The 2022 Midterm Elections Underscore The Need For An Electoral College Approach At The State Level

The debacle of the 2022 midterm elections underscores how a single city/county determines the voting outcome for at least 19 states. We have reached the point where the fear by the Founding Fathers that the large states would dominate the smaller has come to pass, albeit at the state level.

 The Electoral College

 From the Heritage Society:

     “The manner of electing the President was one of the most contentious issues at the Constitutional Convention held in 1787. The Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation, while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule. Smaller states, in particular, worried that a system that apportioned representatives based on population would underrepresent their interests in the federal structure. This concern, that either the big states, or the small states, would have too much influence over the choice of the President, was voiced by many of the delegates at the Convention. They understood the dangers that a direct democracy, with the potential for mob rule, brings to elections.

     After long and serious debate, they arrived at an intentional design for electing the President that would incorporate the will of the people, but still safeguard against faction and tyranny. That system, the Electoral College, balances the competing interests of large states with those of smaller states. By allocating electors based on a state’s cumulative representation in the House and Senate, the Electoral College system avoids purely population-based representation, while still giving larger states greater electoral weight. This design incorporates the “genius of a popular democracy organized on the federal principle,”3 and has been our electoral system that has operated successfully for over 200 years.”(https://www.heritage.org/the-essential-electoral-college/origins-the-electoral-college)

 Today we have reached the point where the voices of the rural Americans is being overwhelmed by the political machines in the large city/county states that now exist in many states. Given the Founders intent to protect the smaller from the larger, I wonder if there is a way to declare single cities/counties deciding the results for the entire state as unconstitutional based on the Founder’s rationale for establishing the electoral college?

 One remedy would be to allocate the popular vote count for statewide and Federal offices to be decided by Congressional district vote tallies vice the entire state so that the rural areas have their voices heard and not overridden by places like Philly, Detroit, NYC, etc. Maine and Nebraska already split their electoral votes for President by Congressional district, so there is precedence.

 One potential drawback to this approach is the states that have only two Congressional districts: Hawaii, Maine, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. What happens when the districts split in their voting? For the Presidential election the EVs would be split according to the voting results in each district (e.g., candidate A gets one EV, candidate B gets one EV). For Federal and statewide offices like Senator, Representative, Governor, etc., in the event of a split in the district totals, the total popular vote would prevail. Not satisfactory, I know, but the major problem with single city/counties dominating the overall state voting totals occurs in states with more than two Congressional districts.

More Lawdog Thoughts on Nord Stream 1 & 2

Lawdog's first post drew a horde of 'experts' claiming that things just don't work the way he said. He responded with a second post providing more information about hydrate plugs (see https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/10/nordstream-ii-electric-instapundit.html):

Even more interesting is this little tidbit, also via email. Russia was having compressor “issues” on Nord 1, enough that the whole sodding compressor station was “shut down” and a “hazardous production facility”.

Is anyone else getting the twitchies regarding the fact that at least some of the equipment that keeps the pipeline pressurised was off-line? Just me? Oh, well then. Carry on.

Moving on — multiple sources have confirmed that Nord 2 was full of natural gas; that it was full for at least months; and that said natural gas had never moved.

It. Just. Sat. There. For — allegedly — months.

During normal operations of a pipeline, you run a pig through fairly regularly. A “pig” is a bit of equipment pushed by the gas flow, and as it moves along it shoves water and hydrate slurry down to where it can be removed; and it scrapes compounds off the inside walls (hydrogen sulphide, I’m looking at you) that might be is probably eating your pipe.

Note the part above where the pigs are pushed by the gas. The gas in Nordstream 2 never moved. That means no pig ever went down the line to shove water out, move hydrate slurry, or stop H2S from corroding the steel of the pipeline. 

Again, he's not claiming that this is the only explanation:

As I said in the previous post — and I will continue to say — none of this rules out intentional Acts of War. There are idiots enough in that region that sabotage can’t be discounted.

How-some-ever … hydrate plugs. 

A lot of folks are hanging their hat on comments made months ago by Biden and Victoria Nuland that the Nord Stream pipelines would be gone. Given the incompetence of this administration Lawdog is correct--you can't rule out an intentional act of war. Having spent some time in the former Evil Empire I can confirm that maintenance is not a top priority.

See his entire post for some interesting photos illustrating what hydrate plugs can do and the alleged locations of the explosions.

So Maybe It Wasn't The US Behind The Nord Stream 1 & 2 Explosions

Lawdog has a great post regarding the Nord Stream 1 and 2 incidents (see https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html).

I call them “incidents” for a reason. I grew up in overseas oilfields. I try to, by training, observe everything from as objectively neutral a viewpoint as possible.

In my experience when anything involving energy-industry hydrocarbons explodes … well, sabotage isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. And honestly, when it comes to a pipeline running natural gas under Russian (non)maintenance, an explosion means that it’s Tuesday. Or Friday. Or another day of the week ending in “y”.

“But, LawDog,” I hear you say, “It was multiple explosions!”

Yes, 17 hours apart. No military is going to arrange for two pipes in the same general area to be destroyed 17 hours apart. Not without some Spec Ops guy having a fit of apoplexy. One pipe goes up in a busy shipping lane, in a busy sea, and everyone takes notice. Then you wait 17 hours to do the second — with 17 hours for people to show up and catch you running dirty? Nah, not buying it.

