Asheville

The 10th floor of the Buncombe County Courthouse has a good view of downtown Asheville. The two tallest buildings in the shot are the BB&T Building in the center and the Jackson Building to the left.



This is the view from the ground level in front of the courthouse looking in the same direction. 10 floors makes a difference.


Looking toward the Battery Park Apartments. The building to the left with the framework on the roof is the National Climatic Data Center. The Parking garage is connected to the Asheville Civic Center.

Here's a view of the upper floors of the Battery Park Apts. If anyone wants to get me a Christmas present the entire top floor remodeled into a luxury penthouse condo would be nice. Don't forget to set up a trust fund to pay the property tax for at least the next 50 years.

This is the Flatiron Building. It is named after the original Flatiron Building in Manhattan. The original (actually called The Fuller Building) was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.

Burnham was one of the architects who designed the Chicago Columbian Exposition along with Frederick Law Olmsted who also designed the grounds of the Biltmore Estate.

Asheville part II

Looking over the top of the Vance Memorial the building with the red roof was, in the early 1980s the hottest gay nightclub in Asheville. It stayed open till about 5:00 AM and after the other bars and nighclubs would close it would lose its gay character and become an after hours hangout for other bar/restaurant employees.

The lower building to the left of the Jackson Building is the headquarters for both the Asheville Police Dept. and the Asheville Fire Dept.

Beside the Buncombe Co. Courthouse is the Asheville City Office Building. Originally they were supposed to have the same architecture, but the City and County couldn't come to an agreement and so went their separate ways. This is still happening today.

Looking past the office building toward the hospital district.

Here's a better view of that church. Note the classic European design.

Contrast that with the First Baptist Church. It along with the Catholic Church that I showed you here. They appear Byzantine with their domed roofs.

In the upper left corner of this shot you can see the Grove Park Inn.

Asheville part III

The Grove Park Inn is a true world class resort. It had no equal in the region, in fact in the entire Southeast, until he Inn on the Biltmore Estate opened. Now it is a toss up. I suspect that the GPI has the edge because it has been here longer and is more developed.


It is hard to get a picture of the entire front of the building, what with the size of it and the trees in the way.


The Grove Park Inn opened in 1913.

There are lots of pictures on their website.

Their rates are not bad with rooms going from $225.00 to $300.00 per night in the off season.

I don't want to think what they'll be charging during their centennial celebration during 2013.

My old pickup truck felt very out of place in the parking lot.

Today's poll

Cutting up Carter

From KESQ NewsChannel 3:

RENO, Nev. Former President Carter is urging northern Nevadans to elect his son, Jack, to the Senate to help combat a Bush administration he says has brought "international disgrace" to the country.

The mind simply boggles. The President who presided over the single most humiliating chapter of American history - a chapter which came about through his bungling - now has the gall to speak about anyone else's "disgrace"!

The former president told a crowd of about 300 on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno today that the nation is more sharply divided that it has ever been as a result of Bush's policies.

I suppose that Mr. Peanut assigns no blame whatsoever to the Democrat Party for this division. After all they only adopted a policy of oppose everything, criticize everything, the national security and the morale of the troops and the well being of the nation be damned!

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, he says he's deeply embarrassed that the American government now stands convicted around the world as one of the greatest abusers of civil rights. He continued the theme in a dinner speech to 700 at a Democratic fundraiser tonight, saying every past president has been a supporter of human rights, until this one.

Carter won his Nobel Peace Prize because he had the good fortune to be president when Anwar Sadat had the good sense to decide to make peace with Israel. Carter hosted the meeting where Begin and Sadat worked out the details. I guess you can get a Nobel Prize for serving Hors d'Oeuvres and making sure that the beds are turned down in the guest quarters. Why didn't Conrad Hilton ever win one?

As for the former Joke-in-Chief's statement about human rights - I get it! America is EXACTLY THE SAME as Iraq under Saddam or the Third Reich under Hitler! It's all so clear to me now! No! Wait a minute. We must be WORSE than those regimes since we are the greatest abusers of human rights.

Jack Carter is bidding to unseat Republican Senator John Ensign. Both father and son said Ensign must go because he has voted 96 percent of the time with the Bush administration. They say that in addition to bungling foreign policy, Bush has cut taxes for the rich to the detriment of working Americans.

If Ensign voted with Bush on amnesty for illegal aliens and his "guest worker" open borders plan Carter might have a point. But I'll bet large sums of cash that wasn't what he was talking about. Also since when is leaving more money in the productive sector a bad thing?

The former president say that Bush's policies have been a radical departure from what all previous presidents have done, including Republicans like Bush's own father, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower.

Let's look at Jimmah's roll models. Bush senior says that not finishing the job in Iraq was his greatest regret. Reagan's greatest error was cutting and running from Lebanon. That rare failure of resolve from the Gipper helped convince Osama bin Laden that America was a paper tiger when confronted with terrorism. The retreat from Vietnam which Nixon oversaw started the period of American decline which George W Bush is trying to reverse. And if we are listing presidential failures let's not forget Carter's own wretched handling of the Iranian Revolution and his pathetic response to the hostage taking at our embassy.

He says never before has the United States had a policy of pre-emptive war, as was the case in what he called an "ill-advised invasion" of Iraq.

Thank goodness earlier presidents didn't follow the Bush Doctrine. Just think of what would have happened if FDR had squashed Hitler as soon as he occupied the Sudetenland. No WWII, no millions dead in death camps. Yep, it is so much better to be reactive than proactive!

Carter needs to go back to hammering nails. He was good at it and it kept him out of trouble.

Nut job Soros to leave politics ?

From The New York Post:

September 29, 2006 -- Billionaire liberal financier George Soros, who spent millions of his fortune trying to oust President Bush in 2004, yesterday said he hopes to stay out of politics from now on.

"In the future, I'd very much like to get disengaged from politics," Soros said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting on the Upper East Side. "I'm interested in policy and not in politics."

This could mean several things.

One, he may realize that he is a liability to the Democrat Party. He may be smart enough and honest enough with himself to face the fact that he did more harm than good for the Democrats. He may have honestly surveyed the Party and came to grips with the reality that by pouring millions of dollars into the lunatic fringe, to the point that they became the mainstream - driving out reasonable Democrats like Joe Lieberman that he has helped to make the Democrats unelectable anywhere outside of the Northeast, the Pacific coast and socialist Minnesota.

Two, he may believe that his work is done. He may look at the way that the kook fringe (the part of the Party that he belongs to) of the Democrats have become the dominant force in the Party and figure that he doesn't need to spend any more of his money.

Three, he may have noted the way that conservative policy institutes like Heritage and Cato helped lay the intellectual groundwork for bringing conservatives to power and helping them to stay there and believe that the hard left's passport back to control of the White House and the Legislature lies down the same path. That would explain why he is going to concentrate on policy.

