It's Our Wits That Make Us Men

Happy Birthday?

2010-02-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

So it turns out my therapist's birthday is a day before my own. At the end of this week's session I said to him,
"Happy Birthday. And I rarely mean that."

He laughed out loud. He knew I wasn't trying to be an asshole. It's something I'm already quite good at. It had more to do with the fact that I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I wanted to make it plain to him that I am glad he was born. We had already spent a portion of the session talking about my unwillingness to join in certain insincere social habits.
Things like awkward silences or nervous laughter. I don't feel the need to fill awkward moments with distractions. I may comment that the moment is awkward
but I'm not going to chuckle like a jackass to lubricate human interaction. Social niceties are mostly lost on me. We use them to lubricate social discourse, to keep each other at arm's length. I suspect if everything we say is sincere in public, there would be a lot less to say or a lot more road rage. Luckily for me I couldn't care less if I hurt people's feelings or if my silence unnerves them.

So why do the rest of you do it? Be honest with yourself. How often do you say something you absolutely don't mean because you are expected to or because saying what you really think is assumed to be unacceptable by others around you?

Do you really mean it when you find out someone's birthday is today and you say, "Happy Birthday?" Is there a part of your inner psyche that truly hopes this person's annual celebration of their birth is enjoyable? Or could it just be that you are afraid of what they or others will think if you say, "So?" I mean, we all have a birthday right? In fact, we all have one EVERY FRIGGIN YEAR. Is it really so special? Is it worth you committing social perjury to take notice of something we all have in common? "Yeah, you were born X number of years ago on this day. You wipe your ass when you shit too. Want me to wish you happy wiping?"

Even more disturbing is when we bow down to social norms to wish a happy birthday to someone we'd not piss on if they were set aflame. I've caught myself doing this more than once. It's usually somewhere where the social pressure is enormous like a professional setting or family gathering. The need to be civil outweighs the need to be true to our own feelings for this person. We drum up the happiest "Happy Birthday" we can but can't help tasting the bullshit still on our lips the moment it's received by the a-hole in question. Why not just be honest? "Oh, it's your birthday? I'll have to mark it on my calendar so next year I can remember to wear black." It's not like they're going to buy a smarmy "Happy Birthday" from you anyway. In fact, the shit-eating grin on their face as you approach the subject should betray their premeditated acceptance of your bald-faced wish for their happiness on the very date that God saw fit to crap this asshole on the face of the earth. Perhaps they'd even have more respect for you if you tossed them a cheery, "Die screaming in a fire, you chode." instead of the "Happy Birthday" they were expecting.

No doubt your honesty will both increase the respect those around have for you while lowering your overall popularity but at least then people can trust that when you say something, you mean it.

Fight On Prince Harry!

2008-02-28T16:48:00.001-05:00

Apparently the token 3rd-place heir to the throne of England has more stones than the whole of Europe. It truly is remarkable that this young man has fought and fought to have the simple right to fight along side the troops of his native land. But the media screwed him.

He tried previously to fulfill the historic duty of a prince and serve in active duty during a time of war, but the UK wouldn't have it. Did that stop Harry? Hell no. A true man of honor, Harry kept at it until he got the nod to deploy, on the front lines, to Afghanistan. And the media so loved itself that they betrayed an agreement with the UK to keep the Afghan deployment secret, no doubt destroying Harry's chances to finish his deployment like all the other active troops he shares the front lines with.

I say screw it, Harry. Finish your tour. No doubt your fellow soldiers would agree that it's an honor and a testament to the strength of the English monarchy that you have fought so hard to serve with them. Yes, you may die in service to Great Britain, as any of your fellow soldiers would, and you may be kidnapped, but your honor and commitment to your troops and your cause will be in tact.

You could have watched the news comfortably from a palace or other comfortable surroundings, and you could have given in to what must have been great pressure to stay out of harms way, but you did neither. You clearly followed your heart and I, for one, admire you for it. Men like you are what the kings of legend were made of, sir. Carry on Harry!!

Fresh Fish

2008-02-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

Well Mr. Cutts, you've got 30 years of pound-you-in-the-ass punishment coming.
State prison for an ex cop is truly a fate worse than death. Judging by the family victim impact statements, he deserves it.

The father of the murdered woman said to the judge, "You won't let me get my hands on him, but I'd love to have some quality time with him." Amen to that. Somehow I don't think the Ohio State prison system will do a half bad job in your stead, Mr. Davis.

Don't drop the soap Cutts.

But wait, the mother of the murder victim, Mrs. Davis has just plead for leniency on behalf of Mr. Cutts. She said that she's forgiven him through her faith and that she prays he can change too through that faith.

And Cutts visibly choked up. Forgiveness was the last thing he expected and it got him. This is like watching birth and death all at once, it's almost too much.

Suck It Up You Whiny Jerks

2008-02-03T00:45:00.001-05:00

It's exactly this kind of selfish whining and bickering that allows a power-hungry duo like McCain and Huckabee to hijack a GOP primary.

Instead of worrying about where McCain may be taking our party, they worry about who got invited to what call and why. It's this kind of petty bullshit that I always thought separated us from the left.

You wanna play the "what about me" card at a time like this RedState? So be it. I'll never read your blog again.

Reap What You Sow

2008-02-02T02:33:00.001-05:00

Super Tuesday is about more than who will be the next president, to me. It's about whether there is any hope left for honoring the principles that have made this country the shining light it has always been. My deepest fear is that America no longer knows who or what she is. A McCain nomination will remove all doubt.

A war on terror is secondary to the current war on our constitution. Without the contract that constitutes and establishes the limited powers of our government, what will we have to protect from extremists who want to destroy us? What would make us different than any other western target?

Our constitution is the ONLY founding document in the history of the world to GUARANTEE the pursuit of happiness. Do you realize that? The single most unique thing about our country is it's inherent protection of a man's right to chase his dreams. When McCain and others like him take that away from us, albeit one bill at a time, we lose what Reagan, Goldwater, and all those before them fought so hard to sustain and protect.

If we do nothing, we deserve nothing. Each generation is responsible for paying the price of Freedom. If we lose the affirmative principles that the GOP has stood for since Reagan, we lose the guarantee of pursuit and all the blessings that come with it. We reap what we've sewn.

And don't think McCain or Billary will be there to answer for the great loss when all is said and done. They'll be squirreled away with their millions in some other country, burning dead presidents in their fireplaces and laughing at the selfish and once great nation of America.

The Deck Is Stacked

2008-02-01T01:49:00.001-05:00

There is absolutely no reason that a man like John McCain should win the republican nomination. There is absolutely no merit in his legislative record that suggests he should lead the GOP. He has gone against the party line for nearly his entire career. What's worse is that now he is blatantly lying about his record and that of his biggest opponent: Mitt Romney.

But the republican base is fighting an up-hill battle. The final score was set before the game even began. There are two major factors that are giving McCain the supposed lead he has in the primaries:

1. The media have caught on that they can get a democrat in the White House by filling people's ears, and by extension their minds, with propaganda about McCain's inevitability.

2. Pundits and the RNC are so spitefully against allowing a democrat, especially a Clinton, back in the White House, they'd nominate Satan himself to be the party's candidate so long as he had the (R) next to his name.

So herein lies the gaffe: the RNC can't see beyond nominating "the most electable candidate" for the general election--and the media knows it. In fact, their counting on it. The media could not continue to extol the virtues of McCain unless the republican establishment plays along. They need their sound bites. And McCain knows that he wouldn't be doing as well as he is without the media acting to ignore and omit any reference to his blatant hostility to republican principles. Add to that match made in Hell a dash of Huckabee's thirst for power (no doubt he made a deal with McCain to siphon off conservative votes all the way through super tuesday so he could get the VP slot) and what you end up with is a complete end-run around every conservative in this country.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, and here's what's going to happen:

1. McCain will be nominated.
2. McCain will lose in November after an embarassing (and TV ratings-rich) general election cycle.
3. There will be a socialist (D) in the White House.
4. Conservatives will have been completely alienated from the GOP.
5. American politics as a whole will have taken a sharp turn towards the left.
6. Freedoms will be lost, taxes will be raised.

This can only end one way: the RNC will have been seriously embarrassed, McCain's political career will be over, the media will be emboldened in their quest to make self-fulfilling prophecies, and the socialist elites of this country will have firm control of the wheel. Welcome to a brave new world.

Terrorist attacks are almost guaranteed at that point, but those will be the least of our worries. We will know we messed up when social programs expand and invade and then collapse. The economy will shrink, the government will expand to fill the gaps, and we will all be "equal".

The saddest part of it all? We will have nowhere else to go.

I might just vote for Obama

2008-01-21T22:31:00.000-05:00

If Fred is out and Romney doesn't make it, what choice do I have? I won't vote for McCain or Huckabee. Both men are silver-tongued liberals trying to play the role of conservative. The only thing more disgusting to me than Huck/McCain is Hillary.

I will vote for the candidate in the general election who has lied to us the least.

And don't just react to my political blasphemy. Yeah, I know, how dare I suggest I'd vote for that lib...

Consider that this country appears to be pining for a lib as POTUS. This year we have had ring-side seats to the state-by-state rejection of conservatism. Apparently our government isn't the only group of Americans who have forgotten how we got to 9/11. When 9/11 happened, I said to my wife, "They'll do their tribute news magazine shows, have rallies, draft some legislation, and eventually forget it happened. This won't be the last tragic terror attack on our soil."

I think we need to face the fact that our countrymen still don't realize the nature or the seriousness of the fight we're in. We have terrorism and failing social entitlements. This isn't a race for President, it's a race to the next tragedy.

But that's not the end of the story. As always, we conservatives will be there to pick up the pieces, put up our sleeves, and help America carry on. It's just sad to see it coming and be able to do nothing to stop it.

Blink??

2008-01-09T12:26:00.000-05:00

According to pundits, the Straight of Hormuz incident this past weekend amounts to U.S. military forces blinking during a stare-down with the IRGC.

Yeah, right.

There is a big difference between a blink and showing discretion. Obviously, Iran is doing everything they can to provoke an attack from us without committing fully to an unprovoked attack of their own.

But if they, or our pundits, or anyone else thinks Bush won't squash Iran like a bug, they are in for a big surprise. Iran is about to win the Wonka ticket in the 2008 ass-whooping contest. We will only take so much before responding with overwhelming force.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T11:07:00.001-05:00

From our bad little dogs to yours.
From Christmas '07

IT'S A TRAP!

2007-12-14T22:58:00.001-05:00

I'm going to say this here in the hopes that one of google's site indexing spiders picks it up.
I'd comment about it on HotAir, but it'd just get lost in the myriad of comments.

Huckabee's surge in the polls of late is a trap. What makes me think that? Three things:

1. The mainstream media (MSM) wants a democrat to win the presidency in '08.
2. The mainstream media is hot-to-trot about Huckabee.
3. Conservatives across the U.S. do not like Huckabee at all.

Since the MSM knows that anything they report often enough ends up being accepted by most americans as gospel, they figure
they can spend the last 20 days before the Iowa caucuses creating a self full filling prophecy for Huckabee's nomination. Once nominated as the
republican candidate, the MSM will soundly turn on Huckabee. The next year will be filled with pundits waxing poetic about Huck's various and sundry religious
sound bites effectively deep-sixing any hope of a republican victory this election cycle.

They are creating a straw man. They are choosing to support the candidate in the republican primary whom they know they have the best chance of helping democrats defeat in the general election. It's really quite smart. It's also a good sign. This strategy is divergent from that of '00 and '04 where they attempted to use brute force in defeating Bush. Now they're getting sneakier by attempting to stack the deck BEFORE the cards are drawn.

So how can we tell who the best choice is for the republican nomination? Who is the most under-reported candidate in the field? Who got the least amount of time at the last debate? Who is the media trying to avoid showing you?

Fred Thompson, that's who.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Liberal Hit On Cheney

2007-10-16T23:20:00.001-04:00

Every now and then I'll watch PBS. I'm a sucker for nature documentaries and history films.

But tonight I came across an episode of a series PBS does called Frontline. The title of tonight's show: Cheney's Law. The episode was nothing short of a character assassination attempt against Vice President Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush--and a damn good one. If I didn't know the english language and was forced to derive the topic of the episode from the images, music, and tones of voice of the narrator and interviewees, I'd be forced to conclude that Cheney and Bush are the worst thing to happen to the world since Adolf Hitler.

The focus of the episode was on the patriot act, executive privilege, and how obviously jealous liberals are that Bush has been at the helm since 2000. All those against Bush or Cheney were heralded as heroes, all those for them as evil or foolish cronies. This summary of the episode would be easy for someone who reads the blogs, watches the news, and has learned the difference between liberalism and conservatism. But your average voter......I'm sure they came away from the episode shocked and appalled at how terribly, horribly, horrible Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are.

Journalistic sources for the episode? You guessed it, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

What angers me about this episode is not that it was heavily slanted against the current executive administration but that it was slanted using the tax dollars of those who know it to be liberal propaganda. I can understand that in a democracy there will be some wasted or even stolen tax funds. What gets me is that the taxes of fair-minded citizens are being used to mislead them to the end of an extreme edge of our political spectrum. Most voters are too busy living their hard-earned lives to watch all the shows and gather a well-rounded view of their government for themselves. The press has been trusted for years and years to mind the store for them. How long can we allow government subsidized liberal propaganda to influence the minds of voters who have little time to devote to monitoring their elected government?

Not even Fox News, the most conservative of all the TV news channels, has produced such an obvious hit job as this against a liberal. I don't understand it. What do conservatives have that makes them think they are safe from subversive media like Frontline? Don't they get that the liberal message itself is almost inescapable in the news media these days? Even worse: don't they see how the government subsidy of such an obviously slanted message lends implicit legitimacy to it?

Head For The Cellar, Dorothy...

2007-10-10T14:32:00.001-04:00

Aaaaaand the media frenzy is fully underway. That's right folks! We are bearing witness to the methodical and sensational stripping of the dignity of shooting victims!
Live shots of each and every victim as they are wheeled out of the school while some self-involved background voice waxes poetic about the necessity of hostage-situation training for high school students.

Is it any wonder we have yet to be contacted by extra terrestrials? I'm already tired of this story and it has only just begun...

UAW Strike Against Chrysler: Never Underestimate The Stupidity Of People In Large Groups

2007-10-10T14:20:00.001-04:00

Did Chrysler or GM start selling cars suddenly or did they win the lottery or something? I'm trying to understand where UAW thinks Chrysler/GM will come up with the cash to meet the demands.

Here we are, again, on the other end of the the pendulum swing. At one time, employers exploited workers to the point that unions were needed to maintain some sort of balance of power. Then unions ended up having more power than employers and began to exploit them. Now, unions are exploiting both workers and employers. I understand the motivation for the strike (greed), but there's no point in shaking down a bankrupt mark....

I can only hope this ends up causing UAW a massive amount of embarrassment, causing union membership and dependancy to drop even further.

