Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Blogrolling.com server woes

The blogrolling.com servers have gotten less responsive over the last several days. Some of the blogs I read have made note of the problems, complaining that it takes considerable time for their pages to render because of the problems. I've noticed that late at night, when I have the most freedom to read blogs that the servers seem to be at a total standstill.

For my web site, I have a solution to the problem. After looking at the code to fetch the raw feed from blogrolling.com for a given blogroll, I've written an ASP.NET server control that can load a standard blogrolling.com blogroll (I haven't bothered for reciprolls), cache the output, and render it into the sidebar on the server, instead of on the client.

I've plugged this control into my sidebar everywhere I was relying on client-side JavaScript to render my blogrolls. The result appears identical to what was being rendered when I used the client-side scripts, but the pages render considerably faster. I've tried to set a reasonable cache lifetime for the blogrolls on the site, a compromise between picking up recent updates when a blog pings blogrolling.com and ensuring a decent response time on the website.

My web server has a lot more bandwidth available to it than my browser does, so this shouldn't have impacted server response times too much. Besides, when I used the script-based method, every single page load results in over a dozen hits to blogrolling.com. Now, with the blogrolls cached on my server, if page hits come frequently enough (and they do when I'm working on the site at night) the number of hits to blogrolling.com from my website alone should go down.

If anyone knows how to cache data from a web site using PHP and plug it into Wordpress or Blogger blogs, let me know. Some of my friends in the blogosphere could probably benefit from this too.

Linked at 123beta.

Are car bombs at airports next?

Could we be seeing harbingers of domestic terrorism? Yesterday a couple of kids detonated two acid bombs in a Wal-Mart in Skowhegan, Maine. Today a suspicious looking device was discovered in the trunk of a rental car at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

MINNEAPOLIS

The FBI was helping in the search Sunday for a person who left a suspected explosive device in the trunk of a rental car at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The Bloomington Police Department's bomb squad detonated the device, finding it contained no explosive material. But airport spokesman Pat Hogan said it appeared to be an attempt at either crafting a bomb or something that looked like one.

"It had wires coming out of it, and shrapnel attached, and it was concealed in the cargo area in a way where you wouldn't see it if you were just casually looking into the trunk," Hogan said.

The first incident looked like domestic terrorism, whether targeted at shoppers in general, or Wal-Mart in particular, until the perpetrators turned out to be a couple of teenage kids. The kids have been arrested, but whether this was just a prank remains to be seen. The fact is, the kids did set off two bombs in a highly public place.

The second incident could have been a dry run, or a failed attempt at creating a bomb. In any case, these two incidents point out just how vulnerable we still are to terrorist attacks.

Hat tip: National Terror Alert Response Center via Stop the ACLU.

Paul Allen's Christmas Wish List

From The Wrap by Ron Judd:

1. Ski rack for South Lake Union streetcar.
2. One 787, size large.
3. Connecticut.
4. Thirty minutes with someone dumb enough to buy the Experience Failure Project, aka the Portland Trail Blazers.
5. Jupiter.
6. Just one Seahawk defender who, for the love of God, can tackle somebody.

I couldn't agree more with the last item.

The Seahawks play tomorrow night at 5:30 PM. Who knows? Maybe they'll get lucky again.

Instant messaging makes you stupid

In today's Seattle Times we find that students are now so stupid because of text-messaging that they've begun to use text messaging shorthand in school assignments:

Tia Burnett couldn't believe what she was seeing when students turned in work that looked more like an instant-message conversation than an English assignment.

Some of her students at Orange High School in New Jersey's Essex County started sneaking abbreviations — "u" for "you," "2" for "to" and "4" for "for" — into their papers and other class assignments.

...

Teachers, administrators and businesspeople say abbreviations commonly used in e-mails, instant messaging and text messages are creeping into assignments and formal writing, and some believe it is hurting the way students think.

Yet another sign of the dumbing down of America. This is almost as bad as teaching English as a second language for students whose primary language is ebonics.

Strange definition of "Ceasefire"

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Associated Press have a strange definition of the word "Ceasefire" when it comes to the conflict between Palestinians and Israel. Apparently in the AP Dictionary the word ceasefire means "when Israel stops fighting back, even though her enemies don't":

(AP) Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at Israel died down Sunday after a daybreak cease-fire, giving hope the truce might end five months of bloody destruction and open a path toward peace talks, despite harsh statements from militants saying they would continue to attack Israel.

The surprise truce was to go into effect at 6 a.m. local time. Four hours later, 11 more rockets had been fired from Gaza at Israeli towns and villages, but Israel pledged restraint, and the two main parts of the Palestinian government, rivals Hamas and Fatah, publicly backed the truce. By nightfall it appeared to be taking hold.

After Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip, ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad tempered hopes for a lasting truce. The rockets landed in open fields and caused no injuries.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with his security chiefs Sunday and ordered them to send their forces to the Gaza border area to prevent any more rocket attacks, according to Palestinian security officials. It was not clear what action the forces would take against those launching rockets.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the army to show restraint in the face of the rockets, said his spokeswoman, Miri Eisin.

