Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

…but ripping Lisa Beamer is going over the edge. (I’m secretly in love with Lisa Beamer. Well, maybe not so secretly…my wife knows about it so I guess I’m safe.)
Read Kat Lopez’s latest over at NRO.
This Jane magazine is pretty much in love with itself. Its “contact the writers” area appears to be named “Aren’t we great?”. I would be inclined to say, “No.” On the other hand, their “looking for writers” area is titled “Jane needs help”. I would be inclined to agree.
My God. There are actually men working for this magazine. And people pay money for it? Gaah.

between what these two guys in Columbus, Indiana, have been caught doing:

The Secretary of State’s Office is accusing two Columbus businessmen of bilking investors out of $5 million — and state officials want the money returned.
The Securities Division, which investigated this fraud case, also wants Don and Mark Pratt to pay what could amount to millions of dollars in civil penalties.
The Columbus father and son are accused of selling fake promissory notes to as many as 50 investors. They allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme, in which money from the sale of notes is used to pay interest on notes that already had been sold.

and Social Security? Well, I wonder if SSA can be construed as “neighbors and friends”…

“They scammed their neighbors and friends,” said Secretary of State Sue Anne Gilroy on Wednesday. “We’re doing everything we can to pursue this and aggressively seek justice.”

I wonder if Sue Anne would be willing indict the SSA, too, while she’s at it?

We (well, certain “progressives” among us, anyway) seem to forget how war was waged before we got sensitive about things like casualty counts. Reading Doonesbury this morning really infuriated me — “Sometimes our guys get hurt.” Well, no shit, Garry “Stupid Hat” Trudeau. In war, you either kick ass, or get your ass kicked. Middle grounds and indecision lead to Vietnam (oh, and you didn’t serve, did you?) and Mogadishu.
Another quote from Uncle Billy Sherman. This one is from a letter to Grant, trying to get permission to march through Georgia:

I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out with our wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources. . . . I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!

And later, after he had taken Savannah and was on the march north to Columbia, SC:

[W]hen he received a truce note from Wheeler, offering to quit burning cotton in the path of the invaders if they in turn would “discontinue burning houses,” he kept his answer brief and to the point. He was unwilling to waste time now in an argument over the propriety of gratuitous destruction. . . . In short, he declined to enter into any discussion of the matter, except to tell the rebel cavalryman: “I hope you will burn all cotton and save us the trouble. All you don’t burn I will.”
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Vol. III, Red River to Appomattox, p. 789-790

This is what we do to our own people, Saddam. Just imagine what we might do to you.

Researchers Find 1941 Japanese Mini Submarine at Pearl Harbor
All well and good, kind of like finding the Hunley. But how exactly did Fox let this quote slip in?

“The sub is significance historically. This was the first shot fired between the Americans and the Japanese, leading the United States into World War II,” he said. “The captain of this submarine was the first person to die. So the first casualty in the attack of Pearl Harbor was Japanese.”

Which of course justifies the entire sneak attack, and three and a half years of war that followed. Right?
Moron. Who cares who was first to die? A damn sight more Americans died that day than Japanese. I have the utmost respect for the Japanese people today (something my father never really understood, but his brother in law spent time in a Japanese prison camp) but I will never forgive them for Pearl Harbor. And I’ve spent enough time researching the antecedents of WWII in the Pacific (it was going to be my historical specialty, had I gone on to get my Ph.D.) to know that it wasn’t the Japanese “people” but rather their “leaders” who dragged them into that conflict. Still, don’t whine to me about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You allowed yourselves to be led to the slaughter.
As Uncle Billy Sherman wrote to the mayor of Atlanta, as he was burning the city prior to his March to the Sea, “War is cruelty. You cannot refine it.”
Damn shame more of our generals aren’t of that opinion. And it’s even more of a damn shame that our people aren’t of that opinion. “Return either with your shield, or on it!” As Robert Heinlein observed, “This custom later declined. So did Rome.”

and may not resume till tomorrow. Lots of work to do.

Dish Network finally got channel 4 up and running this afternoon!
Bye bye Comcast…

Why do we let the bastards take our money when it isn’t even due yet?
Radley Balko on the giant con that is payroll withholding tax.

Environmentalists are perpetrating a fraud (wow, big surprise) when they pontificate and bloviate about old-growth logging, says Tony Blankley.
I expect a comment from Naylor any moment 🙂

My wife is (among other things) a Dish Network agent. Dish sent out a notice to dealers last week that our on-air channel 4 (WTTV, the local WB affiliate) would be up on channel 8454 today.
It’s not. At least it wasn’t 15 minutes ago.
Get with the program, Dish Network. As soon as you get channel 4 up, I’m cancelling my Comcast cable. But I can’t do that till you do, which I sure hope happens before basketball season starts. So right now you are costing me 18 bucks a month that I’d rather spend on, say, a premium channel…
Besides the fact that Comcast is the devil, and I pay them only because you can’t get on-air stations in this town for doodly. I have DSL from SBC because Comcast wouldn’t install a cable modem hooked up to my Windows 2000 server. “You might route other machines through it without having to pay to have multiple machines hooked up.” Fuck you, Bombast Cable. (My current DSL setup lets me hook up as many as 20 machines, no extra charge, not that I have 20 machines, but I do have 5, with another one coming.)
OK, just getting that off my chest 🙂

At least according to some people.

The introduction of electricity has caused the “destruction” of cultures in the third world, according the editor of an environmental website. He says “there’s a lot of quality to be had in poverty.”
“I don’t think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery,” said Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Institute’s online journal the Edge, in an interview with CNSNews.com’s Marc Morano.

Faffing Luddites. Read the rest of this Weekly Standard article by Katherine Mangu-Ward at Fox News.