Happy Mother's Day!

Ah…dog poop. Probably one of the (very) minor reasons my second marriage failed…coz The Second Mrs. Pennington was largely in charge of the particularly odious chore—following behind three dogs, including two pretty good-sized ones—let’s say about 90% of it. And she never hesitated to point out that fact to me. But then again, maybe not. TSMP killed both dogs that were left in our home the week she found out she was pregnant with SN3 (not literally, of course. The vet did the actual dirty work.) She left two years later and hadn’t picked up a whole helluva lot of dog poop…none, in fact… during the intervening time. But I digress. Even though there’s a story in there.

The Mom’s Day image comes from new-to-me blog TGAW…who has great pics of Glacier National Park, in addition to providing me with this “wouldn’t it be great but it would NEVER frickin’ happen in real life” Mom’s Day illustration. Thanks, TGAW!!

Remind me to write about Glacier…some day.

But, seriously. Happy Mother’s Day to all my favorite Moms, and even to those who aren’t my favorites. I’ll remain cryptic on that last.

Back in a bit with hockey stuff you probably won’t read. But you know there may be more, Gentle Reader.

Squids

So. On my way home from the base early this afternoon I passed a young guy on a sport bike going in the opposite direction. As is customary, we waved at each other as he flew by…he was probably doing 80+ mph. I was doing about 75. What immediately caught my eye was the way he was dressed, or to be more specific, the way he was under-dressed. He was in shorts and a tank top. With no helmet. I didn’t get a look at his feet, but if the rest of his clothing was typical I’d guess he was wearing sneakers. We used to call guys like that "squids."

I don’t know who that guy was…but if I did I’d e-mail him this. Here’s a little excerpt:

My name is Chris Young and I live in Auburn, Alabama.

[…]

I was getting gas in my Montero-Sport. And after filling up, I had realized that I left my money at home. So I exchanged my cell phone to the cashier for minutes for me to leave and go home to get some money for the store. While at home, I thought about how nice the evening was and figured I would ride the bike to pay the gas station. (In shorts and t-shirt!!!) I made it to pay the lady but never made it home. Well, not until 26 days later. The cause of the wreck is still a blur to me, but not the crash and the aftermath.

[…]

I think I was traveling around 100 mph on the interstate, because I told the police I was doing 70 - 90 mph to make it sound better, but you know how us "BAD SPORT BIKER'S" are, and had only passed two vehicles, one car and one trucker. The trucker did notice my high rate of speed, according to the police report and he was also the one who saved me.

[…]

This experience has changed my life. While I was in the ER, My blood pressure got down to 60/30, average is 120/80, and I was put on lots of pain meds that night and they continued for almost 3 weeks. I shook like crazy all the time for three weeks, some from pain of my skin and some because coming off the pain meds towards the end. I had 600 cubic centimeters of skin grafts, taken from my left thigh and a broken collarbone. 25 days in the hospital and 7 surgeries. Most of the surgeries were to change the dressings on my arms and legs. Due to the pain of the cleaning of my skin, I had to be put to sleep. One surgery was to cut away the dead skin, and one more was to graft and the last one was too take all the staples out of the grafted skin. My collarbone was never really looked at, it is healing ok, I guess. They wanted to fix my skin before they could do anything to my collarbone.

More at the link, including some pretty gruesome pictures of the physical damage Mr. Young endured. If you think leather is too hot, try wearing anything, and I mean even the lightest tee shirt, over severe road rash or your brand-new skin grafts (see those photos if you want proof). If you think leathers are too expensive…compare a $450.00 set of leathers to a $46,000.00 hospital bill. Not to mention the pain and suffering you and your loved ones would go through. Or, as Mr. Young says:

“Hospital bill has been totaled to $45,892.66, (Maybe More) I did have insurance, but wearing leathers would have been a lot better and cheaper.”

What he said.

About the pic…that’s the world-famous Rollie Free setting the land speed record for motorcycles on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1948. He was on a Vincent Black Lightning and hit 150 mph. Dressed like that. NOT recommended. Here’s the story.

Winning Ugly

The Western Conference Finals are off to a good start… Helene St. James writes:

The Red Wings paid as hard a physical price as they have all playoffs as they started the Western Conference finals.

From Chris Chelios to Henrik Zetterberg to Pavel Datsyuk, the Ducks took aim and hit, almost as often as they threw pucks on Dominik Hasek and crashed around his crease.

