The genius of terrorism

As Wretchard suggests, you can increase your threat in an assymetrical war by being willing to go beyond what your enemy would consider civilized. This is not a difficult concept. Loan sharks and other extortionists have been relying on it for years. The current version employed by the terrorists involves being willing to die with your victims. Definitely beyond the pale. Definitely scary.

That's why you should read the linked post. All of it. About three times. The lesson should be obvious.

However, the anti-war left is in denial. Those willing to fight for our side still aren't willing to do what it takes to convince the enemy that they cannot win. The terrorists understand Hama Rules, and nothing less. They know our limits and use them against us, and they don't really have to worry about popular support at home.

Their media support them. Ours opposes our efforts.

They violate international laws of war. We constantly question our own compliance.

A pack, not a herd; or a pack of bigots?

British passengers refuse to fly with two "Asian-looking" men on board.

In the U.S. the airline would have been fined and probably sued for giving in to the majority of customers. What can you do, force them to fly against their will?

Instead of complaining about racism and discrimination, as groups like CAIR do, Muslims need to be proactive in demonstrating their true intentions and support of the societies that have accepted them. If they continue to deny that Islamic teachings are the source of the current wave of terrorism, they'll lose credibility and be shunned, if not persecuted. There's a perception, created by hate speech from Islamic clerics, fanatical politicians like Ahmadinejad and the terrorists themselves, that Muslims consider themselves superior and entitled to rule the world. If their societies had produced prosperity, respect for human rights, tolerance, etc., they might have a case, but right now their co-religionists haven't inspired much trust. That's their problem, not ours.

Uh-oh. Kofi's upset!

Israel attacks a Hezbollah resupply convoy and is accused by Anan of violating the cease fire. You don't want to cross the U.N. They'll send more UNAFIL "peacekeepers" to "observe" your ass. We all saw how effective they were at stopping Hezbollah from lobbing rockets into Israel.

On the other hand, by sending in commandos, Olmert's government may have helped itself a little. I'd say that preventing more rockets from being stockpiled, Israel has done more than the U.N. ever will to make the cease fire effective.

By brokering this deal, the U.S. has made a bad situation worse, and made itself look like a perpetual dupe for the French. Not Bush and Condi's finest hour. It may be that this is what Olmert wanted, but friends don't let friends drive drunk.

George Allen pays . . .

with a shrinking lead in the polls. He may get reelected to the Senate, but I don't think anybody will take him seriously as presidential timber after the "macaca" incident. He's never excited me anyway, but Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani both have potential.

The coverage of the incident itself has been silly. The Indian gentleman was sent by the Webb campaign to heckle, but the MSM didn't see fit to make that clear. Suggesting that the clumsy word "macaca," made up by Allen on the spot, was a Portuguese term meaning "monkey" is pretty far-fetched. However, with his "Welcome to America" line, he was clearly calling attention to the man's race, and that was an attempt at a cheap shot, even if he had been more clever.

I would think that his handlers blew it by not preparing him well to handle hecklers in a more positive way than going down to their level. By doing it so clumsily, he managed to make himself look not too bright and boorish, too. I all adds up to Not Ready for Prime Time.

The Carter Administration -- still not over.

Andrew McCarthy blasts Judge Diggs-Taylor with both barrels:

It would be wrong and regrettable, but it is certainly conceivable that the Supreme Court will eventually find the Bush administration’s NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional. One thing is certain, though. Such a ruling by the high Court will not rely on the handiwork of Michigan federal district judge Anna Diggs Taylor. Her effort yesterday to invalidate the program is a transparently political screed.

Judge Taylor last garnered national attention in 2002 when she was caught trying to rig the outcome of an affirmative-action case. Now, this relic of the Jimmy Carter twilight has fixed her gaze on a war against ruthless enemies who have already attacked the United States massively, serially and globally — an enemy whose leadership is unabashed in telling us, repeatedly, that its devout mission is an exponentially more devastating reprise of 9/11’s carnage.

