And So We Begin the New Year

I was awakened by the sound of artillery fire this morning…from the Tee Vee. As noted elsewhere on the blog, I have a terrible habit of falling asleep with the Tee Vee on. Last night I fell asleep watching talking heads on C-SPAN, and this morning C-SPAN was running live coverage of President Ford’s state funeral, part II. The traditional 21-gun salute was what woke me up… an interesting way to begin the day, to be sure. With an unexpected bonus: Susan Swain is C-SPAN’s hostess this morning, an out of rotation appearance due to the holidays, no doubt. Ah…but so welcome!

The funeral is continuing as I write. The eulogies have been impressive (Tom Brokaw’s was particularly good), and I continue to be awed by the precision and beauty of it all. Attendance by Washington’s VIP community is much improved over Saturday’s. As well it should be.

I spoke with SN2 at some length yesterday, mostly about his blog, blogging in general, and associated family matters. Sam is attending the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and calls me nearly every weekend as he’s making the drive back to Newport from home in Maine. Interestingly enough, Sam hadn’t looked at his blog at all yesterday and was oblivious to the comments some of y’all left there. So don’t think he’s ignoring you! Sam can well and truly speak for himself, but sometimes life and other priorities intrude upon blogging. At least for those bloggers who have some semblance of a life beyond the blog…

I had to pop out this morning for consumables and was shocked to find the price of smokes has gone up. Again. When I first arrived in P-Town four years ago I was gratified to discover the price of a carton of my favorite brand was …ahem… “only” $38.00 (and change). Quite a difference from what I was paying in SFO, which, if I recall correctly, was somewhere around $45.00/carton. Today that same carton of smokes cost me $46.27. That’s a helluva increase, waaay above and beyond inflation! It’s all taxes.

It’s worse in Texas, where an additional one-dollar-per-pack tax on cigarettes became effective yesterday. ONE DOLLAR, per pack. That’s over and above what was already an egregious tax rate. What is it that makes lawmakers feel like they can tax smokers with impunity? I’m beginning to feel…uh…oppressed. Just sayin’.

Good news in the war on terror, Somalia front… Ralph Peters, writing in the NY Post:

January 2, 2007 -- THE new year is off to a bad start for Muslim extremists and their admirers in the media: After only a few months in power, the Islamist regime in Mogadishu collapsed overnight as Ethiopian troops drove out the fanatics.

The global media line held that the Islamic Courts Council, which seized power last year and immediately imposed Sharia law, was in firm control of the country, with the legal government in Baidoa destined to fall. And Somalia did become the new Terror Central, a safe haven for al Qaeda and a strategic base for Islamist subversion in Africa.

Then Ethiopia stepped in and spoiled the goat roast.

Unconvinced by Western myths that military force is useless against terrorists, Addis Ababa's troops intervened to support Somalia's internationally recognized government against the jihadis. The no-nonsense use of force worked.

One hopes this is a permanent victory and not the beginning of another insurgency. But let us not look at the situation through rose-colored glasses. An insurgency is a given, to be sure. The Islamists won’t throw up their hands and simply go away. But a successful insurgency requires popular support, and it appears that popular support is non-existent, or at least very small, in Somalia. That is good news, indeed.

Here’s an interesting l’il tale from Mark Steyn’s weekly column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Mustaf Jama, a Somali ''asylum seeker'' in Britain wanted for the murder of a policewoman, fled the country by taking his sister's passport, wearing a niqab (the full Islamic head-to-toe get-up that covers everything but the eyes) and passing unhindered through the checkpoints at Heathrow.

How about that? It turns out we are profiling after all, but we're profiling everybody except Muslims. Your wizened l'il ol' gran'ma on a Yuletide break to London is bent double and out of breath struggling to take off her coat and shoes. The officials sternly scrutinize her passport to check that the picture matches her flustered and bewildered face. All around her hundreds of women are doing the same, mutely shuffling through the scanner in their stocking feet. But Britain's most wanted man is breezing through because he took the precaution of dressing as a Muslim woman. And it would be culturally insensitive to expose them to the same scrutiny as your gran'ma.

Many of us think about the long-term shifts necessary to win this struggle: euthanizing the United Nations and overhauling other malign and anachronistic institutions. Fat chance. Mustaf Jama's express check-out is the perfect parodic reductio of "security": The state is willing to inflict pointless bureaucratic discomfort and inconvenience on everyone else, but the demographic group with the most links to terrorism gets to go through the fast-track VIP channel.

Well, now. How about that! If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny, indeed. And just why am I thinking about our very own Flying Imams as I bang this out?

Today’s Pic: A wonderful shot of a transformer on a pole at sunset, which happens to be located in Albuquerque’s’ Old Town. January, 2004. (Note: Blogger is not accepting requests to upload photos at the moment. [sarcasm: off] I’ll try again later.)