So that's how Hamas, the ruling party in Palestine defines and backs a truce, by firing rockets.

Another definition for truce in the Middle East might be "stop shooting at me so I can reload!".

This is how you are rewarded if you negotiate in good faith with terrorists.

A spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Ghazi Hamad, said all the armed groups had committed to the agreement, and any violations were rogue acts.

In other words, Hamas can't control its own people. How very convenient.

Hamas's exiled deputy leader said Sunday that the militant group was committed to a cease-fire with Israel but not until the Jewish state stops its aggression on Palestinians.

In other words, once Israel ceases to exist.

Others blogging on this: Gateway Pundit, The Bullwinkle Blog. Linked at Basil's Blog.

Gateway Pundit explains the meaning of the blue "hope and peace" bracelet.

Left desperate to relive "glory" days of Vietnam

The left is certainly out to relive their glory days of Vietnam when they undermined public support for the war and pushed the U.S. into withdrawing. Now in the Olympian there's a puff piece on the strategy of defeat: 

WASHINGTON - New tactics favored by U.S. military officers in Iraq borrow heavily from the end of another war that might seem an unlikely source for a winning strategy: Vietnam.

Damned straight that's an unlikely source for a winning strategy. "Peace with Honor" was little more than cut-and-run, the same mantra we've been hearing from the left for the last three years. Hell, they were calling Iraq and Afghanistan a "quagmire" before we even went in.

Leftist pundits were warning about how we were going to be getting ourselves into another Vietnam. Pundits on the right were warning then about how the left would eventually turn and try to sap the will of the American people to turn the war into a reflection of their glory days when they brought down a presidency in the aftermath of a failed war and scandal.

Sure enough, that's exactly what we've seen since shortly after we went into Afghanistan, with the pundits on the mainstream news arguing that the American soldier was soft, and unprepared to fight in the mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of Iraq. We were told then that we were entering a quagmire.

The left was taken by surprise when we swiftly routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. After a dumbfounded silence they began to say that we had won too quickly and that it would result in a setback for us. The only real setback we experienced was their constant harping on every small failure while they suppressed news of the successes we had. Pretty soon we were fighting yet another politicized war. The kind the left excels at.

Soon we began to hear about how the weaponry we were using, precision weaponry that could hit the target we aimed at, was overkill. Soon complaints about the use of "daisy-cutters" made the news. Bunker busters were cause for outrage. Somehow in all of this hand-wringing the left was handed a victory as Osama bin Laden slipped through our fingers while the leftist media was trying to tie our fingers back to our wrists.

When we went into Iraq, the same scenario was played out. Again we were warned that we were entering a quagmire. Again we were warned of another Vietnam. It sounded as if the Democrats and the media were hoping for it to happen.

We were warned about going in unilaterally. We went to the United Nations and the very nations that were working quietly to prop up Saddam Hussein and his regime in order to continue their lucrative arms contracts and payoffs in the Oil for Food scandal worked with us only to cut the rug out from under us at the last minute. Even so we went in with a large coalition, which soon turned out to be the media's definition of unilateral action.

Again, when in just days we routed the vaunted Iraqi military the left was stunned into silence, for all of a couple of days. We even saw on television the cheering of Iraqis as they were liberated.

Soon enough the media began to beat the drum against the United States though, expressing outrage as an American Flag was used to cover up a statue of Saddam Hussein. The media also couldn't contain themselves with accusations about how we weren't preventing the looting of priceless Iraqi heritage as priceless items disappeared from Iraqi museums. Did you notice how the media buried the stories when it turned out that the looting wasn't as bad as all that and that many of the artifacts had been removed before we got there? And were returned afterward?

It should have come as no surprise that rebuilding the Iraqi military into a strong fighting force turned out to be as difficult as it did. That very same military collapsed in days when they encountered a superior force. Turning them into a world-class fighting force prepared to defend their people against any agressor, including foreign insurgents wasn't going to be a small task.

Of course it didn't help that the media began their long campaign of disinformation shortly after "major combat operations" had ceased. Soon the media, led by the New York Times and the Democrats began to chant the mantra that we were if not lied to, misled into the war. Where were the weapons of mass destruction became the left's rallying cry.

Never mind that evidence of weapons of mass destruction was discovered. We didn't find the massive stockpiles that would satisfy the left, so obviously they never existed, so obviously "Bush Lied, People Died". Never mind that for over ten years prior to the war prominent Democrats like President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Senator Kerry, Senator Kennedy, and others were telling us the very same thing.

The left's campaign of misinformation and disinformation certainly had the intended effect. The war in Iraq was called a "distraction" from the War on Terror, despite the fact that it was a part of the War on Terror. The popularity of the war gradually dwindled, as an unceasing campaign against it was weighed by the left and by the media.

