Long Awaited

2,459 days after his plan was executed, killing 2,792 innocents,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sits in a courtroom, a major milestone in his descent to Hell.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is facing a military judge in his long-awaited first public appearance before a war-crimes tribunal.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators have taken their seats at defense tables before Judge Ralph Kohlmann, a Marine colonel.

Their arraignment Thursday is the highest-profile test yet of the controversial tribunal system, which is being challenged in court. It comes seven years after the attacks. All five face the death penalty if convicted.

How very odd, and how very American, that Mohammed (familiar name; isn't that some prophet or something?) awaits his fate amidst the dry, orderly environs of a military courtroom.

How very different from those he judged misjudged, who he sentenced to painful, noisy, smelly, terrifying deaths, without ever once looking any one of them in the eye.

And how amazing that there are American lawyers who hate the country that nurtured them and gave them freedom so much that they are standing beside this pillar of Islamism, attacking America to defend him.

Forgot The Box-cutter, But Not The Prayer Book

Benjamin Baines, Jr. is in a world of trouble, since the hollowed out book he uses to stash his drugs went through a TSA X-ray machine at Tampa International and, lo and behold, a box-cutter was stashed inside.

"I'm moving to Las Vegas and I forgot the box-cutter was in the book," Baines told authorities, according to the Tampa Tribune's Web site, TBO.

That's about as reasonable an excuse as the guy who said, "Sorry, I thought it was my nose" when he was caught picking someone else's nose. Baines was at an airport; that might have sent a reminder. On his way to X-ray, he would have passed numerous signs saying what was prohibited, including, of all things, box-cutters. He would have seen the X-ray machine and the TSA agents screening.

Bells? Any bells going off? He would like us to believe that no, he just plain forgot that he was trying to pull off a Mohammed Atta.

Am I jumping to conclusions? Well, his backpack contained a few books that didn't have pages cut out, including one called The Noble Qur'an ("The English translation of the meanings and commentary") and another called The Prophet's Prayer. Amazon doesn't have the latter yet, but you can view it here: It's a detailed tutorial on every aspect of Muslim praying, including:

STANDING IN PRAYER

The Prayer of a Sick Person in a Sitting Position
Prayer on a Ship
Sitting and Standing in the Night Prayer (Tahajjud)
Prayer Wearing Shoes and the Command to do so
Prayer on the Pulpit (Minbar)
The Sutrah, and the Obligation to have one
What Breaks the Prayer
Prohibition of Prayer Facing the Grave

It goes on and on, including quiet prayers, Friday prayers and how to assume the position (sujood); it is not the sort of book someone who isn't serious about Islam would read.

As near as I can tell, there isn't a "Praying on Planes" chapter, though -- with a good defense attorney, that must might get Baines off.

He faces up to ten years in prison on the federal offense of trying to smuggle a weapon onto an aircraft. Great. While he's there, Saudi-funded Wahhabi radicals will push him further and further over the edge ...

... unless he starts reading that other book that was in his backpack. You might have heard of it. It's called The Bible.

hat-tip: Hugh Hewitt

Quote Of The Day: Relativism Gone Wild Edition

"If trials are held in Guantanamo by flawed military commissions, the system will be on trial as much as the men being accused of horrific crimes."
-- Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch (source)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his band of brothers buggers plotted the deaths of 2,973 Americans, none of whom were engaged in any kind of warfare with Mohammed's country or religion. He has, to our knowledge, never expressed one word of regret, other than a regret that he didn't kill more of us.

The Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, whose agenda is in significant part to embarrass America, will not rest until it has tried every trick to shift the focus from the ruthless Islamist terrorists to the American process for dealing with these dangerous, unrepentant men.

We will not be fooled, Daskal! Try as you will, you'll not convince us that Mohammed and his co-conspirators deserve anything more than prisoners of war deserve. They don't even deserve that, as they fight for no nation and wear no uniform.

Our system is not on trial, except by those who want to destroy our system, those who take their money and their cues from Soros, the world's premier America-hater and noted contributor to the Democratic party.

Here Come The 9/11 Death Penalties

A dilemma for Leftists and Truthers 9/11 whack-jobs is shaping up as, six and a half years after the crime, the U.S. is about to charge six al-Qaeda terrorists with the capital crime of planning the 9/11 attacks.

In addition to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, those to be charged, according to the NYT, are:

The official identified the others to be charged as Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mr. Mohammed, who has been identified as Mr. Mohammed’s lieutenant for the 2001 operation; Mr. al-Baluchi’s assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi; and Walid bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers.

Many Leftists will feel compelled to defend the six. For the hardcore, they are revolutionaries who attacked America, Bush and Wall Street. If the rhetoric is going to reach the road, they have no choice but to support. I hope this crowed is loud and highly visible.

More run-of-the-mill Lefties, marinated in anti-military beliefs, will defend the six because they were held in Guantanamo, away from due process, and will claim that evidence from their interrogation sessions must be rejected as coerced. While not as offensive as the first set, this group's protests will alienate most level-headed Americans who know intuitively that the six would have been dead long ago, were it not for the fact that it was America that captured them.

The anti-death sentence folks will be out in force, of course, as evidenced by the NYT, which didn't even wait for an editorial to editorialize:

Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims have expressed differing views of potential death sentences, with some arguing that it would accomplish little other than martyring men for whom martyrdom may be viewed as a reward.

Those relatives, if they exist at all, were not named in the article, which then went on to add:

Some countries have been critical of the United States’ use of the death penalty in civilian cases, and a request for execution in the military commission system would import much of that criticism to the already heated debates about the legitimacy of Guantánamo and the Bush administration’s legal approach there, some lawyers said.

The countries supposedly holding the view went unnamed as well. The lawyers were not identified.

Finally, the Truthers Imbeciles. It will be really something to see them mount an "It ain't them!" defense as the government rolls out its evidence against the six. Rosie, prepare to become even more obnoxious.

