Mostly Good News...

This is good news: Venezuela Is Denied Security Council Seat. Venezuela’s UNSC seat has been denied for the time being, and voting continues today for the seat allocated to the South American region. I suppose that if Chavez couldn’t get the required two thirds majority vote in the first ten rounds of voting, then there’s no reason to believe his prospects will improve in subsequent votes. All in all, Venezuela’s failure to obtain a UNSC seat is a very good thing. We have serious issues with the Security Council now, what with our “friends” Russia, China, and France opposing us at every turn. Adding a bona fide nut-case regime to the mix would be (additional) grounds to withdraw from the UN.

Mark Steyn has a new book (America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It) and the New York Post favors us with an excerpt.

When you look at it that way, the biggest globalization success story of recent years is not McDonald's or Microsoft but Islamism. The Saudis took what was not so long ago a severe but peripheral strain of Islam - practiced by Bedouins in the middle of a desert miles from anywhere - and successfully exported it to Jakarta and Singapore and Alma-Ata and Grozny and Sarajevo and Lyons and Bergen and Manchester and Ottawa and Dearborn and Falls Church. It was a strictly local virus, but the bird flew the coop.

And now, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalized insurgency.

As a bleary Dean Martin liked to say, in mock bewilderment, at the start of his stage act: "How did all these people get in my room?" How did all these jihadists get rooms in Miami and Portland and Montreal? How did we come to breed suicide bombers not just in Gaza but in Yorkshire?

Looks like I have an addition to my reading list…

More good news… Denis MacShane, Labour MP (ed: Member of Parliament) for Rotherham, writing in The Telegraph (UK):

At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.

The 10,000 Muslims in my constituency of Rotherham can only benefit from removing the dead hand of ideological Islamism – allowing their faith to be respected and their children to flourish in a Britain that finally wakes up to what must be done. Despite the efforts of extremists to prevent any sort of rational debate about the place of Islam in Britain, it is at last happening.

And it’s about time. The Right Honorable Mr. MacShane has more than a few valid points in his essay, not the least of which are the contributions of out-of-control multi-culturalism, moral relativism, and the arcane British bureaucracy to the current situation. One hopes that it’s not too late…

Mundane notes on life…

I nuked not one, but three bags of popcorn last evening. As it’s said: the third time’s the charm. The first two bags were burnt beyond recognition but at least they weren’t reduced to an actual flaming mess. It was all part of getting used to the settings on the new microwave. There’s a “popcorn” button on the new nuker, and I used it. Two minutes and ten seconds wasn’t enough, so I increased the time in 30 second increments until I got it right, after the aforementioned failures. Turns out that 2:30 is the appropriate setting.

My old microwave died last month (on the 26^th, to be precise) and I finally replaced it this past weekend. If you’re wondering what took me so long, it’s all because the wonderful folks at Forest River (the manufacturer of my RV) installed an odd-sized microwave in a non-standard space above the range. It would have cost me $350.00 to replace the nuker with a drop-and-insert, turn key installation from Forest River. Three-hundred-fifty-frickin’ dollars for an $85.00 (or less, much less) microwave, do you believe it? Esthetics mean a lot to me, but not to the tune of $350.00! So…I looked. I shopped. Bottom line: no one builds a nuker that is precisely 19.25 inches wide, or even 19.5 inches, that will fit the available opening, which is precisely 19.75” wide. The industry standard for 1,000 watt microwaves appears to be 20” or 21”. So, I settled on an 18” 800 watt microwave that looks pretty damned clunky when installed. Oh, yeah: $49.99 at Best Buy, for a savings of three hundred dollars over the “custom” alternative. I can live with “clunky” and save $300.00.

Yesterday was a brilliant autumn day, High Plains style. Our high was 72 degrees, with a brilliant blue sky and light breeze. Today will be a re-run of yesterday, but it’s forecasted to be a tad warmer. I can live with this!

Today’s Pic: Stone Archways at the Alamo, 10/11/2006.