Rants of a Fuzzy Curmudgeon

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To show our support for the Iranian people, we each have agreed to display this letter, in English and in Farsi, on our pages from sunrise to sunset today, Tehran time.
We are not politicians, nor are we generals. We hold no power to dispatch diplomats to negotiate; we can send no troops to defend those who choose to risk their lives in the cause of freedom.
What power we have is in our words, and in our thoughts. And it is that strength which we offer to the people of Iran on this day.
Across the diverse and often contentious world of weblogs, each of us has chosen to put aside our differences and come together today to declare our unanimity on the following simple principles:
– That the people of Iran are allies of free men and women everywhere in the world, and deserve to live under a government of their own choosing, which respects their own personal liberties
– That the current Iranian regime has failed to create a free and prosperous society, and attempts to mask its own failures by repression and tyranny
We do not presume to know what is best for the people of Iran; but we are firm in our conviction that the policies of the current government stand in the way of the Iranians ability to make those choices for themselves.
And so we urge our own governments to turn their attention to Iran. The leaders and diplomats of the world’s democracies must be clear in their opposition to the repressive actions of the current Iranian regime, but even more importantly, must be clear in their support for the aspirations of the Iranian people.
And to the people of Iran, we say: You are not alone. We see your demonstrations in the streets; we hear of your newspapers falling to censorship; and we watch with anticipation as you join the community of the Internet in greater and greater numbers. Our hopes are with you in your struggle for freedom. We cannot and will not presume to tell you the correct path to freedom; that is for you to choose. But we look forward to the day when we can welcome your nation into the community of free societies of the world, for we know with deepest certainty that such a day will come.

After having spent the entire weekend (starting with Friday night) totally unable to post to Blogger, I’ve kissed them off and am running Movable Type on my unix server. Hope to have this box registered in DNS soon.

And this just plain pisses me off. Shooting is too good for this SOB.

is probably due to having read Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column this morning. I confess that I cried. Our boys deserve better than to be told to shove off by petty Afghan warlords.

Afghan Governors Demand U.S. Seek Operations Clearance, Plan Military Force
Personally I’d tell ’em to go fuck themselves. My messenger of choice would be a Predator with a Hellfire missile aimed right up their ass.
Can you imagine what we would have said if, oh, the French had told us this after we threw the Germans out of their country back in ’44?

Sick, tired, worked nearly to death…but nobody’s reading this anyway so who cares? 🙂
The short of it:

1. Baseball games do not end in ties.
2. Arafat must go!
3. ICC must go!
4. Iranian theocracy must go!
5. Bush rules…most of the time.

I think that covers the last week.

This Washington Times article talks about VRE and MARC attempting to find ways to avoid using Amtrak services. Both MD commuter lines either run on Amtrak rail (MARC) or use Amtrak employees to run trains, take tickets, etc. (MARC and VRE).
Why not sell Amtrak to one or more of the airlines? They need the revenue and they’d probably be willing to upgrade the system to the point at which it might make a profit. And I’ll guarantee they wouldn’t stop in every podunk town in America along the way, which is in my view the biggest problem with trains like the Cardinal. (I’d actually take the Cardinal from Indianapolis to Washington if it didn’t take 18+ hours to get there. I can drive it in 10. But I don’t stop in every little town in Kentucky and West Virginia on the way.) Time and money are lost every time a long-haul train stops.
Airports have been wildly successful being located in large urban areas; some people may have to drive an hour to get to one of them, but it’s just not efficient to land a 757 in, oh, I don’t know, maybe Kokomo, Indiana. Intercity trains need to follow the old express model (now used successfully by the big airlines) and not the milk-run model in order to be profitable. Regional rail can take up the slack by serving outlying towns and rural areas, just like it did fifty and sixty years ago (and just like commuter jets and turbo-props do now).
(Some might wonder why I care about MARC and VRE since I live in Indiana. I spend far too much time in the DC area, that’s why 🙂

Farrakhan tells of U.S. Muslims’ support
Iraq’s state-run media has quoted Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as saying during a visit to Baghdad that American Muslims are praying for an Iraqi victory in a war with the United States.
Sounds like a good enough reason to deny him re-entry to the United States…
AFTERTHOUGHT: Or charge him with treason.

I wish I was half as good as this guy.

has surfaced on InstaPundit today (and it’s nice that Glenn is back, I’ve been in InstaPundit withdrawal for a week). If al-Qaeda are such a bunch of badasses, why is 9/11 their only claim to fame? Because we’ve kicked their asses back into the Stone Age, that’s why!
Anyone who thinks Osama is still alive is out of their minds. Read Mark Steyn’s July 4 column and see if you don’t agree. al-Qaeda, except for their PR machine, are history, and they know it. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be playing Osama’s Greatest Hits over and over.