Four, maybe he is just giving up. After all with all the money he spent trying to defeat George W Bush in the last election and with Democrat hopes for regaining the House and Senate evaporating amid rising Bush poll numbers he just might feel that America is too benighted to merit his enlightened leadership.

McCain caves

From The Washington Post:

Congress approved landmark changes to the nation's system of interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects last night, preparing the ground for possible military trials for key al-Qaeda members under rules that critics say will draw stiff constitutional challenges.

The Senate joined the House in embracing President Bush's view that the battle against terrorism justifies the imposition of extraordinary limits on defendants' traditional rights in the courtroom. They include restrictions on a suspect's ability to challenge his detention, examine all evidence against him, and bar testimony allegedly acquired through coercion of witnesses.

The Senate's 65 to 34 vote marked a victory for Bush and fellow Republicans a month before the Nov. 7 elections as their party tries to make anti-terrorism a signature campaign issue. Underscoring that strategy, the House last night voted 232 to 191 to authorize Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, with GOP leaders hoping to add it to their list of accomplishments even though it has no chance of Senate passage before this weekend's scheduled adjournment. On the final wiretapping vote, 18 Democrats joined 214 Republicans to win passage. Thirteen Republicans, 177 Democrats and one independent voted nay.

I told you that the President would get what he wanted.

McCain is crazy, he is evil and he is a backstabber. He is willing to sacrifice the well being of the Republican Party and the Nation as a whole for his political ambitions, but he isn't stupid enough to continue a course of action when it becomes obvious that he is endangering not only his presidential hopes, but his chance of being reelected to the Senate.

Even if we assume that McCain's opposition to the legislation in question was based in genuine principal (that is if a creature like McCain can even have any principal other than greed for power) a thing like McCain will not allow principal to stand in the way of attaining his goal.

As for the other RINOs who were backing McCain's play - they are irrelevant. They have no independent will, having sold their souls to McCain years ago for whatever gain they imagine they will get when McCain gains the White House.

The Blond One on Clinton's breakdown

It's just like old times. Bill Clinton delivers an impassioned speech, and within 24 hours the Web is bristling with documentation, establishing that nearly every sentence was a lie.

The glassy-eyed Clinton cultists are insisting their idol's on-air breakdown during a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace was a calculated performance, which is a bit like describing Hurricane Katrina as a "planned demolition." Like an Osama tape, they claim he was sending a signal to Democrats to show them how to treat Republicans. Listen up, Democrats: Let's energize the undecideds by throwing a hissy fit on national television!

The Clintonian plan for action apparently entails inventing lunatic conspiracy theories, telling lots of lies, shouting, sneering, interrupting, and telling your interlocutor, "(Y)ou've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever" — all for asking a simple question. To wit: "Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaida out of business when you were president?" The only thing Clinton forgot to say to Wallace was, "You'd better put some ice on that."

Let me be the first to welcome Chris Wallace to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy! If the son of Mike Wallace is a member, can Chelsea be far behind?

[Snip]

. . .the Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers tell us this was a masterfully planned set-piece by their leader.

I also think Jessica Savitch's slurred, incoherent broadcast on "NBC Nightly News" in October 1983 was intentional. Others say it was drug-addled breakdown that ended her career, but obviously Savitch intended to speak in garbled gibberish on air as a brilliantly executed prelude to her death in a ditch weeks later.

And when Stephen Colbert did a routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner that bombed, I think he planned it that way.

Then there was Capt. Joseph Hazelwood's meticulously planned off-loading of 11 million gallons of crude oil off the Exxon Valdez.

Clinton shouted so many lies during his televised meltdown, only the World Wide Web can capture them all. These are just a few.

I eagerly await the frothing moonbat commenters who flap down out of the woodwork whenever Ann Coulter is quoted.

Have at it. . .

Must be nice to have nothing more important to worry about

From AftenPosten:

The head of The Democrats Party, a splinter group of former Progress Party hardliners, Vidar Kleppe, is outraged that boys at Dvergsnes School in Kristiansand have to sit and pee.

Kleppe accuses the school of fiddling with God's work, and wants the matter discussed at the executive committee level of the local council, newspaper Dagbladet reports.

"When boys are not allowed to pee in the natural way, the way boys have done for generations, it is meddling with God's work," Kleppe told the newspaper.

"It is a human right not to have to sit down like a girl," Kleppe said.

Principal Anne Lise Gjul at Dvergsnes School would not comment on Kleppe's plans to make political waves and regretted if anyone was offended by the ban on standing and passing water.

Gjul told NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) that the young boys are simply not good enough at aiming, and the point was to have a pleasant toilet that could be used by both boys and girls.

It should be pointed out here that The Democrats Party of Norway has no relationship with the Democrat Party in the United States. The American Democrat Party has been sitting to pee since the Carter Administration.

ACLU: A Legacy Of Hypocrisy

In case you haven’t heard, a group of dissenters from the ACLU are rebelling and calling for a change in the current leadership of the main organization. The summary of things this new group is fed up with is hypocrisy and the ACLU is full of it. Purging the ACLU of its hypocrisy is bound to be a Goliath task.

Where do we even begin with the ACLU’s hypocrisy? How about its odd stance on the Second Amendment? They have decided that the term “the people” that is contained in the Second Amendment does not apply to “the people” as it does in all of the other rights contained in the Bill of Rights. Instead they say that the Second Amendment only applies to militias such as the National Guard. They defend even the most radical free speech issues as individual rights, but somehow have adopted the opposite position on the Second Amendment.

In August of 2005 the New York ACLU sued against random bag searches on the NY Subway. Ironically the NYCLU HQ has a sign warning visitors that all bags are subject to search.

The ACLU have fought tooth and nail against the Bush administration’s NSA program, a program designed to track international phone calls being made to or from suspected terrorist organizations. They have hailed themselves defenders of the right to privacy and labelled the program an illegal “secret” program of “domestic spying”. All the while the ACLU has its own “secret” program of domestic spying of its own members and their personal financial information. This program has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with the real bottom line of fund-raising. Former ACLU board member Michael Myers was shocked at this discovery.

The American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders’ commitment to privacy rights.

Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization’s frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes.

The group’s new data collection practices were implemented without the board’s approval or knowledge and were in violation of the ACLU’s privacy policy at the time, according to Michael Meyers, vice president of the organization and a frequent internal critic. He said he had learned about the new research by accident Nov. 7 during a meeting of the committee that is organizing the group’s Biennial Conference in July.

He objected to the practices, and the next day, the privacy policy on the group’s Web site was changed. “They took out all the language that would show that they were violating their own policy,” Meyers said. “In doing so, they sanctified their procedure while still keeping it secret.”