My view: The six are lucky to be alive. How nice it would be to be able to go back in time a bit and mount them in stocks on the sidewalks alongside the World Trade Center site, but we are no longer that country, thank God. We will see that evidence is presented against them, that their lawyers will be heard.

A military tribunal will decide their earth-bound fate. If indeed they are guilty, a higher power will consider their eternal fate.

The Most Ridiculous Story Of The Year

There were certainly more than four stories this year to qualify for "most ridiculous story of the year," but given that I didn't start chronicling them until April 25, and that I still have to actually work for a living, rather than read all I'd like to read, four it is.

The criteria for selection aren't easy to meet: Entries must be work that serious writers present in all seriousness that goes far, far beyond the sublime and settle heavily into the imbecilic.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the nominees, in order of their original appearance in C-SM:

First, Naomi Wolf's "Fascist America in 10 easy steps." Wolf is, of course, the author of much ridiculousness, much of it ending up in The Guardian, which is a repository of such stuff. But in this piece, Wolf lets lose all her paranoid delusions, not stopping at merely comparing Bush to Hitler, but:

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And ... George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

She then lists the ten steps Bush is supposedly following to turn America into a dictatorship, stuff like "Create a Gulag," "Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy," and "Develop a thug caste," in this case, "angry Republican men."

Never mind that mobs angry Republican men have not rounded up scores of Muslims (the internal/external threat) and sent them to Guantanamo (the Gulag), Wolf is, very ridiculously, convinced her home country -- which lets her write and publish this filth -- is becoming a police state.

Second, Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh in their WaPo column "We've Lost. Here's How To Handle It." Cuing off the June mosque bombings in Samarra and Basra, Simon and Takeyh decide:

The war in Iraq is lost. The only question that remains -- for our gallant troops and our blinkered policymakers -- is how to manage the inevitable. What the United States needs now is a guide to how to lose -- how to start thinking about minimizing the damage done to American interests, saving lives and ultimately wresting some good from this fiasco.

The authors miss the obvious point: No one loses a war unless someone has won it -- and not realizing that makes everything that follows, in a word, ridiculous.

It's easy to read this in light of what's happened following the Surge, which proved the authors false again and again, as in this case:

U.S. troops can't beat the insurgency on their own; our forces are too few and too isolated to compete with the insurgents for the public's support.

It is obvious that al-Qaeda has lost the public's support and we helped that happen not by the sheer number of our troops, but by their sheer decency and al-Qaeda's sheer savagery.

But that's the easy critique, and hardly the most damning. That goes to Simon and Takeyh's dismissal of speculation that bloodshed would follow our retreat as "unknowable ... In fact, history suggests that the consequences of a U.S. defeat will not be that dire."

Unknowable? Not dire? Can you say Vietnam? Cambodia?

The two have a solution, though, that they say will make retreat very do-able and positive: Contain Iran; tamp down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and return to realism.

Oh, yeah. We'll use all our great new credibility, gained by letting al-Qaeda defeat us, to do just that.

Third, This is Your Brain on Politics, by Sharon Begley, an opinion writer for Newsweek, a book by Drew Westen of Emory University, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

The book itself is a disagreeable thing with a central thesis I generally agree with: Emotion trumps rationality in opinion formation. But Begley earned her nomination for using Westen's book as nothing more than a platform for her blind as a bat, emotionally over-amped Democratic bias.

She dismisses GOP policy and its appeal to large blocks of American voters:

After reading [the book] you won’t be surprised that Westen has been approached by the campaigns of “several” Democratic hopefuls (he is too discrete to say which) for advice on how to make use of findings about how the brain operates in the political arena. Why aren’t Republicans beating a path to his door? Because the GOP has already mastered the dark art of psych-ops—of pushing the right buttons in people’s brains to win their vote. (emphasis added)

Have you ever heard a GOP candidate say the Dems would kill Social Security if they were elected? And don't even get me started on playing the race card. Button-pushing is not a single party deal, but Begley is blinded to reality.

No, she sees Dem mind as a high-minded thing, "dispassionate, making decisions by rationally weighing evidence and balancing pros and cons."

Ridiculous.

Our fourth entry is Is Cheney About to Blow Up the Bay Bridge? from Gypsy Taub at the blog Politics of the Heart. I considered not entering this post in the contest because 9/11 Truthers Paranoid Schizophrenics are so overwhelmingly ridiculous it gives Taub an unfair head start.

But then I thought about die-hard Socialists, cut-and-run Dems and blind pundits like Begley, and I thought, "What the heck? Taub's got no head start with this bunch."

Taub apparently missed the fact that the Bay Bridge was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake, so a new bridge had to be built. (That earthquake occurred in 1989, a bit before (take your pick) Bush/terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.) As part of this process -- and of construction not going as planned -- the Bay Bridge was closed for four days in August.

I'm too harsh. Taub is aware of the earthquake ... it's just the conclusions he draws from it in his muddled mind:

Don’t quote me on this, but I have also heard that the old Bay Bridge is not earthquake stable, so if that is true [it is, my gypsy friend], then it sounds like the World Trade Center that needed to go because of all the asbestos that it was filled with.

Anyway, the bridge's temporary closing was enough to set off a Truther's Numskull's paranoid fantasies:

Bush’s term is coming to an end. The public is pushing to ban voting machines. The power of the Bush administration is deteriorating with major figures resigning, almost daily scandals on the news and constant threat of impeachment. Their only weapon is fear, it’s their last hope. I can see them really desperately needing a terrorist attack in the near future. 911 [I thought that was an emergency number] did them a great deal of good. 911 was, of course, the work of the Bush administration, the Pentagon, and others connected tightly to the Bush administration.

