, mecurial, and unprincipled, especially to other Republicans.

As for the senators who suck? Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) tried hard but simply can't get any of his wonderfully compassionate progressive legislation out of committee; Wayne Allard (R-Colorado) is boring and barely talks on the floor; Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) is mean to staffers and doesn't do anything when he has the potential to ask such tough questions; Conrad Burns (R-Montana) is so forgettable, they mixed his link up with Wayne "the Dullard" Allard's; Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) is a cowardly wuss who proposes pansy-titles legislation (seriously -- Department of Peace and Non-Violence?) without a snowball's chance of hell of passing a Republican Congress and makes other Democrats look wussy in comparison.

Good grief.

Port authority

2006-02-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

I caught a few minutes of Bill O'Reilly at lunch today. DISCLOSURE: I'm not really an O'Reilly fan. I think he's too inconsistent in his arguments, not that that ever detracts from his own colossal ego. Today, he was opining about the sale of the control of American ports to Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates. His argument is that there is no security reason to oppose the deal, since the UAE copmany is run by Brits at the top of their company ladder and the same personnel currently running the ports will remain in place. Any foreign nationals coming in would have to get a visa through Homeland Security, so there shouldn't be any security holes. And they are the friendliest Arab country to us, and rejecting this deal would needlessly alienate an otherwise allied country and possibly inflame the Muslim world because of racism and isolationism.

He's wrong. Let's grant that 1) the company is funtionally run by Brits, Aussies, and Anglophones, 2) the OAE is a friendly Arab country without direct and/or positive ties to terrorism, 3) the primary reason to oppose the sale is because they are Arab and Muslim, not because of any questions of competence, honesty, whatever, and 4) acting because of #3 will antagonize an already volatile population. I have conceded every one of his arguments. He is still wrong. Very very wrong. And I can sum up why in one word:

Iran.

Where was Iran in 1975? Modern, Western, friendly to America. By 1979 they were slaughtering their ruling class, kidnapping and torturing Americans, and funding, planning, and supporting terrorist networks globally. They have dedicated themselves to eradicating Israel and are pursuing a nuclear program to rain blood upon the West and the Jews and usher in a millineum of 12th imams and sharia law. It was the Islamicists, the sheikhs and imams and mullahs and their followers, who overthrew their own government and have kept their people in a stranglehold for thirty years.

Fast forward to now. Hamas beat out Fatah. Syria controls Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia both teeter on the edge of civil war. Then there are the civil wars in Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, and other Muslim countries. Like it or not, the UAE has strong ties to the Saudis, Osama bin Laden, and other terrorist groups. Coups happen. Muslims fight wars with each other to gain power. Even if we grant that the UAE is fine now, how fine will they be in five years? Or one?

Yes, Britain has extremists who blow up buses and children, and Britons safely managed our ports. But Britain is still predominantly our ally and they are decades away from becoming an Islamic state. That doesn't make Britain a bad security threat or mitigate the UAE enough to make it a good one. Would O'Reilly object to Russia handling our ports? Turkey? Mexico? These are our allies, and having them as gatekeepers would be a security disaster. Move on a little -- would he want Germany or France in charge? If France ran New York Harbor, how many Palestinians and/or North Africans could slip in through French channels? As for depending on Homeland Security to keep tight control over the visas -- yes, yes of course they would. Right up to the point that Bush gives amnesty to every willing worker to come here to do the jobs no American wants done. Twelve million illegal Mexican aliens and tweleve Arab hijackers on expired visas are enough of a reasonable doubt for me to want something else done.

Something rotten in the state of Denmark.

2006-02-20T21:40:00.000-06:00

And the Phillipines, Thailand, Nigeria, Italy, Syria, and a bunch of other Muslimic nations. (New word. Quote me.) There is a bizarre kind of irony and humor in headlines like "Cartoon Death Toll Rises to Nine"--until you realize that some people actually think it's rational to slaughter people over a cartoon.

Other people have said a lot about this already. To rehash it briefly, there is simply no equivalence between drawing a cartoon and mobbing and killing and raping and burning. Around the globe. For no apparent reason. Seriously -- almost five months after they were published? These people are monsters. They are inhuman. Their offenses are as psychotic as they are. It's like trying to have a rational discussion over enhanced recission authority or local school board elections with a schizophrenic doped up on Prozac and tangled in a straightjacket. You just can't do it. One party isn't only not participating, they can't process the words in the order they're spoken. That's where we are with the Muslim street.