And what does this jurist see? What she calls “the War on Terror of this administration” — not of the American people, but of George W. Bush — which “[p]redictably” seeks to evade judicial review.

Yes, here we have the thematic history of the administration that has fought to defeat jihadists … as told by a vestige of the administration that first empowered jihadists.

Real the whole thing. It's certainly well deserved.

If judges are allowed to continue to make policy, no president need ever be completely out of office until all of his appointees are still on the bench. There's an old, and lousy, tradition of rewarding campaign supporters, political hacks, with judgeships. Some turn out well, as Justice Rehnquist's judgeship did, but most are underqualified or nonqualified.

It couldn't hurt

The Club for Growth has created websites for every member of the House of Representatives listing their voting record on anti-pork bills. It's also launched a project similar to Porkbusters.

Mitt Romney gets a boost

Tonight on the Hugh Hewitt program Mort Kondracke remarked how impressive Romney is on the stump. That's what most people who hear him think. I'm not supporting him because he's a member of my church. Harry Reid is a Mormon, too, and I think he's a twit.

Now all we need is to let more people see and hear him. He's a great manager AND a great communicator. And if you think his being a Mormon disqualifies him, remember that we have five Mormon senators (including Harry Reid) and quite a few representativs. Mormons aren't really out of the political main stream, unless you apply a religious test.

If Joe Lieberman wins . . .

will Democrats compound the damage by shunning him in the Senate? Spector ran as a Republican because he was spurned by the Democrats. Maybe Lieberman will see a bigger tent on the other side of the aisle.

Much ado over next to nothing

The consensus of law prof bloggers:

[L]egal scholars said Judge Taylor had done the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiffs, few favors beyond handing it a victory. On the other hand, they added, the appeals court is bound to examine the legal arguments in the case afresh in any event.

Honor Murder?

Where did this nonsense of honor killings come from? Is it rooted in Asian cultures or Islam. And if in Islam, where is it grounded in the Quran? And if it's really supported by the Quran, doesn't it make Islam a dangerous religion for Western nations to allow? Of course, those questions will be objected to by CAIR as a violation of Muslims' First Amendment rights, but CAIR would be full of crap, again.

Those crazy Jews

After the U.N. has gone to all that trouble, now Israel is quibbling about the nationality of some of the proposed international peacekeeping force, just because they don't accept Israel's right to exist. How can we have peace if they keep making unreasonable demands like this.

Wake up, Germany

They just might, after this attempt to blow up trains there. Once again, good police work prevented a disaster.

Then there's this:

The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane's flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say.

This will be decried by the left, since we can't verify that the plane had missiles, but it's more evidence that the NSA is protecting us and our allies. It's time for quarantining of Iran from the civilized world.

The Democrats are playing a dangerous game

It turns out that Catherine C. Mayo, the woman who necessitated the diverting of United Airlines Flight 923 to Logan Airport in Boston rather than its destination, Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., isn't just a sufferer of panic attacks. She's an anti-American columnist and anti-war activist. And she's a loony. I don't think she'll be lionized like Cindy Sheehan, but nothing the left does these days would surprise me.

How'd you like to have been one of her 182 fellow passengers, scared out of your wits, having your flight disrupted, because this idiot decides to demonstrate against Bush by freaking out en route? She may be nuts, but she's also spouting the standard anti-Bush line of the contemporary Democrats. There are some right-wing radicals who are this goofy, but they're not in charge of the Republican party.

Celebrating Perversity

How many women are proud of having had abortions?<

The Web site of Ms. Magazine--yes, it still exists--is calling on readers to sign a petition: "I have had an abortion. I publicly join the millions of women in the United States who have had an abortion in demanding a repeal of laws that restrict women's reproductive freedom."

Julia Goren suggests that they might be happier that they weren't themselves aborted.

