Davo Grande

we have ice!

2008-06-20T18:43:00.001-07:00

Not a big deal, you say?

Well, what if it was on MARS?

Me, I'm suspicious. I have just one question, unanswered by this article--

What is the daily range of temperatures where the lander is?

The so-called ice was only an inch or so beneath the surface dust. If it was ice, then the area must be below 32* F and VERY dry and hot in the daytime, especially if the consensus is the ice vaporized directly instead of going liquid first.

So is this an area that goes from frozen to smoking every day? But if it's smoking hot and dry during the daytime, why is the ice still partially there in the second photo? Ice doesn't vaporize SLOWLY, does it? If the transition is slow, wouldn't there be liquid?

For me, that stuff could have been dust that blew away. Without actual video to show the process and the time involved, it's speculation.

Scientists are determined to find ice on Mars, because they're determined to find LIFE on Mars, past or present.

Life on another planet would go a long way to proving the Darwinian theory that all begins randomly, and would go an equally long way to proving Bible believers are idiots.

AP dissembles and deceives for the gazillionth time

2008-06-20T15:21:00.001-07:00

Since I expect to hear from their lawyers if I do, I have decided not to do it.

I won't be cutting and pasting anything from this story. The Associated Press has served notice that it will harass bloggers until they stop, citing 'fair use' and pretending the bloggers are somehow stealing their 'product' to make money.

Most bloggers don't make any money, and the ones who do are not the ones who are using AP material. They are writing their own, very well, and that is WHY they are making money.

The AP, though, is desperate to 'protect its content' from the 21st century. So no cut-n-pastes.

I can link to Yahoo News, though, and so here it is. It's a story about Scott McClellan's appearance on Capitol Hill today to hawk his book some more - er, to testify before the house judiciary committee and tell them everything he doesn't actually know about the White House's activities.

His most shocking charge? The White House was 'secretive'.

He's just whining that he didn't get on the A list most of the time.

The AP's contribution to the sleaze, though, is their deliberate misrepresentation of the Libby case. McClellan complains that the White House told him to say to the public that Scooter Libby was not involved in the Plame affair. The story then points out the both Rove and Libby had in fact discussed Plame with reporters.

But we know, and the story even MENTIONS a few lines later, that it was Richard Armitage who 'leaked' the fact that Plame was in the CIA, and those reporters were actually asking Rove and Libby if THEY had heard that she was in the CIA.

They already knew, courtesy of Armitage, who kept this fact to himself for too long but did reveal it to Fitzgerald THREE WEEKS into the two year long investigation.

So Fitzgerald claimed to be asking a question for which he already HAD, and KNEW he had, the answer. But he kept on, spending tax dollars like water, determined to catch out SOMEBODY in the White House.

And eventually, Libby was caught telling two different stories about the same event, unfortunately contradicting some sworn testimony and thus falling afoul of his own oath to tell the truth.

Libby was NOT convicted for leaking Plame's name. Armitage did that. Fitzgerald did not assert that ANYONE from the White House leaked Plame's name.

This story says Plame 'claims' the White House 'quietly' revealed her name in order to get back at her husband for his perfidy. It also says McClellan agrees.

But the fact is that ARMITAGE leaked her name, and after he did it, it was LEAKED. You can't have multiple leaks of the same information in different weeks. In the first case it is a secret, and in the second it's PUBLICLY KNOWN. The reporters were trying to get White House people to say it, but they already KNEW.

This story very carefully and deliberately shades the truth in order to continue the myth that the White House 'got revenge' on the Plame/Wilson dynamic duo. This is simply NOT SO.

The other inconvenient facts are forgotten as well, such as the fact that she had been deskbound in Washington for six years and no longer qualified as a secret agent under the law that forbids mentioning their names. Her 'operative' career was long over, and she was outside the window of protection. Fitzgerald overlooked this, as does AP here.

Bottom line is, McClellan is still trying to sell his book. Nobody who didn't believe this carp before is going to suddenly be convinced by McClellan's whiny grievances. He puts on display the truth, that he didn't know much and wasn't invited to as many meetings as he thinks he should have been.

Not to mention Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the "tough grandma" of Texas politics who failed to unseat Rick Perry as governor and probably begrudged this failure to lack of support from Bush, is the proud mother of little Scottie. Blood is thicker than decency, especially in Washington.

All told, sickening behavior from Scott and invidious twisting of history by AP combine to induce nausea on a number of levels. Ick.

Obama gets steadily scarier....

2008-06-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

From the Ft. Wayne Gazette comes this story about the various propositions of the two presidential candidates. At the end, it brings up a few things about Barack Hussein Obama. Excerpts in blue, my comments in black--

"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn’t allow the terrorist mastermind to become a martyr, but he may be killed if the U.S. government finds him.

Bring him to justice in a way that doesn't allow him to become a martyr. Capture him alive, in other words. Exactly how he plans to do this he doesn't say, and no intrepid reporters managed to ask. Then he waffles, saying bin Laden might get killed in the process of being taken alive.

...he said the Nuremberg trials for the prosecution of Nazi leaders are an inspiration because the victors acted to advance universal principles and set a tone for the creation of an international order.

Obama still hasn't figured out that the Nuremberg Trials were a MILITARY TRIBUNAL in which the guilty parties had NO habeus corpus rights, just like the battlefield-captured terrorists at Guantanamo (until last week). He has been quoted last week as saying the Supreme Court justices were right to give these terrorists the rights of U.S. citizens on U. S. soil, but praises a proceeding which did no such thing for Nazi prisoners.

Interestingly, he thinks of the Nuremberg Trials as having an entirely new 'tone', but they actually were conducted based on established international law and trial procedures. The only thing 'new' is that they happened, which was a consequence of the ending of that war and the defeat of the Nazis. The path and purpose of the proceedings had been established for some time. The League of Nations and the Geneva Conventions and so forth had been in place for years.

Obama was questioned about bin Laden after he met with a new team of national security advisers.

The old team having met with some public relations difficulties.

The meeting came after rival presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign said Obama had a pre-9/11 mind-set for promoting criminal trials for terrorists."

Actually, if he's that much of a fan of the Nuremberg Trials, let's just propose to him that we conduct all our affairs with captured prisoners exactly the same way. Military tribunal, no rights granted the prisoners except the right to speak in their own defense.

We'll see how much he actually likes the Nuremberg Trials.

We can't drill our way out of this addiction

2008-06-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

So far this week, I've heard over a half dozen prominent democrats say this, verbatim. They throw in a couple of figures, also pretty much verbatim from the DNC fax of talking points.

Their figures?

We use 25% of the world's oil production while our national reserves are only 2% of the world's reserves. Ergo, summa, non bona, yada yada.

This is apples to oranges. RESERVES and PRODUCTION are two different things. Provable reserves are VASTLY larger than annual production. 2% of provable reserves is an ENORMOUS amount of oil.

The dems are attempting to hoodwink America into believing that tapping these reserves would have a minimal effect on price, but their numbers are deeply deceitful. And they're swimming against a tide of voter anger, where this week even LIBERALS are polled as supporting new drilling 46% vs. 35% against. The nation overall is more than 60% in favor of new drilling.

I always wondered what the price of change was, and apparently it's $4 a gallon.

Gore's weight gain matched by his electric bill...

2008-06-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

Looks like Algore hasn't finished all his 'green power' modifications at the palatial Gore mansion in Tennessee... his electric bill is higher than ever.

Al Gore uses more energy in the form of electricity in a month than the average American uses in a year. And that's just at HOME, never mind all the jetsetting around in his Gulfstream private planes and all the fancy hotels at faraway leftist thinktank (drunktank) meetings.

His 'people' claim he's buying electricity from alternative sources like windmills and so forth, so he has a smaller 'footprint' (but still a huge buttprint), but I'd like to see how his house is wired... is it a separate grid that delivers these alternative types of electricity? No, it's just an accounting trick, like when he 'donates' his profits from his movie to 'charity' and it turns out to be an ecological charity owned BY HIM, which pays him a hefty salary.

doing my small part....

2008-06-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

.. to spread the work and the word of Melanie Phillips, the last remaining wise Briton.

Well, sometimes it SEEMS that way. :-)

Some have said that because Obama was a muslim only as a child, well then 'apostate' does not apply, as Islam withholds the penalty of death if the change is made in childhood.

As Melanie points out, Obama was raised and schooled as a Muslim for at least part of his childhood, but did not 'become a Christian' (in quotes because in my view he did not and is not) until he was almost 30.

This means the death penalty for apostasy is very much in play.

Is it going to be the KKKlan? Some redneck? A bitter, Bible-clinging, unemployed, gun-toting Pennsylvanian shooting him at a gas station, as his wife has suggested?

Not likely.

Could be a virgin-seeking missile, though.

Still waiting...

2008-06-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

Okay, Johnson's gone, 'officially'. Too much heat in the kitchen.

But do not believe for a MOMENT that anything is actually different. It's all nomenclature and verbal gymnastics, as when Obama claimed 'he doesn't work for me, I"m not paying him'. That's true, but irrelevant. The point was, and is, Obama's circle is just jam packed with radicals, corrupt machine types and criminals. And James Johnson is as corrupt as they come. His advice will receive as much consideration as Obama had planned to give it, only now it will not be publicly acknowledged.

/end update

********

Still waiting for ANY associates of Barack Obama to be ordinary, normal Americans with no radical, corrupt or criminal history.

Still waiting.

Lately he's chosen Eric Holder, former Justice guy under Clinton, to help him find a veep. Holder steered lawyers the right way a few years back and secured a pardon for billionaire Marc Rich, a tax fugitive living it up in Europe but wanted here in America by the IRS, and certain to go to prison if he came back. Holder has admitted, apparently, that his purpose in doing this was to earn favors with certain people so that he stood a better chance of becoming Attorney General in the future.

Another superb choice of search committee membership is James Johnson, who will become famous for having friends in high places at Countrywide lending company. Countrywide has come under incredible scrutiny during the 'housing crisis' for steering lower class applicants to higher interest rate mortgages, and there is something to those charges. But Johnson accepted a loan from Countrywide for almost a million dollars, at an interest rate lower than 4% when the going rate was 6%.

This is a gift, tens of thousands of dollars of free money in each year of the mortgage. It makes him beholden to Countrywide's executives, and perhaps to the IRS as well. Obama has simultaneously attacked Countrywide for its contribution to the housing 'crisis' and welcomed aboard one of it's multimillionaire 'friends with benefits' to the search committee for veep!

Johnson, tellingly, is also the second in command of the Perseus Fund. It's founder and captain is George Soros. Nuff said.

It's so bad, even the WaPo has offered up an article about Obama's insider problem. The article, though, fails to mention that Johnson is a partner of Soros. This could be the single biggest problem Obama has, as many Americans will not forget "Betray Us".

Johnson and Holder join Wright and Rezko and who knows how many, when its all over, with more than questionable backgrounds who are now part of the 'Obama legend'.

Does he have ANY associates and friends who are NOT corrupt, radical or criminal?

Still waiting.

Nothing like pride in your country...

2008-06-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

Although people like Brian Williams apparently wouldn't know about that....

this is kind of a sick joke to play on a bunch of 18 year olds, don't you think? They're going out there, young, naive, worried about their own performance, thinking about the future, trying to become adults, and here comes a (presumably) respected member of the media laying this ENORMOUS burden on their shoulders, "you've got to fix this broken country".

He's apologized for it, but given the full text of the speech, I don't buy it. He's all the way there, convinced times are terrible and we've gone down the wrong road, his generation has run the ship aground, this election is a once in a lifetime crossroads, etc.

Lord, please grant me this one prayer before I die, that everyone who really doesn't like this nation will just pack their bags and GET OUT.

exciting historical discoveries...

2008-06-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Exciting, that is, unless you hate Christians and are actively promoting that JudeoChristian history is mythical.... which makes the location of this discovery and its proponents all the more remarkable.

It's in Jordan. The disciples themselves may well have worshiped here.

whenever you think your life is tough...

2008-06-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

... just watch this.

that global warming is gonna kill us all!

2008-06-10T05:17:00.000-07:00

No doubt about it. Things are different now.

More Democrat phoniness

2008-06-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

This story is just stunning, on two accounts.

Senator Rockefeller released a committee report yesterday and said of it, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent."

As the linked story shows, there is almost nothing in the actual report that is not 'substantiated by available intelligence', in the report's own words. And the President is, by definition, using intelligence as his basis for making any assertions whatsoever about a situation like this. It is the job of intelligence to inform him so that he may decide. He was not deceptively 'presenting intelligence as fact', only speaking about what he had been informed about, in appropriate terms.

The thing that convinced the entire world that Saddam HAD these weapons was HIS OWN BEHAVIOR, delaying and deceiving and ejecting inspectors, all as if he had something to HIDE.

So Rockefeller's report proves that Rockefeller's comments about his report are a load of manure.

The second reason it's stunning? It appeared in the Washington Post. Online, anyway. Not sure if it's in the actual paper. But the moon isn't blue and hell isn't frozen over (I'd have heard), so I would wager it is not, in fact, in print.

Obama and Michelle's "video" rumor

2008-06-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Someone finally asked him about this rumor that Michelle appears in a videotape badmouthing "whitey".

B.O.'s first comments, that rumors get spread much easier on the web these days than before the days of instant worldwide communication but that they should get no more credence than that, was reasonable.

Then someone asked "do you know this rumor is not true?"

He responded, "I've answered this question. Frankly, my hope is people don't play this game."

Then more about how rumors spread and how terrible it is and how we shouldn't do it.

Someone asked him if it's acceptable to ask the question, and he ventured that people should think about it before they ask about rumors.

Fine.

But this is not even CLOSE to a denial. He's insisted on a previous occasion that if anyone has evidence that he or Michelle have ever spoken this way, let's see the evidence.

Less like a denial than a bravado-masked inquiry, don't you think?

Seems to me like he wonders if there is such a tape and hopes there is not. In the meantime he's trying to convince the press and the public that it's somehow unsavory to talk about, or ask him about, such a tape.

Future news story

2008-06-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

After the Tony Rezko convictions became public news, Barack Obama went back to the same well from which he dipped up the classic "He's not the Reverend Wright I knew" line.

Literally.

"This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew" was his response, as well as a lame suggestion that 'reforms' are needed, as if it was a policy or law problem that cause Rezko's misbehavior.

Rezko is a criminal. Many who play the crooked Chicago politics game are criminals. Barack Obama plays that game very well.

Headline on the Future News Network--

"Senator Barack Obama today confronted reports that he has contradicted himself on many top issues during the campaign by watching the videos of himself and saying, ' that's not the Barack Obama I knew. Reforms need to be undertaken to prevent this from happening again, and I'm the guy to undertake them'."

Sharon Stone coyly reveals... stupidity

2008-06-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

the Shanghai Film Festival will go on this year without Sharon Stone, it seems.

As liberals are wont to do, she flapped her gums about a political issue to make herself seem noble and good. She said the earthquakes in China were 'karmic payback' for the way the government has treated Tibet.

I am quite certain that whatever Karma is, if anything, it does not deliberately kill thousands of innocent schoolchildren 500 miles from the capital in order to teach members of government a lesson about ANYTHING.

One might as well suggest that the deaths in New Orleans were karmic payback for a rotten and corrupt liberal democrat government in New Orleans and in the Louisiana Statehouse for decades. Or that Ted Kennedy's brain tumor is karmic payback for a life of contemptible corruption and evil.

You see what I mean. One can take that karma thing wherever one wishes to go. It's stupid.

We all know hurricanes don't choose where they go. We all know that illness strikes good and bad people alike.

And we all know that the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren can't possibly be payback for anything, since they didn't DO anything.

Garde-moi contre les idiots, mon Dieu, je vous prie.

Again with the misbehavior....

2008-06-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

Here's an AP story about a Massachusetts state senator who is, apparently, and allegedly, a serial groper and misbehaver. Just when he escaped trial for one incident of approaching and touching a woman due to insufficient evidence, he got arrested for doing the same thing again.

I'll just say that his political party affiliation is not mentioned until the very last line in the story.

I'll leave it to you to guess what party he belongs to.

Do you suppose.....

2008-06-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

... that when the United States swears in President Obama, Mahmoud Ahmedine-jihad will suddenly and totally change his mind about us being the Great Satan?

I've always said it isn't about what we do, it's about what we ARE.

Free, liberated, modern, culturally alive.

Irreligious.

Pornographic.

Sex-obsessed.

Drug-users.

If you work your way down the list of the things about America that make Muslims mad, you sort of get mad yourself. :-)

Still, these things are inevitable byproducts of hundreds of millions of people living in freedom and doing what they want. We have laws and rules, but for Ahmadine-Jihad there is only one rule-- Islam or die.

The "die" part is what he is apparently working on now.

Michelle or Barack? Who said it?

2008-06-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

"These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock 'em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing. But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build."

Barack Hussein Obama, 1995.

Notice he did not say "cursing white folks, or making anti-Semitic remarks, isn't fair or morally right."

Only that it isn't practical, that it won't get the job done.

Sure, you can curse whitey and those damn Jews, just make sure you also do some work.

Libertarians plan to overplay their hand

2008-06-02T11:39:00.000-07:00

So when Bob Barr first announced he was running for Prez as a libertarian, he was asked by Sean Hannity how he rationalized the fact that he would take mostly Republican votes and that he was likely to cause McCain to lose and a Marxist wacko named Obama to become President.

Barr's answer was utterly disappointing; he dodged the question by simply saying he was trying to offer Americans who are disenchanted with Washington a different choice and that he believed they would take it.

Barr knows, as does the vast majority of Americans, that he will likely be a Perot, taking votes from McCain and causing Obama to win. In fact, Barr has hired people who worked for Perot fifteen years ago.

He knows.

And this article makes it clear the Libertarian Party, though not enchanted with Barr, lusts to be the 'decider' of this presidential election.

It is disappointing and disturbing.

consequences

2008-06-02T05:18:00.001-07:00

Taxes on vehicles, the larger the vehicle, the more tax, and taxes on WHERE they go.

Taxes on fuel, in ADDITION to the price hikes fuel has undergone in the past year.

Stupid methanol subsidies, resulting in rapid increases in the price of food as farmers worldwide switch to corn and sell to fuel producers, because that's where the money/subsidy is.

These are 'green' policies, English style. And the English, to coin a phrase, are revolting. So are people all over Europe.

These increased costs, threatening to starve the poor and destroy the incomes of many a lower middle class worker, are already unbearable and already receiving mass protest in many forms.

And this is very early in the game, folks. The UN has not yet inflicted itself on us in any meaningful way, Kyoto has been rejected, and the Democrat congress hasn't managed to get anything past Bush that really matters.

