The Happy Carpenter

Welcome to the party

One scene from the movie Die Hard has been coming to mind since the terrorist bombings of England.  Officer McClain is inside the building radioing the 911 dispatchers who don't believe his reports of a terrorist takeover of Nakagumi tower.  But then the terrorists start firing automatic weapons at the twinkie eating cop.  McClain (Bruce Willis) shouts out, "Welcome to the party!"

Now read this from The Middle East Times by Youssef M. Ibrahim:

What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed.

I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.  (emphasis added)

Well, I don't know how 'sad' that is; I'd say it's long overdue.  It's time to put on our red cross crusader uniforms and take care of business.

Is this an Xray of a Muslim bomb or the Muslim Shroud of Turin?

You be the judge.

Something unexpected from Og

I've come to look forward to first class rants from blogger Og, the Neanderpundit, but this week Og has something else on his mind.

Gather ye rosebuds...

Need to think about this

Good ol' Rob has an interesting post about work today, one I'm too tired and frustrated (AdAware has so far found about 400 gremlins in my machine... and counting) to respond to right now.  Your thoughts will be appreciated.

What he said! Tigerhawk strikes again.

Blogs are better than the Old Media in general, and much, much better than the New York Times Liberal Death Star in particular. TigerHawk proves it::

Regular readers know that I love pointing out that on April 2 this year the New York Times declared that the U.S. dollar was headed down, "no matter what" owing to the Bush Administration's economic policies, and it has done very little but go up since then.

Less well-known is that the Times has also lost its shirt in the stock market. On April 16, during what proved to be an extremely ephemeral downdraft in the U.S. stock markets, the NYT ran a front page headline that blared "Stocks Plunge to Lowest Point Since Election." It was not clear at the time what the relationship was between the low level of the stock market in April and the election (since the market had bottomed some days before the election), but the Times purported to see one worthy of a front page headline.

Yesterday, the S&P and the Nasdaq hit their highest levels in the four years since the carefree days between the Clinton Administration and the onset of war on September 11. Imagine my surprise that this morning's New York Times not only does not mention this fact on the front page, but it is nowhere to be seen in all of Section A! It is almost as if the short-term performance of the financial markets has nothing to do with the Bush Administration.

TigerHawk does good work; naturally, he's from Iowa.

Too much to drink 12

last one.  Timber.

Howard Dean doesn't offend me any more

How can anyone take this seriously?

"A pro-life Democrat, unlike a pro-life Republican, cares about kids after they're born, not just before," Dean said.

In the same speech, he offered up this whopper:

The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is 'okay' to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.

It is impossible to be offended by a crank for whom you have no respect.  It's unfortunate that Chairman Dean's views really do represent the typical Democrat, but there you are.

Too much to drink 11

Somehow, I don't think this dude's friends were too concerned with not using permanent markers for their prank.

China

Now this is interesting.

But in the longer term, the signals coming out of Beijing suggest this is the first of many steps towards a flexible exchange rate. If this is true, then it is probably the most significant economic event since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The super slow-mo crash/transmorgrification of Chinese communism has been fascinating, contradicting all western dogmas willy-nilly, and continues apace.  Read the whole thing, and file it away for future reference.  You may well have read it here first.

My friends send me tons of these

But this is the first slide show I've received clean enough for The Happy Carpenter.

Download betterolympics.pps