That's where I part company with Jim Geraghty for the moment. "It's good that moderate Muslims in America are expressing themselves through peaceful protest," he wrote in TKS, "but I hope they understand that Islam's reputation isn't being shaped by their lawful actions; it's being shaped by the arson and murder overseas."

Except that this is a pained translation of "peaceful." About like calling Islam a religion of peace. These images (via Michelle Malkin) are not peaceful.

Again -- this doesn't compare to the people spouting off about beheading people who insult the Dear and Glorious Prophet of Peaceful Jihad, a seventh century Martin Luther King. But is this what you would term a peaceful protest? What are they protesting? Why here? Because InstaPundit posted two of the pictures? Because a handful of newspapers put links on their websites? For this Islam must dominate? And, as Michelle Malkin pointed out at the DC pro-jihad rally, these keynote speakers and leaders are supporting bounties on the heads of Danish cartoonists, while spouting off in public venues protected by the Constitutional rights for assembly and, yes, speech. Whaddup?

I am sick of these Muslims. Blowing up double decker buses and subways and airplanes and trains and buildings gets Muslims out in the street -- dancing for joy around burning flags and screaming about hate crimes and vicitmization (of them and their terrorist buddies, not the charred bodies and grieving widows). They come out in the street to kill people and burn churches and businesses and embassies. They offer death threats with state-funded, or at least state-sanctioned, rewards. And a peaceful protest (of what? For the love of my tripartite God -- what were they protesting?) consists of them threatening to "dominate" and to "bring down the wrath of Allah." Lovely. So when has any group of them ever stood up and said that not only is the murdering wrong, but celebrating it is wrong? We can't get them to admit killing people is bad. We're a few yards away from convincing them being happy people got killed is bad, too. And that is true of the culture and the religion. It is true across borders and ethnicities. There is a common thread. Islam is the problem. And I'm sick of it.

Explaining the absence

2006-02-20T21:38:00.000-06:00

I started a new major project (tech writing is fun!) in late December, and I've had a couple of smaller projects on the side as well. I went to Connecticut for almost a week (a fun adventure vacation in Hartford -- double fun!) at the beginning of January. And since I've been as good about answering my email as I have about blogging, I've been avoiding the computer with guilt and shame. But I'm sort of back, as much as I ever was. Which was never much to brag about.

Things I learned today.

2006-01-15T14:13:00.000-06:00

Do not cut your own bangs when you slept less than six hours the night before.

Good tidings

2005-12-24T16:10:00.000-06:00

Pondering Christmas Carols with Rick Brookhiser. I have my own carol ponerings. "The Carol of the Bells" is haunting, almost sinister, to me and makes me want to look over my shoulder. It seems impossible to me to know the words to "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" even though I do, in fact, know the words. Lately, it seems like people only sing the first verse of "Joy to the World" -- even when they singe the third verse, they just sing the first one twice in a row before moving on. I know it has a second verse. I have sung it myself, but not lately. And all of those old forties songs -- "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," "The Christmas Song," "Let It Snow," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" -- seem like children's songs to me, and I love singing them, but they're not real Christmas songs, they're just preparation.

Good question

2005-12-08T22:37:00.000-06:00

Is Maureen Dowd necessary?

No.

I think Michael Crichton wrote this

2005-12-08T22:28:00.000-06:00

The brave reporting from the UN conference on global warming and the destruction of mankind through free markets, of Roy Spencer on TCS (h/t RealClearPolitics):

I wonder whether this is where all Miss America contestants end up, following through on their collective desire to make the world a better place? There are also so many Ph.D.'s here -- speakers citing their credentials in order to push nostra that are little more than good intentions wrapped in a surfeit of economic ignorance (garnished with a touch of elitism). If only everyone in the world would follow the advice of these experts, our problems would obviously be solved.