After spending 23 years on the ACLU board, the “defenders of free speech” issued gag orders to him, not to speak about the issue. Now thats free speech for you.

When it comes to free speech the ACLU claim to be its most steadfast defender. Now, I am not an absolutist on unlimited free speech. However, most people would think that an organization arguing for hate cults to protest with “God Hates Fags” signs at military funerals, neo nazis to march through Jewish neighborhoods, and that child porn distribution is protected by the First Amendment are about as absolutist as it gets. Not so!

When it comes to abortion protesters the ACLU could care less about their free speech rights. As a matter of fact they actively fight against pro-life protesters’ free speech and have even tried RICO lawsuits on them. It is scary to see just how far the ACLU will go for its unrestricted abortion agenda. Free speech definitely takes a backseat to their pro-abortion agenda. They have even listed it as their number one priority pushing the defense of the First Amendment, the alleged heart and soul of the ACLU’s mission, down to third on the list, after civil rights.

But don’t just take my word for it, listen to the words of a former Executive Director:

The right to express unpopular opinions, advocate despised ideas and display graphic images is something the ACLU has steadfastly defended for all of its nearly 80-year history.

But the ACLU, a group for which I proudly worked as executive director of the Florida and Utah affiliates for more than 10 years, has developed a blind spot when it comes to defending anti-abortion protesters. The organization that once defended the right of a neo-Nazi group to demonstrate in heavily Jewish Skokie, Ill., now cheers a Portland, Ore., jury that charged a group of anti-abortion activists with $107 million in damages for expressing their views. Gushed the ACLU’s press release: “We view the jury’s verdict as a clarion call to remove violence and the threat of violence from the political debate over abortion.”

Were the anti-abortion activists on trial accused of violence? No. Did they threaten violence? Not as the ACLU or Supreme Court usually defines it, when in the context of a call for social change.

The activists posted a Web site dripping with animated blood and titled “The Nuremberg Files,” after the German city where the Nazis were tried for their crimes. Comparing abortion to Nazi atrocities, the site collected dossiers on abortion doctors, whom they called “baby butchers.” …

This is ugly, scary stuff. But it is no worse than neo-Nazi calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people, or a college student posting his rape fantasies about a fellow coed on the Web, both of which the ACLU has defended in the past.

Defending NAMBLA to print material advocating for sex between grown men and boys is the definition of defending “robust freedom of speech” in the ACLU’s book, but defending people’s right to protest against killing the unborn somehow fails to make the list.

But the hypocrisy does not end there. When it comes to protecting religious expression the ACLU has proven itself to be number one in America’s religious censors. They have consistently shown themselves to be hostile towards Christianity in particular. When the Tangipahoa Parish School Board in Louisiana opened its board meetings with a prayer like they had for 30 years the ACLU sued. After the ACLU won that case and the School Board ignored the court ruling, Louisiana ACLU chief Joe Cook called for them to be jailed and compared them to terrorists. Mr. Cook is currently leading an attack on plan for a Katrina memorial paid for with private funds to be erected on private land simply because it is in the shape of a cross and might offend some sensitive passerby. When valedictorian of Foothill High, Brittany McComb, decided to share her faith voluntarily at her graduation cermony the ACLU said it was the right call to pull the plug. Currently when the ACLU wins a case from attacking religious expression it is awarded attorneys fees, often in the millions, at the expense of the American taxpayer. The U.S. House of Representatives recognized this abuse and passed the Public Expression Of Religion Act to put a stop to it. However, the threats and abuse will continue however if we can’t convince the Senate to pass this as well.

But the hypocrisy goes even further. The ACLU’s disdain for free speech outside of its agenda extends beyond Christians and pro-lifers to its own dissenting members. Very recently the ACLU attempted to put forth a policy restricting the free speech of its own members.

Natt Hentoff, another former ACLU board member, was incredulous:

“For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members — I can’t think of anything more contrary to the reason the A.C.L.U. exists.”

After a huge controversy, media coverage, and public concern of the NY Attorney General’s office the ACLU dropped the proposal. Instead they switched to more effective measures of replacing or voting out the members that were not in line with their agenda.

When it comes to principles the ACLU has none other than lining their pocketbooks and furthering their own liberal agenda. As I said at the beggining of the article, cleansing the ACLU of hypocrisy will be a mammoth task. I don’t think its possible. I’m more hopeful that their own greed and corruption will eat them from the inside. I think we are beggining to see the cracks and hopefully enough light will shine through them to wake people up to the truth.

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.

Hatred from some people is a complement

From The Brussels Jorunal:

A quote from Wim Uyttersprot, the CEO of the Brussels company U2U, in a message to an Israeli businessman:

I appreciate your interest in my company, but after the destructive and inhumane war crimes that Israel committed in Lebanon, and because of the apartheid regime that your government is enforcing in Palestine, U2U does not see it fit to connect itself with Israeli products. I hope the political situation in your country changes completely and will be based on peace and respect for non Jewish cultures. Warm regards, Wim Uyttersprot

Too bad this company doesn't do business in the US. I would like to send them my regards by boycotting their services.

Of course going through life with a name like, "Wim Uyttersprot" might just be punishment enough.

Cox & Forkum

1000 words.

Don't believe all the polls

Drudge is reporting that there is behind the scenes skepticism about the Democrats supposedly good poll numbers:

Democratic pollsters are pushing lots of polls that show second- and third-tier candidates performing surprisingly well. If most of these challengers win, the Democrats will gain 30 or 40 House seats.

Obviously, that's unlikely. Extremely unlikely, writes Stuart Rothenberg in fresh editions of ROLL CALL.

MORE

Rothenberg: "Count me as skeptical, and not only because most of these poll memos contain the dreaded "and when voters were read short descriptions about the candidates" second ballot that allegedly measures a challenger's fundamental strength. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride..."

This doesn't shock me. I just find it very hard to believe that the American people would be so stupid as to turn the government over to the Surrender Party in the middle of a war.

BTY, the tactic the Democrats are using is called "push polling". This is where the questions are worded in such a way as to get the desired answer. For example if you've ever gotten a call from a pollster that went like this:

Pollster: Do you favor the Democrat Party’s plan to fund dignified and humane care for our senior citizens or are you one of the demonic Republican fiends who want to murder our elderly by throwing them out in the snow with no food or medical care, making yourself the exact moral equivalent of a Nazi death camp commandant who will certainly burn in hell for all eternity?

Then you've been "push polled".

Day by Day

1001 words.

North Carolina Blogroll

I'm keeping this post on top for a few days. Scroll down for new material.



I have found blogrolls for California bloggers, for Oregon bloggers, Texas bloggers and Pennsylvania bloggers. There is even one for conservative Canadian bloggers, but I have not run across one for North Carolina bloggers.