His theory is that it was the result of faulty Russian maintenance.

Honestly, I suspect someone in the Russian government pinged Gazprom, and said, “The EU is about to have a cold winter. make sure those pipelines sodding well work, so we can sell someone natural gas at massively increased prices.”

So, Somebody In Charge started running checks — and came up with hydrate slurry in both pipelines. After the running in circles, hyperventilating, and shrieking of curse-words stopped, somebody started trying to remediate both lines. Of course they didn’t tell folks down stream — no Russian want to look weak, and besides, there’s been a nasty uptick in failed Russian oligarchs getting accidentally defenestrated — they just unilaterally tried to Fix Things.

It’s methane hydrate. Trust me, if there’s a hydrate plug, there’s more than one. With both pipes having no movement for months, if not a year, there were a metric butt-ton of hydrate plugs, slurry, and rime in both pipelines.

The Fixing of Things went bad. One went Paws Up, and they started trying to stop the other — but pressurisation (both ways) is a weeks-long process, and the second went bad, too. 

The effect is the same, though. Natural gas pipeline explosions during the Russian/Ukraine war are one more factor in Russian calculations for conflict escalation (especially if Gazprom doesn't own up to doing it--it's easier and safer to claim an outside force caused it).

Nord Stream 1 & 2 - Cui Bono?

 The recent destruction of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines 1 and 2 begs the question of cui bono - who benefits?

The most obvious beneficiary is Ukraine. It deprives Russia of a potential money stream and removes an economic sword hanging over European nations, especially Germany. Even though Gazprom had stopped natural gas shipments in September 2022, there remained the possibility (most likely a probability) that freezing European populations would force their governments to stop supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia in order to get the gas flowing again. The pipeline destruction now precludes that course of action.

While Russia was responsible for 43% of natural gas supplies to Europe, indigenous European natural gas production could have alleviated this dependence. Unfortunately, 'green' energy policies forced phasing out most of its indigenous natural gas production, resulting in over 90% of its natural gas being imported from outside sources. Many European nations have shut or are shutting down their nuclear and coal power plants, relying on wind and solar power to keep the lights and heat on. As Texas discovered during 'Snowmageddon' in February 2021 wind and solar power failed to support the Texas energy grid during winter.

Liquid natural gas (LNG) production in the United States could compensate for some of the energy lack, but would not be enough to satisfy European energy needs due to a lack of short term production and shipping capacity. (See https://memgraph.com/blog/gas-pipelines-in-europe for a description of Europe's natural gas infrastructure and capacity.)

The next obvious beneficiary is the United States. Again, it deprives Russia of a potential money stream and economic leverage over Europe regarding Ukrainian support. The downside is that it can provide Russia with even more of a casus belli to engage the US directly in war for its direct support of a wartime adversary. Given the ineptitude of the current US administration in all things foreign and domestic, I can very well imagine it would conduct operations against Russia that would result in direct combat with a nuclear armed opponent. 

The real beneficiary, though, is China. Which nation would greatly benefit from the nuclear destruction of its two main adversaries? A nuclear exchange would leave China as the only major unscathed nuclear power on the international scene. Yes, India, Pakistan, England, France, and Israel are nuclear powers, but one could argue that the UK and France would be targeted by Russia as part of an overall strike against NATO for their support of Ukraine and the US. I doubt that India would take part in a nuclear exchange as it would see itself as the new counterbalance to China.

So,  is China influencing the current administration to provoke war with Russia, thus removing the two main competitors for world leadership/domination? The question is what would the United States be doing differently if it weren't.

What Veteran's Day Means To Me

 

The United States commemorates two days a year for our military—one day to mourn the passing of those who have paid the last full measure of devotion and one day to celebrate those who survived to return home to friends and family. Today is the day for celebration and remembrance.

 

Many years ago, I joined a long, continuous line of guardians stretching back centuries into the past. Collectively we pledged our lives and sacred honor to defend home and family. We are joined in a unique band of brothers and sisters who have one common feature—we signed a blank check on behalf of our nation, payable with our lives. Anyone can do it, but few answer the call. In the United States, fewer than 1% of the population become part of this band. The rate is even lower in other countries. Many of us serve just one tour, while others spend a lifetime in uniform, some continuing on to serve in civilian service while their uniforms gather dust in a closet.

 

Many saw combat and experienced horrors that caused trauma that lives within to this day. Others did not survive. My son is one of those who survived Iraq and Afghanistan only to end his own life due to the ever-growing pain of PTSD. While he and so many others are part of this day, their special day comes in May. Others stood the watch, waiting for the call that never came. Still others fought in the shadows of clandestine wars undeclared, doing battle with those malign entities who meant harm to their home and allies, never to acknowledge their struggle.

 

For the United States, our line goes back to the Revolutionary War. When our country called, we answered. The line continues on as we hand off our duties to the next generation of guardians, content to sit back and rest… or do we? We veterans will lament about the long hours, terrible conditions, crappy food, military bureaucratic stupidity, long days away from home in locations ranging from beautiful to horrendous… and yet… and yet we still hear it. Even today, after all the years in uniform, I can hear the call to duty, the desire to be with my brothers and sisters in arms. We look back and think to ourselves, “I’d do it all again.”

 

So happy Veteran’s Day to my brothers and sisters in arms. I remember you, want to be with you, and would do it all again with you.

