Showhank Hill

Power

2009-08-03T12:37:00.001-04:00

I love the way Obama uses power, he is not ashamed to use it.

Via Instapundit
HOWARD KURTZ: The Prez, the Press, the Pressure. “In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top. Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom. . . Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans.”

Quotes of the Day

2009-07-22T11:41:00.001-04:00

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ``needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
Barry Goldwater

quotes of the day

2009-04-01T11:06:00.001-04:00

What is the difference between a Marxist and an anti-Marxist? A Marxist reads the books of Karl Marx. An anti-Marxist understands them. -Ronald Reagan

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Armed CG Helo's

2009-02-03T12:17:00.002-05:00

Here the SF Examiner looks at the new armed MH-65C CG Helicopters.

Link: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Coast-Guard-adds-machine-guns-to-helicopters38843302.html

M240B machine gun

Belt-fed, air-cooled, gas-operated, fully automatic machine guns
4-feet long and 27.6 pounds
Fire 7.62 mm bullets up to 2.5 miles
Can fire 200 rounds per minute in 10- to 13-second bursts with 2 to 3 seconds between bursts
A heat shield protects the gunner’s hand from the hot barrel

Finding Strength

2006-08-16T16:39:00.000-04:00

If you are not willing to kill those who want to destroy you because you are afraid of committing genocide against them are you not a bit suicidal? Does this not seem to be Israel current position now? Is this current situation just a strategic pause or is it indicative of a more pathological problem with the West?

Here is a kind of echo of Wretchard's idea that if you do not have the will to defend your self your weapons are useless. I found this blog entry by Patrick McGreevy in City Belt.

As the vastly more powerful force, the IDF could have crushed Hezbollah, but only by conducting a genocide on the Shiite people of southern Lebanon who support its resistance. And genocide, on global TV, is the one sin Israel cannot survive.
Hezbollah is a designer resistance force, shaped by repeated Israeli blows against Arabs -- designed not simply to counter its powerful adversaryÂs field techniques, but to infiltrate its soul and seek its deepest pain. It finds this pain like a heat-seeking missile finds its warm target because Hezbollah‚Âs resistance, too, is born of pain. This is the madness we confront.

Do people want to minimize 9-11?

2006-08-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

Do some groups want to minimize 9-11 and pretend it did not happen?

Here is a group in Jersey City that seems to be opposed to what I think is a good memorial.

The winning Liberty State Park memorial design.

2006-05-15T11:04:00.000-04:00

"Free Hollanders in exile"

Hopefully it's the last time I will see this phrase.

2000000 Hits

2006-04-27T16:41:00.000-04:00

Go and help this guy.

negative "excess whiteness" rating

2006-04-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

Wow

And Here

Some Churchill Quotes for Today

2006-04-15T10:29:00.000-04:00

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill K.G.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
The River War, p. 248-50, (1899)

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."
Quote Link

Islamists Post Hit List of 'Apostates'

2006-04-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

Islamists Post Hit List of 'Apostates'

If this is true and people are killed:

The Grave of the Hundered Head

Rudyard Kipling

THERE’S a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face—
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race—
They made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state;
With fifty file of Burman
To open him Heaven’s gate.

The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay—
A jingal covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar’s flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shickaris
Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village—
The village of Pabengmay,
And the “drip-drip-drip” from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man’s chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below,
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris—
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For he Burmans said
That a kullah’s head
Must be paid for with heads five score.

There’s a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

No tears in heaven

2006-04-11T16:32:00.000-04:00

http://sgthook.com/2006/04/10/no-tears-in-heaven/

E Pluribus Unum

2006-04-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

An Army of Davids Marches on the boarder

2006-04-02T10:26:00.000-04:00

Would the Minutemen be possible without the Internet?

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/01/D8GNIHD00.html

Minutemen Gather to Press Border Control
Apr 01 8:27 PM US/Eastern
Email this story

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer

THREE POINTS, Ariz.

Minuteman volunteers concerned about the continued flow of illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico gathered Saturday with lawn chairs, binoculars and cell phones for a new monthlong campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the issue.

A year after their first watch-and-report operation along the border in southeastern Arizona, members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps embarked on a much larger effort in the busy migrant-smuggling corridor.

"I'm concerned about what's not being done by the government _ hasn't been done for ages, apparently," said J. Glenn Sorensen, a retired school administrator now living in Flagstaff.

Sorensen, who was not involved with the Minutemen last year, said he thinks the organization has accomplished part of its intended purpose already, "to draw national attention to an insecure border. I don't think anybody wants to close the border _ I certainly don't. Basically, I think they need to be secure."

No one in the group had any illusions about their campaign's effectiveness, since it targets a relatively short section of the border for just a month. However, it comes at a time when Congress is debating proposals seeking to reform immigration laws, which have drawn supporters of legitimizing illegal immigrants to demonstrations in cities across the country.

"This is like sticking a finger in the dike," said Ken Raymond, a retired electrical engineer and airplane mechanic from Tucson.