So I am starting one. If you want to be part of the Tarheel Blogroll just leave as comment to this post or send me an email with your name, blog name, URL and your connection to North Carolina.

You can join if you live in NC, have property in NC, have ever lived in NC or seriously plan to move to NC.

Put the flag button on your blog and link it back to this post and display the blogroll and I'll add you to the blogroll within 48 hours.

Here is the blogroll code:

< (script) language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=9eeecb9504097af1b3ffe6b562d8b5f7>< (/script)>

Copy and paste this code into your sidebar. Remove the parenthisis from around the words "(script)" and "(/script)" and do not leave a space between the first and last "<" before the words "script and /script" and it should work.


If you have any problems email me and I'll try to help.

"Allah Is Dead"

I just ran across this on The Brussels Journal. It is too good not to post in its entirety:


A quote from Jack Wheeler on To the Point News, 19 September 2006

[The Pope] knows that a religion capable of responding to criticism only with violence and incapable – metaphysically incapable – of reasoned dialogue has no future. He knows he is no Manuel II facing vast Moslem armies he has no capacity to withstand. There are no more vast Moslem armies. All that Islam has left are terrorists, suicide bombers, and imams preaching hate.

[…] The time has come for Islam to be scrapped. It cannot be reformed, it cannot be saved by “moderates” from the “extremists” who have “hijacked” it. It’s finished. Time for folks to spiritually begin anew. Call it a theological application of Gresham’s Law. Bad money drives out the good. It doesn’t matter how many Islamic “moderates” hold up their religious currency and claim it is worth something. […] Christianity will survive and triumph because the nexus between God and Man is Man’s Essence, that which makes him both human and “in the image and likeness of God” – his capacity for reason and rational self-examination. Islam will fail and die because it rejects any such connection.

This is what Pope Benedict understands, this is what he meant in his speech. Some day in years to come, there will be a plaque at the University of Regensburg which will read: On this spot, on September 12, 2006, where Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture on Faith and Reason, the God of Islam known as Allah, died.

This may very well be true. However a fundamentally irrational movement will not go quietly into that good night. They will kick and scream and fight to the bitter end. It could very well be that the last Muslim on earth dies in a suicide bombing.

Ramadan is upon us once again

You know that the "holy" month of Ramadan has arrived when the smoke from burning cars hangs over European cites and the sounds of mob violence can be heard in the air. Paul Belien reports in The Brussels Journal:

Last Sunday the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began. It lasts until 23 October. Many will remember last year’s ramadan riots, which set France and, to a lesser extent, parts of Belgium and Denmark, alight. Rioting went on for three weeks. Each night thousands of cars were set alight by immigrant youths, until the French and Belgian governments ordered the police to no longer divulge any information about the disturbances, after which the media stopped reporting, the youths lost interest and the number of nightly “carbecues” in France dropped to the “normal” level of about 50.

It looks like some Brussels immigrant youths want to make “ramadan rioting” an
annual event. Last Saturday morning, between 1 and 4 am, ten cars were set on fire in the Brussels borough of Schaarbeek. Last night several car and shop windows were smashed and one shop and five cars were set alight in the Brussels Marollen quarter.

Well, how else would you celebrate a sacred religous holiday?

Today's poll

I left one choice for my leftist and/or French readers.

A legend passes

This was posted on Jeff Cooper's Commentaries:

JEFF COOPER

10 MAY 1920 - 25 SEPTEMBER 2006

RIP

At the request of the family it is our sad duty to report the passing of Jeff Cooper on the afternoon of September 25, 2006. Jeff died peacefully at home while being cared for by his wife Janelle and daughter Lindy.

There will be a private internment at Gunsite by invitation, with a public memorial service at the Whittington Center at a date to be announced. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.
SHOOT STRAIGHT

Jeff did a great deal for the shooting sports and for those of us who carry guns for self defense. His commentaries on politics and culture were always fun and will be missed.

Here is some biographical information from his website:

Jeff became a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Marines after serving in the Pacific during World War II and having re-enlisted for Korea.

In the fifties Jeff was a guiding light in the Bear Valley Gunslingers in California, later to develop into the Southwest Combat Pistol League. Many techniques new to pistol shooting which revolutionised the use of the handgun in combat can be traced back to these beginnings and Jeff's subsequent work at the American Pistol Institute at Gunsite Ranch, Arizona (which Jeff founded and developed). Jeff was very influential in the development of the modern rifle, notably with the "Scout Rifle" concept.

Of special note are Jeff's writings on the combat mindset, particularly in Jeff's books "Fireworks" and the later "To Ride, to Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth." Jeff held an MA in History and Jeff's clear and precise writing style complements the intelligence of Jeff's writings.

Jeff was Editor at Large for Guns & Ammo magazine where edited versions of the "Commentaries" were published. Jeff was the Founding President and Honorary Lifetime Chairman, the International Practical Shooting Confederation. Jeff was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association of America.

As is noted in these "Commentaries" Jeff's writings always garnered controversy and are read with interest by all true students of the use of firearms in the social context. They have a wider relevance to those seeking insights into the condition of modern man.

An era ends and we will not see his like again for some time to come.

Another treasonous CIA leak

Michelle Malkin has something interesting today:

The Wall Street Journal calls on the Bush Administration to declassify the National Intelligence Estimate, which leakers blabbed about to the NY Times and Washington Post. I think it's a good idea . . .

There is also a good roundup of commentary on the issue.

I agree that the entire document should be released. This is just the latest episode in the CIA's covert war to bring down the Bush Administration. The entrenched federal bureaucrats at the Agency, which was founded under a Democrat administration and packed with partisan Democrats who have perpetuated the partisan nature of the organization down through the years, are deeply hostile to President Bush. They should not be allowed to release a portion of an intelligence estimate carefully cherry picked to create a false impression.

This hostility is founded on three things:

One, pure partisan politics. They are Democrats and they resent the fact that their ultimate boss is a Republican.

Two, resentment of Mr. Bush's proactive foreign policy and use of military force. The Agency likes to prepare intelligence estimates which take the middle road and tell the intended recipient what they want to hear. For example, during the entire post-WWII Cold War the CIA's estimates of the future of the USSR were that its internal economic and political difficulties would cause its collapse in about 50 years. The number was ALWAYS 50 years. Right up to the bitter end. The CIA knew that American politicians and people wanted to hear that the USSR was doomed and the American way was best, but the end for the communists was always in the next generation so that no one at the Agency would still be around to be held accountable for a wrong estimate. The CIA does not like its work product to be used to affect policy in real time. The chance that they could be made to look incompetent and even foolish is too great. Just think of the Iraqi WMD snafu.

