Dumb Ass Award

If gays weren't so hell bent on being treated not as equal, but as special, there wouldn't be a so called "plight" for acceptance by society. The dumb ass award has to go to Tom Gregory who bought the shirts worn by the gay Brokeback Mountain actors, who think they're straight, in the movie for just over $100,000. No straight man could do what those guys did on film (so I hear) let alone even watch what they did without serious discomfort. While its great his money will benefit a charity, for what are probably $30 Lands End shirts, Gregory apparently thinks this is symbolic of some historic struggle. Of the shirts he says "They really are the ruby slippers of our time" and that the he plans to keep the shirts "as they were, on the hanger, entwined." and probably teary eyed adds "I would never wear them, put them on, or separate them".

I think I'm going to be sick!

Life with a possibility of death

The death penalty in California, and elsewhere, has become a joke....why pray tell do these scum sit on death row for 20 and 30 years, or more, before all their appeals, the "new" DNA evidence, and celebrity sympathizers either present a compelling case for an injustice or not? So now we people, like literally maybe a handful, trying to suggest that lethal injection is cruel or that someone might suffer. Well good, these scum should suffer you peacenik bastards. The always bias press of course doesn't like snuffing out these vile criminals as they imply that the public at large has issues with the death penalty. That's just not so. Take for example the local papers headline of Case speaks to rising scrutiny of lethal injection procedure. Ah, no not really!!! Rising scrutiny? You mean the several doctors and idiots at the prison or the 30 protestors who don't have a day job so stood outside with signs? Which of those would qualify as "rising"? And of course California has no shortage of bleeding heart law ignoring judges as in this case where Michael Morales should already be dead the Mercury News says "Questions of whether some inmates may have suffered excruciating pain while appearing sedate persuaded federal District Judge Jeremy Fogel last week to craft an unprecedented order that legal experts say is bound to have implications beyond Morales." Really? Whose questions? Who said some inmates MAY have suffered? And which inmates exactly? Who witnessed their injections and viewed some signs of EXCRUCIATING pain? And for Christ sake, just give them a horse injection of morphine and they won't feel a damn thing. Arnold you girly man...arrest the F'ing warden at San Quentin for not carrying out the execution!!!!!

A book, a rumor and machetes

Leave it to the religion of peace to take a rumor of the miss treatment of a book to encourage some of its angry illiterate sheep to take to the streets with machetes and people die! The MSM is barely covering the continued spiral of the Muslim anger over nothing. The chicken-shit media picks and chooses its stories that suit its political ideology. In a world were an obviously innocent hunting accident involving the Vice President dominates the news and the daily large Muslim protests around the world go ignored. If they didn't include America as a target for their calls of death and if nearly every protests didn't include deaths (and probably those of fellow Muslims) I could understand it. But at this point its clear that a dangerously large portion of the Muslim faithful are misguided, illiterate, hateful and evil. The supposedly peaceful Muslims stand too idle when minute by minute many of us are close to universal condemnation.

What extreme Muslims and Democrats have in common

We see it all the time. A group or a government whose position, or ideology, hangs by a thread and so they attempt to stifle those who expose the thickness of that thread. So weak is their belief in their cause that they abandon their own basic beliefs (e.g. free speech) in an attempt to stop others from hearing compelling thoughts and opinions that expose the thin thread! On the heels of the Muhammad cartoon example (and the MSM's duplicity) we have the Minnesota Democratic Party trying to stop pro Iraq war tv ads by vets and family of the fallen in Iraq -a group called MidwestHeroes. The Democrats calls these ads un-American! If nothing shows just how unhinged these people are nothing else does. Powerline blog and others in the blogsphere are making noise over this incredible situation that goes silent in the MSM and national news. Why? See the ads for yourself. Doesn't matter if you believe some of those in the ads state something you believe to be false, that's free speech! If you see something like this and believe it shouldn't be shown to the public you obviously question the veracity of your beliefs. Its amazing the never ending examples of the party that thinks it has cornered the market on free speech and civil rights is in fact closely aligned with the ideology of radical Muslims.

ABC softens Saddam's words?

While I'm glad ABC Nightline reported on the tapes of Saddam and his band of evil lemmings talking about WMD's, building them, using them, hiding them, etc....it appears they made edits in the translation of Saddam's words to soften their meaning. The FBI translator who made transcripts of the tapes for ABC says they gave a translation where Saddam predicts D.C. would be hit by terrorists but that Iraq would have nothing to do with the attack. However, the translator says, what Saddam actually was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq. Apparently there are a mountain of tapes and documents not yet translated or available to the public. But rest assured if they in any way make Bush's decision to go into Iraq look good the press will either ignore it or modify it!

Along these same lines the MSM didn't cover, with any earnest, the stories that came from various sources (from a former Iraqi general, from a relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad, former US security exec) that Iraq's WMDs where moved into Syria in the months prior to our latest invasion into Iraq.