This oughta be good

The Democrats seem to be thinking that attacking Wal-Mart will help their chances this fall. More evidence that they've cocooned themselves from the real world and are listening to the All Kos, All the Time Channel.

What to do about BDS

The Wall St. Journal's reaction to Judge Taylor's 44 page opinion enjoining the NSA wiretap program is searing:

In our current era of polarized politics, it was probably inevitable that some judge somewhere would strike down the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretaps as unconstitutional. The temptations to be hailed as Civil Libertarian of the Year are just too great.

So we suppose a kind of congratulations are due to federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who won her 10 minutes of fame yesterday for declaring that President Bush had taken upon himself "the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself." Oh, and by the way, the Jimmy Carter appointee also avers that "there are no hereditary Kings in America." In case you hadn't heard.

With that little homage to the current liberal BDS hyperbole, Judge Taylor shows that she too has lost her critical thinking faculties and is reduced to silly slogans.

The first question I thought of, upon hearing about her ruling, was "Why Detroit?" Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The ACLU had searched out the federal judge most likely to ignore the law and rule in its favor, and she did.

After the London airline plot was disclosed, Democrats' main reaction wasn't relief and appreciation, but totally political: "Bush is politicizing the terror threat." I'm starting to believe that these people would sell us all to Al Qaeda just to get back into power. One hopes that they'll snap out of it and like a person coming out of a sleepwalk, look around and ask, "Where am I?" But I've lost that hope as their rhetoric becomes ever more deranged and shrill. They seem to be shrieking: "Ignore that man in the White House! Forget the sight of airliners full of people flying into the WTC and the Pentagon!" When we should be remembering and strengthening our resolve, they want us to forget, or, like scared cattle, to stampede toward the cliff.

The Republican majority in Congress has not covered itself in glory. It has gone on a binge of pork barrel overspending on things President Bush did not ask for, thinking that rewarding its constituents would seal its incumbency. But Democrats have done their share of earmarking, even as they whimper about the mounting deficits, and then go on to talk about impeaching the president, just to get even, repealing the Bush tax cuts and pulling our troops out of Iraq before its government is secure. We are in a war, but our media seem to be on the other side, feeding us propaganda that would make Tokyo Rose blush, telling us we're losing, telling us that our weapons are unconstitutional and spreading lies about our Commander in Chief. They may not admit a desire to lose this war, but their words and actions evince one.

James Earl Carter, whose failure as a president is second only to Richard Nixon's in current memory and who, more than anyone else can be blamed for the current regime in Iran, is trotting around the world telling anyone who will listen that America is The Real Evil Empire.

And, even as Bush works to reform the judiciary to bring back its proper functioning, the landmines laid by Carter and Clinton are going off, trying to prevent efforts to monitor terrorist communications, just when we really need them.

A processor not even Windows can slow down?

A new transistor could make terahertz processors possible.

It takes more than an antidote

Not that Debunking 9/11 Myths isn't worth reading. It's just that most conspiracy theorists don't want to accept reality. They have to be deprogrammed. The number one myth is that George Bush is the enemy, but how many on the left will listen to that?

If you want me, I'll be in the bomb shelter.

John Keegan reviews "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks, and seems to agree with its critique of how we've handled Iraq. His conclusion isn't very optimistic:

Few would disagree with the analysis in "Fiasco." It is not, however, a complete explanation of what went wrong. Mr. Ricks makes several convincing points about what underlay the insurgency, notably the supreme importance of the value of respect for personal dignity in Arab society. He notes how, at least in the early stages of the occupation, American forces too often showed unconcern for Iraqi dignity--by performing too many tasks and conducting too many operations unilaterally. But he does not take account of what may underlie the whole insurgency, which is the rise of Islamic militancy across the Muslim world.

America was so certain that what it had to offer--modern government in an incorrupt and democratic form--was so obviously desirable that it failed altogether to understand that the Iraqis wanted something else, which is self-government in an Islamic form. It is too late now to start again.