Three, the financial interests of CIA employees predispose them to work for Democrat majorities because they know that their change for a pay raise is better with them. The Democrats are, have been and probably always will be in the pocket of the labor unions and the biggest and most powerful union is the Federal Employees Union.

How do the moderates differ from the militants?

When this was posted at Shooting the Messenger I told Fits that it was too good not to steal.

The main difference between moderate Islam and militant Islam is that militants believe that they can force the West to submit to sharia by bombing, shooting hijacking and attacking with weapons of mass destruction.

Moderates, on the other hand, believe that the West can be forced to submit to sharia by immigrating in large numbers to Western nations and having lots of children so that they become the majority and vote in a theocratic dictatorship.

In both cases the goal is the same. To turn England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and all the other EU nations, and ultimately the United States as well into a carbon copy of Saudi Arabia or Iran.

A new Tarheel signs on

Longstreet who bloggs at INSIGHT on Freedom has joined the Tarheel Bloggers. This is a good conservative political blog from the southeastern coastal region of North Carolina.

Go over and give him a big Tarheel welcome!

Today's poll

Why we fight

I went out to lunch with some friends after church today and snapped this picture.

It occurred to me that little girls like this should be one of our strongest motivators for fighting and winning the war on Islamofascism.

The treatment of females in Islamic society is barbaric, retrograde, dysfunctional and cruel in the extreme.

Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psychoanalyst and Arabist who is the author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About, observes that "The little girl is the most devalued person in the entire Arab Muslim family."

Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served in infantry and intelligence units before becoming a Foreign Area Officer and a global strategic scout for the Pentagon tells us this. "Any society that refuses to exploit the talents and potential contributions of half of its population can't remotely hope to compete with the USA or the West in general. Worse, the virtual enslavement of women is as much a symptom of other ailments as it is a problem in and of itself. Where women are tormented by bitter old men in religious robes, there's never a meritocracy for males, either. And such societies are consistently racially and religiously bigoted." And, "As far as the inhuman, inhumane--and stupid--treatment of women in the Middle East, yep, Islam is scared of the girls. I wish Freud were alive--he'd really get a look at a civilization's discontents."

Of course there is also the issue of female "circumcision" which is practiced in some Islamic societies. A discussion of the topic can be found here, here and here.

Middle-East-Info.org reminds us of this:

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini's Religious Teachings on Marriage, Divorce and Relationships (Parvin Darabi, USA-based Dr. Homa Darabi Foundation website, Jun 10, 2006: "A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, other sexual act such as forplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not comitted a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."

The age of nine was selected because Mohammed chose to consummate his marriage to one of his wives when she was nine. He had married her when she was six. There is a great deal of other information at the Middle-East-Info site as well. I would urge anyone wishing to know more to give it a look.

The murderous rage which traditional Islamic society manifests against virtually the entire non-Islamic world is at least partly due to their attitudes toward women. Jamie Glazov discusses this here.

Dr. Hans-Peter Raddatz tells us that, ". . . over the centuries the jurists and theologians of Islam have widened the rules of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition into an unlimited licence, some sort of blank cheque, for men to handle women as they deem appropriate. Legally, women appear as beings between personal subjects and material objects. Therefore, they are at the disposal of their husbands who are entitled to the unlimited usage of their bodies. Marriage is a contract - as literally expressed in some countries - "to use the sexual organ" for reproduction and personal pleasure. The human rights of sexual self-determination and choice of husband are widely unknown and rare exceptions in practical life." And, "As Islam primarily is and has always been not a religion but a political ideology, male command over the family and violence against women are and have always been indispensable pillars of the Muslim society. For the modern mind it appears quite strange to follow rules which have not only stayed unchanged since 1400 years ago but have also been continuously confirmed over this long period of time.

When a Muslim male beats, rapes or even kills a woman, we are faced with a deeply rooted behaviour pattern which has picked up as a refreshed fashion now. It is called "honor" because it is supposed to secure male power and prevent the society from falling into "Fitna". This is an Arabic term and means something the Muslim ideology is extremely afraid of, namely disturbance or even upheaval in the community. In other words, keeping women under control saves the 'peace of Islam'. "

Those places in the world ruled by Islamic law are not just unfriendly, but bitterly hostile to woman and girls. Of course life under sharia is degrading and oppressive to all people, men, women, boys and girls, but the females have far and away the worst of it.

America and the other nations of the West have their share of dysfunctional families and abuse of women and children, but in the West these are regarded as crimes to be punished or pathologies to be treated, not the socially lauded pillars of proper family life. In Western nations the norm is for girls like those pictured here to grow up being treated with kindness, love and respect.

It angers me that we are at war with such savages and nearly half of the people don't take the matter seriously. After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor the nation was swept up in a righteous fury which carried the country into the total mobilization of the entire society for war. We put 16 million men under arms and accepted nothing less than unconditional surrender in a war fought on two fronts.

Today Joe Lieberman, the best man in the Democrat Party at least at the national level, is forced out of that party (the party of Truman and FDR) because he refuses to surrender to such evil.

The division in American society between those of us who realize that we are in a war for our lives and way of life and those who either don't recognize the fact that this is war or do recognize it and want us to lose puts us in the position of a 200 lb. man forced to function with a 200 lb. cadaver strapped to his back. The part of our culture which is fighting to win is hampered by the dead weight of the political left.

In fact it is worse than dead weight. A dead body that you happen to be carrying doesn't actively attempt to trip you.

Great if true

Breitbart is carrying this:

World leaders reacted cautiously to a French newspaper report that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has died, while the French government probed the leak of an intelligence brief cited by the daily.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when asked before meeting here with Sri Lanka's foreign minister whether she gave the report any credibility, said only: "No comment, and no knowledge."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the report would be welcome if it turns out to be true. "It would be a good news, but it's just speculation," Karzai told Radio-Canada television during a visit in Montreal. "Let's see if it's true or not true."

L'Est Republicain, a French regional newspaper, published Saturday a French foreign intelligence service document, dated September 21, stating that Saudi intelligence officials "are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead."

In France, President Jacques Chirac confirmed that the report was based on a confidential French foreign intelligence service (DGSE) briefing and said he would order an investigation of the leak.

But he stressed in remarks to journalists that the information on bin Laden "is in no way confirmed."

We can only hope.

If it does turn out to be true it will be fun watching the Democrats who have been insisting that the most important thing in the universe is capturing Osama bin Laden suddenly decide that nothing has changed.

The Islamofascists' war on civilization continues

From The Washington Post:

SHEIKHABAD, Afghanistan -- In a small, sunlit parlor last week, 20 little girls seated on rush mats sketched a flower drawn on the blackboard. In a darker interior room, 15 slightly older girls memorized passages from the Koran, reciting aloud. Upstairs was a class of teenage girls, hidden from public view.