This is a bit muddled. If Bush wants to stay in power, what do voting machines have to do with it? If he doesn't want to stay in power, why does he need to (it's hard to even type this) concoct another 9/11? Well, let's not let rational thought get in the way of the ridiculous:

Getting back to the Bay Bridge, it being shut down for 4 entire days sounds suspicious. They are also demolishing a section of the bridge, so that gives them a green light to bring in a demolition crew. According to their official website they are doing seismic safety work which can, as far as I understand, involve drilling holes in the structure to test it for safety. Also, the new bridge being close to finished would be a convenient time to blow up the old one [sic].

Got it. Close the bridge for four days so as not to raise suspicion, then put your Black Ops crews out in full sight of all to drill the holes. Oh, those tricky bastards! Taug goes on to accuse the Bush administration of crashing a fuel tanker so the 880 freeway in Oakland would collapse:

As soon as 880 collapsed the mainstream media [those famous Bush allies] started screaming about steel melting from fossil fuel fires and comparing it to 911. I knew they were going to say that. That seemed to be the whole purpose of this incident, to “prove” that the WTC really did collapse from the jet fuel fire.

Purpose? There are no accidents? And the Minnesota bridge collapse? A training exercise for the upcoming Oakland explosion, of course! Then, suddenly, a near brush with reality:

Having said all this I would like to hope that I am wrong, that it is indeed a legitimate bridge repair work. But if the bridge does get blown up in the near future don’t buy the “terrorist” story! Investigate, document, take pictures, samples of soil, water, anything and don’t let them institute marshal [sic] law or sign Patriot Act 3!

It didn't blow up; there were no charges of a new terror attack. And there's no "marshal" law ... yet.

So, which story is the most ridiculous?

Wolf, and her countdown to Bush's dictatorship?

Simon and Takeyh with their primer for a win/win defeat in Iraq?

Begley with her insights into the GOP and Dem mind?

Or Gypsy Taub, with his deep, deep insanity over police emergency numbers ... oh, I'm sorry, not 911, but 9/11.

I have to reject Taub because his rants are more bizarre than ridiculous and are too narrowly focused on the guilt of the Bush administration. He says nothing that is broadly applicable.

Simon and Takeyh get a pass because history has so quickly proved so much of what they wrote to be wrong. Yes, history has made them appear even more ridiculous, but it has also made it easier to gauge their ridiculousness.

Between Begley's blindness to her own prejudice, which is such a lovely metaphor for the greater MSM's blindness, and Wolf's senseless but vivid paranoia about Bush, it's a tough choice.

But Wolf gets the honors because she took the care to identify ten separate steps, a primer for despots, and figure out how to connect each to Bush. In the process, she managed to ignore the fact that the American democracy remains balanced and protected by its three branches and its no-nonsense public, and that a campaign for the next American president is in the works.

But mostly, Wolf won because she didn't share Begley's blindness to her prejudices ... she lays hers right out there, for all to see, and she glories in just how bright and insightful she is -- failing to see just how ridiculous she and her views are.

Congratulations, Naomi. Keep up the ridiculous work.

Still No Evidence 9/11 Nuts Rule

I will never refer those who think the US government is behind the attacks on our country on September 11, 2001 as "9/11 Truthers" because from a messaging point of view, the term yields the high ground to the disgusting whackos. So, I'm not happy to pass along this bit of news:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. ...

Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Only 30 percent said the 9/11 theory was "not likely," according to the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. (NYPost)

Of course, the poll is useless because it phrased its questions to sensationalize rather than gain understanding. It certainly doesn't show that 62% of Americans accept the insane, paranoid, anti-American rantings of the Truthers. Specifically:

• What percent of those answering yes believe a routine transmittal within the intelligence agencies may have been lost in the paperwork?
  
  
• What percentage of those answering yes believe a source that wasn't credible provided information that was ignored for seemingly good reason?
  
  
• What percentage of those answering yes are aware of the many, many threats against America made by bin Laden and others; threats that seemed like huff and puff at the time, but turned out to be significant?

Unless polls ask follow-up questions like that to discern what percentage of people who answer "yes" to the question really think that senior U.S. officials knowingly allowed 3,000 people to die because it furthered their foreign policy and personal wealth objectives, and that the legions of operatives required to carry out the diabolical scheme have remained silent, we will not know what percentage of Americans have sadly fallen into the grip of the Truthers.

Designing polls right so they yield this level of understanding is not the exception; it's the routine. But this poll was designed by the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, so sensationalism clearly was more important than objectivity.

Scripps Howard has not posted a link to the survey instrument itself, which used to be fairly routine, but now stands out as particularly guarded and lacking transparency. If we dig deep into the Scripps Howard coverage of the poll, we find down in paragraph nine that "16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed."

That's a fairly good indicator of crazed conspiracy buy-in, but the one Truther I'm friends with believes explosives were planted, but doesn't necessarily believe that the U.S. was the one planting them ... so even a 16% whacko factor may well be nothing more than poor polling resulting in overstatement.

Still, the poll undeniably shows that a significant percentage of Americans believe in anti-government conspiracies. It shows, for example, a narrow majority believes the government is aware of the real truth of the Kennedy assassination and is keeping it secret, and about a third believe the government is keeping knowledge of UFOs and aliens secret.

These likely Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich voters can never answer the question "Why?" Why would no one ever break the silence -- especially on Kennedy or Roswell after all these years? Why did Bush want war in Iraq when he didn't campaign on it?

And most important of all, why would people who have dedicated their lives to serving the most freedom-loving, most transparent government on the planet suddenly stop loving freedom and create elaborate cover-ups of crimes against the country they serve?

Don't count on Scripps Howard to provide any answers.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Sunday Scan

The Jerry Lewis Porkathon

The San Bernardino Sun reports on the hometown Congressman:

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, is tops among California's 54 congressional representatives when it comes to securing federal dollars in money-spending bills.

Lewis even bested House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, by 56 percent.

Numbers compiled by a non-partisan budget watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, show that Lewis - sometimes partnering with other lawmakers - scored more than $126 million worth of earmarks in a dozen appropriations bills for fiscal 2008.