Forestalling The Inevitable

2007-10-10T00:52:00.001-04:00

I'm starting to get an understanding of how the SS soldiers at Normandy felt when they looked out of their pill boxes at the swarms of G.I.s crawling up the beach. A vision of impending doom. That's what the latest S-CHIP debacle has conjured up for me. It seems that no matter how off-base leftists have been in their arguments FOR the latest S-CHIP legislation, the media somehow turns it in their favor. The emperor couldn't be more naked. The irony and absurdity of the claims by the left are maddening to the point of comedy: conservatives like Mark Levin, Seach Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin have pointed out the obvious fact that the parrot is dead but the left emphatically denies it while the mainstream media nods along with them!

Since at least 1994, conservatives have had to beat back the liberal hordes over and over to keep our country's medical system out of socialist hands. Over time, conservative victories have become more pyrrhic in nature. For all the efforts and common-sense arguments made, we've instituted more entitlement programs at higher and higher costs to tax payers. Prescription drug plan, anyone? What were you thinking President Bush?!?!

How long can we keep up the fight? With congressmen, senators, and presidents unwilling to speak the truth anymore, is it any wonder that we are losing? How long can we expect people like Michelle Malkin to hold the line for us? If America doesn't speak up soon, and in force, the left will succeed in silencing the right--and we will deserve it. We are purchasing tomorrow's defeat with today's complacency. Idiots do not enlighten themselves.

I have lost hope for the turning of the tide away from socializing our healthcare system. With most information outlets (tv, news paper, film) against private healthcare, and with professional politicians in office, I see no way to avoid an impending medical dark age in our country.

If there is any hope at all it's that the media's public opinion research is as crappy as their story research. Our best ally is the hubris of the left: November 2008 couldn't come fast enough....

"Nobody asked your opinion, Christopher."

2007-10-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

Chris Mathews is, for lack of a better term, a douche. I'm proud of the performance turned in by all the Republicans in the debate today, Ron Paul excluded (I don't consider him a Republican anyway).

I'm sorry, but setting all his other qualities aside, Fred Thompson would get my vote based on his handling of Mathews alone:

Link: sevenload.com

It's about time somebody put that jerk in his place.

Facepalm

2007-10-08T20:48:00.000-04:00

On tonight's O'Reilly Factor Bill O'Reilly commented that he hoped Phil Spector is convicted during his retrial because, "we believe he did it."

Now, I'm the last person to come to the defense of such an obvious scum-bag like Phil Spector, but O'Reilly has no more business saying anything one way or the other concerning the guilt of a man on trial.

In fact, I remember during the Scooter Libby trial how bloviatingly disgusted O'Reilly was about the obvious prejudgement of mainstream media outlets on the guilt of Scooter Libby.

O'Reilly: thanks a lot, jerk.

My New Hero

2007-10-07T23:51:00.001-04:00

One of my earliest memories of politics is the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas to the SCOTUS. At the time I had no idea what a republican or a democrat was, and didn't care. The feelings I recall are of disgust and hatred for Justice Thomas. It wasn't until I was of voting age that it became clear who Clarence Thomas is and what the so-called "Harassment Scandal" was all about. I don't remember his stirring and bold speech in defense of himself wherein he made reference to his plight as the consequence of being "an uppity black" who deigned to think for himself. I didn't realize until today how devastating the whole harassment scandal was to him.

I suppose it's to his credit that for most of my life I had no idea what he went through. He kept it to himself until the writing of his book. He took the beating doled out by the liberals in congress and the media, accepted his role as a Supreme Court Justice, and quietly went about his life.

And I don't why he broke his silence but I'm glad he did. I wouldn't have found my new hero had he kept silent.

In speaking on C-SPAN's Q&A tonight about journalism and some of the things journalists have said about him recently, he said,
"When you get to the point of ridicule and making low-brow comments, you've run out of arguments."

The principle behind that quote is sufficient to expose the media in our country as ridiculous and unnecessary. Justice Thomas himself refuses to read papers, watch tv news, or expose himself in any other way to our mainstream media. He sees it as pointless and therefore avoids it. So do I.

Don't Mistake For Malice What Can Easily Be Explained By Stupidity

2007-10-02T16:23:00.001-04:00

Well, that didn't take long. I figured it was a matter of time before some other stupid liberal news rag used the f-word in "solidarity" with those Colorado idiots.
If I could ask them one question, I would ask them if this show of support for free speech is worth the loss of advertisement money. I mean, I understand that college newspapers exist, by and large, to "fight the man", but how can one fight a war without funding? At least they've taught the rest of us a valuable lesson: speech is free, but the f-word will cost you.

Moral of the story: if you plan to die for a cause, pick a good one.

Couric - Liberalism Incarnate

2007-10-01T10:17:00.001-04:00

Bernard Chapin over at Intellectual Conservative does a good job of validating the picture created of Katie Couric in the new book Katie: The Real Story. His indictment of the mainstream media's response to the book is also dead accurate. But I don't think he goes far enough to explain both why the mainstream media is beholden to Katie and why she makes most people right-of-center shudder when they see her on television: Katie Couric embodies the modern liberal movement.

Couric's persona, as explained both in The Real Story and in Chapin's review, is quintessentially liberal. And despite what you may think, it has nothing to do with politics, righteous indignation, causes worth championing, or any other virtue carried by the revolutionaries of the 1960's. No, Katie Couric embodies what I like to call the "genetic crap" of the liberal movement. She is their dark side. She has all their weaknesses and none of their strengths, save one: the media.

But I only draw a distinction between the virtues and vices of the left to make a point. The modern liberal movement has little-to-no virtue at all, which goes a long way toward explaining the rise of a person like Couric to the top of the media landscape. Blind ambition, ruthlessness, consistent hypocrisy, selfishness, elitism: these are Couric's constant companions. And the rest of the left know it. But instead of doing expose after expose on how Couric has politicized and criticized and played her way to the top of the empire, they stand in the background and golf-clap her cynical conquests. It occurred to Couric at some point in her career that if she became all the most powerful and destructive things the left had to offer, they'd never be able to take her down without destroying themselves. She was safe to walk naked through the living rooms of America day-after-day while her peers marveled at how beautiful and "empowering to women" her new clothes were.

So let's be clear when discussing Katie Couric. She's not an operative of the left, or a true liberal for that matter. She's a narcissist who realized that the best means of becoming the empress she's always known she's entitled to be was to ally herself with all the other self-serving would-be supreme rulers of the world: your modern liberals.

Levin on Media Matters

2007-09-30T14:57:00.000-04:00

I could care less if you don't like the sound of his voice. There is a reason he's referred to as "The Great One":

After listening, see if you can tell why I'll put up with Mark's delivery and why I won't put up with Michelle Malkin's.
By the way, I agree completely with Mark on O'Reilly. What Media Matters did to O'Reilly was cheap and typical leftist crap, but I'm no fan of O'Reilly or his show.
He seems to me to be a disingenuous publicity hound. And guess who is attempting to follow in his footsteps?

MoveOn.org: They Can Dish It, But Can't Take It

2007-09-30T00:58:00.000-04:00

I find it ironic that MoveOn.org has sent a cease and desist notice to some makers of satirical goods. Ironic and predictable. I would expect no less from such a group. They can call our leader in the Iraq war a traitor in a full-page ad in the New York Times but they can't stand a few t-shirts and mugs making fun of them. But I won't belabor the obvious hypocrisy in this latest maneuver. Instead, I want to take a look at what it says about the state of relations in our nation. MoveOn.org is just the latest example of how relations among Americans as a community have broken down.

If I were to judge only by the "General Betray Us" ad and this cease and desist situation, I'd say that we in America just can't get along. Consider the obvious lack of respect and civility in both instances:

General Patraeus
Reasonable people will disagree. It's been that way since the dawn of the first civilization and it's the general understanding that makes a democracy so functional for a species that thrives on both reason and disagreement. But for a disagreement to remain reasonable, there must also be civility lest a disagreement devolve into a full-blown conflict. The one attribute of civility that must be maintained to secure it's existence is respect. Disagreements have resulted in many a compromise and hundreds of years of progress for mankind due to both a respect for agreements and respect between opposing parties. Respect for the opposition has been eroding for quite some time in this country, culminating with the out-and-out smear of one of the greatest and most fair-minded military leaders of our time: General Patraeus.

Was it surprising that a left-leaning political action group like MoveOn.org took action to downplay the news Patraeus brought to congress this month? No. Was a full-age ad inappropriate for an opposition message? Certainly not. Did the message have any basis in fact at all? Nope. It was a proxy attack. MoveOn.org has no reason to fear or even dislike David Patraeus. Being outside the military establishment, MoveOn.org would have no way to definitively tell whether Patraeus was "cooking the books" on Iraq or not. In fact, the message wasn't the point. The method was the point. The ad was outrageous for outrageousness sake. MoveOn.org had nothing to ad to the discussion of progress in Iraq but they knew they couldn't remain silent and allow Patraeus and his good message about our military progress to go unanswered--even if it meant disrespecting one of the most respected positions in our nation's long history: The War-Time Leader of American Forces.

Cease and Desist
Less than a month after MoveOn.org had disrespected the most esteemed and accomplished military commander in theater, showing the darker side of free speech rights not only to Americans but to all citizens of the world, some satirical merchandise depicting MoveOn.org as being bad for both the country and the democrat party caught their eye. They sent an email with a cease-and-desist order in it to the website selling the merchandise, claiming copyright infringement.

When has a political action group EVER needed to protect it's copyrighted property?

Please read the above line again so I don't have to type it twice.

More shocking, however, is that MoveOn.org's application of copyright law in this instance is completely wrong. So wrong, in fact, you have to assume that they know it won't stand up in court and are simply attempting to silence opposition. That's right, any reasonable person would have to conclude that the same MoveOn.org that libeled General David A. Patraeus under the protective and left-wing-coveted banner of free speech is doing it's level best to silence the free speech of their opposition. This is a rank example of cynicism and hypocrisy in their purest form. Purposely misapplying a law in an attempt to keep someone from doing what you yourself emphatically did within the same 30 days and all in public. They did it right before our eyes. Right before YOUR eyes. The lack of respect for free speech, and the law is one thing, but the fact that they did it in public--with a straight face--is the most disrespectful. You and I are the public and MoveOn.org thinks that either we are too stupid, too lazy, or too cynical to recognize this crap when it's done right in front of our faces.

Eventually the people of our country will realize that we cannot stand and call each other names all day while our problems pile up. We will find and reinstate the respect that was seen between Reagan and Tip O'Neal and we will make the progress in our country that so many claim today to desire.

New Look

2007-09-29T21:50:00.000-04:00

I got tired of the old look of the blog. Here's a new one.

Michelle Could Be So Much More

2007-09-29T03:07:00.000-04:00

It's almost just as depressing to see Michelle Malkin shine as it is to see her lackluster. She did a two-part interview recently with
Diana West of the Washington Times. They discussed her new book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization. They also discussed the themes and evidence that support the assertion of the books title. It was a poignant and powerful set of interviews. Michelle did a good job of highlighting why Diana's views are both accurate and important.

But with the obnoxious tone Michelle has employed of late, both on her personal blog and HotAir, I was sad to see her in the interviewer's seat. I don't know if she's too emotional about conservatives losing the culture war or if she's just naive and impulsive. Probably a mixture of the two. Judging by her frequent verbal flubs when on camera, she seems unable to maintain composure when excited. Her thoughtless and petty attacks against the left, both on television and in print and blog, serve the purpose of the left in that they reinforce leftist propaganda about conservative women. An obnoxious writer or commentator is marginalized in a reflexive manner by any audience, no matter what the gravity or magnitude of their message may be. Michelle needs to realize that in a war of ideas, the message you send is often less important than the manner in which you send it.

And so Michelle's chosen method of hammering the left with her over-the-top contempt-speach has done nothing but allow real interviews and news pieces of utmost importance, such as Diana West and her new book, to be lumped into the foray of garbage that Michelle has become well known for producing. In her zeal to propagate the conservative message, Michelle has numbed our ears and made it impossible for us to hear it.

A real conservative would come to terms with this reality and correct course. There is more at stake here than Michelle's television career.

Disappointment

2007-09-10T21:22:00.001-04:00

I posted a comment yesterday on HotAir in response to the latest Beauchamp video they produced.

Normally I don't respond to the "Vent" segments on HotAir. But lately I've seen what I consider some frayed edges on the professionalism of the HotAir team and thought I'd make a point about it. The part about the video that prompted my post was when Michelle was being turned away by Foer's receptionist at the offices of The New Republic. A perfect dick-move, Foer told the receptionist that Michelle should email him to make an appointment to discuss the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle. Nothing about this seemed odd. The New Republic is a liberal rag and Foer is an unapologetic liberal. Michelle Malkin is a woman who carries herself with immense power and grace. Foer's refusal to tell Michelle to get lost in person was so obvious as to be almost scripted.

But HotAir not only kept the segment that showed the receptionist giving out Foer's email address to Malkin, they posted it on the video in the form of a subtitle. That shocked me. Why would they do that? They know they get a lot of traffic on HotAir. They know that Foer's email address is public knowledge--it's all over TheNewRepublic.com. So why show a receptionist giving the address AND show it as a subtitle?

If HotAir's intentions were anything other than inspiring it's readers to deluge Foer's email Inbox with hate mail, I appolgize. However, I was not born in September of 2007. Using the size and loyal following of one's own web site to inflict discomfort on the editor of someone else's is obnoxious and perhaps mean. With HotAir being a site that comes down on the side of conservatism, I expected better behavior on their part.

So I called them on it. I posted this in the Vent thread:

I thought putting the guy’s email address up was a cheap move.
When did the conservative movement aspire to victory by any means necessary?
That’s a liberal thug tactic. We’re better than that.

Some of the regulars didn't approve of my criticism.
Here's my response to their responses:

I guess my point was lost on some.
We need to be careful how we deal with our opponents. They will hold us to the same standards we’ve held them to, but that’s not the biggest reason to mind our manners.

The more we show signs of being the anti-liberals, as opposed to what we really are–conservatives–the more we will lose the respect of those on the fence. I’ve noticed the professionalism of this site go down this year. It’s become more sensational, more knee-jerk, less matter-of-fact. It’s disappointing.

If I have to explain why it’s poor judgment to put what is obviously an already public email address of the editor of a private publication into the site-produced video of a site with good traffic…..then my original post wasn’t meant for you.

Let me put it another way: how many of you would have emailed Foer after watching that video had HA not included the segment where the receptionist gives his email? Additionally, what are your emails going to accomplish? Is deluging the inboxes of people we are disgusted with an acceptable practice? If so, how does that jive with our contention that conservatism is better than liberalism? If it is better, then we act better. Not just when we agree with people, but when we vehemently disagree with people.

Either we will stand for something or we will fall for anything.

Tell me where I'm wrong.

