Islam is a Losing Proposition

In the past your faithful correspondent has ranted about the evils of Islam and Islamism. And in the future he will continue to do so.
But this writer may have given the impression that those who have been born into the Islamic religion are irrevocably lost to the truth that is found in Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not true. Those who God has deigned to be saved will be saved. And among those who have been chosen are a good number of number of Muslims who have seen the Light of the World.
This article gives information about Ex-Muslims who have found Christ: Pajamas Media » Blog Archive » Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves If one can believe the statements made in the article there are many more "secret Christians" in traditionally Muslim lands than we know. To think that the conversion rate among Muslims to Christianity is much greater than that among Christians converting to Islam is a cause for rejoicing. Secret Christians will raise other secret Christians and before long secret Christians will be able to, without fear, come into the open and declare their faith due to their sheer numbers. These Christians deserve our prayers and support. They are the hope of the Middle East. Islam has no hope for its adherents.
This link: A Muslim Journey to Hope features video testimonies by Muslims who have come to faith in Christ. Please note the sacrifices these brothers and sister have made to publicly proclaim their adherence to the Truth.

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

Some people in the Western world seem to have a desire to commit suicide by allowing others to pull the trigger. Or, on the other hand, they may feel that those coming from the benighted lands where Islam is the default religion, are allowed bad behavior because said Muslims are invincably ignorant. In other words, the average Bangladeshi is so damn dumb that even after he immigrates to a Western society he is unable to comprehend that in the West it is expected that, as long as babies, women, sheep or oxen are not sacrificed on an altar, one is pretty much free to practice one's own religion and it is expected that one shoild let other practice their own religion.
But there seem to be people in Great Britain who do not seem to understand the concept: Vicar attacked for 'being a Christian' after hate campaign by yobs who claimed his church 'should be a mosque' | the Daily Mail .
There are two disturbing things about this story. The first is that members of a minority religion would feel free to attack a member of the majority religion. The second is that it is not a bigger story. If a mosque had been defaced by vandals with cans of spray paint there would have been cries of "racism" and "hate crime" and calls for special police protection of the mosque. But, in this case it's a case of, "Nothing to see. Move along." The police claim that they are investigating the assault as a "faith hate" crime. But you can be sure that they are doing a lot less than they would be doing if the local imam had complained about being flipped off after running a red light.
And the Western press wonders why the Orcs think we're weak.
On another front,a Roman Catholic bishop has finally gotten around to taking a stand: STLtoday - News - Religion . As is well known, only men are allowed to be priests in the Roman Catholic Church. While we here at Nib Manor are Protestants of the conservative sort, we appreciate the restricting. Speaking personally, your faithful correspondent has yet to hear a decent sermon delivered by a woman pastor. But there are a number of women in the Roman Catholic Church who are bound and determined to wear a dog collar. The same thing happened in the Anglican Church and the result was the silliness exhibited by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Episcopal Church in the United States.
Here's a question for women who feel that it is their right to be ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church despite the findings of Canon law. Why don't you start your own church using the rituals and liturgies of the Roman church?If the Roman Catholic Church is wrong about the ordination of women could it not be wrong about other things? And if the teachings of the Church true then the ordination of women is wrong. Live in the house or build a house. Don't be a termite.

Clowns in the Moonlight

A recent study in England among the youth found that the youth are afraid of clowns: Don't send in the clowns Oddly Enough Reuters.

The silent movie star, Lon Chaney, the star of such classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera once said something to the effect of, "There is nothing more frightening than a clown in the moonlight."

Well, this coming Tuesday is the primary election in the state of California. There are four people running for the nomination of their respective parties.

Four clowns. In the moonlight.

Be afraid.

When They Came for the Smokers...

Some years ago the anti-smoker movement started. The movement first started with teh idea that the anti-smokers were saving the smokers from themselves. When the success of that idea came a cropper the hypothesis of second-hand smoke killing non-smokers was started despite the fact that the science of the hypothesis was, and is, shaky. At the time, the wiser heads among us stated that the banning of smoking and the demonization of smokers was just the beginning of a health fascism. The do-ggoders laughed it off and said that it would stop with smoking.

Well, the piper is demanding to be paid: Mississippi Pols Seek To Ban Fats - February 1, 2008 Please note that the "fats" referred to in the story are not inanimate fats like lard or trans-fats. Here "fats" means fat people, i.e. the chubby, the portly, the overweight, the plump.

The proposed law claims that the law is just good for the fat. It is a way to make them slim down. But it won;t be long before some researcher in search of a federally funded grant will develop a hypothesis of second-hand fat. It will be based on the idea that people eating watching other people eating to "excess" will be tempted to over-indulge.

Instead of the creeping health fascism that has been chopping off our freedoms inch by inch, why do the politicians not cut to the chase? Instead of us shopping and cooking for ourselves or eating what we want why do they not start a goverment program to shut down all food stores and resturants and instead provide us all daily, via government vans, with the food that they deem healthy in both portion and content? We'll all stand outside at eight in the morning waiting for the van to bring us our prepackaged and prepared three daily meals of soy protein, vegetables and grains. And then they can pass a law requiring compulsory exercise so that we can all be fit and healthy and bitchy. And the insurance companies can make a lot more money.

England. Where No Christian Dare Go

In a previous post your faithful correspondent offered a link to a story about the Bishop of Rochester saying that there were places in England where it would not be wise for a non-Muslim to go. Now the reaction has come in regarding the Rt. Rev. Nazir-Ali's comments and it shows that the religion of peace is, as suspected, the religion of pieces: Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, faces death threats -Times Online.

And if you should have the misfortune of going to a hospital or having a loved one go to a hospital and want to go to the hospital chapel or meditation room to pray, well, if you are not an Islamo-orc, you might want to consider finding another place to perform your devotions: Hospital porter fired in crucifix row - News - Manchester Evening News Apparently, in England, being a Christian is an act of hate while being an Islamo-orc strikes the fear of God into the infidels.

Isn't multiculturalism a great thing?