The location of the mud-walled home school is semi-secret. Its students include five girls who once attended another home school nearby that was torched three months ago. The very existence of home-based classes is a direct challenge to anti-government insurgents who have attacked dozens of schools across Afghanistan in the past year, especially those that teach girls.

"We are scared. All the home schools are scared. If I even hear a dog bark, I don't open the gate. I go up on the roof to see who is there," said Mohammed Sulieman, 49, who operates home schools for girls in several villages in the Sheikhabad district of Wardak province.

Children's education was once touted as an exceptional success in this struggling new democracy. Within two years of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement that banned girls' education and emphasized Islamic studies for boys, officials boasted that 5.1 million children of both sexes were enrolled in public schools. These included hundreds of village tent-schools erected by UNICEF.

Now that positive tide has come to a halt in several provinces where Taliban insurgents are aggressively battling NATO and U.S. troops, and has slowed dramatically in many other parts of the country. President Hamid Karzai told audiences in New York this week that about 200,000 Afghan children had been
forced out of school this year by threats and physical attacks.

I want all the left-liberals who oppose our involvement in the war against Islamofascism to read this and think hard about it. The enemy, whose side you're taking, regards schools - especially ones which teach girls - as a legitimist target.These are the people you want to see win.You call yourselves "liberal" and "progressive" and yet you chose the side of the most illiberal and retrograde force on the planet. You call yourselves feminists and you support a culture which puts women and girls to death for being the VICTIM of rape.

At least have the courage to admit that what drives you is nothing more than the simple hatred of America. America’s enemies, however evil they may be, will always be your friends.

Some Good News

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — The World Health Organization on Friday forcefully endorsed wider use of the insecticide DDT across Africa to exterminate and repel the mosquitoes that cause malaria. The disease kills more than a million people a year, 800,000 of them young children in Africa.

Dr. Arata Kochi, who leads the group’s global malaria program, unequivocally declared at a news conference on Friday that DDT was the most effective insecticide against malaria and that it posed no health risk when sprayed in small amounts on the inner walls of people’s homes. Expanding its use is essential to reviving the flagging international campaign to control the disease, he said.

Dr. Kochi has powerful allies on DDT and, more broadly, on using insecticide sprays, in Congress and the Bush administration — an odd bedfellows coalition for an agency of the United Nations, which has often been at odds with the White House.

At the news conference, Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer, who leads President Bush’s $1.2 billion malaria undertaking, stood at Dr. Kochi’s side and described spraying with insecticides as a tool “that must be deployed as robustly and strategically as possible.” The health organization’s news release quoted Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma.

“Finally, with the W.H.O.’s unambiguous leadership on the issue, we can put to rest the junk science and myths that have provided aid and comfort to the real enemy
mosquitoes,” said the senator, a medical doctor.

This is good news indeed. Millions of lives will be saved.

My wish is that we could charge the environmental extremeists who got DDT banned in the first place with the murder of all the people who have died because DDT was unavailable and put them to death.

Let's hope that this is just a first step. DDT is the most effective insecticide ever developed. It poses zero risk to humans and its only threat to any other form of life is that when used in massive amounts it can cause bird's egg shells to thin.

And for those who have bought the lie that DDT was banned because it posed a cancer risk for human beings here is the truth from Dixie Lee Ray's book Trashing The Planet:

“Contrary to the common belief, DDT is not a persistent pesticide in the natural environment. Only in the unusual circumstances where soil is dark, dry, and devoid of microorganisms will DDT persist. Under normal environmental conditions, DDT loses its toxicity to insects in a few days, usually no more than two weeks. But its overuse did result in DDT being detected, albeit in small amounts, in soil, in water both salt and fresh, in the bodies of fish, birds, and domestic animals, and in man.” (page 70)

“The National Cancer Institute reviewed the mouse experiment results, and, in 1978, declared DDT was not a carcinogen.” (page 73)

“These data and much more were presented at the 1971 hearing and the recommendation, after considering 300 technical documents and the testimony of 150 scientists, was that a total ban on DDT was not desirable, based on the scientific evidence.” (page 73)

“Nevertheless, two months later, on June 14, 1972, William Ruckelshaus, EPA administrator, banned all uses of DDT unless an essential public purpose could be proved.” (page 73)

“Years later, Ruckelshaus admitted that ‘decisions by the government involving the use of toxic toxic substances are political…[and] the ultimate judgment remains political…[In] the case of pesticides, the power to make this judgment has been delegated to the Administrator of the EPA.’” (page 73)

Hat Tip: The Charlotte Capitalist

Nationalizing the election

Donald Lambro is writing about how the Republicans plan to "nationalize" the election. The Party faces the problem that a number of House seats currently occupied by Republicans are in swing districts which are leaning Democrat this year.

Their strategy involves reminding the citizens that a vote for the Democrat candidate is not just a vote for that one man or woman, but is a vote for the entire rogues’ gallery of Democrat leadership:

. . . the GOP is looking for ways to remind voters that, like Pelosi, the Democrats' leftist leadership is far outside the nation's political mainstream.

They have been doing just that lately in congressional races where the Republicans are considered vulnerable. Like Indiana's 8th district where Republican Rep. John Hostettler faces challenger Brad Ellsworth, sheriff of Vanderburgh County. The NRCC is running a TV ad there that tells voters: "Here's something to think about. Democrats in Congress believe that your taxes should be higher to pay for their bigger government. They believe wiretapping of terrorist communications violates civil liberties. And Congressional Democrats believe that illegal immigrants should get amnesty. No matter how you slice it, a vote for Brad Ellsworth is a vote to put these Democrats in charge of Congress. But their agenda is just too risky."

This ad in one variation or another is being run in a number of other districts where Republicans are at risk and, if the polls are accurate, with significant success. The ad not only plants doubts in the minds of swing Democrats and independents, it will motivate Republican turnout, too, GOP officials tell me. The RNC research papers that will be churned out for the remainder of this election cycle -- e-mailed to the GOP's vast list of 15 million activists -- will reinforce these ads and provide fodder for other ads to come.

It is good to see the GOP taking some action. The greatest asset which Republicans will have in this election is the Democrat Party. The unbelievably wretched state of the educational system in the US, from the public schools to the Ivy League colleges, guarantees that the majority of the population will be so ignorant of economics, history and civics as to think that the Democrat Party will be better at domestic issues like Social Security reform, healthcare and the environment.

This leaves Republicans with national security and law enforcement as their strongest areas. Reminding people that the most urgent issues facing the nation today are the war on terror and illegal immigration – problems whose solution involves the use of the military and agencies of law enforcement cannot but help the GOP cause.

A Tarheel signs on

Robert of American and Proud of it has joined the Tarheel Bloggers. Go and give him a big NC welcome!

He is another person who is wise enough to plan on living here one day.