All that can be hoped is that the U.S. Army will prevail in its counterinsurgency and, as Mr. Ricks's gripping accounts of the troops in action suggest, it may still. His description of Marines "attacking into an ambush" leaves one in no doubt that American soldiers know combat secrets that their enemies do not and cannot match. Whether pure military skills will win the war, however, cannot be predicted.

And to think this was the cheap plan.

I haven't heard any very good suggestions for how to deal with terrorism consistent with our beliefs in law and order. We're looking as bad at this point as the Soviets did before they left Afghanistan. The problem is that we can't just turn our backs on the Muslim world and hope they'll drop their jihad, unless we decide to apply Hama rules. None of the options are very encouraging.

One thing is sure, Iran is on a roll and we're going to have to confront it eventually. The question is how long we should wait and trust diplomacy. We probably should be bombing Iran's industrial base right now, but Americans have a history of ignoring problems until they can only be solved through through more violence than would have been necessary earlier. Maybe we'll figure it out when we have suicide bombers killing themselves at the malls.

Fighting terrorism ain't beanbag.

The Guardian seems to think otherwise:

This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome.

Sounds like famous last words to me.

James Taranto answers the weak-kneed:

Here is the problem: "Don't trust the Bush administration" is not much of antiterror strategy. For the long term--i.e., Jan. 20, 2009, and beyond--it is not a strategy for anything, for on that day the Bush administration will end. If the administration's critics do have better ideas about how to win the war against our terrorist enemies, they do the country a disservice by presenting them in an unappealing package of partisan hatred and paranoia.

By focusing all their wrath on George Bush, who really doesn't deserve to be compared to Adolf Hitler or any other fascist, his opponents may achieve a last gasp, but they haven't got anything to offer when it comes to stopping terrorism. I can't see any of them going beyond what Clinton was willing to do. Nor can I imagine tax increases doing anything to help the economy.

Forget George Allen

If his idea of an explanation is as lame as his aide's, this is not going to go away soon. He may have handed Webb the election.

He's never impressed me as much of a leader. More like an affable dork. Giuliani and Romney have proven their ability as executives. McCain thinks he's a leader because he takes "courageous" stands that end up hurting his party. I agree with him on cutting pork, but not on campaign finance reform. We know he can compromise, but we've never seen him as an executive. He can be stubborn and temperamental, but he's not very persuasive trying to inspire followers. That's also Bush's main failing. He gets tongue-tied and doesn't like engaging his critics. I can't really see anybody else on the Republican side. The Dems' choices are uniformly disastrous. The closes they've got to executive experience is Hillary! and Howard Dean. Does anybody really want Bill Clinton back in the White House?

Condi, how could you?

This interview does very little to reassure me about the cease fire agreement. It sounds like a lot of hoping and wishing, but not based on past performance of either Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria or Iran. It's just more kicking the can down the road, and that sounds a lot like slow suicide.

Until the next time

Lebanese are streaming back to their homes in the south. Israelis are doing likewise in the areas affected by Hezbollah rockets.

The fact that most of the Lebanese have homes to go back to is a credit to technology and Israel's desire to avoid collateral deaths.

The fact that the Israelis still have home is evidence of how inaccurate the Katyushka rockets are, despite Hezbollah's willingness to kill as many civilians as possible.

I doubt that Israel will take nearly as long to rebuild and repair as Lebanon will.

NEWS FLASH!

Joe Lieberman is alienating his fellow Dems in the Senate by continuing to make sense about the wisdom of setting a date to pull out of Iraq.

I must confess that there are times I wonder if the Iraqis are ever going to get it together. It's reported that 3400 Iraqis died last month in sectarian violence. However, Bagdad is a big city with millions of people, and these militias use murder bombers and IEDs to attack crowds of innocents. I wonder, if we were to visit the city, how many of these attacks we'd witness as we wandered about. Just as most of America would look perfectly normal just after 9/11 or Oklahoma City, I don't know whether bodycounts are the best way to measure the problem.