[snip]

The people at COP-11 are well-fed, well-dressed, have been transported half way around the world by fossil-fueled aircraft, and are totally dependent upon myriad goods and services that require access to affordable energy. But that hasn't seemed to cross their minds. If it has, they are under the illusion that the world can live on a whole lot less energy than it is right now. I look around and wonder how all of these people would contribute to life on Earth if they were not so busy trying to save it.

As I listen to the opinions and arguments expressed here, I am struck by the lack of interest in exactly how much (or should I say, how little?) the currently proposed policies are going to stave off any future warming trends. Instead, what seems to be the most important are the good intentions of the policy pushers-consequences be damned. To examine whether we can actually "get there from here" would involve some math and science skills. I suspect many of these college graduates barely made it through those courses. It is sufficient at COP-11 simply to believe that if a policy is good for business it is bad for the Earth. Since business interests are only out for themselves, business success couldn't be related to the material needs and desires of those served by businesses.

Able Danger reloaded

2005-12-08T20:32:00.000-06:00

Andy McCarthy has an article on NRO reviving the Able Danger story, something that has been conspivuously absent from most of the blogs I've read. After the immediate surge of interest in it, many in the right blogosphere got spooked when Weldon was attacked and seemed to back off his story. So when he came throttling back with witness names and evidence (six officials now, plus Louis Freeh and some documentation), they were still a little leery of picking it up. But Louis Freeh's article about a month ago and now McCarthy's should stir the waters again. This was an irresponsible, reprehensible, spotlight-chasing, butt-covering schill of a committee which apparently became little more than a bipartisan effort to defend Jamie Gorelick, her "wall" of protection and citizenship rights which were extended to casual travellers, and the Clinton administration. These are the people who had Osama bin Laden. They had Mohammed Atta, and possibly two other 9/11 hijackers. They ignored the first WTC bombing, the Khobar Towers, USS Cole, and embassy bombings. They extended a "wall" with the sole effect of protecting foreign actors with designs on the US. And then they put key architects of that policy on the commission created to investigate it. And then they covered the evidence, smeared the dissenters, and started holding regular press conferences to announce their virtue and wisdom.

McCarthy:

The 9/11 Commission .... didn't report the dissent [of Able Danger] at all. Not in the text, not in the footnotes, not anywhere. It tried, Pravda-like, to erase completely from historical memory any version of events but its own.

Think about that. The commission's mandate was to conduct a thorough investigation and tell us exactly what it found. Its job was not to produce a carefully marketed narrative so media-starved commissioners would have a best-selling launch-pad from which to score sugary interviews. This panel was not supposed to have a vested interest in a single, definitive, air-brushed version of events. It was supposed to give us the facts as it found them, including on disputed issues it could not resolve. Why on earth did it decide to kill Able Danger?

[Emphasis mine.]

This is a woman (Gorelick) who should wake up every morning with the knowledge that her idealistic incompetence directly caused the deaths of 3,000 Americans and, subsequently, two wars and the deaths of American servicemen and contractors, hostages, foreign armies, and Afghan and Iraqi civilians (not to mention the bad guys). I would pity her if she weren't too arrogant and dense to recognize it, and so now I'm pretty close to despising her and the atrocious committee that protects her and the administration she worked for. Have these people no principles?

Sad, hollow men

2005-12-04T21:11:00.000-06:00

Mark Steyn, as usual, is pretty and apt: "These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat."

This sort of happened already in Vietnam; we hadn't won, but we were winning until the whole Winter Soldier thing. John Kerry's most enduring foreign policy contribution.

But I digress. One of his other points is "while the media were eager to promote Murtha as the most incisively insightful military expert on the planet, this guy Lieberman's evidently some nobody no one need pay any attention to. ... It must be awful lonely being Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party these days." Um, yeah, I can imagine that. I really think that Joe Lieberman will be the next Zell Miller. After the education bill, I began thinking that Bush wouold drive the country to the right; he would seduce the ignorant moderates into a moderately conservative voting block, and he would drive pure-hearted but previously passionless conservatives to find true conservative alternatives. The country is spinning to the right because of Bush, but it was unintentional, I'm sure. It's drifting right by default; the left has been so vehemently, viscerally opposed to Bush that, in the course of driving themselves deranged, they have catapaulted themselves leftward; even old school liberals look "right" by comparison. Unfortunately, this hasn't resulted in the GOP and affiliates getting more conservative and I think ultimately it's not going to be a big help in any kind of rightward drift to moderates; they may vote "R" for celebrated liberal mavericks like McCain and Guiliani and Hagel, but they won't be attracted to conservatives like Santorum or Coburn the way they were to Reagan and even Goldwater.

