Last night, we got a little rain... and a little power outage. The storms that rolled through eastern Virginny insulted a tree, which decided that it was much better to be recumbant that erect, and in the process of acheiving recumbancy, landed on the power lines. The power lines, amazingly, held the tree up. They did not, however, pass power along to our neighborhood. Well, crap. This happened while I was on my way home from the Day Job (I'm sure several readers will be glad to know that I have a day job, instead of trying to make a buck off of this enterprise :-), and I had to make my way through the gantlet of flares and flashing police lights to get into the neighborhood. As I drove down the street towards the little grey house, it was clear that the power was out. For the moment, I was back in the Nineteenth Century. I called the Lovely Jessica and let her know that we were in a time capsule for now. Dinner plans were squashed; the Foreman grill didn't make the leap through time very well and refused to warm up no matter how much I prodded and cajoled. We made a quick decision and ordered pizza, praying that the delivery driver wouldn't get stuck in a temporal vortex somewhere and drop our pizza into the Ice Age. I hate cold pizza. Sweet Jessica was not yet home, so I took the dog out for his evening constitutional. The rain had quit, but the temperature was dropping, so we didn't stay out long, just long enough for Beamer to do what a doggy needs to do after all day indoors. (Beamer is a white Maltese Peacock -- half Maltese, one quarter Cocker Spaniel, one quarter Pekinese -- and is quite possibly the cutest puppy on this half of the planet. The Lovely Jessica and I took Beamer to the beach the other day, and he drew oohs and aahs of adoration from all the passing girls. This annoyed Darling Jessica to no end, and now I am not allowed to take Beamer to the beach unless my Beautiful Jessica is with me. My darling guards her turf well, and I like it that way.) When we returned from the walk, I put Beamer into the Puppy Corral and tried to read. This required finding light. It was just barely bright enough outside to allow me to read from the light coming through the window, so I settled into my favorite chair in the Safari room and read while waiting for my darling and the pizza to arrive. The cats decided that I was a reasonable Time passes differently without television. Somehow, I manage to forget that. It seemed like I read about fifty pages in the short time that it took for Darling Jessica to arrive. I know it wasn't that much, but without the hurley burley of the television in the background, and without any other sound infiltrating my brain, I read more quickly, or time passed at a lower velocity. I'm not sure which it is. I accomplished more than I thought in the darkened house. Soon, Sweet Jessica arrived, and we lit candles as the day had begun to fade. The pizza man made teh jump back through time safely, and our pizza arrived in fair to middling shape -- the usual (Why is it that Domino's spent millions developing a way to keep a pizza hot, when chinese food always comes hot, no matter how long it takes to get there? Dominos should have talked to the chinese place down the road). Jessica and I dined by candlelight, a romantic Italian meal for two young lovers. Darling Jessica poses the ultimate question -- how, without electricity, will I be able to make my morning coffee? I just grin and point to the french press on the shelf, purchased just for such emergencies. Then we tried to figure out what to do with the evening... sitting in the dark seemed a little dull. The candles wouldn't last forever, and the flashlight had its limits as a useful tool for illumination. Now I see why families in the days before electric lighting had so many children. Maybe that's why the birthrates of civilized countries is falling -- "Not now, honey, I want to watch ER." Television may truly be the Evil Eye that does in Western Society. So, being the interpid temporal adventurers we are, we went to Barnes and Noble. We boarded the Schoolbus(tm), and headed into the future. Before too long, we saw the glimmer of electric lights! Then... Shops! And Stores! And Restaurants! Oh! To return to the beloved 21st Century! Now, perhaps the laptop and cell phone would work again! We wandered around B&N for a little bit, then settled into the little cafe at the back, Sweet Jessica with a hot chocolate, me with a venti Mocha Frappicino -- 20 ounces of pure caffeine topped with whipped cream. It makes my toes quiver with excitement just to think of it. Or maybe that's just the residual caffiene. I don't know, could be either. Jessica had collected a few of her favorite magazines (Marie Claire, Cosmo, etc.) on our little jaunt through the store, and began flipping pages, looking over the ads and articles, searching out the best stuff for her feminine wiles (Oh! What wiles!) I read a motorcycle magaine I'd brought from home. We passed the time together, quietly, but happily. Eventually, we left, heading home, hoping to find that the neighborhood had been pulled into the 21st century. It hadn't, but at least the burly workmen from Virginia Power were on the job. They had lopped off the top part of the tree, and left the rest leaning against the power lines. Makes no sense to me, but hey, I'm not a burly workman. We proceeded wqith caution through the dark neighborhood, trying to avoid running over women and children in the dark. I didn't fell anything squishy beneath the tires, so I guess I managed to avoid them all. The interior of the house seemed especially dark. None of the scattered light from suburban society filtered into the windows as it would on a typical night. We lit candles. Candles seem so pallid under ordinary circumstances. One taper cannot compete with 60 watts of electric light, much less the now blinding glare of three or four hundred watts used to light a typical room. We took care of the animals for the night, and retreated to the master bath. Jessica lit more candles and I brough in a couple multiple candle lamps we have scattered about the house. Before long, the bathroom was reasomably well lit. We retreated to the tub to end the long night. We lost power, but we found a new world, with a different luminescense.

opinion.telegraph.co.uk - Struggle puts a premium on being anti-Jew Please read this opinion piece from the UK's Daily Telegraph.