Bounty on Muslims!

So now those wonderful friendly misunderstood Muslim clerics have put a bounty of $1M (and a car) on the heads of those who drew the now infamous cartoons! The MSM has been for the most part ignoring the continued protesting, destruction and deaths related to the fabricated uproar over the benign cartoons. We should be promoting our current most wanted list more and should add a bounty for each cleric or Muslim leader who is inciting their illiterate following to murder. Gee, since several of the cartoons originated from the cleric in Denmark who started this, is his name on their hit list?

The Ultimate in Moral Equivalence

"The quote of the day from Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, on the Danish Cartoon publications:

"Unfortunately, people in the Muslim world feel that this is a new 9/11 against themselves."

Hmmm...flying planes into buildings...publishing cartoons. Yep, that's about the same."

I stole this post from my friend Evan Coyne Maloney over at http://brain-terminal.com/.

Evan has been coined as the "Conservative Michael Moore" for his film "Brainwashing 101" about the liberal bias on college campii (sp?). However, I would say that he's much, much better than Michael Moore as his observations are actually rooted in fact.

Black Racists

I always enjoy pointing out those blacks who want you to believe that equality is their mission in life who are in fact racists. While I have only watched Bryant Gumbel's HBO show (Real Sports) a few times I liked the in-depth personal stories of great athletes. I never detected anything that made me think Bryant was a bitter black man, in fact I never saw a black man when I watched him, just a man. Now though, I will see something different. At the end of each Real Sports episode Bryant does a closing monologue and here's the most recent:

"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like them and won't watch them ... Because they're so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something's not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what's called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they're done, when we can move on to March Madness, for God's sake, let the games begin."

Update (2/17): Was listening to a local talk radio show driving into work and they were talking about Bryant's racist monologue. One of the hosts said he also saw a segment on Bryant's show that gives some insight to the man. He apparently did a 20 minute long tribute to himself where he setup stools and had the reporters from his show face him and tell of their favorite experiences or memories of him. Are you kidding me? What an ass!

The Media's Patriotism

This week has seen an unusual amount of idiotic reporting by the MSM. While the various Cheney hunting accident story lines are insanely stupid, the coverage that bothers me the most is of the new Abu Ghraib photos. This story makes it very clear where the MSM puts their allegiance. The very news outlets who either obscured the Muhammad cartoons, or didn't show them at all, do show these Abu Ghraib photos including those that show explicit nudity. Hundreds of news outlets who didn't show bogusly controversial cartoons have the new Abu Ghraib photos in spades. They protect the fake sensibilities of Muslim extremist but are happy to make the U.S. Military and our country look bad to these very same people. These photos don't add to the old story, that's done and gone...all these do is inflame the hatred of those who would kill us. This helps rally that hatred, it helps recruit new terrorists, it may in fact endanger the lives of the American's in the photo...no excuse, no shame, damn treasonous MSM bastards!

Happy to show the photos but not the cartoons: ABC, NBC, CBS (see the Abu Ghraib Interactive link), and CNN

21% of American's are terror suspects!

If you didn't already know that opinion polls are about as useless as a looking for a conservative on the UW campus, then maybe this will prove it to you. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released today found that 21% of those polled said it very likely or somewhat likely their conversations had been wiretapped. So you ask yourself, why does this 21% think they have been wired tapped? They are in fact terror suspects? They're on an FBI or Homeland Security watch list? They have broken the law before or partake in legally questionable activities? Or 210 of 1000 randomly called adults across the US actually believe the government taps every single phone line and cell transmission in the country, all the time every day! Pretty much any one of these reasons these 210 would have for their answer is scary, but lets assume its the last one!

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are 190 million main telephone lines in the United States as of 2002. In 2003 the FCC estimated that those lines accounted for about 80 billion hours of phone calls. Of course, cell phones usage minutes have surpassed land lines by a wide margin but I couldn't find an exact number. There is around 200 million cell subscribers in the US, with around 400 million individual cell phones. Worldwide the total is around 1.5 Billion cells phones. We will just assume the cell phone usage, in terms of minutes, is equal to the land lines...so another 80 Billion hours. We won't even consider foreign cell phones used within the US. Then you need some compute intensive software that can evaluate voice transmissions of land line and cell quality audio (meaning not so good, so it must have enhancement algorithms which are also compute intensive). The software must also account for accents and different pronunciations of words. You must store all the audio you haven't yet scanned for hits. And keep in mind you can't just search for a word at a time. Finding just the word "bomb" in a conversation would give too many false positives (like "she was the bomb" or "I had the chocolate bomb for desert") so you need to search for phrases and combinations of words. And all this "listening" to be useful must alert someone to a HIT fairly quickly else its meaningless. How quick? You could argue and hour, a day, of the conversation happening. But a week, or a month, or longer and it becomes useless. Take 160 Billion yearly hours of audio and the amount of audio you must scan this way daily is 438,000,000 hours! Keep in mind you are going to execute something between a few hundreds thousand and a million lines of software code against this audio. It can't possibly run real time because the same audion snippet might branch to other parts of code and be run again as the pattern matching is done. This of course assumes that you have every carrier (land and cell) working with the government so as to push all this audio to the computers that do this work. The other option would be that the government has a 2nd wire for all 190 land lines going to their own equipment, as well as hundreds of thousands of cell antennas around the US along with special equipment to capture all the cell transmissions. In either case you couldn't involve that many people (govt or private people), or that much equipment, without a lot of people spilling the beans on this vast conspiracy! My 24 years of computer industry experience says the US government couldn't do this if they used every piece of hardware from every government agency together let alone just the NSA or all security related agencies...Nope, sorry, just not possible.

