Letter of appreciation

Apropos of this:

Dear Representative Calloway,

On behalf of the Libertarian voters of Normandy Township, we offer our thanks and appreciation for your outspoken defense of, and active support for, the residents and taxpayers of the Northeast Fire Protection District.

If the "leaders" of Northeast have distinguished themselves in any way, it is as de facto poster children for abuse, corruption and arrogance in the name of public service. Although we are empowered to speak only for Normandy Township's Libertarians, we believe that the vast majority of your constituents will rightly consider themselves well-served by your efforts to restore accountability and integrity to a governmental entity clearly in urgent need of both.

Best regards,
Thomas L. Knapp -- Committeman
Tamara A. Millay -- Committeewoman
Normandy Township Libertarian Party

Showed Me

Just got back from spending the day at the Show-Me Institute's Missouri Blogosphere Event.

No, I didn't actually see Dana Loesch Naked there, but that seems like some pretty good SEO territory to stake out. So I am.

A very well-done event with lots of highly competent panelists covering various blogging-related issues, both philosophical and technical. I'm embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I've made it out to a Show-Me presentation, despite persistent invitations from Eric Dixon. It won't be the last. I learned quite a bit and plan to put that new knowledge to good use in the near future.

High point (and the deciding factor in whether or not I'd make it out for this thing): A visit from the Motorhome Diaries crew. I know Jason Talley (on the left) from the old Free-Market.Net/Henry Hazlitt Foundation days, when I was managing editor of FMN and he was launching Bureaucrash under the HHF's auspices, but hadn't met him before. He ended up roping me into sitting for a video interview a la MHD when he should have been working his way through a bucket of beer instead. Don't know how it came out (I'm sure we'll see), but hey, it was a chance to show off the new trademark tie.

I hadn't met Pete Eyre (on the right in the photo above) or Adam Mueller (solo in photo to the right), either, but naturally wanted to after following the MHD saga. Also, I wanted to get Pete alone, kill him and stuff his body in a dumpster out behind the Sheraton, thus removing an important obstruction on the path to Allison Gibbs' affections. Apparently he'd been tipped off. He stuck to well-lit areas and hinted several times that anyone who screwed with him could expect a visit from his close friends at the Jones County, Mississippi sheriff's department.

Observation: If Jake Wagman decides to change career tracks from journalism to acting, he's a sure thing when they cast for the role of Harry Dean Stanton in a biopic.

Yes, the cell phone photos suck. Sorry about that. I'm going to have to invest in better equipment.

War Party tries to draw to an inside straight

Now that my desktop machine is a Mac, I've discovered the joys of online poker. Those of you who play will recognize the phenomenon I'm about to describe.

Every time I sit down for a "no limit" game, there's at least one nimrod at the table who goes "all in" (i.e. bets every dime he has) on every hand of cards, until he's eliminated. It's easy and tempting to do this at the site I play on (PokerStars.Net), because the money is "play money" and the player can draw up to $1000 of it up to three times in any one-hour period. Sometimes one of these idiots will run up a pretty good take before another player draws a really good hand and takes him down hard.

This is about as closely analogous as it's possible to get to the War Party's policy methodology. Their approach is to take a really bad position, back it to the hilt, occasionally get their way because their bluff isn't called, and then whine for more political capital when their prescription turns out -- as it always does -- to be horribly, destructively stupid.

The latest War Party cause celebre is opposition to trying Khalid Sheik Mohammad, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in a regular court of law.

Yes, doing so is problematic, mostly because prior neoconservative genius moves have polluted the case against KSM. Instead of either treating him as a prisoner of war and according him the protections due him under the Geneva Convention on that topic, or charging him and trying him for his crimes and according him the protections due him under the US Constitution and the UN Convention Against Torture, the War Party -- acting through the Bush administration -- worked at every turn to make it impossible to bring him to justice under any reasonable standard of any type of law. Their idea of "rule of law" is something along the lines of Sharia combined with Russian Roulette.

