Moving to WordPress

Time to see if I can use a blogging system that the Big Boys use. I'm moving to a WordPress site. This site will remain for awhile as beregondsbar.blogspot.com, but beregondsbar.com is what I will be updating after I manage to export things from this site.

If you're one of the few subscribers, please check out the new site, which will have feed options installed shortly. If you're one of the family members who have had posts inflicted on them via e-mail, that should continue once I have things set up.

Thanks to everyone who has read me here, and I hope that you'll follow me to the new site (and bookmark it!) at http://www.beregondsbar.com.

Tea Party Protesters Attacked in North Carolina

A peaceful Tea Party protest in Greensboro, NC (about 70 miles from here) was protesting over potential BP bailouts and the new Durbin Amendment to the finance reform bill that will increase fees for debit card use and pass those fees on to the biggest retailers. That's right, if you use a debit card instead of cash or a credit card it will cost you more, and the store gets it. In other words yet another bailout, this one of the largest stores.

A passing motorist stopped his car, got out and started yelling at the group, repeating the same old tired lies that it's all Bush's fault. (That's not to say that Bush doesn't deserve some of the blame but after 3.5 years of both houses of congress, and 1.5 years controlling the White House maybe it's time the D's started accepting a LITTLE bit of the responsibility.)

The erstwhile motorist then shoved a guy who had been doing a video, then shoved his wife three times. Naturally enough, he defended his wife by pushing the criminal Democrat who had just assaulted his wife away from her. This seemed so outrageous to the Democrat that he sucker puched the camera man. Most of this, including the sucker punch, was caught on video by another protester. When told the police wanted to talk to him, the criminal drove off.

There was a YouTube video up showing all of the details. By the time I went to post about it, the video was gone. It vanished down the memory hole, with a posted claim about a terms of use violation. Fortunately, someone uploaded it to EyeBlast.TV, and I've embedded it below.

You can read more about the incident at BigGovernment.com.

D Day

Sunday, June 6 2010 was the 66th anniversary of D Day, as the landing at Normandy during WWII has come to be known. ("D Day" was originally a generic term for the day of a landing. While there were only a few in the Atlantic theater, there were literally dozens of D Days in the Pacific.)

President Obama wasn't somewhere making a speech to commemorate the occasion because he was working without stopping on the gulf oil spill, right? Not exactly. He was at his second party within a week.

Doug Powers, who is guest blogging for Michelle Malkin, linked to this oldie but goodie- A video look at how D Day might have been reported if it had happened in 2007.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up...

Since almost all of our politicians are cowards who are unwilling to make the hard and unpopular choices that we elect them to make, President Obama created a presidential commission on how to reduce the budget deficit.

Here's a shocker. The retired politicians and bureaucrats who make up the commission think they need more money and more staff. That's right, Taxprof Blog reports that 4 full time salaries and $500,000 (so in other words, around a million dollars) isn't enough to produce a report in 130 work days (six and a half months.)

That the first major request from the deficit reduction commission is for more money should tell everyone all they know about how serious an effort this is.

The "Peace Activists" Were Mercenaries

Confederate Yankee links to this story which demonstrates that the "Peace Activists" on board the Turkish ferry boat Mavi Marmara were organized into squads who communicated via radio to coordinate the attacks. (Almost passed over is the fact that there were only 15 members of the IDF aboard, while there were at least 60 terrorists.)

Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which ended with nine dead passengers and more than 30 wounded, the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group of mercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets.

The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of themercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.

The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.

And just in case that wasn't enough, it appears that the terrorists... Er, "Peace Activists" had firearms of their own. The only firearms the IDF had were 9mm Glock pistols. But shell casings were found that were not 9mm, indicating that there were other guns fired. (Usually a military organization buys their ammo in huge lots from a supplier so that the remaining shell casings. Thus when evaluating a battle scene you can often tell which shell casing came from who, even if they are of the same caliber.) Further, I own three 9mm pistols. One stock Glock 17 (that belonged to my late wife,) one custom Glock 17, and a Beretta 92F. The striker on the custom Glock was replaced as part of the custom work, and the markings on the shell casings are different even with a simple pocket magnifier- And the Beretta's shell casings have different markings.

The Turkish captain of the Mavi Marmara told of seeing guns thrown overboard by the terrorists.

Israel turned everyone loose, even those who had shot and stabbed members of their military. It's a pity we'll never find out where they were trained and who paid them.

Vaccines and Autism

For years I've laughed at people like Jenny McCarthy and her claims that vaccines were responsible for autism. It looked like bad psuedoscience, particularly since several studies had cleared thimerosal (and the mercury it contains,) which McCarthy thought was the culprit.

Nevertheless it can't be denied that autism went from 1 in 10,000 live births to 1 in 150. Something had to have changed. Now it looks like McCarthy and company were right all along that vaccines were involved, they just blamed the wrong ingredient.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek has suggested in the past that residual DNA from aborted fetuses might be to blame. Truth be told, I thought she was riding a hobby horse just as much as Jenny McCarthy. But today we learn of a new study presented at the International Society for Autism Research The abstract of the study is rather dense, but what it amounts to is that it appears that there is a correlation in autism increases at the time that US and UK vaccines stopped using animal sources and began to use human sources.

The study is explained in plainer language at LifeSiteNews.com.:

The use of such cells means that the vaccine might contain residual human DNA fragments. Dr. Deisher told LSN that "short fragments of human DNA residuals in vaccines present two well-documented potential physiological dangers" and "the possibility for auto-immune reactions." While the immune system recognizes the DNA as foreign, its similarity to an individual’s own DNA can cause the immune system to attack parts of the individual's own body.