So do we have to let them go?

Pakistan broke suspect through torture, says the Guardian, to get information needed to shut down UK Airline Terror plot. To me, the only question should be, "Do the interrogation methods acquire reliable information?" I don't care if a subject who is known to be part of a terrorist plot is humiliated, put in fear of his life or starved. They deserve to be killed in the first place, and the only reason for not dispatching them is the knowledge they might have of terrorist plans. No methods should be used that would make an innocent person confess or make up false stories just to get the interrogators to stop, but that judgment has to be made on a case by case basis.

Condoleeza Rice doesn't sound like a real Bushie anymore.

Another Phoney War

The real showdown in the GWOT is coming. The struggles to avoid it do not help our side.

The advantage of the West is our military might, but it is worthless if we're not willing to use it. There is no way to conduct a perfectly clean war, one in which non-combatants are spared, especially where the enemy hides among civilians and refuses to identify himself. That means that lots of innocents will be killed. However, we must not allow our qualms to overcome our determination to win. By "win" I mean the destruction of the Iranian regime. We must not allow the Mullah or Mr. Ahadinejad to acquire nukes, as we did North Korea. We must recognize that in such a situation, where the enemy violates the Geneva convention as Hezbollah does, the innocent deaths are chargeable to the terrorists. Nobody desires to kill noncombatants, but we may have no choice, if we aren't willing to allow terrorism to continue to menace the world. They, like the Terminator, will not stop sending out gullible young men and women, even children, to act as living, moving, intelligent land mines.

Gone, Wisconsin

Kevin Barrett will teach his course, Introduction to Islam, as scheduled. He was, coincidentally, a guest on Michael Medved's program this afternoon. If he really believes a tenth of what he said, he's unfit to teach anybody anything. He's delusional. He was more in denial than most Arab Muslims. He not only ascribes 9/11 to the CIA, but also all the terrorism around the world. I thought maybe he was just larding it on to show contempt for Medved, but then a Somali who's lived in Seattle for 12 years had called earlier to complain that America has always been at war with Islam. He couldn't cite any evidence, but it's obvious that he has heard it so often from his own community that he accepts it without further thought.

As a critique of their religion, people like this are the best evidence that it is about as advanced as the Catholic Church was when it put Galileo under house arrest. Barrett sounded like a moron. How he managed to get a PhD is beyond me. I guess you don't have to demonstrate any critical thinking skills to do a dissertation.

A New York Minute

The New York Times is counting corpses in Iraq and declaring the Iraqi government's security plan for Baghdad a failure. I wonder how long it took Giuliani to make New York City safe. It was probably too long for the Times, too.

Wishful thinking

New York magazine invited a bunch of people to speculate on what the world would be like if 9/11 hadn't happened. It sounds like the Democrats' dream: We'd have John Kerry for president. We'd no longer be dependent on imported oil. Giuliani would have no name recognition. New Orleans would have been rebuilt by now. But Ron Suskind calls it right. He says the London Airplane Bombing Plot would have succeeded.

Actually, you have to ask why it didn't happen. Was it because Al Qaeda had learned its lesson from Clinton's tough response to prior attacks? Or because Al Qaeda never existed? Or because the FBI had done its job right and connected the dots and foiled the plan? If the last were the case, we'd have probably had another event on the level of 9/11. Probably a dozen airliners exploding in midflight around the world. Then everything would probably be the same, except we wouldn't have as much evidence of who was to blame.

As subsequent events have demonstrated, fear and resolve slip away. Stupidity never falters.

I'm shocked! Shocked!

Politics is hilarious, especially when one side plays politics by accusing the other of "playing politics." The Dems have been claiming that the Bush administration is out of bounds by claiming the exposure of the Sky Plot as a victory. I guess if you have nothing but bald claims that Bush's policies haven't made us safer or that Iraq has distracted us from homeland security, you have to pedal faster when events seem to say otherwise. What can they claim? They blocked the Dubai Ports deal, offending one of the only friends we have in the Arab world. They wouldn't be playing politics, though, would they?