At a rally kicking off the effort at a remote southern Arizona ranch Saturday afternoon, politicians and activists opposing illegal immigration gave fiery speeches calling for more border control.

At least 200 mostly older men and women heard more than a half-dozen speakers praise their efforts and call the Minutemen heroes.

Don Goldwater, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor, said he had a message for President Bush.

"Build us that wall _ now!" Goldwater said, referring to a measure that would add 700 miles fences along the border. He promised that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall. Goldwater is a nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Each month, thousands of illegal immigrants cross into Arizona. So far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, agents have caught more than 48,000 in the area staked out this weekend, up 53 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Chris Simcox, the Minuteman group's national leader, said four watering stations placed by the group Humane Borders to keep migrants from dying in the desert will be among the sites under surveillance. Last year, more than 400 people died trying to cross the desert, many from dehydration or heat exposure, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

"We watch them all the time," Simcox said of the water stations. "It's a great place to report illegal activities."

President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox support a so-called guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants already holding jobs in the U.S. to stay.

The Minutemen Saturday arriving south of Tucson plan to patrol private ranch property about 30 miles north of the border.

The group says it plans similar exercises along the border in California, New Mexico and Texas, and along the Canadian border in Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

Along with their binoculars, cell phones and radios, a number wore sidearms, including state Rep. Russell Pearce, a Republican and a leading voice in the Arizona Legislature calling for a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Those planning to patrol were under strict orders to call the Border Patrol and to avoid confronting intruders or drawing their weapons, said Simcox and Stacey O'Connell, in charge of the Arizona chapter.

Although last year's patrols were nonviolent and disciplined, there are still concerns about having armed groups in a busy trafficking area, Gus Soto, a Border Patrol spokesman, said last week.

Minuteman leaders have said that all the group's members have been screened to weed out members of racist organizations.

Still, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union-Arizona say they're concerned over "the potential for taking actions and ... attempting to enforce immigration laws," executive director Alessandra Soler Meetze said.

Churchill Quote

2006-03-28T13:05:00.000-05:00

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
Winston Churchill

I should remember this.

Why does NZ come up first on a Immigration search?

2006-03-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

I lived on Governors Island once

2006-03-16T18:09:00.000-05:00

Makes me think of more peaceful days.

Pics from Library of Congress. Search for Governors Island

Interesting site about a white gang "The Gaylords" in Chicago

2006-03-15T10:55:00.000-05:00

http://www.gaylords712.com/frontpage.html

Left and Radical Islam

2006-03-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

Good book on Euro Islamism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1595394/posts

On Democrats and Port Security

2006-02-21T07:37:00.000-05:00

Abu Ghraib! UAE! Abu Ghraib, UAE! Desecrating our Ports! Buy American! USA, USA. No foreigners need apply! There's no such thing as an illegal alien! No Undocumented Unamericans!

The cognitive dissonance must hurt their heads.

A bit of hypocrisy in Germany

2006-02-09T09:07:00.000-05:00

In Germany if appears you get 2 weeks without trial for goose stepping.

As one of the commentators below quoted below said, it seems some satire is punished in Europe more than others.

I think this should make someone in Germany a bit uncomfortable, WWII has been over for 60 years, I think it's time we all got past this.

Comments below from the Sun Online article linked above.

The first jailed England fan will have a VERY good case in the European Courts.
A goose-step, though perhaps offensive to some people, is not in itself an incitement to violence or hatred.
I think the Germans are on very thin ice with this one.
Rece PorterFlorida, USA

It is interesting that this story appears now in light of the raging controversy over the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad vs the rights of free speech.
Why is satire at the expense of one community acceptable, but not against another?
ShouldnÂt all societies accept that free speech is not an inalienable right to humiliate or degrade each other?
Hedieh Mirahmadi

100 years.............

2006-02-07T09:11:00.000-05:00

Great post on a 100 year old birthday.

via Idleryet.blog-city.com

The tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots

2006-02-03T10:03:00.000-05:00

Saw this via LGF :

Said by Ahmed Akkari, a Muslim theologian from Copenhagen:

.......the level of anger was “very high” in the Muslim community across
Europe and the wider world.
“It is more likely [than not] that any minute we
will hear of violence unless the police can control the situation.”

Reminds me of a couple of quotes:

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"- Patrick Henry
(March 23, 1775)

"The tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots."- President Thomas Jefferson

Hoboken and Scooter Link for Today

2006-02-02T15:19:00.000-05:00

A good day in Hoboken
http://www.philly2hoboken.com/blog/archives/2006/02/its_a_beautiful.html

Riding Scooters around Australia with lots of photos
http://www.gemellivespa.com/sito/pagen/homepage.asp

Mexican Army in the USA ?

2006-01-24T16:53:00.000-05:00

OK, this seems to be down played, were they really Mexican army?

If so I'm getting very tired of this sort of thing. Another thing to add to this line of reasoning.