Traditional liberals like Lieberman may soon find themselves men without a country as the Democratic party whirls into insanity; the GOP may be there to pick them off. I'd hoped for a bigger, righter tent; still doesn't get me quite where I was hoping.

It's all hype

2005-12-04T20:59:00.000-06:00

Instapundit has a poll on avian flu. So far, only 11% agree with me, that it is a bogus hype from people who got bored. Remember the flu shot shortage hysteria of last year? Well, not only can you not get flu shots anymore, THE MENACE IS BIGGER AND DEADLIER THAN EVER! And it is a subject only to be discussed in appropriately breathless capslock. See, that makes it relevant.

Seriously, you could pick any one of a dozen exotic, old school, or standby diseases and have just as good a chance of these one day becoming a millions-dead pandemic. SARS, bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, mad cow (good God, remember the panic on that one? and it involved food, too!), malaria, dengue fever. Anthrax -- that's a livestock one. Lots and lots of things can kill you. I can tell you now, of anyway I could die, a flu epidemic is just not in my cards.

Because this isn't the kind of thing you comment on

2005-12-04T08:49:00.000-06:00

I'm flipped by CSPAN a couple fo minutes ago, and I caught an interview with Samar Assad, the executive director of the Palestine Center, and there was a comment (natch) from California from a man with an accent that Israel was nothing but a terrorist organization that was set up as a puppet by five Zionist-controlled powers (China, Russia, the US, Great Britain, and, um, one more). This went on a for about a minute, and elicited aboslutely no comment from either Assad or the host. Not one,single word. The next caller, from Texas, said he didn't see the point in real talks as long as Palestinians wouldn't disavow or disarm terror groups like Hezbollah. Assad countered back, a little miffed, that her group had no association with Hezbollah (which hadn't been hinted), and Hezbollah was a reistance group defying the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, not Palestine. So it's totally separate and unrelated.

Bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracies -- cool beans. Stop Muslim terror -- how dare you question my patriotism to the one state of Palestine!

Still listening -- now she wants a "one-state" solution" which scares Israelis because they don't want to give equal rights to Palestinians. Of course. (The current state of Israel, I note, does not count.)

UPDATE, 8:59am: A man just called her on not responding to the crazy Zionist-entity guy and for not decrying Islamic (not political, as she tried to say earlier) terrorist groups. Her answer -- it's still Israel's fault. We've been nothing but compliant since 1993, and they still won't recognize our right to exist. Blah, blah, blah. At least his was the last question.

UPDATE II: The link to the Palestine Center isn't working; I did a web search, and it's the right one; it's also the one the Washington Journal host gave. Don't know what else to say, I'll check it out.

Yep.

2005-12-03T13:27:00.000-06:00

To borrow from Love's Labors Lost, pithy and apt:

SCISSORS AND SHARP OBJECTS TO BE PERMITTED ON PLANES [Cliff May]
Under the latest plan by the Transportation Security Administration.

I’m reminded of something I heard from an Israeli security expert: “We do it differently than you do. You look for weapons. We look for terrorists.”

Movie night

2005-11-28T22:16:00.000-06:00

So I finally saw the Day After Tomorrow, and I'm royally disappointed. I had heard a lot of hype about the side-slapping silliness, the "eco-comedy," so I had my hopes set high. Not so much. The Core is way, way better. If you want a pointlessly grandiose disaster movie, rent the Core. The only adjective that fits this one is "overwrought." From the very first frame, just trumped up emotion which amazingly stays absolutely steady throughout the movie -- "my dad didn't pick me up at the airport, so I'm sulky," "they were mean to me at a UN conference, so I'm sulky," "all of New York is destroyed before my eyes and I spend a week starving in a flash-freezing library -- sulk." No sense of perspective here. And movie science is notoriously bad, but still. Little details people -- the National Weather Service issues a tornado watch/warning, not an individual news station. And no matter how brightly colored the blobs on the radar are, it's not the color that signifies the presence of a tornado, it's the shape of the clouds. And I don't care how spiteful the Atlantic Ocean is feeling, weather simply cannot spring up faster than our ability to detect it. And whaddup with that bizarre speech at the end on how we've always looked down on the Third World b/c we were so blind but after our glacial smackdown, we've been humbled and learned our lesson and love our third rate neighbors? It took itself too seriously to be as good as the Core. It's not worth the late fees I have to pay for it. I so should have rented the Core. :(