Now there's word that Lieberman's old Dem buddies in the Senate are endorsing Lamont. But they're not playing politics. They're running scared, driven by the money of the MoveOn.org and George Soros types who have seized control of their funding. Thank you, McCain-Feingold.

Pork is like spam

The Club for Growth

A while back, several groups including the Club for Growth, were able to get their hands on the 2007 Labor-HHS appropriations bill that was introduced in the House (but has not yet passed), along with the committee report. What we found were 1,867 pork projects hidden in the bill.

Maybe we need a movement to vote against all incumbents.

Yet another flaw in the cease fire.

Hezbollah will keep its weapons instead of turning them over to the Lebanese government. Somebody needs to go there and establish a real government instead of a thugocracy.

A blow against political correctness

It's about time!

What about the Lebanese?

Hezbollah has a plan to get around the cease fire. It will hit Southern Lebanon with Katyushka rockets.

A Democrat Dilemma

If Gore/Lieberman had won and gone to war against the terrorists, would their party now be trying to impeach them?

The Democrats' Image Problem

One man's self-image problem is another man's clarity of vision. Somebody tell E. J. Dionne that it's not just their own self-image that's bad. The rest of us have been appalled for about 6 years, and it just keeps getting worse.

Belgium vs. Free Speech

Stanley Kurtz describes censorship by one of those high-minded human rights scolds in the E.U. Conservatives want to censor pornography. Liberals only want to censor conservatives.

Even if it is broke, don't mess with it.

Some sound economic advice:

The biggest danger facing the US economy today is that so many people think there is something wrong. It's dangerous because when people think there is something wrong, they try to fix it. Very often, these good intentions have bad consequences.

This is good advice for economies and climates. They are too complex for mere humans to fiddle with.

Yeah, that's the ticket! An investigation

The LATimes has the all purpose liberal response to every scandal. What more do we need to know? A Lebanese freelancer faked a bunch of photos. Reuters bought and published them. It took bloggers to spot the blatant use of software to manipulate the original images. Maybe Reuters should hire some bloggers to look over the photos before it publishes them.

Come to think of it, it wouldn't hurt for one of these liberal press services to hire Charles Johnson as an editor.

Stars in his eyes

Mike Wallace sounds absolutely star struck by Ahmadinejad. Can you imagine him talking about our President this way? As they say, familiarity breeds contempt, but it may be also, that Evil inspires awe. Funny how charming men like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and this guy are to those who considere themselves citizens of the world.

Reading Ned Lamont's first interview after his primary victory last Tuesday, I realize what a sock puppet this guy is for the Kos crowd. I could have written his responses in advance.

Every time we foil another plot, the left takes it as evidence that Iraq has distracted us from the real war on terror, as if they really supported the measures taken to defend us, such as the Patriot Act, the internment of captured terrorists at Gitmo, the SWIFT program and secret NSA wiretaps of terrorist communications. And they think we should trust them with the job.

Maybe you need to be Jewish

Michael Barone notes the refusal of the antiwar left to face the fact that terrorism is a serious threat. I'm not sure that they hate us so much for "our way of life , our freedoms and our tolerance" as for the fact that our culture has progressed over the past 500 years while theirs has stagnate. It's an issue of Arab honor, which has more to do with being Arab than being Muslim, but has been imprinted on Islam by radical Arab imams like those in the Muslim Brotherhood and spread with the financial aid of the Saudis. Their honor and that of Islam can only be vindicated by the renewal of the caliphate and worldwide jihad.

Whatever the source, these people find their manhood and glory in killing infidels and martyrdom, as if aggression was the same thing as defense. But we have our own version of people living in the past who are also eager to seize government power, but they're a unequipped to deal with the terrorists as the terrorists are ingenious at thinking of ways to murder us. They are so far gone as to believe that the plot just foiled by the British security officials was timed to coincide with Ned Lamont's victory.

