Sympathy for Virginia Tech

Just...wow.

Incredible that someone could have such unfocused hatred. Incredible that after shooting over 40 people, the rage is unsatisfied and the shooter still feels the need to shoot. Phenomenal level of depersonalization, those people screaming, they're not really people. How can you line up and shoot people you don't have a specific reason to despise? I can understand being willing to kill if you're threatened, but to line people up and shoot them one after another? Boggles.

There's a natural desire to want to place the shooter outside the human experience, maybe he had a mental illness, he's a fanatic, he played too many video games, etc. I'm not going to draw any inferences about the shooter's motivations or background, at this point that's rather a secondary issue. There are no motivations or explanations that justify this. This will all come out in the next few weeks. Some people have noted that "Asian" is a code-word in the media for "Muslim", at least in Europe. That's the description given by students, so I don't think they're covering up for anything, sometimes "Asian" just refers to one of about 2.5 billion people who share slightly darker skin than Caucasians and an epicanthic fold. The religion issue is also secondary, premature and largely irrelevant at this point, IMO. The blame lies squarely on the person with the murderous intent, no other factor is anywhere near as significant as the decision to kill in a random fashion.

There are some truths that can already be derived. The media is passing around terms like "massacre", I wonder what else they expect when unsuspecting and unarmed people are stuck in a building with someone armed and in a mental state to kill randomly. It's worth noting that in 2006 a bill in the Virgina Legislature that would have allowed college students and others who had a Virginia Concealed Carry Permit to carry on campus was defeated. Accompanying that bill is a now-unfortunate statement by a VT spokesman:

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Right. May have been true at the time, but it didn't seem to help this morning. And the irony is that there was an increased police presence on campus to investigate the first shooting that occurred around 7am while the second and much larger shooting was taking place across campus two hours later. It's hard to conceive of a more ideal situation in terms of law enforcement response time, but nevertheless we're up to 31 innocents and one scum-sucking dirtbag dead even with the police present.

The ugly truth of public mass murders is that the only thing that will reliably stop someone armed with a gun is someone else armed with a gun. This is one of the reasons that people seek out concealed carry permits in the first place. Rather than making areas safer for people, declaring some places "Gun-Free Zones" is hanging out a "Free Buffet!" sign for wanna-be mass murderers. Pretty much by definition, a gun-free zone is the perfect place to commit a mass shooting, because all of your law-abiding victims will be unarmed. If you follow the law you won't be armed when you're there. If you don't follow the law the "NO FIREARMS" sign is good for a laugh as you walk by, and buys you several more minutes of resistance-free mayhem.

Even under ideal circumstances, with one armed person in each classroom, you're still going to lose some people when a mass-murderer goes off. The first attack is basically free, because there just isn't enough time to respond. You have to realize that, yes, you've been shot at or even shot, and then try to figure out what to do about that. The shooter knows what they're doing, you need to go from Remsburg's Condition White to Condition Orange, and then to Condition Red as appropriate. If you're a concealed carry permit holder and armed, your job is to see to the safety of those around you, and prepare to stop the threat with what you have at hand. The Bad Guy will get the first shot, always.

After reading about the Tueller Drill, after 9/11 and Columbine, it's amazing to me that anyone lets themselves be herded around by a gun-wielding person who's within 10 feet. It's horrible to read of students lined up and shot execution-style, that should never happen. And it's not the students' fault, they've never been trained to respond to force with force. And I don't mean they're not Marines, or black-belt holders, I mean nobody has ever looked them in the eyes and told them that when they're being lined up by a gun-wielding person in a school, they're already dead. They can die fighting or they can just die. The folks on Flight 93 understood this, "Let's Roll" should be the title for a school defense course. The Burleson ISD in Burleson, Texas has an active school defense plan, how much better would this work with a classroom full of 18-25 year old students?

The shooting today at VT is one step below the Beslan hostage crisis, and it's an example that as good and as dedicated as our police officers are, they just aren't prepared for a situation like this. US police in hostage situations are trained to contain and negotiate, there are only a few teams in the nation that are trained to go into a school and find and kill a shooter that is determined to kill or be killed. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team could do it, but they're three hours by air from where I live. The Army's Delta teams could handle it, they're usually overseas. Maybe, maybe, SWAT from Los Angeles or NYC or Dallas could do it, but they're just too far away. The shootings in Norris Hall took only 20-30 minutes to complete, meaning that there is functionally no time to assemble an intervention of highly-trained people when the flag goes up. If you start hearing what sounds like firecrackers, you have: 1) you, and 2) what you have with you. My advice if you're unarmed is to comply only enough to get yourself within range, and then attack with everything you have until you're dead or he's dead.

It's not too hard to imagine that a group the size of the 9/11 hijackers (19-20 people) could simultaneously take over 5-10 schools in a single day, and cause a Beslan-style slaughter in each place. The only thing that has a chance of stopping them is someone else with a gun who will try to kill them before they can kill any more people. CCW permits should be universal and unhindered, CCW permit holders are pretty much by definition the most law-abiding people you'll find next to the people who own Federally-registered automatic weapons. If you really want to stop school violence, that's the best bet the public has. Not only is it free, but we pay for the privilege.

Sympathy and prayers for the students and their families.

PS: Maybe this is an example of why the UCLA cops were so quick to incapacitate someone who was loud and disruptive. They go to school every day thinking "This might be the day someone cracks." Today was the day for Virginia Tech.

Virginia+Tech concealed carry

Jack Bauer Tally: Hours 15, 16 and 17

Even though I've been out of town and busy (cruise, we'll get to that in a future post), Jack's been hard at work.

In Hour 15, Jack tracked down the guy who was trying to hack into the security protocols for a nuclear power plant, and managed to find out that it was actually his autistic brother doing the hacking. To insure the meet went down with Gredenko to transfer the data, Jack used Autistic Brother as bait. After a brief shootout, including a shot through the window of an open car door, Jack captured Gredenko and used Gredenko to get a location on Fayed. Bonus point for a shot through the window.

The CTU guys injected Gredenko's left arm with a radioactive tracer and let him meet Fayed at the Santa Monica Pier. Gredenko dumped his wire and had Fayed's guys cut off his arm with the marker in it so that he couldn't be tracked. Fayed and Gredenko went to leave through a bar, at which point Gredenko ratted out Fayed and the bar patrons charged him, Fayed shot a couple of them but unaccountably his gun was empty after a couple of rounds and Fayed was subdued. Gredenko got away in the melee and died under the pier. On the way into Fayed's meet-up spot, Jack capped a couple of bad guys, including a called headshot (Jack's actual words were "Show me your head"). Bonus for the called headshot.

Jack realized he couldn't torture Fayed to cough up in time (torture really doesn't work for this sort of thing, particularly on True Believers), so he and Mike Doyle set up a false-flag operation to get Fayed to talk. One of the CTU agents pretending to be on Fayed's side made the mistake of giving him a loaded pistol, and well, that ended badly. To secure Fayed's cooperation, the President bullied the Ambassador of Unnamedistan into threatening to kill a General arrested for complicity in the Fayed attacks by threatening to kill his kids. Apparently there was a code word exchanged, so Fayed killed the team that was with him, shot a garbageman and stole a truck, heading off to meet with the rest of his team and get the last two bombs.

Jack secreted himself under the truck and right next to the transmission, which made it hard for him to be heard when he radioed CTU. When the truck arrived at the destination, Jack neck-snapped the flunky detailed to guard the truck, shot the last five guys and ended up going hand-to-hand with Fayed when both of their pistols were empty. After taking yet another beating, Jack managed to sling a chain around Fayed's neck and winch him to his asphyxiatory demise. Bombs secured, world saved.

And then came the call from the one person Jack actually wants to kill: the Chinese guy who kidnapped him in the first place, and who has Audrey Raines in his evil clutches. According to the previews, Jack's going to have to fight CTU and everybody to go after Audrey, something tells me the Chinese are going to offer to trade her for him. The stage is set for the last six hours, and something tells me that by the time Jack is done the list of "Greatest Killers of the Chinese People" will go something like this:

1. Mao Zedong.
2. The Empire of Japan, 1931-1945 (tie)
2. Jack Bauer (tie)
4. Bubonic plague.

Technical Notes

1. Never give someone you don't trust a functional pistol. Removing the striker and/or firing pin is a good way to make a pistol look usable but in actuality be completely useless, other than as a way to club people at close range. Unprimed, unloaded ammo (i.e., a bullet in an empty case) is another option. Given the short period of time available, you can disassemble a Glock and remove the striker within 5 minutes, that's the route I would have gone.

2. The CTU folks would have been better served with a radiotracer like FDG, a tracer used in PET imaging. It's a sugar analogue that is taken up all over the body within half an hour, and the energy it produces is pretty high -- 512 kEV. This means it will be emitted right though walls, etc., it's pretty active and it can't be defeated by cutting off an arm. Half-life is relatively short, but it would be enough for a properly-equipped airborne detector to spot for a couple of hours.

3. Jack and Fayed both shot their pistols empty. Jack should have been carrying a spare magazine, or the "New York Reload" of another pistol. When yours goes empty, just pull out #2 and get after it. Jack should know better. Concealed carry people: YOU ARE UNDERDRESSED IF YOU DON'T HAVE A SPARE MAG.