But imagine a strong Democrat congress with Barack Obama as president. Imagine a UN and a euroleftist cabal that have free access to American taxpayer funds and can set policy that President O will rubberstamp.

Imagine a totally plundered American economy, in which 'poor, minorities will be hardest hit', as the newspapers always say. But everyone will be hit.

Everyone.

Promises, promises

2008-05-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Remember a few years back, when Alec Baldwin promised to move out of the country if Bush was elected?

Still here. Darn it.

Now Susan Sarandon has promised to move out of the country if John McCain is elected.

Until now, I was indifferent to McCain and was planning not to vote. McCain, after all, is not a real conservative and has offered opinions of subjects I care about which leave me no doubt that McCain thinks I'm stupid or evil or both.

However, Susan Sarandon has made the best argument yet for voting for Juan McVain, and I'm almost convinced.

Now if only Sean Penn, Jeanine Garafalo, Al Franken, George Clooney and the rest of the wacko liberal Hollywood crowd would make the same promise, I'd become a McCain campaign volunteer.

Science, nature and people

2008-05-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

I've been watching an HDTV show about the lowland gorilla in the Congo.

Gripping. Couldn't tear myself away. A British scientist followed a family of gorillas through thick and thin, danger and happiness, birth and death, and her party gained the confidence of the gorillas. They never got close enough to touch, but after years of encounters the silverback finally stopped aggressing and acted nonchalant, accepted the group of humans, and the studying really began.

Fascinating, and enjoyable, at least 'til the very end.

The very last line uttered by the scientist?

"we have so much more to learn about this other kind of humanity."

Um, no. Yes, they hold hands and kiss and embrace and grieve and love and all that. Gorillas are, after all, very highly developed mammals.

But 'other kind of humanity'? Let's see.... do they recognize the rights of others? Do they sacrifice themselves for others?

Some would say yes, but the truth is they only do such things for their own tribe. Strangers are all enemies, as it is in nature. Chimpanzees will casually tear babies limb from limb if the babies are from a different family than their own. It's nature. It's the competitive instinct, my line, my family, my children first.

Humans, of course, recognize other humans as such even when strangers. In Israel, hospitals routinely treat sick and injured Palestinians, without questions, without reservations. Being human is the only qualification for deserving help. Our own soldiers treat the battlefield injuries of the other side.

This is the kind of accommodation that apes will never make. Highly developed they are, but they are NOT the complex and mysterious synthesis of mind, soul, spirit and body. They are not made in His image and likeness, but each according to its kind.

We may never know the full extent of the consciousness of the great apes, what they think, how they feel, what they really are.

But they are not human.

Unless you're a wacky scientist-- courageous and dedicated to be sure, but wacky.

Err Amerika chickens comin' home... to ROOST

2008-05-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

When the liberal radio network called Air America first began, the financing came from all over. People thought it was a great opportunity; imagine, a liberal radio show or shows with the success of Rush Limbaugh, only for OUR side! The nation is DYING to hear this stuff, it's gonna be a HOME RUN!

But of course, financing coming from 'all over' has a down side, and it included the looting of a New York charity of almost a million bucks, and lots of fraud and money laundering and so forth.

It's easy to convince people to make illicit 'loans' when you can make them believe it's short term and will be paid back with big interest. that, I'm sure, was the sell.

If they had consulted Limbaugh listeners, of course, they'd have known better. There is no market for liberal talk radio. People don't want to hear it. If they did, there would be a host of programs on local stations already taking advantage of that audience and those dollars.

No audience, no dollars. And that's what happened to Err Amerika.

Now those 'financiers' are coming home to roost, so to speak.

Mystery solved

2008-05-29T04:48:00.000-07:00

Charles Johnson at LGF has received some research from a lizardoid--

.. and the mystery of why Scott McClellan wrote his Bush bashing book is now solved.

It's called George Soros' money.

Scott McClellan has sold his soul for liberal money. His publishing company is owned by a financial group that is part of the Soros companies. There is also an investment fund group that is chock full of rich liberals (including the Clintons) who have benefited from Soros money as well.

Whenever a motive is a mystery, find the money trail and the mystery is solved. McClellan was always a man for sale.

As the son of Carol Keeton Strayhorn, former independent candidate for governor of Texas (who was said to be furious at the lack of support from Bush and the Republican party when she ran against former Bush Lt. Gov. Rick Perry), perhaps McClellan had other motives too.

But none of them were honest, none were upright. His 'outrage' at the evil Bush administration is fabricated, a product created for sale.

McClellan is a phony trying to get rich at other people's expense.

Through all this, nobody has revealed what his signing bonus was for the book, or what his payment terms are, or how much money he is expected to make. Anyone who writes a book liberals disagree with is instantly discredited as out for money, and these details unfailingly hit the press. Their absence is proof of his perfidy.

And once again, the dagger hits. Et tu, Brute. Bush sat with this man and congratulated him on the great job he did, thanked him, spoke of looking back warmly on these days in the future.

And in return, another knife in the back.

With all the responsibility of his post, Bush has suffered much over bad results from his decisions. He lies awake at night over the death of soldiers, and his tears are often public, much to his own dislike. I wonder, though, if the greater price he has paid has been to suffer the betrayals by the people he trusted.

As the only decent man in Washington, such things were always inevitable; they are doubtless no easier to take on that account.

Obama drama

2008-05-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

Well, the initial Memorial Day fluff has faded, and the 'fallen heroes' in B. Hussein Obama's audience have presumably returned to their coffins.... But there's this one thing--

Obama mentioned his uncle (actually great uncle) was in the army and helped liberate Auschwitz (actually Buchenwald) and save the Jews (he didn't say that, but he clearly is trying to fertilize some affection from that group).

Great story, once you get over the stupid errors. Oh, and he has repeated this Auschwitz story before, so it wasn't an accidental mistake. Lots more Jews died at Auschwitz than Buchenwald, and he might have been playing that angle.

But here's the problem:

In the army, helping liberate Buchenwald, was a C. T. Payne. That's all that is known, and the 'keeper of the 89th Division archives' on his website, a guy named Kitchell, is a flaming leftist moonbat who is unlikely to offer/permit any actual research into this Payne fellow. He has grudgingly come forth with confirmation that Payne served in that capacity, but does not add information, like a serial number or full name. He essentially just repeats what his website already says and adds some ugly anti-Bush raving for guys like Dan Riehl of the Riehl World View blog. Enjoy Kitchell's BDS here.

And in another website, a geneological one, Obama's great uncle is listed as Charles W. Payne.

Of the United States NAVY.

The FATHER of Charles W. Payne is, confusingly, Charles T. Payne, born in the 19th century and unlikely to be serving in the 89th Division during the end of WWII, as he was in his fifties then.

So the question is, who was the C. T. Payne in Germany at war's end, freeing the guests of Hotel Buchenwald? Was he the guy who had a daughter named Madelyn, the mother of the mother of Barack Hussein Obama? Or was that Charles W. Payne, listed geneologically as born in 1924 (the right age, at least) and listed geneologically as the father of Madelyn, and said to have served in the Navy?

(German prison camps generally were on dry land.)

Ultimately, someone is going to have to go into government military archives and sort this out. No help will be forthcoming from Kitchell.

How long?

2008-05-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

How long can the American left, home of feminism and gay marriage advocacy and all sorts of radical 'reform' agendas, continue to support by default the Islamic fundamentalist movement?

All over the world, western governments bend over backwards to accomodate Islam while simultaneously trying to drive Christianity from the public square and denouncing Israel as a Nazi-like occupier and war criminal.

But Islam HATES homosexuality. Islam HATES feminism.

Islam hates most of the left's pet projects and people. And I mean hates them enough to kill. Young gay teenagers in Iran dangle dead from nooses on portable cranes in the back of pickup trucks while executioners explain to the crowd how to avoid meeting the same fate. Feminists are called whores and foreign spies, and arrested for recruiting and advocating in the streets.

I shudder to think what will happen to the first Iranian environmentalist who denounces government nuclear 'research' on the grounds that it's bad for the environment.

And you thought it was only Europe....

2008-05-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well, dear reader, the Islamic movement has gained a historic piece of American ground.

They have actually been granted something like police authority in a Miami neighbourhood, by the local government, on purpose. Serious-looking American men in suits, ties and the ever present sunglasses are going to be 'patrolling' a crime ridden Miami neighbourhood in some nebulous quasi-police role explained here.

Something between policing and community outreach, they say. They can talk to people who don't like talking to police, they say. No radios, they have to call 911 like everyone else, that's what they say. They're not police, they're 'liasons between police and the community'.

You see, they claim that they're interested in moral reform. Minister Rasul Mohammad says "what we need most is moral reform".

Moral reform. Why does some small reckless part of me wonder if there's going to be an increase in Muslim recruiting in this neighbourhood? That's what's happening in prisons. There's a British prison (ironically named "Whitemoor") so 'taken over' by Islam that the guards are afraid to go to work and white men are terrified of being sent there to serve time.

And now American Muslims, NOI types, are planning on expanding this fertile recruiting ground by patrolling neighbourhoods and recruiting the young criminals before they even GO to prison.

Even today Christians are still accused of constantly trying to get people to become Christians. Evangelizing, they call it in the Bible. "Get outta my face", says the American left when Christians evangelize to them. Much ground has been gained by the anti-Christians in terms of laws against prayer in schools, hate crimes (homophobia is said to be a Christian crime) and so forth.

These same people WELCOME Islam, probably because Islam is also extremely anti-Christian and seems like a fellow traveler with leftist tendencies.

And one day this bedfellow of theirs will absolutely swallow them whole.

The anti-religion types will find a much less meek religionist in the Muslim; the Koran tells them to take over the whole world by conversion or by the sword.

As opposed to the Evangelical who will walk away with his shoulders slumped at some point, driven to exhaustion by the frenetic opposition to his 'good news', the Islamic evangelizer will instead refuse to take no for an answer.

And he will lop off the heads of those who try treating him with the casual dismissive contempt aimed at the Christians.

The American version of the European transition to Eurabia has begun. The Nation of Islam is now the police, somewhere in Florida.

Simply Obamanable

2008-05-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

For Barack Obama to misstate the number of American states is a gaffe. For him to misspeak the name of Sioux Falls or Sioux City or Sunrise or Sunshine is a gaffe. He's tired, campaigning is hard, brains cramp.

I can understand his small casual errata.

But for him to claim that 'fallen heroes' are in his audience for Memorial day simply shows what we already know; he is essentially disinterested in America, does not love it, does not feel patriotism, couldn't care less about national history or proud American traditions.

Every American knows Memorial Day is for dead people. That's what a MEMORIAL IS! You can't pay homage to the memory of someone who ISN'T DEAD!

Obama is a slacker, a postmodern dopesmoker who thinks about his country in casually dismissive terms. "Racist, greedy capitalist, environmentally polluting America." No sense wasting an ounce of brain power learning about THOSE traditions; we're here to CHANGE this country, not to celebrate her!

If he showed up at a funeral and lamented the passing of great people, many of whom are here today in this audience, what do you think people would do? Gasp in shock, of course. Rebuke him for being so contemptuously careless about these somber and important proceedings.

He would never make such a mistake, of course. HE KNOWS BETTER.

But he did NOT know better on Memorial Day. Such is his true color about his country. No red, white and blue, just beige. No passion, no commitment, no dedication, no love and no respect.

Next thing you know, he'll be singing the wrong words to the national anthem at a ball game.

Jupiterican SUVs are ruining the big planet

2008-05-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like those evil rich Jupitericans driving their SUVs and running their air conditioners and leaving their cell phone chargers plugged in all the time are destroying the environment of the beloved planet.

That's what causes planetary warming, right? Rich people? Rich people who use too much energy and don't even ask permission from any other countries?

What's that? There are no SUVs on Jupiter? No evil rich people at all, no people of any kind?

No industry? No consumerism? No obesity?

Then what's causing Jupiter to warm up?

Economy better than expected.... again...

2008-05-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

Why is it the media always use "unexpected" when good news arrives about the economy?

This time it's "applications for unemployment benefits lower than expected". Not enough layoffs to suit the newsmonkeys, apparently.

The real chuckle is in the first paragraph, where they explain the number by postulating that employers are 'reluctant' to lay people off in SPITE of worsening economic numbers.

Could it be, instead, that they are not finding a REASON to lay people off, because it isn't as bad as the media say it is?

News vs. Reality

2008-05-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

I saw and heard more than a dozen stories about the celebrated Obama rally in Oregon-- stories in which breathless infobabes repeated in shocked tones, "over 70 THOUSAND people!"

Obama, the messiah.

Now I find out it was a daylong party, featuring a FREE concert in the park by a popular band.

That explains about 50,000 of the 70,000. "The Decemberists" are the band, wildly popular in Oregon, and they begin their shows with THE SOVIET UNION NATIONAL ANTHEM.

Booming voices of a male choir celebrating Lenin's great deeds and the glorious future of the workers' motherland. You have to hear it to get the full impact, and you can at LGF. CJ has also provided the words, in English, if you feel like singing along.

Now, if you were the Obama-loving mainstream media, would you mention in a story that a band which plays the Soviet National Anthem opened for Barack Hussein Obama, who is currently reading "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria?

This is an amazing meeting of the vibes here. Could things be any more clear about him?

A very silly argument

2008-05-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

I have finally found a scientist willing to confront the fact that over historical time, the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is 800 years BEHIND the temperature increase. That is, everytime a warming cycle begins, CO2 does not increase before that, or even simultaneously, but so much later that the Roman Empire could have risen and fallen in the interim.

His argument is, basically, that CO2 does increase global temps, and adds to the strength and length of a heating cycle in a sort of feedback loop. He points out that a heating cycle is about 5000 years, and about 4200 years of a typical cycle could be attributed to CO2 increase, at least in part.

He says it doesn't CAUSE global warming but it greatly contributes to it.

Two Points--

One, what DOES start it? No attempt to answer. ("some currently unknown process").

Two, if CO2 does NOT cause the warming cycle to begin, is it not also possible that it does not contribute to it (or only minimally)? That is, isn't it possible that the actual cause of the heating cycle is what drives the entire cycle, and that CO2 is simply following along just as it did for the first 800 years? After all, if it was feedback, what process STOPS the feedback? Try the feedback loop in your guitar amp, and if you don't pull the guitar away the amp will melt down. What pulls the guitar away in nature? He doesn't say.

For as long as solar activity has been plotted, admittedly only a few hundred years, the sun has charted contemporaneously with temperatures, not 800 years behind them. When solar activity increases, the globe's temperature does too, and vice versa. It is well known that 'the little ice age' of 1650-1715 featured a very low level of solar activity, almost no sunspots, a "Maunder minimum" named for an astronomer of the 19th century who studied records and discovered this dearth of solar activity during that time period.

This article's assertion (Jeff Severinghouse, 2004) is the exact same speculation that the global warming types offered in the beginning, with the exact same questionable proof and outlandish conclusions. It is simply adapted to confront the CO2 lag issue.

More of the same weak arguments. That's what you get when you ask them real questions.

Global Non Warming

2008-05-22T07:01:00.001-07:00

Yet another very good summary of the actual reality of 2008 and where we stand regarding the Global Warming-- er, um, climate change thing.

I'll buy climate change. It's changing fast. From warm to cold.

REAL fast.

UPDATE-- More on this from Investor's Business Daily, a few months back. I have often cited the assertions of this Russian scientist in that year, saying in the face of almost total opposition that the world would be cooling over the next decades. He took a lot of 'heat' for that, but his predictions are proving out.

Fox rox

2008-05-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

Just saw Fox News this morning, and the Friends are working without a net.

Alyson Camerata was doing a standup with, as usual, no script on the teleprompter, only notes. Fox prefers its people to adlib rather than read straight.

She mentioned a couple of news items and then tossed out this gem of a sports note, saying the weather probably wouldn't interfere with "the NAACP Women's Golf Championship".

Then she said quizzically, "I think that's right".

If it is, then the old argument, "golf is a white man's game" has been, like, put to bed.

The problem nobody's talking about

2008-05-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

IT's been said by others, and I"ll echo it-- this story will make the Enron collapse (with its casualties, the workers who lost pensions) look like a Disney movie.

All across America, state and local governments are running pension funds. They are running benefits departments. For hundreds of thousands, in sum probably millions, of workers.

Their funding is done on the basis of actuarial data, the insurance company-style estimate of what will happen in the future based on what has happened. Factors like the average age of death, length of time spent with illness, average age of retirement, average performance of investments, etc., are used to calculate how much the government should put into the fund in year x so that when the retiree draws his pension in year z, there is sufficient money in the account to cover it.

Funds are invested, just as mutual funds and private company pension funds. And those investments haven't gone as well as the actuaries expected. Experts are now looking over these decisions, and more than one actuary has been fired. Actuarial firms are even being sued for state and local pension fund underperformance. This is not a case of being able to 'blame it on the evil Bush stock market'; these people are responsible for deciding how much to invest and for predicting how much that investment will yield. It is their area of expertise, it is what they sell when they sell themselves as consultants. Politicians enjoy nothing more than being told they have 'extra money'. And governments have used these rosy actuarial premises to remove monies from the annual pension fund set-asides and use those funds for other things... as all politicians can be counted on to do (see Social Security funds-- missing in action).

Bottom line? Millions of retirees may not get the retirement the government has promised them. That, or the government is going to have to jack taxes through the roof to cover the shortfalls. Many constitutional challenges await whatever decisions the governments might make, but it is certain that this is a nationwide financial catastrophe that nobody is talking about.

And without an Enron to blame for it, the Dems (who are nominally if not totally in charge of most of the governments with failing pension funds) are going to be swinging in the breeze.

As will the American taxpayer, the mighty beast of burden, the dumb ox who gets his cart loaded with more and more people every year, pulling harder and harder, soon to get the whip, and someday to stand still in spite of that whip, no longer willing to move for any reason.

Atlas will shrug, dear reader; it is only a matter of time. Government is not only not PERFECT, it is probably the MOST flawed organization of any kind anywhere in the country. Politicians should not be in charge of money.

Obamaniacal leftism

2008-05-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

So good old B. O. believes that we should somehow check with 'other countries' before we decide how much we'll eat, what kind of car we'll drive or where we set our home thermostats.

He thinks it's unfair that we consume 25% of the world's energy when we are only 3% of the populace.

Does this mean that B. O. will be satisfied if we reduce our energy consumption to 3% of the worlds', in order to be fair?

Seems so. And that, of course, means (in the fair world of B. O.) we will use roughly 85% less energy than we do now.

This is the end, my friend. This kind of change means catastrophic collapse of the world's economy, not just ours.

