Category: Internet

Angels fan Matt Welch still insists they’re doing fine. Go to his bloggy and help him out.

Right now, 4 of my picks are in first or second place, and in the other two divisions one is lead by my second-place pick and the other is the NL West (where my pick is the Dodgers) so we’re looking pretty good.

My worst picks so far are the Mets for Wild Card in the NL and the Tigers to take their division. The Mets are playing below their ability – especially that Beltran clown, who must have been juiced – and the Tigers were a perverse pick even if they have come a long way since losing 114 games year before last. I hate the White Sox because they beaned Chavez and broke his wrist last year, so I’m not permitted to pick them to win anything.

Sepia Mutiny reports:

Bombay had 37.1 inches of rain on Tuesday

Portland is so jealous it could shriek.

Prospect magazine interviews notorious British jihadi Hassan Butt for some insight into his demented psyche. This is from the setup:

Radical Islam draws recruits from many walks of life, but in Britain its agents are of a type—second-generation British Pakistanis. Somehow they have been worst hit by the populations shifts of the last 50 years and the alienation that came with them. A few have rallied under a banner which brings an intense sense of grievance. And when they are done chasing absurd dreams of caliphates, there is always martyrdom. “For me there’s nothing bigger,” said Butt. I met many in Beeston with his makings: small, rootless lives, seeking bigger things.

I think we’re looking at the consequences of multi-culturalism and its opposition to proper assimilation, but read it see what you think.

In our screwed-up society, where man-hating peroxide feminists pass themselves off as conservatives and “feminists for life” pursue a stealth agenda of normalizing the single-parent family under the guise of anti-abortion activism, it’s good that we have the purity of baseball to exemplify the triumph of good over evil.

Damn Rafael Palmeiro.

This is rather pithy example of Burchill:

Of course, it is all very well to spend your days lecturing others to “celebrate diversity” when you go home each night to Hampstead. But surely the faces of the people who were killed last week told their own story — if this is such an unwelcoming, racist place to live, why do all races continue to flock here, as they do to evil, imperialist America?

Why indeed are the US and the UK the top immigrant destinations in the world? It’s not like anybody moves to places like China and Syria, you know.

In It’s a Wonderful Life the angel Clarence says that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. It seems to me that every time an American political partisan lies about Guantanamo, a suicide bomber gets his vest. Given Juan Cole’s recent statement about jihadi software, I don’t think this is far from the mark.

Today’s Krugman column about the French Utopia is hilariously bad:

French people, don’t fret. Things are going well. Just read Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times and you’ll see that your stagnant ecomomy is actually doing great … even if you can’t find a job!

You’ll also learn that Krugman assumes you’re happy — even when you tell pollsters you’re not.

Krugman kicks off today’s column with a demonstration of what to do when you can’t get your desired result using one set of metrics. Change them!

Krugman is the classic example of the ravages of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Juan Cole is pretty much a worthless twit. He’s a Middle East scholar, but he’s so dishonest that his scholarly insights don’t amount to anything. But he occasionally screws up and says something worthwhile in the course of delivering his anti-American and anti-Bush rants. He lapses into good sense for a few paragraphs in the top entry on his blog today, when he explores the common thread uniting the UK terror-bombers:

What then do they have in common? They got the software installed in their minds. Why? Because they met the installer, and were susceptible to his worldview. That’s all they have in common…

The software is of course a hugely distorted view of the universe. It lets the young man see Israeli atrocities, but not those of Hamas or the Aqsa Brigades. It lets him see American atrocities but not those of Saddam Hussein, Izzedin al-Duri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The software is fatally one-sided. It also exaggerates. The Muslim world is not in danger of being destroyed, least of all by the United States, a warm friend of most Muslim countries. But the software configures a dire crisis, almost apocalyptic, which can only be averted by an ethical hero who is willing to sacrifice himself. The software hides from the convert that he is to become a monster and kill innocents. It tells him he is a noble soldier, and his victims are wicked enemy soldiers, that there are no innocent civilians.

So how do you fight this form of terror? You disrupt the installation of the software in more and more minds. You adopt policies that make the story the software tells implausible. And you reach out to make sure people hear the implausibility.

Of course, his solution is only part of the story: you also have to be prepared to kill them before they can kill you, because you’re never going to completely prevent the software from being installed anywhere at all. Some people are just plain crazy.

The thing I find interesting about this post is the fact that at least some of this distorted software is produced by the elitist, anti-American and anti-Western elements of the mainstream media, from people like, well, Cole, who insist on spinning Western policies in a devious light. I don’t think he meant to ‘fess up to his role.

Cole’s analysis suggests that those of us who do intellectual battle with the propagandists of terror are helping, in our small way, to win this war. That shouldn’t be overlooked.

The IRA claims to have given up on its terrorism campaign, ordering its jihadis to stand down:

Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, said the British and Irish governments had worked for 11 years for today’s outcome. He said: “The war is over, the IRA’s armed campaign is over, paramilitarism is over and I believe that we can look to the future of peace and prosperity based on mutual trust and reconciliation and a final end to violence.”

Mr Ahern added: “If the IRA words are borne out by the verified action it will be a momentous and a very historic development.”

Mr Adams called it an “emotional day” and, flanked by senior members of Sinn Féin, spoke directly to IRA volunteers, telling them: “National liberation struggles have different phases – a time for struggle … a time for war, and also a time to engage, to put the war behind us all – this is that time.”

I’ll believe it when I see it, but meanwhile those who supported the terrorist campaign by raising money in the US (Ted Kennedy, Tom Hayden, Peter King) still need to be prosecuted.

With yesterday’s victory by the A’s and loss by the evil Anaheims, our boys are only four games out of first place. This is a milestone because it puts them in single-series range of the bad guys. Their best pitcher couldn’t beat the Blue Jays, and the A’s best is starting at home against the Tigers Friday. By this time next week, the scales of justice could once more be in balance.

In other sports news, you can forget about the Detroit Pistons next year: Larry Brown is officially with the Knicks.