Wow. That's it. Just wow. I've only started this blog back in August, and thanks to the Great Glenn who linked to me a few days ago, my hits have gone through the roof. Take a look at this graph:

On September 23, I was averaging about 35 to 40 impressions a day by the Counted stats(the "counted" bitmap at the bottom of the blogroll). I spiked a bit when Glenn linked to me for the McAfrica burgers, but that was on a weekend, in the middle of the summer, so it didn't spike anywhere near as much as it is now, though at the time, I thought it was the bees knees. Compared to the traffic I'm receiving now, it would barely twitch in comparison. The Bravenet counter numbers are similarly incredible too. Two weeks of minimal activity, followed by an explosion. For a lot of you established bloggers, who get a few thousand hits a day as a matter of routine, this must seem like no big deal. However, prior to this week, on a good day I would get a 60 visitors and be happy about it. Now, I have received three times more visitors since tuesday than I have since I started the blog. Wow. And thanks.. Update: I had to dump the bravenet table of hits. The HTML was becoming a pain, and I want to write posts, not play around with HTML all day.

Tinfoil hat leftists, are you threatened by logic? Wishing you could spend more time listening to the wisdom of Noam Chomsky? You're not alone! With this handy-dandy product, all your problems are solved!

Germany's contribution to the war on terror:

Navy Launches new ship to fight on war on terror

The U.S.S. Edward Kennedy (I know, I know, old joke)

I was reading Britain's Independent Communist a few weeks ago, and as usual, they had an wildly anti-American screed by an Anita Roddick. Now, I was thinking about engaging in a fisking, but it was such a doctrinaire piece, I thought, "What's the point?" That was until I read an article by Andrea Peyser in the New York post a few days ago. It turns out that Anita Roddick is the founder and a very major stockholder in The Body Shop a beauty shop which crows about its eco-fascist credentials:

World Leaders Criticised For Setting No Green Energy Targets The Body Shop today (3 September) criticised world leaders for failing to sign up for specific targets to make renewable energy available to two billion people in the developing world.

This is a perfect example of vomit-inducing limousine liberalism. The two billion in the developing world are far more concerned about having a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and not being a victim of the next Mugabe, Idi Amin, or Pol Pot. Their need for "renewable energy" ranks somewhere between a crop of freshly harvested poison ivy and The Body Shop's overpriced commie-friendly products. But I digress. Anita Roddick's website makes the Body Shop look like Worldnet Daily in comparison. Therefore, I have, on an empty stomach, waded through this vast septic tank of pseudo-intellectual fecal matter so you, the reader, are spared the agony of doing so yourself. The problem is where do I start? Her views are such a cornucopia of idiotarianism along such a wide range of topics that it is almost impossible to find a good place to start. Almost, but not impossible. The best place to start is with what brought me to this immense gathering of verbal flatulence, her September 11 anti-American screed, and then her "Oh horrors, they don't like me!" wail afterwards.(The anti-American screed in red, the shock at the reaction in green, in solidarity with her enviro-commie agenda):

How has the world changed since Sept. 11? For one thing, Europeans no longer aspire to be Americans. Who would, given how that country moves steadily and inexorably toward dictatorship? The American people, in a scant 12 months, have had their once-enviable civil liberties outrageously eroded in the name of patriotism. The ideals of freedom and democracy which America pledges to export across the globe have been perverted so spectacularly at home that America's admirers hardly recognise her anymore. Where once Americans reveled in their uniquely American right and willingness to criticize their government, they are now told that those who dissent are no better than terrorists, or terrorists themselves. They have had their pride of country, their patriotism, hijacked by a self-interested and short-sighted government which steals freedoms from its own people and gives riches to corporations and "security" infrastructures such as the military, FBI, and CIA, all of which which have proven, in the past 12 months, to be either fatally incompetent and totally corrupt. Those Americans who would question their government are told to "watch what they say." The FBI has been given broad reign to spy on citizens with phone taps and email snoops. Long-held ideals of fair and speedy trials are thrown out the window as suspected terrorists and sympathizers are "disappeared" like the enemies of Pinochet 20 years ago in Chile. (...) America's us-against-the-world mentality has managed to wear away almost all of the remarkable international sympathy it built up just after Sept. 11. Bush & Co. has slapped the international community in the face as the it tried to embrace and console the United States. Now the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before.

Then, of course, she's shocked to find that Americans might find the juxtaposition of the United States with Pinochet's Chile a wee bit offensive:

My outrage and sadness in these times is precisely because I love America. I am deeply sorry if a few Americans took personal offense because they misunderstood me or were misinformed by right-wing commentators who quoted me out of context, but I stand by my sentiment.

