My Political Transformation

This post is probably pertinent to post here as well. I'm trying to get back to blogging after quite an absence.

Rethinking Things pt. 1 (Politics) posted at The Multifaceted Me

Enjoy!

So Hsu me

Over at Riehl World View yesterday Dan Riehl got a threat from Hillary Clinton campaign photographer Stephen Schwartz for having this photo of the Hildebeast and that wacky now-you-see-him-now-you-don't Chinese money man Norman Hsu posted on his blog without Schwartz's permission.

Dan has taken down the offending photo, but I and other bloggers will keep posting it until the Clintonista chekists come a-calling. If I also have to remove the pic, you can still find it here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Controlling them dang internets ain't so easy, is it Mr. Schwartz?

That *had* to hurt...

On the O'Reilly show LTC Ralph Peters (ret.) smacks down the lying POS Chuck Schumer for his vile, dishonest smear of US troops in Iraq during a speech in the Senate this week:



Ouch.

Where's Slim Pickens when you need him?

As Instapundit would say, heh.

(via Op-For)

Labor Day Disaster

UPDATE - This post of mine from last year's hurricane season is still relevant, especially for us folks here in Jaw-juh: And the winds fell upon them...

Most Americans don't have hurricanes on their mind as they enjoy a holiday day of barbeque & brew, even with the monster Felix the Cat 5 spinning in the Atlantic this very moment. But we are about to enter the peak period for the Atlantic hurricane season, and people on the US East & Gulf Coasts should already have their family disaster plans in place in the event they are impacted by a tropical cyclone.

On this very day 77 years ago - Sept. 3rd, 1930 - at least 4,000 people were killed in the Dominican Republic by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane that smashed into Santo Domingo with winds between 150 to 200 mph, nearly wiping out the city.

The storm traversed Cuba and appeared it was headed towards the Yucatan Peninsula when it made a hard right turn, crossed over Florida as a tropical storm, then moved back into the Atlantic and regained hurricane strength as it brushed Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Such unpredictiablity is only partially mitigated by today's generally - but not completely - accurate computer forecasting models. Bottom line, keep your eye on the Caribbean Sea during every hurricane season because anything can happen.

All the Bird Flu news that's fit to print

By the way, have been meaning to highlight the BirdFluBreakingNews.com site for a while. The BFBN site is an up-to-the-minute aggregator of not only media articles about H5N1 but also the latest blogger analysis of bird flu developments. There are also links to other pandemic resources - veritably, it's the Drudge Report of bird flu!

H5N1 H2H?

This is not good news: Study confirms 2006 human-human spread of bird flu. One of the researchers involved, referring to an outbreak in Indonesia last year, said "The world really may have dodged a bullet with that one, and the next time, we might not be so lucky".

Meanwhile, bullets continue to fly out of Indonesia: One more suspected death from bird flu in Bali. "Sariasih first became sick on August 22nd but her relatives did not suspect that she might be infected with bird flu virus or H5N1 as there was no back-yard chicken or duck farming in the surrounding areas of her home."

A Politically Correct Zombie War

Killing Black Zombies is Racist! At least it is if a White Man Shoots Black Zombies. If many hold such witless PC attitudes, it does not bode well for mankind's hopes of survival in the upcoming global war against the undead.

But no, surely rational human beings would not sit back and let themselves be overrun by an implacable, homocidal enemy in the name of political correctness, would they? Naw, just can't imagine such a thing ever happening.

UPDATE: I should have known - President Bush is all over the looming zombie threat (via Instapundit)

Back to BSing (Blog Stuff, that is)

My apologies for the lack of posting lo these many months; it's been a busy summer (which included a summer teaching gig - my hats off to all you teachers out there, it's one of the hardest jobs I've ever had...but also one of the most rewarding). But now I have time to get back to blogging - try to contain your excitement.

We'll start off with some quick hits on current events:

Barack Obama continues to threaten to unilaterally attack a US ally (and a nuclear-armed one at that). Hillary should just stand back and let this fool bury himself.

With the US military's surge in Iraq working, it's time for a political surge: "one that comes from all directions, both from within Iraq and from the international community".

Is Korean reunification possible? Sure it's possible - but not desired by either side. In the North the Workers' Party of Korea will never willingly give up their stranglehold on the DPRK, and the South fears a post-reunification influx of economic refugees from the North that would overwhelm public services, with staggering economic costs that would make the expensive East/West German reunification look like a picnic in comparison.

Russia has been violating international airspace, assassinating dissidents abroad, blackmailing weak neighbors....ah, makes me nostalgic for the old Cold War days.

"the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a Western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia," the wit Mark Steyn wrote last year. Now the definition of a nanosecond needs to be updated again: the gap between the occurence of any natural or man-made disaster in America and the Democrats hysterically blaming President Bush for it.

Well, ya basta for now. It's good to be back BSing.

R.I.P., Boris

I've just heard the news that Russian ex-president Boris Yeltsin has passed away at the age of 76. I'll never forget watching CNN in the summer of 1991 as he stood atop a Soviet tank in front of the Russian parliament, shouting his defiance against the Communist apparatchiks who launched a coup against the government of Mikhail Gorbachev, putting Gorbachev under arrest and filling Moscow with troops and armor.

Yeltsin was far from perfect; he was bombastic, corrupt (but no worse than other Russian leaders), and a drunkard. He might have done a better job leading Russia during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the bitter transition from Communism to economic reform, although I'm not sure that anyone else could have done much better if they were handed the basket case economy of the former USSR to fix.

For me, my lasting memory of Yeltsin will always be the scene atop the tank during the '91 coup. The man was far from perfect, but this one moment of personal courage helped transform a nation forever.