They went all-in in defense of conducting multiple wars without getting the constitutionally required declarations of war.

They went all-in in defense of unconstitutionally suppressing habeas corpus and promoting "indefinite detention" without charge or trial.

They went all-in in defense of the use of extra-legal "military tribunals" instead of real courts.

They went all-in in defense of using torture, in secret "black" foreign prisons, to extract information from abductees.

They kept bluffing, and they kept laying down garbage whenever their bluffs were called -- at which point they'd demand that the house provide them another stake, hoping that if they could just sit in for a few more hands they'd draw four of a kind or at least a straight flush.

Now, when it comes to the subject of justice versus KSM, they're whining that their stake should be replenished so that they can go all in again.

They're the ones who declined to go to Congress for a legal basis -- a declaration of war -- for treating KSM as an enemy combatant, legal or illegal.

They're the ones who stuck KSM in a secret prison and waterboarded him nearly 200 times, making criminals of themselves and making any confessional evidence so obtained inadmissible in the courts of any civilized nation.

They're the ones who dicked around for six years trying to find a way to get around the law -- effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "DON'T WANNA DON'T HAFTA LA LA LA LA LA SCREW THE CONSTITUTION!" at the tops of their lungs -- instead of delivering him for a speedy public trial.

They're the ones whose approach reduced the US government's legal options with respect to KSM to precisely two:

- Try him in US District Court and attempt to get a conviction even though most of the evidence will likely not be legally admissible and much of the admissible evidence will likely be stuff that the prosecution won't want to introduce because it's "classified information," i.e. incriminating of KSM's abductors rather than of KSM himself; or

- Let him go.

My suggestion is that those who favor real justice and the American way accommodate the War Party's demand for a re-stake and then go all-in ourselves. Their hand, as usual, is garbage. They're sitting on 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 off-suit. Give them some chips, then take those chips away on the showdown.

Hopefully, KSM can be convicted of his crimes and sentenced to life in ADX Florence. That would be at least Queens full of sevens.

No, no death penalty -- that's what he wants. That would just make him a martyr and encourage other Islamists to follow his example. Stick him in a cell and occasionally release camera stills of him sitting on his steel toilet. Make his fate as dull and unglamorous as possible. Executing him would at best be two pair.

And if he's acquitted? Unlikely in the extreme, but even that's a split pot, as if we drew the same hand as the War Party's. Yes, he goes free and that's a bad thing (although I won't be surprised if he runs into a drone or a car bomb or something shortly after), but it's the nimrod neocons who stacked the deck for that hand, and they're the ones who'll rightfully get the blame.

Re-raise, all-in, call ... and this time when they lose, kick them out of their seat and give it to someone familiar with concepts like "check" and "fold."

What do we know about Nidal Malik Hasan?

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know. -- Donald Rumsfeld

Q: Is he a jihadist or just a nutcase?
A: Why can't it be both?

To those who want to treat the two as mutually exclusive ... no can do.

The guy is a devout Muslim who screamed "Allahu Akbar" as he gunned people down. Unless you think he drew the phrase out of a hat, it's reasonable to conclude that, whatever other or additional reasons he might have had for doing what he did, one of those reasons was that he considered it (or, if he wasn't flying completely solo, was told to announce it as) an act of jihad.

That doesn't mean that he couldn't also be batshit insane, or in some other way a "broken person," though.

For one thing, the whole martyrdom thing tends to attract the mentally unstable from the get-go.

For another, jihadist groups in the Middle East and Central Asia have been known to press "developmentally disabled" -- to grab a politically correct term -- individuals into service as suicide bombers.

They've also been known to grab poor kids and promise to provide for their impoverished families if the kids are willing to make the big sacrifice. With 72 virgins on tap on the back side of things for the kid as well, of course.

If I had to bet, I'd bet it's gone the other way, too ("nice family you got there ... be a shame if anything happened to them. Hey, let's get your measurements -- I'm going to have a very special vest tailor made for you").

