Category: news

08:13 – We got about what was forecast. An inch or two of snow, with sleet and freezing rain on top of it. Barbara just left for work. The neighborhood streets are a mess, but she should be able to make it out in 4WD. The main roads are plowed and salted. The high today is to hover right around freezing, which’ll melt some of the ice just enough to make things really slippery.

I’m writing and working on kits today.

14:56 – I see that the Danes have finally named the dead gunman who murdered two people and wounded several others in two attacks in Copenhagen at a free speech event and a synagogue. I was surprised to learn that this piece of filth’s name was Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, which sounds muslim to me. Even our own president, Barrack Hussein Obama–which also sounds muslim to me–tells us that these repeated attacks are random and have nothing to do with islam. It’s obviously just coincidence that the victims are those who have criticized or ridiculed islam and even more coincidental that these terrorists’ bullets seem to hit a lot of Jews.

I also see that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, is encouraging European Jews to relocate to Israel, where they’ll be safe(r). Netanyahu is being roundly criticized by European leaders for his remarks. Apparently, those leaders have forgotten that European Jews have already been the victims of one Holocaust within living memory and want them to stay put for round two. I think any European Jew, including UK Jews, who can possibly emigrate would be crazy not to do so. If not to Israel, then to Canada or the US.

Back before 9/11, I remember talking with and exchanging emails with my late friend, Bo Leuf, who was living at the time in Malmö, Sweden. According to Bo, even 15 years ago the muslims were turning Sweden into a hellhole. Cops were afraid to patrol areas of the cities that were infested by muslims. Swedish men were being attacked and Swedish women raped by these scum, and nothing was ever done about it. It wasn’t even reported by the press. Here it is 15 years later and this plague has spread and worsened dramatically. The western democracies treat muslims as being above the law. In many cases, literally. Rather than being prosecuted for their crimes in national and local secular courts, these criminals are often turned over to shariah “courts”, which of course don’t punish them at all.

I just wonder how long it will be before the lid blows off. People in western democracies know that their “leaders” are lying to them. They know that islam is the problem. They know that a high percentage of muslims are criminal scum, and that most muslims who are not active terrorists are would-be terrorists, or at least sympathizers. Of course there are secular “muslims” who don’t actually believe in islam, but they’re a tiny minority. And when the lid finally does blow off, those secular “muslims” will be tarred with the same brush. Perhaps literally.

08:09 – Barbara is much more cheerful now that the doctor has approved her returning to work. Colin and I will miss having her home all day.

We’ll probably never know what actually happened in that shooting in Chapel Hill Tuesday, but my guess is that the three muslims who were killed ganged up on Mr. Hicks and he was forced to shoot them to defend himself. If he was in fear of his life, he was certainly entitled to use deadly force in self defense.

09:17 – I finally finished the first book in Matt Bracken’s Enemies Trilogy last night. All I can say is that he completely misses the point. His bogeyman is “left-wing” elements of the federal government. The real enemy is the federal government, period. It has simply grown far too powerful. Even well-intentioned politicians and bureaucrats, of whom there are many, take well-intentioned actions that inevitably have evil consequences. Their goal is not to chip away at the freedoms of US citizens; that is merely the result of those actions. I am reminded of Lord Acton’s famous letter to Mary Gladstone.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

08:36 – Barbara is doing well. We’ll do some driving practice over the next few days. It wasn’t an issue when she had her left knee replaced in October 2011, but a right knee replacement can affect driving. As her physical therapist said, it’s not so much the ability to press the gas or brake pedal as the ability to switch rapidly between them. So we’ll start in an empty parking lot and work our way up to residential streets and then main drags.

I see that NBC News hopes to salvage its superstar. They’ve suspended Brian Williams for six months without pay, hoping that will be long enough for viewers to forget that Williams is apparently a pathological liar. If I were NBC News management, I’d assign Williams for the next six months as an embedded reporter with ISIS forces. The worst that could happen would be ISIS beheading Williams or burning him to death. That prospect shouldn’t scare Brian “Rambo” Williams, since he’s already been a big hero everywhere from the Middle East to New Orleans during Katrina.

12:03 – There are two AT&T cherry-picker trucks parked in front of our house right now, connecting fiber. We should be able to sign up for their gigabit service in the next month or two, if we decide to do so. I may instead just bludgeon TWC into discounting our current cable Internet service on a month-to-month basis. I figure it’s actually worth about a fifth of what we’re paying for it now.

16:27 – We just got back from the doctor, who approved Barbara to drive and to return to work Monday. She’s delighted, and I’m sure the people at her office will also be delighted. We’ll practice driving over the weekend so she can get used to working the brake and gas pedals with her knee, which is still not 100%. It probably won’t get back to 100% for at least six months and possibly a year. But everyone is happy, except Colin, who’s now used to her being home all day every day.

She’ll be getting back to work just as the cold weather returns. Temperatures are forecast to fall over the next several days. Monday’s high is to be below freezing and the low 14F (-10C).