I'm Lucky I'm So Cute

2007-08-10T17:44:00.000-04:00

Personality Goes A Long Way

2007-08-09T21:21:00.000-04:00

If this dog didn't have the personality he does, he wouldn't get away with eating our dinner right off the stove while we're at church on Christmas Eve.

2007-07-27T17:10:00.001-04:00

I'm blogging this from my MacBook Pro dashboard!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

"Envy becomes fury in a hurry"

2007-07-20T12:32:00.001-04:00

Don't look forward to September for the spectacle of General Petraeus proving the defeatest left wrong. His long-awaited, and feared by the left, report to the Senate on our progress in Iraq has already been assessed and found wanting. The column I link to below is from Hugh Hewitt over at Townhall. It's his summary of the leftist response to an interview General Petraeus gave Hewitt on his radio show.
Townhall.com::Attacking General Petraeus: The Hysterics of the Anti-War Fringe::By Hugh Hewitt

What surprises me is that the extremists have fallen so deeply into their own narrative that they are wholly unaware of how their call for strict control of the news and their slander of the widely and rightly admired extraordinary hero that is General Petraeus exposes them to the public as deeply unbalanced, anti-intellectual and far, far removed from the mainstream of America.

The left has so officially adopted the line "Petraeus is a Bush stooge" that they have already dismissed anything he may have to say come September. And I believe that Hewitt hit the nail right on the head about the cause: their envy of successes won by the right has turned into a blind fury. So blinding is the fury that they have all but thrown the principles of liberalism right out the window. Like an enraged professional football player facing a tough team in the Super Bowl, they've forgotten the principles and training that got them where they are. Any athlete can tell you that when you give in to the temptation of rage in a competition, you start to make stupid mistakes that may cost your team a win. Let's hope that we can keep our cool as the left becomes ever more unhinged this September when Petraeus reports what we already know to be true about Iraq: we are winning.

No Sympathy

2007-07-18T13:35:00.001-04:00

Do not ask me to feel bad for a man or his family when he freely sticks his head in the mouth of a lion and returns home headless:

Mariane Pearl sues al Qaeda over husband's killing | U.S. | Reuters

Pearl was the South Asia bureau chief of the Journal when he was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 while seeking an interview with suspected Islamist militants. After several days in captivity he was beheaded on video.

My father used to put it quite simply: if you hang around a barber shop, you're gonna get a haircut.

The part that really pisses me off is that we have soldiers, marines, seamen, airmen who march into the lion's den every day and they never come back. How does Daniel Pearl deserve more attention than them? How does his wife deserve a major motion picture? Our military servicemen and women KNOW they may die and they march on for duty. They avoid unnecessary danger, like seeking out militant jihadists, unless they are forced into it.

So how is it that Pearl and his family deserve all the press? What sacrifice was he making, what battle was he fighting in? What was he attempting to gain from the interview that cost him his life? And how can his wife fault anyone but Daniel and the news organization he worked for? Why is she not enraged at him for being so stupid as to seek out the most dangerous men in the world? Why doesn't she blame her husband, a jew, for seeking out the historical scourge of all jews? You don't blame a lion for liking the taste of human flesh. You blame the human who offers his flesh to the lion.

A word of advice to all journalists: stay the Hell away from jihadis and you won't have to worry about being kidnapped or beheaded. They could care less that you work for the propaganda machine of the western left. You are an infidel first and a journalist second.

Marching Toward The Blast Zone

2007-07-17T21:15:00.000-04:00

After viewing this clip, answer me a simple question:

If the war is actually somehow, in some way, God forbid, sparing us the next terrorist attack, wouldn't ending it prematurely be suicidal?

I wish CNN gave us names and phone numbers of people like these. Then I'd have somewhere to send the thank you cards after the next 9/11.

Who's On First?

2007-07-17T00:16:00.001-04:00

The latest Rasmussen Reports™ poll on bias in the media turned up nothing but the obvious: all major networks are biased toward liberals except Fox News, which is biased toward conservatives. This falls within what I would consider a layman's understanding of our country's current political climate.

And it does not shock me that the majority of liberals/democrats poled feel that the major networks are NOT biased, except for Fox News. The same is true for conservatives. I would not expect the polar opposites of a political spectrum to admit to the slant of any network slanting in their favor. So here's what did shock me: more conservatives were willing to admit that Fox News is slanted to the right than liberals were willing to admit NBC, CBS, and ABC slant to the left! Even more shocking is the disparity between conservatives who think the news is slanted left on Fox News and the liberals who think NPR has no bias what-so-ever:

49% of liberals believe they have a conservative bias. Just 10% of liberals see a liberal bias at ABC, CBS, and NBC.
...
Eighteen percent (18%) of conservatives see Fox News as having a liberal bias while 21% say the opposite.

Now there are many different reasons you could come up with for why 49% of liberals didn't flag the MOST liberal news outlets on the planet as being slanted left:

They don't know what "liberal" and "conservative" mean, so they guessed their way through the survey.

They know full well that ABC, CBS, and NBC are liberal and lied about it.

They lean so incredibly far left that they fall off the end of the political spectrum. In this case, major networks would truly appear conservative.

In contrast, more conservatives identified Fox News accurately as being conservative biased than liberal. In their case I would have to assume that they are so incredibly far right that they shun television as being "the work of the devil". There's no news in the existence of far right and far left extremes. But the disparity between those who accurately identified the bias of the networks and those who did not is striking.

So here's why this matters to me: I'm a conservative. I pride myself on being able to tell the truth even when it hurts or makes me look like a fool. I also pride myself on being able to give an accurate assessment of something. So when I see that more conservatives can identify their biased television as being biased toward them than those who see it being biased away from them, I'm proud. It confirms what I believe about myself and conservatives. On the other hand, I do get a bit of pleasure when I see that liberals either can't or won't see the bias in the networks that are biased toward them. Whether it's dishonesty, delusion, or stupidity, it confirms my belief that liberals do not function as well as conservatives.

Carnival of Maryland - Eleventh Edition

2007-07-15T11:03:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my first hosting of the Carnival of Maryland. As a Maryland expatriate, I'm grateful to be given the chance to write a carnival of blogs about my home state.

Without further ado...

P. Kenneth Burns over at Maryland Politics argues against the Prince George's County council allowing the closure of the Prince George's Hospital System. Rightly so, he worries about where PG residents will go for care in the event of an emergency and where health workers in the county will find themselves. I've been treated by the PG Hospital System more than once. My parents lived in Laurel when I was born and I spent the first 5 years of my life there (we lived in Bel Ami, right off of Cherry Hill Rd.). I am no stranger to Laurel Regional Hospital. Burns makes a strong case for why the hospital system should be kept alive, and gives credit to those politicians who are rightly supporting that endeavor.

Our good friend Pillage discusses what appears to be a war against little green men in Bethesda. Well, little green, red, blue, and yellow men. Perhaps you've seen these sings at your children's school. I know I've seen them at my children's school here in Stewartstown, PA. But I've also seen them, years ago, out front of an elementary school in Columbia, Howard County MD. I always thought they were cute, and quite appropriate for the bus loading zone out front of a school. For some reason, I assumed that schools were the only place you would find them. Apparently not. I must agree with Pillage, however. When not in front of a school, these things go from being friendly warnings to being obnoxious little targets.

SoccerDad over at Baltiblogs talks America's Pastime with respect to dem O's and the biannual Orioles Manager Hunt. It appears the ownership of our beloved Orioles still subscribe to the belief that they can purchase a winning staff instead of growing one over many seasons. While that may not be as true today as it was in the late 90's, SoccerDad still takes issue with the lack of consistency in Oriole staffing. At some point I guess you just have to go with what you've got. Fan turnout is an issue because of the whole capitalism thing, but O's fans have always been loyal to the team. Why not repay them by choosing teamwork and loyalty over a pumped up roster? As an aside, people up here in PA didn't quite understand why, at the singing of our national anthem, I emphatically yelled "OOOOOH". Or maybe they did but hadn't been to enough O's games to be brainwashed like I am. Self-conscious as I may be about my pavlovian response to the anthem, I will NEVER sing it without that O. It just wouldn't feel right.

We've got a Whine er Watch going on over at the Howard County Maryland Blog. David Keelan writes about what can only be described as whining over Democrats getting a taste of their own medicine. Apparently, some people don't like the site www.omalleywatch.com. It's not that the information on the site isn't accurate, it's that someone had the gall to create such a site in the first place. This is understandable. Democrats have enjoyed a majority in Maryland for quite some time. Governor Ehrlich was an anomaly. We all know that he didn't stand a chance if it weren't for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend being sooooo arrogant and stand-offish with Marylanders during the gubernatorial election before last. It seems that the only thing Marylanders hate more than a republican is a snooty democrat. Anyone taking on O'Malley has an up-hill battle. Being Clinton 2.0 (in more ways than one), carries a lot of weight. He's sexy and charismatic and he's a democrat in a democrat-controlled state. It's about time republicans in Maryland forced the democrats to work for their power. This should be interesting....

E.P. Wintergreen offers us the West Baltimore Diet. That's right ladies, forget South Beach, turn in your Weight Watchers club card, and pick up a crack pipe! Don't let the name of the blog fool you: he's kidding. While it appears all bases are covered in this social satire, let me offer a couple more:

Rat Fishing: They are high in protein and low in carbs. All you need is a porch, some twine, and a chicken wing and you're in business. It's the perfect past time for when you're coming down off that coke high.
Vent Prospecting: It's tough to find a free vent to sleep off that hangover on. Be proactive and lose weight in the process by scouting out a vent before you start to nod off!

If you haven't lived in Baltimore, this kind of satire will just make us seem cruel. I'm willing to risk it.

Zinzindor over at Leviathan Montgomery punches a couple of Montgomery County Councilmen in the nose over the possible elimination of a common sense approach to housing problems. His logic is sound and the bloodied noses are well deserved. Montgomery County housing issues appear to be just another symptom of political complacence on the part of voters. If they pay attention to what these jackasses are doing to their county, maybe they wouldn't elect them. But I'm sure that when it comes to voting, people in Montgomery County (my birth county) do what everyone else in America does: what's easiest, or nothing at all. I share Zinzindor's frustration and I hope many in MC read his blog.

Monoblogue brings us Michael and his in-depth analysis of GOP canditates - Part I. The topic of analysis was eminent domain and/or property rights. Michael brings a meticulous scoring scheme to his judging of each candidate and comes out with a rational conclusion. While I agree with the merits of both his scoring system and his logic in granting points, I cannot agree with the final outcome, at least not based solely on Part I. I would urge you to read Michael's post, and from a non-partisan viewpoint, if for no other reason than to see how one might go about logically selecting a candidate. We live in an age where politics is purposely driven by emotion. As a result, we the people end up losing. No matter what your political affiliation, you can't argue against holding your candidate up to the light of reason.

Well ladies and gentlemen, that's this edition of the Carnival of Maryland. I appreciate your stopping by to read and I look forward to blogging with you in the future.

Special thanks to Pillage for spearheading this event!

Independance Day

2007-07-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

This was one of the images in my mind tonight as I watched the fireworks with my wife and two boys. In fact, I've had this image in my mind for days now as my town, Stewartstown, begins celebrating the 4th of July days early each year. Almost every house in this small Pennsylvania town hangs the flag of our country from it's front porch, garage, or even a special regulation-size flagpole in the front yard. Some have even adorned their gardens, driveways, or mailboxes with little flags in addition to the regular flag most display. In my town, we celebrate Independence Day the way most other towns celebrate Christmas. The flags and fireworks come out early here, and stay for long after the 4th.

Those of you who grew up in towns such as Stewartstown will not understand why I regard such patriotism as remarkable. But I grew up in Maryland. Though our nations capital is more than half-way inside the Maryland state line, patriotism is rather hit-or-miss. This is not to say that there are no patriots in Maryland. On the contrary, there are plenty. It's just that I grew up in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area (the part of the state between Baltimore and D.C.) where you usually don't come upon an American flag unless it's hung from in front of a government building. And fireworks are illegal. Maryland government has felt for years that they must protect stupid people from using explosives in an idiotic fashion. This inevitably results in a monopoly of fireworks display for fireworks entertainment companies who can only give us a glimpse of what Francis Scott Key saw as he watched "the bombs bursting in air" over Fort McHenry once every year. So I was used to being exposed to as much patriotic expression on the 4th as one fireworks truck could carry.

Luckily now I live in a place where the government wishes to abstain courteously from making safety decisions on behalf of those too stupid to keep themselves safe. We can fire off any firework we please, and we make full use of that privilege. Stewartstown began marking the sky with flashes of red, white, and blue two nights ago. Coupling that with the display of flags made my spirits rise. My whole life I was used to a single day to reflect on what this country represents and how much it, and our freedom, is worth. But now I live in a town that collectively celebrates this country for a full week each year. And that was the part that got me.

They get it.

This fact was driven home during the fireworks display our town put on this year. It was a big affair. My oldest son's cub scout pack (pack 27) sold burgers, hot dogs, fries, and sodas all day and into the night. There was a local band playing under a pavilion while hundreds of locals sat around the back of the parks big baseball diamond in pouring rain. The volunteer fire department was busy all day doing whatever it is they do to make sure the firework display is safe. Despite the horrible rain all day long, the show went on. The rain stopped at 8:30 pm and the show was scheduled to start at 9:30 pm. For the full hour before the show, during the show, and for literally hours after the show, much of Stewartstown gave their own fireworks display. And I'm not talking bottle rockets here. Each display used what seemed to be professional fireworks.

Just before the big display at 9:30 pm there were innumerable little fireworks displays going off ll over town. There was a cool breeze and the local band at the pavilion was rather good (if you're into Fleetwood Mac, Lynyrd Skynyrd, or The Eagles), my boys had their glow necklaces and almost all of the town showed up. Most of the town was seated around the outside of the baseball diamond with the fire department and fireworks over the hill behind left and right field. You could see just over right field the firetruck and a cluster of spot lights. For a moment I worried that the bright lights would dampen the effect of the fireworks, until I saw why they had them turned on. The big engine with the rescue ladder and basket had hanging from the bottom of the basket an enormous American flag. The ladder was fully extended and the bottom of the flag was tethered to the ground so the flag was perfectly flat and facing the crowd. The lights I was worried about were placed behind the flag to illuminate it. In the foreground were a couple of fire fighters who were making sure the crowd didn't get too close to the baseball diamond. They were about 20 feet from my family and I. There juxtaposition against the taut, illuminated flag formed an image reminiscent of 9/11 photos. Just as that image hit me, the band started to play the Star Spangled Banner. I'm not one for crying in public, but that almost got me. I rarely feel proud to be an American. I'm always grateful to be an American, but never proud. In that moment, I was proud.

I was starting to lose my faith in my own people this year. Not white people, not Christians, not computer geeks--Americans. And perhaps that was the goal of the people who make TV and radio and newspapers. But that's done now, it's over. I know that my neighbors may look at the picture up top or the one to the left and understand what these boys are fighting for. I know that they see the compassion and the pain, the courage and determination of our armed forces and they stand behind them 100%. I can say with complete confidence that we in Stewartstown leave our politics at the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. We may disagree, but we're Americans first, and political rivals second. I am both elated and relieved to find that I live in America.