Bad Guys and Eggheads

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Officer Daniel Faulkner, along with Michael Smerconish has recently written a book about the killing of Officer Faulkner by Mumia Abu Jamal in Philadelphia in 1981. Your faithful correspondent does not remember the title of the book, but it can be easily found by checking Amazon.com.

The former Mrs. Faulkner (she has since re-married and moved to California) has been interviewed several times on the more reputable talk radio programs and it brought to this writer's mind the travesty of the elite's support for the evil Abu Jamal.

Those who have a memory for such things, will remember that Jamal was originally sentenced to death in Pennsylvania. He claims to be a victim of institutional racism. The details are here: :: Justice for Daniel Faulkner :: (an admittedly biased website, but one can read the transcripts of the trial). The usual suspects i.e. Mike Farrell, Susan Sarandon, Ed Asner, et al, have championed this monster's cause without not knowing a damn thing about what happened when Faulkner was killed. They see an "oppressed' black man with some writing and radio talent who, because he's not a knuckle dragging thug a' la Moose Malone, must be a victim of "the man."

A search engine look at the term Mumia Abu Jamal will find site after site in support of the man: Educators for Jamal, Journalists for Jamal, Knuckleheads for Jamal. It is not unusual to go to the local Starbucks (what's the difference between Starbucks and McDonald's besides the fact that one can't get fries at Starbucks?) and see some kid wearing a Free Mumia t-shirt. The French renamed a street in Paris for the guy (but the French, go figger). And there is a movement to rename a street in New York City after this guy. Oddly, there has been no movement to rename a street in Philadelphia (where most of the populace knows a killer when it sees one) after Jamal.

It's all ridiculous and stupid and just plain silly. There is an element among the elite (those who think they know better than the man in the street and the first ones to be hanged if a real working class revolt were to take place) who think that if a man or woman can write more than one sentence without making a grammatical error that person cannot be a criminal. Note that such persons do not volunteer to take said "victim" into their own homes to decompress. They want the "victim" to live in your neighborhood just in case the "victim" is really as bad as the legal system and real victims say that he or she is.

Talent in writing, speaking or singing does not mean that the writer, speaker or singer is not a criminal. The Marquis De Sade wrote well in French, but he was a criminal and pervert. Bob Tilton and Benny Hinn can talk the birds out of the trees, but they are both crooks who would make Elmer Gantry blush. Spade Cooley was a great western swing fiddler, but it doesn't cancel the fact that he killed his wife. Talent and goodness are two different things. To have talent does not mean that one is not a bad person.

Jamal was a member of the then moribund MOVE movement. Those old enough to remember recall the movement as a black racist political movement and cult. The then mayor of Philly made the mistake of making MOVE more than a bunch of nuts by pretty much bombing MOVE headquarters back in the 1980s. For the radical fringe the bombing of the MOVE HQ made the members of MOVE martyrs, when, in actuality, they were crooks, violent revolutionaries and racists. And as often happens, the thoughts of the radical fringe bled into the "progressive" movement and then the liberal media. Liberals are always looking for new causes to champion whether it be federally funded health care or black radicalism. A man who was a member of MOVE and who woke up to the truth of the movement has a website about what the lie MOVE was: The Anti-MOVE/Mumia Blog.

The whole thing reminds me of the Jack Abbott affair. Jack Abbott was a career criminal who was championed by Norman Mailer and friends. Abbott had writing talent. He wrote a book called In the Belly of the Beast in which he recounted his "victimization" by society and the judicial system. Mailer. Susan Sarandon (again!), Christopher Walken, and others, pressured the justice system to grant this hero of arts and letters parole. Six weeks out of the stir Abbott killed a man. The elites were proved wrong at the expense of a man's life and Abbott went back home. A short version of the affair is here: Jack Abbott - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of course, Wikipedia is always suspect, but it gets the story substantially right. One thing that is interesting about the Wikipedia entry is the emphasis on Abbott's rotten childhood. A rotten childhood is no excuse for immoral behaviour. Your faithful correspondent has know more than a few individuals who have had bad childhoods, had been members of Hitler Youth or had grown up in Imperial Japan. None of them became criminals, none of them beat up Jews because of the propaganda under which they were raised, none of them tortured Chinese of Koreans for fun.

There are people in the world who are evil. The elites like to proclaim that evil is a social construct instead of a fact. That is, until someone holds a knife to their throats and takes their wallets of pulls down their knickers to claim the promise they've been offering on screen.

The whole thing is enough to make one want to drink cheap gin straight from the bottle.

Hate Crime?

The publisher of the Canadian publication, The Western Standard, was brought before the Alberta Commission on Human Rights recently. His crime? Publishing the now famous Mohammad cartoons. The charges were brought by a Saudi trained cleric and a head of an Islamic organization. Here are three video clips of his testimony and questioning: lgf: Outrage of the Week: Canadian Publisher Persecuted for Mindcrime .

Please note that he did not fold and even questioned the authority of the government to express his opinion. Would that the publisher of the L.A. Times had such courage and a dedication to the freedom of speech and of the press.

Those in the know are aware that we here at the Manor of Christians (of the Protestant type) and while we often find the statements made by "thinkers" in the press and on film regarding Our Lord and or faith, we recognize the right of such fools to make them. There are rights that are given by God. The government is supposed to protect them. The government does not give rights. It can only deny them.

On a somewhat similar note, several weeks ago your faithful corrrespondent linked to a story about an ethnic Pakistani bishop of the Church of England who claimed that there were certain areas in Great Britain that were "no-go" zones for non-Muslims. As can be expected, a Quisling bishop of the same organization, an ethnic Briton, has found joy in the fact that his church is dying and is being replaced by Orcism: Dhimmi Watch: UK: Bishop "very happy" with Muslim prayer call. There's nothing that does the heart so good as to hear the caterwauling and ululations of an ignorant Muslim on a Friday instead of church bells on a Sunday. It makes one want to mount speakers on one's car and throw New Testaments out the window to pedestrians while yelling "Tolle lege!"