Jihad sympathizer Gore

Tarranto of the WSJ points us to a great post by blogger TigerHawk on Gore's seditious anti-American speech on foreign sole to mostly Muslim Arabs. I couldn't do better than TigerHawk's prose on the man who could have been president so I include much of them here following some of Gore's more destructive comments:

Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment. Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications."The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum.

TigerHawk:

This is asinine both substantively and procedurally.

Substantively, the idea that cracking down on Saudi visa applications is "playing into al Qaeda's hands" is laughable. Had we scrutinized Saudi visas a little more carefully in 2001, thousands of Americans who died on September 11 that year might well have lived. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on that day were Saudi nationals. If we had denied some or all of them visas, exactly how would that have "played into al Qaeda's hands"?

Perhaps Gore is suggesting that notwithstanding the obvious benefits of our tough visa policies, if they irritate the House of Saud, or just the average wealthy Saudi, the Saudis will abandon the fight against al Qaeda out of pique. If so, his point is absurd. The House of Saud and al Qaeda are at war, and have been going at each other with hammer and tongs since May 2003. Whether or not some Saudis are offended by American visa policies, that inconvenience -- or indignity, even -- is nothing compared to the mortal threat of the jihadis.

Procedurally, Gore's speech is repugnant. It is one thing to say such things to an American audience in an effort to change our policy. Whether or not one agrees with Gore on the substance, if he wants to change American policy to let in more Saudis the only way he can do that it is to campaign for that change among influential Americans. It is, however, another thing entirely to travel to a foreign country that features pivotally in the war of our generation for the purpose of denouncing American policies in front of the affected foreign audience. It is especially problematic to mess with Saudi political opinions, which are subject to intensive influence and coercion by internal actors and the United States, al Qaeda, and Iran, among other powers. Supposing that some Saudis were inclined to be angry over the American visa policy, won't they be more angry after Al Gore has told them that they're being humiliated? How is that helpful?

Finally, Gore's outrage at the American treatment of Arab and Muslim captives may be genuine, and it may even be worthy of expression in the United States, where we aspire to do better than press accounts suggest we have done. But whatever nasty things we have done in exceptional cases in time of war, they pale in comparison to the standard operating procedure in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Gore has done: he has traveled to Jiddah to explain to the elites of an ugly and tyrannical regime that the big problem in the world isn't the oppression of Arabs by Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the mistreatment of a few hundred Arabs in the United States. This is like visiting Moscow in 1970 and denouncing the United States in front of a bunch of Communist Party deputies for the killings at Kent State. Indeed, the differences in that comparison reflect badly on Gore.

There is simply no defense for what Gore has done here, for he is deliberately undermining the United States during a time of war, in a part of the world crucial to our success in that war, in front of an audience that does not vote in American elections. Gore's speech is both destructive and disloyal, not because of its content -- which is as silly as it is subversive -- but because of its location and its intended audience. He should be ashamed. But he won't be. The leadership of the Democratic party should disavow Gore's Jiddah speech. But it won't.

An accident or something more?

I could only laugh at the various supposed news stories about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Do these reporters, who try to make this sound like anything else other than an accident, really think they are serious journalists? Michelle Malkin has a nice collection of right thinking comments on this story. All I can say is what a joke the MSM is. The coverage, or lack of accurate coverage, of the Muslim cartoon idiocy followed by trying to turn this hunting story into something telling is proof of modern inbreeding. Get the shown bumper stick from ExposeTheLeft.com

Thin skinned masqueraders

Did you know that CNN displayed one (or some) of the oh so awful cartoons but blurred out what are suppose to be Mohammed's head? So this chicken shit PC move by CNN got one political cartoonist to poke fun at CNN. The Beacon Journal's Chip Bok in Akron Ohio drew and printed the cartoon you see here...only to draw criticism from local Muslim groups along with we-pretend-not-to-support-jihadist CAIR. You have to be kidding me? At its best this is a laughable example of being thin skinned. What this instead shows is that supposedly upstanding "normal" Muslims support the fake and manufactured uproar created by extremist Muslims. Since its clear that images of Mohammed have existed for centuries without issue, and that Mohammed's own words allow for non-Muslims to not follow Islam and that Muslims peacefully accept that....anyone not supporting the freedoms, of those who have it, to express criticism of some Muslims is supporting the extremist and terror.