Now, after the Democrats have taken control of both the House and Senate nearly half of the media's agenda has been accomplished. The very people that have been urging our withdrawal from Iraq are now in positions of power and they hold the purse-strings. They've been calling for a timetable for withdrawal for years...

The tactics - an influx of military advisers and a speeded-up handover to indigenous forces followed by a gradual U.S. withdrawal - resemble those in place as the U.S. effort in Vietnam reached its end.

And so the media has cause to cheer. The same failed strategy for retreat from Vietnam appears to be taking shape in Iraq - in no small part due to the hand-wringing and defeatist attitude being trumpeted by the Democratic leadership and the media's pet "experts" who don't have their feet on the ground or their minds tuned to the administrations briefings and plans.

In historical assessments and the U.S. recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam as a war actually was on its way to succeeding when the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking funding and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.

The war wasn't unwinnable, regardless of what the media would have you believe. We had had many victories and won most of the campaigns we engaged in. Political pressure indeed caused the plug to be pulled and we slunk home with our tail between our legs after betraying the people of South Vietnam.

I don't know if the South Vietnamese army could have fended off the communists if we had stayed longer. I do know that by leaving without a full-on push for victory we threw away what little chance they had. If the United States had had the will and resolve required to continue the fight and to push for victory instead of practicing a "limited" war we could have crushed the North Vietnamese.

Instead we listened to children who were enamored of the communist lifestyle. Our congress and administration listened to the "hippies" of the day, those interested in flower power and drugs, in communal shared living, who saw the communist ideal instead of the reality that would become all too evident after we abandoned the South Vietnamese to their fate.

Now, over 30 years later those same children are running the left. They're running our universities. They're running the media, and they're running the Democrat party. For six years we've heard from the left how George W. Bush isn't a legitimate president, and the left has been itching to bring him down or to marginalize him all of that time.

The view that Vietnam could have been won if public opinion and political will had continued to support the war effort is far from universal, particularly among historians outside the military.

Stanley Karnow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the war from the day the first American was killed in 1959 to its ultimate end, said Hanoi was nowhere near capitulation by 1973 when the Paris Peace Accords were signed.

"They're clutching at some sort of way to justify hanging on in Iraq," said Karnow, whose "Vietnam: A History" is frequently considered the definitive account of the conflict.

Yes, especially by the leftists that came of age during the end of the Vietnam war and now seek to relive their youth.

"The war in Vietnam, in my estimation, was unwinnable for the simple, basic reason that we were up against an enemy that was prepared to take on unlimited losses. They would have gone on fighting endlessly."

Maybe so. Maybe they would have gone on fighting endlessly. We were certainly killing more of them than they were killing of us, despite the heavy casualties we took during that war. The way to win a war of that kind is to let the enemy take on unlimited losses. If they won't surrender, wipe them out to the last man.

That's what we need to do with the terrorists that threaten perpetual Jihad against the West. The war in Iraq is a part of the global War On Terror. Retreating from Iraq and leaving the region to the terrorists will be a terrible defeat in the War On Terror and a tremendous victory for the Jihadists and terrorists.

The Jihadists have sworn that they will not stop fighting us until we all convert to their brand of Islam, give up our Democratic system of government, and accept Sharia law in its place. I'm not willing to do that. I doubt that the left is willing to do it either, although they certainly seem willing to give up most of our culture in favor of socialism and the welfare state.

We've already seen that the Iraqi military isn't ready to take over responsibility for their own safety, let alone a stronger role in the War on Terror. The Democrats are arguing for a quick exit from Iraq and the media seems to be anticipating that very thing.

The course that senior military officers now appear to be steering in Iraq mirrors the "Vietnamization" program implemented by Nixon and his military chief in Vietnam, Army Gen. Creighton Abrams, in the late stages of the war.

If that's the program the Democrats and the media want to see, then it's plain that they want a repeat of what happened in Vietnam when we left. If they get their way they'll have managed to marginalize the administration as they've tried to do for the last six years.

The cost will be the betrayal of the Iraqi people, the eventual destruction of the fledgling democracy in Iraq, and the lives of the Iraqi's who have been taught to believe in freedom. If we leave without ensuring that the Iraqi government is on a sound footing with a strong military then we doom the Iraqi people to eventual subjugation by yet another tyranny and we will have shown the world that America is not to be trusted.

If we do that, then we should withdraw from all of the foreign entanglements we find ourselves in, call all of our troops home, from Europe, South Korea, Africa, and all other places we have supported the United Nations in their so-called "peacekeeping" efforts. We should bring them home, close our borders and cower in fear in our bomb shelters.

Because after they come for the Iraqis they will surely come for us. If not sooner, then later. And when they do, the left will open the doors for them having taken their lessons from the French. The choice then will be to collaborate (convert) or die.

There will be no other power to come to our aid then, as we came to the aid of the French. By then, the rest of the world will have been subjugated under the sword of the terrorists and the Jihadists.

Linked at Basil's Blog.