Wile never considered a great thinker and not a graduate of a seminary (probably a good thing), Brigitte Bardot, long ago recognized the threat of Muslim immigrants to France and the French tendency to fold under pressure: BBC News SHOWBIZ Bardot racism conviction upheld The woman has been convicted and fined three times for stating the truth and not the politically correct line. Now that "disenfranchised" Muslim youth have made it a sport to burn cars as a sport our French friends may wake up to what the divine Bardot said many years ago.

Makes You Wish for the Benny/Allen Feud

Those of a certain age (those who have an AARP card in their wallet) or fans of the Golden Age of Radio, recall the "feud" between Jack Benny and Fred Allen.


Simply put, the "feud" was manufactured by Benny and Allen and the network they worked for to boost ratings. The idea was that people who occasionally tuned in either Benny's or Allen's shows would tune in every week to hear what crack or slam one man would make against the other. Magazines published photos of Benny and Allen facing off with clinched fists as if they were going to go to the mat with the "feud." It was a clever gag and it worked, and it was all in good fun.

This week the opening salvo of a real feud between a former radio host and a radio station, and specifically a talk radio team, was fired and it isn't in good fun. It's an example of what much of talk radio has become and all of the principals in the matter are looking pretty muddy and thin skinned and self serving.

The radio station is question is KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles: www.kfi640.com . The angry former talk radio host and former employee of KFI is John Ziegler: www.johnziegler.com . The two particular objects of his wrath are John Kobylt and Ken Champeau: www.johnandkenshow.com . Ziegler's slam against the radio station and the hosts is here: www.therealkfi.com - The Real KFI

In a nutshell, Ziegler worked for KFI as an evening talk show host for several years. Your faithful correspondent listened to his program occasionally and found it occasionally interesting, but was put off by Ziegler's stridency and constant references to his life and personal problems. One was never sure whether the program was about current affairs or John Ziegler's life. Ziegler and KFI parted ways in late 2007. It was evident before Ziegler left KFI's employ that there was stress between Ziegler and John and Ken.

Your faithful correspondent has also listened to the John and Ken Show and considers it one of the talk shows that is akin to professional wrestling. In other words, little of what either host says can be taken as the host's true feelings or opinions. It's all about ratings for them and they do a good job of pulling the number. That's their real job and they do it well.

Without going into Ziegler's claims against KFI and Kobylt and Champeau, let it be known that this writer is willing to take Ziegler's charges at face value. BUT, to be honest, Ziegler sounds like a child whose lollipop has been knocked out of his hand and into the dirt by the neighborhood bully and instead of slugging the little brat on sight goes home and cries to Mommy. In other words, instead of fighting back when the fighting was good, he complains about being mistreated and/or shunned.

The management of KFI may be jerks. Most management is. Kobylt and Champeau are probably thin skinned self servers. But 90% of the American population works under such conditions. There are two things to be done. Quit. Or grit one's teeth and fight back as well as possible. Instead Ziegler hides behind the skirts of his former news woman, Leah Brandon, as an excuse not to give the fig to those who "abused" him. And he waits until such a time that he cannot be fired to level his blast.

Ziegler's screed may be true, but he sounds like he wants some cheese with that whine. The thing that makes Ziegler's pity party distasteful is the mentioning of family members not involved in the feud, the claim that someone as gay who has not said that he is gay, and the scattershot approach to his problem. Ziegler is one of those people one occasionally runs across who seems not to have any sense of discretion in his attacks or comments. Everything is public with him. The sign of a man of his time.

We here at the Manor call for a pox on both houses. We don't like whiners and we don't like fakes. This story is full of both. One can only hope that like in the old (politically incorrect) story of Little Black Sambo these tigers (in actuality yakking termites) keep chasing one another around the tree until they turn into butter.

Don't Go There!

It's been a while since we here at the Manor have addressed the bad behaviour of the Orcs living among us. It sometimes feels as if we have been playing King Canute in commanding the tide not come in/ But, of course, much of the current problem has to do with those who have the power to build a dike as so damn stupid as not to realized that their boots are full of water while telling the rest of us that the land is suited to the planting of pear blossom cactuses.

A case in point would be the firing of the Pentagon's specialist in Islamo-Fascism at the behest of Orcs working at the center of the Department of Defense: Jihad Watch: Pentagon fires key specialist on Islamic law and jihad after comp Or the refusal of police authorities in Texas to admit that the killing of two Arab-American girls by their father is related to the Muslim sense of honor: Hot Air » Blog Archive » A pair of “honor killings” in Texas Updated: The girl. The secular authorities always know better than what the average Yankee church-goer knows. But, of course, the average Yankee church-goer answers to a Higher Authority than the average politician or civil servant, who answers to political correctness.

But we here at the Manor, from the ever lovely Lady Nib down to the boot black realize that the average decision-making bureaucrat is not so much an idiot as much as a man or woman wanting to keep his or her job until retirement. Selling one's birthright for a mass of pottage, as bad as such an action is, is more excusable than selling one's soul for applause from one's enemies.

Certain "leaders" in the Christian world have been falling over themselves to show their fundaments to the West while they squat in prayer toward Mecca and its minions. These leaders are of the theologically liberal taint. A theological liberal of the late 20th and early 21st century is a Unitarian of the 19th century. In other words, are they not only heretical, but they are in the trailing edge of modern heresies. They cower behind the cutting edge waiting to see if anything collapses. If nothing collapses they run to the front and proclaim how brave they are in their thinking. In another fifty years they will be crowing about a "new" Christian atheism that somehow reconciles the idea that there is no God and expecting you to put money in the plate to worship Him properly. The French did the same thing during the French Revolution and did it much more honestly.