Q: Did he act alone, or was he part of a conspiracy?
A: We don't know.

He was certainly part of a "bigger picture." He obviously didn't originate the idea of jihad or suicide attack himself.

He may have had co-conspirators. If so, we don't know whether they wussed out on this attack, or whether there's a plan in motion which includes followup attacks.

He may have had a handler or handlers telling him what to do and when, where and how to do it.

In a way, conspiracy and/or subjection to a chain of command would actually be comforting. They imply the necessity of interactions which put an enterprise like Hasan's at risk of exposure by informants, communications intercepts, etc. The lone actor who makes his own plan, works on his own timetable and consults / takes orders from no one is -- if he's smart, anyway -- less likely to be discovered in advance of his attack.

What's exceedingly unlikely is that he was some kind of long-term "sleeper agent." Bloviations from the crazy corner ("He is a devout Muslim who joined the army with a purpose. ... Al Qaeda directed Muslims to infiltrate the military for these very attacks") aside, the guy served 8 years as an enlisted man, then went to med school and got a commission ... and until recently was not only stationed in the DC area but attending events with political and "Homeland Security" VIPs. Yeah, I'm sure he was told "wait ... wait ... we've kept you in place for 15-20 years because we want something more low-profile, like gunning down some enlisted types at a base in Texas."

Q: Is he dead or alive?
A: We don't know.

He was initially reported as killed -- shot four times by base police Sgt. Kimberley Munley -- at the scene of the Fort Hood attack. That report quickly changed to "he's alive." Now he's allegedly in ICU at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Why would the authoritahs say he's alive if he's dead? Why would they say where he is if he's alive?

Simple: If he had any co-conspirators, they're probably more likely to out themselves -- make a run for the border or the airport, or even try to get to him and either rescue him or finish him off, for example -- if they think he's alive. If he's dead, he can't talk; they can lay low and hope they aren't discovered, or proceed with whatever nefarious plans they have in the reasonable hope that those plans remain unknown. If he's alive, maybe he can talk ... maybe he will talk ... maybe he's already talked ... and nervous people panic and do stupid things.

Q:Could Hasan's attack have been prevented or mitigated?
A: Oh, yeah.

How's this for the height of insanity?

Lt. Gen. Cone added that soldiers are not armed on the base: "As a matter of practice, we do not carry weapons — this is our home.”

Last time I checked, the body count was at 13, with dozens of non-fatal (yet) casualties. The guy apparently fired more than 100 rounds from two handguns, at TROOPS in the middle of a MILITARY BASE ... and nobody had the tools to fight back until the police arrived. Pardon my French, but that's just fucking stupid.

And it wasn't like Hasan hadn't skylined himself long before the attack. Preaching fundamentalist Islam instead of talking medicine during grand rounds at Walter Reed, for example. Retaining a lawyer to get him out of the military for another. And, apparently (no verification yet that this is actually him), favorably comparing suicide bombers with people who throw themselves on grenades to save others, etc. ("If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory").

Even if the guy hadn't been trying to get out of the military, he should have been shown the door quite some time ago.

Q: So all the Bushevik yahoos who love to crow about "no terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11" -- forgetting the anthrax attacks, the LAX attack, etc., etc., etc. -- are either going to shut up or blame it all on Obama now, right?
A: Presumably so (and about a 99.9% chance that it will be the latter). But they were idiots then and they're idiots now, because ...

This was not a terrorist attack.

Terrorism subsists in violence against civilians for the purpose of influencing political opinion through terror.

This was an attack on US military personnel at a US military base.

In point of fact, it was arguably at least as legitimate as, and probably less "terroristic" than, any given US drone attack undertaken in Pakistan or Afghanistan without due diligence as to whether or not there are civilians in the targeted area.

That doesn't make it any less horrific, of course ... but let's not just go making shit up in order to turn it into something other than what it is.

Now why didn't I think of that?

U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup To Wipe Out National Debt