The Score so far:

Method	Score	Notes
Biting A Carotid	9.0	-1 for lack of Universal Protocol
Shooting Curtis	-8	-10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage
Shooting guard while handcuffed	7.0	+2 for while handcuffed
Shotgun	5.0
Shotgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife)
Handgun	7.0	+2 for disarm
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool
Handgun	6.0	+1 for suppressor
Handgun	6.0	+1 for through car window
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	10.0	+5 for called headshot
Neck Snap	7.0	Always cool.
Handgun	5.0	Fayed henchman
Handgun	5.0	Fayed henchman
Handgun	5.0	Fayed henchman
Handgun	5.0	Fayed henchman
Handgun	5.0	Fayed henchman
Length of Chain	8.0	Strangled Fayed
Net	125.0

Jack's getting back on track, Hour 17 is pretty much midseason form for prior seasons.

Jack+Bauer 24

Jack Bauer Tally: Hour 14

Mopping up after the largest slaughter of Russians since Afghanistan, Jack relocates back to CTU and has his broken ribs splinted. The EMT guy says he "could have floating rib fragments, that could lead to internal bleeding", apparently he don't know Jack, so to speak.

The bad guys get their stealth drone into the air, headed for parts unknown but later to be revealed as San Francisco. They have a back door into the CTU system that lets them spoof the satellite tracking of their drone.

The lunatic VP-who-is-acting-President is going to nuke a patch of desert in Middleeasternstan to show that he means business if the second bomb goes off. Karen Hayes is understandably dismayed, Tom won't step in to change anything. The only one that can stop this is President Palmer, and he's just been put into a medical coma to stop brain swelling.

Jack got some bad news, apparently Audrey is dead. The official story is that she perished in China in a car accident, and there is "DNA evidence" to that effect. Any time a questionable incident off-camera is presented as a fait accompli in 24, it usually means the official story is wrong or a cover-up. Do I smell Season 7?

The data link the Russian drone pilot is using to stay undetected is detected, and traced to Nadia Yasser's station. Chloe had already confronted Nadia and Milo about Nadia using Milo's login to get around security restrictions placed on Nadia because she's a Muslim, but it's not clear whether or not Nadia and Milo undid what they did. Nadia is arrested and dragged to a holding room where Ricky Schroeder chokes her and she calls him a sadist, which he doesn't deny. Jason Bateman would have already been pulling fingernails if Silver Spoons is any guide, so she got off light. Milo looks pensive, probably because they'll figure out that at least he's committed a felony by letting her use his login, and at worst he's going to get busted if he planted the spoofing software.

Conveniently, the drone pilot is just three blocks from CTU, so Mike Doyle (Ricky Schroeder) and Jack round up a CTU posse and break in. Jack gets two kills with a silenced pistol, the pilot is disabled and the drone steered not over the Pacific, which would be too easy, but to Oakland where it crash-lands without detonating and spreads nuclear material on the docks. Bill Buchanan tells the Vice-President that the first responders "almost assuredly got a lethal dose", though in reality plutonium is only really toxic if inhaled. The VP orders a nuclear strike and is told that the sub will be in position to fire "within the hour", then the episode ends.

Technical Note



"Silencer" is a misnomer, almost no weapons are actually silenced. People in the know call the cylindrical doo-dads on the ends of pistols "suppressors" (or "cans", if they're really cool), because that's actually what they do. The noise made by a gunshot is composed of two or three separate sounds, depending on the round being fired. The two invariable sounds you'll here are the mechanical noise of the pistol being fired and the action working, and the explosion of burning powder and gas exiting the muzzle and pushing the bullet out of the barrel. If the bullet is supersonic (nearly all rifle bullets are supersonic, and some pistol bullets are supersonic), there is an additional sound from the bullet's shockwave as it breaks the speed of sound and produces a sonic boom.

To "silence" a weapon, you have to address all of these sounds, and only a few weapons have ever been truly silent. The Welrod pistol and the DeLisle carbine from World War II were some of the few really silent weapons, the Welrod was bolt-action pistol and the DeLisle was a modified British bolt-action rifle that fired the US .45 ACP pistol round. For both weapons, the only audible sound with firing was the click of the hammer hitting the primer.

Work on suppressors continued after World War II. The two main kinds of suppressors are ones that work with "wipes", typically rubber discs in a cylinder that trap the expanding gas, and more sturdy designs based on metallic baffles that trap, cool and slow down the gases shooting out of the barrel. One of the main advances in suppressor technology was designing the baffles so that the sound produced becomes very high frequency, to the point where it's practically inaudible. A dog would go "WHAT WAS THAT?!", but humans don't sense that sound very well. The precise appearance, number and design of baffles is the province of PhDs and patents, and the materials used are often the strongest, most heat-resistant metals in common use. The suppressors based on wipes may last only a few shots before the discs become ineffective, but the baffle-designed suppressors can last thousands of rounds.

Metallic baffle silencer

The supersonic issue is easier to manage than you might think. For one thing, heavier bullets that don't exceed the speed of sound (roughly 1000fps at sea level) are actually fairly common in pistol rounds, nearly all the loads for .45 ACP are subsonic, and there's even a heavy 9mm bullet that leaves a normal barrel at less than the speed of sound.



Some weapons that have the suppressor built into the weapon itself, like the MP5-SD shown above and the DeLisle, have a perforated barrel to prevent the gas from pushing the round past the speed of sound. Even without using a subsonic projectile, suppressors make it very difficult to locate the source of gunfire with human hearing. The supersonic crack may be audible, but it's a non-directional sound that is not helpful in determining where the shot originated.

Suppressors are legal Class III devices, each suppressor requires a $200 transfer tax and an application to the BATFE, but they are legal for civilian use. For home defense they're a good option if you can afford them because firing a weapon makes a LOT of noise, to the point where you can add "permanent hearing loss" to the list of your costs for defending your home. Suppressors are popular for urban combat because they reduce noise and often completely mask the flash signature of firing at night. The other plus is that since the suppressor traps the gas column coming out behind the bullet, accuracy can actually be improved with a well-designed and well-fitted suppressor. And most importantly, a suppressor allows you to fire a weapon without being identified by sound as having done so. Pistols sound like firecrackers, if you hear pop!-pop!-pop!-pop! in the distance (and you're near a gun range) you're hearing gunfire. Most people don't immediately identify fsst!-fsst!-fsst!-fsst! as suppressed gunfire.

One common Hollywood error is the sight of a suppressed revolver, the most egregious case is Magnum Force where David Soul snaps a suppressor onto a Colt Python.

All revolvers with the exception of the Nagant revolver have a "gap", a bit of open air between the cylinder and the barrel that the fired bullet has to cross to get into the barrel. This gap makes silencing a revolver functionally impossible.

The Score so far:

Method	Score	Notes
Biting A Carotid	9.0	-1 for lack of Universal Protocol
Shooting Curtis	-8	-10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage
Shooting guard while handcuffed	7.0	+2 for while handcuffed
Shotgun	5.0
Shotgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife)
Handgun	7.0	+2 for disarm
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool
Handgun	6.0	+1 for suppressor
Net	64.0

Jack+Bauer 24 silencer

Frank Facts About Fred Thompson

Frank J, the proprietor at IMAO, is just screamingly funny.

If you enjoy the Chuck Norris Facts or Jack Bauer Facts, Frank has a list of Fred Thompson Facts for your perusal.

The funniest one is probably in the comments:

If Fred Thompson had been at Thermopylae, the movie would have been called '1'. And people would now be decorating their homes with 'Fred' rugs.

Fred+Thompson IMAO humor

Movie Review: '300'

300, directed by Zack Snyder and adapted from a Frank Miller graphic novel of the same name, is yet another retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. It's generating plenty of battles on its own. The basic story of the movie has been known for almost 2500 years, since Herodotus first wrote it down: 300 Spartans led by one of their kings, Leonidas, stood for three days against a Persian army of hundreds of thousands, and died at the pass of Thermopylae in Greece in 480 BC. Their sacrifice was an inspiration to the Greek city-states, who temporarily stopped killing each other long enough to fend off an invasion by the largest empire the world had ever seen, and subsequent events in Greece formed the basis of Western Civilization.

My exposure to the history of the Battle of Thermopylae comes from a circuitous route. In reading We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, the book by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway, from which the movie We Were Soldiers came, there was a section about why men fight, and what it's like to be a soldier -- not the physical experience, but the mindset. Both that book and another Vietnam memoir, Steel My Soldiers' Hearts by David Hackworth recommended yet another book: Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

It seemed odd that non-fiction books about Vietnam referenced a novel about ancient Greece, of all things, to explain the mindset of men in combat, the fraternity and lifelong bonds that the most dire of circumstances will produce. It seemed odd, that is, until I read Gates of Fire for myself, and I have to tell you, it's about the only book that has ever had me close to tears. I get close to tears when I read about the 19 year-old Marine who gets shot, and in shock and in pain apologizes to his Sergeant for being wounded, and whose first concern is for his squadmates who will be denied his assistance in the rest of the battle. There's a selflessness there that is out of place in a self-centered world, yet another reason that the military is unpopular in certain circles these days. The military shows us a high standard of selflessness that can be difficult to face, particularly by people whose concept of selflessness consists primarily of proscribing the speech of others and taking a day off of work to go to the protest. 'Courage' and 'sacrifice' are frequently ignored or defamed by people with lesser definitions of those qualities.