She doesn't need to just get a Clue, she needs to get the Parker Parker Brothers Deluxe version. She accuses Americans of being complete dupes, and when we take offense to her slanders of us, then we must simply be "misinformed", and read something quoted out of context. I'd like her to explain how, "...the enmity has left America alone, more reviled and isolated internationally than before," can be considered anything other than anti-American? Then, of course, in pure idiotarian rhetoric, she talks about how the boycott of her little empire is somehow "intimidating":

Those who have called for my head and encouraged a boycott of The Body Shop because they disagree with me may believe they are defending America, but is intimidation, retaliation, and suppression of ideas really what America is about? I don't believe it.

Of course, when it is her little bastion of leftism that is under boycott, it is intimidation and suppression of ideas. However, when it is Exxon, a greedy capitalist oil company, she sings a different tune:

In May 2001, The Body Shop was the first international company to join Greenpeace's Stop Esso campaign, calling on our staff and customers to buy petrol from anyone but Esso. I saw it as a good opportunity to repoliticize our staff. If we couldn't vote George W. Bush out of the White House, at least we'd be able to vote with our wallets against the company whose will he was exercising when he pulled out of the Kyoto treaty.

But her astonishing intellectual vacuity doesn't end there. She puts up a page of anti-war quotes, putting William T. Sherman and FDR alongside the wisdom of Abby Hoffman, Pat Schroeder, and George McGovern. She uses a quote of Teddy Roosevelt to imply that he would wholeheartedly approve of the drum banging morons who comprise the idiotarians. She should remember that Sherman promised to "make Georgia howl," and TR said, "don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep." She should also remember that it was FDR who authorized the building of the A-bomb, and none of these three could be considered a pacifist in any way, shape, or form, and were actually quite the opposite, and, if any of them were alive today, they would have responded in such a way that there probably would not be a city left standing from Beirut to Islamabad. However, her idiotarianism is not simply related to the war. In this paragraph from a November, 2001 waste of bandwidth, she waxes nostalgic about how proud she was of her participation in the riots in Seattle, and how alarmed she is that the "success" of Seattle was not repeated:

I was one of those teargassed at Seattle when the World Trade Organization last met in 1999, and felt the collective outrage and sense of empowerment that we got from standing up to the world's economic bullies.

So this working class hero, with her TWENTY FOUR MILLION shares of stock, along with a bunch of spoiled trust fund kiddies, felt a sense of empowerment at shutting down McDonalds and Starbucks staffed by people making salaries marginally above minimum wage, throwing rocks and bottles at police who make less in a year than she makes in a week, and disrupting the lives of millions of everyday people who work in Seattle, most of whom work there to support their families. All so that she can show that she stood up to the "bullies." Maybe this old leftist crone and her trust fund kiddy brethren should ask themselves who the bullies really were. She continues:

So now when I see how little protest there was outside the latest WTO ministerial at Doha in Qatar, with only Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in the harbor, I have quite mixed emotions. Granted, visa and travel restrictions in Qatar kept all but the most determined activists away. But even so, there seems to be less outrage just two years after Seattle, despite the fact very little has changed.[my emphasis]

Notice how she seems to completely ignore that minor event that occurred two months earlier. I guess the slaughter of 3000 people are just a trifling compared to some good drum-banging protest against more "bullies". Dang. I guess the war got into that too. Nonetheless, it serves its purpose. In her wailing about how she was being (gasp!) criticised for her idiocy, she writes the following:

I hate terrorism and terrorists. I was shocked and horrified and saddened as much as anyone at the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. My heart bleeds for everyone who lost loved ones on that awful day, and my heart aches for all Americans who were made to feel frightened and confused and terrorized. I celebrated, like everyone, stories of heroism and bravery; I cried a thousand tears at the stories of lives cut short by fanatics and their hatred. I would be devastated if people who know of me thought that I felt any differently.

Now justapose that little statement with the fact that only two months after the atrocity she laments that nothing has changed! What was she, in a f*cking cave?!? On the limo ride to Kennedy Airport, did she not notice that the New York Skyline was a little bit different? Or was it that she just considered those people in the towers an abstraction, like she considered the people and policemen of Seattle an abstraction, like she considers the American people an abstraction, and that her concern for the victims of the Atrocity lasted about as long as it was on the front page? Well. I could go into more detail, but I'm starting to feel a little ill. If you want to endure some time in the furthest ring of idiotarianism, go to her site. I would suggest you not do it unless you are rather well lubricated with alcohol, or have taken anti-idotarian immunity pills.

