The Islamic Wars

Yesterday, Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood. He was heard shouting "Allah Akbar" as he was gunning down fellow soldiers. The media does not mention his Muslim beliefs, only that he is an Army Major.

Why does the media continue to resist calling this war what it is? It is a war on Islam. Fundamentalists and moderates alike cannot be trusted in our society.

The reason why the media dodges this issue is that the only rational solution is segregation. No one wants to sign on to the forced removal of a class of citizens. This practice occurred in WWII with the Japanese among us. It was employed by a Democrat president. The practice is widely repudiated today but none can say the effectiveness in that situation. None can say the effectiveness if used today to separate Muslims from the rest of us.

One can say the effect of not imposing partition. We see its effects every day. Muslims and the practitioners of Islam must be removed from us. Mere survival requires we segregate Muslims in the US.

I suspect that will be a long time coming. There is no political will to do the necessary at this point.

Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is narcotic to the lucid mind. It clouds judgement. In fact, its central tenet is to anesthetize any sense of a need or right to judge anything at all. Jesus said "Judge not" but he didn't say to be stupid about it.

Abortion is murder. No amount of rationalizing or equivocating will change that. Abortion stops the heartbeat of a living human being. I overlooked this fact many years ago only because it was convenient to do so. I can overlook this no longer. I've changed and I'll never go back.

Its like the flat Earth people refusing to recognize the actual shape of the world. Once you see the truth you cannot go back to thinking the Earth is flat. What might have been ignorance before is now a lie.

Obama's Speech at School

Last week, Obama gave a speech to and for school-aged kids. The speech was carried live and watched in many schools across the country. From what I hear and read, the speech was rather benign politically and encouraged kids to stay in school and off drugs.

On the other side of the political fence, someone decided that the whole idea of Obama speaking to kids was a very bad idea. Controversy built to the point where some schools opted out of showing the speech during classroom hours. Several talking heads railed against the whole idea of allowing the President to speak to kids, claiming undue influence.

There could not be a more boneheaded take on this event. First of all, he is the POTUS; he can damn well speak whenever he wants. Second, every time he speaks he exposes himself as a Socialist. This is exactly the kind of fodder needed to discredit him. Let him speak. Would that he would try to influence our children to accept socialism.

The arguments against allowing the POTUS to be viewed in the classroom give oxygen to the Left's accusation that the Right won't even listen. What idiot started this nonsensical protest of the President's speech? They need to shut up and sit down. Obama will expose the merits of his ideas by enunciating them to all of us. Let him. We are not idiots. We do not need sheltering.

Political Blackmail

Obama's latest action is more evidence of his unfitness for office...of any kind. His decision to go after the CIA over alleged crimes during terrorist interrogation is nothing more than a tantrum over the tanking of his cherished health care take-over. It is political blackmail. It is Obama saying "if you don't leave me alone to change this country's health care system, I'm going after your beloved CIA and maybe even your Bush cabinet."

This guy is trying his hardest to intimidate half or more of the population into letting him have his way. We the people be damned. God save us from people with good intentions.

Carville

James Carville is clever; the once and future master of spin. Spins like a top. Round and round he goes. There's two sides to every argument. The problem with James Carville is that nothing is absolute with him; everything is relative.

In a recent report by Mike Allen on Politico, he quotes Carville as saying:

“Put a bill out there, make them filibuster it, make them be

what they are, the party of no,” Carville said. “Let them kill it.

Let them kill it with the interest group money, then run against

them. That's what we ought to do.”

Carville wants to trap his opponents; he's more interesting in outmaneuvering folks than trying to win an argument of ideas with meritorious logic and sound policy.

He is the Schemer, the Corruptor, the Devil whispering in our collective ear. Get thee behind me Satan.

Chairman O

This is too easy. Obama doesn't know when to duck. Senator Cornyn of my home state, Texas, takes to task the White House that wants Americans to email them about "misleading" health care publications. (The Senator's most salient observation is that had W done something like this the media, et al, would be calling for his head...even more than usual.)

This is probably the most bone-headed directive to ever come out of the White House. Dumber than anything W could have done. The problem is that O doesn't get it. He doesn't see that he is turning Americans against Americans.

By virtue of his attempts to squash free speech, I have to say Chairman O doesn't believe in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This man is so completely wrong for America that it staggers the mind.

To be perfectly clear (something the big O says quite frequently), it has nothing to do with the color of his skin and everything to do with the merit of his ideas.

VisualWorks' Delays

We use VisualWorks for embedded machine control. Our software is designed to run in a distributed environment. Our customers typically have 5-9 computers linked together on a private intranet. The images running on these computers use remote object communication and the traffic is relatively heavy.

We collect a lot of data from all of the computers and coalesce it into a single timeline. It is important that the clocks be synchronized.

In practice, clocks drift, so we resynchronize periodically. When we do, Delays get screwed up. Given that we are responsible for ensuring that humans are protected from poisonous gases, lethal electrical currents and robotic machinery, it kind of makes a difference that a Delay fires when it is supposed to.

VW 7.x contains an implementation of Delay that fails this simple requirement. How is it that Cincom's entire compliment of Smalltalk brainpower isn't on this problem? How does Cincom rationalize making another release without fixing this?

Frankly, it is beyond me how anyone could put profit ahead of safety, but it happens a lot. American Industry is full of examples. Of course, we regard these violators as greedy and opportunistic. History is unkind to their ilk.

Maybe Cincom's good intentions will deflect the critical glare of history.