Finally Some Sense

2007-07-03T19:22:00.001-04:00

Moral relativism and A Mighty Heart

If only the forces of tolerance could win out over the forces of intolerance, I reasoned, the world might finally know some measure of peace.

But there was a problem with my theory, and it was never clearer than in a conversation I once had with a Pakistani friend who told me that he loathed people like President Bush who insisted on dividing the world into "us" and "them." My friend, of course, was taking an innocent stand against intolerance, and did not realize that, in so doing, he was in fact dividing the world into "us" and "them," falling straight into the camp of people he loathed.

My heart goes out to this man, Judea Perl. He lost his son to jihadi animals and then had to watch as his daughter-in-law succumbed to the temptations of moral relativism.

The only person here with a mighty heart is Judea Perl. He has the courage to speak the truth about what happened to his son, and by association our country...

Still WIth Fred!

2007-06-29T19:10:00.000-04:00

Watch this clip. It's from Fred!'s recent stop in one of the Carolinas.

Say what you will, but the man is savvy. They tried to get him with a few loaded questions and I think he answered them with authority and sincerity.

There is absolutely nothing that will pull me away from Fred! at this time. All the crap you hear in the media about the man is just that--crap. The jackasses who got into the race early, for the exact reason Fred! states in the above clip, are pissed at him because Fred! has been competing against them so far without having to raise a dime.

To put it simply, that which is innately attractive has no need for advertisement. That is why so many of us spell the name of our soon-to-be fearless leader with a ! on the end: Fred!

Silly Libs

2007-06-29T01:19:00.000-04:00

So you can get this poster, and a few others over at ForkScrew (language alert).
I think they actually show support for the troops and could even boost morale. I cut the gratuitous lib tally of casualties off the bottom of the poster. It gets in the way. I do like it though. In their quest for impact-through-minimalism it made the iraqi vs u.s. deaths look like a scoreboard.

And the score is in our favor. We are ahead in confirmed kills by over 9,000, according to the libtards at ForkScrew.

Wouldn't it be ironic if a liberal poster campaign like this actually had the opposite effect?

This supports the troops AND makes fun of apple's rediculous iPod advertisements. It's the best of both worlds!

Simple Math

2007-06-26T03:21:00.001-04:00

Today in Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news

This year, for instance, the U.S. has killed roughly 650 terrorists a month, according to published reports and Defense Department estimates. That compares with about 37 U.S. combat deaths per month, through May.

The ratio, thus, is about 18 terrorists killed in combat for every allied soldier killed. And that doesn't include the current offensive in Diayala Province, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which dispatched 159 enemy combatants in just the first five days.

Since the war began, we've lost about 70 troops a month. This compares with 526 a month in Vietnam, more than 900 a month in Korea and 6,639 a month during World War II.

In other words, by any meaningful metric employed, the U.S. is winning this war. But it will never be reported that way.

It just doesn't get any clearer. We have been winning this war from the start, but it has never, and will never be reported as such. Please read the article I linked to above (Hat Tip to Pat Dollard).

Here's where the numbers start to really chap my hide:

War	Casualties/Month
WW II	6,639
Korea	900
Viet Nam	526
Iraq	70

Not only have our total losses not yet come NEAR those of previous wars, but our rate of losses are so small in comparison to those of other wars as to be regarded as MINOR casualties. How does this make for a losing pattern? If the topic was productivity for a major U.S. market and the table above listed Fiscal Year instead of War and Productivity Losses/Month instead of Casualties/Month, the press would be praising the leaders of the market from the cover of every magazine and front page of every news paper. But the media and the anti-american left are synonymous terms, and neither wants their own country to win any war.

Remember the table I used to show the dramatic difference between other wars and this one. It is but one of many metrics the mainstream media will not show you when they attempt to declare the Iraq war a lost cause.

WE DID IT!!

2007-06-23T16:46:00.001-04:00

BLACKFIVE: RCT-6: 6,000

I learned about six minutes ago that the 6,000th email has just come in.

This response gives me hope. I'm sure it gives our fighting men and women some too.

How Can We Help?

2007-06-23T16:17:00.001-04:00

Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » Arrowhead Ripper: Surrender or Die

Public Affairs should have known this months ago. Valuable stories about our soldiers and the battle are being lost and will never be filed because reporters, after a long day of being on the battlefield, cannot make a simple phone call, or file a story. Why be here? It’s pretty dangerous, and insurance is expensive. I had to skip a mission this morning because I cannot make communications, and am down to filing stories on the fly again without time for editing. There is no other way to keep the flow open, and if you are reading this, it’s only after I’ve wasted hours trying to upload it. Hours I could have been with our soldiers, telling about their days in one of the most important battles of this war.

Yon has not been coy about parts of the war that our armed services could be doing better. The lackluster performance of the PAO is no different.

Michael is right, this is one of the most important battles. It's not only the culmination of all we've learned thus far but it is also the end-game. Read the above-linked dispatch from Yon for the full story. I want to know who to contact and/or pressure about this in the military. I'm going to start with with White House dot gov and move down the chain from there. One thing's for sure: this has to stop.

An Almost Teenage Fascination With Fashionable Causes

2007-06-21T21:44:00.001-04:00

Bias at the Beeb - official-Comment-Leading Article-TimesOnline

But what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes.

Yes, the BBC is biased. And it turns out, water is wet.

But the title I chose for this post says it all. That's the chewy center of this story. Not just because it's true for the BBC, but also because it's true for all American media and political organizations.

Since the mid '70's, humanity has been looking for a "cause" to champion. Something to fight for or give meaning to our lives. They call it "progress"--a term for which an entire part of the political spectrum gets it's current politically correct name: progressives. But there is no cause to champion. Racism is down, women are up. The real causes are too uncomfortable to fight for (I'll stop driving my SUV as soon as you do). So, now the fight is the cause, it is the mission.

And the name "progressive" says it all. They stand for progress, not of any particular type, you see. "We will overcome" has turned into "We will make progress on overcoming so that we never are left without something to overcome". Maybe that's why they like sayings like, "It's the journey, not the destination that matters." Yeah, especially if your journey is designed to be never-ending.

Yon and Gordon - The Only Sources In Baqubah

2007-06-21T02:08:00.001-04:00

Michael Yon* is a reader-supported journalist and former military serviceman. He's been covering the war in Iraq for some time now, and doing an outstanding job. Michael Gordon is a reporter for the New York Times. But Yon vouches for Gordon's reporting, saying "...Gordon has been very accurate and on target."

What's remarkable about operation Arrowhead Ripper goes beyond the bloodbath that's about to ensue. The most remarkable thing I can see so far is that Yon and Gordon are the ONLY reporters taking advantage of the full access being given to the press on the battlefield:

Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » Operation Arrowhead Ripper: Day One

The combat has only just begun, and media has now figured out this is serious business. During the morning brief (June 20th), Major Robbie Parke mentioned that CNN, TIME, Reuters and some others, are trying to get out here now. Problem is space. Looks like Gordon and I are mostly alone for now.

The Army is giving full access to the battlefield, and while on base full access to the TOC (HQ)

Now, the war in Iraq has been going on for quite some time, so I can understand the reluctance of press to show up to every morning briefing. But there are two reasons why these morning briefings are NOT to be missed by any member of any organization whose primary purpose is to inform the American public:

Arrowhead Ripper is no ordinary operation. The enemy is NOT insurgents, it is Al Qaeda. This battle is being promoted as and has been prepared for like this was the title fight between Rocky Balboa and Mr. T.
The military is giving unrestricted access to press. Anything is up for grabs, except Special Forces operations.

Michael Yon is too professional to point out the implications of being one of two reporters in the middle of this action right now. But I'm not an embedded reporter. I'm proud of Yon for what he does and the professionalism with which he does it. So let me take on the dirty deed of implication. As Yon has suggested, the mainstream media has only today figured out that Arrowhead Ripper and Baqubah are a serious story. And so they have a problem. Nobody but Yon's and New York Times readers have a source on the ground. What is the rest of the MSM to do?

I would suggest that in the weeks ahead we pay close attention to a few things:

In any MSM report on Arrowhead Ripper/Baqubah, who is the source? If it's Yon or Gordon, fine, otherwise we may be dealing with false reports.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com - because we know he has the real story.

AQ is about to reap what it has sown. I hope Allah's stocked up on virgins...

*I cannot stress enough that Yon is supported by contributions from us. If we want to continue getting the kind of truly unbiased coverage of operations in Iraq, we should support him.

Hotel California

2007-06-21T01:05:00.000-04:00

Thank God for HotAir. I don't know if I would have seen this if not for that site.

This sign is so simple that it could be put anywhere, a cell phone text message, a banner behind a plane, on the blimp marquee at the Super Bowl.

Hey, that's a good idea....

Michael Yon - Doing What The Rest Of Us Can't Or Won't Do

2007-06-20T13:16:00.001-04:00

I have to say, first of all, that I echo the sentiment given by Terry Trippany in this first paragraph:

Freelancer Michael Yon Does the Job the MSM Won't Do | NewsBusters.org

I have been a huge fan of Michael Yon for years. He risks life and limb as an embedded reporter to report the news in Iraq from the soldiers' point of view and he is honest in his assessment. That honesty has often been met with scorn and resistance by some decision makers in the military who in my assessment have been their own worst enemy when it comes to getting the word out about progress as well as the hardships endured by our fine fighting men and women overseas.

I too have been following Michael Yon for years and have always regarded him as a true journalist. He is honest about the war, even when it makes our military look bad. I deeply respect and admire him for going and doing what many of us can't or won't do.

It is beside the point that the mainstream media won't report on the war like this. The big media outlets have painted themselves into a corner that precludes them from doing any real reporting on any subject--with the obvious exception of Paris Hilton's Struggle, of course.

The Bill and Hillary Spoof Ad

2007-06-19T17:49:00.001-04:00

Allahpundit at HotAir notes:

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Bill and Hillary spoof the “Sopranos” ending

This makes two creative, entertaining spots in a row to come out of her camp. She’s got this, Gravel has those kooky art-film spots, Richardson has his job-interview series, and our guys are dumping out clips from their campaign rallies. “Pathetic” doesn’t begin to describe it.

Click the link to see the video on HotAir. I wasn't going to write about this, but now we on the right are comparing what our guys put in ads to what Hillary is doing. Let me make one thing clear: Hillary is not campaigning.

It is one thing to campaign, and even to pander. It is quite another to be the David Copperfield of modern politics. The reason why Hillary's campaign stuff is so entertaining is because it's supposed to be. It's purpose is to get you to like her because you like her stuff. There is no substance, no real candidacy. It feels too much like an ad campaign for a new Disney movie.

Think about it. First, she launches the web site with her famous "Let's start a conversation" video. Then she does this contest for choosing her "official campaign song". Now we have an official campaign ad that spoofs The Sopranos with our former President and his wife acting like a couple of Saturday Night Live staff actors. What's next, a campaign auction for taking Bill to dinner? Does she have moon-bounces at her stump speeches? Is there going to be a pony ride sponsored by Billery at the Democrat National Convention?

Look, I'm sure we all grew up with at least one kid in our neighborhood who had no personality but tried to make up for it by giving the other kids candy or rides on their bike or let them borrow toys. I know I did. He entertained us and we tolerated him. And I'm sure a lot of you did that too. But what we need to be asking ourselves right now is if , as adults, we can allow that kid to bribe his way into the White House.

Built By Fred!

2007-06-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

I don't know if it's because of his powerful words, who he spoke them to, or how he delivered them, but this speech given recently by Fred Thompson to The Policy Exchange in London had him conjuring up memories of Ronald Reagan for me.

And maybe that's because I want to see Reagan in him. Who knows. I don't think anyone can deny that Thompson is a strong speaker with a commanding presence. I think many would deny that he'll be any good in office. But I'd like to take that belief to task for a moment.

Both the audience, the tone, and the subject matter of this speech are, in my estimation, proof of the leadership and strategic skill found in Fred Thompson. Haystack over at Redstate does a fantastic job of pointing out significant parts of the speech, as well as explaining the significance for each. But I want to look at the overall effect of speaking the way he did to this specific audience.

What I think is the single greatest thing about this speech is the audience. Fred speaks to The Policy Exchange and it is as if he were speaking to Britain as a whole. This is a brilliant move. Before even formally announcing his candidacy, he's engaging Europe and diffusing one of the biggest talking points on the left side of American politics: "our reputation around the world". He uses his conservative principles in the message to accomplish two main goals:

Settle differences between the U.S. and Europe.
Make plain our intention to defend ourselves, and Europe, if need be.

He appears to be defining the planks for his foreign policy platform to a European audience. Not only that, but he also does it while holding true to the conservative position of not backing down in the face of terrorism. The long-term effect of such a strategy can only be bringing conservatives closer to him and giving liberals less to complain about.

In short, this is just another wonderful example of Fred being Fred! and why I support him for President. While the other guys (and gal) are out doing the usual stumping and sound bites and such, Fred! is engaging non-standard audiences. I think that the sum total of his efforts will be that one day the other candidates will look around and find themselves debating on a stage whose platforms were built by Fred!

Who Has The Will?

2007-06-19T11:28:00.001-04:00

Michael Yon, an embedded independent journalist and retired serviceman makes it quite clear what the newly-started Diyala offensive is going to cost us, and why we cannot fail.

Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » Be Not Afraid

This campaign is actually a series of carefully orchestrated battalion and brigade sized battles. Collectively, it is probably the largest battle since “major hostilities” ended more than four years ago. Even the media here on the ground do not seem to have sensed its scale.

Due to the shear scope of the battle, and the casualties that both sides will inevitably incur, I fear for how the Democrats will use this to undermine the war effort. It's been quite some time since America was use to hearing large numbers of U.S. troop fatalities reported every day. Such a shock will go a long way toward giving credence to irrational screeds like, "the surge has failed".

So who has the will? Clearly this time we are fighting Al Qaeda forces. This is not us getting caught between rival factions in a civil war. In Diyala, we are fighting the very enemy that brought down the Twin Towers. We march into this battle with all the scars and agony wrought by the events of Sept 11, 2001. Will we let the opportunists in this country stop us from bringing Al Qaeda what it deserves?

Stuck To The Ground In Lilliput

2007-06-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

I think Christopher Hitchens does a fantastic job of summing up the whole Scooter Libby debacle.
Here's my favorite quote:

Before savoring the full absurdity of the thing, please purge your mind of any preconceptions or confusions.

It really is worth the read. The bottom line in this saga is that Democrats wanted a scalp of some kind and Republicans did little to stop them. So yeah, maybe he will get out on appeal, and he won't have to do much hard time. But how does he recover the money he spent to defend himself?