Benford's Law

People should become familiar with Benford's Law (http://infogalactic.com/info/Benford%27s_law). I use Infogalactic because Wikipedia is already rewriting their page to claim that it is controversial and in dispute by 'reputable scientists.'

From Infogalactic: "Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, is a phenomenological law about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many (but not all) real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers the small digits occur disproportionately often as leading significant digits.^[1] For example, in sets which obey the law the number 1 would appear as the most significant digit about 30% of the time, while larger digits would occur in that position less frequently: 9 would appear less than 5% of the time. If all digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time.^[2] Benford's law also concerns the expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution."

Why is this important? According to Principia-Scientific (https://principia-scientific.com/joe-bidens-votes-violate-benfords-law-mathematics/), the voting totals for Joseph Biden violate Benford's Law. In other words, when votes accumulate from a natural process, there is a natural distribution of the digits of the numbers. When unnatural means are used (e.g., creating votes, ballot box stuffing), people tend to make round numbers of votes (remember 138,000 votes showing up for Biden in the middle of the night?). This results in an unnatural distribution curve. President Trump's and other candidates follow normal distribution curves, but not Biden--at least not in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas for certain. As Benford's Law has been accepted in previous court cases as proof of fraud, I expect it to feature prominently in the lawsuits fighting the massive voting fraud conducted by the Democrat Party.

Oh, and don't post this on Twitter or Facebook as Twitter accounts are being locked immediately for posting references to it and Facebook is banning references, claiming "Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive." Yet more indications that Twitter and Facebook have and are making contributions in kind to the Biden campaign.

Proposed - 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution - Election Integrity

Given the current state of our national election, it is obvious that we need to change our voting process. Hence, the proposed text for a new amendment to the Constitution is as follows: 

28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – Election Integrity

 

Election day for Federal and state level elections shall be declared a Federal holiday to facilitate voting during the voting time period.

 

a. Voters. Voting in elections is restricted to citizens of the United States. Registration for voting shall be conducted in person and closed to new registrants 30 days prior to an election. Registrants shall prove identity, residence, and proof of citizenship (e.g., passport, birth certificate) prior to being added to the voting roll. For voters unable to afford standard identification (e.g., driver’s license, passport) States shall provide identification credentials at no cost to the voter certifying identity and residence. Voter rolls shall be maintained in a manner that polling places and data collection/tabulating locations may check the validity of the voter and notate that a vote has been cast. Voter rolls shall be audited biannually to remove voters no longer eligible to vote. Failure to do so shall be considered election interference and the senior responsible authority for maintaining the voting roll shall be punished with imprisonment of 1 year and a fine of $10,000. If a voter is not physically able to vote at their designated voting location due to illness or absence, they must apply for an absentee ballot in person (or by videoteleconference if ill or unable to travel due to physical limitations) and voting authorities shall confirm that the voter is who they claim to be prior to issuing the ballot.

 

b. Influencing the voting public. Opinion and exit polls conducted in support of any election shall not be made public but shared only with the candidates. Polling information shared outside of the candidate campaigns by any person/entity shall be considered election interference and shall be punishable by 5 years imprisonment and a $50,000 fine for each instance.

 

c. Voting process. Elections shall be conducted by voting in person on election day.  Voters will vote in their assigned polling place. All polling locations shall be open and closed at the same Greenwich Mean Time to prevent states in earlier time zones affecting outcomes in later time zone states. The election day voting period shall be twelve hours. All states shall establish sufficient polling places and equipment to accommodate all registered voters within their state during the voting period. All polling locations shall have the ability to identify voters as valid and sufficient equipment and supplies to accept all valid votes without delay. Each voter shall be notated in the State’s registered voter database as having voted to prevent voting at multiple locations. All voting polling locations shall report the raw number of votes at the end of the voting time.  This raw total shall be compared to the number of votes for each candidate in each voting category. If the total number of votes for a candidate category exceeds the raw vote total, then that polling location shall be locked down and all voting materials seized and audited. All votes received after election day shall be declared null and void. All absentee ballots shall be processed/counted as they are received, but no later than election day. All states shall conclude counting of all votes no later than 24 hours from poll closure. Observers from all parties having candidates in the election shall be present while the polls are open. Any actions to prevent poll observers from observing voting activity shall be considered election interference and punished by imprisonment and fines. All voting data collection/tabulation sites shall be open to all observers of all political parties engaged in the election. Tabulation shall be public.

 

d. Election interference and vote fraud. Anyone found to have engaged in affecting the vote totals through malign activities (e.g., voting more than once, accepting invalid votes, adding invalid votes, changing existing votes, destroying votes, preventing voting and/or tabulation observation and challenges, false registration, using false identification to vote, providing compensation for voting for specific candidates, illegally voting as a felon or non-citizen) shall be guilty of voting fraud and subject to imprisonment of ten years and a fine of $100,000. Punishments dictated by this amendment will not be subject to Presidential pardon. Fines shall be indexed for inflation from the date this amendment is ratified.

Sorry It's Been So Long

 I accepted a senior position in 2012 which precluded me from commenting publicly about pretty much anything. I'm retired now and no longer have to worry about that. So I'm back--Lord help us all.