Another danger springs from the length of the DNA fragments. Residual DNA fragments consisting of less than 250 base pairs (bp) have been shown to have a higher probability of entering the nucleus of human cells. Once inside the nucleus, short DNA fragments can integrate with the genome of the cell. The probability of integration is 1 billion times greater with DNA from the same species than with DNA from another species, according to the abstract.

The study explained that, as the average human DNA fragment length in the rubella vaccine is 220bp, it would be especially likely to enter the nucleus of a cell. Moreover, 25 of the "recombination hotspots" where the DNA fragment could likely combine are located in some of the autism-associated genes (AAG). Thus, such recombination could be one of the causes of autism.

More details and links can be found at Jill Stanek's blog.

Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World

UPDATE 06/14/2010

The spoof heard around the world: We Con the World, The Turkish 'Aid to Gaza' Song. Launched on YouTube and then banned by YouTube. Watch We Con The World on PJTV: http://pjtv.com/v/3750

Copyright law permits parodies as an exception. Not only did the creators of this video consult lawyers before they released it, but the new host of the video, PJTV, was founded in part by Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, a regular contributer and a law professor. You can read the shameful story of YouTube's ignoring the law in a blatant double standard here.

full text:


There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN
There's no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there's crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won't buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh, we'll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there's no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don't you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world (Bruce: we con the world...)
We con the people (Bruce: we con the people...)
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Blood Libel

We're watching another blood libel take shape in the media. Like the "massacre" at Jenin, which never happened, a credulous international press is repeating any assertion made by a gang of thugs with terrorist links because they call themselves "Peace Activists." In reality many of them were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Sure, there was a Catholic Bishop on board- One who had been convicted of smuggling weapons to the PLO in the 70's and was set free at the request of the Vatican.

The "peace activists" who shot videos of themselves preparing for a martyrdom operation, who had smuggled, knives (some of them darn near short sword size) metal pipes, concussion grenades, fire boms and other weapons on board the Turkish ferry boat have scored a big PR hit. Nobody cares that one of the Flotilla 13 sailors (like US Navy Seals) was beaten and dumped over a rail to land on a steel deck 30 feet below. So what if he has extensive injury and suffered massive brain damage? He's just a Jew anyway.

Not that the nation of Israel acted intelligently. While there is no doubt that a nation in a state of war can set up a naval and air blockade (like JFK did around Cuba and we have done for as much as a decade at a time around various middle eastern entities) showing up to a gunfight with a paint ball gun was NOT a good option. Sure, most of the ships surrendered- But from the time they turned the fire hoses on the boarding party and threw concussion grenades into the boat the gloves should have come off. Yes, a paint ball gun stings but if someone is inclined to resist they can ignore that. So one by one the sailors from Flotilla 13 roped to the deck to be beaten with pipes, stabbed, have their (real) pistols stolen and used to shoot them (along with at least one rifleman who hid below decks.) Stupid.

Clearly the IDF had no option but to defend itself. After failing to subdue the crew members who were beating them with metal rods, stabbing them, and beating them with chairs with just their paint ball guns, eventually permission to fire the pistols was given. For some, as we have seen, it came too late.

Lots of international outrage. Al Jazeera TV, who had a crew on board, claimed that at least 20 were killed. We now know that as usual with Al Jazeera, the number of casualties was inflated. The invaluable MEMRI (Middle Eastern Media Research Institute) that provides English translations of things that even the Al Jazeera English Service is too shy to admit in public, documents some of the "Peace Activists" chanting

"Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return."

(Khaybar was a 7th century battle where most of the Jews at an oasis were killed, and the remainder allowed to remain for a few years, on the condition that the survivors of the massacre pay the Moslems 50% of their produce.)

and a "Peace Activist" who says on camera:

"We are now waiting for one of two good things – either to achieve martyrdom, or to reach Gaza."

But cause for suspicion goes back even before the flotilla sailed. A prominent Egyptian specialist in International Law said this on TV on May 18th:

Dr. Hassan Ahmad Omar: "The siege that Israel is imposing... It is necessary to provide Gaza not only with food, water, and building supplies, but also with weapons. Weapons must be provided, because these are weapons of revolutionaries, and aid must be provided to the Gaza Strip. "It is necessary [to help] the refugees return to the Gaza Strip, as well as to the Acre region, because according to the partition plan, it belongs to the Arab state of Palestine. [...] "The various countries have an obligation to provide these weapons and food to Gaza, and [to enable] the return of the refugees. "Turkey could revive the commission consisting of Turkey, France, and the US, which was mentioned in Resolution 194 regarding the return of the refugees, thus facilitating the return of the refugees to Acre – at least the half million refugees from Lebanon – in accordance with article 6 of Security Council Resolution 1559. "These aid campaigns should not be restricted to food and water. The [ships] could also include returning refugees and weapons for the Palestinian revolutionaries. The MEMRI material, including more of the above interview, can be found at http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4249.htm Lastly, we're supposed to shed lots of tears because one of the terrorists who died in the flotilla was an American. My buddy Duane Lester did a bit of research. Furkan Dogan was indeed born in the US when his family briefly lived here. When he was 2 years old his family returned to Turkey with him, and there is no evidence he has been here since. When his body was sent home for burial, it was sent to Turkey. What we actually had was a Turk who had dual citizenship because his mother downloaded him in the US. I've gone a bit long so I shan't get into the demonstrations of support all over the world. I'll just say that it was convenient that mobs with signs in English were ready all over the world to appear on short notice. The media should be doing their job and investigating, not serving as a transcriptionist as the Muslim world perpetuates another blood libel.