And even if he denies that a 'fair' match between energy consumption and population share is what he had in mind (if not, why bring it up?), we are still faced with a putative leader who wishes to check with France, Russia and Iran every time we order a Big Mac or give the thermostat a nudge on a hot day or buy a used car.

Rules, restrictions, chains, prisons, slavery. Call it what you will, it's the end of American national sovereignty and personal freedom.

"but Dave, we should conserve and use wisely and be good stewards!" Agreed. We should volunteer to make changes in our own lives that suit the times. It's only right.

But when it's mandatory, and when it's at the demand of OTHER COUNTRIES, it's no longer liberty, no longer America.

Imagine the HOUSING CRISIS that would erupt if the European Union was allowed to legislate how big the typical American house should be! Half the houses in the nation would plummet to ZERO value! Banks would collapse, business would close by the thousands, jobs lost by the millions, unemployment and welfare benefits rocketing far beyond the taxpayers' ability to fund them!

"But monsieur, it is simply unfair zat you should have such a big house and such high energy consumption when zere are starving people in Ethiopia!"

You are free, sir, to have that opinion. I am free to dispute it, as I can't imagine what my living in a smaller house would do for an Ethiopian. But once you enslave me with legislation that removes my right to make such decisions for myself, the value of the house I presently own will drop to zero. Forbidden. Too big. Against ze international law.

Unwilling to make payments for a worthless property, I will then default on my mortgage, along with the millions of people whose houses are bigger than mine, and banks will fail, Home Depot and lighting stores and flooring firms and Sherwin Williams and innumerable other companies will close their stores nationwide, and every lawn mowing illegal in Texas will have to go home to Mexico to find a job.

Of course, rather than make a larger home illegal, they could just impose punitive Euro-style taxes on them. This wouldn't necessarily drop their value to zero, but it would darn sure depress it big time. Nobody wants to buy an obligation to pay stupidly higher taxes. We've already seen depressed areas all over America caused solely by rapid and large increases in property tax.

And as the value drops, more defaults, more credit crises, more lost Home Depot jobs, more Mexicans going south to cut their OWN lawns.

Every small and medium business in the neighbourhoods of larger homes will eventually be hit as values plummet and people move out; jobs lost there, stores closed, restaurants starved for business. More jobs lost means more benefits claimed, higher taxes needed to pay for them, and with the tax increase even fewer profits for business, even more closed stores, even more lost jobs, and the cycle continues.

this is B. O.'s vision for America.

Perfect timing....

2008-05-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Yet another proof that the ethanol subsidy on the part of the world's governments is a truly terrible idea--

Not only are forests being razed to grow corn (adding to global warming, anyone? No more CO2 absorption by THOSE trees), and not only has ethanol production contributed to corn shortages and food riots in poor countries, but now there are other food shortage problems cropping up, so to speak.

When this is all done, the ones who suffer most will be, as always, the POOR.

The very people leftists always claim to be speaking for, helping, defending against the depredations of the evil rich, are the ones who suffer most from the consequences of leftist policies.

When the evil rich are taxed and beaten down to lower middle class, they will still be able to eat.

Not so the poor.

John Kerry, your phone's ringing

2008-05-06T04:21:00.001-07:00

Recall, if you will, John Kerry's foolish assertion in that speech; if you get a good education, your prospects are wonderful. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Well, the King of horror, Stephen, is apparently unaware of the damage that assertion did to Kerry's reputation, and has fired a similar volley in a public appearance.

Do these lefties really not know that if you can't read, the military won't TAKE you?

An ironic message, to those who can't read, from he who cannot write.

Canseco defaults, press misses point

2008-05-02T12:16:00.001-07:00

Jose Canseco has decided to walk away from his mansion, owing 2.5 million bucks on it.

He says in this article that it makes no sense, given there's a judgment against the house, for him to continue paying the bank for it, 'since it already belongs to someone else'.

Never mind that he is obligated to pay the bank, since he bought the house with a bank loan and the bank is not affected, or even interested, in any judgments against CANSECO. They made a deal with him and want him to honor it.

But the reporter clearly asked him if he sympathized with people losing their homes because of high interest rates, and he said he did.

What does this story have to do with people losing their homes from inability to pay? Canseco CHOSE to walk away, DEFAULTED on his loan, not because he couldn't afford to pay but because in his selfish and unethical judgment it didn't 'make sense' to keep paying for a house that one of his ex-wives was going to get in a judgment!

Canseco didn't LOSE his home, he WALKED AWAY voluntarily. He was not foreclosed. He simply said 'I will not bother to pay this debt which my signature obliges me to pay'.

I hope the bank sues the steroids outta that guy.

at last, acknowledgement

2008-05-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like the cooling trend of the last two plus years can no longer be ignored by the powers that be in the great global warming scam.

Now they're admitting that global warming 'could take a break' over the next DECADE.

This is a warning shot, dear reader. They do NOT intend to be shouted down or otherwise moved from their long term target of a global tax regime that redistributes wealth 'for our own good'.

They will continue to whine and complain that global warming is going to kill us all, even as the globe significantly cools. And any warming that comes after the next decade will be PROOF POSITIVE that they were right all along.

You only THOUGHT you could dismiss them when the globe cooled.

But it was never going to be that easy.

But if sunspots don't come back, maybe that 'decade' will turn into a generation or more, like it did a couple of times in the past 500 years. If it does, we'll have way more global problems than the attempt to put us all under the yoke of de facto communism.

We're going to have trouble finding something to EAT. Cooler temps worldwide will significantly impact crop growth to the negative.

A warmer planet means more areas can be used for agriculture. A cooling planet, not so much.

random thought...

2008-04-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

If the left is accurate in their criticisms that Bush is some sort of totalitarian who silences the dissenters, then why is it that the dissenters are all I hear, see and read?

If Bush was successfully silencing them, wouldn't they be... silent?

Real silencing of dissent results in things like Saddam's mass graves.

Where are the Bush mass graves? Where are the 'showers'? Where are the lists of the desaparados? Where are the Killing Fields? Where are the Bush gulags full of brave honorable journalists eating gruel and whispering to each other about First Amendment rights?

Anyone who lived in the 20th century is familiar with names like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. People who literally ordered the deaths of millions of their own citizens, to eliminate political opposition, to reduce the number of hungry mouths the state must feed, or simply because the millions are of the wrong racial background. Pol Pot in particular included Cambodians with eyeglasses on his to-be-slain list, on the grounds that they were intellectuals and could make a more effective political opposition.

Casual stupidity such as this is often the mark of the true dictatorship.

Real totalitarianism, real silencing of dissent, is easy to spot. It leaves a long bloody trail of corpses, empty homes, shattered families. The mark of a well-silenced dissent is that you NEVER HEAR IT.

Even if Bush was not a good, kind, loving and decent man, humbled by his knowledge of God and determined to do the right thing even when it is the hardest thing, I would never believe he was a totalitarian dissent-silencer without at least a couple of pits full of dead journalists or Democrats.

I disagree with Dubya on a number of important issues. I do not expect to end up in a pit.

The proof that the lefties are wrong about Bush being an evil silencer of dissent can be found in the sheer constant grating LOUDNESS of the complaints themselves. Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch in which the peasants bring a woman to the wise man of the village shouting 'a witch! A witch!' When the man asks how they know, one peasant shouts "She turned me into a newt!"

Long pause during which all realize he is in fact a human being.

Flustered, he claims "I got better."

Journalists claim to be silenced, Democrats claim to be repressed and smothered by the evil Bush machine, and yet, somehow, through all the repression and silencing by the evil Bush, we can still hear them loud and clear on every cable channel all day all night. They were silenced, but they got better.

Stupid Celebrities stupid headline

2008-04-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

I was randomly following links this morning and was startled to see the headline, "John Travolta Nearly Escapes Death".

First thought-- Travolta is dead!

Immediate second thought-- stupid web journalists don't know the English language.

Second thought was the right one. "Narrowly" would have worked, or "barely". But "nearly" made the sentence say the opposite of what it was intended to say.

The one thing that actually works in the favor of the dinosaur journalists' argument for expertise and training and experience is that they actually do go to college and specifically learn the use of the language for their trade. When just anyone can start writing without that preparation, the weakness of the normative American education is put in the spotlight.

I know it's silly, but this sort of thing annoys me. :-)

Black men I'd support for President

2008-04-22T11:03:00.001-07:00

I've been challenged on several occasions to produce this list, so I figure now's as good a time as any.

In no particular order:

Herman Cain. A non-privileged childhood, but with good parents who taught him the value of work and set good examples. Herman Cain was the executive who 'turned around' Godfather's Pizza and earned national acclaim and awards for inspired leadership and good business management, and is now a motivational speaker and author, and fills in on conservative and libertarian talk radio from time to time.

Walter Williams. Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a free markets guy with an incredible understanding of human nature and transactional ethics. This guy would make FOOLS of the 'world leaders' who hold America in such sniffing intellectual disdain.

Michael Steele. Almost won the contested Senate seat in Maryland in 2006, normally the bluest of blue states. Former Maryland Lt. Governor, Republican spokesman and now chairman of GOPAC.

Thomas Sowell. Academic and author with a circumspect view of people, life, politics and race, immensely wise and personally humble and understated. Sometimes the best of leaders begin with these traits.

Allen West. While on duty in Iraq, Lt. Colonel West needed to know some critical information which a detainee in his control knew but was not telling. It was about an ambush point, and West was trying to keep his men alive. During the questioning, West held a pistol close to the head of the terrorist and fired it. The tactic worked, and the man told what he knew. West subsequently got in a lot of trouble with the Army over this, but eventually was allowed to retire cleanly. He is now running for Congress in Florida, a black conservative military veteran with an unambiguous love of his country and the achievement-oriented attitude we need in Congress. I would not vote for the brass who wanted to give him grief, but I would most definitely vote for and support Allen West. My kind of guy. He's got a beautiful wife and daughters, and a lot to be proud of and to fight for.

More to come...

Sign of the Times...

2008-04-18T07:10:00.001-07:00

The New York Times reports a drop of over 10% year on year in its primary revenue source, advertising on the web and in its newspaper.

The Times blames two things-- the downturn in the economy and the continuing shift of readers and advertisers to the web.

And of course two things came to my mind as well--

One, don't they have a website? They admitted as much when they included it as part of the ad revenue that's being lost. So they can't really blame the 'shift to the internet'; they ARE the internet. Their problem is that readers are shifting to sites OTHER than the NYT site.

Two, do they have any share of the blame for this shift?

Could it be that their content drives away readers, who then go to the web in search of something they like BETTER?

Sans doute, mon ami. The Times is driving away its audience, and the advertisers know it and are looking for that audience somewhere else.

As we have learned this week after Obama's candid slip in Billionaire's Row, America is not a great fan of the hard left view of the world. Obama revealed his contempt for the common man and for what that man holds dear, and Obama is being held to account for this contempt.

So, over a longer haul, is the New York Times. A long history of undermining the President of the United States in wartime with treasonous acts is not exactly meat and potatoes for the common man.

George Bernard Shaw once opined that the working class does not deserve to live, and that nothing would make him happier than if his generation of working class people died off and were not replaced. He led opinion during the heyday of English leftism, anti-religious intellectualism which spawned the Kim Philbys and Anthony Blunts-- the men who would betray their country, also at war, in acts of treasonous espionage which continued over decades.

One should not doubt that, if not quite to the level of wishing them extinction, nonetheless the left in this country holds the working class American in the same general contempt. They are only good for what they do; they have no inherent dignity or humanity. They're just too stupid and superstitious.

They're for being manipulated to gain their votes, and for taxing. That's all they're good for.

While we're talking about it

2008-04-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

As Barbara Boxer today embarrasses our nation by altering the language of a Senate resolution to welcome the Pope-- in order to remove any semblance of language that might be interpreted as opposition to abortion-- I'm reminded that I should make this effort now and then. So here goes:

When does a human being become a human being? Forget the ambiguous 'life', I want to know when it's a PERSON.

Because it's illegal to kill a person.

Nobody has ever positively identified the moment, day, week even, when a tissue mass becomes a human being. That 'scientific discovery' has yet to be made. There is much negatively identified, as in "it doesn't even have eyes, how could it be human? It doesn't even have a brain, how could it be a person?"

But no positive ID. No medical statement saying "in the third week of the third month, at midnight on the 78th day, a tissue mass is officially, or medically, or reasonably, a human being."

Yes, it is impossible to know, to agree. We don't even agree on what a human being IS. What is a soul? Does the soul define a human being? Or is humanity only Darwinian randomness, an accidental conglomeration of DNA and goop, something that could just as well have looked like an octopus or an amoeba, breathed helium or CO2?

Is it possible that we are no more than a cosmic accident?

And yet murder is not only against the Commandments ('Thou shalt not kill' in the original language is contextual and means 'don't murder anyone'), it's also against the law.

When the constitutional right to life was established and laws were made against murder, of course, abortion was not even on the horizon of possibility. That particular level of depravity was not among the dreadful things our founding fathers considered when crafting the documents intended to limit government's ability to tyrannize. The "right to life" was not added to the founding documents in order to prevent abortion, but it does argue against that practice if the personhood, the humanity, of the unborn child is agreed.

And of course American law was not the first to proscribe murder; it was generally illegal and almost universally wrong for thousands of years, even among societies which had not the benefit of the Old Testament. For example, in ancient Egypt the Book of the Dead lists the claims to a righteous life that a man might make before the Gods on his judgment day, and one is "I have not slain men."

So forget about the far end of the argument; mankind more or less universally recognizes that we shouldn't just arbitrarily or for personal benefit take the life of another person. And you can't claim an actual human being isn't a human being-- even though some proponents of abortion recognize this particular tension and actually try to go that direction, saying infants shouldn't be declared human until they've lived six months, or nine months, outside the womb. They want to not only have the right to kill the unborn child, but to retain that right for months after the birth. Sickening.

Fortunately that bloodthirsty subset of the far left has yet to gain any real influence, not that they're not trying.

No, the issue is this and only this-- IS AN UNBORN CHILD A HUMAN BEING?

And if not, at what point does the 'tissue mass' assume 'personhood'?

One would think this was dreadfully important, given the emotional commitment to the pro abortion side; how could they even make the case for abortion without first assuring themselves and the nation that in fact they were not advocating the killing of human beings?

Of course they knew this problem well, but were never willing to address it.

This is why the argument was, from the beginning, framed as 'women's rights'. It could never be about the BABY. Because the practice of abortion is indefensible without a national agreement on whether or not an unborn child is a person.

So they made it about 'a woman's right to do as she wants with her own body'. I'm told that when the meetings were held to agree on this deception, some participants actually had a laugh about how easy it would be to fool the public. Call that story apocryphal for now, as I cannot confirm or link it. But I know I have both heard and read this.

Logic demands we reject this 'women's rights' argument on the grounds that it begs the question. The question is 'what is a human being? When does it become human? How do we know?' The 'woman's right to choose' argument is simply a sidestep of the principal objection to the 'choice', that it is possibly the choice to murder someone. If an unborn child is a person, the proper comparison to a pregnant woman is that of a homeowner with a guest, a minor guest whose needs the homeowner is obliged to meet until such time as the guest leaves the house. If you're pregnant and an unborn child is a person, you are not the only one with a claim to rights related to your body. Your 'guest' is subject to the decisions you make about your own health, and you are obliged to meet the guest's basic needs.

And to anyone who makes the claim that an unborn child is not a person, I simply say prove it.

There is no argument presented by the left that conclusively, medically, logically, rationally proves that an unborn child is somehow not yet a human being, especially an argument that shows rationally at what point in the timeline 'humanity' somehow establishes itself within the tissue mass.

If they had such an argument, you can bet it would be universally known and extensively repeated in the media. The fact that even now, more than thirty years after the Supreme Court finding, they still speak of it in terms of 'a woman's right to choose' reveals the dishonesty inherent in the argument of the left.

A woman does not have the right to 'choose' to murder someone, any more than a man has it. If an unborn child is nothing more than a tumor, no rational person would try to prevent her from choosing to have it removed-- but the left does not make any attempt to prove that the tissue mass has no personhood.

They stand on the 'woman's right to choose'.

So rational thought here makes a sensible stand; given mankind is more or less universally opposed to murder and has been from earliest history, if we cannot know, for certain, sufficient to dismiss the question, that an unborn child is not a person, shouldn't we extend the benefit of the doubt to this little would-be person? At least temporarily, until such time as society might agree on what a person is and when it is?

If you were hunting in a field and saw something that might be a deer and might also be a person, would you say "I have the right to hunt!" and pull the trigger?

If you were driving at night and saw a lump ahead in the road, and it might be a trash bag but might also be a person, would you simply hold your course because you have the right to choose what lane you're in?

Society has, regrettably, chosen to blind itself to this, chosen to charge ahead and run over whatever's there, to pull that trigger even though the thing in its sights may be a person.

Because nobody is capable of making a genuine argument that an unborn child is NOT a person.

The Judeo-Christian view is that God, who has always existed and who created all things, also created us. The Bible teaches that God invented each of us first as an idea, a personality, a soul, and then later as a human being with a physical body. "I knew you before you were born", Jesus said. Each person is, therefore, complete and finished eternally, meaning certainly before sperm meets egg. We have always been persons, and we are still persons before we are born and afterward. We are born in the infinitely creative mind of God, who imagined the universe and then said "BE!" and it was.

We are created by God, and he made us like Him, according to Moses. In His image and likeness. That's why man has morality, a knowledge of right and wrong, and is the only creature on earth who has this. God said he made animals like animals and man like Himself. This, if you can make yourself believe there is a God, answers all the questions science cannot answer, about what and who we are, how we came to be this way.

And when God took the opportunity to answer mankind's deep questions about who He was and what He wanted from us, one of the first instructions given was that we shouldn't murder each other.

In this light, we who understand and accept the JudeoChristian version of events know from the beginning that abortion is murder, that it is wrong.

The other side, the activists, the liberals, have nothing but contempt for this set of beliefs. But they also have nothing to offer as counterbalance; they cannot explain what a human being is, when it becomes a human being, cannot answer the questions that ought to be settled before any more abortions are done.

Instead they talk of women's rights, forgetting even the words of the founding fathers concerning such things, that we are 'endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

If God did not grant us rights, we don't have them, according to the founding documents of this nation. Where do rights come from if not the Constitution? And the Constitution says they come from God.

So where does that leave the pro abortion side, many of whom reject God entirely and all of whom are disinterested in whether God sees abortion as the murder of a human being?

If there is a God (and there is), if there is a judgment for every human being (and there is), I pity the fool who selfishly supports abortion because it's a convenient way to avoid the consequences of bad decisions. Or because performing abortions makes him or her a good living. Or because people in need of abortions vote for the people who support them.