Pre and Post Nationalism--Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Daniel Greenfiled of Sultan Knish makes some excellent points in discussing the similarities between Islam and the Left:

The Muslim immigrant does not trade one national identity for another. What he does is bring along his local ethnic identity and his global religious identity, and unpacks them both in Sydney or London where he is a member of an ethnic community and a religious community. On top of that he may be an Australian, but he is an Australian in the same way that Sunnis and Shiites are Iraqis or Syrians. All that means is that he will pay taxes, fill out forms and curse the local government officials for being incompetent blockheads, instead of the ones back home. And when his religious identity is at odds with his national obligations, he will do exactly what Sunnis in Syria or Shiites in Iraq have done. He will choose religious identity over national identity.

This concept should not be a particularly foreign one to Gillard. It is likely that she feels a similar identification with fellow progressives in Europe and America, that Hassan feels for his fellow Muslims. Like Islam, progressive politics provides a shared transnational identity based on common goals for an ordered world ruled by an ideal system. Gillard may even feel a greater identification with European Socialists than with more conservative Australians.

As Greenfield notes, it comes down to pre-nationalism and post-nationalism resulting in the same conclusion:

Gillard subscribes to a post-national identity, and Hassan to a pre-national identity. This is only a technical difference that matters as much as the location of the endpoint of a circle, but in the practical sense they are members of dramatically different identity groups with their own incompatible forms of multiculturalism.

The left's post-national identity is based on a secular political multiculturalism. Islam's post-national identity is based on a religious theocratic multiculturalism. The left has heresies that it prosecutes as hate crimes and Islam has heresies that it prosecutes as blasphemy. Gillard would understand, though condemn, a riot based on some offense to gay rights or aboriginal rights, as an offense against her brand of multiculturalism. The Mohammed riots may be more understandable to her as an offense against Muslim multiculturalism.

And therein lies the dilemma.  In a post-nationalist world, Progressives expect to be ruled by laws that are no longer tied to any nation or tradition because we've 'outgrown' all of that.  Unfortunately, they face the reality of a culture that could care les about their laws as God has already given all the laws necessary.

The left destroyed Western national identity and brought back the holy war, but due to Christian and Jewish secularism and Muslim immigration, instead of Catholics and Protestants fighting each other in Paris and London, it's Muslims rioting in the streets and demanding an Islamic theocracy to rule them. And why not? If rule no longer derives from the people or the nation, but panels of judges and rooms of bureaucrats, then the Islamic version is as legitimate as the Socialist version.

Exactly.  And that is the crux of the problem facing the rest of the world--how do you coexist with a culture and religion that has no interest in coexisting with yours?  "Behead those who insult Islam" is not an encouraging sign that the holder of that view is interested in dialogue.

Read the whole article here. 

Future Middle East Trends

The author known as 'Spengler' writes in the Asia Times that the Middle East will eventually end up in regional warfare.  His contention is that we might as well get it over with.

If a contrarian thought might be permitted, consider the possibility that all-out regional war is the optimal outcome for American interests. An Israeli strike on Iran that achieved even limited success - a two-year delay in Iran's nuclear weapons development - would arrest America's precipitous decline as a superpower.

Absent an Israeli strike, America faces:

A nuclear-armed Iran;

Iraq's continued drift towards alliance with Iran;

An overtly hostile regime in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood government will lean on jihadist elements to divert attention from the country's economic collapse;

An Egyptian war with Libya for oil and with Sudan for water;

A radical Sunni regime controlling most of Syria, facing off an Iran-allied Alawistan ensconced in the coastal mountains;

A de facto or de jure Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the Kingdom of Jordan;

A campaign of subversion against the Saudi monarchy by Iran through Shi'ites in Eastern Province and by the Muslim Brotherhood internally;

A weakened and perhaps imploding Turkey struggling with its Kurdish population and the emergence of Syrian Kurds as a wild card;

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan; and

Radicalized Islamic regimes in Libya and Tunisia.

Not a pretty picture, is it?  Given the recent death of an American Ambassador in Libya due to terrorist action (and not due to some stupid Youtube video), we are facing a very grim future.  But we may not be in the worst position directly: take Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest loser in the emerging Middle East configuration, and Russia is the biggest winner. Europe and Japan have concluded that America has abandoned its long-standing commitment to the security of energy supplies in the Persian Gulf by throwing the Saudi monarchy under the bus, and have quietly shifted their energy planning towards Russia. Little of this line of thinking will appear in the news media, but the reorientation towards Moscow is underway nonetheless. 

It seems to me that our current foreign policy trajectory is somewhat problematic.  Whoever wins in November is going to inherit quite a mess.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Instapundit

 

Important Reading To Do

For those of you planning to vote in our upcoming Presidential election in November, there is some studying you need to undertake in order to have the requisite understanding to make an informed choice.

 

Doug Ross has an enlightening post at his blog regarding the current and potential policies of the Obama Administration.  One place where Obama's cultural outlook is on display is in California, where supporters are about to have Proposition 31 passed.  Prop 31 will rape the suburbs to support the cities.  The book cited below has more detailed explanations for what this policy will entail.

 

Spreading the Wealth



 

As the author, Stanley Kurtz, noted in his article in National Review Online: 

California’s Proposition 31 is the project of a collection of “good government” groups, in particular, California Forward. California Forward says its goal is “fundamental change.” They’re right about that. The change they have in mind, unfortunately, is creating a collection of de facto regional super-governments designed to undercut the political and economic independence of California’s suburbs. The goal is to redistribute suburban tax money to California’s failing cities. Instead of taking on the mismanagement that is breaking California’s cities, Prop. 31 lets failing cities bail themselves out by raiding the pocketbooks of California’s suburbanites. In the process, Prop. 31 will kill off the system of local government at the root of American liberty.