It took a superb effort from Detroit's penalty killers and two power-play goals to beat the Ducks, 2-1, Friday night at Joe Louis Arena in Game 1 of the best-of-seven series. Game 2 is Sunday.

[…]

What really killed the Ducks was Detroit's penalty killing. From nullifying nearly two minutes when the Ducks were up two men to a 4-on-3, the Wings held Anaheim 0-for-7.

Special teams, in other words. Detroit’s were superlative…especially the penalty-killers…while Anaheim’s weren’t. In a strange turn of events—for the Wings, anyway—the Ducks out-shot Detroit, 32-19. But the Hockey Gods smiled upon Detroit last night, nullifying Anaheim’s shot advantage by allowing Detroit to score one seriously fluky goal and another that got lost-in-the-traffic in front of Anaheim goalie J.S. Giguere and trickled across the Ducks’ goal line. Both were power-play goals. The first Detroit goal was as ugly as I’ve ever seen, and the second wasn’t much prettier. Barring those two bits of luck the score could have been Ducks 1, Red Wings 0. But I’ll take it, as anyone would. Here’s Freep columnist Drew Sharp on “ugly:”

Ugly was unacceptable until fans discovered something even more grotesque: not advancing beyond the second round of the playoffs. That had happened each year since 2002 because the Wings were ill prepared to wallow in the muck that's often demanded during a long playoff run.

There's nothing pretty about Nicklas Lidstrom admitting that he doesn't know how his game-winning blast from inside the blue line got through Anaheim goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere after hitting Tomas Holmstrom and getting an inadvertent assist from an Anaheim stick. And there certainly was nothing artistic about Henrik Zetterberg pretty much banking a shot off a sliding Duck defender's leg for another goal like he was playing a game of eight-ball pool.

But it should be understood now that this is how it must be for these Wings. They no longer play as though they're posing for a hockey magazine centerfold. They'll happily wear the smudge that comes from doing the necessary dirty work.

I’ll take ugly if it means being in the third round and on their way to The Cup over a “pretty” first-round loss…any time. Every time.

Anaheim brought their vaunted physical game into The Joe last night but it didn’t seem to do much good, in the sense that the Wings were not intimidated. And the Wings gave as good as they got. The hits were even at 22 apiece, and Detroit’s Kirk Maltby was the leading hitter on either side, with 6. These Wings are physical, too.

While Detroit’s penalty killers were superb, they need much less work. Detroit took 11 penalties last night. Four of Detroit’s infractions were offset by simultaneous Anaheim penalties—resulting in more 4-on-4 play than I’ve seen in a playoff game in a long time—that’s way, way too many penalties to be successful against a team like the Ducks.

Tomorrow’s game will be most interesting!

At the end of an ESPN article that mostly says “So, what?” about the Ducks’ loss last night, Scott Burnside asks…

... Just wondering why it is that in Buffalo, another border community, the Sabres acknowledge their cross-border neighbors by singing "O Canada" at every playoff game regardless of whether the Sabres are playing a Canadian opponent. In Detroit? Only the U.S. anthem is played.

Maybe it’s because the games are played in Detroit, and not Windsor? I know that says nothing about why the Sabres’ management feels the need to play/sing “O Canada.” I don’t be believe I’ve ever heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” played at a Canadian rink when two Canadian teams were going at it in the play-offs, but then again, there aren’t any Canadian teams in “border” towns…unless you count the Leafs, or the Canucks. That’s a stretch for the Leafs, coz (a) Toronto isn’t in the play-offs (this year) and (b) Toronto is a long way from the border (relatively speaking). (Vancouver didn’t play a Canadian team this year either…and I don’t recall hearing our national anthem played there or in Calgary, for that matter, when the teams met in the play-offs in 2004.) And Montreal? The Canadians are lucky “O Canada” is played at the beginning of games there…let alone “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Just sayin’.

And now…it’s a beautiful day with light winds. I’m gonna go for a quick ride out to the base…and perhaps beyond.