Pejman Yousefzadeh posted yesterday that someone agreed with him. I commented that when someone agrees with something he says, he should say "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" and crow to the world that he said it first. In that vein, let me say the following:

Nanny Nanny Boo Boo

Why? Read this article by Dick Morris in the New York Post, dated yesterday. Now read this post by me dated six weeks ago. So how come everyone is beating his door down for speaking engagements, and he gets a regular guest spot on Hannity and Colmes, and I can't even get on cable access?

Well it finally happened. My earthlink account maxed out, and all the pictures on the site disappeared. I was hoping I would be able to make it for another three days until the end of the month, but alas, it just wasn't meant to be. Time to go digging out the old sun box.

Do you want to scare Richard Gebhart? Turn the volume on your speakers all the way up, then click here.

The Nature of Deterrence This might cause a minor storm, but I was thinking today about deterrence. Most everyone who could be considered a warblogger, the President, and the entire national security apparatus believe that deterrence has failed. The few somewhat rational members of the anti-war crowd say that we should give deterrence another chance. The reality is that both are wrong. Deterrence has not been credibly tried in the Middle East, at least not by the United States, anyway(Israel is a different matter). First, a bit of history of deterrence. In the final days of Nazi Germany, the Soviet armies invaded Germany, they were kind of shocked at what they saw. Every major city they had approached had been already been turned to rubble by British and American air power. This had an impressive effect on the Soviets in general, if not Stalin himself . They saw the aftermath of what American air power could do, and they didn't want to be subject to it themselves, and the institutional memory of bombed out German cities proved the concept of a "decadent" West was a fiction. The A-bomb simply reinforced that viewpoint. Nonetheless, deterrence was tested, and repeatedly. First the Berlin airlift, then Korea. The fact that we were willing to sacrifice thousands of American lives in Korea, and that we had bled the Chinese in the process helped keep the concept of deterrence alive. Vietnam may have been a defeat for us in war, but that we were willing to endure riots and sacrifice 50,000 people half way around the globe simply so the Russians couldn't get their hands on it impressed both the Russians and our allies. When push came to shove, we would fight, and we would make an enemy pay a horrible price for doing so. The Soviets knew that if we were willing to sacrifice so much for a slice of bug-infested jungle in Southeast Asia, sacrificing Kansas City to prevent them from reaching the Rhine wasn't much of a stretch. While the Soviets might have used the "decadent west" as a propaganda tool, they never believed it themselves, and that is why deterrence worked. Now let's look at our record over the past 12 years or so. We let Saddam live after invading Kuwait. We kissed the butt of Aidid after he killed 18 Americans, when we should have dispatched a Mechanized battalion to rip him apart. When Saddam attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, we launched a token, worthless retaliation. We allowed a mob to bully an American expedition off of Haiti. The World Trade Center was bombed--nothing happened. Khobar towers bombed--nothing. After the embassy bombings, we launched the "ten million dollar missile to hit a ten dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt." If you were Saddam or Bin Laden, would you expect us to hunt you down and kill you after what we did during the post Cold War era, or more precisely didn't do at all? What we are engaged in now is not an abandonment of deterrence in favor of preemption, but a restoration of deterrence. Deterrence is a useless concept unless your enemies are convinced you are willing to fight a war. Say what you like about the Soviets, they knew we would fight, because they knew it, deterrence worked, so we never had to fight a war. We went into Afghanistan to evict al Qaeda and the Taliban, and prevent them from killing more Americans. However, that wasn't the only reason. We went into Afghanistan to shock the muslim world into reform, true, but that is only part of it. We are going into Iraq to disarm the country, give Saddam a dirt nap, and eliminate it as a base of terrorism, and hopefully create a prosperous and democratic Arab country. However, even though these are stated and unstated goals, they are still not the only reasons why we need to fight and win this war. The unstated, and unpondered reason why we need to fight, and win decisively, is to bring back deterrence. Winning the war against the islamofascists will make us safer, yes. It will eliminate the cesspools of Middle East tyranny, certainly. But it is also an unspoken warning shot to potential adversaries that no, the United States is not as decadent as they think, and yes, if they attack the United States, this vast war machine will show up on their doorstep, and do to them what we did to the Taliban, and what we will do to Saddam we will do to them, whoever "they" might be. Winning the war will restore our ability to deter potential unforeseen enemies(China?) for the next generation, and probably the next two generations. Noone appears to have considered this, but the beneficial effects of an American victory echo far beyond the Middle East. It will mean that threatening the United States becomes a vastly higher risk activity than it was just over a year ago. And that will mean that we can engage in deterrence far more effectively than we could have before. I'm not saying that we won't have to engage in preemption again, but speaking softly and carrying a big stick will be credible again. And that is a good thing.