ApparatChick around the world! -- Part 2

2005-11-27T14:55:00.000-06:00

This is about a week old now, but I have to brag about getting into the Carnival of the Recipes with this entry. Yummy -- and photogenic! One of the proudest moments of my life. ApparatChick around the world!

Random thoughts

2005-11-27T10:35:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged for awhile. No real reason one way or the other, but I think it's indicative of a general malaise in the right of center blogosphere. For instance, as of 10:25am Central, there is not a single new post on NR's Corner, and hasn't been one since 2:05pm yesterday (I think that time is Eastern). Powerline, Michelle Malkin, even the crank-out-the-hehs InstaPundit haven't been blogging as heavily as normal. It's not just the holidays; it's been something I noticed for almost two months. I think it was Harriet Miers. Now, I have blamed Harriet Miers for everything from being a terrible SCOTUS nominee to ruining OU's football season (though that truly belongs to their losing to Texas Christian, one of the biggest role reversals in history). But, much like Wal-Mart' head-scratching decision to quit saying "Merry Christmas," the Miers nomination was a pointless attack on the very core of the President's and the GOP's base. While it may be somewhat resolved in that she's gone, the demoralization remains. It's hard to get excited about Alito, when in September we all would have been linking and cross-linking and enthusing on decisions and trivia and school records and 1980s FedSoc articles. Now -- who cares? Really? Barely even NARAL or the People for the American Way. There just hasn't been as much to get excited about, which makes it hard to write about anything. We have political ennui. The President and GOP killed any loyalty and affection I used to have for them. Even formerly pro-war conservatives have started bedwetting over McCain's torture amendment as if a) we actually are torturing people (100,000 people detained, and around a dozen died in custody? People, that's better than the average deathrate in the US. Grow up, for the love of God!) and b) this amendment would do anything to stop torture. The way hate crimes legislation taught us all an important lesson in respecting our neighbors. But when it comes right down to it -- who cares? We care, we ignore, it doesn't matter, we still get a Miers nomination (or an OU loss to TCU) regardless of our faith and effort. Ennui.

Fox and Friends

2005-11-08T18:09:00.000-06:00

I was watching Fox and Friends yesterday, and they mentioned that people were leaving California, New York, and Washington in droves (can't imagine why). So they started listing places where these ubanites were going -- Detroit and Milwaukee, Delaware, Vermont, Indiana, Illinois. Then the mentioned Kansas (no!), southern Missouri (very much no!), and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. MENDOZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! They will bring with them hiked up taxes, outrageously and pointlessly exploded property values (what kind of medication do you need to feed a psychotic to convince them that a 1200 sq. ft. duplex half is NOT worth $800,000?), they're crappy anti-good-things Sex-and-the-City culture, and all kinds of gaywad moneypit ideas like bike paths no one uses and empty convention centers.

People, live with your own mistakes, don't tkae them here! Please, please, please, stay in your blue-state urban-paradises and leave my nice little corner of the world alone.

Appalling

2005-11-08T17:47:00.000-06:00

I was absolutely stunned, flummoxed, shocked, appalled -- I can't even think of the right word -- when I read this on the Anchoress, about the riots in France:

Some nights ago, “youths” threw Molotov cocktails in a bus. People scrambled outside. A poor handicapped woman was sprayed with petrol by the very same thoughtful “youths” and was saved by the bus chauffeur. The poor lady was badly burned.

FR3 channel showed the lady’s 2 daughters, Yaël and Anastasie; they were European and wore no Islamic scarf. They expressed their gratitude to the courageous chauffeur. On another channel, well there was only one daughter… whose name was Fadella and who wore an Islamic scarf! She said that her mother (??) was saved by the courageous “youths”. What do you make of this? Was Fadella an actress? You bet!

