Saturday Post

There is yet more to say even on the week-end.

I know, Kittysaurus. I could scream, too.

That this needs to be explained in this day and age displays the failure of the public school system:

The ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States stressed Friday that his country is different from Chechnya, the region with which one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects has close ties.

“As many, I was deeply shocked by the tragedy that occurred in Boston earlier this month. It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment,” Czech ambassador Petr Gandalovič said in a statement Friday.

Gandalovič cautioned people, largely on social media, that the Czech Republic and Chechnya are not the same thing.

 “As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation,” he said.

The next time someone emphasises pink shirts, Earth Day or veggie sex over basic geography, punch them in the face.


Watch the train wreck:

The combination of policy success and coddling by the media was sure to affect the president’s judgment. His ego never has been what one could call petite. “Phil, what’s my name,” the president is said to have asked his legislative director one day in the first term. “President Obama,” the aide replied. And Obama said, “Of course I’m feeling lucky.”

(Sidebar: what a douchebag.)

Such words are usually delivered at the moment in the play when Nemesis appears onstage, ready to correct the hubris of a tragic hero. And though Obama is neither a tragic figure nor a heroic one, he definitely suffers from a case of misplaced confidence. He clearly assumed that the power of his oratory, his charisma, and national shock at the horror in Newtown, Conn., would allow him to sign the first significant gun legislation in a quarter of a century. He was wrong.

Obama has been cushioned from criticism and the ill effects of his incompetence. I doubt that lucky feeling will remain.


Obama and the the word "terrorism":

And here the president faces a challenge. Will Obama level with the American people and use the word? His administration obsessively adopts language that extirpates any possible connection between Islam and terrorism. It insists on calling jihadists “violent extremists” without ever telling us what they’re extreme about. 

It even classified the Fort Hood shooting, in which the killer screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he murdered 13 people, as “workplace violence.”

In a speech just last month in Jerusalem, the president referred to the rising tide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists as the rise of “non-secular parties.”

Non-secular? Isn’t that a euphemism for “religious,” i.e., Islamist?

Yet Obama couldn’t say the word. This is no linguistic triviality. He wouldn’t be tripping over himself to avoid any reference to Islam if it was insignificant.

Therein lies the dilemma for Obama and other leftists. If they cannot bring themselves to say what is already apparent, how can any problem be resolved? Do they want the problem resolved? Islamist terrorism isn't non-speculative or general. It is rooted in Islam. It occurs mostly in Islamic countries. Its victims are largely Muslim. Those who take credit for these acts base their motives in the Koran or in the name of Islam. Such things take the guesswork out of motivation and responsibility. One must conclude that failure to recognsie the obvious is due to fear or support.


Because he's Mark Steyn:

It’s very weird to live in a society where mass death is important insofar as it serves the political needs of the dominant ideology. A white male loner killing white kindergartners in Connecticut is news; a black doctor butchering black babies in Pennsylvania is not. When the manhunt in Boston began, I received a bunch of e-mails sneering I was gagging for it to be the Muzzies just as hungrily as lefties were for it to be an NRA guy, a Tea Partier, a Sarah Palin donor. But, actually, I wasn’t. On Monday, it didn’t feel Islamic: a small death toll at a popular event but not one with the resonance and iconic quality the big-time jihadists like — like 9/11, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. After all, if the jihad crowd wanted to blow up a few people here and there IRA-style they could have been doing it all this last decade.

The culture of death has wrapped itself around a morbid purpose, it seems, and that is to stroke the egos of the politically radical.


China is an octopus:

China has deployed near Taiwan a powerful missile designed to take out US aircraft carriers as Beijing strengthens its ability to prevent US forces from aiding Taiwan during potential conflict.

Uh-oh:

The section of my book America Alone on demographic decline begins with Japan – because Japan presents “the demographic death spiral in its purest form”. The Economist and a bunch of other smart guys all said at the time that it was “alarmist”.

Seven years later, everyone’s ringing alarm bells. From today’s Asahi Shimbun:

Japan’s population has dropped by a record 284,000.
As of Oct. 1, 2012, the country’s population was estimated at 127,515,000, down 0.22 percent from the previous year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said April 16.
The decline is the largest in both number and rate since 1950, when comparable figures were first available.
The population dropped for the second year in a row for the first time.
Japanese society continues to age, with the population of elderly, aged 65 or over, estimated at 30,793,000, up 1,041,000 from the previous year. It was also the first time that the elderly outnumbered children, aged 14 or under, in all 47 prefectures.

The central fact of our age is the unprecedented, voluntary self-extinction of the developed world.

(Gracias)