Father's Day Sunday Scan

Role Model Day?

Here's an interesting take on Father's Day from Sweating Through Fog:

I'm getting pretty tired of seeing things that treat being a father as just a "male role model."

A father is not a male role model. A father is an adult male that a child knows:
a) will take a bullet for them.
b) will work hard for many, many years, doing things he may or may not like, in order to provide a loving, secure home for his wife and children.
c) loves the child enough to consider the well-being of that child the foundation of his worth as a person.

You can be a male role model if you teach a kid how to ride a bike, throw a curve ball, learn a trade or act on a date - all good and wonderful things. Fatherhood is an irrevocable, lifetime commitment to sacrifice - with grace and pride - for the benefit of a child. A child derives great benefit knowing that someone made those sacrifices for them.

God bless the Dads who dedicate themselves to doing both, and God bless the kids who have neither. For them, today's not much of a day.

Father's Day Read

David Woo, a photographer with the Dallas Daily News gave a reverse Father's Day present to son Jake that merits an entry in the Chronicles of Fathering -- Woo the elder visited Woo the younger at his post on at Forward Operating Base Iskan, south of Baghdad.

Woo the elder's piece is posted at the Dallas Morning News today; here's a poignant excerpt:

As I walked about 100 yards to my room, the only light was moon glow. As I looked up, I had to stop. Before Jake was deployed to Iraq, I told him that I would go outside every night before I went to sleep, look up in the heavens and say a prayer for his safety. This time, my prayer was a little different:

"God, I'm here with my son now. Keep him and his fellow soldiers safe."

For whatever his reasons, God did not keep several thousand of Woo's fellow soldiers safe in Iraq. What a terrible, terrible day today must be for those families and those fathers. Please keep them in your prayers today ... there are no words sufficient to the loss.

(See Woo the elder's photo gallery from the trip here.)

Predators And Reapers


Two of the coolest named weapons in the US arsenal, the Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft, are flying over the Pakistan/Afghanistan border like never before, in a renewed effort to bring in Osama bin Laden before the end of the Bush presidency. The Times of London reports:

As Mr Bush arrived in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe, defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

I'm not a big supporter of last-minute legacy-building by presidents, so I have to ask why this effort wasn't undertaken sooner? Why the big rush now?

I hope they get him -- today wouldn't be soon enough -- but having big stories in major international newspapers about the hunt isn't going to help the effort any.

Bullseye!

Osama, from your hovel in whatever bleak, flea-bitten corner of nowhere it is, take note:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

A satellite flying at who knows what blinding speed 130 miles overhead nailed with pinpoint accuracy by a missile fired from the middle of the ocean.

Got a missile cruiser, Islamist dog? A spy satellite? Technology more advanced than a satellite phone (which, by the way, we invented). If Islam is so hot, what does it have to show for itself, save box-cutters, four guys who could pass flight school, and the highly advanced technology of strapping someone else's C4 around the bellies of suicidal psychopaths?

And you want the world to come to where you're at. Speaking for all the billions of us, no thank you.

hat-tip: memeorandum

OC Traitor Dead? Let's Hope!

Orange County's most infamous native son, Adam Gadahn, bin Laden's hate-spewing, turncoat, traitor mouthpiece, may have died in last Thursday's killer attack on senior al-Qaeda blood-luster Abu Laith al-Libi.

Gadahn's grandparents were liberal Jewish leaders in Orange County and now he is/was one of the world's premier Jew-haters.

His parents were mellow hippie goat-farmers with multi-culti coursing through their drug-soaked brains. It was Pop's goat sales to OC's first mosque that introduced their son to Islam -- and that's cool man, you know, because God is God is God, you know? Far out.

In no time, the preachers of the Religion of Peace had converted Gadahn into a new man: hateful, vicious and Hell-bound.

And now, if the rumors are right, he's reached that well-deserved location.

For my earlier posts summarizing the OCRegister's fascinating three-part series on Gadahn and his family, click here, here and here.

Sunday Scan

A Personal Hero Revisited

I earned my degree at Ernie Pyle Hall, Indiana University's journalism school, so this story moved me:

NEW YORK — The figure in the photograph is clad in Army fatigues, boots and helmet, lying on his back in peaceful repose, folded hands holding a military cap. Except for a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he could be asleep.

But he is not asleep; he is dead. And this is not just another fallen GI; it is Ernie Pyle, the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II.

As far as can be determined, the photograph has never been published. Sixty-three years after Pyle was killed by the Japanese, it has surfaced — surprising historians, reminding a forgetful world of a humble correspondent who artfully and ardently told the story of a war from the foxholes.

"It's a striking and painful image, but Ernie Pyle wanted people to see and understand the sacrifices that soldiers had to make, so it's fitting, in a way, that this photo of his own death ... drives home the reality and the finality of that sacrifice," said James E. Tobin, a professor at Miami University of Ohio.

