MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL,
AND TO ALL A...

KABOOM.

[Or was that 'Allah Kaboom'?]


We had a fantastic Christmas here at the old homestead, with two out of My Three Sons home for the holidays, one with new wife and ultrasound baby in tow. Other son and Totally Brilliant Grandbaby weighed in long-distance via Skype. There are times when I do love the modern age.

I had declared for myself that Christmas would be pretty much a No FOX Zone, and stopped watching news for several days, though I did sneak a peak at the Daily Horror (that's Drudge) and a few of my go-to websites (Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, and PowerLine).

So I did find out about the Nigerian bonehead who popped his Christmas Cracker

in his pants, on Flight 253 from Amsterdam.

We have a new civilian hero, Jasper Schuringa, who leapt onto the burning bonehead without regard to his own safety, and prevented further disaster. [his video account here]

Interesting: American filmmakers = liberal wimps / Dutch filmmakers = scourge of terrorists. Glad it ended better for Jasper than for Theo Van Gogh.

And we have a new poster boy for terrorism, one Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, privileged son of a filthy rich Nigerian banker, who left his $5 million flat in London, where he had been cruising through an underachieving academic career at University College, with his underwear full of explosives, planning some Christmas Day homicidal pyrotechnics for the city of Detroit.

He had also spent the last couple of years on a U.S. National Counterterrorism Center list, and had recently been reported to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria by his own father as a person with increasingly troubling radical Islamist tendencies.

Damn that George Bush, once again failing to 'connect the dots.'

Meanwhile, back at the $4,000-a-day ranch ['Let them eat Christmas cake...'], our Hawaiian-based Commander-in-Chief was briefed on the 32nd terrorist attack/attempt on U.S. soil since 9/11 (12th on his personal watch), and then proceeded to commit the ultimate Bush sin of taking in a round of golf, leaving the commentary to his D.C. minions and himself remaining silent.

The staff's apparently handling the press outreach better than they did with the Fort Hood disaster, but apparently the President himself, like Mary Jo Kopechne, was unavailable for comment. And the administration's Cone of Silence seems complete regarding the explosive situation currently going on in Tehran. Gateway Pundit, of course, has it covered, in stunning detail.


Please, sir, I want some more

Now, class, let's review the root causes of terrorism, so this latest 'near miss' can also function as an object lesson. We'll take our cue from the Teflon General:

Former U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, also pledged U.S. commitment to fight poverty in the continued focus on terror: "We can't just stop with a single terrorist or a single terrorist organization; we have to go and root out the whole system. We have to go after poverty." Powell elaborated further at the U.S. State Department in 2002: "I fully believe that the root cause of terrorism does come from situations where there is poverty, where there is ignorance, where people see no hope in their lives."

And, a U.S. House of Representatives 2004 Resolution declared that: "By improving literacy rates and increasing job opportunities, education addresses several of the root causes of terrorism. The distribution of food in schools increases attendance of children who might otherwise be susceptible to recruitment by groups that offer them food in return for their attendance at extremist schools or participation in terrorist training camps."

Send your care packages here, c/o #2 Mansfield Street, London, W1G 9NF --

Boy Abdulmutallab's former college 'digs'.

Won't be bothered by Sebastian Flyte puking through his window any time soon in this place, by gar.