Until a majority of Muslims denounce the hate, the calls for death and destruction, and proclaim that Islam and those who follow Mohammed can and should peacefully coexist with those who do not...until then you're with those who would behead me and I know who will win that war.

Press complicit in cartoon uproar

No doubt if you read my blog you also have read somewhere the true origin of this manufactured uproar over the Mohammed cartoons. While I don't know much about the Muslim religion, or the teachings of Islam, it seems pretty clear that groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda are not true followers of the religion but political groups run by power hungry hate mongers. A piece (Bonfire of the Pieties: Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.) in today's WSJ outlines the two falsehoods this fake uproar is based on, that: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.

Amir Taheri gives the background to dispel both claims. It's understandable how the unemployed, and uneducated, Muslims in these countries where the protests primarily have taken place are easily coaxed into believing completely bogus claims. But what can't be explained is why the press isn't reporting on the how this uproar was in fact manufactured, and staged, and that the reasons for the furor is based on false claims of Islamic teachings.

More on the lying Danish Imams (from Malkin) that manufactured cartoons of their own that were not published. They added these to those that were published and I'm sure they let the other Imams believe these cartoons were produced by infadels and published.

The Fakes

Knowing Your Audience

The blatant demagoguery of the liberal left over seemingly every topic is beyond ridiculous at this point. The latest being the aforementioned funeral for Coretta Scott King.

I will give the democrats one thing, they always know their audience and yesterday was a great example. Jimmy Carter made this remark during his bloviating speech: “difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps.” Of course that drew a hearty round of applause and then strangely enough Ted Kennedy came up to speak and he too drew applause.

Perhaps it was lost on the crowd that Ted is the brother of Robert who was the Attorney General who authorized those very wiretaps on the Kings.

As to the good Dr. Lowery he’s on record saying (in 1996): “We have never stopped believing for a moment that there was some government complicity in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” At the same conference, Lowery claimed the CIA was selling cocaine in black neighborhoods. “This is a new and worse form of slavery: chemical warfare in the form of drugs. It’s worse than anything Saddam Hussein has done.”

So again, if he thinks the government was in on King’s assassination that would mean it was the Kennedy administration behind it and if the CIA was selling coke to black kids that would be the Clinton administrations doing. Yet he took no shots at the Kennedy’s or the Clinton’s yesterday.

How odd.

How Low Can You Go?

Hot off the press on the Drudgereport we find that several turned the memorial for Coretta Scott King, billed a celebration of her life (as any funeral/memorial would be), into a political Bush bash opportunity. Rev. Joseph Lowery gave a lovely diatribe honoring Mrs. King weaving in smart bombs in missions afar and non-existent WMD's. While I seriously doubt this guy every talked to Mrs. King about this stuff could you imagine going to a friends funeral and one of the speakers, to honor the departed's life, talks about anything negative at all? Honoring someone's life is not a political opportunity for anybody with a grain of class and decency. The fact that these inappropriate comments got a two minute standing ovation speaks to the class of those in attendance...again such a display at a memorial is truly strange to me. Then Jimmy "corn" Carter wove in a NSA eavesdrop Bush bash by mentioning the Kings were once the target of a secret wiretapping to again cheers! Carter also threw in the racist hurricane connection. Hmmm, did Mrs. King make public statements that the aftermath of Katrina was evidence that we are all not equal? Even if she did a political stump doesn't belong in a memorial service in my opinion...Unbelievable.

The full first Drudge post on this:

KING FUNERAL TURNS POLITICAL: BUSH BASHED BY FORMER PRESIDENT, REVEREND Tue Feb 07 2006 15:49:48 ETToday's memorial service for civil rights activist Coretta Scott King -- billed as a "celebration" of her life -- turned suddenly political as one former president took a swipe at the current president, who was also lashed by an outspoken black pastor!The outspoken Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ripped into President Bush during his short speech, ostensibly about the wife of Martin Luther King Jr."She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said. The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation.A closed-circuit television in the mega-church outside Atlanta showed the president smiling uncomfortably."But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.Former President Jimmy Carter later swung at Bush as well, not once but twice. As he talked about the Kings, he said: "It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly. Later, Carter said Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America. Some black leaders have blamed Bush for the poor federal response, and rapper Kayne West said that Bush "hates" black people.Developing...

Michelle Malkin also posts on the "unhinged" at the Scott King funeral.

Manufactured Outrage!

Similar to my earlier post (Muslims stoked this fire) this one is about the phony nature of the cartoon outrage by Muslim wack-jobs. Michelle Malkin's blog has a nice offering on of all things the use of an image of Mohammed for centuries in paintings, drawings, etc. some being flattering and some not. And yet now against the actual words of Mohammed the supposedly devote Muslims call for violence and murder! As Michelle's post asks, will the SCOTUS be next since the image in this post is of Mohammed in the form of a marble frieze inside the SCOTUS building!