How does Prop. 31 work? It allows local governments to join together to form “Strategic Action Plans.” Supposedly, this pooling of local municipal services into a kind of de facto collective regional super-government would be voluntary. In fact, Prop. 31 deploys powerful incentives to effectively force the creation of these regional super-governments.  

To begin with, municipalities that join regional collectives–and only those municipalities–can effectively waive onerous state laws and regulations by creating their own more lax versions of those rules. Next, Prop. 31 channels a portion of state sales tax revenue to municipalities that join regional governing collectives–and only those municipalities. Finally, Prop. 31 authorizes local governments participating in the regional collectives to pool their property-tax receipts.

The result will be the effective redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities, and second-class citizenship for Californians who live in municipalities that refuse to pool their tax money by joining regional collectives.

Think about that attitude, and then you will understand the attempts to push mass transit (like building trains to nowhere) and destroy the automobile with extreme CAFE standards as part of the war on the suburbs and removing the mobility of the populace (i.e., you will live and work and, more important, pay taxes where we want you to).

 

A second book you will find of interest is:

Fool Me Twice

 

If you are considering re-electing the current Administration, then it would behoove you to understand what a second term could entail for America.  The President himself has stated that Global Warming/Climate Change will be one of his primary priorities in the next four years.  Understanding what exactly that means (i.e., the effect on the energy industries, transportation, economic growth, etc.) should be your goal.

 

If you are comfortable with the President's current and future policies, then your choice in November is obvious.  If you are still undecided about who you will vote for, then information is your best friend.

 

 

There is a reason the Democrat Party is not running on their record for the last four years.

 

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

 



Brand X

Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish has penned another insightful article.  This time it's about how the election in 2008 demonstrated that our current electorate was swayed not by issues but by a 'brand:'

Obama did not have an aspirational candidacy, he had an aspirational brand. A brand that people wanted to be a part of, because it made them feel good about themselves. And so we learned that there is indeed something worse than Bread and Circuses. An electorate that votes on that is at least somewhat capable of using self-interest to make judgments, but one that votes for the brand that feels good has abandoned even the vestiges of reason and self-interest. Such people are no longer exercising their power over government, instead they have become customers, buying a product that they have no say in how it gets made or what goes in there. Not because they need it, but because they have been programmed to feel good when buying it.

Read the entire article here. And then ask yourself if the past four years will have been enough of a reality check to keep people from buying Brand X again.

Middle East Governments: Rock-Paper-Scissors

Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish has composed yet another fascinating piece about Middle East culture.  This one is about governmental styles:

Every government is only a few bad months away from losing power, and so every government fears being overthrown by its enemies and implements a regime of secret police and prisons. No sooner do the revolutionaries step out of prison to usher in a new era than the same thugs are rehired to torture enemies of the new regime.

The victors of the Arab Spring know that another few bad months could toss them out of power as easily as the bad months put them into power.  Like every other regime in the Muslim Middle East, their main priority is staying in power by making it impossible for others to do to them what they did to their predecessors.That leads to a cycle of repression, broken by temporary liberalization as alliances with the opposition are explored and then abandoned, because the opposition cannot be trusted not to seize power for themselves.

Everyone in the region is playing rock-paper-scissors all the time, which leads to total regional paranoia and conspiracy theories. Everyone distrusts everyone else by necessity and keeps trying to guess how many fingers their rivals will put out while defending against their own weaknesses by preemptively attacking everyone else.

Military governments persecute ideologues. Ideologues imprison top officers. Tribals seek out military protectors-- and then undermine them by backing their ideological enemies so as to stay in control of the relationship.

That is what happened to us and the Saudis, who, along with the other Gulfies, depend on our protection, but undermine us by supporting terrorism and Islamization to gain the upper hand. Paradoxically, the more that the Saudis need us, the more they undermine us, much as any feral population that is dependent on the charitable welfare of the majority lashes out against that majority to the exact degree that it is dependent on it.

The borders of Muslim nations are artificial and fluid. Their nationalism has no depth no matter how often Socialist ideologues borrow from European nationalism to proclaim the glories of the nation. The Muslim Middle East is not purely nomadic, but it is nomadic enough that large families stretch out across different nations and their tribal allegiances stretch with them. Ethnic groups like the Kurds cross national borders, carrying with them the dream of an ethnostate carved out of the Sunni states that dot the desert.

 Read the whole article here.

Vote Fraud Is Just Something Republicans Made Up

At least that's the charge made by Democrats opposed to voter ID laws.

Obviously, there's no reason to have the same level of identity proof required to buy cigarettes, get on a plane, cash a check, etc., to vote, as there's no such thing as people voting who shouldn't have.  And besides, you're a racist, right wing hate monger if you make voters show proof of identity because it unfairly inhibits minority voting.  (Just think about that statement... its proponents are claiming that minorities are too stupid or incapable of obtaining identification to vote and therefore most be protected from themselves.)

Well, guess again.  According to Byron York of the Washington Examiner, vote fraud gave us the colossal embarrassment that is Senator Al Franken of Minnesota:

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.

Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.

And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.

The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare.