The liberal Christian leaders see Orcism as the rising power and they want to be sure to be there to lick the boots of the first jihadist who enters their church, cathedral, fellowship. They'll get a pat on the noggin, avoid getting their throat cut, and might get a new doe-eyed piece of action to take the place of the old ball and chain sitting at home brewing tea and setting out biscuits while wearing her brogues and twenty year old twin set

Rowen Williamson is the best internationally known example of this creature. He's a Christian, he's a druid, he's a lover of Orcs, he's sympathetic to Buddhist, whether Tibetan, Mahayana, Theraveda or Zen. He's okay, you're okay. they're okay. Okay? The problem is not with the actions of Muslims. The problem is with Christians who actually believe the Bible. Christians are so odious to this man that for a Christian to express disapproval at the acts of honor killing or female genital mutilation is tantamount to blasting Orcs with death rays.

Williamson is not the only useful idiot. He is just the best known. Any mainstream Protestant denomination in the US or Canada is full of such termites.

Well, to get to the point, a bishop in Great Britain, a man who knows a lot more about the threat of the Orcs than Williamson and his cronies will ever know, has something interesting to say about the Orcs among us: Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims - Telegraph

Ain't life grand?

The Juice Ball Era

Last week the Mitchell Report concerning the use steroids and Human Growth Hormone was released and much of the sports world has gone into the vapours concerning the allegations.

It was a given that Barry Bonds was a juicer. and that Mark McGuire was pumping the stuff. But when it was charged that Roger Clemens, Andy Petitt and Eric Gange had been using either steroids or HGH many of the sports writer were "shocked, shocked," while the remainder claimed to know that such nonsense had been going on for many years. In either case, the sports writers have proven themselves to be craven in either claiming not to know while actually knowing, or knowing and not reporting because they didn't want to burn their sources.
Whatever the case, baseball has been regarded the sacramental sport in the United States. Certain eggheads have even claimed that in order to understand the United States one must understand baseball. But, of course, that was said before so many players were recruited from the Caribbean. But there is a certain mythic quality to baseball that must at least we must pretend to exist -- the late spring afternoon played in a newly mown field by farmers' strapping sons or hardscrabble coal miners' sons making the professional league because of their strength and talent.

The great game, unfortunately, has long gone beyond those myths (not unlike the old Playboy myth that the centerfold is a graduate philosophy student at Oxford who poses nude in front of a camera just for the hell of it). But one finds oneself hoping that the players will at least play without the help of steroids and HGH in the same way that a young man hopes that the figure of a Playboy center fold is natural and not the result of implants or air brushing.

The difference, of course, is that baseball has always held itself to be a reflection of truth, justice and the American way. Playboy has held it's photographic endeavors as representations of "the girl next door", which is great unless it is your daughter who is the girl next door.

But to get back to cases, there are men in baseball who have used steroids or HGH. Some of them have been named. Major League Baseball has not condemned them. The owners have not condemned them. The players union has not disowned them. No player who has been named has had a Marion Jones moment. And those players who have admitted to using HGH (never steroids) have claimed that they only used HGH to recover from an injury (ask yourself this question: have any of your co-workers been prescribe HGH to recover from an industrial injury? Your co-worker lost more, percentage-wise and in real terms, more money than the recovering baseball player, as did your co-workers' employer due to his absence).

The juicers have tainted baseball, the Great Game. And as much as the protest that they haven't been goosed by a hypodermic needle, they have wrecked the image of the game. Let's face it. Politicians are expected to be rotten, cheats and corrupt. We, the populace have no choice but to pay them through our taxes. But the pay of ball players is based on our disposable income. We have, in theory, control of the game, and we have been led to believe that the game is clean. There may be drunks or womanizers or just plain jerks, but on the field we expect every player to play without performance enhancing drugs. Is it not a strange thing that Babe Ruth, a known souse, knocked in so many run runs, while Barry Bonds had to surpass his record while using steroids. Hank Aaron managed to break the record on his own talent.

Many years ago Brett Butler of the Los Angeles Dodgers was sidelined by throat cancer. At the time it was assumed that his cancer was caused by the use of chewing tobacco or Copenhagen snuff. The result of Mr. Butler's malady was that the use of chaw or snuff in the major leagues was pretty much ended in favor of the use of sunflower seeds. MLB did not want to be associated with a substance that might (and very rarely might) be associated with cancer. So instead of players perhaps getting cancer from chaw or snuff, they have deigned to use a substance that will more likely give them cancer later in life such as steroids and HGH.They have not learned the lesson of the NFL players, such as Lyle Alzado and John Matuzeck, who, being steroids users, succumbed to cancer at early ages. Chaw and demon rum are benign compared to the wonders or modern chemistry. The chances of a player getting cancer from Red Man or Meyers' Rum are much less than his getting cancer from a Balco product, but since the the effects of chaw or booze ( spitting or stumbling) are not as apparent as steroids. MLB has ignored the use of the Juice because an uneducated fan base expects home runs instead of good in the park ball and homers make money while getting upset over an honest brown stream of tobacco juice spit over home plate that results in no improvement of a player's performance.

Let's face it. Baseball will never be what it was or what we hope it was. There have always been cheaters in baseball and there always will. But we, as fans, can shun or shame the dirty players. Can you imagine what a bunch of fans would do to Roger Clemens by shouting "Juicer!" the ext time he goes on the mound?

Kudos to Curt Schilling, a truly honorable and ball player with heart (remember his World Series victory pitching while bleeding into his sock) who has called out the juicers. If only more players had his sense of honor.