Over forty million abortions have been performed in this country since the early 1970's.

If you wonder why we are moving toward a welfare state imbalance, toward having too few workers and too many retired, think about forty million more people in this nation who would be working now, for the most part. More than forty million, since enough time has passed for them to have had children who would now be joining the workforce. It is the left and their determination to continue and increase abortions which has robbed this nation of millions upon millions of citizens in these current generations, a colossal loss of human capital whose contributions cannot be overestimated.

Or see it as God does, as a tragic display of casual selfish brutality, another in an endless line of proofs that man has a sinful nature and indulges it, and that Christ's sacrifice was necessary to absolve them of a universe of sins.

And if you can't get past this business of women's rights, think for a moment of all the women who chose abortion as 22 year olds or 18 year olds, or 14, and then had to spend the rest of their lives seeing children of various ages and crying silently to themselves, "my son or daughter would have been this age now". I have known more than one woman in this terrible position; there is massive guilt over the choice to end that life, longing for the child that should have lived, regret at a selfish and foolish decision made at a young and naive stage of life. They never recover fully; the guilt and shame and anguish are lasting. And these are only the women who admitted it to me. Imagine how many cases of depression and illness and suffering for middle aged and older women can be properly blamed on this incredible guilt and shame, unspoken, unadmitted.

Some women I've known still defend it even as they suffer. They are not willing to speak the truth plainly; "I killed my child". But they know. And some say it outright, through tears.

I cannot imagine their plight. But one thing is certain; the moral responsibility for what they've done is shared in great measure by the people who defended abortion, argued for it, convinced them to abort. Told them it was their right. Made it seem like a simple medical procedure, a wart removed, or a cyst. A tissue mass.

Those people are in God's crosshairs. Now or later.

We're changing our position, but we're still right

2008-04-12T05:38:00.001-07:00

Kerry Emmanuel is a scientist. He's not just any scientist; he's an MIT scientist. He does the math that shows the world is going to cook and we're all going to die from global warmening.

Kerry Emmanuel is one of the jokers who predicted in 2005 (after Katrina) that 2006 would be even more dreadful. Then, after 2006 was considerably less dreadful than 2005, Emmanuel predicted that 2007 would be the ultimate dreadful hurricane season.

Now that 2007 has shown itself to have been similarly undramatic, it's time for the expert to explain himself.

So Kerry Emmanuel has changed his tune, now saying that even though global warmening is actually happening and we're all going to die, nevertheless hurricanes aren't going to get stronger and more numerous for a while.

He has invented a 'novel' formula to predict this, and he espouses it with great confidence; it is the same great confidence with which he espoused the previous failed formulas.

Rather than reconsider the larger picture, he set about creating a formula that would still prove his previous preexisting conclusion while taking into account the data which argues for the opposite conclusion.

Only a scientist could manage this, but don't worry-- K.E. is one of the best. Heh heh.

Remember, the most recent actual global temperature measurements tell us we haven't seen actual warming since 2004, and that the recent ten year period is either flat or cooling in trend, with the warmest weather in 1998. This ten year non-warming trend has actually leveled the charts for the previous 100 years, putting us at current temperatures which do NOT support the whole global warmening thing.

Coincidentally, the sun has been dead quiet in terms of sunspots since 2005, and the latest cycle of sunspots is now two years late and counting. Sunspots are the cause of increased solar radiation striking earth, and when sunspots are at a minimum, the weather historically has been cold.

But rather than incorporate THIS data and reach different conclusions, these 'scientists' approach their work with conclusions already formed and then create the math to explain their preexisting conclusions.

This does not fill ME with confidence about their work.

Err Amerika actually has standards

2008-04-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

In addition to being stunned at the fact that Air America, the left wing radio network that can't make a buck the honest way, is still actually broadcasting, I am now stunned to find that this bunch actually has standards.

They've fired Randi Rhodes, the jockette with the checkered present. She not only has faked a mugging (told people she was mugged when the truth was something wierder, involving a fall, possibly a drunken stupor or worse), she has recently used filthy language to describe the Obama non-supporters among the Democrat party. Hillary is a 'f***ing whore', Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary are both 'f***ing bitc**s', you get the picture. Randi Rhodes in top form.

OF course she immediately went back to her old job-- at Green 960 radio in San Francisco.

Where she was publicly welcomed. They're glad to have her back.

So what does Err Amerika do when it's missing a marquis name? They take a dip in the talent pool-- Hollywood actors. Richard Belzer will fill her timeslot on a temporary basis, probably trying to earn it permanently.

Yep, Richard Belzer from Law and Order. Used to be a comic, now a deadpan dramatic actor.

I wonder how Billary are taking this. The hardcore left were always in the bag for the Klintoons way back when. Now they seem to not only have lost their appetite for Klintommunism, they actually seem to hate the both of them. With a f**ing passion.

:-)

Stormy weather....

2008-04-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 3:30 this morning to a sound I've heard about but never heard-- the sound of a train passing right by the front of my house.

Since there are no tracks, it occurred to me that I might be in the middle of some real trouble... I woke up, looked out the front window and saw my big oak tree doing impossible things, twisting, leaping, looking like it wanted to vacate the yard and come join me in the master bedroom.

To my great good fortune it did not. Others in my neighborhood did that, and on almost every block of my 1200 home subdivision there is at least one mature tree split down the middle or missing half its limbs or snapped off at its base. Many homes have lost shingles, and at least a dozen have had big strong fences come down.

My fence bent but did not break. My electric security gate, which is a part of the fence when it is closed, was not so fortunate.

It was pushed off its rail (not easy, as it has a very big metal clasp that was designed to hold the unattached end in place when closed) and twisted outward into the alley. More than half the fencing wood was torn off it and the rest is splintered and loose. The drive chain, of course, snapped.
The gate was only partially blocking the alley, but pieces of wood bristling with nails were everywhere, and it took a while to collect them.

Then the more arduous task of heaving the gate back onto its rails began. It has an iron frame, the wood was soaked, and it weighed several hundred pounds.

I finally figured out that my floor jack has castered wheels and I was able to use it to lift and move the gate back where it belonged, after prying the splintered beam out of the guide area.

With thanks sent heavenward for our comparative blessings, and prayers for the less fortunate around here who had roofs off and cars crushed by carports and so on, I now set about finding a repair guy who can do this job before September.

Those guys are booked pretty solid after this little adventure.

After one year in Dallas, I've concluded the weather here is very much more adventurous than in Houston. The TV people continue to insist that this was 'straight line winds', but I've been in some very strong winds that did not make this particular sound. It is just as they say, a train coming past the house at good speed, a rumbling and roaring. I can't help but believe a little funneling was going on.

Michele unplugged

2008-04-09T07:39:00.001-07:00

Here's what's in store for our great nation if and when it becomes an Obama-nation--

From the Charlotte Observer:

**Obama, like her husband a Harvard-trained lawyer, listened and then spoke off the cuff.

Most Americans, she said, don't want much.

"They don't want the whole pie," she told the women. "There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach."

After law school, she and Barack were beset by loans they'd still be paying had her husband not written two best-sellers, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father."

Those debts early in their marriage, she said, equips her husband to better understand the problems many Americans face.

Should she become first lady, she said she'd focus on family issues.

"If we don't wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership...for how we want this country to work, then we won't get universal health care," she said.

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."**

There you go, America. Because she 'had it tough', which is to say she and her husband used student loans to become Harvard-trained lawyers, she's convinced that someone has to give up a piece of the pie so others can have more.

My first difficulty is probably yours too; how does a Harvard lawyer with a Harvard lawyer husband lay claim to anything like a tough life? I have several doctor friends who are still paying student loans well into their forties. It's how you pay for enormously expensive educations that reap enormously large results. If your results come slow and your loans are hard to pay, why is that someone else's problem? Why does someone else have to hand over a slice of the pie, probably a pie they earned by going to school and paying off some student loans THEMSELVES?

My second, and larger, difficulty is of course with socialism itself.

History shows that, when you use government to decide how much of a person's productivity they are allowed to keep for themselves and how much should be given to those who did not earn it, you put a MAJOR damper on future productivity. People rightly ask why they should work so hard if it's only to put money in the pocket of someone who DOESN'T.

Human beings are consistent in that they work hardest and achieve the most when they are in a position to benefit from their own work. When they find they're instead in charge of paying for everyone else's expenses, they tend to slack off, sometimes in a big way.

And this is the rub with socialism; lower productivity per person, especially when you factor in the very high achievers who now have these targets on their backs, results in less wealth, less to redistribute, LESS FOR EVERYONE.

Socialism does NOT alleviate poverty; it spreads poverty UP the income ladder by reducing incomes in the higher rungs.

Naturally, government will get around to solving the problem of decreased productivity by becoming the agency of decision for who will do what job, where, how much of the time-- in other words, de facto slavery will be the result. It was in the Soviet Union. And of course it would be the result under HillaryCare, in which we all know doctors would have to submit to the State as to what specialty they pursue and where in America they will locate.

Folks, when government is that much in charge of your life, you're either in the military or you're a slave. Military is voluntary service; the rest is mandatory. That's the difference.

Socialism does NOT work. It's been tried enough, in enough historical times and places, for the conclusion to be obvious to all but the most determinedly blind.

But it's always the SMART people, the morally superior people, the 'wisest ones' (as Sheryl Crow's new song would have it), who think that it will work this time because this time the SMART people will be in charge.

And socialism is just communism without the 'nationalizing' of industry. The corporations are still nominally owned by stockholders and run by boards, and it's only the cash flow that's 'nationalized'. In communism, they stop pretending and actually make the corporations state-owned enterprises to be run by Central Planning Kommittee. But the principle is the same; all wealth belongs to the state to distribute as it sees fit, and anyone with moreof anything than another person is morally culpable for that wrongful state of affairs.

Like mom used to say, 'eat your dinner, there are people starving in Ethiopia". I never managed to understand how eating my Brussels sprouts helped anyone in Ethiopia, but there you are.

I knew it...

2008-04-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

I was hearing the Dancing with the Stars TV show in the other room a moment ago (the other room being the kitchen, where something wonderful was happening), and Sheryl Crow came on as the guest performer.

She began singing, and I began to suspect that the snippets of words I was hearing belonged to some new happy meaningless spiritualistic sort of liberal anthem. Something like "We are the World".

It was worse than that.

Me and my morbid curiousity. I didn't hear much of the song, but I had to go and Google the lyrics. Here's a sample--

"Losing babies to genocide,
oh, where's the meaning in that plight.
Can't you see we've really bought into
Every word they proclaimed and every lie.."

Once again our cruel and ignorant society has left it to the pop singers to bring morality and goodness back to the public square.

Who is "they"? She doesn't say. And clearly she doesn't mean herself when she says "we've" bought into the lies "they" proclaimed. Smart people like Sheryl Crow knew 'they' were lying all along.

Interestingly, in the chorus she pleads with 'children of Abraham' to lay down their fears and swallow their tears, yada yada. Children of Abraham. Jews and Arabs. Carter couldn't do it. Clinton couldn't do it. Arafat and Rabin couldn't do it. But now Sheryl Crow has solved the middle east crisis. Lay down your fears, Palestinians (?). Swallow your tears, Israelis (like they haven't already been doing this for sixty years).

Later she intones, "every man is his own prophet, every prophet just a man"

It's an insult to Islam and Mohammed (bravo Cheryl, brave stuff) and to Christianity (same old junk, yada yada). The Jews, apparently, do not appear on her theological radar screen. Lucky them.

Christians, as usual, will yawn and ignore her.

Muslims will issue a fatwa and set about killing her for blaspheming the holiness of their proph-- wait. Sheryl Crow is a liberal, an activist, anti-Bush, anti-evangelical.

They can always kill her later.

Blasphemically speaking, though, 'every prophet just a man' is a traditional Christian blasphemy too, the kind that used to be illegal in England and the empire. She has gone to the trouble here to deny the supernatural aspect of Christ in specific terms.

Pretty bold for a pop singer.

"Let every man bow to the best in himself-
We're not killing anymore.
We're the wisest ones, everybody listen
'cause you can't fight this feeling any more."

Gawd this is crap. Mindless leftist drivel, presumptive moral superiority on NO grounds whatsoever. It's secular humanist dreck, this constant hope and dream of human perfection and peace and love and world harmony. Sorry Sheryl-- not this planet, not this race, not this universe. Not gonna happen.

"We're the wisest ones"? Staggering arrogance disguised (thinly) as moral superiority. How does a pop singer and her 17 - 34 yr. old CD-buying demographic, mostly women, assume the mantle of wisdom? Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Hume, Edwards, Qutb and Zawahiri and bin Laden, all those who have been held by various parts of the world at various times to be wise, all now take a back seat to Sheryl Crow and her 'me' generation; they are 'the wisest ones'. I know of a few mullahs who might be rankled.

This song is another droplet in a Niagara Falls of evidence that liberals aren't serious, don't recognize evil or have any plan for dealing with it, can't come to terms with the fact that human beings are imperfect and some of us are downright evil and nasty.

Wait-- she knows we rightwing nutjobs are evil and nasty, but fortunately she hasn't elucidated any plan to rid the world of US-- at least not in this song.

They still think, just like in the '60's, that if they can just enlighten the dim, kill the killers with kindness and elevate the human race with that last lunge for the exact right kind of knowledge and wisdom, then THIS time, THIS century, THIS world can be overflowing with peace, love and harmony.

Children of Abraham, lay down your fears. Sheryl the psychoanalyst has concluded that fear, not anger, drives radical Islam, and that fear, not sensible self-defense, drives the IDF.

Dreck and drivel.

The lead line in the chorus says it best..

'if we could only get out of our heads and into our hearts'.

This world needs less thinking and more feeling. THAT will solve all the problems of humanity.

Tell it to Islamic Rage Boy.

As I was saying....

2008-04-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

It seems the curtain might have its corner pulled back, for a tantalizing peek at the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that Saddam never had.

American media utterly ignored a book published in early 2006 by Georges Sada, a former Air Vice Marshal under Saddam Hussein. "Saddam's Secrets" told the story of how Saddam did not trust his military and instead commandeered Iraq Airlines planes and had all the seats taken out.

Sada says what came on board the newly created air transport fleet was dozens or hundreds of canisters of yellowcake. "Barrels, yellow barrels, with skulls and crossbones on them", he says.

Sada supervised the transport of this material to Syria after the collapse of a dam there made the transports plausible as construction aid and materials.

It's all in the book. A bit of it is on Melanie Phillips' blog.

And it's related to the recent Israeli bombing of that site in remote western Syria.

It was a matter of time..

2008-04-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

"Bond. James Bond."

Daniel Craig was tough, edgy, understated, athletic to a fault, convincing entirely without the sort of "overacted underacting" the character has become famous for. I enjoyed his first Bond film, Casino Royale, immensely.

But in the end even the British version of Hollywood is what it is.

The new Bond film will be written 'in the context of global warming'.

The new villain, a French actor named Amalric, says "It's so difficult to know who are the villains today. ... Maybe they're in banks, maybe they are the insurance companies, maybe they're in labs, even in the subprime crisis".

Uh, yeah.

Then again, maybe they're Islamic terrorists. Maybe they're trying to FUND or ARM Islamic terrorists. Maybe they're in the UN and they're trying to skim billions from world charity or trying to stamp out Israel, a UN member in good standing.

One can hardly recognize the villains these days....

The plot apparently involves money interests trying to reinstate a dictator in return for shares of the natural resources. They don't even see the irony here-- dictators passing out natural resources in return for unethical support and for ignoring little problems like their mass graves and suffering people, well, that was exactly the problem Bush was trying to SOLVE.

They've done it. They've put me off James Bond movies.

These are sad times.

The real question is....

2008-04-04T19:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a great story about another front in the Dem crack-up, in which leftist radio personalities are censured for using filthy language to describe Dem candidates.

Err Amerika's Randi Rhodes made insulting remarks about Hillary recently, beyond even the soft parameters applied by management to that sort of personality, and was disinvited to work for a few days....

The greater question, of course, went unanswered--

Are they still on the AIR?

I thought Err Amerika folded months ago, after having illicitly drained the coffers of a publicly funded school in a scam to keep themselves afloat. I thought Err disk jockeys were quitting due to lack of paychecks.

I thought the new Err Amerika building was a tombstone. Really. And I do want to know how they managed to keep it going, and if taxpayer money is involved, well by all that is holy and good and decent, I want MY SHARE BACK.

It was an earmark that left a big red mark on my left ear, nasty stuff.

Teds are goofy

2008-04-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

About 20 years ago, Ted Danson famously started his environmental activist group, something about oceans, with a quote to the effect that within ten or twenty years our oceans would boil, or freeze, or just die of pollution or something. No fish, no survivors of any kind.

Unless we, the evil American public, change.

Danson is still giving interviews about the oceans, proving the press does NO fact checking these days.

But now another Ted is proving how silly Teds are, this time one named Turner.

He says there are too many people in this world, and within 40 years we're going to be starving and will turn to eating each other. Yes, fellow non-Teds, we are going to become cannibals. Dr. Lecter will doubtless be at the forefront with a chain of restaurants, if indeed Ted and Ted's excellent future adventures come to pass.

Me, I always wonder why the guys who complain that there are too many people on earth don't set a good example and off themselves.

Ted? Ted?

new thinking about an old problem

2008-04-03T05:39:00.001-07:00

The problem is poverty.

The reason, when you boil it right down to essentials, is human behavior.

People mostly don't do what it takes to get out of poverty. Make moves, take chances, apply for jobs, clean up, stop drinking and drugging, follow better examples. Most poor people just don't do what it takes.

For whatever reason. Dems have long said it's because of right wing racism, but that doesn't explain the majority of the poor who are not black. There are also a large number of people who cycle in and out of poverty, sometimes doing what it takes and sometimes slumping back into misery and depression and inactivity.

The human spirit is complex and difficult to understand, but there are some market responses which are consistent and timeless.

Penalize a behavior and it will decrease; reward (or subsidize) a behavior and it will increase.

Somewhere in the obscure metaphorical arguments made in this article linked on Instapundit is the absolute gem of a solution--

SUBSIDIZE WORK.

For people who get jobs, give government payments related to the earnings from the job. The harder they work, the more then earn, the more 'welfare' payments they receive. In this way the taxpayer dollars are blending with actual human productivity and thus, for once, have the potential to actually be an economic net plus for everyone-- rather than the temporary and ultimately wet-blanket 'fix' for the economy that taxpayer funded relief so often turns out to be.