I think it's duck season. And by "duck" I mean "bad prosecutor". Nifong recently went down. Lost his law license and is looking down both barrels of a law suit. Here's hoping he gets that smirky bill knocked around to the back of his head. The obvious evolution of this situation is for Libby to not only get his conviction overturned but to follow up by suing the jackass who convicted him for something meaningless in the first place. Were I Scooter Libby, I'd even go so far as to sue the jackass who pushed the previously named jackass to turn the Plame investigation into a full-blown partisan witch-hunt.

Most people will think this gratuitous or over-the-top. But I believe that if a clear message isn't sent to those in the government who misuse their power, one of us could be the next Duke Lacrosse player or Scooter Libby.

No Ulterior Motive In "Day Night Day Night"?

2007-06-18T20:36:00.001-04:00

After viewing the trailer on HotAir, I had to look into the writer's motives for this film. There was such a heated discussion given that the resident liberal on the blog was so quick to point a finger at us for being so quick to call the film liberal garbage.

So, for the sake of intellectual honesty, here's what the writer/director, Julia Loktev, had to say about the purpose of the film (emphasis mine):

What Makes 'Day Night Day Night' Director Julia Loktev Tick? -- New York Magazine

But her new film was inspired by her dissatisfaction with another sort of biographic narrative: journalistic accounts of female Palestinian and Chechen suicide bombers. “Reporters tended to pathologize them: This girl couldn’t get pregnant. A boyfriend broke up with this girl,” she says. “Well, I know a lot of girls who couldn’t get pregnant who didn’t become suicide bombers. I wanted to subvert these regular expectations in terms of pop psychology.”

Call me crazy, but I always thought the word "subversion" and all it's conjugations in the english language to be part-and-parcel of propaganda.

Git 'em!

2007-06-18T17:56:00.000-04:00

It's about time one of our leaders went after the jackasses on the left. The proverbial emperor has been sauntering around naked for years now and it's high time someone called attention to it.

See, this is why I like Fred!. He doesn't seem to have any of the political crap holding him back that all the other candidates do. He just doesn't seem to care what you think about what he has to say. He believes in it, and he's gonna say it.

Allahpundit will be skeptical of Fred!, right up until the inaugural ball. However, I do understand his affection for Mike!. Yes, since the last republican debate, and his appearance on The Sean Hannity Show, Gov. Huckabee has made quite the impression on me.

The two things both candidates have in common? A willingness to be candid. That's what I'm looking for in a President. I want a man who will call it like he sees it. There comes a time when you just have to tell them to, "turn off the spanish television" because it's the right thing to do--politics be damned!

Oh Ye Of Double Faith

2007-06-18T14:14:00.001-04:00

Somehow I get the feeling that the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and The Tooth Fairy are off in the distance snickering at us stupid "realists":

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Episcopalians have first Muslim priest

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

Decisions, Decisions....

2007-06-18T13:12:00.001-04:00

Bush extended his support to Abbas, the President of PLO. It's an important distinction, the difference between Hamas and the PLO. Hamas is Islamic-extremist, or religion-based, while the PLO is sectarian.

So Bush lifted the embargos on the PLO to help them defeat Hamas. His justification for lifting the embargo was that Hamas is now mutually exclusive from the PLO. Here's what the guys at Little Green Footballs think about that:

lgf: US and EU to Grant Windfall to Terrorists

The strategy of arming one group of terrorists to fight another group of terrorists has proven to be a spectacular failure. So what do we do? Pour more money into the pockets of the PLO.

I don't know that I agree. Were I George W. Bush, I would certainly support the PLO through this little war for two reasons:
1. We want sectarian palestinians fighting their religious-extremist counterparts. No matter which side loses, the number of combatants in Palestine are reduced with no damage to our forces.

2. When the smoke clears, Bush has put the U.S. in a position to claim that we gave Palestine our full support. This will make the impending conflict with whatever side comes out of this conflict on top easier because they will find it hard to rally forces against us.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

Biden Illuminates The Comming Struggle

2007-06-18T12:32:00.000-04:00

It seems that Biden has unwittingly underscored the trouble ahead for the U.S.
Bryan from HotAir does an incredible job of laying it all out.

I'm starting to get a little anxious. A lot of what Bryan wrote in that post was news to me. If we have enemies attempting to bog us down in Iraq while maneuvering to our flank, we are in trouble.

Of course, my estimation of our impending doom is based not on our military strength or resources but on our will to perceive and react to a clear and present threat.

What's In A Name?

2007-06-18T11:35:00.001-04:00

To a certain degree, this moron from Newsweek is correct. A strong name helps push an agenda forward.
However, the substance of any agenda is what usually gives rise to its name.

Newsweek Editor Advises Dems on Surrendering While Saving Face | NewsBusters.org

The idea behind pull and strike isn't new, but its predecessor catchphrase—"strategic redeployment"—lacked a certain muscular quality and never caught on.

But "pull and strike" sounds like someone is trying to hide something. When you think of "striking", you think of a forward motion, not the backward motion associated with pulling. So the very name of the suggested policy is a blatant fallacy.

I have a suggested name of my own, in keeping with the idea that the substance of the policy is what crafts its name: F@%K THE POOR!!

Hat-tip to Mel Brooks and History of The World, Part 1 for my idea on policy name.

Men and Women - Still Not Different

2007-06-17T18:28:00.000-04:00

So, some big lib artist wins $29Gs because a NYC cop arrested her for strolling around with her breasts exposed. Apparently, that cop didn't know that men and women are completely symmetrical biologically and that she had every right to stroll through the city bare chested.

I kid you not, the law that supports this in New York upholds the belief that men and women are no different.

All I can say is, I hope I'm not still on this earth when feminists figure out which hole on a man's body God (or Gaea) intended a baby to come out of.

(h/t) Trackback to Pillage Idiot

Don't You Dare Look!!

2007-06-17T17:27:00.001-04:00

Either Huckabee left this out of his answer, or Marie Claire left it out of their publication, but it needs to be said. Here's the quote that got me thinking:
Q & A with Mike Huckabee - Marie Claire

Q: I read that you're against miniskirts.
A: If a person dresses provocatively, they're calling attention -- maybe not the most desirable kind -- to private parts of their body.

Well, absolutely they're calling attention. Women wear miniskirts because walking around naked is against the law. Yet so often men are chided and condemned for looking at their legs, butt, and chest when clearly those parts of the woman's body are being put on display.

Now, whatever motive you ascribe to the wearing of revealing clothing, when something is revealed, people look. Given that men (and lesbians) are attracted to the female body, when they see one, or parts of one they don't see with the same frequency as a woman's face, they will look. But then we are lead to believe that this audience is offensive to the woman whose private parts are on display. And if that's not bad enough, the rest of society follows suit and chimes in to condemn the man who looked. Our society doesn't condemn people for stopping at a stop sign, but we condemn men who look at what can best be described as a look sign.

So maybe Huckabee is just trying to remove the problem instead of getting into the classic fight over what a woman wears and what she intends. Islamist extremists go too far. A burka? Please. I wouldn't want to live in a society where we could not see a woman's legs/arms/hair/face. I may prefer them naked (depending on several factors not appropriate for discussion here). Or I may prefer that no person uses clothing, or lack thereof, as a biological sensory-driven advantage over the opposite sex. Or maybe I could care less about what people choose to wear (I reserve the right to change this opinion when I have a daughter or my younger sister reaches dating age), so long as they don't wear it and condemn others for looking.

If you put it on just because you like how it looks for feels, don't leave the house or just wear something on top of it. Once you expose something to the eyes of others, you have invited any honest response they may have.

Blood Diamond

2007-06-16T15:51:00.001-04:00

Does it make me an imperialist to want to stop mass murder?

Do I care? No.

All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Sound familiar?
When we are done in Iraq, I want boots on the ground in Africa. No more forced enlistment of young boys to a rebel army. No more rape of young women. No more slaughter of entire towns. You want to have a civil or uncivil war, be my guest. Leave the innocents out of it or Uncle Sam will make sure you lose.

The last thing any rebel army needs is the U.S. Marine Corps deploying on their flanks.

Good vs. Evil

2007-06-16T13:51:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald's most recent book, A Tragic Legacy, makes the case that the legacy of George W. Bush is tragic due to his use of a "Good vs. Evil mentality". He states very plainly that this idea that we are good and our enemies are evil is a self-destructive one, that nothing is so simple.

From the About section of the above-linked page:

But once the war became murkier—its target unclear, its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white—support for Bush and his policies dropped precipitously. Glenn Greenwald brilliantly reveals the reasons behind the collapse of Bush’s power and approval, and argues that his greatest weakness is the same rhetoric that once propelled him so far forward. Facing issues that could not be turned into simple good versus evil choices—the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, his plans for Social Security “reform,” and, most ironic, the failed Dubai ports deal—Bush faltered and fell. Now, Greenwald argues, Bush is trapped by his own choices, unable to break out of the mold that once served him so well, and indifferent to the consequences.

I think we can all agree that black-and-white mentality is no good, most of the time. But there comes a time, such as Sept. 11, 2001, when good vs. evil is the only mentality. But that's not really the issue here. Pay close attention the quote above, particularly the first sentence: "But once the war became murkier--its target unclear, its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white--support for Bush and his policies dropped precipitously." A casual reader may take that opening line for granted and nod their head in approval. It certainly seems correct. But there are details missing. It is indeed true that Bush saw and still sees things as black-and-white. It is also true that the war became murkier and that the target has not been anywhere near "clear". And certainly no one would argue that Bush's approval ratings have not dropped precipitously. But one thing about that opening line sticks in my craw. When the writer of the About section wrote, "its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white", did he betray a deeper truth about the tragedy that is the Bush administration? I think so.

Without going into all the political hot-topics surrounding terrorism and terrorist states, there are a few things about this wars "combatants" that are indeed black-and-white:

They are followers of Islam.
They have committed, or plan to commit, acts of violence against their own people or western nations.
They use no military uniforms yet carry all the weapons of the military trade.

Perhaps it's easier to put it this way (a way I'm sure Bush himself has put it himself): The enemy is the guy shooting at you. Simple, effective, without need for discussion. The only murky thing about our enemies is who may be planning an attack. The bad guys may have on uniforms on the battle field, but the AK-47 or RPG they're holding certainly betrays their intentions.

Now that we've made it clear that the assertion, "its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white", is most certainly false, let's take a look at the truth it betrays about both the author of the About page and his perceived audience. One simple question unlocks the hidden meaning in such a statement: Why would he lie? Why lie about the identities or scope of your targets in a war? I can think of two reasons:

You want the war effort to fail.
You want the commanders of the war effort to fail.

Here is where I think Bush really did himself no favors. He kept us safe. This allowed a certain degree of comfort and denial in America that gave his critics the perfect opportunity to flirt with disaster by undermining the war effort. Think about it. You oppose Bush, for whatever reason, and he's enjoying large-scale support from the public due to his winning fight against evil. You realize that the fight is going so well against the enemy that you can get away with using them against Bush. The very good-vs-evil ideal that makes your blood boil also has won enough safety margin for you to side with the enemy against your political opponents. What better way to make Mr. Good-vs-Evil look like a stooge and a fool than to portrait the mortal enemies of your own country as victims of his overzealous crusade? Sound ridiculous? The first radio broadcast of War of the Worlds causing people to panic sounds ridiculous too, but it happened.

So which is it? Are our enemies really a threat to us or not? Has Bush kept us safe or has he plundered for oil? The truth is somewhere in between. One sad thing though, and the reason I wrote this, is that we have not had another successful terrorist attack on our soil since 2001. And yet they still tear him down. THAT is all the American public should need to know about Bush and THAT is what his legacy is and will forever be in my mind. And that is the true tragedy of the Bush legacy.

Sometimes evil just is. And when that happens, you need to think simple in order to survive.

What Now President Carter?

2007-06-14T21:00:00.001-04:00

You won't see this reported in the L.A. Times or New York Times or The Washington Post.

Here's why: Jimmy Carter gave this quote in response to Hamas winning elections over the rival Fatah faction:

Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group's militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

Now we have this:

Hamas Overruns Fatah Security Command

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot to death in the street outside Preventive Security. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed in front of their wives and children.

I'm not exactly a fan of Fatah, or any Islamic militant group for that matter. But when one group systematically executes the surrendered fighters of another in front of their wives and children, it's more than I can bear.

I often argue with my wife over my obvious disdain for liberals. She can't see why I get so upset when liberals push for appeasement and "peace" in the face of an enemy that is determined to kill. Well this is why. Jimmy Carter gave Hamas his Nobel-prize-supported seal of approval and now wives and children have to witness the slaughter of their husbands and fathers. I can think of no more horrific or inhumane outcome.

We should have done something.

Sicko, Indeed

2007-06-14T13:15:00.000-04:00

There are few things that will make a conservative spit coffee across a room the way I did this morning. One such thing would be hearing your conservative wife say, "I want to go see Michael Moore's new movie, 'Sicko'." The coffee didn't just spatter the wall and floor, it came out of my nose and almost my ears too.

I rib my wife for watching such shows as Nightline, Oprah, the evening news, but I know that she is, for the most part, impervious to the liberal slant she sees. So this morning's declaration from her came as quite a shock. I feared the worst. I imagined that all that liberal propaganda had finally overcome her. And my reaction was commensurate with the obvious realization of that fear:

"WHAT!?!?"

Betrayed. I felt betrayed. Those dirty lefties had taken my wife's mind from her and from now on I'll be living with a closet lib. That's how I felt. Luckily, the way we humans feel does not always resemble the reality that brought about the feelings in the first place. Feelings aren't facts.

So after a very heated and contentious discussion, it turns out that I was the small-minded one. Her reasons for wanting to see that film are completely normal and in no way translate into any perceived affection for a liberal point of view. She agrees with me that Cuba and their socialist medicine are clearly NOT the answer and that Moore's film is nothing short of a political stunt. But our health system is clearly broken and Moore's film is currently the only work in our society that addresses that in any way.

Once we understood each other on the larger issues of Moore being a jerk and socialist medicine being worse than free-market medicine, we argued the solution of our country's broken medical establishment. Here's a breakdown of what we agree on:

The system as it is cannot continue. It must face change.
The change will be incremental.
Insurance companies and their coverage are the largest symptom.
Government beaurocracy must never be a part of healthcare.
Legislation must play some part in the needed change.

And here is where we differ:

Method of enabling more health coverage.
Degree of trust in corporate entities to do right by patients.

We agree that healthcare is broken because not enough people can get it in a reliable way. Most of my wife's qualms with the system stems from getting treatment for our oldest son's medical condition. He has a touch of autism. It's commonly refered to as Asburger's Syndrome. This disease requires regular cognitive testing to determine what progress we have made in arresting the symptoms of the disease. Anyone who has ever needed any kind of cognitive testing or treatment knows two painful things about it:
1. It is expensive.
2. Insurance companies regularly do not cover it.
Now, my wife has been in medical establishments with other parents whose children have needed cognitive testing or treatment. A few of those parents were extremely poor, to the point that they could not even afford being put up in the Ronald McDonald House. But medicaid had the treatment for their child covered in full. That, in my wife's mind, was the kicker.