Let's take "my bad" to a new level

As regular readers of this space are well aware, your faithful correspondent is not a writer of the most elegant or proper English prose. But he does try to write proper English. By "proper English" he means the Queen's English or standard American English as was spoken and/or written in the English speaking world up until twenty years ago.
This is the English that was regularly in the popular press, in literature and in the electronic media. It was the English as taught by Webster, Fowler, and Strunk and White. It was English meant to be used as a lingua franca among English speakers. It was free of dialect, cant, occupational terms and slang in general.
In those days slang was written with quotation marks to signify that the slang term was rather suspect and dialect was identified as so. There was an assumption that there was a proper way to speak English and an improper way to speak English. Proper English was the language spoken in public or among those outside of one's social or occupational group. In other words, a machinist would refer to one thousandth of an inch a a "thou" among other machinists, while using the term "one thousandth of an inch" among those outside the trade. Or Japanese-Americans would refer to elastic as "gommu" among other Japanese-Americans while using the word "elastic" among the gaijin.
About twenty years ago, the various new media and the entertainment industry decided that they wanted to appeal to youth instead of conveying clear information that would be understood by all English speakers. They began using street slang and business slang. The result, more recently has been the regular use of such terms as "my bad", "gettin' real (or makin' it real)", "hottie" and "taking it to the next level." What do these terms mean? They are so loose in definition as to mean nothing. Does "my bad" mean that one has been bad, done something bad, made a mistake or is "bad" in the street sense? Does "gettin' real" mean being sincere, a genuine item or feeling or getting down to brass tacks? Is Monica Belluci a "hottie?" Was Deborah Kerr? Was Audrey Hepburn? What exactly is a "hottie"? When a young man and young woman have been kissing one another good night for several weeks and one suggests that they take their relationship to the next level does that mean that they should go back to holding hands? Or start going to bed together? One wonders if, in announcing the declaration of war against Japan, if had the current trend toward the use of street language had become popular, Franklin Roosevelt would have announced to the nation, "Yesterday, December seventh, the shit hit the fan in Pearl Harbor."
Here's the gist of the matter. English is a difficult language to master. For some it is a difficult language to attain competency in. But these are not reasons for the various media to lower the standards of the usage of the language to appeal to those who cannot tell a preposition and a noun. One would think that those in the various media would want to try to raise the standard of the use of the language for no other reason than to allow more nuance in their stories and programs. But the hunger for money trumps what is proper and more and more while reading the newspapers and watching television and the movies we will be subjected to such terms as "MILF" or "googling."
It's all enough to gag a maggot.

Two Topics for the Price of One!

We here at the Manor are baseball fans. We are not rabid baseball fans; we cannot recite statistics, but we do believe that it is God's own game. We often encourage the hired men to play ball on the verdant fields during Christmas and Easter, as well as those late afternoons when they've finished the sheep shearing.
Having said that, your faithful correspondent has heard that the Mitchell Commission dealing with the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs will be making their findings public soon. According to Arte Moreno, the owner of the Angels and an opponent of juicing, despite the fact that one of his players is a know user of human growth hormone, says that the commission report will name names. In other words, it will name players who have been using steroids.
We here at the Manor hope that Moreno is correct in his prediction. Major League Baseball seems to be unwilling to enforce its own rules against steroid use. Perhaps the Mitchell Commission report will shame the juicers into either quitting the great game or quit using steroids. The likelihood of either event taking place is, admittedly, slight. But one can always hope that someone will do the right thing.
The steroid controversy has excited your faithful correspondent to consider the fact that baseball was not the game that it once was. Let's face it, baseball is a game that children play for free or pay to play and which adult men are played enormous amounts of money to play. Something is a bit out of balance in the equation. It's somewhat tantamount to one's little daughter playing house for the fun of it and the cast of Desperate Housewives doing the same thing for more money than the average engineer makes.
If your faithful correspondent had just a bit more cash on hand (the majority is tied up in ruby mines in Columbia and tea plantations in Ceylon) he would found a new baseball league called the Real Baseball League. The rule book of the league would be the same rule book used in 1890. The ball used would be the dead ball (making for in the park ball and home runs a real oddity instead of an expectation), gloves would be optional, pitchers could throw spitters, and the only safety equipment would be batting helmets. No batting gloves (what's wrong with friction tape or pine tar?), no elbow or shin guards (these batters are looking more and more like robots instead of men) and no drugs other than alcohol, nicotine or caffeine. And not changing the ball after every time it's hit or touches the ground. As the ball changes the game should change.
Consider the fact that the only thing that has changed in the English game of cricket in the past 200 years is that now the batsman wears a hard helmet. It's the same ball, the same bat and the same game. Baseball is not the same game that it was a hundred years ago. The plethora of home runs has made the game rather boring. Baseball has become a batters' game instead of a pitchers' and fielders' game. And we all lose by the change.
This past week the Los Angeles Times (a truly terrible major city newspaper, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once a day) printed an opinion/entertainment piece about the old television program Mannix. The jist of the article was that the series is a hidden treasure and was pretty much the last gasp of the "cool" private investigator. Apparently the character Mannix was a smoker, a wearer of ties and sports jackets, a listener of jazz and a drinker of scotch. In other words, he was the last of the Peter Gunn type of television P.I.s.
Yours can not remember ever having watched the series. But this may be due to the fact that he was slaving away at the mill on the night shift during the show's run. The only thing that he can remember about Mannix is that Mannix's secretary was named Peggy, which is the name of your faithful correspondent's lovely sister-in-law. Night shift workers get what they can on television and what we got at the time were re-runs of the Rockford Files at 2:30 Monday morning. Rockford was not the cool shamus. He was the common man shamus, but he was pretty entertaining.
In musing over the article it slowly dawned on your faithful correspondent that the private eye series, which was once a staple of network television (the last being the Mike Hammer series starring Stacy Keach), is no more. Instead the networks offer series about trashy suburban women (and if any trashy suburban women are reading make sure to e-mail me and I'll give you directions to the Manor), hospital soap operas and crime shows featuring government operatives in various permutations such as CSI, Missing, NCIS and 24. No private investigators.
What does this mean? While your writer is no sociologist (a truly grim and useless profession) he will take the reins and state that the change from the private detective hero to the government investigator is a signal and disturbing change. Without quoting Raymond Chandler, let it be said that the private eye was a free lancer, a man outside of society working to correct society, a knight walking down the mean streets of society to right the wrongs that the barons ignored. The government operatives work to maintain the society. They do not work to try to fix the society and the government. They ARE the government. They don't smoke. They rarely drink. They agonize about beating up or killing a villain. They are products of the 60s and 70s. They distrust the government and yet do everything they can to maintain it. The old timers like Mannix, Rockford, Gunn et al, while working for what was right did not do so for the state. They did what was right because they knew what was right. And in doing what was right was not always what was legal.
And to think that shows such as Mannix, The Rockford Files and Peter Gunn were written by men who were of the generation called square and sheep. They were more suspicious of the government than are the writers of the current crop of crime shows. Their characters didn't depend on the state to save the day.