Voter fraud matters when contests are close. When an election is decided by a huge margin, no one can plausibly claim fraud made the difference. But the Minnesota race was excruciatingly close. And then, in the Obamacare debate, Democrats could not afford to lose even a single vote. So if there were any case that demonstrates that voter fraud both exists and has real consequences, it is Minnesota 2008.

What a shame that the Democrat party must resort to fraud and deceit to win at the ballot box.  Of course, they've been doing it a long, long time. 

Remember this come November when a nation--badly shaken by four years of economic horror inflicted upon the it by the President's (and Congressional Democrat) policies--looks like it is rejecting the 'enlightened' leadership of its political elite.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip:Instapundit

The Science is Settled! What? Really?

Well, not really.  And this time it's not about climate science.  Apparently there has been some debate as to who the first 'native' Americans were.  The prevailing theory had been that the first natives appeared around what is now known as Clovis, New Mexico, around 13,000 years ago.

Not so fast:

The ancient people who have long been thought to be the first humans to colonise North America were actually johnny-come-latelies, according to scientists who have comprehesively analysed the ancient fossilised poo of their predecessor Americans.

The new revelations come to us courtesy of Copenhagen university, where some of the investigating boffins are based. The scientists say that their results demonstrate conclusively their somewhat controversial thesis: that the "Clovis" culture dating from around 13,000 years ago - which has long been thought to be the earliest human society in the Americas - was actually preceded by human habitation at the Paisley caves in Oregon.

Which, given that humans most likely crossed into the American continental landmass across the Bering land bridge, makes sense.  What's significant about this story is that it illustrates again how what is considered settled, rock solid science (koff, koff, AGW, koff), is so often proven not to be.

The so-called "Clovis First" theory had until 2008 been accepted as unquestioned truth among archaeologists, who considered that the Clovis people - so called from 13,000 year old archaeological finds near the village of Clovis in New Mexico - were the true native Americans. When the still more ancient 14,000-year-old excrement was found at the Paisley caves, it was pointed out by disgruntled boffins that no stone tools or other evidence of the type seen at Clovis had been found, and that the DNA poo evidence could have been erroneous.

Dr Dennis Jenkins of Copenhagen uni was having none of that, however, and he continued to poke about in the caves. Now he and his team are back, this time packing stone artifacts including "Western stemmed" stone projectiles and new, more comprehensive DNA dating.

In other words, Dr. Jenkins and company really knew their shit.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Instapundit

It's Not All About Melting Glaciers

Which aren't melting, by the way.

It appears that the dreaded 'global warming catastrophe' of increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to other changes besides polar bears dancing on ice floes for National Geographic photographers:

A new study published today in “Nature” by authors from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre and the Goethe University Frankfurt suggests that large parts of Africa’s savannas may well be forests by 2100. The study suggests that fertilization by atmospheric carbon dioxide is forcing increases in tree cover throughout Africa. A switch from savanna to forest occurs once a critical threshold of CO2 concentration is exceeded, yet each site has its own critical threshold. The implication is that each savanna will switch at different points in time, thereby reducing the risk that a synchronous shock to the earth system will emanate from savannas.

Yes, holy hotcakes, Batman, we'll get more trees!!!!  Amazing how the planet is able to adjust to climate change... almost like it's been doing it for billions of years.  And all without the help of global warming scaremongers.

In all seriousness, our magnificent planet flexes and copes with all manner of changes.  CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and the planet has survived.  CO2 represents just 0.04% of atmospheric gases, which is the equivalent of 40 people out of a 100,000 people sports stadium.  According to global warming alarmists, we've added the equivalent of one person to the stadium due to man made activities (which assumes that they are correct in claiming that 280ppm is the correct baseline, but information here demonstrates that even this point is highly questionable).  And yet we're supposed to believe people who lie about, hide, and distort the data, and who have yet to build a climate model that can predict weather that's occurred in the past, much less 100s of years in the future.

Call it what it really is: people who want to tell us how to live and what to do because they're so much more morally superior to us... and smarter than us knuckle dragging conservatives, too--just ask them.  Scientists who politicize their work (e.g., climate scientists) are dragging down those who don't into the realm of used car salesmen.

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: Guido Fawkes

Liberty

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Garbage In, Policy Out

So how much more damage will be done to the world's economies based on the junk science that passes for climate research?  The Obama EPA is shutting down coal power plants based on their declaration that carbon dioxide (that gas which we exhale and plants require for life and photosynthesis) is a pollutant.  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being used to force first world economies to subsidize third world dictators because models show that our evil modern societies are driving the planet into a frenzied increase in global temperature.

So just how accurate are those models being used by leftists and eco-nazis (but I repeat myself) to bludgeon the rest of us into returning to the pastoral squalor of the 1600s while subsidizing their global conferences in hardship spots like Rio?  According to Ross McKitrick of the Financial Post:

Just how good are climate models at predicting regional patterns of climate change? I had occasion to survey this literature as part of a recently completed research project on the subject. The simple summary is that, with few exceptions, climate models not only fail to do better than random numbers, in some cases they are actually worse.

 Actually worse than random numbers.  Let me repeat that: Actually worse than random numbers.  Our idiot global policy makers are basing changing our societies and economies on models that perform worse than just flipping a fricking coin to guess about the climate.  Of course, this has been known for some time.