Poverty is real, poor people need help, and I do not pretend otherwise. But I've always been rankled by the certainty that the vast majority of those receiving government subsidies are able to care for themselves but choose not to, for whatever reason. Maybe it's depression, perhaps it's a lack of hope rooted in their particular realities of crime and danger and addiction, and of course maybe they're just taking the easy way out, as is human nature.

I am deeply, fundamentally opposed to this 'taking the easy way out', this lazy acceptance of other people's money, and have long demanded that government find a way to separate the needy from the lazy.

While this idea I've linked to does not inherently do this, it does work around it by incentives to work-- which will leave only the needy and the TRULY lazy in the position of receiving subsidies for doing nothing, and which perhaps actually stands a chance of at least offsetting the wasted taxpayer dollars which support the lazy with a real productivity gain that stimulates economic activity and lifts a community up.

We have 4.8% unemployment in this country, a .1% increase from the past several years due to the recent speculative foolishness in the property market. An English newspaper has proposed that we are now in a depression.

But of course, in the real Depression the unemployment rate was almost 25%, a rate five times higher than today. In fact anything under 5%, historically, is magnificent, and means employees can be selective and find the best job.

English leftists are no less dedicated to the end of America than our own; they trumpet disaster in the press as a way of convincing people that disaster is what we have, so we'll start behaving like victims and their prophecies will be self-fulfilling. Radical change is what they want, and massive public dissatisfaction is their means of getting it. If capitalism breeds failure and misery, the public will want socialism. It's their standard assault tactic.

But the reality in America is so, so different. And the world still wants that American life for itself, even as it claims to be anti-American.

There is no country in the world more receptive of people who want to work.

So if incentives to work are not effective here, they won't be effective anywhere.

House prices

2008-03-25T05:15:00.000-07:00

February housing prices are slightly up (here's an example, here is another).

The media seems mystified, as Glenn Reynolds says on Instapundit. I suppose they expect all trends to continue along the same chartlines forever-- unless it is good economic news, of course, which is always represented as short term news about to take a turn for the worse.

But as Instareaders point out, at some point the falling price of ANYTHING will bring along a few interested buyers. That is how the free market works.

And I have long wondered why this drop in housing prices is such bad news, given we are always publicly pulling for the little guy achieving his American dream. Doesn't a lower price mean more people can afford it?

We know, as we have finally heard some Republicans say, that speculation is the major problem with housing prices, not the economy per se. Borrowers would buy homes they could not reasonably afford, planning to sell them in two years for 40% more and take away a profit. Lenders, too, speculated, considering their really BAD mortgage loans safe on the grounds that they would repossess a property worth, yes, 40% more in two years. A no-lose deal for the banks, so they thought.

World wide, investors of all classes bought into the wobbly securities based on these rough loans with their higher interest rates, and when it headed south, lots of card-houses tumbled. This, in turn, affected home prices, as many a buyer found himself in trouble on the income side, through investment failures or more difficulty finding or keeping a job. Likewise many an owner found himself in need of a fast sale to correct financial imbalances of his own. The market was flooded and the prices plummeted. New homes stood partly finished and builders declared bankruptcy. Banks tightened requirements and new mortgages were harder to get, further drying up the pool of buyers. How did this all happen?

Reynolds lets his readers point out all the 'real estate' shows on networks like HGTV, which encourage young people to buy and remodel homes and then sell them for big profits. I would add to this the absolutely VIRAL spread of weekend radio shows on the same topic; real estate clinics, how to make money in real estate, become wealthy without working, yada yada.

I'm a radio guy. I even produced a couple of these shows as part of my staff work. From the beginning, I was a cynic; why aren't these people simply out DOING it, rather than taking money from people to give lessons? Surely there's more money to be made in that market than in giving classes, right? It's a ticket to MILLIONS!

But no.

It is of course because they knew all market trends come to an end. The line on the real estate chart was becoming more and more vertical-- a sure sign that it was all going to rebalance itself shortly.

Market forces at work have made a lot of money for a lot of people, and that money is spent or invested. It's been a boon. The new lower housing prices will also be a boon to many. But those who tried to get the richest the quickest have found out the perennial market truth-- with great reward comes great risk. Caveat emptor. Nothing in this world maintains an annual increase in value of 20%, not for long. For financial guys to make that money, they have to buy and sell things constantly; nothing in the investment world is a long term 20% annual gainer.

Risk-takers are what makes America the economic engine it is. I salute them, and I try to take a few risks myself from time to time. I've lost more than I've gained that way, though, and I have less of a stomach for it than I used to.

But of this I'm certain; taxpayers do not owe risk-takers the financial backing to save them from their own decisions.

If so, then listen, I've lost money investing-- who will give it back to me? Anyone? Anyone?

(crickets chirping)

Out from Under the Bus-- Obamagramma's real story

2008-03-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has sacrificed his grandmother's reputation in this world in order to improve his chances of winning an election.

The one thing all white people fear (if they have any sense) is somehow acquiring the tag of 'racist'. It's impossible to shed, impossible to prove a negative; and it can ruin you, financially, socially, literally. The Jerksons and Shrimptons have used it well, this magical sword which holds rational discussion at bay and compels their enemies to submit.

Now Obama has given this terrible burden to his own grandmother, just to advance his political career.

But as you see here, things are not what they seem. In his book, Obama tells the story of his grandmother's adventure at a bus stop, when she is accosted by a black panhandler and he genuinely frightens her with his aggression.

The speech he made this week said 'she was afraid of black men in the street', or some such. In reality, she was afraid of ONE black man who was acting aggressively toward her.

What's even worse is that in the book, Obama says it's his grandfather who regretfully told him his grandmother was a racist. The poor man felt terrible even saying it, and probably died with a truckload of guilt pressing down on him.

It might have been hard growing up half black in a white world, as did Obama, but I suspect this glimpse into his family interactions reveals it might have been just as hard being an older white family raising a black son. None of us is immune to external pressure and internal guilt.

The grandfather is dead. The grandmother is sequestered from the media.

If I was a white member of this family I'd be calling my lawyer right about now.

The race, so to speak, goes on.

"Seas Not Warming- GW on temporary break"

2008-03-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

That's what the the good folks at NPR are thinking/hoping after this scientific research project reveals that the seas just aren't warming.

The Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming crowd is ignoring ever more evidence to the contrary of their setpiece.

Oh, and look at this-- if you're writing for Reuters, the first couple of months of this year are cold cold cold, but no worries-- global warming will devastate the planet this summer for sure, heh heh..

Global Warming 1920's style

2008-03-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Tim Blair has dragged together lots of interesting stuff from back in the 1920's, stories about warming seas and ice melts and the earth is going to burn up and kill us all, yada yada...

And of course, it got hotter and hotter. 1930 and 1931 were ridiculously hot years, contributing mightily to the 'dust bowl' in the great depression. Even now 1931 is one of the hottest years on record, hitting 100 degrees or more in Washington DC for more than 30 days straight.

And as we know, it got cool again, so much so that by the 1970's scientists were warning of an impending ice age, we're all gonna freeze and starve in the cold, yada yada.

Cyclical, anyone? Natural patterns, anyone? Sun-related, anyone?

This ain't the first time around the track for these people.

AP attempts self-fulfilling prophecy

2008-03-16T18:10:00.001-07:00

Here's a classic lefty media effort to make something happen.

It appeared on Yahoo's home page with the (Yahoo-written) headline, "US death toll in Iraq quietly nears 4000."

In the first place, how is it 'quietly' if the HEADLINE ON A PAGE WITH A MILLION VIEWS A DAY IS SAYING IT?!?!?!

It should say "Courageous Yahoo News Headline Writers Expose Evil Military Effort to Conceal New Symbolic Death Toll Not Yet Reached".

And if the Yahoo headline doesn't make you blow Diet Coke out your nose, read the A. P. story itself.

It's a laundry list of stuff they HOPE will happen and will publicly discuss in order to advance the possibility of it becoming reality.

It's media wishful thinking at its finest.

Historical perspective

2008-03-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

I was browsing an antique mall yesterday and came across some old advertising pieces, magazine ads under plastic and for sale as collectibles.

One was for the 1971 Chevy Monte Carlo, a medium-priced and very comfortable car of that era, well equipped-- and listed at $3,300.

Roll forward to 37 years later, and the same sort of car, medium size and well equipped, sells for almost ten times as much.

So how much was gasoline, more or less, in the same year?

About 35 cents a gallon.

Roll forward to 37 years later, and gasoline costs (gasp!) almost ten times as much.

For all who moan and groan about gas prices and the evil oil companies, please note that gasoline costs no more than anything else, adjusted for inflation.

Rage and incoherence

2008-03-13T07:54:00.000-07:00

Pastor Wright, the mentor and example and shining light of one Barack Obama, is finally getting the attention he deserves.

But what stands out to me is not so much the boilerplate black militant talking points; those after all have been around for forty years or more.

No, what stands out is the incoherence. He hates and hates and hates America, but the must cursory examination of the issues he mentions will yield a thorough concern for the mental stability of the good pastor. His classic liberal talking points about nuclear weapons and our primacy on the world stage and so forth are utterly superficial, sometimes in conflict with one another, and overall they give me the sense that he is less than mentally stable.

He is clearly nourished on black militancy and an unsatisfiable thirst for revenge of the black, against the white.

He doesn't acknowledge that the entire western world was guilty of this treatment of black people. He doesn't acknowledge that black people were, are, sold into slavery by other black people. He doesn't acknowledge what any black world traveler will tell you, that America is the least racist of any nation on earth in real daily life.

He doesn't acknowledge even that black people have their own racial prejudices. Ask Jews or Mexicans about that.

He believes America created AIDS to kill black people.

HE believes America knew in advance about Pearl Harbor, that it was deliberately used somehow as an excuse to go to war. Same for 9/11, of course.

He doesn't acknowledge that the reason we used the nuke in Japan is because our calculations of American casualties from a conventional invasion (necessary to end the endless war) were above a MILLION AMERICAN MEN (doubtless including some black men).

He doesn't acknowledge that most of the decisions in American history which he now decries were made in a complex and changing set of circumstances, or that most decision makers actually were and are decent men trying to do the right thing.

Wright believes that white people are responsible for much of the evil in the world and at home, and that they should be punished for their transgressions.

This is personal. I am a white person. I have never nursed any grudge against any black person, and have never been able to even understand the assumption that any race is somehow superior or inferior because of genetics. It is simply erroneous. It requires a certain level of stupidity or fear or hatred to believe something that visibly is not true. I do not hate, I am not afraid, and I am not stupid. The same can be said of hundreds of millions of Americans, ordinary decent people. Some are racist; the same can be said of some in every race.

We are farther along this road than we've ever been, and everywhere you see the evidence. Do interracial couples even get a GLANCE in the streets anymore? Not where I live. Truth is, race mongers like Jackson, Sharpton and Wright are starting to look like dinosaurs, anachronistic.

I do not claim to know, really know, the suffering of a black American; I cannot. But I do look around me and see incredible (given where we started) progress.

Mr. Wright has not changed his tune for forty years. America has changed its tune. He is out of tune. He is dissonant.

And Obama still calls him a mentor, a shining light for the past 20 years.

This is troubling, to say the least. Racism is not over; it will never be, because it springs from the flawed nature of human beings. Racism as national policy and cultural rule is most certainly over, to the point that people of all colors are voting by the millions for a black man BECAUSE he is black.

Never have so many white people taken advantage of such an opportunity to say to the world, and to themselves, "I am not a racist". What a great country, eh? Unless you're Barack Obama's preacher man.

One wonders what sort of world would satisfy him. One thing is certain; we will never have such a world, because man's sinful nature, man's built-in flaws (for which Jesus suffered and died, although Reverend Wright never seems to get to that part), will always bear bitter fruit.

BTW-- does anyone realize that Wright's divinity school degree has the equivalent of a 'major' in ISLAM?

For those conspiracy theorists who want to believe that Obama is a stealth Muslim out to destroy America, there's some red meat. I wonder why nobody has picked up on that.

Geraldine-- "the devil made me do it!"

2008-03-11T15:25:00.001-07:00

Well, okay, it wasn't Flip Wilson's Geraldine character, but the real thing, Geraldine Ferraro-- one time Vice Presidential candidate-- who said "if Obama was a white man, he wouldn't be in this position." She said almost the exact same thing about Jesse Jackson twenty years ago.

Obama's campaign is furious, of course.

But it's not because of 'the race card'.

What Ferraro said is an insult, true enough; her assertion goes more to Obama's mediocrity than his blackness.

She is describing, in a roundabout way, the phenomenon known as 'white guilt'.

Ferraro is saying that it is white liberals (and probably some conservatives), feeling guilty about the suffering of black people down through the centuries, who are carrying Obama to the top of the vote count and delegate count and state win count.

After all, black people are only about 15% of this country, and some of those don't vote for Obama anyway.

Remember, not long ago Senator Joe Biden (D- Delaware), in one of his many frank but stupid moments, said Obama was 'clean and articulate', a wonderful candidate; Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson must have privately fumed, given they have both been presidential candidates in the past, but they did not speak out against the evil racist Biden-- he is a Dem.

And noted (black) author Shelby Steele has written a book on this topic, also called "White Guilt". It is a chance for redemption, to cast a vote and choose a black man to lead us, and expunge from the collective conscience all our previous maltreatment of black people by elevating a symbolic man to ultimate power. It is a way for a white person to overcome his own doubt and say to himself, once and for all, "I am not a racist". It is proof of his moral superiority, and I submit that is no small emotional pull.

It is, of course, a pitiful reason to vote for a President. Americans should know and vote the issues, instead of trying to 'make themselves feel better about themselves'. That sort of thing is selfish, juvenile and destructive. But they will do it, and Obama is the guy who will tug on their self-esteem all the way to the ballot box.

Ferraro has spoken the truth; if he were not a real, true-life African-American, he would not have been elevated to this place. He is a typical leftist, not distinguished by achievements; that is, unless you count the achievements others have planned that he take credit for.

His ascendancy from the beginning has been about the idea of marketing an 'acceptable black man' to the white guilt crowd. They knew of the power of this emotional tug, and they planned all along to use it. White people would never vote in large numbers for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton; those two began their public lives as militants, agitators, troublemakers. But Obama is a Harvard guy, lawyer, was not raised in the 'hood' and does not speak in the patois of the culturally black (except for the odd excursion into that realm on the campaign trail, clearly phony but also clearly effective).

Electing Obama will do nothing to reduce racism, of course, and probably will exacerbate it-- if his pastor's activities and statements have any sway at all with him, Obama will encourage and promote a platform of racial preferences and so forth, and become in office the militant he never was in private life. After all, Pastor Wright accompanied Louis Farrakhan to Libya to meet (then the enemy of America) Muammar Khadafy.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that jam session.

But the point Ferraro made is strong; Obama is a mediocre man, smooth talker but without much of a performance record and nothing to indicate that he's going to 'blossom' someday. The blossoming is all being handled for him, and the favors he'll owe are going to make a very very long list.

He would not be a leading politician, probably not one at all, if not for being the right color in the right place at the right time. Sad, but true. No wonder Obama's crowd are angry.

But his response was, essentially, to condemn Hillary for allowing her 'supporters' to 'bring race into the race', so to speak. He has not acknowledged what Ferraro was actually saying.

Global warming.. to a point

2008-03-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a great story from Hungary on the awful terrible crisis of Global Warmening, courtesy of Tim Blair.

Apparently, the science which produced the 'runaway global warming' atmospheric model was all along based on a mathematic theorem produced in 1922.

Which would be fine, except that the 1922 theorem used as a base the notion that the atmosphere is infinitely deep.

Of course they already knew it wasn't, but sometimes an infinite base works almost as well as an actual number for such calculations, and nobody ever bothered to find out if an actual number would significantly change the outcome.

Until now. And it does.

In fact, this Hungarian scientist, formerly the loudest advocate there for Kyoto and a big believer in the warmening phenomenon, says the new formula causes negative feedback that serves to limit the carbon based warming activity, and the higher the warming, the greater the negative feedback.

His formula shows a strong coordination with the history of global weather, quick spikes of heating followed by long slow cooling spells. No other model predicts this, and they all have proven to predict warming that has not happened. in the predicted short term.

Not to mention the recent chart that shows 2007 was such a cooling year that it almost erased all the global warming of the past 100 years.

Again, remember the frightening forecasts after the big 2005 hurricane season, even more storms, ever more powerful, deadly danger, all Bush's fault, yada yada. What has followed was half the number of hurricanes in 2006 as in 2005, and just as few in 2007.

And watching the snowflakes come tumbling down just last week here in Texas has done nothing to convince me that we're going to be cooked off anytime soon.

If others are right about what drives it, it's the sun. And the sun is dead quiet, more than two years after the new cycle of sunspots was supposed to have already begun. DEAD quiet.

It's an eleven year cycle that is two years late and then some. This, to me, is enormously significant. The last time the sun was this quiet when it should have been active was just a few hundred years ago, and a generation of people in the northern hemisphere died of starvation and cold. Permafrost covered southern England. Crops did not grow. And it all happened AFTER Shakespeare wrote his plays. It is well remembered and completely documented.

And our present two years of cooling is, what, a coincidence? Quiet sun, cold air?

Seems completely normal to me. But then I'm not a scientist trying to keep his government funding and his professional reputation (which in too many cases seems to be for sale, for the funding).

Looks like a giant... WILLIE!

2008-03-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Instapundit--

Jim Geraghty wonders if, now that Austen (Goolsbie) and (Samantha) Power have fallen victim to the perils of telling it how it really is about the Obama campaign, could there be a campaign adviser named Danger (the legendary middle name, baby) and should he just resign now?

I say the REAL scandal would be if Barack Obama had an American Express card and was a--

wait for it--

Gold Member.

one way racism

2008-03-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

Hollywood strikes again.

Not so long ago two Wayans brothers (in the literal sense but the cultural works too) dressed up, and put on makeup to become "White Chicks" in the movie of the same name.

It wasn't funny. It had some moments, but not enough to fill even the trailer.

But the make up and acting were themselves quite impressive. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon fooled nobody, but these two actually pulled it off once or twice, skillfully if not subtly.

Now there is a new movie about to hit the screens in which Robert Downey Jr. (Currently "Iron Man") is made up to look like a black man. And it is at least as impressive in that sense.

A glance at the publicity photo and you'd never imagine Downey was in the photo. I cannot WAIT to see how the slightly unbalanced but brilliant Downey pulls it off.

It is a Ben Stiller movie, with Jack Black, a goofy comedy and satire on multiple levels including a send-up of egotistical and self-aggrandizing actors-- which gladdens my heart, as most of them appear to be exactly that in real life.