Where Have the Men Gone?

To the right we have a photograph from the old movie The Wild Bunch. The actors are, from left to right, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden and Ernest Borgnine. The film, was, in the opinion of your faithful correspondent, one of the last films that portrayed men and was acted in by men.

We now have films about superheroes played by emotional boys. Consider Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films. His character survives incidents that would kill any mortal and he does things that a team could not do. Or Matt Damon in the Bourne films. Bourne seems to be able to outsmart a CIA that is more God-like than governmental i.e., lazy time servers. Cruise and Damon, among others of their acting generation, separate themselves from the great unwashed masses and restrict their appearances before the public to movie premieres and film festivals when not pushing silly religions or silly pseudo-scientific causes like man made global warming.

In the past the male actors such as those in the photo proved themselves willing to show themselves as men who believed in something other than pet projects. Borgnine spent two different enlistments in the Navy, one before and one during World War 2, and finished his enlistment as a Chief Gunner's Mate. Holden put his own money into the conversation of African wildlife and didn't stand on the local church steeple shouting "Save the antelope." Johnson lived the life of a decent man asking no recognition, but showing what decency was. Oates, well, was Oates. He lived a rough life but never involved himself in scandal. He was, probably more than we'd like to admit, like most of us.

And we can add others. Glenn Ford preferred to hang out with the workers of his local service station than the Hollywood crowd. Clark Gable knew cars and worked on cars (not hiring someone else to do it like say, Jay Leno) and would even set the timing of a newspaperman's car when the newspaperman had come to interview him. Eddie Albert planted and maintained a large vegetable garden on his Beverly Hills spread and didn't expect a hireling to farm it and he didn't boast about it like, say, Ed Begley Jr.

So what can we learn from this? Simply that there was a time when men who had the good fortune to make a good living as actors never lost their sense that, whatever their degree of talent, they were lucky or fortunate and that they were not special. They never considered themselves among the elite. And they never forgot that they were men more than they were actors. They knew that to be a man was to travel an often difficult road doing things that were not easy, but were right. Like the gang in the Wild Bunch at the end of the movie.

The Prize Gets Gored

There was a time when the Nobel Peace Prize meant something. It was awarded as a reward and for the recognition of someone who had worked for peace or for the relief of suffering in the world. Theodore Roosevelt, considered by some one of the more belligerent American presidents despite that there were no wars in which America was involved during his administration, won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Teresa of Calcutta won for her work among the poor of India.

The Prize has always been a gauge of its time. But there was a time when the Committee at least pretended that it was looking at the influence of the receipt's work over the long term instead of the season. This is evinced by the awarding of the Prize to Henry Kissinger (partially responsible for the fall of Vietnam and the resulting suppression of freedom in that nation as well as Cambodia and Laos), Jimmy Carter (who never met a terrorist he didn't like) and Yasser Arafat (nephew of the vile Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and one of the inventors of modern Arab terrorism), and the United Nations (whose "peacekeeping" forces strand by and watch while innocents are slaughtered in the Congo instead of protecting the helpless). The Prize has turned into a beatification of those who stand opposed to Western values, fellow travellers, sanctimonious poseurs and the clueless.

Now Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with "alerting" the world to the dangers of man made global warming. Discounting the fact that the truth of Gore's version of the causes of global warming is in dispute among respected scientists, one wonders what Mr. Gore has done to promote peace in the world with his alarms. The only thing that we at the Manor can assume is that it is Mr. Gore's insistence on bringing down Western technology and engineering to the level of the Third World so that instead of burning fossil fuels or taking advantage of the power of the atom the First World can burn dung to make our morning coffee and move our cargo over the roads with heavy duty bicycles and over the seas with sailing ships. Meanwhile, Mr. Gore flits from place to place like a moth with some sort of attention disorder in private jets using the excuse that he's buying carbon offsets by paying someone to plant a tree for each mile he travels, or some such nonsensical thing.

And here's where the awarding of the Prize makes some sort of sense. The Nobel Peace Prize has become a prize given by the elite to the elite. The people doing the grunt work to make the world a better place are looked down upon. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Chabad, medical missionaries and teaching missionaries do more to promote peace in nations and in the world than Mr. Gore. But because none of these groups buy into the New Age liberal Gaia nonsense, they are ignored in favor of a self satisfied re-incarnation of the Penguin.

But what can you expect from Sweden? The Swedes sat out World War 2 while others bled so the Swedes could make their name in the manufacture of uncomfortable furniture.

But others, much smarter and more articulate than your correspondent, have addressed the matter more succinctly. Check them out: Public Secrets: from the files of the Irishspy: And the award for the biggest , Union Leader - Gore's prize: A fraud on the people - Sunday, Oct. 14, 2007 .

What a Surprise!

There are still those among the chattering classes who insist that there is no such thing as Islamo-facsism and that the problems that the Western world, what is left of it, has with the Islamic juggernaut is due the "misunderstandings" of the true nature of Islam. Any thinking person with any sort of sense of self-survival knows that this is simply bull corn.
The Orcs are on the march and much of our national leadership, instead of resisting the onslaught, is hoping that the Orcs are wearing soft soled shoes while the trample us instead of golf shoes.
Let's face it. The Orcs have been on the march for for the past 1300 years. Generations of the past have successfully fought back against tide of heathenism while our own spends more time trying to "understand' instead fighting back. Instead of standing for the values of the West we find ourselves at the mercies of politicians who are more concerned about "inclusiveness", i.e. Chamberlainism, than they are about the maintenance of Western mores and values.
But be that as it may, here's a video from Deutsche-Welle television about the grand mufti of Jerusalem and his connection with Nazi Germany: Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: The Grand Mufti, the Nazis and modern Islamism It explains a lot.