Having read Steven Pressfield's version of the historic battle (and having never covered much in the way of Greek history other than mythology in school), I was eagerly anticipating the Frank Miller/Zack Snyder version. The day before the opening I was talking to one of the young women at the office who indicated that her boyfriend had already gotten tickets for the next day, and she remarked that "Every guy I've talked to wants to see that movie. I guess they just like all that violence and gore." I replied that if men wanted to see violence and gore there are plenty of options, the Saw series comes to mind. What motivates men to see 300 and to be drawn to the story in general, in my estimation, was the example of a stand against impossible odds, to draw your line in the sand and pit your will and your strength against the other's. And most importantly, to do that beside your dedicated friends, men who have your back, who trust you and in whom you trust. The Spartans are the ultimate football team.

I must admit, there's also a certain adolescent impishness that makes the Spartans (in the commercials and trailers, as well as the movie) appealing, especially to younger men. They're tough, they're bad, and they'll tell you the same to your face. When called to lay down their arms, the Spartans respond "Come and get them." When Xerxes offers Leonidas an amicable sharing of cultures after the first day's slaughter of Persians, Leonidas respones with a smirk, "We've been sharing our culture with you all day." One of the Spartans (they have names, but they aren't really important to the plot) is threatened by a Persian that "Our arrows will blot out the Sun!", to which he replies, "Then we will fight in the shade." The Spartans are nothing if not cool, until the fight starts, at which point they're deadly, efficient and largely smarter than the poor saps they're fighting. In short, they talk the talk and they walk the walk, something to which most young men aspire. I was in no way surprised that the 9:30 showing last Saturday was probably 70% male.

The other strong presence in the movie is Gorgo, Leonidas' wife who stays at home yet still fights for her husband, attempting vainly to rouse the Spartans to follow her husband and the 300 on the slim hope of rescuing him. She's as strong in her way as Leonidas is in his, and toward the end of the film she provided the loudest "Woohoo!" moment in the movie. At one point the Persian envoy who comes to deliver the first message from Xerxes to Leonidas and the Spartans is shocked that she speaks in his presence. She calmly puts him in his place. From the portrayal in the movie, it's even more obvious why Gorgo is queen than why Leonidas is king, she's an admirable figure.

There are multiple historical inaccuracies. A portion of the Persian fleet did sink in a storm, but it was on the other side of the island of Euboea, and out of sight of the Spartans. The Spartans wore armor in battle, their shields were bronze-covered wood, not solid metal, the swords are a bit fanciful. The Spartans weren't dead-set against slavery, they had a servant-class called helots that were pretty close to chattel slaves, these do not appear in the movie. When Leonidas bellows about "free men", he's talking about free Spartan citizens, but some license is in order. Democracy and the rights of the individual have to start somewhere, and Sparta was one of the places it started. Leonidas never spoke with Xerxes, and Xerxes is not indicated as being eight feet tall, bald and pierced in the historical record. The Spartans neither fought nor died alone, even at the end somewhere between 700 and 1,100 other Greeks stood and fought with them.

The controversy over the movie comes in two major and one minor flavors: there are several critics who write the phrase, "There's a war on!" as a criticism, and there are a lot of people objecting to the portrayal of the Persians in the movie. The other comment about the movie I find more than a little silly is that it's homophobic, a criticism that rests on one derisive line about Athenians (they are referred to as "boy-lovers") and the fact that Xerxes looks to some reviewers like a "club queen" or an ancient analogue of RuPaul. To deal with the minor issue first, the Spartans never liked the Athenians on general principles, you have to be extremely hypersensitive to focus on two words out of a whole movie. Also, the visual of Xerxes is Frank Miller's, compared to the, well, spartan Spartans there has to be a visual way to communicate "the Other" and this is the way Xerxes was portrayed. It takes a mind bent on finding offense to find homophobia as a strong undercurrent, given the other outstanding inaccuracies of the movie.

The "There's a war on!" people like to try to raise questions about whether Xerxes or Leonidas is the George W. Bush of the film, and whether or not the film promotes violence. I can understand the perspective, particularly if you approach it from the US being decadent and expansionist and sinful and the insurgents of Iraq or Afghanistan as noble and peace-loving people who fight to protect their way of life. I don't see the world this way, and on as simple a question as "How do the Perisans and Spartans perceive the role of women?" the question is answered. The other issue would be who does the fighting and for what reason, the Spartans send 300 volunteers, a tiny force, to accomplish a huge mission. The Persians drive their non-volunteer troops to battle upon fear of death and in fear of the God-King, to avenge an insult. Slot in the ummah for the God-King and a religious philosophy that even today demands submission and fidelity beyond that given to a nation-state and you have a pretty good Islamist analogue for the Persian troops. There is also some concern that a pro-military movie might (gasp!) encourage young men to enlist. Wonder if that held up the producers of Guadalcanal Diary? Frank Miller comes across as an unabashed conservative in this audio clip from NPR, I'm pretty sure that if the movie means the Army and Marines don't have to scramble for recruits it won't be the worst thing to happen, in his opinion.

Gorgo at the forum in Sparta pleading for assistance for the few volunteer Spartans fighting for their lives far away may just be too accurate a picture of Western civilization circa 2007: peaceful at home and uninvolved while a few fight across the globe against a real threat that as a civilization we'd rather not notice. The Spartans at home seem to say, "They're at war with Athens, not us. The Athenians shouldn't have provoked them," much as some in Europe (and those Americans who want desperately to be Europeans) say, "The Islamist terrorists are attacking the Americans and the Israelis. The Americans and Israelis shouldn't have provoked them." As if that will stop the onslaught. It did nothing for the Phocians, who abandoned their posts and allowed the defenders of Thermopylae to be surrounded and eventually defeated. If current political figures are anywhere in the movie, George W. Bush is Gorgo and most of Europe's political elite is Theron, including the rape in return for help that never comes. If only GWB was as articulate as Gorgo...but I digress.

The other criticism comes from modern-day Persians, including the Government of Iran. Some of this criticism is valid, some is not. The invalid parts center around the CIA's involvment in bringing the movie to fruition, if the CIA had CGI capabilites this good, we would have 'found' WMDs a long time ago in Iraq. The Iranian government is having a cow over a movie and events that predate the birth of their prophet by a millennium, it's just more in a stream of idiocy that seems to pour forth like a fountain from Tehran. I wish the CIA were this good, about the only government the CIA seems to be threat to these days in that of the United States.

The Persians who feel slighted by the portrayal of Xerxes have a historical point, the Persian empire was considerably more liberal in its administration of its territories than comparable empires, by and large as long as the taxes arrived they didn't impose religion on people and left them alone. They may have been the first to do this but they were by no means the last, Rome employed a similar strategy. They also point out that Xerxes was simply responding to an Athenian provocation that occurred 20 years earlier, and to the prior Persian defeat at Marathon, 10 years before Thermopylae. For the sake of argument let's concede the point that the Persians are generic bad guys made fanciful and freakish for the movie, but the tip for careful viewers that this wasn't a historical film should have been at least by the point in the movie where 'The Immortals', Xerxes' personal guard showed up wearing Greek theater masks and swinging katanas. One would think that the fact that the only actual things in the movie are the actors playing the soldiers and the rest is CGI would have been the first clue. Compared to the contemporary falsehoods that are believed to be truths by many in the Arab world after viewing the movie Valley of the Wolves Iraq, license with historical accuracy from 2500 years ago may be somewhat easier to overlook than license with events from less than four years ago.

300 is a spectacularly violent movie that is not for children, but tells a story of a brave battle for high stakes and higher ideals that still has relevance today. There is nudity and dudity, some of the makeup and costumes are a little gross. But if you're an adult, have eight bucks you can spare and a couple of hours to kill, I highly recommend it.


300 movie+review

Weird Thought Of The Day

We were watching The Sound Of Music on DVD night before last and I couldn't stop giggling thinking about how different a movie it might have been with Georg Von Trapp played by Christopher Walken instead of Christopher Plummer.

Consider that the next time you see the movie.

Christoper+Walken weird The+Sound+Of+Music

Jack Bauer Tally: Hour 13

Well, last week was pretty uneventful from a Jack Bauer standpoint, he just broke into the Russian Consulate and cut off the left pinky finger of the Consul-General with a cigar cutter. Then he got blown up by a breaching charge (an explosive designed to rapidly open a door) and subdued by the Russian Consulate guards. He convinced a Russian security guy to call CTU and rat out the Consul-General, but evidently this fellow was Aaron Pierce's overly-trusting opposite number, because another guard shot this guard in the back of the head and hung up on CTU. Jack gets no points for a pinky, leaving Hour 12 with a fat zero net points.

