Watch this clip and be thankful that you don’t have the job that these marines do. I would be shooting people left and right.
This is why they need to use the lash
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Category Archives: Politics
Links For Today
The End of the World Is Nigh Again. (A post arguing that the market is due for another major correction).
The Fruits of China’s One Child Policy. We all know that there is going to be more males than females in China because of the one child policy. But the figures keep getting worse and worse.
Links for Today
The French Are Making America Look Bad
As a multinational force off Somalia built up its military muscle, French forces staged their rescue after talks broke down.
One hostage and two pirates were killed and three other adults and a child on the yacht, the Tanit, were rescued six days after it was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, a spokesman for Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said.
Meanwhile, the pirates defy America….
”
We are not afraid of the Americans,” one of the pirates told Reuters by satellite telephone on behalf of the gang holding the captain.
“We will defend ourselves if attacked.” A pirate commander onshore in the Somali pirate town of Eyl said that preparations were being made by other pirates to set sail to help their beleaguered friends.
“We are planning to reinforce our colleagues who told us that a navy ship was closing in on them and I hope the matter will soon be solved,” said Abdi Garad. “We are making final preparations and will try our best to save our friends.”
Speaking of beleaguered, The Belmont Club remembers all hostages that nobody seems to care about. It is a useful counterbalance to all the news coverage being given to the captured American captain.
In Honor of North Korea's Launch Missile
(h/t The Belmont Club). Here are the words to the song.
It should be noted that the US is claiming that the missile lunch was failure. I suppose it all depends on how you define failure. They learned something from this I am sure. And they got farther then they managed last time.
Links For Today
Maybe this is how our cat died? Symptoms seem to match but the vet thought that it was just the flu.
They want to give the President the power to shut down the internet. But the President already has the power to declare martial law if necessary. Why give him more power?
How long before this sort of things starts to make people really angry?
Enough Said
From an article from the AP regarding the shooting in Binghamton….
Police said they arrived within two minutes.
Hurray for the Binghamton Police. That is a good response time. But wait, there is this from later on in the article…..
Police heard no gunfire after they arrived but waited for about an hour before entering the building to make sure it was safe for officers. They then spent two hours searching the building.
They led a number of men out of the building in plastic handcuffs while they tried to sort out the victims from the killer or killers.
Why did they even bother to show up?
Links for today
Is it time to start blaming the victims?
As the whole world knows (here is the report from China’s English News Agency) 14 people got shot in Binghamton, New York today. It is just the latest in a long string of such shootings. Undoubtedly we will hear a lot about how we need to improve security or improve gun laws or some such. But when are we going to talk about the proper moral reaction to such an attack by those who are living through it?
I mean, after 9/11 it was generally agreed that people should never allow a plane to be hijacked again. Whatever it took and whatever it cost, people swore that they would take back the plane. Yet in the wake of multiple mass shootings no such consensus towards mass-murdering gunmen seems to be emerging.
To be sure, the pro-gun lobby will argue that this shows why everyone should be packing heat. But I think such arguments miss what is really wrong in this country. It is not a matter of arms, but of courage.
I remember hearing about a mass killing in California where the gunman made everybody lie down and then he started shooting people at point blank range. Needless to say he killed few people before the police stormed in to stop him. I remember hearing about a woman who survived the killings talking about how she lay there, listening to the other people getting shot, and hoped that the gunmen would not shoot her. Talk about making it easy for the killer.
Now I don’t know what I would have done in that situation and I don’t know enough about what happened in Binghamton to give an opinion on what happened there. But I do know that people don’t have to act like sheep. A man came to where I work armed with a gun, a propane tank, and the intent to kill. He was jumped by a lady in her fifties and he never got chance to get off a shot (granted she was a lot tougher then your average lady, and a man later came to her aid, but still….).
But the prevailing trend in our culture is not to celebrate the ladies who jump gunmen armed with nothing but their bare hands. Rather, it is to celebrate the people who chose to act as passive victims as this post from the Belmont Club makes clear. Moreover, this attitude that celebrates those who value their own lives above all else has even permeated our law enforcement agencies as this article from Paul Howe makes clear (For those that don’t recognize the name, Paul Howe is a former Delta operator who played a key role in the events of Black Hawk Down. He currently teaches tactics to law enforcement officers.)
Links to Read Today
German Homeschooling Family Seeks Asylum.
An update on the disease that threatens the worlds wheat crop.
Something for auto workers to do (read till the end)? I don’t know how well these things will really work. But it is important to remember that when you keep companies from going broke you often make it harder to shift resources to where they will do some real good.