Lewis does have some classic pork in his $126 million, including $8million in Army research funding for a local military contractor, but not all pork is created equal.

Lewis represents some of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, so his region needs a lot of help to cope with growth: New roads, new water and sewer systems, new hospitals. Developers pay a big chunk as do taxpayer-approved bonds, but it makes sense that Lewis' district should get more than slow-growing districts.

Then there's the fires that have swept the mountain communities above Redlands. Lewis represented those people well by getting money to help rebuild their towns.

While I'm no fan of pork, I'm even less a fan of lazy reporting.

Preposterous Prosperity Preachers

"Give and the Lord will give back" is a message heard from many pulpits, often with biblical purity. God loves a giving heart -- but if He loves televangelist prosperity preachers, who do a lot of preaching about giving, it would be one of God's greater mysteries.

Now a Republican Senator has launched an investigation of some of the biggest of these money-sucking televangelists:

The powerful top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month sent detailed letters to six mega-ministries that are exempt from paying federal taxes, asking about their fundraising and use of donations.

For example, [Sen. Charles] Grassley wants to know for what tax-exempt purpose Joyce Meyer Ministries, based in Fenton, Mo., bought a $30,000 malachite round table, and spent $11,219 on a French clock and $19,162 on Dresden vases.

He's also interested in the total amount of "love offerings" received in lieu of salary by Bishop Eddie Long of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., and how Long reports them on his W-2 forms to the Internal Revenue Service.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries, in Newark, Texas, also received a letter. Grassley is curious about reports that a gathering of ministers presented Kenneth Copeland with a "personal gift" in excess of $2 million, in celebration of the organization's 40th anniversary.

The other three targets are Randy and Paula White of Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla.; Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church Inc. in Grapevine, Texas; and Creflo and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. Des Moines Register via Right Views)

My only question is why it took so long. These thieves have been taking money from the widowed, feeble and naive for so long their place in Hell is well secured; their time in prison should have started long ago.

A pulpit is the worst place to hide behind ... with the possible exception of the television camera. If Sen. Grassley's investigation bears fruit, then the next step should be going after some television broadcast licenses.

The $30,000 malachite table caught my eye; here's Malachi 1:6:

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.

Amen.

Happy 60th Betty and Phil

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are celebrating their 60th, and BBC has provided us with 60 wedding tidbits including ones of wealth:

The Queen's bridal veil was made of tulle and held by a tiara of diamonds. This tiara was made for Queen Mary in 1919. It was made from re-used diamonds taken from a necklace/tiara purchased by Queen Victoria from Collingwood and Co and a wedding present for Queen Mary in 1893. In August 1936, Queen Mary gave the tiara to Queen Elizabeth from whom it was borrowed by Princess Elizabeth for her wedding in 1947.

... and ones of war-time austerity:

The two Royal kneelers, used during the service, were covered in rose pink silk. They were made from orange boxes, due to war time austerity, and date stamped 1946.

It's an interesting journey into another time, another place, and makes a nice Sunday read.

Paranoid Libertarians

Steve Greenhut, editorial writer at the OCRegister, is a years-long friend. We talk frequently about property rights, crazed greenies, global warming hysteria and other common interests.

We almost never talk about the war, because as a libertarian, Greenhut has been against it since day one, and his normally clear vision gets clouded, as in his column today:

One of the most disturbing lessons I've learned following the 9/11 attacks is that many people will go along with just about any government-imposed outrage if it's couched in the right terms and plays on their fears.

In the past few years, we've seen the federal government become increasingly aggressive in its efforts to spy on, detain, wiretap, monitor, imprison, search and harass not only suspected "enemy combatants" but pretty much anyone, at its discretion.

Pretty much anyone, Steve? Where are the cases in point? Who's been harassed? Who's been imprisoned? If you think the targets are "anyone," then our legal targets will shrink to pretty much no one, and the Islamists will have successfully exploited our freedoms in their efforts to take our freedoms away from us.

Greenhut's focus is Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans in WWII:

One columnist, quoted in the book, "Reflections," about the Manzanar relocation center in California, made this argument: "I'm for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior … let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry … let us have no patience with the enemy or with anyone who carry his blood. Personally, I hate the Japanese."

Last year when I first researched this topic, I found such bile to be common in newspapers. At the time, The Orange County Register's longtime co-publisher R.C. Hoiles was one of the only West Coast newspaper publishers to come out against the internment.

Hindsight can be 20/20, but Greenhut should understand that among all those unjustly interned were some whose interment was good for us and for the war effort -- something Greenhut dismisses with:

The justification was to protect against espionage and sabotage, although there was scant evidence that Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals living on the West Coast had engaged in any such activities.

But how could there be evidence unless there was the sort of spying on, wiretapping and monitoring that Greenhut abhors?

I have friends who lived in Manzanar, and I am well aware that the internment was ugly for all and unnecessary for nearly all. But the fact is this: There hasn't been any government call for internment of Muslims or any government effort that we know of that involves wholesale electronic spying on Muslims.

To fear such civil liberty breaches from within so much that you ignore the very real effort of some to undermine and destroy our freedoms, then that is the greater risk to freedom.

The Islamo-Socialist Front

Two terrible regimes are getting together today as the Venezuelan vampire drops by to visit the Tehraniacs. No good will come of this.

McGovern: The Dems' Vietnam

Look at the Dem Prez hopefuls and you see candidates who are running on a platform that speaks to activist core of the part, with planks on peace, economic justice and social equality.

If that sounds mistily familiar, think back to McGovern, says poli-sci prof and author Bruce Miroff. He looks at today's situation through a lens of an ongoing McGovern shock to the Dems:

Republican political ascendancy since the Reagan presidency has centered on a few core—and clear—principles: limited government, the free market, a strong military, traditional values. The Democrats’ alternative public philosophy is far less distinct. For decades, their party had had trouble articulating what it cares about and what it believes. Republicans have been proud to call themselves conservatives. Democrats have not really wanted to call themselves anything in particular.