In Hour 13, Jack disarmed the Bad Russian with the Dead Good Russian's belt, after being thrown down the stairs. Scuffling ensued, basically Jack got the Bad Russian's Makarov pistol and shot him with it, though he found himself trapped in the basement. Five points for the kill, plus two for the escape. Later in the episode the Russians found out where he was hiding and charged the room with AKs blazing, Jack got three more kills and was rescued by Mike Doyle (Ricky Schroeder) and his tactical team, who appear to have killed everyone else in the building in about 15 seconds, except the pretty Russian chick. It seems that really pretty people can't die in 24, they seem to have "charisma armor" or something. The blonde woman that was the arms dealer's girlfriend was unceremoniously executed, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it's the way to bet.



The Makarov is a decent little Russian-designed double-action pistol that at least conceptually resembles the Walther PPK. It fires a 9x18mm (first number is diameter, second is case length) round that is between the .380 ACP (9x17mm) and 9mm Parabellum (9x19mm) in size as well as performance. It is useful for its intended purpose (shooting dissidents in the back of the head), but it's no tack-driver in terms of accuracy and production quality ranged from superb to abysmal.

The Europeans didn't seem to consider the pistol a fighting tool after World War I and always liked smaller calibers than we typically used. Police officers would actually be sent out on the streets with a self-loading .32 ACP as a defensive weapon, making the pistol the equivalent of a badge of office rather than a useful item. That is perhaps too severe a criticism, a .32 ACP is more effective than harsh language, at least at close quarters. This European fad burned out in the late 20th Century and now European firearms makers crank out a wide variety of "real" pistols in less-than-anemic calibers, and arm their police officers fairly well. Modern European police pistols include the Heckler & Koch P7, the SIG Arms P225 and P220, and other, more capable firearms.

Russian, East German and Bulgarian Makarovs were imported into the US in fairly large numbers in the 1990s, and were pretty cheap as pistols go, as little as $150, with the Russian and especially East German models fetching higher prices. As a backup gun they're not a bad option, but I'm pretty sure Jack would have preferred something else.

The Score so far:

Method	Score	Notes
Biting A Carotid	9.0	-1 for lack of Universal Protocol
Shooting Curtis	-8	-10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage
Shooting guard while handcuffed	7.0	+2 for while handcuffed
Shotgun	5.0
Shotgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife)
Handgun	7.0	+2 for disarm
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Handgun	5.0
Net	52.0

Jack+Bauer 24

Bangladesh Trial Update

If you remember my previous posts, the trial of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury for blasphemy for daring to write articles critical of Al Qaeda in Bangladesh and for advocating economic relations with Israel (as the charges read, "sedition, treason and blasphemy" -- right) was supposed to go off January 22, 2007.

The good news is that the government witnesses didn't show up, and apparently the government of Bangladesh is getting the picture that this trial isn't helping their image in the democratic countries of the world. Other good news is that the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed, in a bipartisan fashion and without dissent, a resolution calling for the government of Bangladesh to drop all charges against Mr. Choudhury. It should go to the full House soon.

The bad news is that while the government of Bangladesh had apparently told everyone concerned about the issue that there would be three hearings and no witnesses would show up, allowing the issue to be dropped, two witnesses showed up for his February 28 trial, and thus the trial has to continue. Given that the judge in the case is inclined to favor the Islamists, this is not a good thing for Mr. Choudhury.

Ask your representatives to co-sponsor House Resolution 64 (text (PDF)).

This just ain't right, folks.

Bangladesh Choudhury trial

Hyperpower? By Default.

Max Boot of the LA Times lays out the reason the US is the sole superpower left in the world, in the process of talking about why Tony Blair had to reduce Britain's troop committment in Iraq:

The tragedy is that he had to rob Peter to pay Paul because Britain can't maintain 7,000 troops in Iraq and 7,000 in Afghanistan. Those are hardly huge numbers for a country of 60 million with the fifth-largest national economy in the world. Yet even as Britain has continued to play a leading role in world affairs, it has allowed its defenses to molder.

The total size of its armed forces has shrunk from 305,800 in 1990 to 195,900 today, leaving it No. 28 in the world, behind Eritrea and Burma. This downsizing has reduced the entire British army (107,000 soldiers) to almost half the size of the U.S. Marine Corps (175,000).

Adding all of Canada's 62,000 active duty soldiers to the British Army equals the manpower of the Marine Corps. The US does have the largest defense expenditures in the world at a shade over $500 billion a year, but that is just 4% of GDP and nowhere near Cold War-level expenditures, which were often 9% of GDP or higher. Meanwhile, Euroland has dropped its GDP expenditure for defense to 1.9%, on average. All of the EU armed forces together -- a geographic and economic power equal or greater in size to the United States -- can't muster a force anywhere near ours, and is woefully lacking in force projection, the ability to get boots on the ground around the world.

Why does the US "go it alone"? Because we functionally "go it alone" even when our allies come on board, in terms of numbers and capabilities. Barring some tectonic shift in European politics and budget priorities, even the "full support" of our traditional allies amounts to little more than political cover and a pat on the back. This is one of those times where appearance is more important than reality, because the reality is that if we fight in the future we'll be on our own in the field. Our French, German and British friends may stand behind us, but the reality is that they'll for the most part be behind us indeed -- like, back in Paris, Berlin and London.

This is not disparagment of the British or Canadian soldiers that take risk equal to our troops in Afghanistan, they are widely-regarded as extremely capable and brave troops especially for the numbers of them in theater. But it sure would help if there was no need for a qualifier after "extremely capable and brave troops". Canada in particular is doing yeoman work in Afghanistan, and the Conservative PM Stephen Harper is taking flak for the strain on the Canadian Forces to keep their troops there. The help of their troops is greatly appreciated, it would be easier on their troops if their societies would put more resources into defense. Many of the non-British and non-Canadian NATO troops in Afghanistan are forbidden by their governments from taking offensive action, even though operations in Afghanistan are supported and approved by NATO. While there are combat support jobs that need doing, that doesn't strike me as quite the same level of commitment the Canadians and British are showing. Not only are our combat troops defending American freedom and the principles of the nations of NATO, they're also fighting and dying in Afghanistan in part to defend European nations' right to a thick social safety net at the expense of their ability to project power.

Robert Kagan covered this well in Of Paradise and Power, a look at how America and its European allies interact in the post-Cold War period. He argues that there was a window for the EU to form a counterpole to America's default unilateral power after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that in essence Europe chose to buy into the Peace Dividend concept rather heavily. Part of Europe's reluctance to recognize the War on Terror as a War is their general position on Arab-Israeli interactions (it's the Jews' fault) and possibly more experience dealing with domestic terrorism, but another factor may be the Europeans' inability to participate in a war. They're simply not prepared. The EU's iffiness on whether Darfur requires UN intervention is likely due in part to the reality that if the EU declares a genocide, there's little they can do about it militarily.

The EU likes the soft power of trade and sanction and strongly-worded diplomatic notes because that's about the only power they have left. It's not inconsiderable power, but if boots on the ground become necessary that's a situation that only highlights Europe's impotence in that regard. Why encourage even righteous beat-downs of international criminals if it shows that the defense cupboard is bare because of decades of neglect? The last genocide on record happened over a period of years in Europe in the 1990s, and only when the US showed up to drop 96% of ordnance in a "joint" operation against Serbia in 1999 was the genocide stopped. Next time you're out to dinner with someone, offer to pay 4% of the check and see how much your companion appreciates you telling others you split the bill.

Where this becomes a problem is when the US feels the need to use the military force it has retained since the Cold War. The result is almost inevitably elitist disdain of our decision to have guns AND butter, rather than a whole lot of subsidized EU-certified butter. We can count on this attitude, no matter the issue, until the EU is able to field a force on par with US forces. It's not outside their capabilities, but from a political standpoint it does seem to be beyond their conception.

I belive I'll pick up Max Boot's latest book for our upcoming cruise.

Britain Army Hyperpower EU Max+Boot

Missed Co-Branding Opportunity For The Wii

Had it for a couple of weeks before I managed to cowboy-up and climb into the warren of wires behind our A/V stack, add a component selector switch and power-on the Wii.

Let me just say that next to the trampoline in the backyard and a swimming pool, there is little that will send your kids to bed exhausted more than Wii Sports. I knew I should have stretched or something but I just couldn't help myself, and I've been sore for three days after maybe 90 minutes of Bowling, Tennis, Golf and Boxing.

Ouch. Fair warning to parents -- if you plan to play with your kids on the Wii, get limber or get Aleve. They won't get bored any time soon, and you'll still be sore. For the money it's a pretty good game system, it plays all the GameCube games if you have one of those, and it doesn't require a HD monitor upgrade to fully utilize. It wasn't the cost of the XBox360 that made me wait six months after they came out to buy one, it was the cost of the LCD panel to play it on. You sidestep that completely with a Wii, and it costs half of a PS/3 and 60% of an XBox360 with hard drive.

Soon as I get some other games I'll let you know. I was in college during Zelda, so I missed that part, but I'm sure something good is out there.

Ninetndo Wii pain

What is McCain Doing?

Comes to the reading room news that John McCain chose the august location of Late Show With David Letterman to announce his bid for the Presidency, and that he's declined an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Committee's (CPAC) 2007 meeting.

