As IF Times

link Taliban Dream Team: Who are the 5 prisoners traded for Bergdahls freedom? | Fox News.

The release of 5 Taliban guys in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl  is an event  that has to anger or annoy at least one person.  That would be the number 6 terrorist on the release list.  The link describes the various nefarious exploits of the top 5 Taliban guys and we must suppose that the number 6 guy didn’t quite cause as much mayhem and destruction as the top 5 did.  As we’ve determined before, that consternation must come with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, all the guys below 5 get to still live in relative comfort without the corporate pressure of plotting the next successful hit.  On the other hand, they miss out on the adulation of their peeps back at home.

History is replete with the exploits of those that went above and beyond and were able to distinguish themselves from the vast majority of people who toil anonymously in their chosen fields.  Even in the mass murder and mayhem business, it seems that excellence in the field is rewarded.  You would think by now that some of the foot-soldiers in the Jihad movement would be a little less eager to don the ball bearing vest when they see that their superiors get fed and coddled by the enemy and then feted by their own people upon their release.  All that the plebes get are promises of untouched women in the great beyond.

What’s the lesson here?  It’s the universal one: whatever you do, strive to be the best at it if you want to be treated well by society.  We can foresee the Taliban guys giving inspirational speeches at high school graduations. The incumbent president seems to be taking that philosophy as his operating beacon as well.  Not content to be just a number in the string of Presidents through history, he appears intent on cementing his position as the worst thereby ensuring his immortality.  At this point, Jimmy Carter is rightfully miffed and Woodrow Wilson is convulsing in his grave.

The only certainty about attaining recognition for being the best at what you do is that someone will always come along trying to top that position.  In the case of the 5 Taliban guys just recently released, you can bet that some in the ranks will want to surpass their positions like golfers trying to oust Tiger Woods as number 1.  We can expect more killings, more destruction and larger scale mayhem.   In the case of someone one day trying to usurp Obama’s role in history, well that’s a race to the bottom nobody should want to celebrate.

link Restaurant with No Weapons, No Concealed Firearms Sign Robbed at Gunpoint.

It sure is crummy when a good plan goes awry.  Sure, it makes sense to some; simply post a prohibition against something and voila, problem solved.  As long as two things are present: firstly, that people can actually read and secondly that people give a flying flick about what’s on the sign.  It may have just occured to the owners of this restaurant that posting a no guns sign at their premise is as useful as a no poop sign for dogs at a fire hydrant.  To the crooks who robbed the place at gunpoint, the proprietors may just as well have placed a neon arrow at the register saying “take me, I’m yours”.

But this logic is lost on much of that segment of society who believe that waving their “I’m a Vegetarian” t-shirt will prevent them from being eaten by a lion in the wild.  A similar gesture of stupidity is occurring now in another context, that involving the fate of 300 odd girls in Nigeria being held captive by a terrorist Muslim group whose name sounds amusingly similar to the band that sung “Whiter Shade Of Pale” from the 60’s.   The brilliant campaign that has been thought up is to use Twitter and mount a social media campaign: specifically, hashtag, bringbackourgirls:

pleading celebs

Undoubtedly, the pressure brought to bear by celebrities and social media will convince the armed militants to give up their control of the poor girls.  The consequences of not complying are too fearsome to consider.  What if they get unfriended?  If only someone had the foresight to place a no kidnapping sign at the girls’ school at the time.  They wouldn’t be in the pickle they’re in now. Also, this same social media campaign aims to shame the men who would be potential buyers of these girls as slaves:  “Real men don’t buy girls”.  Boy, I bet the market for buyers of the girls has dried up completely.  Given that the terrorists have threatened to sell the girls off at $12 apiece, why doesn’t someone just offer to take the entire bunch for $3000 on a bulk discount?

Increasingly, the delusional are living in a bizarro world of theoretical benigness and faux moral piety wherein the intrusion of harsh reality is an affront to be dismissed contemptuously. Those that choose to live in reality are shamed at best or at worst, demonized, even criminialized for actions that offend the delusional.  And of course, woe be to any who would willfully or unwittingly say something that is deemed to be offensive by the PC gestapo.   Even the normally brash Mark Cuban had to backpeddle a bit when he candidly stated that if he saw a black kid with hoodie walking his way, he’d cross the street.  Apparently, “black kid in a hoodie” was dog whistle speak for Trayvon Martin.  Cuban used to have more cojones, but now is bowing  to the PC police too.  Mark, Mark, Mark.

Putting up signs and imagining that bad things won’t happen to good people is an admirable life philosophy…if you’re an 8 year old girl.  Usually, people grow out of that stage of naivete and become adults.  It’s not clear to me why the views of the delusional have become mainstream, but I suspect it has something to do with the state of protracted adolescence that’s epidemic in the West.  The bemusement turns to despair when you realize that it’s the delusional people who are in positions of influence and that adolescence for them is a permanent state.