Photo: The Old Man was good last night, stopping 31 of 32 shots.
Photo credit: Detroit Free Press

Mostly Filler

Christopher Hitchens, writing in the June issue of Vanity Fair (Londonistan Calling):

In the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, which killed 52 civilians (including a young Afghan, Atique Sharifi, who had fled to London to escape the Taliban) and injured hundreds more, I found that American television interviewers were all asking me the same question: How can this be? Britain is the country of warm beer and cricket and rain-lashed seaside resorts, not a place of arms for exotic and morbid cults. British press coverage struck the same plaintive note. One of the murderers, Shehzad Tanweer, was a cricket enthusiast from Leeds, in Yorkshire, whose family ran a fish-and-chips shop. You can't get much more assimilated than that. Yet Britain's former head of domestic intelligence, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller (and you can't get much more British than that, either), said last year that there are more than "1,600 identified individuals" within the borders of the kingdom who are ready to follow Tanweer's example (including those in whose honor we now all have to part with our liquids and gels at the airport). And, according to Manningham-Buller, "over 100,000 of our citizens consider the July 2005 attacks in London justified."

[…]

In the 1960s, many Asians moved to Britain in quest of employment and education. They worked hard, were law-abiding, and spent much of their time combating prejudice. Their mosques were more like social centers. But their children, now grown, are frequently contemptuous of what they see as their parents' passivity. Often stirred by Internet accounts of jihadists in faraway countries like Chechnya or Kashmir, they perhaps also feel the urge to prove that they have not "sold out" by living in the comfortable, consumerist West. A recent poll by the Policy Exchange think tank captures the problem in one finding: 59 percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under British law rather than Shari'a; 28 percent would choose Shari'a. But among those 55 and older, only 17 percent prefer Shari'a, whereas in the 16-to-24 age group the figure rises to 37 percent. Almost exactly the same proportions apply when the question is whether or not a Muslim who converts to another faith should be put to death …

As usual, Hitch nails it…and damns multi-culturalism as the principal “prime mover” in turning London into Londonistan. I know I’m preaching to the choir, Gentle Reader, but do go read.

And lastly (on this particular subject), I’ll offer you this: The “Islamization” of London has been going on a lot longer than most people think. One small piece of anecdotal evidence: when The Second Mrs. Pennington and I arrived in London in 1980, all wide-eyed and positively amazed at our great good fortune to be assigned…for three whole years!… in the crucible of our cultural inheritance, one of the first things we noticed was the amount of graffiti written in Arabic. And there was lots of it. We then began to notice other things…such as women dressed more appropriately for Riyadh than the West End (no burkhas, but lotsa veils) and many, many more than one or two men walking about in jalabiyas, and certainly not last…the HUGE numbers of kebab stands and shops where English was spoken only to customers, but not amongst the help. (We patronized those kebab stands willingly and often, too, food being what it was—or wasn’t, more appropriately—in 80’s London.) Other than considering the phenomenon(s) passing strange enough to remark upon, we gave them no further thought. But, 1980 was indeed a different time. It all begins in the most innocuous manner, now doesn’t it?

(h/t for the link: Chap)

Dang! I just glanced at my watch and it’s now 1137 hrs (as I type) and my self-imposed posting deadline of “sometime before noon…usually” is hard upon me. And, aside from the one paltry entry above (paltry, in terms of quantity…not quality), I have nothing to show for the last three hours of link-chasing and reading. So, that said, Gentle Reader, you could do a lot worse than clicking on the “Chap” link above…as the greatest part of those three hours of which I speak was spent chasing links from his site. Great, good stuff in great quantities.

Apropos of nothing, and simply to fill space, as it were… I’d be interested in knowing how all y’all blog. Your mental and physical processes of blogging, that is. Most folks post single entries on discrete subjects, one at a time, and make several entries over the course of a day. I do what I call “omnibus posting,” which is to say I usually put up a single post a day with several discrete subjects, all included in the same post. If I come across something that just won’t wait until tomorrow, I’ll post again…but that’s not too common.

So anyway…My modus operandi, in condensed form, goes like this:

1. Open my monthly blog file in MS-Word, if’n it isn’t already.


2. Open a new tab in Firefox and begin my daily reads, usually with Lou, Laurie, Lex (that does it for the ells), the two sons, and the rest of the blog roll as I see fit. Most days I don’t come close to hitting them all.


3. Open new tabs in Firefox to chase linkies.


4. Cut ‘n’ paste excerpts and linkage from interesting stuff into the aforementioned Word file.


5. Write my comments to said linkage.


6. Save often.


7. Rinse. Repeat.


8. Open my image editor and peruse the photo galleries for a candidate for “Today’s Pic.”


9. Agonize greatly over the lack of good pictures and swear I’ll take a bunch of new ones, today.


10. Select something, anyway (most of the time).


11. Or not.


12. Copy from the Word file.


13. Paste into Bogger and publish.


14. View post.


15. Edit. (I always miss something…)


16. Close it all out and go do something meaningful, like finish the coffee and smoke a cigar or small portion thereof. Or go riding. Or do laundry. All of which are on today’s agenda, by the way.