Kazaa has some hidden features I bet you didn't expect...

War, Reason, & Innocent Civilians A bit of peacenik blarney. To take it apart one by one -- Civilians are innocent, even if they are technically the boss by way of a democratic republic. The reason you target soldiers in war is that soldiers are the ones who would take direct action against you, just as a cop will not fair at a burglar who has his hands in the air and no apparent weapon. Civilians will sit at home and watch TV, work, etc.; they are not the ones taking the shots. Targeting civilians just to kill civilians is not what WWII bombing was about. The vast majority of the bombing raids were targeted at the factories that make the weapons of war. Deny an enemy his weapons, an you reduce his warfaring abilities. Dresden and the firebombings of Tokyo were not undertaken lightly. The biggest difference between the actions in WWII and the actions of the modern terrorist are that the actions of the WWII commanders were undertaken with regrets, not celebrations. IIRC, the firebombing of Dresden also resulted in a few commanders getting fired for doing such a heinous act. Also, one must remember why the Dresden was firebombed -- it was because London was firebombed. Yeah, the Germans began total warfare in WWII. The same applies to the bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The decisions were not made to gleefully exterminate a few civiilians. Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima were all legitimate targets from a strategic perspective, and it was with much regret that the decisions were made. Also, the intent of the ose bombings was to attempt the shorten the war, to get Japan to surrender without invasion, and to preserve the lives of millions of other civilians. The terrorists do not bomb with the intent to prevent destruction of all the Jews in Isreal -- they bomb to facilitate the destruction of all the Jews in Isreal. As for protecting civilians being counterproductive -- that's as false an statement as you can make. Targetting civilians doesn't make the civilians more sympathetic to the deaths of their enemies or soldiers. It makes them madder than hell, and all the more ready to commit to killing the enemy. Think about it -- on September 10, 2001, if someone had said "Yeah, we need top topple the Taliban and kill off Al Quaeda," no one would have suported such actions, even though Al Quaeda had already killed a fair number of US sailors and soldiers. But when they killed civilians at the WTC, the idea of killing Al Quaeda and their sponsors suddenly became a really popular idea, Finally, to address number four -- as I said above, killing civilians makes the country whose innnocents are killed all the more ready to kill the ones who killed the civilians. And you're an idiot if you think terrorists will negotiate. They might parley, to get what they can, but then they'll see that thay have power over you, and they'll terrorize again, and again, and again, until they push you off the face of the earth and own all that you hold dear.

OpinionJournal - Extra A concise History of Arafat...

Jews attacked on Berlin street It's starting again... the Arabs want an Anschluss, and then to begin the extermination of the Jews, perhap?

Why don't they show the footage of the attacks on the WTC any more? I think I know why... because showing the attacks on the WTC would remind us why we should be fighting. It would put us, as a people, on the side of the Isrealis.It would remind us that there can be no equalization of the Palestinian murderers to the Isreali soldiers. It would remind us that Isreal fights our war. So they do not show the images of the attack. We shoul;d be reminded. We should get mad every time we see those images. We should be ready to kill off the totalitarian Arab states that have sponsored this violence. By not showing the images, American resolve softens slowly over time. The images of the jet airliners crashing into the WTC reminds us of the cruelty of our enemies. If they don't show those images, they aid the enemy. Come on, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, FoxNews, etc. Remind us of why we fight.

Whoops... Blogger had a glitch yesterday and i apparently double posted about the First Lady...

Welcome to the White House, where the First Lady reads from an eggroll... I limit myself to the menu, usually...

Welcome to the White House -- where the First Lady reads eggrolls... I usually just read Chinese Menus...

Rethinking Iraq... I had a thought over the weekend, regarding Iraq. Iraq might be the keystone to the arch of autocracy in the Middle East. Most of the dicatators (and all but Isreal and Turkey are under the thumb of dicatators) don't seem to mind Saddam Hussein. I think it is, in part, because Hussein represents a worst case scenario for a dictator. The nations in question can all look to Baghdad and say "See? We aren't that bad!" This helps keep their more violent elements in control (those that the Saudis aren't paying off). Add in the bizarre talent of the Imams to turn the blame on Isreal for everything (Clinton could learn from those spin doctors), and you have a festering sore. Taking out Iraq and beginning the long and arduous task of turning Iraq into a civilized nation, and you may begin to see the entire Mid East collapse under the weight of their ideology. The sort of ideology that most Arab nations espouse cannot stand. Wahhabism will collapse either when it steps too hard on the toes of other nations, or when it finally gets a chance to try and exist as a standalone ideology. The Soviet Union collapsed inward when its contradictions finally piled up and the whole stack fell over (what do you mean you can't dictate how many shoes we'll need next year?) Wahhabism and radical Islam will suffer the same fate. The question now becomes -- How soon will it fall? I hope it's sooner than later.

Dick Morris has an interesting take on Campaign Finance Reform, and why it will be unnecessary in a few years.