Then in 2008 and 2010, a team of hydrologists at the National Technical University of Athens published a pair of studies comparing long-term (100-year) temperature and precipitation trends in a total of 55 locations around the world to model projections. The models performed quite poorly at the annual level, which was not surprising. What was more surprising was that they also did poorly even when averaged up to the 30-year scale, which is typically assumed to be the level they work best at. They also did no better over larger and larger regional scales. The authors concluded that there is no basis for the claim that climate models are well-suited for long-term predictions over large regions.

 Yes, by golly, the science has been settled, mind you, settled!  All of us troglodyte disbelievers need to be beaten with hammers for asking embarrassing questions.

Read the whole article here.  And then tell the global warming alarmists to keep their damned hands off your wallet and freedom.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades

Che!

Hat tip: Hookers and Booze

To Absent Companions...

The Failure of Modern Education

We are suffering the ill effects of modern education in today's society.  The young are being destroyed by the unionized incompetents who call themselves teachers.  Learning is not important--it's all about feeling good, self esteem, and unstructured actualization leading to creativity.  Well, that's the theory, anyway.

What reality shows, though, is that today's modern educational theory is patent bullshit.  Our children are being set up for failure in life because teachers aren't interested in teaching.  No, that would require actual hard work, students failing and learning from their failures, discovering how to overcome setbacks.  Instead, our children are all taught that everyone is bright, shiny, and equal to everyone else.  It's so much easier to teach songs about how wonderful the President is vice how to reason logically.  Too bad life eventually kicks them in the face, leaving them cursing the buffoons who wasted their childhood's making them feel good about themselves rather than how to think.

Janice Flamengo in PJ Media writes about the 'unteachables,' the 'generation that cannot learn.'

The unteachable student has been told all her life that she is excellent: gifted, creative, insightful, thoughtful, able to succeed at whatever she tries, full of potential and innate ability. Pedagogical wisdom since at least the time of John Dewey — and in some form all the way back to William Wordsworth’s divinely anointed child “trailing clouds of glory” — has stressed the development of self-esteem and a sense of achievement. Education, as Dewey made clear in such works as The Child and the Curriculum (1902), was not about transferring a cultural inheritance from one generation to the next; it was about students’ self-realization. It involved liberating pupils from that stuffy, often stifling, inheritance into free and unforced learning aided by sympathy and encouragement. The teacher was not so much to teach or judge as to elicit a response, leading the student to discover for herself what she, in a sense, already knew. In the past twenty years, the well-documented phenomenon of grade inflation in humanities subjects — the awarding of high “Bs” and “As” to the vast majority of students — has increased the conviction that everyone is first-rate.

Too bad it doesn't work in the real world, where engineers are expected to know facts and how to calculate stress loads on structures, where scientists are expected to know how to conduct research, where writers are expected to know how to construct a grammatical sentence.  No, life is not the fluffy bunny that is wrapped around children by do-good teachers intent on indoctrination, not education.  Unfortunately, it isn't a new occurrence.

It sounds good. The problem, as traditionalists have argued (but without much success), is that the utopian approach hasn’t worked as intended. Rather than forming cheerful, self-directed learners, the pedagogy of self-esteem has often created disaffected, passive pupils, bored precisely because they were never forced to learn. As Hilda Neatby commented in 1953, the students she was encountering at university were “distinctly blasé” about their coursework. A professor of history, Neatby was driven to investigate progressive education after noting how ill-equipped her students were for the high-level thinking required of them; her So Little For the Mind remains well-worth reading. 

 It's the same mindset that demands that we tax the rich because they don't deserve their wealth, that we should share the wealth like "A's" for everyone.  It's why mindless youth flocked to Obama in 2008--because no one had taught them how to reason or discern between truth and propaganda.  And now they reap the whirlwind that is progressive politics, wondering where all the jobs are that were supposed to be waiting for them after graduation.  Welcome to life, suckers.  Aren't you glad now that you didn't listen to the good teachers who tried to actually make you work and learn?

What must be even worse is the feeling those good teachers have in the pits of their stomachs as they try day after day to swim against the tide of crap, only to see mediocrity rewarded because supporting the NEA is more important than building the future.  These few, these band of brothers and sisters, are the real heroes.  We desperately need more of them and much less of the leftist ideologues who use our schools to indoctrinate our children in how horrible our nation and culture are.

Read the whole article here.

November Matters

Congratulations!  Did you know that the United States was the world champion in petroleum reserves?  According to the Government Accounting Office, the oil shale formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming holds recoverable oil stocks the equivalent of the proven reserves of the rest of the planet combined.  Over three trillion barrels of oil in that one field alone--and it's not the only one in the U.S.  Remember ANWAR?

So in essence we have the natural resources in the U.S. to meet our energy needs for centuries.  One minor detail, though: the Federal Government owns the majority of the land where this oil is located.  And given that our current administration has spent billions of taxpayer money to prop up green energy "success" stories like Solyndra, the Chevy Volt, and the Fisker Karma, what do you think the odds are that we'll tap the energy bonanzas located within our own borders?

Yeah, me neither.  As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit notes, " If I were the Russians and the Saudis, I’d be paying off some Green groups to block development."  Oh, wait.... never mind.

Hat tip: For the full story, go read Powerline

Real Estate Update

Hat tip: The Troglopundit

One Of The Most Important Books You Will Ever Read

Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins

This is one of the most important books of the 21st century.  Robert Spencer conducted a scholarly review of the historical Muhammad--something that scholars have been doing in Christianity and other major religions since the 19th century.  Unfortunately, rather than engendering a much needed Reformation of Islam, this book will most likely result in Spencer's death at the hands of an enraged Muslim.