Despite my attempts to show my wife that medicaid is no panacea (I work with medicaid information systems for a living), she could not get past the idea that an almost homeless child gets better coverage than her own--under the government. I can't blame her. So I think that this component of her experience with private insurance has colored her beliefs about how salvageable it is as an institution.

My wife is so angry about the repeated denials of claims by private insurance that she doesn't see any way that a company beholden to stock holders can ever be entrusted with the care and well being of a person. The litmus test here is our oldest son. She needs to feel like she can trust whomever is responsible for his care. The easiest way to do that is by making all insurance non-profit organizations. Remove the shareholders and you remove the profit-motive that caused all the claim denials in the first place.

To some extent, I agree with her. There must be a way to make the well being of subscribers and the company's bottom line reasonably exclusive. Clearly any for-profit organization must make profits. Nothing is free in this country, not even freedom. We are a capitalist democratic republic. The free market is what were built on and it's what works best for us today. If we were to look at the healthcare system as a closed circuit of some type, like a boiler system, it's easy to see where the problem lies and how to solve it: pressure. Nothing is truly created or destroyed in a closed system. Balance is simply shifted from one side to another. In that sense, perhaps we don't have to recreate the healthcare system or the model for insurance companies. Perhaps what we need to do is alleviate pressure and restore balance. Which brings me to my solution to healthcare in America: tort reform.

Have you ever read the book A Fly Went By? It's a children's story about a boy sitting by a lake who sees a fly go zinging by him, a frog after the fly, a cat after the frog, a dog after the cat, and on and on, each one running from the one behind it until he finds out the entire mass exodus was caused by a poor little lamb with a bucket stuck on it's hoof. I see tort reform and healthcare as the same scenario. It goes like this:

Person gets healthcare
Lawyer says "They didn't treat you right, I can get you money"
Judge/Jury sides with patient
Wash/Rinse/Repeat until malpractice insurers start settling out of court as a matter of policy.
Malpractice premiums go up (oh, and even if a doctor is no longer in practice, he still needs to carry malpractice insurance for life).
Doctor has to raise his fees for service in order to make the practice of medicine worth while.
Consumer health insurers are forced to pay higher prices for medical services.
Health insurance debits vastly outnumber their credits.
Insurers begin dropping coverage for specific services to save money.
Insurers employ detestable strategy of denying claims outright to forestall payment.

Now, which part of that scenario do you think would be the best place to begin reform? Keep in mind that the numbered list is chronological. Yes, it's oversimplified, but it's exactly what has transpired.

The bottom line here is that the more expensive and prohibitive our civil justice system makes it for doctors to practice medicine, the more expensive healthcare will be. The easiest place to trim fat in the system is in tort reform, specifically in the arena of frivolous law suits. If you make it less likely that a malpractice insurer will have to budget for out-of-court settlements every fiscal year, I guarantee you will see health costs come down and insurance coverage go up.

Where the turd meets the punch bowl

2007-06-13T01:09:00.001-04:00

The following quote is the latest diatribe of the left against those who do not buy into the latest amnesty bill:

How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly? - By Steven E. Landsburg - Slate Magazine

Bottom line: When the immigrant crosses the border, Americans lose $3, and the immigrant gains $7. To oppose that, you'd have to count an immigrant as less than three-sevenths of an American.

But wait! It's worse than that. The $7 gain went to a $2-an-hour immigrant. The $3 loss came from $10-an-hour Americans. And we usually think of a dollar as more valuable in the hands of the desperately poor. The most conservative standard assumption is that the value of an extra dollar is inversely proportional to your income, so an extra dollar is worth five times as much to a $2-an-hour Mexican as it is to a $10-an-hour American. The immigrant's second dollar is worth a little less, and the third a little less than that.

Accounting for all that, it turns out that the immigrant's $7 gain is worth about five times the American's $3 loss. In other words, to justify keeping the immigrant out, you'd have to say he's worth less than one-fifth of an American citizen.

By contrast, there was a time when the U.S. Constitution counted a black slave as three-fifths of a full-fledged citizen. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has recently apologized for the ravages of slavery. How long till politicians apologize for the ravages of our restrictive immigration policies?

This quote is noteworthy for two reasons:

The outrageous and classical nature of the race-bating involved.
An excellent example of Reductio ad absurdum.

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile, or proof by contradiction, is a type of logical argument
where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd
or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption
must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result.

The combination of the two are a perfect example of modern leftist rhetoric.  This writer gets bonus points for finding a way to bring slavery, and the racial hatred and bias it brings with it, into the discussion.

U.S. Accuses Iran of Arming Taliban

2007-06-12T14:24:00.001-04:00

Trouble is on its way folks....

Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official

With No Due Respect

2007-06-12T14:02:00.000-04:00

Finally somebody says exactly what we're all thinking:

Reductio ad Dubya

2007-06-12T11:36:00.000-04:00

Reductio ad Dubya: whimsical Latin for "reduction to Bush", in the same tradition as Reductio ad Hitlerum. The reductio ad Dubya fallacy is of the form "President Bush (or the Republican Party) supported X; therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad, etc"; or, more rarely, "President Bush was against X; therefore X must be good, desirable, praiseworthy, etc." This fallacy is often effective due to the near-instant condemnation by liberals of anything to do with Bush or Conservatives.

Reductio ad Dubya came about through constant vilification of President Bush by the left. The vilification was so extreme in fact that new terms were coined to encapsulate the left's hate and contempt for him: BushCo, The Chimperor, and the most revealing Bushitler. I think that last term tells most of the story. "Bushitler" is the perfect melding of the names Bush and Hitler.

Now, Godwin's Law says that a comparison of Bush, or any other politician, to Hitler was inevitable. However, it's the degree to which he has been compared to Hitler that's so profound. And once again, being true to Godwin's Law, the left do not make comparisons between conservatives and nazis, Bush and Hitler, because one group has done the things the other was guilty of. No, this is purely a way of stifling reasonable discussion of today's most consequential issues. I mean, let's face it, if you can't vote someone out of office, what better way to marginalize their impact on society than mounting a national campaign comparing the person to the worst fascist dictator and mass-murderer of our time? That's sound logic and strategic planning, right?

Unfortunately for people on the left, what Ronald Reagan said about them during Goldwater's run for President is still true today: "...the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." With a lack of real substantive counter points in an argument, we can always expect liberals to answer any of our facts with ad hominems and reductio ad absurdum. They offer hysteria and rage to our fact, to the point that Bush/Conservatives and anything they are associated with are demonized. Which is why I've formally coined the phrase Reductio ad Dubya. If Bush is for it, they are against it. If Bush is against it, well then it must be God's gift to mankind.

So perhaps it's time for a little intellectual dishonesty of our own? Perhaps it's time to employ rope-a-dope as one of our strategies. If Bush is for something like, say, illegal immigration, it won't be long before the left is against it. After all, if Bushitler wants to make illegals legal, I'm sure someone can urge the ACLU to look into why this may be a violation of the civil rights of the good citizens of San Fransisco.

CNN Won't Tell You This

2007-06-10T13:16:00.001-04:00

Pat Dollard | Young Americans » USS Enterprise Heads To Iran…

The Enterprise makes three. Three carriers and three strike groups, total.

This finalizes the first phase of military escalation against Iran that VP Cheney promised to the Gulf States.

The message we sent to Iran in Baghdad was signigicant only to people who don’t know better, like the media and dumb politicians. The real message is in the weapons of mass destruction, the instruments of the apocalypse of Iran’s nuclear facilities and infrastructure, that we have strung like a Damocles sword above their heads. Bush has made it quietly clear to them that we are going to strike. Forget Condi’s for-the-press face today. For many months now, while no one has been able to really see and understand, we have been waging a war of finality against Iran and her ambitions. While everyone in the media, and on the media’s receiving end, have been wringing their hands in anquish at our seeming impotence and inaction, the VP has been functioning as a nearly one man army/terrorist wreaking havoc through the halls of power in Tehran. Why do you think he has been taking all those trips through the region? To discuss the latest trends in couscous recipes? He has been shoring up relationships, building strategy, and waging the necessary war against Iran. Why is he about to visit all of Iran’s northern neighbors? Why has Iran been taking Americans captive in a feverish panic? Coincidence? Why is the architect of Iran’s nuclear program, Vladimir Putin, about to head to a private summit with Bush? Why all the posturing about a missile shield? It’s all about Iran, and Putin is working to get all he can as the price for his blessing.

No one is asleep at the wheel. Except the media and the Democrats.

There’s a lot, and I mean A LOT, that’s been going on behind the scenes. An entire war, in fact. More to report shortly…

Principles Over Politics

2007-06-10T13:02:00.001-04:00

I think the reason why many conservatives are so anti-liberal is because liberalism has become synonymous with "unprincipled".

Quite simply, our nation was founded under the idea that reasonable people may disagree, but that discourse would provide a better outcome to any situation. This assumes, of course, that both sides are open to at least listen and contemplate the views of their opponent. So many times over the past 7 years I have seen example after example of the "unhinged left" being unwilling to listen. In fairness, the right has been guilty of this very same crime. We've suddenly found ourselves in a country devoid of "reasonable people". Partisan politics trump the most basic principles of discourse.

So here's why the story below is so heartening to me: a liberal was willing to set aside his own political views and question the objectivity of a Washington Post story. The story most certainly was written to one-up conservatives, and instead of sitting back and laughing at the stupid right-wingers, this self-described "knee-jerk liberal" exposed the bias.

Why does this matter to me? It matters because this guy threw away an easy victory for his team (liberals) because his principles didn't allow room for the way in which the victory was attained. I don't care if this guy is Pro-Choice or Pro-Labor or Pro-Terrorist. I don't care if he's more liberal than Ted Kennedy. The fact that he put principle over politics gives me hope for our country and disarms my rage towards liberals. I respect that immensely. Clearly this man is one of the reasonable people whom, if he wanted to speak, I would grant a captive ear.

Liberal Reader Calls WashPost on Liberal Bias in DDT Story | NewsBusters.org

Liberal Reader Calls WashPost on Liberal Bias in DDT Story

Their Own Filthy Image

2007-06-07T14:12:00.001-04:00

So the Democrats have a new secret weapon: the nutroots (liberal bloggers). It disgusts conservatives and moderates alike, this new power, because it allows liberals to control the agenda of not only the media but also the Congress. God help us if they get a hold of the Supreme Court.

I was one of those conservatives who was frightened and demoralized by this newfound power of the libs. That is, until I read the below quote from Allahpundit:

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Joe Klein hammers “often witless” nutroots “extremists”

But the fact remains, if they do have the clout to make Obama or Hillary bend a knee on war funding, more power to them. They’ve earned it; now they get to remake the party in their own filthy image.

Here's why I'm all for the nutroots having all the control they want over the Democrat party: the "filthy image" in which they are recreating the party will not stand the test of time. In fact, liberal views are at such extreme odds with reality that any party based solely, or even mostly, on their beliefs is nothing more than a house of cards. While it may give conservatives and moderates heartburn to hear liberals crow over the power they wield, we need to suck it up and continue standing on our principles. It won't be long before their own double standards, selfishness, and dishonesty bring the Democrat party tumbling down.

The Worst Temper Tantrum EVAR

2007-06-05T01:29:00.001-04:00

lgf: Moonbats in Vermont

MONTPELIER, Vt. —At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black “US Out of Vt.!” T-shirts are among the hottest sellers.

But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States — peacefully, of course. Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism.

They’ve published a “Green Mountain Manifesto” subtitled “Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union.” They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March, eventually persuading the state Legislature to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.

No Atheists in a Foxhole

2007-04-20T01:58:00.001-04:00

Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen? - News Bloggers

Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.

Atheism is a luxury provided by the many blessings given to man by God over the millenia.

We have little want for food or shelter in America. We have nothing in the way of hardship and trial that our ancestors had. The work of our faithful forefathers has enabled us to become unfaithful. The Bible is full of stories about the very same thing happening to the Jews. They needed, God gave, they praised Him, then they turned their back to him because they no longer needed. This process was repeated again and again and again for centuries, and is still being repeated today.

And I don't believe there is any such things as atheists. What we have are people who wish they could shake this feeling they have that there is a God of some sort who does indeed require they act a certain way. What they don't understand is that He requires we do certain things a certain way because of the intangible laws of the universe He made (even modern science agrees that our minds are too feeble to grasp the inner workings of the universe). It's not a matter of a cosmic megalomaniac playing puppet-master with a bunch of people who should be free to do what they want. It's a matter of The Creator of existence telling us how to move with harmony through this amazing contraption He created that we call life. If the engineer who designed your car emailed you one day to offer secrets he knows about that could help you get longer service from your car, would you take him up on the offer? Of course you would.

Not believing in God is as silly to me as not believing in gravity. No matter what you tell me about gravity, and no matter what "proof" you may have against it's existence, you will always fail to evade it's pull. At least we all can agree that none of us is getting out of life alive, so some day this charade of a debate will be settled once and for all time.

Virginia Tech Shooter: Why were his symptoms of psychosis ignored?

2007-04-19T03:08:00.001-04:00

I posted this to HotAir tonight in response to the question in the title above:

There is a direct relationship between selfishness and awareness of one’s surroundings. If we are so into ourselves, our own lives, we will always miss the warning signs of the Chos around us.
I have always viewed liberals as the ultimate in selfishness. Me, me, me. Now, now, now. Our society has encouraged the idea of “what about me” to a very dangerous point. When I was growing up in the 80’s, we saw the decline of a neighborhood that took care of it’s own. Now, we strive to completely ignore those around us.

I’m not saying that the victims deserved this, not at all. I’m saying that I believe this type of catastrophe to be an unintended consequence of Americans becoming too concerned with themselves. I doubt that most kids on that campus can recall a time when neighbors cared for and sacrificed for one another on pure principle.

I can tell you this: had I been in one of his classes, I would have taken him for treatment either by talking him into it or by just taking him with force. I’ve done this more than once with 3 schizophrenic friends, one of whom drove his truck deliberately into an oncoming semi on the highway.

It also occurs to me that someone may have done just that for Cho at some point and the media has either ignored it or hasn’t heard it yet. We don’t know. My point is that there are very real and grave consequences for turning away from age-old wisdom like “love thy neighbor”. Who among us will sacrifice his comfort for that of his neighbor? What TV shows do you know of that illustrate this? What modern-day role models do we have for this?

I’m sorry, but this catastrophe, as well as all the other school massacres, are what happens when right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. The democrats want to connect this incident with Iraq? Well I want to connect this incident to the democrats.

Liberalism can only end in tragedy.

The Horror

2007-04-16T17:28:00.001-04:00

At least 33 dead in rampage at Va. college - Massacre: Virginia Tech - MSNBC.com

A gunman killed 32 people in two shooting incidents Monday at a college in Virginia in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. The gunman also was killed, and at least 15 other people were injured.