Democracy in a Cartoon

This is the title of a great piece by a best selling author and Muslim Dissident published by Germany's Spiegel on Friday last week. Ibn Warraq gives a perspective on this idiotic cartoon controversy that sums it up better than any I have seen. The entire thing is full of perls so read it, but this passage aligns with my feelings on the topic:

The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

Muslims stoked this fire!

In a UK based online news rag called The Daily Telegraph an opinion piece by Charles Moore titled If you get rid of the Danes, you'll have to keep paying the Danegeld has an interesting new twist to the cartoon story. Just a portion:

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of "spontaneous" Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of "adding fuel to the flames"; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organized, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

Now the BBC announces that the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars has called for an "international day of anger" about the cartoons.....

So, it seems this could be an internally stoked fire that regardless of motivation. Separatism is a cancer in any group and in the end leads to disdain the group has for outsiders and visa versa. That sound familiar? And will you see this in the MSM? And how does the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) way in on this issue? From their website: “You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness.” So, apparently the cartoonist, and the entire country where the cartoonist hail from, have done evil to all Muslims? And of course CAIR implies Islam is kind and forgiving? Then why doesn't CAIR denounce the message on the signs of their protesting brothers. One thing these Muslims have in common with the left is they suffer from do as I say, not as I do syndrome.

The evil among us

You should read Todd Bensman's Hamas's Rock Star piece in the latest Weekly Standard. It's scary for two reasons. I think it's but one example that the evil is among us and the governments inability to do good police work is troubling. In Palestine the election put Hamas in power and with it's supreme political leader being one Khaled Meshal this story is of more interest. You see Meshal's half brother has been living in Dallas for many years...and apparently helping raise some $60M for Hamas terrorist activities (namely focused on killing Jews) since 1989. The half brother, Mufid Abdulqader, was a city of Dallas civil engineer by day and an entertainer at Hamas money raising events the rest of the time. We need to realize that it's unlikely this is an isolated case and Muslims living in our communities are attending similar meetings. And as you would suspect they brainwash their children with their hatred. From FBI evidence of Abdulqader's singing and skits at a meeting put on by his group (the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development) it is noted:

In the videos, masked jihadists in camouflage uniforms march menacingly to the band's drumbeats. Children take the stage to perform pantomime stabbing and shooting motions to the beat. One child points a toy gun at the sky, marching in place on stage. During brief intermissions, speakers take the stage to recite old Jewish-conspiracy canards.

The Face of ISLAM

THIS




CAUSED: protests in Denmark, UK, SUdan, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and more...and they're spreading...many of the protests are thousands strong....and look at the message of these protests!



While there very well maybe good people who are Muslim the most prevalent world wide evil are followers of Islam. The level of reaction to such trivial things as a rumored mistreatment of a Koran, or cartoons considered insulting to the prophet Mohammed, is indicative of a naive and backward group of sheep. The world has passed much of the Muslim world by. While many countries, and religious groups, have kicked and screamed into the modern world most make concessions in order to get along with those more progressive than them. Muslim leaders around the world interpret portions of the Koran as promoting either violence or elimination of others. As some countries in the middle east begin to embrace forms of democracy, elevating the status of women and allowing freedoms not previously enjoyed, the hard line Muslims promote an extreme stance. It's also interesting that the arm of this evil (the terrorists, the suicide bomber, the jihadist) hypocritically embrace practices and freedoms in the locations they are deployed in to execute their evil. I don't care that there are good Muslims in the world.....the evil within, I believe, has metastasized and so it is terminal.

Update: Powerline has a post called Religion of Peace update that's got some examples of what apparently much of the Muslim world feels is a proportionate response to the mild (at best) cartoons. One imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that those behind the drawings should have their heads cut off.

Upadate 2, Feb 4th: Hugh Hewitt at first offers a more reserved and maybe more appropriate view than me, but I'm still pissed, then as events unfold gets a bit more heated towards Syria.

Playing the Nazi card

The vitriol spewing left is amazingly consistent in trying to associate conservatives with unrelated negative imagery. On the heals of Hillary's plantation I found this item on Drudge regarding the NAACP's chairman saying "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side", and referred to Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as "tokens". There is no defense...there is no excuse and if leaders on the left (and the MSM) do not take offense to Mr. Bond's inappropriate rhetoric then as far as I'm concerned they condone and agree with it.