Newsweek(link in MSNBC's site) has an excellent article by Mohammed Al-Jassem, who writes for the Arabic language version of Newsweek. He writes an iron-clad confirmation of what I have written, and what Steven Den Beste, Cato, Indepundit, Bill Quick, and just about every warblogger of note has stated repeatedly and en masse. It also shows just how wrong the EUroleftists and the perpetually incorrect at Warbloggerwatch have been. Al-Jassem states:

The Arabs need shock therapy, some kind of tremor that would bring them back to reality and away from their political dreamscape. Egypt?s loss in the 1967 war against Israel was the sort of shock that did away with the nationalist slogans prevalent since the July 1952 revolution carried out by Gen. Gamal Abdul Nasser. If the 1967 shock laid the ground for the spread of Islamism as an alternative to the nationalism, the ?Saddam Shock? might be what is needed to launch the era of pragmatism. The Islamist mantra has not been dropped yet, but it was tested in the Afghan war and did nothing for its supporters except spark a few demonstrations here and there, which soon died out.

This is a solid confirmation of what we've been saying all along. We shouldn't pander to the Islamofascists and Baathists, we need to defeat them utterly. We should ignore the "Arab Street". We need to show, completely and unmistakeably, that the ideologies of oppression and violence that are part and parcel of the Middle East will only bring death and destruction to their adherents. Nothing else will suffice.

A little exercise in demographics If you work at a major airport, bus stop, or railroad station, or have been to any of the above in the past two weeks, step back. If you share a house or apartment with someone who works at or has been to a major airport, bus stop or railroad station in the past two weeks, step back. If you live in, or work at, or have visited a major city in the past two weeks, step back. If you share a house with someone who has been to a major city in the past two weeks, step back. If you work as an EMT, in a doctor's office, or in a hospital step back. If you share a house with any of the above, step back. If you have been to a hospital in the past two weeks, step back, and if you share a house with someone who has been to a hospital in the past two weeks, also take a step back. If you have attended a national convention of any kind in the past two weeks, step back. If you share a house with someone who has attended a major convention, step back also. If you cleaned the hotel room of someone who has attended a major convention in the past two weeks, also take one step back. If you are a prostitute, or have visited a prostitute in the past two weeks, step back. If you are a stripper or have attended a strip joint, step back as well. If you share a house with any of the above, step back. If you have been to Disney World, or to a casino in Atlantic City, Tunica, Las Vegas, Reno, or Connecticut in the past two weeks, step back. If you work at any of the above, step back. As before, if you share a house with someone who has been to or worked at any of the above tourist destinations, step back. If you have been on a cruise in the past two weeks, or worked on a cruise ship, step back. If you share a house with someone who has been on a cruise ship in the past two weeks, step back also. Now for the kicker: If, in the past two weeks, you have come into contact with any of the above people either by direct physical contact, or by indirect contact via money, clothes, bedsheets, phones, silverware, etc step back. If somehow you didn't have to take a step back, consider yourself lucky. Had this been a real attack using smallpox, you would be among the few who would not have to worry about being infected. For the rest of you, I hope you had your shots early.

The One Good Democrat Award Has anyone noticed that Rendell basically unendorsed Gore the day after Al Gore's "breakthrough" foreign policy speech? That flushing sound you hear is Al Gore's election prospects in '04.

There are no terrorists in Iraq! And of course, OJ is innocent too. Ha'aretz reports that the Israelis have nabbed 3 Palestinians from the PLF who received training to be a terrorist in Iraq. After listening to the anti-war crowd crowing about how there is no link between Iraq and terrorism Iraq and Nuclear/Biological/Chemical weapons, and dismiss the mass murders he has already committed with a handwave. I am convinced that one of Saddam's secret programs was to replace rational people with pod people, completely impervious to all logic. The OJ jury was the first successful test of this, a pilot program was then used for the pod people to excuse Bill Clinton's rampant perjury in the Lewinsky trial, and now Saddam has fully deployed them to oppose his ouster. This explains the Scott Ritter phenomenon completely. He went to bed one night in 1998, and the next morning he woke up, but was, like, different. He sounded the same, had the same mannerisms, but he wasn't Scott Ritter. There are other explanations for Ritter and company, but this is the only way to explain it without my head exploding.

Blogspot seems to have barfed a lung. I can post just fine, but all the blogspot blogs are dead as a doornail.

AOL and Disney are looking to merge CNN and ABC news into a joint cable operation. Now, if they can get Donahue, Bill Moyers, and Robert Fisk as well, they can become the world powerhouse in aging crackpot leftists.