I argue in my recently published book, The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party, that the McGovern campaign was the last time that a presidential nominee of the Democratic Party voiced a full-fledged public philosophy: liberalism. ...

But McGovern lost by a huge margin, crushed by a landslide in which forty-nine states voted for the incumbent, none other than Richard Nixon. ...

A legacy of the McGovern campaign was that it made Democrats lose confidence in their longstanding public philosophy even as Republicans were gaining confidence in their new one. The McGovern defeat can thus be seen as a profound trauma for contemporary Democrats, a political and psychic wound that has been covered over with layers of denial and defensiveness. (History News Network)

Miroff is, of course, right. Today's candidates all remember the McGovern debacle well, just as they remember the Reagan juggernaut. What they're forgetting is that there is a place in Dem-dom somewhere between the unrealistic positions of McGovern or Markos Moulitsas and the hard right positions of the Conservative revolution.

It may take another generation for the Dems to leave McGovern behind and find a new voice for the party -- a bit of New Deal, a bit of populism, a bit of progressivism (as in embracing change, not running from it as the Dems are today). Hillary is the embodiment of McGovernitis, with her unwillingness to take a position on anything, her searching for something safe and electable to believe in.

Not that this augers well for the GOP in 2008. The people are free to elect people who can't say what they believe in -- especially if the people don't know what they believe in either.

Let's Keep Ahmadinejad Away From The WTC!

Try as you will, you won't be able to draw a direct line from Tehran to 9/11. The crazy, rights-tromping, Jew-hating Shi'ia extremists of Iran's revolution may have applauded the results, but they can take no credit for it.

That doesn't mean Mah- I'm in the -moud for insulting the memories of 3,000 dead Americans Ahmadinejad (rhymes with "I hope my security detail's iron-clad") should visit Ground Zero at the World Trade Center when he sets his defiling feet on our shores next week. He is one of the leaders of the other side in the War on Terror, a war that started, really, when he and his cohorts seized the American Embassy in Tehran, and broke out into the open on the hallowed ground he wishes to dishonor with his visit.

Here's an idea for patriots, human rights advocates, separation of church and state radicals, Christians, Jews and the long-sought moderate Muslims alike: Turn out in force and clog every single street leading up to the WTC next Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Load up with signs full of clever, powerful, even nasty, slogans telling Ahmadinejad what we think of him and his hateful kind.

Give him a taste of free speech.

Let him see a free nation at work protecting its honor.

Let him feel the power of the people.

Then let him slink back to Tehran, more afraid than ever that someday soon the people he leads oppresses will rise up against him and his crazed Islamist ilk.

As an interesting aside to this story, take a moment to compare the statements from the two prez candidates from New York:

Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

"Under no circumstances should the NYPD or any other American authority assist President Ahmadinejad in visiting Ground Zero. This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero - hallowed ground for all Americans - is outrageous."

Senator Hillary Clinton:

"It is unacceptable for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who refuses to renounce and end his own country's support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation's history."

Who would you rather have in the White House?

Image: Jihadwatch

A Proper Headline For Today

I just love the use of Yiddish in this headline; turn the screws, turn the screws:

Hijab Lawsuit Takes Chutzpah

Under that headline, OCReg columnist Gordon Dillow makes the same argument I made regarding the case of Muslim welfare cheat Souhair Khatib, who is suing OC after a jail deputy made her remove her hijab. He said:

It's actually pretty easy to avoid having to give up some of your religious rights in the Orange County jail system.

For starters, you can simply not commit welfare fraud.

I said:

If she's that devout, she should have felt more defiled when she was committing welfare fraud. I would hope that not being a stinking, lousy welfare cheat would be viewed by Islam to be a greater sin than not having a scarf on your head.

Really, it's not just Khatib who's got the chutzpah; it's the entire Islamic movement, with its crying for tolerance towards the poor, suffering Muslims while offering precious little of it to the poor, dead, blown apart non-Muslims killed in the name of Allah.

In the spirit of World Infidel Day, I'll show my soft side to Khatib. Hey, Souhair, put on your hijab and I'll take you to that nice pork BBQ place for lunch!

We Remember And We Mourn

This sickened my heart this morning. No, in fact my heart was sickened even as I typed dailykos into my browser, knowing something like this would be there:

We remember and we mourn
by wiscmass
Tue Sep 11, 2007 at 03:31:08 AM PDT

[Today], the sixth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever to occur on US soil, we will hear many platitudes about the fallen. Instead of buying into the hype, we choose to remember and mourn the actual people who are no longer with us. We remember and we mourn our friends and family and complete strangers who lost their lives on that terrible day.

We remember and we mourn all the US soldiers who died in a war of retaliation against the wrong people. We remember and we mourn the Iraqi victims, the journalists, the coalition soldiers, and the US soldiers killed in Operation Enduring Freedom as well.

I sense wiscmass really mourns very little with this troubling mess of a list, this list designed to sound all right but really poke a finger at America for 9/11.

We don't see President Bush's name in this little entry, neither do we see jihad, bin Laden, al-Qaeda or Islam. It's as if 9/11 just happened, then America responded with death. It's as if all wiscmass and his/her fellow travelers mourn is that there is a war.

The nation that was united six years ago was a chimera; this is the nation we have today. A nation in which our leading general isn't rightfully questioned about his policies, but instead is accused (thanks to a hefty ad discount from the NYT) of being a traitor. And a liar. Why? Because he's doing what the Left has demanded be done: Changing administration policy in Iraq.

For a moment six years ago, America could look at itself proudly as the nation it is supposed to be. Unbent, committed, strong, we looked a vicious attack in the face and reacted with calm assurance. No mobs of Americans took to the street shouting, "Death to the Islamic devil!" No Muslims were torn from their homes and stoned or stomped to death. And no wings of aircraft took off, laden with weapons of war, to strike back viciously at some target, any target.