What is is NOT is a 'real' role for a black man, stolen by a white man. It is doubtless a role created for Downey by Stiller et al, and Stiller is a second generation comic legend with many great creations to his name-- the king of 'awkward attempting to be cool and failing" comedy.

And yet the accusations have begun to fly.

Some perfectly qualified black man is out of a job because of the racists in Stiller's production team.

GIVE ME A BREAK.

I saw an episode of "Scrubs" last week in which Donald Faison ("Turk") was made up to be a white-bread suburban insurance salesman for a skit. He pulled it off, marvelously-- it took me a few seconds to realize it was him.

No cries of racism here either.

Why is racism always a one way street? Even Stiller, doubtless a Hollywood liberal in every sense of the word, realizes we've made enough progress on that front that we ought to be able to exchange roles now and then without having labels like Minstrel Show tossed around.

No Wonder Obama wants troops home

2008-03-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

IT is beginning to be known that Obama is connected, through Rezko, to a bunch of very smelly Iraqi billionaires, and in very RECENT dealings.

Perhaps Obama has promised them to get our troops out so they can be free to indulge themselves in pillaging and corrupting the politicians of Iraq, as they seem to have done with some of ours.

Did you know that Rezko was born in Syria? That there are former Saddam officials and recent ministers of the present Iraq government involved with Rezko, one of whom was in jail over there awaiting trial for four months on a corruption charge and ESCAPED, and is now residing in his mansion... in CHICAGO?

This is all getting VERY interesting, and if it gets any hotter in that federal building, look for Dem higher-ups to find a way to torpedo the Obama candidacy.

Snow in unlikely places

2008-03-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

UPDATE-- now it's early afternoon and fat wet snowflakes are blocking the view of the house across the street from me, so heavy is the fall. temperature has dropped from mid forties to mid thirties, will be 29 in the morning, and if there is much more snow it will stick and we'll be iced in.

Darn global warming is gonna kill us all.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

This past year we've seen a deluge, if you will, of reports of snow in unlikely places.

Baghdad. Nobody there can remember the last time it snowed in Baghdad.

San Diego.

Lima, Peru.

And dozens of others.

It is somewhat less unlikely to have snow here in Dallas, Texas, of course. Happens every other winter or so, more or less. Last winter there were ice storms here, the kind that coat your car and make you wish you'd have carried ten gallons of hot water from the front door with you when you tried to go to work and couldn't get the key in the car door.

So this winter, we expected a pass. Global warming, right? The least it could do while threatening to kill us all is give Texans a break from winter weather.

So here in early March it was kind of disappointing to read today' forecast, calling for a 90% chance of snow.

Mini-me's perfect pistol

2008-03-05T12:19:00.001-08:00

A swiss gun maker has produced a limited edition pistol that is only two inches long.

It's a little revolver, believe it or not. This article in the Daily Mail (UK) gives the details, including security concerns in America about how this might avoid detection in travel situations.

The Swiss manufacturer is Jean-Francois Pompousass. Well, okay, that's not his name, but it is certainly his attitude. He thinks it's ridiculous, that many air guns have twice the muzzle speed (true), and he says--

"It is ridiculous. Why would criminals want my gun when you can go out and buy a Kalashnikov there already?"

There, as in here, in the USA, of course. A Swiss guy thinks people walk around with AK47s in regular America. That is the leftist anti-gun rights opinion in action, and in an irony doubtless unnoticed by any readers of leftist persuasion, he IS HIMSELF A GUN MANUFACTURER.

His guns, of course, are sold in small numbers and put on shelves in chateaus for display only.

Then again, he does manufacture the ammunition for this little popgun as well, so perhaps he does intend for someone to actually pull the trigger now and then.

2.34 mm rimfire cartridges, made only for this gun. If you grabbed a paper clip and used wire cutters to snip off about an eighth of an inch of the wire, that's about how big the bullets are.

American officials say it's lethal, because it can penetrate the skin and damage the heart.

Of course, this is kind of overkill. .177 caliber air pistols can do that too, probably deeper.

But this 'gun' can get past security as a KEY FOB. A MINIATURE TOY GUN.

So give them some credit for noticing it.

Obama, the Pastor in Chief

2008-03-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama defends his support of 'civil unions' (gay marriage in all but name) including the right to 'visit each other in the hospital, transfer property', and so forth, by citing--

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

In the words of our Lord, red lettered, with notes by this writer--

'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'.

This means (the other possible meaning is incoherent) "the poor will be blessed in their spirit", and it has nothing to do with civil unions and is irrelevant to the position Obama defends. It is an extension of the Christian notion that suffering is inevitable and if we 'share it with God', dedicate it to Him, it is easier to bear and counts to our good in eternity. The theology is hard to fully understand, even for longtime Christians; the point is, it has NOTHING to do with government programs for the poor or oppressed or marginalized.

It is about the SPIRIT. It is God's word to comfort the poor, to reassure them that their suffering is not all in vain, that it is noted and will be rewarded in Heaven. The obverse meaning, that those who luxuriate on this earth will do less of that in Heaven, is left unsaid.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Having been a mourner, as I will be for the rest of my life, it's good news. It is also irrelevant to Obama's assertion, unless he's planning a government giveaway for everyone who suffers the death of a loved one.

Not out of the question by any means, if he can get votes with it.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Assuming Obama intends to defend his position with this part-

It takes a really loose interpretation of 'meek' to include today's typical 'poor' American, who has two televisions, a working automobile and a really whiny attitude about other people owing him/her a living. They are in many cases the opposite of meek; assertive, demanding, unsatisfiable. And our modern meek do nothing to endear themselves to the other Americans, those who will pay the bill.

And I would certainly list as among this group the many gay activists I've seen and heard, given the sheer volume of the whining sound made by so very few people and the unique privileges they are usually seeking.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Righteousness being defined contextually here as acting in the way God wants us to act (as the Bible itself teaches us throughout both Testaments), this assertion by Christ certainly excludes cynical appeals to certain voting groups; and since the Bible is fairly unambiguous about what marriage is (even Christ says 'a man and woman shall leave their parents and cleave one to another' in Mark 10:6-9, not to mention Paul's discussion of 'perversions'), the gay activist cannot here claim anything like the 'righteousness' of which Christ speaks in this sermon.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Defined as? A merciful redefinition of the word "marriage"? To his credit (not his moral sense, of course, but his political sense) Obama eschews changing the meaning of the word. But if the reality is there, the verbage matters little. And again this plainly goes against the words of Christ, saying unambiguously that 'the two shall become one flesh'; this union between a man and a woman is for life. It is marriage, and in the context of the Greco-Roman world in which the Hebrews live, it is revolutionary. It elevates the woman to the status of first-class human being, removes the label that says 'property of the man'. Divorce is now equivalent to amputation; they are 'one flesh'.

She had suffered with this second class status for as long as the human race existed, until the tablets came down from the mountain and the Hebrews learned how God wanted His creations to live.

We are wise to remember this revolutionary nature of the Hebrew way (one all powerful creator God, women and men different but equal in value, etc.) as we consider what is actually a counter-revolution, a return to the animal human and his subjective values, currently being conducted by leftists.

(aside-- part of the leftist arrogance at work here rests in their idea that only in this generation, only recently, have (only) certain people become wise and smart enough to address the reworking of the foundations of our culture. It takes a determined effort to ignore C. S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine and Origen and Polycarp and John the Elder and all the Apostles and prophets, as well as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Cicero and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and all the thousands of voices which have made and shaped Western and Jewish and Christian culture for thousands of years. Humility is part and parcel of the character which honors and admires the great teachers of the past; arrogance and contemptuousness is the hallmark of those who toss it all out the window and insist they are smarter than those old people, those 'dead white guys', those antiquated types from yesteryear. Stalin tried it with the 'new Soviet man', Hitler with the Aryan supremacy theme, following Lenin and Marx and Trotsky and Sartre and Neitzche. It didn't work for them, and it doesn't work now. The sheer gall of those who think theirs is the only generation smart enough to remake human culture is breathtaking. Hillary Clinton is one such person, and has been from a young age. Clearly Michelle Obama is another, and doubtless Barack is also.)

Back to the fisking-

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Not applicable, certainly not to politicians (who shudder involuntarily when hearing this part).

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Because sometimes peace only comes when the clenched fist is applied to the unashamedly violent and oppressive, I count the United States Military among the peacemakers. Obama would not. And it is not relevant to the idea of 'civil unions' or even government largesse in general-- unless 'making peace' is somehow (as it is always, in this modern world) the responsibility of the defenders of the old ways, so that they are compelled to sit down and be quiet and let the changes happen for the sake of peace.

It is always the more conservative among us who are asked to be silent, isn't it? Obstruction of 'progress', as it were.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"For righteousness' sake" is the key here; people who are persecuted in general, or believe they are, do not appear on that list. It is for people who stand up and speak (and live a life which does not make the speech hypocritical) for God and Jesus and the Bible, knowing they will recieve grief or harm for it.

This includes, ironically, many people who stand and oppose the gay rights agenda.

It is those who have the courage to speak for God and Christ, not those who claim to have courage in the general leftist sense, 'speaking truth to power', yada yada. The real "truth to power" is the Gospel.

Blessed are ye, when men shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'

See previous paragraph; note that it is not for people in general who have been spoken against falsely, but those who suffer this for the sake of Christ specifically.

There is now growing a zeitgeist in the Western world, amplified with zeal by the media-supported gay activists, which ever more boldly denounces Christians as intolerably intolerant (an irony completely lost on the 'tolerant'); Christianity might soon go as Judaism has long gone, down the road of the truly oppressed. We are presently only a little down that road.

But some of us would be wise to educate ourselves on the millenia-long and terrible story of the Jews, if only to better prepare.

All this simple exposition of the beatitudes, the beginning of the Sermon, should serve to tell Barack Obama that if he is to use Scripture as support for a political stand, he'd best be sure of the contextual meanings.

Thus endeth the beatitudes, mostly irrelevant to Obama's articulated position. More on the remainder of the Sermon after I get a night's sleep.

/end notes on red letters-

In summary-

Looks like Barack Obama hasn't been listening to Pastor Wright in church; or worse, he HAS. This sort of appeal on Biblical grounds is utterly wasted on anyone who knows, and cares about, what is actually written in that Book.

Constituent politics using Biblical references fails at a key point; the spot where 'government programs' are presumed to have been what Christ and the Apostles were proposing as 'charity' or 'caring' or what have you. We can logically extend that to any effort by government to put any group in a position to financially benefit from its actions. That is not what Christ was about. He spoke to individuals, about their OWN choices and thoughts and actions. He was not a 'group activist' in that sense.

Spending someone else's money, as in supporting a government program you aren't paying for, is not only not charity; it is the opposite. It is something approaching theft. And if you stand to benefit from the program you support, it is an immoral conflict of interest, a grubby grab for other people's money cloaked in the clean white robes of democracy.

Gay activists certainly stand to benefit in many ways from this new Obama world. Of course, it is legal NOW to write a will which names a beneficiary, but that is apparently too permanent and too much work; in a promiscuous lifestyle such things are a constant chore to maintain. So they demand spousal rights to estate inheritance, hospital visitation rights, mostly as a cover for what they really want: BENEFITS. Health care free on a partner's work benefit program, legal co-ownership of pensions and so forth.

And that too is a hit to the average citizen, who will suffer from economic pressure consistent with the new burdens carried by businesses, burdens that result in fewer jobs, higher prices for goods and services and so on. It is not a huge burden; gays are a small percentage of the population. (Although I'd hate to be working in the Human Resources department right about now.)

But it is one of many burdens which Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would add (in a lunge for the votes of many special interest groups), and the totality is dreadful to contemplate.

I think it was Cicero who said something like--

When the masses discover they can vote themselves a share of the public treasury, the Empire is finished.

living and dying in Las Vegas

2008-03-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

There's a story in the news this week about a hotel room in Las Vegas whose occupant is now well on the way to dying from ricin poisoning.

He, apparently, was the one responsible for the ricin, likely having made it himself.

Police have already gone to the trouble to say that it wasn't terrorism. The man is American and does not have any obvious relationship to Islam or any middle eastern countries. He has a misdemeanor arrest but nothing glaring in his past, at least so far. Investigations are ongoing.

He did have a book whose subject matter was 'anarchy', they say. It had a chapter on ricin, and that chapter was tabbed or highlighted.

Probably a chapter on how to make and distribute it.

The article is, as always, tremendously vague, but I have to ask:

just because the book wasn't a Jihadi book or the Koran, how can we say he was not intending terrorism? Anarchy as a political philosophy died out almost a hundred years ago, but he didn't need to be an adherent of the book's antiquated political foundations to need it; all he needed was the highlighted chapter with the ricin instructions, which he clearly followed to the letter.

The man will probably be dead by the time I finish typing this, so we don't expect any answers from him. But it is far too early to abandon any notion that this might somehow be connected to terrorism.

The best of us....

2008-02-27T12:20:00.000-08:00

For reasons too numerous to even think of listing, William F. Buckley was the best of us all, the proto-neo-conservative, the guy who had the decency and the courage and the sheer intellectual FORCE to work it all out and explain it in such a way as to be understood.

At least by anyone who wanted to understand. Some didn't.

Hot Air dot com linked to this marvelous remembrance of Buckley at his best/worst, in a 1968 television appearance with Gore Vidal, famed liberal weasel. Vidal was pompously pointing out all the same crap we hear today about the Middle East but regarding Vietnam-- you know, they have a right to put in whatever government style they want (as if there were no difference between north and south), we shouldn't interfere, Western Europe and the rest of the world all agree we're wrong. Same crap as today. He ignored the suffering of the south Vietnamese at the hands of the Cong, he ignored the Soviet involvement that was after all the primary reason for our going there, he oversimplified and blamed America for everything. Classic liberal weasel, Vidal.

After a testy exchange prompted Vidal to call him a Crypto-Nazi, Buckley said:

"Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a nazi or I'll sock you in your goddam face, and you'll stay plastered!"

Buckley was leaning forward, probably a millisecond from actually taking a swing at Vidal; he was not just aggravated, he was righteously outraged. He went on to point out that he fought in the infantry in the 'last war', the big one. Nobody calls an American soldier a Nazi and gets away with it.

Note that the time-honored leftist tradition of calling anyone from the right a Nazi was standard practice a full forty years ago. (Nazis were, of course, the National SOCIALIST party of Germany, demanding that everyone think and say the same thing and that private industry and citizens should subordinate their natural energies and productivity 'for the good of the state', but leftists never allow their own similarity to Nazis to prevent them from calling US Nazis.)

In addition to inspiring countless young conservatives (including me, not so young now but still impressed by "God and Man at Yale" and all the good years of National Review, and still a Blackford Oakes fan), Buckley also served as inspiration, example, confidant and friend to the man who is inarguably the torch-bearer in our generation; the one and only Rush Limbaugh.

Rush took this subject on today, letting us in on the day he first met Buckley and on some marvelous personal moments in the years afterwards. He once made Buckley well with tears when he admitted to him in the company of several friends that having Buckley in his life made him feel as if his father were still with him.

Rush is, as always, speechless and humble when people actually start loading him up with praise and compliments, but the listeners did it to him today. They let him know that he really is this generation's Buckley, keeping intact all the layers and textures of meaning in that assertion.

And I, here on an unknown and little visited blog, second that emotion. I'm the first Rush generation. I was introduced to his show in 1989, right after he had started the national broadcast, and I've been listening nonstop for almost twenty years, including a four year stint in Europe during which I listened on the internet most evenings.

I submit that, while Buckley is the best writer of conservative views we've ever known, Rush Limbaugh is the best extemporaneous explicator of said views, probably ever.

He would deny any comparison between himself and Buckley. But anyone paying any attention at all reaches the same conclusion. Conservative politicians are often unhappy about Rush; his quickness, thoroughness and adherence to conservative principle remind us every day of the weaknesses and failings of our guys in office, and often they are just not smart enough or well spoken enough to bring themselves back from such a comparison.

William F. Buckley was a true genius, a man who changed the lives of millions and who had no ego about it whatsoever. He was the best of us.

ABC tries to put white sheets over innocent Texans

2008-02-27T04:06:00.000-08:00

This is appalling.

A news crew hires two actors, one to play a covered Muslim woman and another a redneck store clerk who shows loud and angry prejudice to her.

The bystanders, customers in this store, are BEING SECRETLY FILMED by the ABC crew, who clearly are trying to catch people supporting the 'clerk' to show how Americans are prejudiced against Muslims.

Two things come to mind--

Why can't they find a REAL example of anti-Muslim prejudice? Why did they have to manufacture such an elaborate scene? Seems to me there are enough women in this country who cover themselves in public that ABC should be able to just secretly film THEM to catch people 'hating'. But of course if they did that, the fathers and husbands of those women would be just a bit irritated at the news crew. Not to mention they would be filming and waiting a LONG TIME, because there just isn't that much anti-Islam sentiment in this country. Lots of people are concerned about radical Islamism, but most people, even here in Texas, don't care what religion you are or what you're wearing.

Why did they go to TEXAS? Anybody think the ABC people might have thought they stood a better chance of finding what they were looking for down here in cowboy country? Anybody think Dubya has anything to do with this witch hunt? Might ABC News be holding a bit of animus against you and me, the good folks of Texas?

You can find the same redneck attitude in the same small number of Arkansans (nah, Clinton is from there), Louisianans (nah, Democrats run the place), New Mexicans (nah, Bill Richardson is governor there), and so forth and so on. But they chose Texas, deliberately, to try to add another thin layer of guilt to the people of this state for voting Republican.

This is, of course, a complete insult to everyone who lives in this state. Texans don't have any larger percentage of people who have biases against other cultures than the 49 other states do. But we talk in this funny accent, you see, and some of us have cowboy boots on and drive pickup trucks with rifles in the back windows, or Bush/Cheney 2004 stickers, or both.

I'd like to see them set up a secret crew in Dearborn, MI., and stand a fake white guy preacher on the street corner with a bible and a megaphone shouting "Jesus saves!" and then get the responses of the passing Arabs on video. Think you might find some cultural bias at work amongst the good people of Dearborn?

Assuming the fake preacher survives long enough to make a 2 minute news package out of the results.

McCain on the hook

2008-02-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Who would have seen this coming? The Times never got any real traction with their story; the 'story' was the political hit job the Times tried to do on McCain, and the entire spectrum of political punditry saw it that way. Leftists moaned that the Times was going to unify the Republicans around McCain. It was all about the New York Times this time, and their reputation is turning to dust.

*********************************

The good senator is wriggling mightily this morning, doing a presser to refute the story published yesterday in the New York Times about a possible romantic attachment.