Homodisdain

I'm inventing a new word...homodisdain! It's defined as "disdain for homosexuality, especially any open display of it". To be clear, this is because I don't fear(the definition of phobia) homosexuals and so don't have homophobia. That's why I would never see Brokeback Mountain. Aside from the story line being uninteresting (to me) the thought of even simulated homosexual sex disgusts me. What's amazing to me is that liberals and many (but not all!!!!) in the entertainment industry think you're being homophobic, or that your "easily offended", if you don't WANT to accept, tolerate or embrace homosexuality. They can't fathom that many people just find it sick, gross, wrong, reprehensible, etc. I found an interesting parallel in this entertainment writers piece called How Gay Will Oscar Go? to the criticisms of Judge Alito. The basic argument against Alito was that he is a conservative person and therefore will not judge a case on its legal merits but instead on his personal ideology. In the case of Brokeback Mountain Nikki Finke wants the academy members who don't want to even view the film to do so else how can they judge it? But judging performance, or art, is all about personal interpretation or ideology. No sensible person would expect me to acknowledge an artist as a good one if I find the material disgusting. If the basic theme of a 2 hour movie really bothered you it's not clear to me you would take note of someone's fantastic performance in delivering that bothersome theme. In fact I think it's valid if you find the story of a movie offensive you don't need to see it to decide not to vote for the movie in any category. But the Oscars isn't really the story of interest here...it's the lack of understanding by the left of why someone doesn't approve of, or want to embrace in anyway, the gay lifestyle. They believe that I must be accepting or be tolerant...ah, NO actually I don't.

Agh, Give Me A Freaking Break!

So Cindy Sheehan has a few words for everyone today. Mostly she's bitching and moaning about how roughly she was treated last night and how the police are lying and the press is distorting what happened.

You can read the whole pathetic bit here, it's on Michael Moore's blog so I guess pathetic whiners like to congregate toghether even in cyberspace.

There's a picture of her being "roughed up" and you'll notice that the security guy is in the row above her and has her by the arm but he doesn't even have a firm grip (if he did his thumb would be on top of her arm so that he could grip it) on her so I can't see how he's being rough with her.

She also says "He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat", right he ran down the narrow little aisle and lifted your fat ass out of your chair.

Then there's this bit: "What did Casey die for? What did the 2,244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing. "

Let me clear this up for you, you dipshit. Casey died defending the national interests of his country. He took an oath saying that he would do so and to his credit he lived up to that oath. I honor him and his service.

Tens of thousands of his brothers and sisters in arms are there for the same reason.

George Bush didn't start that war, Saddam Hussein did. George Bush doesn't kill our troops, Islamo-facist terrorists do. They do it in the most cowardly way possible and yet you, Cindy Sheehan honor them for that.

You're a particularly loathsome human being.

Update from Tiny: I added a blow up photo from an AP photo that shows a little smile on Cindy's face as she is being handled roughly by the capital police!

Never trust off kilter eyebrows!

I watched the SOTU address by President Bush last night with my brother-in-law. Bush did ok, wish he was more harsh on Iran and the sudden green approach on energy is new. He did a nice job taking jabs at the moonbats across the isle. Cindy Sheehan proved what an idiot she is with her t-shirt stunt. Doesn't matter what the shirt said and it's interesting there's different accounts of that. Anyway, the MSM isn't running the Sheehan arrest front and center...maybe she's lost he media darling status?

My brother-in-law and I started laughing pretty much simultaneously as Virginia governor Tim Kaine was less than a minute into this Democrat response. His left eyebrow would frequently move a good 2" higher than the right one. This would happen on making certain points. Kaine's response was the same old the Bush administration is responsible for everything that's messed up (and there is nothing that is ever going well). Throw in repeated "there's a better way" but as usual for Democrats they never detail the "better way". I suspect Mr. Kaine probably would be a bad poker player as my guess is that eyebrow maneuver is tide to his discomfort with what he's saying (or in this case not saying)...too funny!

Yikes!

At the risk of being mean I had to laugh when I saw this photo of the super nice, ethical, civil liberty champion Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez kissing Cindy (moonbat) Sheehan. I felt sorry for Chavez. Imagine Sheehan's face fastly approaching yours! If you had never seen Sheehan's face before you might look at this photo and think gee the guy closes his eyes when he greets someone the first time and gives them the handshake equivalent of a kiss? But in fact I think this was the only thing he could do as the horse face came closer to his! I don't feel bad about being mean here since frankly I see Sheehan as a charlatan and in the top 5 of most unpatriotic Americans. To embrace a foreign leader and join him in baseless demeaning criticism of her own country and its leader is bad enough. But imagine if she was a Venezuelan and visited Bush and joined Bush in his criticism of Chavez.....I'm sure her homecoming would be very different from what she will experience upon returning to the U.S. Isn't it amazing the bedfellows that the most outspoken liberal media darlings keep?

And I for one will support (but not with a vote) Sheehan's bid to unseat Feinstein! Could you imagine the material for us political junkies? Not to mention how anyone like Sheehan actually getting traction as a candidate would fracture Democrats into the real leftist wackos on one side and more centrist liberals on the other.....a nice bonus for conservatives! So make sure you support Sheehan for the Senate!