I think we are beyond the point where school shootings, or massacres in public for that matter, are isolated in the scope of the american experience. We are now at the level of pattern.

That's "The Horror" referred to in the title here. This incident is horrifying in it's own right, but when you add it to that of Columbine, the postal shooting in the late 1980's, and all the school and public mass-murders since, it becomes a living nightmare.

Blame video games, rap music, MTV, or any other pop culture manifestation you wish. It won't change the fact that somewhere along the lines we as a people lost the value we place on human life. What madness have we wrought...

UPDATE: It's been said today that these types of madness-driven mass murders have occurred throughout history, that this is nothing new. Perhaps that's true, this kind of horror has shown a regular pattern in every civilization since man first created fighting implements that improved our skill in killing. But I would submit two points that make my initial blog entry above more poignant:

America is the epitome of civilization. We have made progress on every aspect of the human existence in this project we call America. We have broken many patterns of horror and hardship that plagued mankind until the dawn of America: disease, poverty, war. So why is it that we have not only retained this particular horror but increased it's frequency?
America did not see mass murder perpetrated by a single person or a small group (less than 5) on this scale before the late 20th century. Why? It wasn't means. The handgun was invented in the late 19th century, the fully automatic rifle just a few decades or so later. We certainly had the means. Clearly, this incident ratchets up the scale of such acts not only in the body count but also in how close it is to the last occurence of such a massacre. Let me put it this way: if public shootings were birth contractions, we would be very very close to a birth. Going mad enough to kill is not new, but not losing your will to murder after the first or second or fifth victim is. War-hardened soldiers should be immune to carnage, not students.

It is plain that a man seeks to destroy his enemy when he feels threatened. This man set out to destroy a whole building full of people. Nothing was particular about the victims to him except that they needed to die. I can't help but think this guy was angry at the whole campus, and between 7 and 9am today the people in that academic building represented the collective campus in some sort of payback attempt. Think about it, he used two handguns: 9mm, and a .22. This seems very last-minute and very deliberate. Last minute because the two don't match. You'd think if he had two guns they would be of the same kind or caliber. Deliberate because he had thought enough about the massive carnage he intended to inflict to see that he needed more than just a single handgun. Based on all this, the following is clear to me:

He had a grudge against the VT campus, professors and students. He used all the ammo one man can carry. The group was clearly the target here.
Something pushed that grudge over the edge today.
He was not crazy. There was too much planning here (two guns, chains for the doors) for this to be some heat-of-the-moment event (though the slaying of his girlfriend may have been). Also, he committed suicide at the end of it all. If he was psychotic, he would have felt nothing, especially not suicidal feelings.

I'm going to add one more thing. A prediction. I predict that before the investigation and media tragedy-whoring is over it will come out that this guy was enduring some kind of slow anxtie emotional burn. A happy, well-adjusted person doesn't slaughter 32 people and themselves. A psychotic doesn't come all the way from China to study at Virginia Tech. Something happened to this guy, either in China or here that allowed him to watch the spurting blood and listen to the wailing of his classmates, bullet after bullet after bullet. 32 people is a lot of bullets, a lot of blood, and a lot of screams. I suspect that after all the screaming around him had died down, it was the screaming left in his head that made him fire the very last bullet.

UPDATE: It turns out there was something wrong with him that would account for how merciless and cold he was. Mental illness is a serious, dangerous, and sometimes nebulous thing. The more our nation turns a blind eye to the facts of mental illness, the more mass murders we will see committed by the mentally ill. May God have mercy on the shooter.

I admit it, I could accept Obama in '08

2007-04-14T15:38:00.001-04:00

Obama: Rappers Using Same Language As Embattled Radio Host Imus :: WRAL.com

"But just because you can say something doesn't mean you should say something," he said. "And I think that we have not talked enough about the harmful images and messages that are sent." He said as a parent it was a constant struggle to reinforce his two daughters' sense of self-esteem.

Say what you want about how liberal this man is. He is saying something, as a black man and father of two girls, that I have been craving to hear from ANY public official on the left.

Though I am not a democrat or a leftist, I hope with all my heart that Obama wins the primary next year. It is statements like the one above that make him palatable to me. I believe Obama has the kind of fortitude that would end up making many conservatives admire him once he's in office.

If he does not win in '08, I hope that he truly does replace Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as the leader of Black America.

So, does that mean there are no principles anymore? Just situations?

2007-04-12T12:57:00.001-04:00

In a word, yes. But here's a clever way of illustrating it:

NRO: Explaining in the Morning

40% != 40%

2007-04-11T15:54:00.001-04:00

It turns out that 40% is simply not the same as 40% when you are talking Democrat-Controlled Congress approval ratings.

So let me get this straight, 40% is low-low and deserves a "Gulp" when it's the approval rating of a republican president, but 40% means you are "riding high" when it's the approval rating of a democrat-controlled congress?

I'm glad I wasted all that money on math courses in college. They never taught me anything about the partisan shift principle of probabilities and statistics. I sure am glad we have a neutral news media to keep me informed.

CNN’s Miles O’Brien: Democrat-Run Congress 'Riding Pretty High' at 40% | NewsBusters.org

An excerpt of O’Brien’s report, which he read during the 6 and 7 am hours of Tuesday's "American Morning."
M. O'BRIEN: Lawmakers will also take up the thorny issue of federal funding for stem cell research. The Senate likely to approve the idea ,and that sets the stage for another presidential veto. Democrats are marking 100 days of their congressional reign now, and they're riding pretty high. Right now, 40 percent of the nation approves of the job lawmakers are doing, that's up from 25 percent from right before the election last fall. The numbers from Associated Press/IPSOS polls.
Also, an excerpt of Wolf Blitzer with CNN political analyst Bill Schneider on "The Situation Room" on September 19, 2005:
WOLF BLITZER: President Bush's approval rating back to its low–low point of 40% in our brand new poll. And that only tells us part of the story of the President's political troubles. Let's bring in our senior political analyst Bill Schneider. Bill, how do these new numbers compare with past -- other past two-term presidents?
BILL SCHNEIDER: Wolf, let's see. At this point in their second terms, Presidents Clinton, Reagan and Eisenhower were all about 60% job approval. As you just reported, Bush is at 40. That puts him in the company of Lyndon Johnson, after a summer of urban violence and escalation in Vietnam and just above Richard Nixon in the middle of Watergate. Gulp.

Prediction: Gonzales and Attorney-gate back in the news

2007-04-09T15:31:00.001-04:00

Usually when you see one scandal riding atop the latest news cycle get bumped in favor of a newer and more juicy scandal, the first one just dies off. We had almost a month of attorney-gate, wherein Alberto Gonzales, his Justice Department, and of course Bush by extension, were burned in effigy in the media for a scandal that never was. Just as the Dems were about to really stick it to the Bush administration with subpoenas and such, stupid Iran came along and kidnapped some poor helpless British troops.

I'm sure Shumer and Ried and Pelosi and all the rest of the flying monkeys in congress were beside themselves with grief that Iran single-handedly pulled the poles out from under their big tent. The circus would have to wait.

Now, sometimes a scandal of sufficient drama will survive being bumped by a secondary scandal. So we watched and waited. We waited for the next segment of attorney-gate, but instead we got the Damascus Diva, a.k.a. Nancy Pelosi, putting her foot squarely in the steaming pile of terrorist splendor that is Syria. And conservatives looked upon the news headlines in the MSM and we saw that it was good.

But here's where the trouble begins for those of us who thought we had neatly evaded the horror that was attorney-gate. Pelosi apparently screwed up SO BIG that her friends in the MSM have to do SOMETHING to save her. What better way than to reintroduce attorney-gate?

Here's a preview of what's to come: http://newsbusters.org/node/11917

God is on the side of truth...

2007-04-08T00:49:00.001-04:00

I do not find it odd that as soon as a huge global warming propaganda paper is released, the weather suddenly gets colder. This is simply God's way of thumbing His nose at liberals for lying to us about global warming.

Think I'm wrong? Go outside.

Record Cold Sweeps Nation After Release of IPCC’s Global Warming Report | NewsBusters.org

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Fourth Assessment Report Friday presaging doom and gloom as a result of global warming, a cold snap gripped much of the country promising all-time low April temperatures in many cities across the fruited plain.

Anatomy of future Darwin Awards

2007-04-07T00:54:00.001-04:00

ABC News: Dumb Criminals Caught on Tape

One expert said he thought with streaming video, criminals would start broadcasting their capers live on the Internet, which means they might be caught even faster.

Finally

2007-04-06T10:07:00.001-04:00

This is truly a milestone.

Lauer Pelts Pelosi's Foreign Fling: 'A Lot of People Think She Messed Up' | NewsBusters.org

Message to Speaker Pelosi: how do you know when you've put your foot in it? When David Gregory and Matt Lauer respectfully cite VP Cheney's criticism of you.

Word of the day

2007-04-05T23:56:00.001-04:00

Patterico’s Pontifications » ABC NEWS Smears Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with Slanderous News Article

swiftboat (v) - to tell the truth about a Democrat.

Women's Rights < Hate For Bush

2007-04-04T22:13:00.001-04:00

lgf: Syrian Reformists: The Damage from Pelosi's Visit Will Be Felt for Years

Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women’s rights in the Middle East.

Is it just me, and the rest of conservative/republican americans, or has Pelosi just acted in direct defiance of both spirit and letter of Women's Rights dogma? How are we to interpret this?

I consider myself a logical man, so let me attempt to apply some logic to this provocative act by The First Woman Speaker:

Either
a. Pelosi and her constituent's hatred for Bush is so monumental that they are willing to doom a budding women's rights movement in one of the most oppressive regions of the world just to make our President look bad.

b. Pelosi and the rest of the hard left in Washington never really cared for women's rights or initiatives in the first place and were able to toss the hundreds of thousands of oppressed women in the middle east under the buss in an act of petty partisanship.

I'm dead serious about this. Women's rights is not one of my flagship issues. But it is and has been one of hers. So how was she able to toss it aside so easily? Did she even register a conscientious objection to President Assad about covering her head?

This just further proves what many of us have always said about Pelosi: power is her only motivation.

Egg shells

2007-03-31T16:32:00.001-04:00

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Dobson clarifies Thompson remarks

There’s a lesson in this, both for Christian leaders and for bloggers. For Christian leaders, expect your words to be twisted by MSM reporters. Grant them interviews, but have your own tape recorder standing by so that you can publish your remarks in full when your words get twisted. Because they will get twisted — you can count on it.

Here's my question:  why should conservatives be careful?  Wasn't there a time when liberals had to be careful in public?  And how did they turn it around?

I think what conservatives need to do is clear:  deluge the media with the conservative message.  Do it often and in great numbers and it will be the libs who have to be careful once more.

The Silverest Tongue

2007-02-17T23:13:00.001-05:00

Bill Maher Asks John Edwards What No Media Member Will Dare Ask Hillary Clinton | NewsBusters.org

Alright, let me ask you about your vote in 2002, the vote to authorize George Bush to at least have the authority to go to war. Uh, your response to that was to write an editorial which began with the words “I was wrong,” words you don’t usually hear from a politician.. Uh, Hillary Clinton says, “I was misled.” So, what’s the difference between “I was wrong” and “I was misled?”

Edwards:

Uh, “I was wrong” means – I’m only speaking for me – means that I take responsibility for making a serious mistake on a vote that was probably the most important vote I cast in the United States Senate. Uh, I think we desperately need, uh, leaders in this country who will admit when they were wrong. We’re all human. All of us make mistakes. Admit when we’re wrong, change course, take responsibility, uh, for being wrong. I don’t think you can have, uh, the foundation for leadership, the moral foundation for leadership, if you don’t start by telling the truth. And, at least for me, this is the truth.

Say what you will about the morality of this man and his campaign. It's just good to see one of these liberals saying something us conservatives can agree with.

Sadly, his recent debacle with hiring extreme-left, vulgar bloggers removes any ability for me to believe the words coming out of his mouth. I realize it's cynical of me to say this about him but he has proven himself an opportunist in the past and is clearly a hypocrite.

I will buy his sense of duty to morality when he either stops saying he's for the poor and working people or sells his gigantic home. A socialist has no right to so much personal wealth.

Start talking free market, capitalism, limited government and you can keep the millions.

No Conservative Horse In The Race

2007-02-09T20:12:00.000-05:00

From my last post on MarkLevinFan:

I have no doubt that there is an uncompromising conservative out there who can stand up to the libs and lead us to victory. Since he is human there are factors that are keeping him out of the race. Maybe he needs to be fed up. Maybe he needs to be hit on the head somehow. Maybe a current politician needs to lose a loved one in the next terror attack. We never know how or why the Churchills and Reagans and Jefferson's get that itch, we just thank God when they do.

Until such a person gets the itch, WE are the ones with the duty to never give up, never surrender. Accepting the Rudy's and McCains and global warming and abortion and big government and imigration IS surrender and is NOT conservative.

Conservatives are patient because we KNOW we are right. We KNOW that time will vindicate our publicly detested views and opinions. Don't lose the courage of your conviction just because Pelosi sits in 3rd place. Don't lose hope because Bush wants America to be 1/2 mexican.

Now is the time for us to show the libs, and those who would be conservatives and true patriots, what it is to be an american. We fight for the principle, not the outcome, that's why we are great.

The first sentence says it all

2007-02-09T18:56:00.001-05:00

lgf: The Moonbat Monologues

Friends who know me weren’t surprised to learn that my Zionist boyfriend and I broke up last summer shortly after Israel began dropping bombs on Lebanese children.

-Linda Quiquivix

Huh? Our university-educated youth use the word zionist? I thought that only came out of the mouth of dictators, terrorists, and other america haters. Wait, what's that Linda?

The American flag is like kryptonite to me. I refuse to wave it, and much less salute it.

Gotcha. America hater it is! BTW Linda, feel free to enjoy all the government services that are bought and paid for by those who salute your "kryptonite". And please feel free to prove yourself an idiot, our troops will continue to die in support of that right no matter how you choose to squander it.

An effective leader will know the top AND bottom

2007-02-09T13:10:00.001-05:00

This quote by Karl Rove makes me sick:

"I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

I have picked tomatoes, and made beds. I have worked a jackhammer and poured concrete with some of El Salvador's finest. I have done complete tear-off and removal of townhouse roofs. I have been a lifeguard at an indoor pool.

I have also lived with a millionaire, as his step son. I have lived with an old farmer on a farm in West Virginia. I have lived in a rented upstairs apartment in an old house under interstate 95 in Arbutus Maryland. Today I live in a single family home in Stewartstown PA. I own my house and have paid off all my college debt.

The Corner on National Review Online

It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

There is simply NO REASON why an illegal immigrant should be treated like a legal one. More to the point, the laziness of our children is hardly an acceptable excuse for amnesty of illegals.

