Careful Thought

If Michael Yon isn’t on your daily reading list, you’re wrong, just wrong.

“Afghanistan, I think, is making tremendous progress. In the next one hundred years, these people might be poised to leap over the 12th and 13th centuries, landing with a smile, a sword, a gun and a bomb, in 14th Century. Perhaps another hundred years later they will land in the 17th century, and in another hundred into the 21st. But by then some of us will be in the 24th century, having either finally obliterated ourselves, or perhaps having finally conquered the common cold while raising kids on planets we never heard of today.”

I’m continually amazed at the clarity of Yon’s writing. There is just no comparison between him and the mainstream media talking heads with their “five soldiers were killed by a car bomb today” daily talking points.

Go here for more on the Desert of Death.

I am all about Psalm 51. Here is David, after Nathan confronted him over his murder of Uriah and his adultery with Bathsheba, turning to God.

The psalm opens with a plea for mercy from one who is undeserving:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.

David recognizes his own unworthiness before a righteous God. He seeks forgiveness and purification that goes well beyond the ritual purifications required by the law. He wants purification at the heart level.

In the middle of the psalm he recognizes the need for a changed heart, or spirit. It’s interesting to see the repeated theme:

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit , to sustain me.

He continues with praise and a desire to give God what He really desires in and from us:

O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.

Interestingly, David ends with a plea for prosperity and talks again about the traditional sacrifices:

In your good pleasure make Zion prosper;
build up the walls of Jerusalem.Then there will be righteous sacrifices,
whole burnt offerings to delight you;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

That didn’t make sense to me until I recognized that ritualized sacrifices (which God Himself ordained) are meaningless without the essential sacrifice of a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart.

David didn’t deserve forgiveness or mercy from God. I often wonder how God can love us back-sliding, fist-shaking fools. It’s actually pretty simple: we’re His children, washed clean of our true natures by the sacrifice of His son. David knew the font of forgiveness and mercy, even centuries before the sacrifice of the Christ.

Ain’t forgiveness grand?

Courtesy of Jonathan at Mangled Cat :

Global Warming Is Over At least since, 1998, that is. From the U.K Telegraph :

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Really. Maybe that would explain this .”
Time to add the Cat to the links…

From FoxNews.com: Iraqi Forces Kill Al Qaeda Leader :

“U.S. forces, acting on Iraqi intelligence, raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi, the local Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, and the two other insurgents were hiding just outside Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.Al-Takhi, known as the ‘emir’ of Samarra, was gunned down while fleeing the house, and the other two militants were killed while trying to defend it with grenades, the U.S. military said. After they were killed, the U.S. troops found a car parked nearby containing a grenade launcher, rockets, AK-47s, grenades and a shotgun, the U.S. military said.

Iraqi police said al-Takhi had been responsible for many insurgent attacks against coalition forces and civilians in the area.”

Hmmm, Al Qaeda is willing to die for their cause and our military is willing to accomodate them. As a wiser man than I said, “Let’s git ‘er done.”

Tim at the Black Kettle caught an outstanding piece by Jose Maria Aznar, the former Prime Minister of Spain, posted at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs . Here’s a taste from Tim’s summary (or go here for the whole enchilada).

[Aznar] reminds us of what a tragic day it was for both Spain and the defence of the free world when the Spanish buckled under the threat of terror and replaced him by an appeasement-minded government. Avnar is one of the few present or former world leaders who really gets it. NATO, he says, needs to articulate a new mission: to combat jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and concentrate its efforts upon fighting terror. Obvious. In pursuit of this aim, he says, it should open its doors to those nations that share its values and invite Japan, Australia, and Israel to become full members. Obvious: but only to some. Israel, as he says, may be in the Middle East but it is defending western values, and its half-century defence against the Arab enemies who have ceaselessly tried to exterminate it has now mutated into a defence against the Islamist extremism which has taken over the Palestinian cause. [My emphasis]

“Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.” (For those of the [Hispanic] race, everything. For those outside the [Hispanic race], nothing.]

What was once a trickle of illegal immigrants hopping the border at a handful of isolated points between Brownsville, Texas and San Diego has become a deluge. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) emphasis has switched from the arrest and deportation of illegals to drug enforcement, with a passing nod to apprehension of those involved in large-scale human smuggling. Locals along the American side of the border decry the lack of enforcement, leading to establishment of Minutemen and other quasi-legal organizations bent on turning back the human flow. Privately funded barriers on private property are springing up along the New Mexico and Arizona borders in the face of government inaction.