Did I say “condensed form?” Yeah, I did. Disregard.

So…how do you do it?

1157 hours…time to POST! (Insert smiley-face here.)

Thursday

You find the coolest things on these Intertubes… Yesterday while I was reading the Miata newsgroup I subscribe to I decided to check out one John McGaw’s web site, and Lo! What a find. Aside from the fact that we both drive Miatas, we have a lot of other stuff in common. We’re both retired USAF Master Sergeants, we both “fell” into our respective careers, we both are life-long photographers, and we’ve both traveled extensively. Mr. McGaw is a whole helluva lot better at archiving his photos than I am, however.

Mr. McGaw, at one point in time, set a personal goal of driving around the periphery of the United States. He’s not quite made the entire tour as of yet, but he’s done about three-fourths of it…in his 1991 Miata. His touring narratives begin in Anchorage and document his travels down the ALCAN into the Northwest. A few years later he filled in the east coast, all the way up to the northeastern-most point in the US. The narratives are superb, as are the accompanying photos. Here’s his intro:

There came a time in my life when major changes were the rule rather than the exception—I had turned 50, retired from my job with the State of Alaska, my house was sold, and it was time to move on. As a way to shake off the dust of the old life and make way for the new I decided that a serious trip was called for. Eventually I decided that a drive around the edge of the USA would be an admirable goal. I knew from my electronics and programming experience that boundary conditions are the most interesting and surmised that it might be true in other areas.

Thus it came about that I drove out of Alaska in my beloved 1991 Mazda Miata carrying a laptop computer, digital camera, and GPS navigation hardware and software to guide me. Winter was fast approaching and there was no time to spare if I was going to make it down the Alaska Highway safely in my highly unsuitable car. My original intent was to drive from Alaska and then "on the edge" of the lower 48 states from northwest to southwest to southeast to northeast, always staying as close to the perimeter as humanly (and automotively) feasible. I failed to complete my quest due to lack of time and Florida-induced emotional fatigue but still found it one of the more interesting chapters in my life.

The travel narratives are quite long, too, and I cannot claim to have read them all. But I’m working on it. His photography is excellent and there are many, many galleries worth a visit or six. All in all, an excellent site and one I felt the need to share.

Do go.

Speaking of cool things…Steeljaw Scribe has an entertaining, illuminating, and very-well-told sea-story over at his place today, and it’s but one of many such. This particular story has to do with unsung heroes, foul odors emanating from places unknown on the bridge of the USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN 69), and The Man’s dreaded command: “Fix it!” And SJS was the guy carrying the ball…or rather, directing the play.

Once again: Do go!

Well, it’s official…Tony Blair is announcing his departure date (June 27^th) as Britain’s Prime Minister today, ending a fairly successful ten-year run as both leader of the “New” Labour Party and as the UK’s Prime Minister. Only the date is news, as Blair announced his intention to step down last Fall. The Times has an extensive article with lots of commentary and a few rather ugly political cartoons. Here’s The Guardian’s take…and here’s one article from the rabble-rousing, ultra-Left-wing The Independent.

One would be hard-pressed to say who is more unpopular as the leader of their respective countries…Blair or Bush. A shame, that, as both are effective and principled politicians. If such a thing isn’t an outright contradiction in terms. I, for one, find it absolutely amazing that a Labour prime minister turned out to be America’s most steadfast ally in these troubled times. Who’d a thunk it?

Godspeed, Mr. Blair.

And finally…a heart-felt plea from one of the writers of the famous Iraq the Model blog, published in today’s NY Daily News:

The cost of liberating Europe in the last century was enormous in blood and treasure. In fact, it took half a century of American military presence thereafter to protect those nations from subsequent threats. If that made sense during a Cold War, and it did, then I don't understand why anyone would demand a pullout from Iraq (and maybe later, the entire Middle East) when the enemies are using every evil technique, from booby trapped dead animals to hijacked civilian aircrafts, to kill innocents.

And so, my friends, I will call for fighting this war just as powerfully as the bad guys do - because I must show them that I'm stronger than they are. The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.

They understand only power. It is with power they took over their countries and held their peoples hostage. Everything they accomplished was through absolute control over the assets of their nations through murder, torture, repression and intimidation.