What can you say to that? Do they need more j-shools, the way they need more urban renewal programs? God Almighty, a fake daughter giving credit for saving her to the people who set the woman on fire? Unbelievable. As Glenn Reynolds says, read the whole thing.

Recip-blogging!

2005-11-08T17:37:00.000-06:00

I actually ripped this recipe off of Mustang Catering in Livingston, Montana, which has fabulous food. They used to have a little restaurant as well, but not since the summer (after we moved). They were a block down from our house, and my dad ordered their chicken torte milanse with tomato basil sauce (and salads, fruit platter, rolls, etc., etc.) as a gift for my mom our first Christmas there, having our meal catered. It was incredibly good, and, since I got on a cooking kick, I'm trying to imitate the recipe here. It's been three years, so my memory's a little rusty, but I made this for lunch today, and it turned out great.

Ingredients
9x9x6 casserole dish
4 tubes of crescent roll dough
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 large chicken breasts
1 bag fresh spinach, chopped medium
1/2 onion (about 1/2 cup chopped fine)
2 stalks of celery (or leeks), chopped fine
1 stick of butter
3 tbs. ricotta cheese
fresh parsley, chopped medium
fresh basil, chopped medium
fresh rosemary, chopped medium
garlic powder
black pepper
1/2 lemon
sprinkle of parmesan cheese
1 egg

This cooks 6-8 servings for an entree or 12 servings as a side or buffet dish.

Preparation
1. Use a non-stick cooking spray to generously coat the inside of a casserole dish. Take one of the tubes of crescent roll dough, and coat the bottom of the dish to make the bottom crust; use at least two layers (roughly the whole tube). Use another tube of dough around the sides of the dish.

2. Boil the chicken breasts for about twenty minutes (or until cooked). No seasoning, marinating, etc. Cut the chicken into roughly bite-sized pieces.

3. Sautee the onions and the celery in 3 tbs. fresh butter.

4. After a couple of minutes, drain one can of diced tomatoes, and add them to the onions and celery.

5. When the onions and celery are almost done, add the chopped spinach, half a sprig of chopped rosemary, about 8 leaves worth of chopped basil, and about four stalks of chopped parsley. Only sautee these for about a minute, so the spinach leaves don't get wilted.

6. Mix the chicken in with the sauteed vegetables.

7. Add garlic and pepper to taste. (I like a lot of both.)

8. Add 3 tbs. of ricotta cheese and 2 tbs. of butter to the chicken and vegetables and stir in.

9. Add about half of the chicken/veggies to the casserole dish.

10. Use half of one tube of dough to create an inner layer.

11. Add the rest of the mix.

12. Use the rest of the dough to create the top crust.

13. Mix up the egg, and slather it over the top crust. Spinkle a little bit of parmesan cheese and garlic on top.

14. Bake at 350 degrees (F) for thirty minutes.

15. While the torte is baking, take the other can of diced tomatoes (keep the juice), 2 tbs. of butter, 3 chopped basil leaves, black pepper, garlic, 2 stalks of chopped parsley, a half sprig of chopped rosemary, and the juice from half a lemon, and put them in a small sauce pan. Bring to a gentle boil for two minutes.

And then you have a yummy chicken torte milanse with tomato basil sauce.

Awesome.

Map of the riots

2005-11-07T18:32:00.000-06:00

Via Instapundit, a map of the major riot centers in France. It's in over three hundred suburbs now. Frankly, I'm surprised only one person has been murdered so far; with fire, rocks, and shooting, it's only a matter of time.

Bizarre Parisian quote of the day

2005-11-07T18:27:00.000-06:00

This comes form the mouth of Villepin himself:

He [Villepin] said 1,500 police and gendarmes would be brought in to back up the 8,000 officers already deployed in areas hit by unrest that began in a poor Paris suburb on October 27. He also promised to accelerate urban renewal programs. [Ed. -- Because what was missing was urban renewal programs. That's what makes people riot.]

But dismissing growing calls for army intervention, he said: "We have not reached that point."

As my mom said, what would that point look like?