Texas Officers Involved in Standoff at Border
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

SIERRA BLANCA, Texas — Men dressed as Mexican Army soldiers, apparent drug suspects and Texas law enforcement officers faced off near the U.S.-Mexican border after three suspicious SUVs attempted to flee state authorities, officials said Tuesday.
Andrea Simmons, an agency spokeswoman in El Paso, told The Associated Press that Texas Department of Public Safety troopers chased three SUVs, believing they were carrying drugs, to the banks of the Rio Grande during Monday's incident.
Men dressed in Mexican military uniforms or camouflage were on the U.S. side of the border in Texas, she said.
Simmons said the FBI was not involved and referred requests for further details to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., reported Tuesday that the incident included an armed standoff involving the Mexican military and suspected drug smugglers. The incident follows a story in the Bulletin on Jan. 15 that said the Mexican military had crossed into the United States more than 200 times since 1996.
In a news conference, Rick Glancey of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, said three Hudspeth County deputies and at least two Texas Department of Public Safety troopers squared off against at least 10 heavily armed men from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
U.S. officials who pursued three fleeing SUVs to the Mexican border saw what appeared to be a Mexican military Humvee help one of the SUVs when it got stuck in the river, he said.
When that didn't work, a group of men dressed in civilian clothes started unloading what appeared to be bundles of marijuana from the SUV, and the stuck vehicle was then torched, he said. A second SUV had a flat tire and was left behind in the United States and its occupant ran across the border, he said.
Glancey said he could not confirm whether the armed men seen at the site were Mexican Army, police officers, or drug dealers, and would not detail what markings deputies may have seen on the men's uniforms or the Humvee.
Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department said that Mexican army personnel had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border, the Daily Bulletin newspaper reported earlier.
"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."
Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, whose officers were involved in a similar incident last year, said he is certain that Mexican authorities know who was involved.
After the newspaper reported on Mexican military crossings earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the report was overblown and most of the incursions were just mistakes.
In eastern California, Arizona and New Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border is largely unmarked. But in Texas, the Rio Grande separates the two countries and even when dry, is a riverbed about 200 feet wide.
In November, Doyal said Border Patrol agents in the border town of Fort Hancock called for help after confronting more than six men dressed in Mexican military uniforms. The men allegedly were trying to bring more than three tons of marijuana across the Rio Grande, Doyal told the newspaper.

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A great Ben Franklin quote

2006-01-18T11:11:00.000-05:00

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
http://www.notable-q...

The Intangible Wealth of Nations

2005-12-19T09:11:00.000-05:00

This is important.

The Intangible Wealth of Nations
Why you're worth more than you think

Love

2005-12-12T16:58:00.000-05:00

Someone whom I love very much is trying to tell me something. I thought that with my very morose and defeated state of mind lately I would try to come back with an amazingly depressing quote, but unfortunately I was only able to come up with this:

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
-Sir Winston Churchill

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-Sir Winston Churchill

Great pictures of Hudson County

2005-11-30T13:24:00.000-05:00

Looking west on Hoboken Avenue from Baldwin Avenue, taken February 10, 1906

Here is another example of the great pictures available on the LOC site.
The pics are availible in jpg or very high resolution tiff files. For example the following is taken from the picture above.

Is Bush a Buddhist?

2005-11-30T12:31:00.000-05:00

The Eight Pillars

Jefferson and the Internet

2005-11-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

WINDSOFCHANGE.NET post on the attempted takeover of the Internet by the UN linked to the following news article.

"Those who have supported nihilistic and disorderly freedom of expression
are beginning to see the fruits" of their efforts, [Robert] Mugabe said, adding that Zimbabwe will be "challenging the bully-boy mentality that has driven the unipolar world." . . . . "Fidel Castro, the unflinching promoter of the use of new technologies," believes "it is necessary to create a multinational democratic (institution) which administers this network of networks," said the WSIS delegate from Cuba. . . . . Too often, the Internet is used for the "propagation of falsehoods," said Mohammad Soleymani, Iran's minister of communication and information technology. . . "Changing the current Internet governance to a participatory, legitimate and accountable system under an international authority is imperative," he said. But changes proposed by Third World countries that would give them more influence are "being rejected because they are not facilities managed by the Breton Woods institution by the West's neo-colonial desires," charged Zimbabwe's Mugabe, referring to a post-World War II agreement that led to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Mozambique Prime Minister Luisa Diogo predicted the struggles to replace ICANN were not over, saying that "it is a matter of justice and legitimacy that all people must have a say in the way the Internet is governed." ICANN does have an international board of directors, including members from Senegal, Morocco, and Nairobi, but critics say that's not enough.

The desire of the UN to control and stifle dissent on the Internet reminds me of a quote by one of our founding fathers:

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33

I think it is best said like this: “The best cure for free speech is more of it”

Where does this name come from? / First Post.

2005-11-22T14:10:00.000-05:00

This blogs name is from a section of Jersey City called the Heights, it was once called Showhank Hill and at one time had a brook of the same name. I found the name while browsing the Library of Congres American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record. This collection contains many interesting pictures and drawings. I lived in the Heights at one time and it's a great and stimulating place to live.

The main purpose of this blog is to improve my writting skills and contribute something to the Internet.