The Letterman thing -- whatever. It's not ringing with historical overtones like Sen. Obama's announcement at the Illinois Statehouse, but then again nobody was going to mistake John McCain for Abraham Lincoln. It's less Web 2.0 than Hillary's videoblogged-announcement, but I guess it's pretty silly at this point to go on a national television talk program and waffle about whether you're going to run when you've been running for the last 3 years.

McCain put his foot in the same hole that Obama twisted his ankle in a month or so ago, saying that the lives lost in Iraq have been "wasted", which is not going to endear him to the milblog crowd at all. Then again, the poll data suggests that he's angering less than 50.1% of the population with that statement, so politically it makes sense, right? He has since apologized, and his fellow Senator from Illinois had the grace to not tapdance on the statement with golf shoes on. It does show some class for Senator Obama to do that, which is part of the reason I think Hillary Clinton's politcal machine will be picking its teeth with his femur before the primaries are over. Politics is no longer the place for the Nice Guy, but I respect him not taking the boots to McCain when he's down.

The CPAC thing is a much larger blunder. First, the 5,000 attending CPAC are the yeast in the conservative political dough, and not getting face time with them is not helping your chances in the race for money and support. Second, it's pretty obvious that McCain is afraid of video of him speaking to the foam-flecked Wingnuts of the ultra-right (see, I could write for DailyKos if I used more profanity) making it out to the public. He could really use some conservative help, I mean, we vote too, rather reliably if it's someone we like. Mitt Romney will be there, so will Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. McCain's people were trying to get a room to meet with some of the CPACers on the sly, without saying anything to them on the record, but it strikes me that this only twists the knife -- I want your support, but I don't want my picture taken with you? This kind of makes CPAC attendees out to be the John Huang of this political cycle, don't it?

I guess the calculus is that the conservatives will vote for McCain if he's the GOP nominee, because we'd really rather not vote for Hillary. That's what I want to be, a President elected by the people who voted against the other guy. Whale of a mandate there. This would be a better strategy if there weren't other candidates at the conference. I think most conservatives would love to see Rudy Giuliani be the Designated Public Speaker for George W., the guy exudes credibility and he articulates the War on Terror as well -- but if it's Date-Marry-Kill between Rudy, Newt and Mitt, I'd go for them in that order and I imagine that most people at CPAC will feel the same way by the end of the conference. Rudy is a leader, but he's pro-choice and pro-gun control, and if you want to get me to stay home or vote Libertarian those are two good positions to articulate early and often. Mitt Romney? He's a bit of a cypher at this point. Yes, he was elected in a Blue state but his late conversion to conservative viewpoints seems based more on convenience than conviction, and since he's out of office he doesn't have a chance to demonstrate his commitment in any tangible way.

The reason I'd marry Newt is that he really is that smart. He's a good speaker. He thinks about the issues, and articulates real plans to do things, not more platitudes. Yes, he's had an extramarital affair or three, yes, he's been married more often than Britney Spears (in fairness, Britney is just getting started). I know all these things, if they're a negative for Newt they're a negative for Rudy "I Divorce Thee At A Press Conference" Giuliani as well. The thing is, I don't want a Pastor, I want a President. I want a GOP candidate that can, if necessary, intelligently talk the Democratic nominee into the ground, with detail, and be right. And do it all without cue cards. The Modern Political Playbook says know your Talking Points, and refer the answer to any question back to your Talking Points. What a world it would be if the candidates were Talking, instead of Talking their Points. Of the serious contenders for the GOP nomination (Brownback? Tancredo? WHO?), Giuliani can probably do that, but I would question Romney and McCain's ability to do so.

The trick is that Newt isn't running, at least not officially. But my prediction is that he will come in either second or third at the CPAC straw poll, and a lot of people who wished Jeb Bush would enter the race will leave CPAC wishing Newt would enter the race, and he will, if asked.

CPAC Newt+Gingrich John+McCain GOP politics

Fathers and Anthrax

In case you missed it this week, a 22 year-old graduate student threatened the University of Missouri-Rolla campus with a bomb and anthrax. The bomb was less of a problem than the word 'anthrax', which resulted in the graduate student and nearly everyone around getting a disinfectant bath, including the civil engineering building in which he was holed-up. The powder turned out to be powdered sugar.

His roomate, also from India, gave background on the perp to the local media. This sentence in particular stands out to me:

Venkatramolla is an international student from a “well respected” family in India, according to Putta, who also pointed out that Venkatramolla’s father died when he was a child.

This clearly illustrates the importance of a father in a young boy's life to stress how wrong it is to threaten others with dread diseases. Take that, feminists!

I am truly sorry this kid lost his Dad. I'm unbelievably lucky to be my age and still have mine. But why does the loss of this kid's parent need to be in a story about six felony charges and anthrax? What journalistic purpose is served by including this detail, other than to generate sympathy? I went to college with a guy who lost both of his parents by the end of his senior year, people go through pain all the time. The vast majority of them manage to navigate it without showing a white powder that they say is enough anthrax to kill Central Missouri.

When in our society will a 22 year-old be held responsible for his actions, and explanations not offered for his bad behavior? And isn't it a little early in the process for excuses?

Hat tip LGF

Anthrax Fathers UM-Rolla

Jack Bauer Tally: Hour 11

Jack seems to be off his game a bit. Then again, he's been in a Chinese prison camp for a couple of years, so I imagine he's not in prime shape. He didn't even kill anyone this week, and he only killed two people last week. His season total isn't even up to what he managed to do in 10 minutes breaking Secretary Heller and Audrey out of their hostage situation in Season 4.

His two kills from last week saved Milo from getting gunned down and his sister-in-law, Nathan Petrelli's wife from Heroes, from being caught in the clutches of Jack's evil Dad. One son has killed nearly 100 people in service to his country, the other tried to foment a foreign war and had an ex-President assassinated to frame his brother. One can only imagine the dinner table conversations.

This week's bloodless (other than the bomb in the Press room, called by yours truly) episode showed Jack meeting with Charles Logan, and the prominent featuring of a Bible verse -- with the key phrase being "gave me a place to stand." A place to stand in Russia, Mr. Logan? That's what I'm thinking. Jack is in the process of accompanying Charles to the Russian consulate, and Jack doesn't do well with consulates.

For any of you interested, Jack's sidearm this season and last appears to be the Heckler & Koch USP Compact:



The USP Compact comes in 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Wouldn't surprise me to see Jack using the .45 ACP, though compared to the .40 it doesn't offer much more in the way of stopping power at the cost of a few rounds per mag. Of course, if you can hit every time you shoot, how many rounds do you really need?

The Score so far:

Method	Score	Notes
Biting A Carotid	9.0	-1 for lack of Universal Protocol
Shooting Curtis	-8	-10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage
Shooting guard while handcuffed	7.0	+2 for while handcuffed
Shotgun	5.0
Shotgun	5.0
Handgun	6.0	+1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife)
Handgun	6.0	+1 for saving hostages
Net	30.0

Jack+Bauer 24

Jack Bauer Tally

Just as a summary of last night's episode of 24, Jack got two kills with a pump shotgun, bring his season total to a so-far disappointing 5 confirmed kills. To recap, Jack's previous kills were biting the carotid out of a foolish terrorist to escape from Fayed's men in the first two episodes, and the shooting of one of the BXJ Corporation goons while still handcuffed. And of course, the unfortunate shooting of Curtis, which has to be seen as an "own goal".

The Score so far:

Method	Score	Notes
Biting A Carotid	9.0	-1 for lack of Universal Protocol
Shooting Curtis	-8	-10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage
Shooting guard while handcuffed	7.0	+2 for while handcuffed
Shotgun	5.0
Shotgun	5.0
Net	18.0

Jack has been blown up by exploding homes twice so far this season.

Morris was tortured by beating, mock drowning and Black & Decker and finally coughed up a working program to arm the suitcase nukes. The suitcase nukes feature an overly-complex mechanical trigger system that is very easily defeated if you have the schematics, or at least, the proper schematics, as Jack and Chloe found out. Now, other than being a ladies shoe salesman-cum-ace programmer, Morris is a self-professed coward with a bum shoulder, who nevertheless finally cowboyed-up and got back on the workstation to help out CTU. Other than calling everyone "Love", Morris is unfortunately two-dimensional so far this season and is simply a slimmer Edgar Stiles with an accent from a couple of thousand miles farther east, minus the twitching death.

Rob Lowe's otherwise forgettable government weasel-patriot claims he can take "decisive action" against the President. With the VP on Air Force 2, I'm thinking Rob Lowe is going to attempt to suicide-bomb the White House Underground Lair. Either Wayne Palmer will survive or he will find his inner Bauer and cap Rob Lowe with a pistol from a dead Secret Service agent. Tom Lennox will probably die in the process of protecting the President and redeem himself at the last moment. Either way, expect Wayne Palmer to be incommunicado for a portion of the remaining hours in the season, allowing evil Powers Boothe to assume Presidential powers and try to stop Jack Bauer at some point in the season.

He should know better, you can't stop Jack Bauer, you can only hope to contain Jack Bauer. More to come.