Instead we grieved, cried and prayed. The voices of dissent were quieter then. Maybe they were afraid to say anything; maybe they truly felt as we did for a moment. But that moment is gone now and it's up to us who don't play games with historic moments to remember and mourn correctly.

We remember and we mourn because the world changed for the worse on that day due to the acts of a few utterly intolerant, hateful men from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

We remember and we mourn for the souls who were not a part of any war, who were not confronted with any choice regarding their fate, but were subjected to painful, fearful deaths at the hands of the most intolerant and hateful of extremists.

We remember and mourn the heroes from NYFD, NYPD and the just everyday folk who rose to the occasion and put others' lives ahead of their own.

We remember and mourn the ribbons, flags and bumper stickers that for a while seemed to say we were united.

We remember and mourn those two great towers, and that massive heap of dust, twisted steel, blood and snuffed life.

Debra Burlingame also remembers. Her brother was on the airliner that was stolen by al-Qaeda and redirected into the west wall of the Pentagon. She writes this morning, six years later:

There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts that result in loss of life, with "body count" being the primary factor that keeps it in the top spot of "worst in the nation's history."

Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn't the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup.

The attacks were not a random act of violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act of war committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.

Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but "9/11" is with us every day.

And that is why we remember and mourn the soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. They understand, unlike MoveOn.org, Code Pink, Daily Kos and the other defilers of the memory of 9/11, that the jihadists are not done and that making excuses and placing false blame is not going to stop them.

Some will mark today by trying to disrupt the Senate hearings for Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker with anti-war, anti-American slogans. Fortunately, most of us will remember the day correctly, with a prayer of remembrance to those who died, a prayer of good will and protection for those who defend us, and a prayer for this world, and for a true and just peace.

Schaar or Schäuble?

In our world of muted criticisms and careful policies, it is good to see a solid and forthright response from a government official about the Islamist threat:

In an interview with the mass-circulation daily Bild Zeitung, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned of the danger posed by radical converts to Islam. "One thinks that people who have grown up here and who enjoy the benefits of our free society are immune," he said. "But some are susceptible to radicalization. These are dangerous, fanatical people with a high degree of criminal energy. That is a great concern for me." ...

Schäuble renewed Thursday his calls for online spying, saying that terrorists are increasingly using the Internet to plan their operations. Authorities must have the option to secretly spy on computers "in strictly justified exceptional cases," Schäuble told the German broadcaster ARD. (der Speigel)

Schäuble is thinking with a post-9/11 mindset, but of course there are others who are responding to Germany's brush with catastrophe with pure 9/10 perspective:

But the critics have opened up on Schäuble this week. Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar wondered in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau on Thursday how the high-court mandated "core privacy" can be maintained in light of such a strategy. He also had serious doubts about the suitability of the government sending out virus-laden e-mails.

"The police cannot be allowed to present itself as the Cologne Youth Office in order to plant forensic software on the computers of those being investigated," he said. "That is absolutely not allowed."

Representatives from both the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats likewise blasted the idea, with FDP domestic policy expert Max Stadler calling for parliament to step in to block it. (der Speigel)

So what is allowed, Herr Schaar?

Our very freedoms are weapons in the Islamists' hands, and many are content to simply have these weapons, these freedoms, turned on us. If the Islamists succeed, our freedoms will be no more, crushed under Sharia law.

So what's our choice? Stay true to the letter of our freedoms and side with Schaar, or risk everything to defend our freedoms and side with Schäuble. Those who are with the former, who are with the ACLU, the German Greens and the ideologues of the Left do, are with Fritz G., Daniel S. and Adem Y., the three arrested jihad suspects in Germany.

German officials say there are at least seven more of this cell out there. Who do you trust to capture them, Schaar or Schäuble?

9/11 Whackos: More Of Them Than You Thought?

The fun-lovin' whackos at ... I'm even having trouble typing this name ... 9/11 Truth have a new survey out that they're pretty excited about:

As America nears the sixth anniversary of the world-churning events of September 11, 2001, a new Zogby International poll finds a majority of Americans still await a Congressional investigation of President Bush' and Vice President Cheney's actions before, during and after the 9/11 attacks. Over 30% also believe Bush and/or Cheney should be immediately impeached by the House of Representatives.

You know what they say about underestimating the stupidity of the American people. But in the case of the impeachment question at least, this is more a story of never underestimating the cleverness of a pollster for hire. Take for example the phrasing of this question:

401. Some groups on both the right and left are now petitioning Congress to impeach the President and/or the Vice President. Based on your own knowledge of George Bush's and Dick Cheney's conduct regarding war policy, detainee treatment, domestic surveillance, the 9/11 attacks and Congressional investigations, which one of the following comes closest to your opinion?

Adding "war policy, detainee treatment, domestic surveillance, the 9/11 attacks and Congressional investigations" is so biased you have to question, as I often do, Zogby's professionalism. Do you suppose he would have gotten 31 percent supporting impeachment if they had asked questions about their conduct "regarding fighting terrorism, protecting America, gathering intelligence on terrorists and Democratic party hostility" they would have gotten different results?

Unfortunately, the question that led 31 percent of the respondents to say they think the administration knew about the attacks in advance or planned them was much more straightforward. As you read it, however, remember that this question immediately follows the heavily biased impeachment question:

402. There are three main schools of thought regarding the 9/11 attacks. The first theory is the official story, and maintains that 19 Arab fundamentalists executed a surprise attack which caught US intelligence and military forces off guard. The second theory known as Let It Happen argues that certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic motives; and the third theory Made It Happen contends that certain US government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks. Based upon your knowledge of 9/11 events and their aftermath, which theory are you more likely to agree with?