They say 'former staffers' (who are of course unnamed) related concern eight years ago (!) over a friendship between the senator and a female lobbyist thirty years his junior; they claim (anonymously) to have actually formulated policies amongst themselves to intervene, break up schedules, prevent access, etc., in order to reduce the chances of such an attachment blossoming and becoming public.

No evidence was produced. No sources were named. And of course, no more information is available to them now than eight years ago, during the LAST time McCain tried to become president, not coincidentally.

Clearly the notable points are:

McCain's currency with his pals in the media is worth nothing, now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee. All his past smooching with the press, even his endorsement by the Times, has come to nothing, as any sensible conservative would have predicted. This isn't the end, either, as we are going to hear rehashed Keating Five stories and all sorts of other stuff nobody's talked about for years.

McCain is still using the verbal 'quote' when he talks about "conservatives" coming on board with him. He is still on his high horse, and we conservatives are still out in the cold, rebels, unrepentant of our sins, to be welcomed to the warm hearth of McCain as soon as we get humble. It is the opposite of how it should be. He should be the one making at least a token apology for his outrageous positions of late. But he is still waiting for an apology from US.

McCain really really can't talk. I mean it's BAD, folks; when it's time for him to speak concisely, clearly and firmly on point of principle, he defaults to lawyer type talk, badly formed and semi-coherent, and furthermore, utterly unconvincing. He makes Bush look good. At least Dubya can simplify his language until his point is clear; McCain seems unable to bring himself to say anything really strongly, with the exception of a nice brisk "no" to any question for which that is the correct answer.

He seems determined to withhold soundbites from the press, and the result is that he seems unwilling to be firm about the points he makes. And when he does use firm language, it is not accompanied by clear and concise explanations. He's a fumbler, in some ways worse than Bush. Nobody expects anything of Bush at this point in terms of speaking. McCain now carries the water of the entire Republican party, and he's not doing much of a job expressing himself.

I sometimes wonder if he is intellectually overmatched by this job. I've never heard him sound like he really understands something, and he has admitted there are some things he knows little about; the economy, for instance. Is he really smart enough to do this, or is it all image and reputation, all war hero and maverick?

A maelstrom of doubt engulfs me. I hate when that happens.

Castro News Network

2008-02-21T04:26:00.000-08:00

Powerline links this morning to a CNN guideline note to writers on how to treat the subject of Castro's resignation when writing news stories.

Nobody tries harder than the left to see what's not there and to NOT see what's staring you in the face. And it's all the more damaging to public knowledge when they blatantly manipulate how broadcast news is presented so that their view is the dominant one, and comes to be accepted as fact by those who do not study the issue.

"Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to (Cuban news organization), and not 'in a letter attributed to Castro'. We have no reason to doubt he wrote the letter, he (sic) has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half."

Well, if you ASSUME he wrote the articles, then you have no reason to doubt the letter, I suppose. But that begs the question; is Castro lucid, coherent, ALIVE? We don't know, and it is a fool's game to presume the positive when dealing with a regime that owes its continued existence to maintaining public ignorance on matters of consequence.

It is just plain childish to cite other written works to provide provenance for a letter, when all such works are presently subject to the same possible sets of circumstances which lead us to use caution in attributing the letter.

It's childish, and it's an arrogant presumption that viewers aren't smart enough to wonder whether Castro is writing his own propaganda these days.

And in that respect it is unnervingly similar to that propaganda; weak proofs offered with confidence and pride, and (at least on CNN, thanks to this note) no other viewpoint available for the viewer to consider.

But it gets worse--

"please note Fidel (yes, a warm personal first-name reference from the CNN brass) did bring social reforms to Cuba - namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech."

The grammar of these superior journalist types is atrocious, and so is the blindness; Cuba's "free education" is propaganda and sufficient basics to get the young slave to work in the cane fields, no more.

The 'universal health care' wasn't good enough for "Fidel" himself, as he imported a Spanish surgeon to deal with his own health care.

Powerline notes that Eldridge Cleaver, a man with some unfortunate experience in fighting racism, went to Cuba to live in the worker's paradise while on the run from American law. He found racism was worse than ever under Castro and came back to the States, commenting that Fidel's real Cuba didn't match the fantasy.

But if you're CNN's brass, you stick to the fantasy.

And note the end of that graf -- "being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech."

The positive stuff - "did bring social reforms to Cuba" - is objective fact in CNN's view, and the negative stuff is asserted to be someone's opinion of what he did, some criticism he suffered, some whining rightwinger's idea of how Cuba was.

"while despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with some leftists in Latin America, for standing up to the United States."

There can be little doubt how CNN sees Castro. Standing up to the United States is at present the policy of the network, no matter what the issue, for as long as Bush or conservatives remain in charge of anything.

Fidel Castro is a mass murderer; God alone knows how many deaths he is responsible for and how much suffering he has inflicted on his nation. He is a thief, having secured for himself more money in foreign bank accounts than Saddam did, than Arafat did, than any other dictator in history.

I'll never forget the tale told me by a Cuban emigre I met, of late night knocks at the door, of the men in the town being whisked off in darkness to work at cane fields on the other side of the island, families not notified where they were or when (or if) they would return.

And when there were no more men, they came for the women.

Castro had a policy of allowing a few families to leave, so nobody could criticize him for imprisoning his people. It was by lottery, and families waited years to find out that they had to go in two weeks or lose the chance. They left everything behind. At the airport, they were searched and all valuables taken, including the wedding ring of a young boy's mother (the boy having grown to be the man I knew).

Castro was and is a pillar of evil, the worst this world has to offer. The amount of mental and moral gymnastics one must go through in order to write that note to CNN's news writers is beyond my imagining.

But those are the people who shape public opinion.

Thank God they don't have a monopoly on it anymore.

If PBS says it

2008-02-20T04:43:00.000-08:00

It must be true.

The Marines at Haditha are innocent of murder or any other evil act, and were simply doing the best they could with the information they had at the time-- set up, as they were, by bad guys trying to make them look like they committed a massacre.

At least that's the conclusion that the most ardent leftists in broadcasting, the folks at PBS, have come to.

If PBS can offer a program that concludes our Marines are hardworking guys in a profession fraught with danger who must make split second decisions about the lives of locals, the lives of their men and fighting bad guys, then why can't Jack Murtha admit he was wrong?

If our military courts can throw out the charges against the Marines over Haditha, why can't congressman Murtha admit he was wrong when he called our men 'cold blooded killers'?

Thus far there is no public record of any journalist asking him this question. One intrepid student followed him with a camcorder and asked it, last year. Murtha ducked into an elevator and closed the door without answering.

For a former Marine, that guy is vile, venal and cowardly. I'm honestly surprised some vet hasn't already taken it upon himself to give Murtha a much-deserved a$$-kicking. His entire life is a continuing insult to our men in uniform.

Great column by former presscorpse turned Bush writer

2008-02-19T18:15:00.000-08:00

The Anchoress links to a wonderful column whose base facts elude me, but I will guess--

this writer was once a media hack covering politics and is now working, or until recently worked, in some capacity for the Bush White House.

(update: it's a former WSJ writer turned Bush speechwriter and retired this month)

The perspective from the writer is eye-opening and perhaps gives a clue as to how Bush will be remembered in times to come.

It is also an indictment, albeit gently delivered, of the MSM, and how the media so often gets it wrong.

Read it, and tell the Anchoress I apologize for any bad links or other violations of web protocol.

Gore effect?

2008-02-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

Anybody seen Algore? Is he perhaps on a luxury yacht in the Greek Islands?

I"m just sayin'.

First time for everything

2008-02-18T19:41:00.001-08:00

Michelle Obama has now said that 'for the first time' (speaking of the possibility of Barack becoming president) "I can be proud of my country."

Let's see, billions given from the pockets of private citizens for the tsumani relief in 2004, billions given from private citizens to help in New Orleans, space missions, scientific achievements, the dismantling of the Soviet Union, "tear down this wall", and dozens and dozens more good reasons to be proud of America since she reached adulthood in the early '80's. None good enough for her, of course. No, the only thing that would make an educated, successful attorney from Chicago who entered university management as a second career PROUD of her country is--

If it elected a black man president.

No better irony could be manufactured than what is available now; George W. Bush is days into a visit to Tanzania, working out charity and benefit packages to cut down on malaria deaths and improve education and so forth. Bush is welcomed with music and cheering as he tours Africa and promises American help. Many billions of dollars will flow into Africa and the benefits are accruing daily, in better lifes and in increased hope for the future.

And back in America? Well, if you're Michelle Obama, Bush is evil, America is anti-black and racist, Michelle Obama has never been proud of her nation for anything its done, until at least this nation makes HER first lady.

If she truly has never been proud of this country until Barack wins, she has holes in her history and philosophy you could drive a Peterbilt through. She skipped class during that top notch education, and passed the bar in Illinois on looks alone, apparently.

How it happened

2008-02-18T11:35:00.001-08:00

Captain Ed has a good breakdown of how evangelicals shot themselves in the foot and ended up with McCain as nominee.

I would add only that sensible people (like me) tried and tried to make them understand that we were not voting for a PASTOR IN CHIEF.

President of the United States is a secular political office, and Mitt Romney would have made a fabulous president. As a Mormon, he'd make a lousy Southern Baptist pastor, but that wasn't on the ticket. I only know that every Mormon I've ever known (or even met) has been a model citizen, helpful and charitable and responsible and honorable beyond belief. Parts of their religion are a bit opaque to me, but I can say the same about some sects of traditional Christianity as well.

But throughout this primary season Christians in this country were completely exposed in their anti-Mormon bias and we are all paying the price of their foolishness.

And I say this AS a Christian. I was pleased to see Dubya ascend to the office, knowing of his faith. But if I am to take him at his word, his faith led him to several positions and actions for which my own faith helped me to completely opposite conclusions. Christian faith guarantees almost NOTHING in terms of concrete policy direction, and that isn't hard to understand.

Christians shot themselves in the foot this year. I hate it when that happens.

Proof they think we're stupid

2008-02-17T10:30:00.001-08:00

If you've ever wanted to see absolute, incontrovertible proof that the media believes the masses are easily led, check this out.

Rioting continues in Denmark, obviously a result of the Danish newspapers' choice to reprint the Mohammed cartoons 'out of solidarity and in the name of free speech'.

There can be no doubt even to the most casual observer that this is Islamic rioting, burning of Danish flags, death to America, death to Israel, car burnings, yada yada. No surprise, no mystery.

Unless you're Reuters.

If you're Reuters, 'police can give no reason' for the rioting, and it might have been because schools are on winter break and the weather is unseasonably warm.

Bored kids, global warming. The two great causes of rioting, if you're Reuters.

MORONS. FOOLS. COWARDS. At least the Danes had the guts to reprint the cartoons; Reuters doesn't even have the guts to mention Islam while reporting on this riot.

COWARDS.

Hamas attacks books

2008-02-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hamas nasties have now shoved their way into a library and blown it up.

Thousands of books are on fire. The computer terminal survived, because THAT bomb didn't go off.

Why would Hamas attack a library?

It was the library in the YMCA, the Young Men's CHRISTIAN Association.

Non-Muslim knowledge. Evil. Must be destroyed. May lead the faithful astray.

God save us from religious zealots, the REAL kind. You don't see many book burnings these days over here in America, let alone book BOMBINGS. I guess our "religious zealots" aren't holding up their end of things, compared to Islamist religious zealots.

Or maybe ours have some sense of propriety, humility, allegiance to the rule of law, self-restraint, you know..... the stuff of civilisation.

Clemens and congress

2008-02-13T12:43:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I fear I haven't made myself clear, so I'll sum it up.

When congress holds a hearing like this one with Clemens and MacNamee, they reveal themselves to be stupid, vain, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, dimwitted and utterly incompetent.

Just in case their performances of regular congressional duties don't make it clear, this hearing did. These people are a national embarrassment. This hearing was cringeworthy.

******************************************

Well, after twice switching off the TV for fear I'd throw something at it, I have some conclusions:

Roger Clemens is to be commended for not going over the podium and thrashing Waxman at the end. I could see the veins bulging on Roger's temples as Waxman exercised the ax and fascia of Imperial power at his expense.

I cannot say for sure whether Clemens is telling the truth, but it's obvious to me that the only evidence anyone has against him is the words of a man who has told six different stories on this subject and is a known liar on a variety of topics. Brian MacNamee is a weasel, an amoral and self-promoting snake trying to make a fast buck by prostituting himself in a variety of ways, ingratiating himself with athletes by providing what they shouldn't be asking for.

MacNamee is a colossal weasel. Clemens was consistent from the beginning in his assertions that he's never used performance enhancing drugs. Everything that makes us pause about his story ultimately comes down to MacNamee's word, and his word is no good.

Clemens had to sit through the most pointless exercise imaginable, suffering the bloviations of some of the most vain, arrogant, self-aggrandizing and mediocre people I've ever seen in this life.

At one point he was being 'questioned' (he was being accused of lying, in the FORM of a question), and when he attempted to correct his 'questioner', he was told to stop talking, because he was using up the questioner's time!

I can't remember the name of that congressman, but he is the one who once claimed that over 200 million Africans were thrown overboard and eaten by sharks during the slave trade.

Of course logic tells us the vast majority of slaves made the voyage and were sold in Europe and America. This means that billions of slaves were traded, if you buy the story about the sharks and the 200 million.

And yes, in those days there were not even 1 billion people on this earth.

Idiot.

Idiots, I should say. Vain. Arrogant. Self-loving, self-aggrandizing. Mediocre to the point of pain. These people are politicians because not ONE of them could MAKE it in the business world. Too stupid, too lazy, too incompetent.

God help me, I'm afraid people overseas are accidentally watching this kind of spectacle, and theyve been given a damn good reason to suspect that America is a bunch of dimwits who shouldn't be in charge of anything.

A sad end to a great career for the Rocket. But of course nobody's proven anything, and he can go to his grave claiming he was innocent.

MacNamee's doubtless planning a book (he has a sick child and needs money, which he now will not be able to earn), and trying to clear the way for his future written assertions about Roger's guilt. Roger is equally busy trying to make sure none of this sticks, for obvious reasons, including future Hall of Fame votes.

A stupid waste of congressional time, television time and my attention.

/end rant.

bilingualism shows moral superiority... right?

2008-02-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

We're told over and over that it's racism on our part if we object to bilingualism, teaching immigrant children in their own language, offering business and services on their terms and in their language, so they don't bother to learn ours.

We defend our own culture and we're told that's racist and evil. Keeping the brown man down. We defend our sovereignty and the rule of law and we're chided as cruel and backward-- by the president of MEXICO.

Well, now the Egyptians are declaring that teaching a foreign language to students of their universities would be destructive to their culture.

Never mind the fact that they teach many foreign languages already in Egyptian schools. This particular one is apparently just too much.

You see, the Israeli ambassador to Cairo has requested that Hebrew be taught in Egyptian schools.

Not gonna happen.

Now I"m officially holding my breath waiting for American liberal leftists to complain about the Egyptian stance, insisting that it's only appropriate for countries that share a border to be bilingual so cultures can be in contact and economics can improve, for the sake of the poor.

After all, It's not a COUNTRY; it's a REGION, the Middle East, and everyone should move freely and speak all the languages.... right? If borders are enforced and languages are stamped out in certain areas, hardship will follow, and the poor will be among the hardest hit.

RIGHT?

Still waiting for the Viva Israel cries, the blue and white signs hoisted high in rallies and protest marches, the sympathetic voices singing the Egyptian national anthem in Hebrew, the---

Never mind. Egypt will get the benefit of the doubt, and will be permitted by libs to maintain THEIR cultural monopoly and their hard-edged borders policy.

But Los Estados Unidos is still evil and wrong.

Tom Lantos requiescat in pace

2008-02-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

I didn't know this about Tom Lantos, but apparently his rescue from Nazi-occupied eastern Europe included help from the amazing Raoul Wallenberg. Talk about a life that left ripples spreading through generations-- Wallenberg saved thousands of Jews, and presuming certain math formulae for reproduction and for aliyah (emigration to Israel), it is certain that Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish aristocrat, can be personally credited with making life possible for a substantial portion of the population of present day Israel. The Wallenberg story, even though it's been made into a movie, has not yet been told enough, in my view.

At 80, the old geezer Lantos has finally left us, heart failure the cause.

Tom Lantos, lately remembered for his thinly veiled insults to General Petraeus in the hearings last fall, lived a full and uniquely American life.

He was the only holocaust survivor in Congress, and for the most part he had convictions equal to his experience. Lately, though, he had registered such profound opposition to Bush's foreign policy pursuits in the middle east that he had begun to sound like a typical liberal democrat rather than a moderate to conservative, old fashioned democrat, which he was for decades.

His Hungarian accent never seemed to diminish, no matter how many decades he was 'American by choice'. I recall back in the '90s, when Admiral Jeremy Boorda was discovered to be wearing medals he had not earned and killed himself over it, Lantos was prone to bring that up in discussions; his 'Mission: Impossible' style, 'generic eastern Eurovillain' accent was quite entertaining when he pronounced the word 'suicide'.

But everyone will remember him for this:

"With all due respect, General Petraeus, I don't buy it."

It came out "eye doan bie eeet."

Congressman Tom Lantos (D. Hungary); he will live on, as long as those audio clips are still useful to talk radio and network news.

eye doan bie eet.

Caterpillar-brow strikes again

2008-02-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Unbelievable.

How long until the Church of England, the official state bastion of Christianity in the British Isles, is led by its titular head the Starched Bishop of Canterbury into banning bibles from services for fear of offending Muslims?

Or banning women from the church unless they're 'covered'?

Of course, at present he is only talking about matters of state, not the Church in particular, but the path is inevitable as he himself lays it out.

Sharia law is the future of Britain, in his view, and piecemeal implementation should be taken up for consideration immediately.

Rowan Williams believes that it's bad for society to force a constitutional system of law on those parts of it which do not accept such things. But how is a group which does not accept constitutional law in a democracy a "part of society"? It's not. It's a virus, a bit of foreign matter inflaming the rest until something awful breaks out.

If Williams believes giving British muslims their own law system and excusing them from the one everyone else must follow will lead to a more integrated and open society, he's out of his bloomin' mind.

Britain will simply become a series of tribal enclaves connected by motorways. And the local imams in the Sharia sections will descend on the motorways in their neighbourhood and try to impose a tax on passing vehicles.

But seriously, you cannot have a constitutional democracy if segments insist on decoupling from the constitution and using their own very different set of laws. The very points a constitution is supposed to address (women's rights comes to mind, and human rights in general) are cast aside in favor of 'getting along' and 'avoiding friction'.

So in Britain, they have an official state Church, but its leadership is abrogating the defense of Christianity and instead leading the charge to destroy it.