Jack+Bauer 24

Achin' Arkin

For those of you who don't follow the blogosphere much, there's been quite a kerfuffle over William Arkin's blog, hosted at the Washington Post. Said kerfuffle began after the airing of this brief NBC News piece by Richard Engel, it's all of 70 seconds long and worth a watch:


Wow. Let's just consider what we saw there. Three (3) US soldiers, average age probably 22-24, made statements that basically said, "Support us, enough of the cognitive dissonance that you 'Support the troops' but not what they do." Now, I personally don't put a lot of credence into the large worldview of someone of that age, even someone who's travelled internationally. What makes this news is that this viewpoint is so rarely expressed or even allowed to be expressed by the media. This is an outlier from NBC News, in my opinion. It's an outlier to hear this expressed by troops in any of the mainstream media outlets. I was happy to hear it, frankly. Given the attention and media coverage that the recent protest against the war got on the National Mall this past month, and the long and drawn-out coverage of the debate around the non-binding resolution criticizing 'The Surge' and the general conduct of the war, this is pretty mild stuff -- notable for if anything the absence of similar pieces elsewhere in the media but otherwise, not much of an issue. At least that's the way I see it.

William Arkin of the Washington Post had a bit of a different take. A borderline hysterical and over-the top take that's worth a read, particularly if you suffer from low blood pressure. Some key passages:

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

...

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

...

But it is the United States, and the recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

Now, Mr. Arkin is a former US soldier who enlisted in 1974. I have not enlisted and do not question his moral fiber, courage, whatever on that ground. What I do question is his mindset, the hair-trigger at which his vitriol-release mechanism must be set to in order to overreact to one story notable for being the only one of its kind I can remember, and to the statements of young men in a stressful situation. This is a horrific over-reaction, and he compounds it by going on an unhinged rant worthy of Mel Gibson or Michael Richards in terms of denigration, if not particular buzzwords of racial disharmony.

"Through every Abu Ghraib, every Haditha." You mean THE Abu Ghraib and THE Haditha, Mr. Arkin? The incidents that stand out as exceptions that generally prove the rule of good conduct of American soliders in extremely trying situations? It's telling that Mr. Arkin is a former researcher for Seymour Hirsch, who's never seen a soldier without seeing an atrocity. Mr. Arkin's post-Army experience has been pretty far-left in terms of the groups that have employed him. It's fairly obvious that his patience is of limited reach, since the first thing he brings to the rhetorical table are the offenses that he obviously considers de rigeur, his meta-message seems to me to be that there is no expiation for these crimes and that if he had his way the American people would hold each and every soldier personally accountable for them.

"Obscene amenities." Right. How many places that serve three kinds of ice cream also get mortared on a regular basis? Makes you wonder if Mr. Arkin doesn't have to wear his Interceptor vest and a helmet to Starbucks on a given day he considers it an "amenity". Yes, some of the FOBs are pretty snazzy, even John Kerry eats there when he's in-country -- but most of the places where US soldiers are deployed in the field would see regular running water, or hot running water, as an upgrade. I didn't see any KBR employees trotting along and helping those soldiers on patrol in the video report carry their packs and armor, a 45-lb load when you don't carry water, food and extra ammo, up to eighty when know you're going to fight. Maybe this is an "up hill both ways in the snow" moment for former-Private Arkin, but it's also petty and stupid.

And as for the soldiers being "above society", that's some delightful projection there on the part of Mr. Arkin. The soldiers are part of society. They would tell you the same thing, and they do on their blogs. A part of society that does hard things in hard places, but a part of society that gets a say in things as well (unless you're an attorney for the Gore Campaign in Florida after the 2000 election). How are these three soldiers' opinions impairing Mr. Arkin's freedom to put his foot in his mouth with this blog post? There are soldiers who would vehemently disagree with those guys, there's a whole website with 1268 active-duty and reserve soldiers who disagree with the statements made in the NBC News report. One wonders if Mr. Arkin is as offended by that expression of soldier viewpoints, one believes, uh, not.

And finally, Mr. Arkin delivers the coup-de-grace on himself by referring to our volunteer force as "mercenary". Even he, in a later post, says:

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

Only, he digs the hole deeper by adding in the next paragraph:

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Again, projection much Mr. Arkin? I doubt he can say with a straight face that he holds the people who voted for GWB in anything other than contempt.

Needless to say, Arkin's columns have provoked a storm of criticism, debate (mild profanity, but funny) and email, all of it angry on one side or the other and some of it threatening. I don't wish William Arkin any ill. I do wish him the anonymity he enjoyed prior to blowing a gasket and displaying his dark, sad, hateful soul for all to see. He's trying to tamp a lid on all of this with a third and a fourth post, if recent celebrity trips to rehab for bad public decisions are any guide I imagine he may volunteer to go to Parris Island for "Sensitivity Training" with the Marines. It's so very sad to watch people try to apologize for saying things they believe, from his third post:

I knew when I used the word "mercenary" in my Tuesday column that I was being highly inflammatory.

NBC News ran a piece in which enlisted soldiers in Iraq expressed frustration about waning American support.

I intentionally chose to criticize the military and used the word to incite and call into question their presumption that the public had a duty to support them. The public has duties, but not to the American military.

So I committed blasphemy, and for this seeming lack of respect and appreciation for individuals in uniform, I have been roundly criticized and condemned.

Mercenary, of course, is an insult and pejorative, and it does not accurately describe the condition of the American soldier today. I sincerely apologize to anyone in the military who took my words literally.

Does anyone else believe that his snarky use of the term 'blasphemy' pretty much invalidates everything else he says? It seems like that to me. His final post is about the evils of demonization, and I would take statements like that seriously from someone who spends so much time demonizing entire segments of society. He oughta know, and you should listen to experts.

Arkin Iraq opinion

New York Times Columns of Cartoonish Idiocy, Perhaps Reflecting Toll Of Financial Mismanagement And Upper West Side Isolation

It's really spectacular how bad some BDS cases are. Take Stuart Elliott of the New York Times...no really, please take him and wrap his head securely in tinfoil and manage his psychoactive meds better because whoever his therapist is s/he is not doing a very good job.

In an analysis of the Super Bowl Commercials to divine the zeitgeist, he finds high levels of violence and decides that, although no overtly patriotic commercials aired this year, "the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials." To support this he lists examples of slapping, being hit in the head with a rock during a rock, paper, scissors game and a Garmin ad that is an homage to the 1960s-era Ultraman (complete with Garmin GPS as the Beta Capsule that allows the defeat of the Map Monster), which Elliott would know were he as culturally-relevant as he believes himself to be. An example:



Elliott projects his own anti-war feelings and longing for the last four years not to have happened onto the few ads that use the gimmick of awaking from a bad dream, the best of which was the "GM Robot" ad. His worst bit of projection he reserves for Prudential, who's been advertising as long as I've been alive and has stuck with the same tagline, "Get a Piece of The Rock" for, oh, ever -- Elliott assumes the Prudential is subliminally saying "Get a Piece of Iraq".

Following this line of illogic (hey, it's fun, and besides, Elliott started it), the cartoonish violence inherent in Jackass laid the groundwork for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the invasion of Afghanistan. Prudential is an obvious funder and fomenter of anti-Iraqi feelings, they've been telling us to "Get A Piece Of Iraq" for years, worming the message into our consciousness the entire time. It's all there if you want to see it, duude...The Man has been using SuperBowl Ads and MTV to push us to war forever! Cartoonish violence comes from cartoons -- from the Warner Brothers brothers cartoons and Hollywood and the neo-con Jewish elements in the Entertainment Industry! Fred Flintstone has a five-o'clock shadow and is primitive, it's not a cartoon version of The Honeymooners, it's been a tool all along to make us dislike dark-haired hirsute men! This is all planned, MAAAAN! DONTCHA SEE!

Just a few days prior to publishing Elliott's exercise in projection, embedded NYT reporters in Iraq and their US-based editors published on the Internet (and in print form in their January 29th edition) video and photographs of the mortally-wounded Staff Sergeant Hector Leija, without his consent. This violates a clearly-defined policy and responsibility of embedded reporters, to the point where the Commander of MNC-I, Lt. General Raymond Odierno, booted the reporter and photographer out of SSG Leija's unit and they're probably on rather thin ice about staying in-country to report at all. Perhaps it might occur to the stockholders of the New York Times, if not the Sulzburger family or the editors or reporters, that it's this kind of idiotic venting of the spleen and disregard of journalistic standards that has led to the NYT becoming a financial disaster.

If there really is all this anti-war sentiment in the nation, it would seem that the nation's "Newspaper of Record" hurling red meat for the anti-war and anti-Bush crowd should be reaping some benefits, right? Increased circulation, higher valuation of the company? As it turns out the answer is "not so much". In the New York Times Company's latest financial statement, NYTC was forced to write down the value of two papers it purchased, the Boston Globe and the Worchester Telegram & Gazette, by $814 millon, two assets they paid $1.4 billion for in 1993. If the Sulzberger family (which owns a controlling interest in the NYTC through its control of a minority of shares with super-voting priviliges) told scion and NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger to spend to money on cocaine and women of loose morals, he couldn't have possibly lost that much money. The Sulzberger family has done such a poor job of running the company and strategic decision making that a Morgan Stanley investment manager challenged their operation of the company, leading the Ochs-Sulzberger family to pull their assets out of Morgan Stanley, a typical Times-ish, take-my-ball-and-go-home reply to criticism. I'm sure their stockholders, the ones that vote in the company like the peons they are under a hierarchical corporate governance structure, are willing to accept a 50% loss over the last two years in return for the Sulzberger family's enlightened editorial guardianship. Hey, they're Doing The Right Thing, it's not like The New York Times Corporation is a business or anything.