Let's remember this quote when Rove Jr. gets into politics. I mean, as lazy as Daddy is allowing him to be, how can he do anything but live off of who and what his father is? Let's remember that Rove Jr. never had to learn first-hand what it's like to be at the bottom.

Aside from making just a pompous and tactically stupid statement, thank you Karl for giving the libs another reason to vilify you, and by association, all conservatives.

I was wrong about him

2007-02-09T10:46:00.001-05:00

Read the piece below written by Michelle Malkin on how Terry Moran and his brother conduct themselves professionally with respect to family:

Michelle Malkin: Putting family above politics

ABC's Terry Moran has taken heat from conservatives in the past. Now, he's getting flak from left-wing critics for questioning the wisdom of John Edwards' blogging staff. Those critics have also been attacking his blogging brother, Rick (hat tip: Greg Tinti). What's so admirable and deeply moving to me is the way these two brothers, who have very different political views, defend each other unequivocally despite their differences.

No matter what Terry may say on Nightline, I have nothing but the deepest respect for his being true to his beliefs in family, perhaps to the detriment of his image on the left.

The Troops ARE The Mission

2007-02-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

I would like to have seen what could have been accomplished had the whole damn thing not been so politicized. I've read more than one summary of the failings of the U.S. in Vietnam and all of them seem to say that politicians have no place in a war.

In my view, a civilian-controlled military is not on in which civilians decide how to wage war. A civilian-controlled military is one in which civilians decide WHEN to wage war.

War is Hell. It always has been and always will be. But like mothers with multiple children we always seem to forget the pains of the past. We somehow commit ourselves to a war and then when we remember that war is horrible we try to stipulate our way out of it.

Once the train of war has left the station you have only one type of concern: tactical. The politics should have ended when the train left the station. The minute our troops stepped foot on Iraqi soil the issue became a tactical one. Why you ask? Because public opinion doesn't kill enemies, bullets do. You can poll 'till you're blue in the face and that won't armor a humvee. You can rally and protest and hole hearings and give speech after speech, but that won't round up illegally sold RPG's and AK-47s.

And given the current bullshit state of the mass media, I cannot honestly throw my weight behind ANY decision other than supporting our troops AND their mission. If the commander and chief tells them to pull out, I say pull out. If he tells them to fight on, I say fight on.

I can completely separate the motives and reasons behind the decision for war and the war itself and hold the politicians who crafted the motives and reasons accountable. I can keep the purpose of a mission separate from the mission itself and I will openly debate the purpose. But I absolutely REFUSE to separate the troops from the war and I REFUSE to separate the troops from the mission. I will not take the chance, based upon my own ideas of moral and intellectual superiority, that condemning a situation may get the people in that situation killed. Either those troops believe in their mission or they are trying like Hell to believe in it. I will not ask them to suck down hot lead and the daily deaths of their brothers while believing they are involved in a charade. If they need to believe in Santa Claus to get through Iraq, or any other battle field, so be it.

Criticizing tactical responses to battlefield problems is not without precedent. But the degree to which we are seeing it now is outrageous and cowardly. I think everyone needs to see the speech given by Senator Lieberman on the senate floor this week. He states very clearly what I feel on this subject: "We cannot have it both ways." Either vote to stop funding the effort and bring them home, or shut the Hell up. All this talk just gives people headaches and causes further division in the american public (which may be the point after all).

The shortest distance between two points = diapers

2007-02-08T00:05:00.001-05:00

Perhaps if Lisa Nowak were an android it would make more sense to us that she put on NASA-issued adult diapers when embarking on her now infamous road trip. But to the engineers of the world, what she did makes perfect sense. I'm a software engineer and have suffered many a social embarrassment at the hands of my obsession with efficiency. So I guess this story is so hot because people don't understand engineers.

Or maybe it's just because potty words are still funny to most adults when used in an odd context. If you think I'm way off base, ask yourself this simple question: can you pass the fart-in-church test?

Either way, I know I couldn't keep a straight face when reading headlines like The Preparations Went Way Beyond Diapers. How about you?

FOXNews.com - GRRR! Should We All Wear Diapers? - Entertainment News | Mike Straka

Reality does not require your belief in its existence

2007-02-07T21:25:00.001-05:00

Like I have always said, liberal schemes will fall apart when they come into contact with reality.

It seems the European Union's dependence on a viable economy is still more powerful than their desire to save the world from CO2 emissions.

Capitalism, reality interfere with Climate Change scare | Redstate

It is refreshing to see that even in quasi-socialist Europe, reality can get in the way of the planners' schemes. Now let's put that IPCC report on the heap where it belongs; it already seems to be headed for the back burner.

It is refreshing indeed.

We are what we search

2007-02-07T14:43:00.001-05:00

Take a moment to visit the site linked below.

trovando -

This site is basically a search term collector. It shows the top 30 keywords used in google searches. I don't know details such as:

How often it refreshes the list
If the list is just based on american googlers
etc...

What strikes me, however, is how pathetically shallow the top 10 search terms are in terms of what they say about the person doing the searching:

paris hilton
britney spears
myspace
game cheats for ps2
google
ebay
playstation2 game cheats
yahoo
myspace.com
music lyrics

You don't get to a search that doesn't involve pop-culture until 15. mapquest. Even then, you don't get to a search with any political or societal importance until 18. jessica cutler, which is more sexcapade than informative.

As I went through the rest of the list, depressed by the substance of what my fellow humans were most interested in, I kept saying, "real topic, real topic, C'MOOOOOON real topic!". Luckily, the search term "gerald ford" anchors the top 20 at number 20.

I suppose it could have been worse. Number 20 could have been "hillary clinton".

The Form of The Traveler Has Been Chosen!

2007-02-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

This picture is comedy gold:

It's possible that this picture was taken during a rainy or otherwise wet day and her emotions co-processor was shorted out.

But seriously, read the blog I link to below from Hot Air. If we allow the media to tell us who is going to win in '08, we should go buy some depends and shack up at the local geriatric care facility, 'cause we are done living for ourselves.

Here's a rule of thumb: if you cannot, or are unwilling, to wipe my backside for me, then you are not eligible to tell me how it's going to be.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Heart-ache: GOP insiders say Hillary presidency is (almost) inevitable

Meh...

2007-02-06T22:16:00.001-05:00

I have known a famous person or two. They are so self-important that it becomes almost impossible for them to see how they sound.

And I doubt that Charlize meant any of what she said. I doubt that she calculates much of anything, let alone what comes out of her mouth. How many of these self-proclaimed heroes actually have to accept any consequence when they open their mouth? How many of them can tell when shooting a scene ends and real life begins?

The sad answer is none. And here's why it doesn't matter: nobody feels threatened by a clown (aside from those with a phobia or unnatural fear of clowns). More importantly, nobody cares what a clown thinks of them or the things they care about. Charlize, Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, and countless others are actors. Like most humans, they define their very being by what they do for a living. And what do they do? They entertain. Some are dramatic, some jest, but all are little more than objects for our amusement.

While I do believe that they, as well as sports starts, have a responsibility to mind the messages they send, I'm certainly not going to waste energy getting angry at clowns who pretend to be more than a fringe benefit produced by a free and prosperous society.

Say whatever you wish Charlize. I will still find you breathtaking to watch, even with the sound turned down.

Charlize Theron: Stupid Actress Or Communist Apologist? - Say Anything

To my countrymen in Democrat districts

2007-02-06T20:35:00.001-05:00

Please purchase this DVD and mail it to your congressman and/or senator.
I have a feeling that much of their current debate on Iraq involves things that they know nothing about. This DVD could be quite educational to them.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Outside the Wire

Outside the Wire

Antiwar Lieutenant

2007-02-06T17:17:00.001-05:00

Clearly a man without integrity, this Lieutenant Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq with his unit and will now pay the price.

I don't care how you feel about war. When you join the military, you ARE war. More important, when you sign a contract, you had better live up to it. This man pooched on both.

It's not surprising that this is happening. There have always been deserters. Men have always gone AWOL from the service. What really chaps my hams is that the media, and all the mouth-breathing liberals in the country are heralding him as some kind of hero or martyr.

Nothing sums it up better than the below quote:

Men Without Chests | Redstate

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

Update: So now this chooch goes and brings into the trial things that he signed a statement stipulating he wouldn't and gets himself a mistrial. He just won himself a month wait in the brig.

Resolution of Irresolution

2007-02-06T13:49:00.001-05:00

Senator Lieberman, former democrat senator turned independent, spoke this week about why he opposed the vote for cloture on this well-known non-binding resolution of no confidence in the president's surge plan for Iraq. What he said gives me great hope that we may yet be able to return to some sort of principle and integrity in congress.

Here are some quotes from his speech:

"..have the courage of your convictions, to accept the consequences of your convictions."

"We cannot have it both ways."

"This is what happens when you try to wage war by committee."

At the end of that third quote, Senator Lieberman goes on to say that there is a reason why the Constitution reserves the power of waging war for the office of the executive. Clearly not a popular thing for any non-republican to say.

He calls the resolution a "resolution of irresolution" more than once. And instead of turning his attention to why democrats are pushing this resolution, which would be tactically stupid, not to mention childish, he points to the many way in which such a resolution would be unhealthy for not only the troops but for America as a whole.

I'm not from the state he represents in the Senate, but today he surely represents me. I'm tired of all the cat fighting and media crap surrounding partisanship and feel that America, and our troops, deserve better. I breathe a deep sigh of relief at the site of a well-known Senator who caucuses with the democrats calling for a realistic and high-minded approach to dealing with the war in Iraq. It's been a long time since anyone has said, "Say what you mean, and do what you say."

Thank you Senator Lieberman.

Be careful what you wish for...

2007-02-06T12:35:00.001-05:00

Though I completely agree that Reid and democrats like him are gutless opportunistic elitists who will do or say anything to be en vogue, I think it's wrong to use their own short-sighted tactics against them.

Reid: A Debate Means I Get to Win | Redstate

If Reid truly thought the war was wrong, he should be pushing to cut off funding for operations in Iraq.

We need to be careful when calling the cut-off-funding bluff. They did it in Viet Nam and the state-side parallels are getting too close to that era for me to stomach as it is. The more this "debate" about the Iraq War becomes a pissing match, the more people will get pissed on.

Perhaps it's better in some situations to hold our tongue. After all, it's better to be pissed off than pissed on.

Couric at it again

2007-02-05T21:55:00.001-05:00

Apparently it's not enough that we are at war. It's not enough that we have countrymen dying daily, that families are being torn apart. No, we have to rub our opposition's nose in it. This is disgusting to me.

Katie Couric Highlights 4th Anniversary of Powell's 'Embarrassment' at the UN | NewsBusters.org

Of course, at the time nearly everyone believed what Powell believed, as evidenced by former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay who told CBS News Pentagon reporter David Martin that he was impressed with Powell's presentation. Martin moved on to other misguided assumptions, asserting “the intelligence about Iraq was not all wrong. On the eve of the invasion, CIA analysts, including Paul Pillar, warned the aftermath could get ugly." Martin also, however, pointed out that “bad intelligence about WMD started the war, but it can't be blamed for all that has happened since." Former CIA analyst John Brennan explained: “We would still have the same bloodshed, instability and destruction even if we did uncover those treasure troves of purported weapons.” So, the fourth anniversary of Powell's presentation about WMDs really isn't relevant to the current situation, but that didn't deter CBS from bringing it up.

What purpose can a newscast such as this one serve? I think it's obvious at this point that both CBS and Couric are biased to the left. But given that, what can this type of "journalism" be in support of? What is there to gain by reporting on this kind of thing in this kind of way? Having already skewed the public's opinion and won a majority for democrats in congress, what big white wale could Katie be after?

Here's a few musings on her target:

This is a nose-thumbing of Katie at her Republican/Conservative colleagues or friends.
This is part of a larger overall campaign that the liberal media is engaged in for skewing more public opinion in '08.
It is simply a sad fact that juvenile, unprofessional name calling and spiteful rhetoric is the new black in mainstream journalism.

If I am wrong about any of this, then why the need to proclaim "embarassment" for the Bush administration? Who is Katie Couric, or CBS for that matter, to tell us how any group of people other than themselves are feeling? It would be different if President Bush himself gave CBS a soundbite for this newscast wherein he confesses embarassment at being wrong about WMD 4 years ago. But I think it would be more realistic to find our Commander In Chief more concerned with the lives of our service men and women in Iraq tonight than with his pride.

Before we get started, let me clarify something....

2007-02-05T18:59:00.001-05:00

The public face of our society needs to grow up. This includes anyone you could consider to be exposed to the public in a deliberate manner. Aside from the obvious (politicians, tv networks, news outlets) I'm talking about bloggers and blog commenters. I'm talking about corporations and consumers. I'm talking about anyone with any chance of saying something to more than one person at once.

As the subtitle of this blog suggests, I will defend with my life your right to make an ass of yourself. It's one of the most important principles my father has passed on to me. It's important not because of the probability of my making an ass out of myself some day but because of the certainty that I will make an ass out of myself some day. The marriage of passion and reason in our species guarantees that we will get it wrong more often than we get it right. The principle of allowing others to be who and what they are, in speech at least, allows us all the ability to revise our positions with the least interference from our emotions.

So it is because of a logical evaluation of the principle of free speech that I support it. I am keenly aware of the ways in which it will torment me to watch my enemies practice it but am comforted by the knowledge that the principle is sound and worth suffering through the less comfortable uses of it.

But to continue on with my indictment of all the collective voices in our world today...... This is me voicing my opinion. It makes me sick the way that so many people abuse this right of open discourse. The O'Reilly's and Olberman's of the world make me sick. The extremes of both the right and the left, the media whores and attention whores who proclaim from the top of the airwaves that their cause is just and their embarrassing diatribes are for the good of their cause, are doing nothing more than selling toothpaste for their sponsors. They fill our eyes and ears with the digital equivalent of meat-filler and their pockets with money.

The media and our politicians would have us believe that the robber barons of the 21st century are the Exxon-Mobile's and Enrons of the world--but that's crap. The real robber barons are the MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Posts of the world. The shear scope and reach of their media organizations alone afford them the ability to create self-fulfilling prophecies wherein the tail wags the dog and the american people become unwitting extras in a dark comedy that USED to be the greatest nation on earth.

And what do the blogs and blog-readers have to do with this? They not only suck up all this processed and choreographed information, they echo it with umph. Each blogger, each commenter, ends up acting as an amplifier in a network of spin.

The entertainment value is obviously sky-high. Networks keep making more and more money (Google "superbowl advertisement cost"). "Reality" is all the rage. Reality has somehow become more interesting when on TV. Media organizations have found a way to craft reality itself. In fact, the media have even managed to create the first-ever 2-year presidential campaign (Google "exploratory committee" to see what I mean). But as in any closed ecosystem, nothing is truly created or destroyed. If wealth is materializing for the media, it must be dematerializing from somewhere else. But from where? Look around. It's not hidden very well.