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July 26, 2005

"A Devil's Choice"

Confederate Yankee writes "Jihad for Dummies," and tries to explain why, as tragically as it turned out, the London cops made the right decision to shoot the (incorrectly identified terrorist suspect) under very difficult circumstances.

And, of course, having only a second or two at most to make this decision.

You can criticize cops, but you can't knock them for failing to be omniscent.

Only one person who ever walked the earth was omniscent and all wise, and of course that person was Hillary! Rodham.

She makes the sun rise and the flowers bloom. She also, in her infinite wisdom, created pantsuits, and gave this gift, Prometheus-like, to the races of man.

posted by Ace at 02:31 PM

Comments

But God talks to bush, isn't that more than enough to scare Hillary?

Posted by: jeff on July 26, 2005 02:44 PM

Hillary is friend to all children!

Posted by: apotheosis on July 26, 2005 03:17 PM

With our blood, with our sould, we will defend you Hillary! Rodham!

Posted by: Rocketeer on July 26, 2005 04:06 PM

Funny! Great post.

Posted by: Malebranche on July 26, 2005 04:22 PM

What is so hard about understanding the fact that if you run from the cops, they may shoot you? It was tragic, and unfortunate, but shit happens.

Posted by: Gun-Toting Liberal on July 26, 2005 04:51 PM

A classical Prometheus reference!

You rock, dude. Totally, fer sure. Prometheus gave us, what, beer, wasn't it?

Posted by: drc on July 26, 2005 05:01 PM

Well, not just running away from cops,

But in a place that is arguably more alert notched up than the Sunni triangle, wearing suspicious lookin clothes, running away from a cop who's yelling at you.

I've traveled overseas. Been places where I didn't speak the language. If a cop started yelling at me, and I didn't understand a goddam word he was saying, I would do everything in my power to make him understand I am no threat, and I'm gonna do EXACTLY what he tells me, just as soon as I figure out what it is!

Posted by: Dave in Texas on July 26, 2005 05:23 PM

Yea verily, Hillary gave us implausible deniability: what man can not now smile at his woman and boldly claim, "Bill did, but did not; I did, but did not."

Hillary did not seek to deceive us with cookies; Hillary doth not bake. Hillary giveth, and Hillary taketh away.

Hillary giveth good student government, squirrel-cheeks, a myriad of unsatisfactory hairstyles; Hillary giveth subtle political triangulation.

Yea, Hillary, whose ways are mysterious and whose foes are legion; she suffereth them not.

Posted by: railwriter on July 26, 2005 06:01 PM

Gun-Toting Liberal had it right:

It was tragic, and unfortunate, but shit happens.

Posted by: Gun-Toting Conservative on July 26, 2005 06:33 PM

When you fight a defensive war and treat counter-terrorism as a policing activity, who suffers? The people suffer, as their daily lives and commerce are disrupted by bag searches, their privacy is invaded by "security" cameras, and their heads are invaded by cops' bullets. That poor Brazilian immigrant had to die so we could be nice to the Saudi Wahhabis who funded the mosques that recruited the terrorists for whom the police mistook him. Those who think that man's death is all in a day's work in the War on Terror are thinking just a shade less pacifistically than the bien pensant intellectuals who insist the war is all in our heads.

Arafel

Posted by: Arafel on July 26, 2005 07:06 PM

To be fair to the Brazilian, the cops were plain-clothes. If they didn't identify themselves clearly (I'm not saying that happened, I'm only saying if), or if he didn't understand them, I can't blame him for running from the men brandishing automatic weapons.

Posted by: jic on July 26, 2005 09:03 PM

Just to clarify: Assuming the cops did identify themselves properly, I think they did the right thing in difficult circumstances. Shit happens.

Posted by: jic on July 26, 2005 09:15 PM

jeff, no, cuz the other guy talks to Hillary.

;-)

Posted by: Rightwingsparkle on July 26, 2005 11:00 PM

Prometheus gave us fire, and thereby, cooking.

*Dionysus* gave us beer.

Well, wine.

The ancient greeks didn't drink beer.

Posted by: Knemon on July 26, 2005 11:03 PM

railwriter,
Let's not forget that Hillary! also gave us pantsuits! Imagine how horrid the world would be without those pantsuits!

Posted by: azlibertarian on July 26, 2005 11:34 PM

Wait a minute. The ancient Greeks drank wine but not beer?

That explains a lot. Especially the tot-buggery. Remember that the next time the waiter suggests the Pinot. He's probably wanting to bugger you or your kids or something.

Posted by: spongeworthy on July 27, 2005 08:55 AM

Yup. When we visited Russia one summer, we were stopped by customs and they weren't going to let us in the country with our luggage and some medical supplies we were taking in.

It was pretty easy to figure out what they wanted, despite our terrible Russian. $200 cash, American, got us through customs with no questions asked.

Posted by: Slublog on July 27, 2005 10:43 AM

If a suspect draws a gun and appears to endanger a bystander, the police are justified in shooting the suspect, even if it later turns out the gun was not loaded and the actions were not as they appeared.

The Brazilian was a suspect that appeared to have the characterists of a bomber and endangering bystanders. In context of recent events he was simply a victim of his own stupidity and the elevated threat level.

Posted by: boris on July 27, 2005 11:23 AM

A Song for Hillary

The whole world will be dancing in the street when Hillary Rodham Clinton
takes her Senate seat.
No carpetbagger is she; she's a human Statue of Liberty.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary!

We're so glad for the joy that she will bring.
We can always count on her to do the right thing.
She's faithful and honest, too.
Thank God she's happened to me and you.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary!

No matter what the voices of deception say,
Vote Hillary Clinton on Election Day.
No matter the problems, big or small, she will tackle and solve them all.
The whole world will be dancing in the street when Hillary Rodham Clinton
takes her Senate seat.
No carpetbagger is she; she's a human Statue of Liberty.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary!

~ from a leaflet handed out by Hillary operatives outside her birthday bash at the Roseland ballroom

*This is no ordinary campaign ditty. It more closely resembles the sort of totalitarian anthem that the Young Pioneers used to chant while strewing roses at Stalin’s feet.*

From:
A Dispatch from Occupied New York
By Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 9, 2000

Posted by: on July 28, 2005 01:33 AM

Amazon.com Widgets

Now Available!
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A Horde-sourced Cookbook
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Top Headlines

This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away
I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.

Oil prices plunge on bizarre realization that Eric Swalwell may actually be straight. A rapey molester, allegedly, but a straight one.

Artemis II Crew releases clearest images of the Far Side yet recorded

Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win
Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

Tuq'r's makeover is 100!

Alfred Hitchcock learns to talk with TJM

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]