Why?  Because Spencer calls into question the actual existence of Muhammad, and thus the origin of an entire religion followed by over a billion people on this planet.  As Pamela Geller notes:

Imagine if the entire premise that a comprehensive religious, legal, political, social, cultural, and dietary system was based was completely and utterly false.

Robert Spencer's groundbreaking blockbuster book, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins is a game-changer of incomprehensible proportions. It shatters every conventional and accepted myth on the history of Muhammad and Islam. Is it any wonder that Islamic supremacists want to squash it?

The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) already succeeded in getting his talk on the book in New York canceled, but it was held last Tuesday in another location, with four times the audience that it was projected to have before CAIR protested. It was a good sign: people are tired of CAIR's attempts to shut down free speech and quash the truth about Islam and enforce the blasphemy laws under Sharia.

They fear Spencer's new book. This is the first popular book to show all the many holes and inconsistencies and contradictions in the standard story of the life of Muhammad, the development of the Qur'an, and the early years of Islam. Did Muhammad Exist? is going to surprise a lot of people, including non-Muslims who assume that there must have been a man named Muhammad who claimed that he was a prophet of Allah, even if they don't accept his claim. But Spencer shows here that even though Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632, and the Arab conquests of the Middle East and North Africa started shortly after that - supposedly inspired by Muhammad and the Qur'an - we don't start hearing about either one, or anything about Islam at all, until much later, in the 690s. No one, not the people the Arabs conquered nor the Arabs themselves, ever mentions Muhammad or the Qur'an, or even calls the conquerors Muslims, for six decades after the conquests began.

Think about that. That would be like the Nazis overrunning Europe in the early days of World War II, but the Poles and French and the Germans themselves never mentioning Nazism or Hitler or the swastika or Jew-hatred. Or the Islamic jihadists destroying the World Trade Center towers and committing almost 20,000 jihad attacks around the world after that, and no one ever saying a word about Islam or jihad -- oh, wait, that is what's happening.

Is it possible that all of the murders and bombings have occurred because of a belief that apparently originated from a man made attempt to rationalize the tribal conquering of people and territory?  Could this explain why fundamentalist Muslims fly into rages over perceived slights to the Qur'an and Islam--because they fear the result of meaningful investigation into their faith?  

The truth may set them free, but may also result in the death of the rest of us before that happens.

(How similar, then, the reaction of the Left to any investigation of socialism and Marxism--because investigation would lead to uncovering the fascism and totalitarianism underpinning them.  Thus, the Left enforces the political correctness that attempts to keep us from daring to question Islam/global warming/wealth redistribution/ fairness/affirmative action/Occupy whatever/etc. while saying nothing about anti-Semitism, anti-Christian, anti-Caucasian, anti-not Left violence.)

You owe it to yourself and your posterity to read this book.

The Cradle of Islam

Daniel Greenfield brings news of the latest religious proclamation out of Saudi Arabia:

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has ruled that ten year old girls can be married off, because in his words, "Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age." The Mufti, who also recently called for destroying churches in the Arabian Peninsula, is descended from Mohammed Wahhab who gave birth to Wahhabism and his descendants have controlled the Saudi religious establishment, which has given them control of Islam around the world. For all his power and influence, the Mufti is blind and hasn't seen a thing in the last 52 years, an apt metaphor for his entire religion.

Such sensitive souls, the Wahhabis.

The Saudis are not some aberration, they are Islam in its purest and truest form. This is where Islam originated, these are the people whose brutality and cunning spread it across the world, whose clans killed each other, then killed or enslaved minority groups, and then embarked on a wave of conquest that destroyed countless cultures and left behind seeds of hate that linger to this day.

Unlike Egypt or Syria, they were never colonized by European powers and the impact of Ottoman influence was limited. Oil has brought in massive amounts of money, but it has changed very little. There are limousines instead of camels, the slaves have foreign passports, though they are often still slaves, there is still a brisk trade in imported luxury goods, harems for princes and clans staggering under the weight of their indolent progeny.

Religiously, Wahhabism has done its best to recreate the "pure" Islam of its origins. Economically, oil has allowed the Gulf Arabs to prosper without reform or change. And if Mohammed were to ride out of the desert tomorrow, he would have little trouble fitting in, as soon as he developed a taste for Porsches. Anyone who wants to see the world as it was in Mohammed's day can visit Saudi Arabia and see inbred clans, slave labor, veiled women and thugs enforcing the will of Allah on every corner.

Sadly, many in the West remain in a state of rectal-cranial inversion.  They continue to insist that fundamentalist Islam is misunderstood and we must remain tolerant and forgiving. That Islam is represented by the quiet majority who haven't raised arms against us.  That we should make allowances for shari'a and adapt our culture to theirs.

There are two Islams. The real Islam of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and an imaginary Islam that exists only in the mosques of air and card table korans of academics apologists and political pundits who have decided that Islam cannot be bad, because no religion can be bad, not even one which kills and kills, it must just be misunderstood.

Tolerance in only one direction is a recipe for disaster.  We are being forced into a cultural war by those who are determined that their culture will win, and who have no tolerance for infidels, except for those who agree to pay the jizya and accept their chains.  Without an Islamic Reformation, the likelihood of conflict will remain high.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Sultan Knish.