Well, Lo! and Behold!

Occasionally one is willing to admit one's garage is infested with termites only after one's garage is a dilapidated heap despite warnings from people who are experts in termites have warned one year after year that one's garage is in danger of becoming useless for anything, even fire wood.

Those in power in Western societies often make the same mistake. They are willing to admit that there is a problem only after the society has fallen around their ears and resulted in a society that is completely antithetical to Western values. They discover that their concept of "inclusiveness" has resulted not so much in inclusiveness as it has the replacement of a better society by a lesser, or worse, society. Those who replace the better society are not willing to offer the same tolerance that the "wise men" of the better society are to offer to the lesser society.

In other words, if the traditional culture of the United States tolerates the culture of illegal aliens from Latin America by allowing the use of the Spanish language in governmental business, the celebration of Mexican patriotic of holidays such as Cinco de Mayo or Sept. 16 by municipal entities or the practicing of Latin American traditions that are antithetical to those of the United States, there is no reason to be surprised when the English language becomes an option instead of the default language, that the celebration of Independence Day becomes a holiday meaning nothing more than fireworks and barbecues and that pure food edicts disappear in favor of the tamale vendor pushing a cart down the street who's food has been thrown together in a roach infested kitchen.

Some people in Europe are finally waking up. Some are finally seeing the quiet invasion by Orcs. This all to short video by Deutsch Wila shows the results of an investigation by an Europeanized Muslim woman concerning the Orc invasion of Belguim:YouTube - Belgium - Militant Muslims

Imagine such an organ such as ABC, CBS or NBC receiving the same reaction among the denizens of Arab Detroit or MacArthur Park in LA. If nothing is not done you will see it.

Methinks someone was cheated

Those in the know are aware that we here at the Manor are rock-ribbed Protestants. This is not to say that we do not consider some of our Roman Catholic brethren Christians, but we do hod to the doctrines of Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide and Sola Gratia.

This being said, we do pay attention to the activities of the Roman Catholic Church in the county in which the Manor has been placed.

After the Northridge earthquake Roger Mahoney deigned that it was imperative for Catholics within his archdiocese to pay for the building of a new cathedral to replace Saint Vibiana's Cathedral, which was dead in the center of downtown Los Angeles. It was so downtown that it wasn't unusual to be hit upon by a drunk or sterno drinker camped outside St. Vibiana's while walking by said cathedral. Said "street people" retreated to the Salvation Army Mission or Union Rescue Mission (both Protestant organizations) when they wanted a bed or a meal. St. Vibiana's offered them nothing. Cardinal Mahoney claimed that the earthquake damaged St. Vibiana's (a Spanish colonial style edifice) to the extent that it would cost more to repair the cathedral and bring it up to current earthquake standards than it would be to build a new cathedral on the other side of the freeway (and outside of downtown).

Of course, Mahoney got his way (after all, he is the price of Los Angeles and every politician has his nose buried in the back of Mahoney's cassock) and a new cathedral, Our Lady the Queen of the Angels (perhaps it's Angles) was built on the west side of the freeway. The resulting edifice looks (despite the alabaster screens and statues) like a sheet metal plants. But it gets Mahoney and his minions away from having to daily confront the homeless, the drunks and the insane camped outside their cathedral.

Be that as it may, the cathedral is there and it was paid for by the tithes of faithful Catholics under the guise that it would be more economical to build a new cathedral than repair the old one.

Well, lo! and behold! The local rag (the L.A. Times) reported the other day that the old cathedral, St. Vibiana's has been refurbished and brought up to the current earthquake standards. In other words, Roger Mahoney has not only built a new cathedral, but has refurbished the old cathedral, as well as paying off the victim of the priest sexual abuse scandal.

It seems awfully odd to us here at the Manor that Roger Mahoney, while crying poor mouth, can pull off such a financial miracle. He must have a hot line to the Almighty. One year he says that the Church cannot afford to repair the old cathedral or any of victims of pervert priest and the next thing one knows the Church in LA is building a new cathedral, repairing the old one and paying off the kids who were sexually abused.

Meanwhile, Mahoney is still sending the homeless, the drunk and the abused to the Salvation Army and the Union Rescue Mission.

Somebody was ripped off and it wasn't the Protestants. Mahoney wears his scarlet beanie and keeps his hand clean while Protestants take care of the poor. The poor and homeless aren't camped outside of the Taj Mahoney.

Two American Icons

We here at Bloody Nib Manor are what some people would call "old fashioned." We don;t listen to rap or hip-hip or corrida music. We don't watch many new movies. We don't speak Spanish. And we know that marriage between a man and a woman is the definition of marriage. Anything other is is a goose disguised as a duck.

NFL football is not popular here. We think of NFL as the National Felons League as is evinced by Michael Vick and Pacman Jones. It is a thuggish sport dominated by thugs. The NBA is made up of players who spend much of their time posing, preening and trash talking. The last NBA player worth any regard was A.C. Green, who was ridiculed by the press for his Christian convictions.

Major League Baseball, on the other hand, is popular here at the manse. While we realize that not a few professional ball players are on paragons of moral behaviour, the game has not fallen to the level of employing dogfighters or rapists or gun toters. Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco may be a steroid pumped slugging machines, but most ball players behave themselves and do not act like idiots when they hit home runs. They hit, they run and then they go back to the dugout.

Baseball is that odd game where the physical size of the player means little. A little guy can hit and run as well as a big man. The perfect pitcher is a noodle with an arm. Sandy Kofax was the perfect pitcher. Watching him pitch was like watching a ballet. Perfect form. And in that way the game is the perfect American game. Genetics mean little in the Great Game. Talent, smarts and work make a ball player. Not size or bulk. The current standing in the America League show that even money doesn't matter. The Yankees, one of the highest paid teams in baseball, were humiliated last week by the Angels, and they are trailing badly behind the Red Sox, another lesser paid team. In the National League the Dodgers ( high paid team) are stumbling trying to find the call let alone cross the plate. Every game is a new game and work and skill make a winner. Just like the good old USA.