Now, in fairness, not all of the NYT's problems are the result of its anti-war, anti-Bush stance. In fact, the problem is the company's late grasp of the fact that newspapers are an increasingly irrelevant means of disseminating news. The people who are cleaning up on advertising, relatively speaking, are the Googles and Yahoos of the world. The NYT does have an online presence -- and they made the brilliant move last year of putting most of that material behind a pay-site barrier, because, you know, it worked so well for Salon.com. I guess there is an upside, when the Times decides to publish the secret inner workings of US government anti-terror plans, it means that terrorists will have to pony up for a NYT premium online subscription.

So basically, thanks Mr. Elliott for revealing the secret backmasked pro-war leanings of CareerBuilder.com, Anheuser-Busch and Prudential. Good job! Lean over here and let me smack you in the face to demonstrate how impressed I am with your insight.

Oh, and if I were you, given your boss' ability to lose money, I'd write down that CareerBuilder.com address. You never know.

New+York+Times BDS Commercials

Can't Stop The Signal

For those of you that haven't seen Firefly the series, or Serenity the movie, you're missing out, particularly if you're a SF fan. Snappy dialogue, clever direction and good plots in a 13-episode series that Fox most likely now badly regrets it cancelled back in 2002. I tried very hard to see every episode when it was broadcast, Fox didn't help by moving the series 3 times over the 11 episodes it actually aired.

Firefly did manage to assemble quite a fan base, though, and when it came out on DVD the fans performed an incredible viral marketing job, with somewhere around 600,000 series sets sold since it came out. This pile of change coming into the coffers did make people notice, and with the Internet an international fan base was created virtually instantly. With this interest, the feature movie Serenity was made and released in the fall of 2005. Box office wasn't superb for the movie, but the movie itself was great -- in my opinion on par with Episode IV of Star Wars and better than any of the Star Wars movies except The Empire Strikes Back. It's worth a watch, too.

What's so interesting about this show is that it's not just the fans, but the actors who seem to really love the show. Ron Glass, a veteran of Barney Miller, practically cries in the DVD extras when he talks about how much he enjoyed the series. Due to a misspelling somewhere along the Internet journey, fans of the series became known as "Flans", and there was supposed to be a "Flanvention" this past weekend with people coming in from all over the world, literally. The company that was putting together the Flanvention abruptly canceled the event, just a few days before the planned date.

With a bunch of fans in town for a canceled event, do the actors from Firefly shrug and stay home? No. They go to the hotel and an improptu party begins in the bar, with Nathan Fillion ("Captian Malcom Reynolds") passing out gifts, Alan Tudyk ("Wash", the hilarious pilot) and others posing for pictures. Most likely what began as a massive disappointment has become a huge 'high' for the Firefly/Serenity fans that showed up. That's impressive, and that's how you build fan loyalty.

Apparently, when Adam Baldwin ("Jayne") walked in, the crowd began singing a song from one of the episodes called "The Man Called Jayne", too funny. Christina Hendricks ("Saffron" from my favorite episode, "Our Mrs. Reynolds"), Mark Sheppard ("Badger") and at least two other actors showed up, apparently unpaid, just because some fans of their work were there. Now, you can argue that actors are attention-starved junkies desperate for adulation, and really, who wouldn't want to get to be a real hero to some supremely disappointed people? Nevertheless, I think it's really cool that they would take time out of their lives to make some people's day.

When I get off call, I think I'm going to watch Serenity again.

Firefly Serenity Flanvention

Snarky, but Funny

Plane Diverted Due to Flatulence

Story here. via Drudge Report.

Basically, a woman with "a medical condition" was worried her flatulence would offend others and so she lit matches to conceal the odor. When the lit-match smell was noted by the passengers, the plane was diverted and the "ninja of the nasty" kicked off.

It's a testiment to her personal brand of gas that she believed the terrifying smell of an in-flight fire would be preferred by other passengers to her own emissions, I guess she felt she was trying to do the right thing.

While it's a better strategy than opening a window at 35,000 feet, an even better strategy would be Beano and a high-protein, low-sulfur diet.



As this video shows, the enchilada platter plus the three-cheese omlette with broccoli is a bad choice before you get on a plane.

flatulence air+travel

He Said What?

I have to say, I didn't expect this out of a Lipscomb University professor. In the Big Three of colleges commonly associated with the churches of Christ, Lipscomb is the smallest but I was under the impression that it was far from the most liberal. Associate Professor Lee Camp of the College of Bible and Ministry is quoted (emphasis necessary -- I don't trust reporters as a rule) as making some, uh, interesting statements at a recent interfaith meeting in Nashville:

To live peacefully with Muslims and Jews, Christians must put aside the notion that their faith requires the creation of a Christian kingdom on Earth, a Lipscomb University theologian told an interfaith gathering at the university.

"We are not going to get very far in our relationship with Jews or Muslims if we do not let go of this idea," Lipscomb professor Lee Camp said at Tuesday's conference.


The unusual gathering of several dozen clergy and lay people was devoted to resolving religious conflict in Nashville and around the world.

"We need to forsake the Christendom model," Camp said. "The most basic Christian commitment … is that we say we believe in the Lordship of Jesus. But, if we claim that, how can a Muslim or Jew trust us, if we say Jesus is the Lord of all Lords?"

...

First, Christians must examine their "sins of omission," he said — such as not taking the time to learn about other religions. Then they must look at their "sins of commission."

"We have such short historical (memory) spans as white Christians," he said. "There is a history of anti-Semitism, the violence and bloodshed of the crusades and cultural imperialism. We have to deal with the reality of what Christians have done, which in some cases has been to kill people."

Camp described himself as a conservative Christian but conceded his opinions may be viewed as "radical" by other evangelical Christians.

Christians must shed the idea that they need to promulgate a worldwide Christianity, he said.

"If I hold to a model of Jesus … what I've committed to in my baptism is loving my enemy," Lee said. "I'm committed to not killing you, but to serving and honoring you. It's an exclusive commitment to the way of Christ, not to the exclusive authority of Christ."

"Radical", Dr. Camp? Ya' think?

Now, there are a lot of folks whose lives have been changed for the positive by Dr. Camp's book Mere Discipleship, and not having a full transcript available I'm going to suspend judgement as to what he actually said as opposed to how he was quoted. "Christian Bible Professor At Local Arch-Conservative School Throws In The Towel, Accepts Dhimmitude" is such a more interesting subtext than "Religious Leaders Say 'Can't We All Just Get Along" that I can understand why a reporter with a built-in viewpoint would promote Camp's statements to the level of faux pas/career suicide. But it's worth addressing the points raised in the quotes until someone coughs up a transcript.

First, the God of the Muslims is not the God of Abraham and Jacob, the God of David and the Father of the Christ. Our God is not distant and unknowable, he interacts with his people all through the Bible. Allah does not "equal" the Christian God, unless there is a pair of thrones in Heaven, and I somehow believe that since Judaism and Christianity were Mohammed's source texts, somebody would have spilled the beans somewhere in the 66 books of the canonical Bible or the other non-canonical works. I don't seem to recall God mentioning his buddy Allah (who was aloof but good with deserts) when he spoke to Job about laying out the seas during creation in Job 38. The Muslim concept of God is simply not the same God that speaks through the Bible.

Second, I'm curious as to the utility of Jesus if he's not the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I can understand why having a sweatshirt or bumper-sticker mentality about being on the "King's Team" would be off-putting in a Michigan vs. Michgan State kind of way, this isn't a football game with cheerleaders. But if Jesus is not the Son of God, then his sacrifice would seem to be insufficient to cover the sins of the world, which leaves Christianity with precious little to offer. If the "Good News" is just another flavor of "Religion-ix" to be downloaded and offered as a Moral Operating System, count me out. A fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam is that you can know your eternal resting place before you die, what's more you can know God himself through the Holy Spirit and the Bible, at least as much as our limited consciousness can grasp. You don't have to strap on thirty pounds of Semtex and ball bearings to earn the favor of your Lord by killing yourself and the nearby infidels. The price for you was already paid. Where is the hope, other than for earthly praise by other Christians, if Jesus isn't Lord? If he can't lay down his life and through his own authority pick it up again, then the hope of eternal life, the message we offer to others, is robbed of its power. I'm sure there are missionaries all over the world smacking themselves in the foreheads when this is published and promulgated all over the world.

As for the historical depradations of white Christians, you know what Dr. Camp? I personally don't bear any culpability or responsibility for that, in fact, I categorically reject it. My surname is French, it's entirely possible that one of my ancestors stood (or fell) with Charles Martel at Tours in 732 when the Muslim invaders were forced back to Iberia. My mother's family name has Germanic roots, maybe one of my far-back progenitors was an Austrian fighting for his very life and watching his family slowly starve at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. I don't bear any ill will toward the descendants of the jihad-fueled military expansionists that threatened Europe for 900 years -- they weren't there. This is not a matter of forgiving as much as we're forgiven, I don't see that as biblical. What this is a matter of is using history as pretext.