What he said…in frickin’ spades. It doesn’t get any clearer than this. Read the whole thing.

And now I’m off to The Big(ger) City^TM, again. Still shopping for next week’s trip to Utah…and points east. More about that, later.

A Blast From the Past. Literally.

Here’s a great lil story about Bob Probert…one of my past heroes (until he got busted for transporting cocaine in his underwear from Windsor into Detroit…but that’s another story altogether).

Bob Probert, the former Detroit Red Wing and Chicago Blackhawk from Windsor, returned home Monday after joining a group of National Hockey League alumni on a tour to visit Canadian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.

While there, he got an up close and personal view of what Canada's fighting best deal with on a daily basis.

"Our second night in Kandahar, they took us over to see the spy planes," Probert said. "We were in the one of the rooms getting briefed on the spy planes and all of a sudden the sirens start going off."

"They came in an escorted us right to the bomb shelter. The bunker, they called it."

While there, Probert looked around at his fellow retired NHLers and spied Dan Daoust, Mike Pelyk, Lou Franceschetti, Dave Hutchison, Dave (Tiger) Williams and Kevin Maguire, all of them former Toronto Maple Leafs and decided to add a little levity to a tense situation.

"I said, 'Apparently, they found out the Maple Leafs were here,'" Probert said. "That didn't go over too well."

As for the missiles, they missed their target.

Good on Probie. And I’ll bet those ex-Leafs kept their peace when Probert cracked wise about the Leafs being in Kandahar. There’s one thing you DIDN’T do back in the day, and that’s piss Probert off. I’ll give you a dollar to a donut that it’s still true. Why?

There was absolutely, positively no one, and I mean NO ONE, who could best Probert back in the day when he was known as The Heavyweight Champion of the NHL. I’ll quote the Wiki:

Probert will always be remembered as one of the NHL's toughest players, and many enforcers considered him the toughest and most feared fighter in the NHL.^[1] Several web sites, such as Hockeyfights.com, chronicle his long list of fights with other league enforcers. He saw it as his job to protect his teammates, especially Detroit captain Steve Yzerman. In a recent news story, he recalled a time that he sucker-punched enforcer Kevin Maguire of the Buffalo Sabres while Maguire was fighting with Yzerman.^[7]

Some fights in Probert's career:^[5]

· Two long fights with Craig Coxe of the Vancouver Canucks in the mid-1980s.

· A career-spanning series of battles with Tie Domi of the New York Rangers and other teams.

· A memorable fight on December 17, 1993 with former teammate Joe Kocur of the Rangers, during a brawl involving several players from both teams. Probert and Kocur had grabbed the nearest opposing player without realizing who it was, and continued trading punches even after they identified each other.

· A fight on February 4, 1994, against Marty McSorley, then of the Pittsburgh Penguins, lasting nearly 100 full seconds.

In his career, Probert took part in many other classic hockey fights against noted enforcers such as Todd Ewen, Troy Crowder, Tony Twist, Donald Brashear, Stu "The Grim Reaper" Grimson, Bob McGill, Dave Semenko, and "Big" Jay Caufield.

It would have broken my heart to watch Probert and Kocur mix it up. Those guys were known as “The Bruise Brothers,” back in the day when they were Detroit’s top enforcers. And what memorable days those were… Nobody ran the Wings’ stars in those days. The price to be paid for that was simply too frickin’ high.

But. It’s good to see Probert has grown up a bit and that he’s giving back. As for me, IF I were still in the Air Force, and IF I were in Afghanistan, I’d have been pissed to find out Probie was visiting the Canadian troops and not us fans from Detroit. And believe me, Probert had legions of fans in Detroit. Just sayin’.

A Couple of Google-Things and a Short Rant

Interesting: “My life without Google.” A lot of people bitch about Google and all the data they collect about us, but James Thomas is actually doing something about it.

How much did I use Google? Apparently a lot more often than even I could speculate. For the last two weeks, I've had google.com blocked at both work and home. The amount of data they're gathering on me is frightening. Not because of Google, but because I'm positive the government will legislate their way into Google's database sooner or later and start labeling people as suspicious. Political paranoia aside, let us look at the fact here; Life on the internet without using Google is hard. (My emphasis)

I’ll say. If I were to emulate Mr. Thomas I’d have to (a) change my e-mail address (b) find a new blog host and (c) quit watching YouTube…just for starters. The latter would be tougher than you might imagine. There are alternatives to YouTube, and a lot of people use ‘em. But a lot more don’t. I’d hate to have to give up all those cool plane pr0n videos that take forever to load, given the state of my ‘net connection.