The Tarheel Blogroll grows

Beth at Blue Star Chronicles has joined the Tarheel Bloggers. Beth vacations in NC which gives me the oppurtunity to stress that the Tarheel blogroll is for people who live in NC, own property in NC, vacation in NC, have ever lived in NC, plan to someday move to NC, or just in general Love North Carolina.

Carolina is a state of mind. If you have your mind right come join.

Someone is protesting too much

From The Washington Post:

The cost to consumers for helping to secure America became clearer yesterday as a coalition of state groups tallied the bill for implementing the Real ID Act and federal officials divulged the price that some of its workers must pay for new smart cards.

In a report released by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, state motor vehicle officials estimated it would cost more than $11 billion over five years to implement the technology required by the Real ID
Act.

Under the law, states must start to re-enroll about 250 million holders of U.S. driver's licenses after May 2008. The states must train workers to verify copies of original birth certificates, Social Security cards, marriage certificates and various identification documents.

"The days of going to the DMV and getting your license on the same day are probably over," said David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors Association. "You'll have to take all your documents as if you were applying for the first time. What this comes down to is that more people will be in DMV offices spending more time to get an ID."

The Real ID Act was passed last year to protect against terrorist infiltration and crack down on illegal immigration. Without the new identification, citizens will be barred from airplanes, sections of airports, and military bases and other federal facilities, unless they have another form of federally issued identification, such as a passport.

I warn you now; get ready for a whole lot more bitching and moaning about how much this is going to cost and how difficult it will be to implement and how inconvenient it will be. The reason for all the complaints can be found in the fifth paragraph, “The Real ID Act was passed last year to protect against terrorist infiltration and crack down on illegal immigration.”

By all of their objections to any measure which will make it even one micron more difficult for an illegal alien, convicted felon or any other legally disqualified person, to vote the Democrats reveal what they must consider an essential part of their strategy to regain and then hold on to power – pack the voting booths with people who have not right to be there.

This tells us everything we need to know about what kind of people are leading the Democrat Party and about what kind of people the Party appeals to. That the Democrat Party is willing to be so overt in its intentions, to the point of seeming desperation, gives us a very large clue into how they view their electoral prospects, not just this November but further down the road as well.

Boycott CITGO?

Michelle Malkin has a post about the boycott of CITGO which is gathering momentum. Normally I would not support such a movement given that a large number of ordinary Americans would become "collateral damage" in an economic sense, but in this case it may be necessary.

Today's poll

Some more shots of Asheville

Looking down Patton Avenue toward the Vance Memorial. The Buncombe County Office Building is in the background.

Looking down Wall St. with the Self Help building in the background.

Further down Wall St. with the Federal Building in the background.

About halfway down Wall St. is the Cat walk.

Of course a catwalk needs cats.

There are sculptures like this scattered around downtown.

And cats need a mouse.

Some more shots of Asheville, part 2

This clock is right, twice per day.

The Roman Catholic Church.

Down the Page Ave. side of the Grove Arcade.

A pair of griffins guard the Battle Square entrance to the Grove Arcade. This one is named Roger. The other is named Bill.

The Battery Park Hotel was once one of the finest hotels in the nation.

Here is a monument representing a guest book. Some of the signatures reproduced here are F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's and Babe Ruth's.

Some more shots of Asheville, part 3

They finally finished the addition to the Haywood Park Hotel.

This bench is one of the sculptures which form Asheville's "urban trail". It honors Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

The poster on the right advertizes an appearence by Starhawk, one of America's most famous witches. As beautiful as Asheville is, it is very much a moonbat town.

Yes, the old bastard is still alive!

You know I'm old enough to remember when he was still funny.

Today's poll

Cox & Forkum

Stop The ACLU Blogburst

The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed its disappointment with the House passage of a bill placing undue and unnecessary burdens on Americans’ fundamental right to vote. H.R. 4844, the “Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006,” requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote in federal elections. In addition, beginning in 2010 voters would be required to present a photo ID that was issued based on proof of citizenship in order to vote. The measure passed by a vote of 228-196.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“Less than two months after the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, the House of Representatives has chosen to pass legislation disenfranchising the very citizens the VRA was designed to protect. No eligible citizen should have to pay to vote. There are voters who simply don’t have photo ID and requiring them to purchase one in order to vote would be tantamount to a poll tax. This measure will disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minority voters, senior citizens, voters with disabilities, and others who do not have photo identification nor the financial means to acquire it.”

What a load of crap! This ridiculous “poll tax” meme is quickly making its rounds. Nancy Pelosi has taken the ball with this one and ran with it headlining with the alarmist title, “Voter ID Bill Is an Attempt to Suppress the Votes of Millions of American Citizens!”

Give me a break! You have got to be kidding! Perhaps they are worried this act will supress “millions” of illegals and dead people from voting! An I.D. is required in many of the most basic things in America such as driving a car or even cashing a check. Please, tell me how all of these poor people that can not afford to get an I.D. cash their welfare checks?

Rep. Henry Hyde makes the same point.

But Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who sponsored the Federal Election Integrity Act, says requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls “presents no greater hardship than people face performing everyday activities.”

For example, Hyde noted that government-issued photo IDs are required for driving vehicles, applying for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, food stamps, boarding airplanes, entering government buildings, registering at school, getting student loans, renting movies, and cashing checks.

Given all the cases in which U.S. citizens are asked to produce photo IDs, it should not be difficult to produce IDs to guard against fraud in the electoral system, Hyde said.

It really isn’t surprising that the ACLU would be against making our democratic process have more integrity. After all, they know which side butters their bread. They even keep a scorecard on Congress.

The ACLU are involved across the country fighting voter I.D. laws. In Missouri at least 16 St. Louis area Democrats have been found guilty of election crimes in the last year and a half! When Republican Gov. Matt Blunt signed a law requiring voters to provide I.D. the ACLU had to come up with a different argument than the poll tax crap. Even though Missouri the Missouri law provided for free photo IDs that voters could obtain before election day the ACLU represented a group of Democrats to challenge the law by arguing for a loophole they found stating the law violated a state constitutional provision against imposing costs on local governments without providing state funding. So much for the poll tax argument or putting an undue burden on the poor.

As a matter of fact as Digger’s Realm points out:

Those against it are claiming it’s a poll tax on the poor, minorities and elderly and that they can’t afford to get a drivers license or passport. They fail to mention that the bill includes a portion to pay for free for the poor who can’t afford a photo ID.

People can see for themselves. The full text of the bill is here.

The ACLU were also involved in the recent case against a similar bill in Georgia that was struck down. It also provided free I.D.s. They also fought voter ID laws in New Mexico, Michigan, and Indiana. The ACLU has clearly shown its true colors in support of voter fraud. The only possible reason I can realistically see why someone would be against this bill is if they actually desire for voter fraud to continue. Once again the ACLU has shown just how transparent their lie of non-partisanship is. It is clear what the ACLU and democrats want. They want rights for illegal aliens, dead people, and felons to vote early and often.