Stupid post-adolescents and Hispanics (who are exposed to the worst media in America) are the only segments who have a majority in the "let it happen" and "made it happen" group -- 72 and 58 percent respectively. The least skeptical (i.e., "official story") are Jews (82.6%) followed by "very conservative (81.8%).

The most interesting finding -- one not touted by the sponsors -- is this: The more stupid you are, the more likely you are to buy into 9/11 conspiracy theories. I make the statement based on this assumption, which some will challenge as biased, but I believe is defensible: lower income general equates with lower smarts.

In this case, 49.5 percent of those with incomes lover than $25K and 48 percent of those making
$25 to $35K are conspiracy theorists, but only 20 percent of those earning over $100K buy into it.

The young, the stupid ... oh, and the liberal, at 39 percent.

Can We Say The Enemy's Name Out Loud Yet?

Writing about September 11th today, Victor Davis Hansen concludes with a warning wrapped in a criticism:

In short, six years of quiet at home since 9/11 have fooled some into thinking that terrorists pose little danger here - or that we may be doing far too much rather than too little to stop such killers. No matter that this past week a jihadist plot to destroy U.S. facilities in Germany was thwarted.

Others make the mistake of endlessly re-fighting the past six years - who let al-Qaida grow?; who "lost" Osama bin Laden?; who fouled up postwar Iraq? - instead of concentrating on the storm ahead.

Before 2001, the excuse for American complacence and in-fighting was naivete. But what will be the reason for the next successful strike against us by the jihadists?

More naivete - or is it simple hubris? (Real Clear Politics)

When the second and third and fourth domestic shores attacks do come, whether they are months away or years away, I fear they will be met with more hubris, not more clarity and commitment. I can hear the left now, blaming the attacks on our efforts to free Iraq, or on the poor way those Islamic boys were treated by intolerant extremist Christians who they may or may not have bumped up against.

Those who were supposed to stop attacks, from whoever's leading Homeland Security then on down, will point fingers every which way and Congress will investigate everything but what they should investigate, which is, of course, what can we do to mercilessly stop this evil threat that Islamism presents?

Hansen is rightly looking at the ongoing threat to America as the anniversary of 9/11 nears, but of course America and Americans are at risk the world over. For example:

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - American and other Western installations in Nigeria were at risk of terrorist attack in Africa's most populous nation, the U.S. Embassy said Thursday.

"The U.S. Mission in Nigeria has received information that U.S. and other Western interests in Nigeria are currently at risk for terrorist attacks," the embassy said in a consular statement sent via e-mail to U.S. citizens in Nigeria. "Potential targets include official and commercial installations in Abuja and Lagos," it said, without elaborating.

Now, Nigeria was a colonial nation. Is that the cause of these threats? It has an oil economy, so is the meddling of Halliburton the cause of these threats? To hear the liberals, one would think so. All evil tracks back to American, European, white, capitalist, imperialist roots.

They don't worry themselves over troublesome facts like the 50 plus years Nigeria has had of independence, of its generation of leaders who never experienced colonialism. And never mind that corruption there is indigenous and there is no need for Halliburton to set up corruption classes at the local schools.

And certainly, obviously, the left won't trouble themselves with nasty little facts like this: Nigeria is 50 percent Islamic, 40 percent Christian and 10 percent Nativist.

The communique from the U.S. mission didn't say which group in particular to watch out for, which is the result of neither naivete or hubris, but rather our unwillingness to name our enemy, whether out of diplomatic or PC concerns.

Nearly six years after Islamism's largest attack on our shores, our government and our MSM still have trouble declaring we have an enemy, and even more trouble saying that enemy's name.

Its name is radical, jihadist Islam, and it is out there and still very much after us. So what would be wrong, after six years, to actually say as much every opportunity we have to say it?

The Most Ridiculous Story Of The Year? (4)

Normally (if you can even remotely apply that word), a 9/11 conspiracy story would come nowhere close to having the stuff to qualify for CSM's Most Ridiculous Story of the Year. These conspiracy yarns are far too trite, and besides, "looney" and "ridiculous" are not exact synonyms.

But leave it to the lunatic fringe to pull together so much paranoia, Bush hatred and bad physics to actually compose a story -- Is Cheney About to Blow Up the Bay Bridge? from Gypsy Taub at the blog Politics of the Heart -- that can clear the high hurdles and qualify.

(The rules for qualifying are this: Entries must be work that serious writers present in all seriousness that goes far, far beyond the sublime and settle heavily into the imbecilic. One could debate that Gypsy is not a serious writer, having posted only 20 posts to her blog since starting it in May. One could also debate whether this article is serious; I thought it first to be a lampoon, but amazingly it is not. Besides, the "one" who could argue these points is me, the sole arbiter, and I say it's in.)

Let's get on with it, then:

Having been a 911 truth activist for 5 years, I have serious suspicions about the Bay Bridge being closed for [an] entire 4 days.

There has been a lot of threats of terrorist attacks coming form [sic] the government. Looks like they are preparing the public. Or else it could be their usual scare tactics.

On the other hand, Bush’s term is coming to an end. The public is pushing to ban voting machines. The power of the Bush administration is deteriorating with major figures resigning, almost daily scandals on the news and constant threat of impeachment. Their only weapon is fear, it’s their last hope. I can see them really desperately needing a terrorist attack in the near future. 911 did them a great deal of good. 911 was, of course, the work of the Bush administration, the Pentagon, and others connected tightly to the Bush administration.

So we begin with the apparent supposition that Bush does not want to leave office in Jan. 08 -- why else would he bother with an attack? But if he wants to stay in office, why the line about the voting machines? He wouldn't need voting machines to stay in office; he'd need a military coup.

And yes, there is constant talk of impeachment, but really, constant threat? The alleged sins of Bush are now five and six years in the past; if no impeachment has happened yet, when are we expecting the train to arrive in the station?