Illegal immigration con't

2005-11-07T12:10:00.000-06:00

Niall Ferguson has a much rosier view of our illegal immigration (or at least Hispanic immigration; the only immigrant he mentioned was a naturalized Bolivian immigrant) than I took a few days ago, vis a vis the Paris riots and their Muslim problem:

Not so long ago I was at a junior school in Texas, not far from the Mexican border. The day began with the entire class singing a ditty that went: "I am proud to be an American, be an American, be an American/ I am proud to be an American, living in the USA - OK!" Deeply corny, no doubt. But these little kids sang it with real gusto. Every single one of them was of Mexican origin.

---

This works. I can vividly remember the day my cleaning lady in New York - a Bolivian by birth - passed her tests, swore that oath and became an American citizen. She was euphoric. "What are you going to do now?" I asked. "Enrol[sic] in Law School," she replied. And she did.

As that suggests, the problem in Europe is partly economic. In free market America, immigrants get jobs; they are not much more likely to be unemployed than workers born in the USA. But the second problem is that Europeans do not try hard enough to make immigrants integrate culturally.

On the contrary, in the name of "multi-culturalism", we positively encourage them to retain their languages and allegiances.

Fellow Englishman John Derbyshire takes a somewhat gloomier position, though (as expected):

An uncharacteristically dimwitted piece by Niall Ferguson in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph (London).

The gist of it is, that the French haven't tried hard enough to assimilate their North African Muslim immigrants, and that the U.S.A. does things so much better. The piece is filled with Tamar Jacoby-style happy talk about how, e.g., "The US has long excelled at integrating newcomers into American society."

The US did indeed excel at incorporating Germans (Christian, European), Irish (Christian, European), Italian (Christian, European), East European (Christian and Jewish, European),... into its foundationally Christian, European society.

Whether we shall have similar success with Central Americans (Christian, mainly Amerindian) and Muslim Middle Easterners (Muslim, Middle Eastern), is an issue not yet decided. We can, and should, hope; but many of the indicators are negative.

Heather MacDonald has an awesome article in the fall issue of City Journal. According to her article, Mexican consulates across teh country actively engage in getting IDs to illegals, supplying lawyers and support for illegals who are jailed to get them to stay in this country, providing textbooks for Mexian history adn culture and the Spanish lanugage to schools and libraries (even doing spot checks and testing in schools to make sure the kids are fluent in Spanish and using the materials), and encouraging bilingual education and services.

Mexico’s struggle to hold the hearts of its fleeing countrymen has worked. Mexican migrants have maintained a strong nationalism, exhibited through the “unfailing celebration of Mexican national, religious, and regional holidays, the conspicuous displays of patriotic symbols in Mexican neighborhoods and businesses, and in the low naturalization rate,” writes University of California professor Luis Eduardo Guarnizo. In the last decade, the rate of naturalization among legal Mexican immigrants did improve, in response to the 1996 welfare-reform law, which reduced welfare eligibility for non-citizen immigrants, and to Mexico’s authorization of dual nationality in 1998 (not exactly ideal motives for becoming citizens).

The comparison between the contributers and the leeches still holds true. MacDonald points out more: the guidebook on how to get into the US illegally and then how to keep from getting caught; a cabinet-level organization to promote "Mexicans Abroad"; law enforcement groups to protect illegals from criminals, corrupt Mexican officials, and Minutemen as they cross; even calling the billions of dollars a year that illegals send back to their families an invaluable economic source of domestic revenue. When illegals are arrested, it's a "human rights violation," an "act of bad faith" or "racism" or "bias." They object to illegals being arrested for any criminal activity, even unrelated to immigration violations. And in light of lists like this, that's a dangerous policy to listen to.

Quick to defend individual illegals, the [Mexican] consuls just as energetically fight legislative measures to reclaim the border. Voters nationwide have lost patience with the federal government’s indifference to illegal immigration, which imposes crippling costs on local schools, hospitals, and jails that must serve or incarcerate thousands of illegal students, patients, and gangbangers.

---

The Mexican government will push to control as much U.S. immigration policy as it can get away with. It’s up to American officials to stop such interference, but the Bush administration simply winks at foreign attacks on immigration laws that it itself refuses to enforce. President Bush should worry less about upsetting his friends at Los Pinos and more about listening to the American people: illegal immigration, they believe, is an affront to the rule of law and a threat to American security. It can and must be stopped.