On a more prosaic level, consider the Zippo lighter: Zippo - Product Category listing. 75 years old, basic as basic as can be, low tech. No plastic. Just metal, flint and naphtha. The basic thing like what we hope America will be. And still chugging along.

Who could ask for more?

The World Continues to Deteriorate

There is a certain segment of the Western World that seems to suffer from Chamberlainism. Chamberlainism is the philosophy that if one appeases one's enemies one will not be attacked or destryed by one's enemies. In other words, throw your kids to the crocdiles and the crocodiles will not get hungry for your sorry carcass.

In the Netherlands we have a Dutch bishop sugesting that Dutchmen referred to ur Lord God as Allah because it might make the Orcs living in Holland happy: Let's call God Allah - Radio Netherlands Worldwide - Independent thinking, ind . If this suggestion had been made by a politician it would almost be excusable because politicians are a craven bunch who rarely stand for anything other than their maintainance of power and am easy job with a good income. But this man is a Roman Catholic bishop and seems to be calling for a downgrading of the Person of God by referring to Him as the name Mohammedans use to referto their god, who is not the One True God, but a false and fickle deity. Some people commit suicide and some people want their societies to commit suicide. When reading the article note that this man seems to have lived a life of theological confusion. The nest thing you know he'll be calling for the Dutch to follow the silliness of Wayne Dyer and his faux Taoist nonsense because the largest ethnic group in the world are the Chinese.

Meanwhile, from Canada, a group of Mennonites have fallen under the eye of the secularists in Quebec: WorldNetDaily: Christians would rather move than hear evolution The Quebec governement has demanded that evolution be taught in Mennonite schools. This is an example of Right-think as described in Orwell's 1984. Ask yourself this question: In your daily life, if you are not a scientist, does an adherence to the theory of Darwinian evolution mean anything? Does it affect your life? Will it make you a better person? Will it help you be a better farmer, machinist, stockbroker or citizen? The answer is, No. It might make you a worse person. If one thinks of a human being as nothing but an animal then one might tend to treat other humans as animals. But, for some reason government officials seem to think that the teaching of evolution will make a better person. The nonsense is never ending.

As an aside, the farmers and pigeon fanciers (Darwin used the development of various pigeon breeds as proof of evolution despite no pigeon ever developed into another species) knew a lot more about genetics than Darwin ever did. They knew that no cow could be bred into something that was not a cow. Their experience was based on real life, hands on work, not speculation. But Darwinian evolution is nothing but speculation. To be blunt, it's mental masturbation.

It's For the Children!

This week the Solons who govern the State of California have decided to take action to prevent the drinking of alcoholic beverages by people under the age of twenty-one.

"What," you may well ask," have these paragons of wisdom and intelligence decided to do to prevent Justin and Tiffany from getting falling down drunk or driving their cars into the minivan carrying the members of the local baseball team?" Have they perhaps increased the penalty for merchants who sell demon rum to the high school cheer leading squad? Or perhaps have law enforcement descend on the local loud party at which Harold teen and his friends are dead drunk on the front lawn?

Nah. They've decided to try kill two birds with one stone. Discourage teen aged drinking while making money from teen aged drinkers. After a lot of "hard" study, they've decided to increase the tax on "alcopops." Alcopops are those bottled drinks with a fermented malted base ans a fruit flavor. In other words, beer that tastes like lemonade or some other fruit drink. Examples are such drinks as Mike's Hard Lemonade, Zima and Seagrams coolers. The tax on such beverages will be increased three dollars per gallon, or about one and a half dollars per six pack. The thinking is that young people don't like the taste of beer or hard liquor. They like the taste of soda pop. Thus if the price of hootch that tastes like pop goes up them crazy kid's will make a right turn to the nearest ice cream parlour instead of falling under the influence of John Barleycorn.

To be blunt, that's bullcorn.The tax increase punishes those adults who have the misfortune to like the taste of such silly drinks in the name of "the children" while it will do nothing to curb teen aged drinking, binge or otherwise. It's a show, it's a pose. It's a way to say, "We're doing something!" while in reality the legislature is doing nothing but finding another way to bring in the long green. The legislature might as well increase the tax on sweet wines and mixed drinks. It would be much more effective to punish those teenagers found drinking or drunk with jail time or community service or fines. But those actions don't bring money into Sacramento. They cost money.

Any kid who wants to get drunk will do so whether or not he or she can cough up the extra buck and a half for Zima. They'll soon develop a taste for Coors Light or Olde English 800. Meanwhile, their Mom, having to put up with such brats, will find that her nightly bottle of Zima is too much to cover with her Wal-Mart paycheck, and will find it more economical to buy a fifth of vodka and down a couple of screwdrivers while waiting for her little dears to come home from the local fiesta. And then Junior will find the Popov in the bread box and start his day with a screwdriver before heading to school.

On a somewhat similar topic, some idiot in the federal government has decided that it might be a good idea to increase the federal tax on cigarettes by one dollar per pack and on cigars by as much as ten dollars per cigar. The idea behind this is twofold. The first is to "discourage" smoking. The second is to use the tax money to pay for a federal health care scheme to treat children (children in this case means people up to the age of twenty-five. When your faithful correspondent was twenty-five he had been married five years, had served a four year apprenticeship, was a member of the Naval Reserve, was buying a house and had to pay for his health care out of pocket and didn't whine about it).

Other people a lot smarter than yours has looked at this phenomenon of increasing tobacco taxes to "discourage" smoking and have asked one question that has yet to be answered: If the government wants to discourage smoking why doesn't it just outlaw tobacco? Why not just have a tobacco prohibition? And the answer is: because if tobacco is made an illegal substance the government will receive no revenue from tobacco that it sold illegally. Let's face it, you local marijuana dealer, once caught in the act, is likely to suffer a lesser penalty than a cigarette smuggler. There's no money in pot for the Feds. There is money in Camels.

And it's all for the children. Damn brats!