Gypsy then drivels a bunch of 9/11 theory -- or as she quaintly puts it, "911" theory -- which I won't bother with, because she could do that all day and never achieve "Most Ridiculous" status. We then pick up again here:

Getting back to the Bay Bridge, it being shut down for 4 entire days sounds suspicious. They are also demolishing a section of the bridge, so that gives them a green light to bring in a demolition crew. According to their official website they are doing seismic safety work which can, as far as I understand, involve drilling holes in the structure to test it for safety. Also, the new bridge being close to finished would be a convenient time to blow up the old one [sic].

Got it. Close the bridge for four days so as not to raise suspicion, then put your Black Ops crews out in full sight of all to drill the holes. Oh, those tricky bastards!

Of course, she might have read this at the Oakland Bay Bridge Web site and not written a post at all:

Oakland, Calif., Monday, September 03, 2007 - The Labor Day Weekend closure of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge will end at 6:00 p.m. this evening, with the span re-opening 11 hours ahead of schedule.

The bridge was closed in both directions to allow workers to demolish a 350-ft. section of upper-deck roadway just east of the Yerba Buena Island tunnel and to replace it with a new seismically safe segment that was constructed on an adjacent site and rolled into place early this morning. This segment is the first permanent piece of the new East Span that motorists will drive across.

But we have to remember: Nothing the government says can be trusted.

Point of information: The old Oakland Bay Bridge was not seismically sound; a section of roadway tipped in the 7.0 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. That's why a new replacement bridge has been built next to the old one Gypsy's so concerned about. But she wouldn't want to be quoted on anything like that:

Don’t quote me on this, but I have also heard that the old Bay Bridge is not earthquake stable, so if that is true [it is, my dear], then it sounds like the World Trade Center that needed to go because of all the asbestos that it was filled with. Cleaning it up would have cost an enormous amount of money that no one was willing to pay. In other words, it sounds like the Bay Bridge is a good candidate for a “terrorist attack” just like the WTC was.

So, leaving aside the fact that there is no need to remove asbestos unless it is going to be disturbed, and leaving aside the fact that it's only disturbed during a remodel so abatement would occur one suite at a time, and leaving aside the fact that quite a lot of the WTC was built after asbestos was banned and has no asbestos, and leaving aside the fact that the cost of removing asbestos from the WTC was minimal compared to the value of the building, we have a theory emerging: The old bay bridge was no longer needed, so Bush would blow it up to stay in power.

Was the Pentagon also no longer needed? Just asking.

Unable to sustain this story for too long, Gypsy launches into a fresh new "Bush the terrorist" angle, tied to another Bay Area infrastructure disaster (she's a San Francisco "media activist," so she knows this stuff):

Another thing that raises suspicion is the collapse of highway 880 in Oakland this past April and the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge. As far as I am concerned 880 was an inside job. Gas doesn’t melt steel otherwise your engine in your car would have long since melted. Because of 911 it became a well known fact that steel melts at a much higher temperature than gas burns. The story that I read online about the collapse is full of inconsistencies.

Why would Bush set a fuel tanker on fire as a cover for a pre-planned demolition of the 880? Do you really have to ask?

As soon as 880 collapsed the mainstream media started screaming about steel melting from fossil fuel fires and comparing it to 911. I knew they were going to say that. That seemed to be the whole purpose of this incident, to “prove” that the WTC really did collapse from the jet fuel fire. The 911 truth movement used the impossibility of such a phenomenon as a proof of government complicity and cover up. So this was possibly meant to disprove this point.

You would have figured this out too if only you'd realized that the MSM are in cahoots with Bush and the silent Black Ops figures that really pulled off 9/11.

And Minneapolis?

I can see these events being a rehearsal to test out a bridge demolition by “terrorists.” I just talked to Eric Hufschmid and he said that the Minneapolis bridge collapse looks a lot like the 880 collapse in Oakland, very suspicious.

Got it. It's all rehearsals. I wonder what major building collapse we should look to as the rehearsal for 9/11. Maybe the Bush administration was behind the Las Vegas boom, so all those old casino hotels would have to be replaced, giving them a lot of opportunity to plan for 9/11. It would be just like them.

I don't even know how to introduce Gypsy's next paragraph, so here goes:

Also realize that both the mayor of San Francisco (Gavin Newsom) and the state government (the legendary Schwarznegger) [sic] are both unelected puppets installed by Bush and Co.

Geez. I thought Gray Davis' incompetence led to Schwarzenegger's election ... and didn't he beat Phil Angelides in 2006 all by himself? Maybe I'm naive.

As for Newsome, he has been winning elections since 1998 without any help from Bush (or so I thought). Perhaps Gypsy's alluding to the fact that former SF Mayor Willie Brown, a notoriously wheeling and dealing Dem, appointed Newsome to the SF board of supervisors way back in 1996 -- showing Bush's incredible reach. Four years before he was elected president, he was able to get Willie Brown to place Newsome on the board, so that years later Newsome could support gay marriage, thereby solidifying the GOP base. Look how well it worked out for the GOP in 2006!

Let's wrap this up, shall we?

So, the Bay Bridge is between a rock and a hard place. It would be very easy to imagine an investigation being made impossible if the bridge did get blown up by so called “terrorists.”

Having said all this I would like to hope that I am wrong, that it is indeed a legitimate bridge repair work. But if the bridge does get blown up in the near future don’t buy the “terrorist” story! Investigate, document, take pictures, samples of soil, water, anything and don’t let them institute marshal [sic] law or sign Patriot Act 3!

Gee, and here I thought that if the Bay Bridge went and got itself all blown up, we'd all just say, "Shoot, there go those darn terrorists again!" and not investigate it at all.

It must be very hard for Gypsy to through life knowing all the world is crazed and she's the only one who's sane enough to see it.

See also:
The Most Ridiculous Story of the Year?
The Most Ridiculous Story of the Year? (2)
The Most Ridiculous Story of the Year? (3)

hat-tip: memeorandum; Bridge photo: Jimgris