It was White Christians who powered the Renaissance, who developed the tools of logical inquiry and free reasoning to their current apex (some would say apogee, looking down the road) in Western Civilization, and curiously it was an echo of the Islamic rejection of the same Hellenistic ideas that make Paul's writings so clear and cogent, in the form of Averroes' writings that helped promulgate the very concept of rational analysis in Western religous philosophy. Dr. Camp's statement about "what Christians have done", while incomplete (again, we're waiting on a transcript), rings of a typical leftist apology for our society being more affluent and free than theirs. While this may not be his intent, the simple truth is that when the Islamic world had the opportunity to embrace tradition or reason, it chose tradition -- in the 1200s. The resultant stall in cultural development and embrace of tribalism and ignorance over education has long-lasting effects to this very day, none of which were the result of Americans, Christians or Westerners.

While it's important that we recongnize what Christians have done in the past, having a discussion with a Muslim about which religion has been the most violent or aggressive is patently beside the point. If you want to discuss what some people have done in the name of my God, then we're not discussing my God or his Son, are we? It's a continuation of the anti-rational thread that runs so spectacularly through the more extremist versions of Islam and is still latently present in feelings of inadequacy and failure that run through the Arab world. It's up to me as a Christian to be Jesus to people, real living people that aren't at the Siege of Vienna or the Battle of Tours or the Sack of Jerusalem during the Crusades. In day-to-day interactions, I don't see where the history of either religion comes into play. Either I'm a living example of the love of Christ to people I interact with, or I'm not. I fail to see why wearing a T-shirt that says SORRY FOR THE CRUSADES will make me more credible.

The one thing that Dr. Camp says that I admit to some conflict about is the role of Christians in conflict. The chances of my presented with forced conversion to Islam or death are at this point very slim, but given that specific choice I regretfully (because I love my family and my life, to be painfully honest) find that I have to choose death. Short of that specific eventuality, I don't believe that Christianity compels me to, for example, serve others by exposing myself in the open for the benefit of a sniper who is having trouble shooting me. I don't believe that Christianity compels me to be defenseless against senseless violence, I have a responsibility to my family and to raise my children. I'm their protector, I'm supposed to lay down my life for my wife but I don't read that as being defenseless. Peter tried (inexpertly, I might add) to decapitate Malchus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus undoubtedly knew he had a sword but he didn't compel Peter to disarm himself, or even criticize Peter overmuch for the act itself. I'm humbled by the examples of the early church martyrs, but then they were executed for being Chrisitans. Is it the same when a Muslim extremist tries to kill Americans for being Americans? Having read the blogs of some admirers of Dr. Camp, they would laugh at the idea that being a Christian and being an American are the same, or even related.

I wrestle with this one, but when it comes down to it I don't feel that as a Christian it's my duty to submit to random violence simply because I happen to be in a shopping mall when someone decides to open fire. I'm not going to reason with the guy with the AK, I'm going to shoot him twice in the center of mass and once in the head or pelvis and repeat as necessary. It may be a sin of commission to use violence in Dr. Camp's formulation, but it's a glaring sin of omission to see oppression or violence to others and not act if you have the power. It may be sublime and may be seen by others as more moral or Christ-like to do everything short of violence to resolve a threatening situation, but I'm sorry, I just don't see it that way. There is a sacrifice involved in even legitimate violence, post-shooting syndrome is well-known and often discussed in law enforcement circles.

And finally, I guess we can just pack up the missionaries if we're supposed to "shed the idea" of a "worldwide Christianity", as the reporter paraphrases Dr. Camp. Again, this is a characterization not a quote and I hold it suspect, but it's sure depressing to people like me who support worldwide missionaries.

UPDATE:

Well, it seems that as I originally suspected, the fault is apparently on the Tennessean's end. Here is the statement from Lipscomb University:

On November 28, 2006, Lipscomb University held a historic meeting for the city of Nashville and the surrounding community. The Institute for Conflict Management invited individuals with differing religious beliefs to come to campus and participate in a dialogue. That purpose is consistent with one mission of this institution: to proclaim our faith and values to a broader community. For those engaged in the day long endeavor, the program was enthusiastically endorsed.

As is often the case in dealing with difficult questions, misunderstandings or misinterpretations can occur. By now many of you have read the Tennessean article or heard various news reports purporting to summarize comments by Dr. Lee Camp. Having been a participant in that seminar and heard Professor Camp’s statements, I can assure you the article printed in the Tennessean did not accurately reflect the substance of Dr. Camp’s presentation or his personal beliefs.

As a point of clarification, Dr. Camp has provided the following summary statement of his presentation and beliefs.

“On Tuesday, Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management hosted an “Invitation to Dialogue: Conversations on Religious Conflict.” The full-day program included a variety of speakers, and from a broad range of backgrounds: Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist, as well as Catholic and Protestant. My assignment for the day was to articulate the “Theological Ground for Peaceful Co-Existence.” Due to a front-page story in The Tennessean that mis-characterized my lecture and beliefs, numerous questions have been raised regarding what I believe, and what I said. Many have expressed feelings of dismay in response to the story, feelings I also shared when I read the report. Brief news stories can seldom do justice to substantive conversations.

“The dialogue prior to my lecture had been most encouraging and refreshing: numerous speakers had insisted that Jews, Muslims, and Christians must not pretend that our differences are insignificant. Moreover, we can acknowledge the seriousness of the differences, while honoring one another. Such conversation encouraged me, precisely because I have long disagreed with those who say that Jews, Muslims, and Christians are all “saying the same thing.” Serious adherents of their respective faiths know this is not the case.

“In my lecture, I too insisted that we must not discard what is most important to us. I am a Christian who holds, without apology, to the Lordship of Jesus. I cannot accept any strategy of “conflict resolution” that asks me to set aside that particular claim. I believe and teach that Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

“This exclusive claim of the authority of Christ thus presents a problem for “conflict management.” I went on to ask these questions: How can the Jew or Muslim trust us Christians if we hold onto the exclusive Lordship of Jesus? Given that I refuse to deny the Lordship of Jesus, what can I or other Christians possibly contribute to peace-making, whether global or local?

“Here is my answer: Because I profess that Jesus is Lord of Lords, I have committed myself to loving both neighbor and enemy. Because I profess that Jesus is King of Kings, I have committed myself to serving and honoring all people. Because I profess that Jesus is the ultimate authority to which all other authorities must submit, that authority requires of me to extend gracious, generous hospitality to the stranger, the pilgrim, and those who do not see the world as I see it.

“This, of course, is not how the authority of Christ has always been practiced. In serious dialog with Jews and Muslims, we American Christians, who tend to have very short historical attention spans, must acknowledge the sins of Christian history. The claim of the Lordship of Jesus has often been divorced from Jesus’ call to be merciful to those with whom we differ. In fact, the claim has often served as a battle-cry, an imperialistic profession used to destroy Jews and Muslims. In view of this history, Jews and Muslims have good reasons for not trusting those who wear the name Christian.

“Because I profess Jesus as Lord, I must let go of any strategy that seeks to violently impose “Jesus is Lord” upon another. I believe and profess “Jesus is Lord,” and am compelled by Jesus’ Lordship to share this Good News world-wide. But if such sharing treats others in a way contrary to the teachings of Jesus, I have thereby denied my profession. I choose not only to proclaim that “Jesus is Lord,” but to live Jesus as Lord, among all—believer or unbeliever, Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jew.”

Lee C. Camp
Assoc. Professor of Theology & Ethics
Lipscomb University
29 November 2006

Upon learning of the article in the Tennessean, we reviewed Dr. Camp’s actual comments and sought perspectives from conference attendees. This e-mail from Charles McGowan, a prominent religious leader, was consistent with other comments we received:

“The Tennessean did Lipscomb and Dr. Lee Camp a great disservice in how they reported his remarks. He absolutely did not say what the paper reported him to have said. … I commend Lipscomb University for this bold step and for creating a table to which we would invite Muslims and Jews. It is, however, a risky place and one that requires much grace and wisdom which I believe God will give us if we humbly seek His face.”

As an administration, we believe that continuing this dialogue is essential to fulfilling the ministry of reconciliation to which we have been called and for which Christ died. The ministry of reconciliation is not without risk and is sometimes difficult. As we participate in this dialogue, I encourage each of us to practice the principles of
Matthew 18 as we engage in community with each other.

L. Randolph Lowry III
President, Lipscomb University

Well, that's better. I'll still differ with Dr. Camp with regard to the importance of history, I know more than most and quite frankly sitting across the table at Starbucks is me and me alone, not my ancestors and not their actions. If there is a Muslim or Jew across the table from me, then it's them, not their ancestors and not their actions. Either I'm credible as a Christian or I'm not. The rest is baggage I don't choose to bring to the table, if others care to use that as a lens through which to see me, then that's their vision problem, not mine.

Lee+Camp, Lipscomb, Christianity, Islam

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Bill Hobbs!

Tags:

• Lipscomb
• Christianity
• Islam
• Misquoting