Speaking of Google: You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well. Or so sez the WSJ.

In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites' member lookup functions. But, as more people flood the Web, that's becoming an especially tall order for those with common names. Type "John Smith" into Google's search engine and it estimates it has 158 million results. (See search results.)

For people prone to vanity searching -- punching their own names into search engines -- absence from the first pages of search results can bring disappointment. On top of that, some of the "un-Googleables" say being crowded out of search results actually carries a professional and financial price.

I’ve done my share of vanity searches in the past (pre-blogging days) and was always semi-disappointed with the…uh…non-results. “Buck Pennington” does pretty danged well now, after a year and a half of blogging. Not so with “Norman Pennington.” I gave up after going 12 pages deep with no results… Hello, Reality Check. I’m still a prole—always will be.

So. I’m generally “off” politics as far as the blog goes but, as I’ve mentioned frequently, I’m still keeping up with my reading. An article in the NY Sun caught my attention this morning, as did commentary on that same article from Ed Morrissey over at Captain’s Quarters…one of my favorite reads. The Sun sez “Islamist-Left Alliance A Growing Force.” Excerpt:

Over the past year, multiple international conferences have featured leaders of the anti-global left and Islamist groups working together. Go to any anti-war or anti-globalization demonstration in the West and chances are you will see the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas waved by people wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And at some of these meetings, members of such radical Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah have enjoyed starring roles.

The roster of Islamist-left alliances quietly grows every day: Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky praises Hamas and denounces America on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television. London Mayor Ken Livingstone invites a leading Islamist, Sheikh Yosef Al-Qaradawi, who is known for supporting suicide attacks, to visit his city. Iranian President Ahmadinejad calls for a world without America even as he plays host to a Tehran peace conference attended by American Mennonites, Quakers, Episcopalians, Methodists, and leaders of the National Council of Churches.

This article simply fleshes out and adds detail to what any casual observer of “peace” marches and demonstrations has already noticed. I mean, how could you not see all those bright yellow Hezbollah banners borne by kaffiya-bedecked protesters and their pro-Hamas/Hezbollah, anti-Israel messages? And how could you not ask the question “WTF does this have to do with Iraq?” The simple answer is plain, unadulterated anti-Americanism… a modified “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic that just boggles my mind. But I digress, yet again. Here’s Captain Ed taking down Noam Chomsky, one of my favorite “people I love to hate actively dislike:”

In the case of Noam Chomsky, this seems particularly egregious, but not terribly surprising. Chomsky can talk about Enlightenment ideals out of one side of his mouth, as he did in Imperial Ambitions, and then warmly support Hamas, which completely rejects those ideals of freedom, liberty, and individual conscience. In that book, he told David Barsamanian that "No other industrialized country has anything like the degree of extremist religious beliefs and irrational commitments like you see in the United States," and yet he has aligned himself with violent religious extremists like Hamas, and does so on the television network of the equally violent and extreme Hezbollah.

People like Chomsky love Hamas and Hezbollah not for their supposed "Enlightenment ideals," but for their hatred of America. That's the one thread that follows through all of these alliances between the Western Left and the Islamist nutcases who, on a philosophical basis, should be their ultimate nightmare. The people who drop brick walls on homosexuals get praise and support from the Chomskys of the world because the US cannot decide between allowing civil unions or gay marriage. Chomsky frets over the fact that "Large majorities are convinced of miracles, the existence of the devil, and so on," but then praises those who believe that infidels are agents of Satan and must be destroyed in jihad.

What he said. Chomsky and others of his ilk come perilously close to treason and sedition, IM(not so)HO. The Left is quite fond of their “gulag” and “fascist” fantasies, invoking them at every turn…but Damn! What are we to do with people that openly support and collaborate with our enemies? The fact that we tolerate “dissent” such as this is mind-boggling on the one hand and ultimately mysterious on the other. While I don’t think we should shoot them (gratifying as that might be), I’m ALL over alternate solutions…such as deporting the bastards to Palestine, Iraq, or Iran…and allowing them to live and work within the societies (and I use that term oh-so-loosely) they so admire.

They wouldn’t last a week.

Today’s Pic: Another shot of yesterday’s lonely iris; a close-up this time. I originally thought about titling this photo “snug as a bug…” but thought better of it. Too cute by half.