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.

Maybe it's time to save what we can

Paul Belien writes in The Brussels Journal:

. . . one slogan of last Sunday’s Islamic hatemongerers in London may be more than just hate speech: “Islam will conquer Rome” may be prophetic. Here, however, we ourselves are to blame, because Islamists will not find it difficult to conquer Europe. Christianity in Western Europe has virtually ceased to exist. The spirit of secular relativism that originated from the French Enlightenment has persuaded Europe (including Europe’s churches) to commit a protracted, two centuries long suicide, the symptoms of which were visible in Communism, National-Socialism and moral relativism in general.

Man is a religious being and needs religious faith. If European Christianity had still been healthy today it would have proselytized, it would have reached out with missionary zeal to the millions of Muslims who migrated to Western Europe since the 1970s, it would have offered them Christ. Instead, it’s churches became bastions of religious relativism. Europe offered the newcomers only cultural decadence, from which decent people want to shield their children, and spiritual emptiness, which one can only despise.

The Europeans, who lost the missionary zeal to reach out to the immigrants, also lacked the zeal to pass on their own civilization to their offspring. Worse still, they lacked the zeal to have offspring. Since demographics is the mother of all politics, it is, barring a miracle, certain that Islam will become the old continent’s dominant religion.

Unless Europe rediscovers its will to survive – and it may already be too late (though as a Christian I do not exclude miracles) – soon furious Islamists may be holding sway over Europe in much the same way as the Taliban did over Afghanistan, removing all visible remnants of pre-Islamic culture. The Cathedrals of Europe may share the fate of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Christian works of art may be destroyed. Surely, a faith that forbids the depiction of human figures will be offended by the Christian art of medieval Europe and the nudes of the Renaissance. Perhaps it is wise to seriously consider salvaging as many European cultural treasures as one already can, before it is too late, and bringing them to safety elsewhere.

Mr. Belien is entirely correct. Europe’s loss of religious faith has been accompanied by a loss of the very will to live. The demographic time bomb of the Muslim birthrate versus the lack of native European reproduction and the unchecked rate of immigration from Islamic countries has doomed Europe to sharia and dhimminitude.

The suggestion that at least some of Europe’s artistic and cultural treasures be evacuated before inevitable Eurabian Caliphate can destroy or pervert them has a great deal of merit.

We should remember that the beautiful St. Sophia’s, once the heart of Orthodox Christianity in Constantinople is now a mosque in Istanbul. It would be difficult and expensive to take St. Patrick’s or Notre Dame apart stone by stone and relocate them, but might it not be worth it not to see them one day turned into mosques and filled with barely human savages ranting their hatred of the very culture which built them in the first place?

Certainly the contents of museums like the Louvre can be removed to places of safety. Of course this will not happen. If the governments of countries like France could recognize the danger well enough to take that kind of action they would be aware enough to take steps to reverse the decline before we see the Mona Lisa being thrown into a bonfire because it is a picture of a European whore with uncovered face painted by a homosexual.

The Blond One takes on McCain

Ann Coulter gives us her take on the "torture debate":

Fortunately, history always begins this morning for leftists, so they can keep flogging the same idiotic idea that has never, ever worked: Be nice to our enemies and they will reward us with good behavior.

Never mind trusting left-wingers with national security. Never mind trusting them with raising kids. These people shouldn't even be allowed to own pets.

If the Democrats and the three pathetic Republicans angling to be called "mavericks" by the New York Times really believe we need to treat captured terrorists nicely in order to ensure that the next American they capture will be well-treated, then why stop at 600-thread-count sheets for the Guantanamo detainees? We must adopt Shari'a law.

As McCain might put it, I hold no brief for al-Qaeda, but what would better protect Americans they take prisoner than if America went whole hog and became an Islamic republic? On the plus side, we can finally put Rosie O'Donnell in a burka.

Go and read the rest.

A new Tarheel!

We have another Tarheel Blogger signing on. Betsy's Page is written by Betsy. Betsy is an American History and Government teacher at a charter school in Raleigh.

I checked out her blog and found it to be very intelligent and well written. I recomend it highly.

More on McCain

It has been suggested that I lay off of John McCain because of his status as a combat veteran and former POW who endured torture. I’m told that if I just knew someone who had been a POW I would have a different perspective.

My grandfather lost a leg from shell fire and had his lungs badly damaged from poison gas in WWI. My uncle had his chest crushed by a torpedo which fell onto him when his submarine was depth charged. Two of my older cousins were captured by the Japanese while fighting under MacArthur in the South Pacific (they were tortured, when they came home they looked like toothless skeletons and their health remained poor for the rest of their lives). Another cousin was a tail gunner on a B-17 in Europe and was shot down and spent the war in a Nazi POW camp.

I am not insensitive to veterans or former POWs. I also do not “blame” McCain for what happened to him. ANYONE will break under torture if it goes on long enough. If the people who have you know what they are doing and have enough time and are willing to expend the effort they can not only get you to give up information they can brainwash you to the point where you change sides. Again I say NOBODY can hold out forever.

Whatever McCain did for his Vietnamese captors it isn’t his fault. If he had gone home and lived out his life in the private sector I would be the first person to cut him many miles of slack for whatever odd behavior he manifested. After all the man who was mentally damaged by his experiences in war is no different than the man in a wheelchair or with the dark glasses and white cane. All of them were injured serving their nation and deserve our respect and gratitude.

But McCain didn’t return to the private sector. He obtained a place in the United States Senate based, in part, on his war record. Because he holds a place of great political power and seeks even higher office he opens his life to the minutest inspection. If he is mentally ill because of whatever he went through at the hands of the Vietnamese communists that MUST be taken into consideration.

If John McCain wants to go back to Arizona and become a private citizen then I say drop the entire matter and let him be a hero. Let him be the Grand Marshall of every 4th of July parade in Flagstaff and God bless him for it. But he’s not going home willingly.

Also, his attitude in the Geneva Convention debate MAY be explained by his POW experience, but what about his other perfidy? What about his back stabbing and deception in other matters? Even if McCain gets a pass on the “torture debate” what about the fact that he led the effort to gut the First Amendment with his wretched campaign finance reform legislation? What about his betrayal of his party with the “gang of 14” maneuver on judicial confirmation? What about his support for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens?

Viewed in the context of his other sellouts his attempt to undermine the President in the current controversy looks less like the principled stand of a former POW who endured terrible torture and more like the latest smarmy attempt to polish his reputation as a “GOP maverick” for his true constituency – the leftist Washington media elite.