Over across the channel in France, the wonderful old enlightened secular government was built on the premise that religion has no place in it, and matters of faith are not matters of state in any way.

Until, that is, some muslims win some local and regional elections.

One way or another, Europe is in deep doo doo here.

It's a bit late, but...

2008-02-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

Scientists and the press are now starting, slowly, to admit some things about the Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming rush to doomsday.

Fresh off the wires, ethanol might add to MCGW instead of subtract from it.

Finally, the law of unintended consequences gets its due, and the full spectrum of bad effects of this new policy and trend is examined.

How to put it best

2008-02-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

UPDATE:

Well, someone wrote him a good speech anyway. :-)

Sounded like the kind of thing that will win over the majority of anti-McCain conservatives, provided of course that he keeps the ship on the course he just gave us.

He made many specific promises, among them never to sign a bill with an earmark in it.

He says he now knows our opposition to the immigration bill was based in principle, defending the rule of law. Would have been nice if he'd admitted that DURING the battle. Instead we heard stuff from Trent Lott and Lindsay Grahamnesty about how we're the LOUD people, WE are the problem... and we all know that Grahamnesty is attached to McCain's rear end like a lamprey. If McCain is serious, the borders might actually get some real attention.

Nothing in this speech to raise my annoyance level any higher than it already was, and some good stuff.

Provided he keeps to it.

****************************************

I finally figured out how to express myself over this McCain thing.

My dislike of John McCain is nothing more than the REFLECTION of HIS dislike of ME.

Almost everything he's said, done and taken responsibility for over the past several years has not just been against my beliefs in general, but seemed to be deliberately provocative of people like me, as if to say "you don't even deserve the respect of good faith opposition; you're just stupid."

McCain is vain, angry, contemptuous. He still turns the air blue at age 72, which really puts off those of us who have already dealt with the immature habit of foul language and are still 25 years younger than he is. Foul language is a sign of selfishness and immaturity and ego. He's way too old to talk like that. Especially when he uses it most often against people who are making the argument for my views.

McCain dismisses me breezily, and if I speak up, he snaps at me with F-bombs.

That's not a guy I feel good about, not a guy I want carrying my flag into the great social and philosophical battles of our time.

Blackfive strikes again

2008-02-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Great point made here on my favorite milblog, Blackfive.

I would add that not only is government money worth fighting and killing for in a failed state where there is no other money, but government money is often gigantic, because of oil and other resources.

It isn't just the difference between survival and starvation, it's the difference between VAST WEALTH and starvation.

Remember the position so many Africans find themselves in next time you want to say that all cultures and ways of doing things are morally equivalent to ours.

Because some ways are just dreadful, some cultures are madness, some governments are just semi-organized crime.

Solzhenitsyn tried to warn us back in the 1970s that not all 'other people' were anxiously trying to be more like the West, that some took affront at the idea they should change to liberal democracy, that some strongly cling to their own ways and hate the West on principle.

With that warning to heart, I still believe Western ways are better than barbarism and tribalism and Stalinism. I still believe people everywhere would be better off to adopt at least some of the principles of the western world.

Economic reality, though, often dictates political will.

Christian chaos

2008-02-06T05:09:00.001-08:00

This just isn't good.

I just saw noted Christian leader Dr. Richard Land on Fox News blowing off the conservative discontent with McCain, saying he's a good conservative and he goes to church and that the talk of a party split is overdone.

But just yesterday I read a public statement by Dr. James Dobson, saying that in his opinion McCain is NO conservative and that he cannot imagine himself supporting McCain under any circumstances.

Dr. Land and Dr. Dobson. I would not have seen this coming. These two guys have been pretty much completely aligned on every issue they've publicly discussed over the past thirty years.

Dr. Land sees the necessity of unity against Hillary. So does Dr. Dobson, but instead of pointing out McCain's good qualities and proposing unity behind him, Dobson points out McCain's bad qualities and draws a line in the sand--

"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP caucus in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry’s running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does NOT make the medicine go down. I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."

Dobson goes on to say how sad this is, and how this is the worst slate of presidential candidates to come along in his lifetime.

And after the careful review I've conducted over the past months on McCain's career of anti-conservative maneuvering and principle-free decision making, I'm afraid I've come down on the Dobson side.

Courageous, determined, indomitable, all that stuff applies to his war record and his suffering in the POW camp. But no matter now you slice it, those things are not equivalent to a set of conservative principles. McCain doesn't have them, not all of them anyway.

Reagan conservatism, as Rush said, is a three legged stool.

Social conservatives, including Christians. McCain doesn't understand them and doesn't like them.

Fiscal conservatives, the low tax low regulation crowd, business. McCain doesn't understand the economy, admits this, and speaks in terms like 'punishing' the Wall Streeters for 'lending to people who can't pay it back'. (Is it even possible to force someone to accept a loan and sign a contract? In America?) McCain thinks in terms of using tax to control behavior, a distinctly liberal trait. He has made cutting remarks about Romney's wealth, as if it was somehow less than honorable to be successful in business.

Defense conservatives, one of which McCain can lay claim to be in general terms.

But even those are split between the 'evil neocons' with their plans for changing the world and the traditional strong defense status quo crowd of times past. McCain is no neocon. He has no vision for the middle east and no plans to rid the world of dictators.

Bottom line is, McCain is a good sell to moderates and liberal-leaning Republicans, and in the general election will pull liberal votes from those on the left who worry about their candidate. Most real conservative candidates wouldn't pull those, so it would be up to the right to make sure they win.

McCain can win without me. And he will have to, because I'm on the Dobson side of this. McCain has stuck his finger gleefully in my eye one too many times, and it's clear to me he would be little different from a Hillary in stark policy terms.

Enjoy your pyrrhic victory, Senator. I suspect at this point that real conservatives are in the long term looking for a different sandbox to play in.

Things you should know

2008-02-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest news from the 'war torn nation' of Chad in Africa.

Weeks of fighting, the news says, might soon end.

France might intercede on behalf of the sitting government.

I have it on good authority that more than one major oil company has had to evacuate its employees because the Chadean government withdrew its military protection, citing an existential need to deploy those soldiers elsewhere.

Oil investment in Chad is hundreds of millions of dollars, minimum, probably more like billions.

And it's all at risk. Not to mention exploration and production can't continue if a rebel army is moving around the landscape killing anyone who has any connection with the sitting government.

Ironically, the rebels are really just tribal gangsters trying to get the seat of power so THEY can claim the revenues from the Chadean resources. same for all the African 'rebel forces', sometimes three or four different groups in the same civil war, all laying claim to legitimacy.

It's about money and power. They want the money that comes from the oil, and they'll do anything to get it.

But if Western oil companies just packed up and left, what would happen? Chad would be descended upon by Russians and Chinese, hustling to pick up the production available there, trying to strengthen themselves for the economic war against America, trying to marginalize us by preventing us from having access to oil.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that these rebels are backed by some of those anti-American interests.

Amongst all these facts, knowing that ExxonMobil's pursuit of production is inseparable from strong American foreign policy, our liberals STILL complain that EM makes too much money, they're evil, they should be punished.

In reality, America's future is at least partly in the hands of companies like ExxonMobil, depending on their success to provide energy for our future, our military, our economic growth.

One more example...

2008-02-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

Not so many decades ago, the mainstream media (all three channels) had a total lock on what we heard and knew and believed.

Today, there are thousands of sources of information, and some are pleasantly surprising in their choice of topic and presentation.

Reason dot TV makes use of the humor of Drew Carey to puncture yet another MSM balloon, that of the 'middle class squeeze' in our economy. Woe is us, we can barely get by, life is hard if you're not a corporate fatcat, yada yada.

It's obvious, it's simple, and it's brilliant. And it is the OPPOSITE of what you hear on television every night, as you will see.

What Carey does not conclude is just as significant; there is a REASON the media does stuff like this. Looks to me like they are somehow invested in public discontent, particularly in the Bush administration.

HT Instapundit.

The comfort zone of the truly intellectual

2008-02-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend Ixman for finding THIS.

Christopher Hitchens, for all his inexplicable godlessness, is one of the most brilliant men I've ever heard. He likes to go on television and radio programs and put down the dimwitted with casual flicks of his rhetorical blade, and occasionally a wave of a blade of a different kind.

Note, as you watch, that the audience really does hesitate when Hitchens points out that making five "Bush is stupid" jokes every night on TV is easy, that anyone can do it, that it is now just a joke for people who haven't the skill do better. And Bill Maher is actually silenced, seemingly shamed by Hitch's cutting truth.

And when he points out that Bush is in fact more intelligent than any in the audience, the sound is decidedly mixed. Some people in that audience know it, no matter how loudly they participate in the Bush jokes. Hitchens slams an axe blade between trivial entertainment and actual hard reality here, and the crack of the leftard shield is loud and clear.

Support for cheesy liberal entertainment/propaganda may be a mile wide, but it absolutely is an inch deep. We need more men like Hitchens, willing to tell the truth and take the arrows, smiling all the way. An awful lot of people who think they're liberals actually aren't, and the more they're reminded of it by skilled men like Hitch, the less they'll be taken in by the happy hopeful change-ish talk.

Limbaugh says most people live as conservatives and raise their kids that way, even if they don't vote conservative or even understand that they share conservative values. But when you hit them with obvious truth, they feel it in their bones; they understand.

This audience knows the truth and is made to hesitate by Hitchens when he gives it to them on the tip of his finger. They know.

better late than never

2008-02-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

the Australian Broadcasting Company has finally gotten up to speed with me.

They're carrying a story about the suspicious nature of three different internet cables being cut in the same region in the same week.

Twist? They think it was ISRAEL and AMERICA trying to wage information warfare on the Middle East.

Heh.

I still think my theory is better; it was al Qaeda, trying to separate Muslims from their online porn.

(read the whole story linked here, but scroll down to just past the picture of the smiling Iraqi schoolboys to find out what I'm talking about-- and remember, after English speaking countries, the second largest ethnic and linguistic group on earth in terms of porn downloads is the Arabs.)

Tim Worstall strikes...

2008-02-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

I read this earlier this evening, and now can't find the link.

But I know that one of my favorite writer/bloggers, England's Tim Worstall, has said that America already has universal health care, at LEAST as good as they have in the UK.

What Hillary is selling is universal health INSURANCE, which is quite a different matter.

And she's willing, apparently, to do whatever it takes to get everybody paying into the system, including garnishing the wages of the unwilling.

The old guard speaks up for its own

2008-02-04T18:27:00.001-08:00

Well, Bob Dole has heard enough.

The old boy has roused himself and done a campaign PR gig for McCain, writing Rush Limbaugh a public "letter" in support of the little maverick.

In it he lists eight bullet points which are intended to prove McCain's conservative credentials, although tellingly Dole does NOT describe it as 'conservatism' but as 'support for his party'.

In a bill of particulars numbered 1 through 8, Dole wrote that McCain has a “Consistent pro-life record,” was a “Strong advocate for strict constructionist judges,” “Supported voluntary school prayer,” supported a balanced-budget amendment, was a strong advocate for cutting spending, consistently defended Second Amendment (gun-owner) rights, “opposed ‘Hillary Care,’ ” and was “Probably the Senate's strongest advocate for strong national defense.”

Let's take a look, shall we?

Consistent pro life record -- I'll give him that, for lack of evidence to the contrary. But does he believe a fetus is a human being and that abortion is murder? And if not, why is he against abortion? Or is he? Is a 'consistent pro life record' evidence of a belief, or of a simple desire to support fellow party members? Who knows? He never talks about it in these terms.

Strong advocate for strict constructionist judges -- uh, no. Gang of 14. Didn't like Alito because he wore his conservatism on his sleeve. McCain might say he likes constructionists, but they tend to write opinions of a conservative nature, and he has clearly said he does NOT like that. McCain is a George H. W. Bush type, and HIS picks for bench spots were plain dreadful.

Supported voluntary school prayer -- well, why not institutional school prayer, like it used to be? That's a cop out and is NOT conservative.

Strong advocate for cutting spending-- maybe, but he used this as an excuse to vote AGAINST Bush's tax cuts, TWICE. Real conservatives know that cutting taxes means increasing government revenue, and that spending cuts do not NEED to be tied to tax cuts. McCain is talking about CARBON taxes, about GLOBAL WARMING, right off the pages of the NYT's OPED section. He's not planning on CUTTING spending.

Besides, he's also said he opposed those Bush tax cuts because they were 'only for the wealthiest of Americans', just like every liberal says. So which is it? Was the problem a lack of spending cuts or that the recipients of the tax cuts were the EVIL RICH?

McCain is no conservative. Conservatives know you can't give a tax cut to somebody who didn't PAY any taxes. This is what's happening NOW, with the stupid 'stimulus' bill. They're going to send checks to people who didn't pay, and means-test the ones who DID in order to EXCLUDE them from the bonanza. It's the OPPOSITE of tax relief. It's simple redistribution of wealth.

Defended gun rights? Okay, at least he supports ONE of the amendments to the Constitution. But that freedom of speech thing? Forget it. McCain Feingold. The Incumbent Protection Act. A clear violation of our right to speak about politics in the public square during election season, supposedly to get money out of politics but really all it did was to remove accountability from that money.

the Senate's strongest advocate for national defense -- okay, but, Senator, what is your actual stance on Islamism and our long term foreign policy? I mean, we all demand to be protected from attack by our military, and that's fine; even Hillary would be responsible for the most part in that area.

But what's your plan? What's your opinion? What's your vision? Funny how he never talks in those terms. Bush says freedom and peace go hand in hand, and that unfree nations are the only ones that make offensive war these days. Free citizens tend to not want to do that. So Bush's vision is a free and democratic Middle East, with no dictators amassing weapons and dreaming of conquest.

It's a vision thing, whether you like Bush's vision or not. What is McCain's vision? Nobody knows.

We DO know that he believes totally in the leftist pap about global warming, including a need to tax the hell out of anyone with an extra dollar to pay for the mess he's going to get us into. We know he believes border fences are stupid, and anyone quick or smart enough to get here illegally ought to stay. He says he's strong on defense, but what about the defense of our own borders?

Match Point to Rush.

Dole has given the game away; he's responded to Limbaugh in such a way as to prove Limbaugh right AND to demonstrate that conservatism is NOT fading away as an American philosophy.

After all, if conservatism was a dying movement, why would Dole feel the need to defend McCain's conservative credentials? Why not just blow those crazies off, forget about them, reach out to regular mainstream America and win THEM over? Who needs a dying movement, a minority of cranks, a failed philosophy?

Apparently McCain does. The polls have been shifting mightily of late, showing lots of creep from McCain to Romney, showing Rush's assertions are having their effect. If we had anything like a Reagan in this game, even if Fred had caught on and been in Romney's shoes this week, McCain would be fading fast. Romney is the default candidate for conservatives now, and he's not really the best at articulating this. but so many are concerned at McCain's legendary non-conservatism that they're moving to Romney furiously. too little, too late, perhaps; still, it's happening. Huckabee is staying in ONLY because he takes votes from Romney; watch the McCain cabinet picks to see his smiling weasel face again in our future.

After all, if McCain was a real conservative, why would he have to EXPLAIN it to us? Wouldn't the conservative movement know it already?

Isn't this movement founded on principles and populated by attentive and politically astute citizens who are capable of determining through news and current events whether their politicians are adhering to their principles? After all, that was Rudy's problem in the end; he was not really a conservative, just a strong-on-defense moderate lib. The people voted on it, and he didn't get any real traction amongst conservatives.

Well, the people know McCain too. He gets lots of waffle votes, lots of moderate votes, independents, crossover Dem nutcases who illegally vote in our primaries-- but not the majority of the conservative vote.

If McCain was a real conservative, he wouldn't be enlisting a fake conservative like Dole to trumpet the conservative angle.

This is why Dole lost the presidency, folks; he was a blue blood country club establishment Republican who was embarrassed at all the conservative noise and ignored those crazy red-state rednecks.

And he lost to a man who did NOT get a majority of the vote.

I think that once the media has assured itself of getting McCain as the Republican nominee, they will rapidly fall out of love with him, and McCain will find it impossible to win in November.

The media are liberal, folks. They don't change overnight. If they've got a choice between Hillary (or Obama) and McCain, they'll go with the left leg every time.

Oh, and does anyone now believe the Dem ticket will NOT be some combination of Hillary and Obama?

This business of getting McCain nominated is just the media's effort to nullify conservatism as a topic of discussion. They're sending us out into the woods to be forgotten, to be hermitized.

But we're not gone just yet. :-)

Clinton-care

2008-02-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

For what seems like decades now, Clinton-speak has been all about the millions of people who are uninsured, who can't afford it, who are left behind by our system....

But if Hillary herself is to be believed, there are actually a large number of people who can afford it but simply choose not to buy it.

And in her administration, you better believe those people will be forced to pony up and get in the system, up to and including garnishing of wages to pay the premiums.

If this is your vision of America, vote Clintons.

Islamists go for the easy target

2008-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

For a few days, I grudgingly accepted the story about a ship's anchor accidentally cutting a transoceanic cable that provided internet service to Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

Seemed reasonable.

The web speed around the M.E. decreased significantly and the story was it would take a few weeks to fix it.

But now I'm pretty much convinced my first instincts were right.

Because now they're up to THREE cables cut, all within the past couple of weeks.

Islamists always go for the easiest target. Nothing like bottlenecking that dastardly Western sensuality in the cable, far at sea with nobody there to shoot at you.

Let's get real

2008-02-01T04:52:00.000-08:00

For those who artfully wave their hands in the air and assume expressions of panicked outrage that we're not doing enough to combat global warming, read this.

The ice may well be reduced in the Arctic, but down there in Antarctica there's now more than ever. And the average winter temp in the Antarctic region is down one degree in the past fifty years.

Some parts of this darned old globe just aren't warmening enough for those guys.....

Darn Global Warming is gonna kill us all, I tell ya

2008-02-01T04:39:00.000-08:00

I wonder whether Al Gore has made an unpublicized trip to China.

By now the "Gore Effect" is well known by global warming skeptics; wherever he goes, it gets ridiculously cold.

China is now on the verge of a food crisis. Thousands of square miles of crops have been destroyed by snow, and food prices are rocketing skywards. Homes are collapsing from the weight, infrastructures are failing, electricity is out in widespread areas because of downed power lines, roads are blocked and there are no snow removal vehicles to clear them... it's dreadful, just awful, what snow is doing in China, and over a hundred million people are in real crisis. There are almost a million people sheltering in TRAIN STATIONS. With no food. Because of snow.

Record snow. Record cold.

Gore just HAS to be there, on some sort of unannounced business trip. There's no other explanation.