Read the rest at USA Today.

I think Pyle would have taken umbrage at the line, "... not just another fallen GI." There were no "just anothers" among the soldiers Pyle wrote about in his columns from the front lines of the war, which you can read in Brave Men or Here is Your War: The Story of GI Joe.

Pyle might just have been the last great journalist, were it not for men like Michael Totten and Michael Yon, who ignore the directives from the military's PR men and put themselves at risk, as Pyle did, to report the noble, inspiring and heartbreaking stories of our great soldiers doing their great work.

Now, 63 years later, we see Ernie Pyle at rest, and it is a moving, powerful photo. How tragic that often this is bravery's reward; how reaffirming that six decades on, we still care.

Unwelcoming Worlds

Be thankful that you're from Earth, not a planet in the RS Ophiuchi binary system, the red giant/white dwarf system rendered here by a NASA artist.

Here's why:

"We were getting ready for a routine engineering run when all of a sudden the nova went off. It was very bright and easy to observe, so we took this opportunity and turned it into gold," says team member Marc Kuchner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ...

The Keck Nuller [astronomical instrument] was undergoing tests on February 12, 2006, when a nova flared up in the constellation Ophiuchus. The system, known as RS Ophiuchi, consists of a white dwarf and a red giant. The red giant is gradually shedding its massive gaseous outer layers, and the white dwarf is sweeping up much of this wind, growing in mass over time. As the matter builds up on the white dwarf's surface it eventually reaches a critical temperature that ignites a thermonuclear explosion that causes the system to brighten 600-fold. (Science Daily)

Talk about your global warming!

But what's a mere super-nova among friends? What makes the RS Ophiuchi system just so darned inhospitable is that similar events were observed (counting backwards) in 1985, 1967, 1958, 1933, 1989 and who knows how many more times back through the history of the universe.

Those time spans of nine to 34 years were astronomical quick blinks; nearly constant and instantaneous by the way galaxies time things.

RS Ophiuchi is a mighty hymn to the incredible splendor of the universe, and testimony to the infinite creativity ... and maybe even humor ... of the Creator.

I mean, really, doesn't this whacked-out solar system remind you just a little bit of the Three Stooges, forever knuckle-heading, slapping and poking each other? You ... I oughtta ... nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!

Gore Gorged ... Again

The next time you bump into Al Gore, you might want to tattoo this across his forehead:

A warming global ocean — influencing the winds that shear off the tops of developing storms — could mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States according to new findings by NOAA climate scientists. Furthermore, the relative warming role of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans is important for determining Atlantic hurricane activity.

The article, to be published on January 23 in Geophysical Research Letters, uses observations to show that warming of global sea surface temperatures is associated with a secular, or sustained long-term increase, of vertical wind shear in the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes. The increased vertical wind shear coincides with a downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes. (source)

Researchers did an amazing thing in this study. Instead of stoking up the computer models and filling the models' cyber-heads with silliness, they actually went back through historical records and tracked real landfalls from the late 1800s on. Imagine that!

Of course, the study finds the oceans have warmed, which supports global warming. But it also shows that we know far too little about what its effects may be to start taxing ourselves in order to fund government programs willy-nilly. If this study is true, people along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts might not be too keen on paying a carbon tax to curtail the forces that are making their lives safer.

Taxes To Beat The Axis

Ymarsakar has posted this Donald Duck cartoon from the 1940s to show how Hollywood's approach to wars has changed.

clipped from ymarsakar.wordpress.com

As Y says,

This is an interesting example of how Hollywood was for the war in WWII, due to the fact that there was no reason to be against Hitler, given Hitler’s betrayal and attack on Soviet Stalin.

Hollywood seems to have forgotten that the Islamic world that they're defending through their current round of movies overwhelmingly was on Hitler's side in WWII.

Like Father, Sort-Of Like Son

Hamza bin Laden is following in the terrorist footsteps of his father, although it appears he may be more willing than pops to actually put his personal safety at risk in the name of jihad.

AP has obtained a draft of Benizir Bhutto's autobiography, due out later this month, which contains this passage:

"I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me," Bhutto reportedly says in the book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West.

"These included, the reports said, the squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group," she is quoted as saying.

Mehsud has been blamed by Pakistan intelligence for the attack, but his mouthpieces deny his involvement. Bin Laden & Son are similarly silent -- knowing, perhaps, that this is one act of terror they're better off not taking credit for.

The Consequence Of Being Unread

I wouldn't put Vladamir Nobokov's Lolita on my recommended reading list, but let's face it, it's a good thing to have some awareness of the literary world around us. Otherwise, our world is vulnerable to this sort of silliness:

LONDON (Reuters) - A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

In "Lolita," a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter -- but Woolworths staff had not heard of the classic novel or two subsequent films based on it.