Barone notes, as many have lately, the similarity to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler by Neville Chamberlain. All of this has become trite, but it needs to be repeated by those who believe it, because our media are on largely part of the problem. Barone closes with this:

Joseph Lieberman is being criticized for saying, "I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -- more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War. We cannot deceive ourselves that we live in safety today and the war is over, and it's why we have to stay strong and vigilant."

Lieberman, as an observant Jew, remembers the lessons of appeasement and recognizes the implacability of our enemy from their hatred of Israel and of all Jews. The odd thing is that so many of his fellow Jews support those who are trying to replace him in the Senate, and I don't mean Mr. Schlesinger.

The operation was a success but the patient died.

Tim Hames of the Times of London thinks the Israelis won the go-round with Hezbollah. That won't save Olmert, but it illustrates how differently things look if you're considering military results rather than public relations. I think that Israel knows by now that it can never win the public relations battle, because the media will never give them a fair shake.

All in all, Israel accomplished a lot, but its dithering in the handling of the campaign has left a bad taste with most of its supporters. Olmert's government is likely to fall.

An Uncertain Sound

In a piece titled Where does God stand on abortion? by Tom Ehrich, an Episcopal pastor, the question is not answered. What the reverend gives us, instead of sound doctrine, is mealymouthed non-leadership. It's basically an admission that Christianity needs new revelation.

The role of a church, particularly a pastor, is to lead the flock, not hem and haw and tell sidestep on issues of morality.

The Apostle Paul said:

Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?

And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped?

For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air.

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

True prophets speak with the spirit of God, and people who want to follow God feel that spirit.

Something about Mahmud

John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics describes Mike Wallace's interview with Ahmedinejad:

I found the interview itself quite disturbing. Much has been written about the similarities between today and the 1930's in relation to appeasing Ahmadinejad and Iran, but there was something about the man's demeanor and appearance that I found eerily similar to Adolf Hitler. In the late 1920's and early '30's Hitler was written off as a sort of silly looking rabble rouser by the real powers behind the scenes in Weimer Germany. Even as late as January 1933 when Hitler assumed the Chancellorship, much of the German "establishment" thought that he could be controlled. They were, of course, wrong.

We see similar stories today, speculating on how Ahmadinejad is really just a pawn used to placate the masses and really doesn't have control and/or make the actual decisions in Iran. We'll see.

Good news?

NewsMax is also reporting a study that predicts a 25% increase in global oil production:

Oil and natural gas production capacity should surge by 25% to 110 million barrels per day by the year 2015 - the result of investments in new and unconventional petroleum sources like oil-sand deposits and oil shale, according to a study conducted by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA).

The report flies in the face of most predictions of peaking oil output that is threatening economic stability.

But the research firm's forecast, if accurate, "would ease the current perception of taut supplies that have driven oil prices up 25% so far this year and 285% since the end of 2001," according to Investor's Business Daily.

Oil shale in Utah is said to contain more oil than the Saudis have, and it can be produced for $40 per barrel. I think the U.S. should put a tariff on foreign oil to give domestic producers some cover from price cutting, by OPEC. Normally, I'd oppose such measures, but I see this one as a national security issue. Our foreign policy shouldn't be driven by fears of oil embargos by Venezuela, Nigeria or the Middle East nations.

Inscrutable

This is from a NewsMax email newsletter:

[A] NewsMax friend sat next to former Sec. of State Henry Kissinger at a dinner recently. When the conversation turned to the North Korean threat, Dr. Kissinger down played it. For example, Kissinger claimed that Japan already has a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Japan has repeatedly stated it does not have nuclear weapons – but admits it could become a major nuclear player in a matter of months.

All-American Boys?

Thus their attorney describes Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of Dearborn who are alleged to be procuring special chips used to convert cheap cell phones to allow them to make international telephone calls.