Alas, the WaPo's Charles Krauthammer offered some opinion on Sheehan being a bad choice for an antiwar voice that I think would be the achilles heel of her Senate campaign! To refresh your memory Sheehan calls Bush "lying bastard"; "filth-spewer and warmonger"; "biggest terrorist in the world". She blames Israel for son's death as well. Complained when the media stopped paying attention to her, and sides with what she calls "freedom fighters" in Iraq who killed her son.

Filibuster Pandering

I'm amazed! First Kerry, then Kennedy and now Hillary foams at the mouth about a filibuster of Alito. What a colossal waste of time. Of course those who support this doomed stunt say its the principle, it's to make a point, but they're wrong. No reasonable (and that word is important here) person would look at Alito's personal life and judicial history and label him as extreme, or one who made judicial decisions based on ideology ignoring the law! The evidence isn't there. Because a decision on cases involving abortion, race, big business, etc. doesn't favor your beliefs doesn't mean there was inappropriate personal bias. Are people influenced by their ideology? Of course, but the most important test of a judge is that they first and foremost show the ability to apply the law appropriately and fairly. These senators know Alito's resume is in fact stellar and yet they say Alito's appointment will mean illegal abortion, the end of women's rights, the end of civil rights, and so on. This is a lie and they know it, but they pander to the looney left , to the extreme liberals, as I assume they believe this is their base. The problem with the left is they don't practice what they preach. They say they believe in free speech and that civil rights are so precious, but they don't defend them universally. The examples are endless. In fact conservatives clearly hold these founding principles more firmly as we support the rights of those we loath. The obvious pandering will not bode well with many democrats who don't associate with the far left.

Gays embrace Nazi symbology

This post is my reaction to the story Teachers Won't Hang Gay Rights Poster. It has two elements that get me enraged. First is that people are not outraged that gay groups use the symbol (a pink triangle) that the Nazi's used in concentration camps to identify gay prisoners. The so called plight of today's homosexual in now way, shape, or form related to the inhuman actions of the Nazi's. This is not a symbol of pride nor is it appropriate as a symbol for any organizations use other than its historic reference as a marking used by an evil group. The image I have included (from the archive of US Holocaust Museum) shows the pink triangle used by Nazi's to mark those considered homosexual.

The second element that makes my blood boil is the incredible hypocrisy. The leftist, like the principle quoted in the story, don't see the problem hanging a gay symbol on the wall!!!!!! Gee, can I hang a Playboy Bunny on the wall in the classroom as a symbol for the straight students? How about a poster promoting Young Republicans? How about a poster for Jewish unity? How about a poster to make the Catholic students feel protected and welcome? OF COURSE WE CAN'T. But we can put something up that is 100% related to who someone wants to have SEX with on the classroom wall...that's ok?????...and Principal Amy Furtado has no F'ing clue what the controversy is about???? Tell me, please someone tell me, how these people are blind to the hypocrisy here.

Finally, An Honest Liberal

Well it took a few years but we have a first for the left, an honest liberal willing to tell us what he really believes. His name is Joel Stein and he writes for the LA Times. In his op-ed piece "Warriors and Wusses" he comes clean and lets us know that he does not support the troops.

He's the first liberal to actually understand that you can't oppose the war and support the troops, so I applaud him! He sums it up nicely; "...being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition."

Now the rest of the article is crap and full of half-truths and lies but I have to give him props for at least understanding the basic illogic of the vast majority of liberals out there.

Hillary Clinton's "plantation" pandering

Shelby Steele with the Hoover Institute has an excellent piece in the WSJournal today titled Hillary's Plantation. It outlines how the pandering to black audiences by Democrats is an approach based a grievance attitude that many blacks have. As Steele puts it the panderer always identifies with the suffering of those pandered to--always "feels their pain". The appeal is to the feeling of entitlement for the pain and suffering of their ancestry. Hillary's "plantation" example is a shameless example if, like me, you believe in the undertone of Steele's message. As I have said before in many blog postings, this is what the black leaders promote and feed on. The black leaders, and the stumping Democrats, need the black community to feel grievance, to feel they have been wronged and are entitled to special help. So Hillary and Al Sharpton benefit from black grievance and are happy to promote a wrong done hundreds of years ago as if its effect are fresh in the black community today.

Steele then outlines why Republicans can't pander in this way to the mostly Democrat black voter block as it's counter to big government and entitlement programs. Instead Republicans, who don't benefit from the outdated grievance attitude, embrace the achievement of minorities. Condi Rice is an example Steele says strikes fear in Democrats for if blacks can see opportunity for themselves in her success through hard work they loose. This is why the MSM pays less attention to Rice then they might normally pay to the Secretary of State. This is also why you see the disparaging cartoons and comments about Rice. She brakes the stereotype that the black and Democrat leadership need to keep the defeated blacks under there thumb.