Hence they saw nothing wrong with advertising the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about six until a concerned mother raised the alarm on a parenting website.

It reminds me of a little girl I saw on TV once named Temptress. The shocked show host asked the girl's mom if she knew the meaning of the name, and she didn't. She just thought it sounded nice and had something to do with "pretty."

Just like whoring has something to do with sleeping, I suppose.

Dem Voter Guide

In closing, I'd like to offer an olive branch to my Dem readers (all two of you!) by providing you with this handy-dandy Dem Voter Guide for the upcoming primaries.

Edwards supporters are free to give their votes either to Jimmy Carter #1 or Jimmy Carter #3. (hat-tip Doug Ross via What Bubba Knows)

Bhutto Clip: Bin Laden Dead?

clipped from mypetjawa.mu.nu

Jawa Report has posted this video in which Benezir Bhutto names names of who is likely to killer her -- and apparently gets it right. In it, she also drops in without comment this little tidbit: Naming Omar Sheikh as the man "who murdered Osama bin Laden."

Did she really know something? If she did, does it die with her?

Probably not. More likely, she just got the wrong name into the sentence -- speculation is that she meant to say "Daniel Pearl."

hat-tip: memeorandum

Back To Terrorism?

Osama's boy, Omar bin Laden, is not happy with the news coverage his polygamous marriage to a 51-year-old British grandmother has garnered, sez the Guardian:

In a written statement published by the Saudi newspaper al-Watan yesterday, Omar bin Laden said he was "stunned and outraged" at the publicity the wedding has attracted.

By his dad's criteria, that should be a serious enough wrong to get Omar back into the terror fold. Innocents beware: You should die because an Arab was stunned and outraged by how the West responded to Islam.

If a 24-year-old wants to take a grandmother as his second wife, what right have we to look with dismay, or even chuckle good naturedly?

Prepare to die, we must.

Here She Is, Mrs. bin Laden

It's an eyebrow-archer when a 51-year-old woman marries a 27-year-old man, especially if it's after a one-week whirlwind romance.

But when the groom's name is bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, 4th son of Osama, and the woman is a Brit ... well, that will grab a headline or two.

Jane Felix-Browne picked up her fifth hubby after he gazed upon her on horseback near the Great Pyramids of Egypt, sort of a Jane in Arabia thing. Now they're in limbo, he a scrap metal trader in Jedda, she a parish counselor in the village of Moulton. She can't get him into England; he can't get her into Jedda.

But what kind of problem is that if you're in love?

And what kind of problem is it that hubby trained to be a jihadist with Dad, or that the Brits aren't too keen on al-Qaeda types after a couple weeks of fingernail chewing about car bombs. And who really cares if, as Jane told the Times of London, "Omar doesn’t know if it was his father who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t think we will ever know.”

There are always crazy women available for incredibly dense marriages, like Doreen Lioy, who married Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, and promises to commit suicide when he is executed. They make choices so sensationally beyond the rational that you have to wonder just how deep the crack goes into the pot.

Pretty darn deep:

“If I can do anything because of who I am married to and try to end some of the fighting in the world then I will do it.

“Omar trusts me and has supported me is speaking publicly about our marriage and about our plans to campaign for peace. I know a lot about Middle East politics and believe there should be peace in the whole of the world, the same as Omar.”

Well, nothing else has worked, so why not a five-time bride and the son of a terrorist who must have his kinkiness dialed up high? I'm sure all the parties would like to meet with them, if for no reason but to gape in wonder.

Closing In On Bin-Laden?

Where's Osama bin Laden? We just might know.

First, on Friday's Brian and the Judge show on Fox Talk, the hosts said their sources had told them bin Laden's days might be numbered. Now this:

For the past two days, U.S. and NATO forces have been conducting a major attack against a compound in a remote area of Eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden or another senior al Qaeda leader may be hiding, ABC News has learned.

According to eyewitnesses and local reporters in Kunar province, Coalition forces launched a fierce attack on a small enclave in the village of Mandaghel, approximately 17 miles from the border with Pakistan, on Friday afternoon. Warplanes pounded the positions ; U.S. special forces and Afghan National Army soldiers moved in shortly afterwards.

The assault appeared to meet stiff resistance from militants at the compound. Heavy artillery and gunfire could be heard for hours, local witnesses said . A handful of civilians were reportedly wounded in the strike. Though sealed off from outside access, the area now appears to be under coalition control.

U.S. officials declined to identify who the operation was targeting, but indicated they were after a "High Value Target" (HVT) . Official sources would not rule out that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself was the intended victim. Afghan officials said the target could be another senior ranking al Qaeda leader. (ABC News Blotter)

Something worth keeping an eye on. I don't think it'll make all that much difference in the War on Terror, but it sure would be nice having him dead -- hopefully after a long period of intense pain -- than alive.

Hat-tip: Fourth Rail Art: Joe-KS