The issue has become a political football that cuts across party affiliation. Democrats and Republicans propose legislation to give the appearance of concern and activity, but few imagine that any meaningful immigration legislation will be enacted, let alone be enforced. The building trades, the service industries and agriculture have become addicted to cheap labor. All have brought pressure to bear against legislators who threaten the source of that labor.

Within the Hispanic community there exists a growing Reconquista movement to take back the American Southwest from the gringos. Groups like MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) or “Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan” support forceful eviction of non-Hispanics from the region by any means necessary , legal or otherwise, peaceful or otherwise. [Aztlan is loosely all of Mexico, Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington state.] Aztlan-supporters have found a supportive, even welcoming environment in academia and hold public office throughout the southwest. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was chairman of the UCLA MEChA chapter in his college days. He has never renounced MEChA.

Reconquistas have become part of the landscape.

Non-Hispanics are becoming a distinct minority in many southwestern communities, particularly as birthrates among Hispanics are significantly higher than for blacks and Anglos in those communities. In fact, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics 2004 Report on Birthrates shows that the birthrate of Hispanics was 50% higher than for blacks and fully double the rate for “non-Hispanic whites.” By 2003, Hispanics had already overtaken blacks as the single largest minority in the United States.

For more info on MEChA and the devotees of Aztlan, go here .

So how is your Spanish?

Tags: aztlan, birth rates, taking of the southwest

Coincidence? I don’t think so…

If you’re not reading Michael Yon’s blog , if you’re getting your news about what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan from the evening news and the mainstream media, then you’re not getting the real story. Yon is no war-monger. As he says,

“It may surprise people to learn I was anti-war long before the invasion, and I am in the middle of the war at this moment, tonight, in one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.True, I am anti-war, but I recognize that at this juncture in human history that refusing to fight in many parts of the world means that we agree to be beaten to death, or we agree to allow airliners to ram into our buildings. War is a pitiful human reality that we must face, and we are far from finished with facing this demon. We live in a rough world where strength is rewarded, weakness is penalized.”

Those who refuse to carry swords can still die upon them. Let’s get the job finished.
 
This kind of scene, in a market square in Mosul, was much more common than the scenes of car bombs and ambushes featured on nightly news.

From ZDNet Asia : “10 Internet threats PC users should ignore.”

What, Bill Gates isn’t giving away Neimann-Marcus cookies?

In honor of the 1906 shaker that almost erased San Francisco a hundred years ago, FoxNews.com posts the following Wild and Wacky Tales From the 1906 Earthquake .

- One man, long paralyzed from the neck down before the earthquake, regained the ability to move when a looter tried stealing his bags from beside him in a park, where he was placed by friends after rescue. Enraged, the man’s first act of mobility was to crack the criminal over the head with a plank of wood.- Eyewitnesses in Tomales Bay reported seeing a cow’s tail protruding from a crack in the ground after the earthquake ? as if the earth had opened, swallowed it whole, and then closed up again. No word on whether the Earth would have perhaps preferred its meal medium, or even well done.

- As San Francisco threatened to descend into lawless mayhem, Mayor E.E. Schmitz enforced a shoot-to-kill policy against looters. Taking the orders too far, one officer shot a thirsty horse that was “looting” water leaking from a broken hydrant.

- Forty-six workers at the U.S. Post Office defied orders to evacuate and battled the fire that threatened their building with mail sacks soaked in water. Incredibly, not a single piece of mail was lost in the blaze, although many of the addresses to which they were meant to be sent no longer existed.

- Of all the major buildings in San Francisco, the well-built U.S. Mint (at the time holding $300 million in assets in its vaults) survived with the least amount of damage. Today it sits empty and unused ? because it doesn’t meet modern earthquake codes.

Why doesn’t that surprise me?

- Despite being packed with one of nature’s fuels, another building to survive the quake and fire unscathed was A.P. Hotaling’s whiskey warehouse. The odd miracle prompted a local poet to create this famous ditty:

If, as some say, God spanked the town,
For being frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling’s Whiskey?