Racist Entertainment

All I can say is WOW. The hypocrisy of those who so easily play the race card when the supposed victim is black is off the charts. Today BET (Black Entertainment Television) posted an article so racist, so ridiculous that it defies explanation. In Global Warming Could Spell Disaster for Blacks you could assume BET is playing to their audience (which according to their website is a measured 78% black). According to BET global warming is a fact, and it's bad "especially for African Americans". And for those blacks that are contributing to that global warming at the same level as whites (of course whites are to blame the most) they have an excuse that is also my fault..I guess: "It has been ingrained in our heads that to be anything, you must have everything" says EJCC steering committee member Nia Robinson. "Because some of us have a big car and a nice house, people aren't seeing that racism still exists. But Katrina showed that racism is alive and well in America. Now that people have that idea, I think we're in a really critical stage to organize, educate and mobilize people." Of course it mentions President Bush, and he like all whites are culpable for all the woes of a black person, and on it goes. Where is the outrage at the white racism in this dribble?

But this is only part of the story. Many of the shows on BET are based on the very black stereotypes that those who claim black racism and discriminationnation is still a big issue dislike, or so you would think. BET also actively promotes what are shockingly bad role models for their mostly young audience. They have a 6 episode show called Countdown to Lockdown where you follow rap artist "Lil' Kim" get ready to go to jail as she was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice . Blacks are blacks worst enemy. The black entertainment industry doesn't ask their target audience to reach for more, to be good, to love family and their fellow man...the white man is evil, the government is evil and if you're evil too, well it's not your fault. You're a patheticthetic and hypocritical group that promote a color bias in our society.

Conservatives Gone Bad

I was surfing the web the other night and happened upon some strange liberal blog that had a link to this article by Paul Craig Roberts. Like you, I had never heard of him but the complete stupidity of his article forced me to email him (since he puts his email link on his pieces, which I applaud).

So I did a bit of research on Mr. Roberts. Turns out he used to write for the very conservative TownHall.com website. Now I’m not exactly sure what flipped him to the not so bright side but I’m trying to find out.

In Robert’s latest piece he says that “Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts…So much for "the liberal press" that right-wingers rant about. If a "liberal press" exists, the New York Times is certainly no longer a member.”

I guess nowadays not being reported on is somehow akin to being censored since that’s the title of the link to the speech, “Gore Censored”. I guess I’ve been censored my whole life by that standard.

He goes on to say “Gore challenged the American people to step up to the task of defending the Constitution, a task abandoned by the media, the law schools, and the Democratic and Republican parties. If we fail, darkness will close around us.”

Without Al Gore we’re going to be seeing the end of America as we know it, and soon.

In my first email to Roberts, I explained to him how the Clinton-Gore administration started the Echelon program and how it was used to wire-tap domestically long before the Bush administration started doing. I also explained to him how the New York Times reported on that development, which is summed up by this quote from a piece in the Times, “Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists….”

I later ran across a previous article written by Roberts about Al Gore in 2000 title "The Slide Into Dictatorship”, where he said such glowing things about him as…

“Choose Al Gore and vindicate eight years of lawlessness: Whitewatergate, Filegate, Travelgate, Monicagate, Campaign Finance and Buddhist Templegate, "missing" Rose law firm and Al Gore e-mail documents, Justice Department stonewalling of law and investigations, the Waco massacre -- the list goes on ad nauseum. Topping it all off is the latest Gore scandal -- a secret deal between our vice president and a Russian prime minister. Did you know that Gore illegally exempted Russia from the economic sanctions that the U.S. imposes on all countries that sell arms to Iran? In addition, Gore violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act by keeping Congress in the dark about Russia' nuclear cooperation with Iran. Is this another instance of "no controlling legal authority"? Here we see the true colors of Clinton Gore: The law means nothing if a political purpose is served by ignoring it. No matter how powerful his office, no U.S. official has the power to grant exemptions to U.S. law, regardless of the end served."

I again emailed Roberts about this totally flip-flop and here is his response:

“So what? Gore is the only one today defending the US Constitution. The Constitution is far more important. I know many sinners who, despite their transgressions, stood up for the right thing when it counted.”

That’s the response you get from a Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is also a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

This is a potential President?

If you do a google search on Hillary and look at the sound bites that make it into the stories on her, ask yourself if you think she's presidential? And then, there is, of course the incessant criticism of every single thing the Bush administration has ever done. I always love hindsight critics who either offer no alternative solution or when they do it cannot be proven to have been effective because of course it's based on how people might have reacted. Or in the case of Iran, Hillary gives her normal hindsight criticism but then gives a solution with historical proof of being ineffective...UN sanctions!

Happy Birthday Ben

Pete du Pont's opinion peace in today's WSJournal is one of the better and concise write ups on the history and legal precedence of the Presidents right to approve of the, now not so secrete, NSA eavesdropping program. I imagine it was Ted Kennedy's statement last week (along with it being Ben's 300 B-day) that gave du Pont the idea of taking this back to 1776. In response to the President using his constitutional powers to listen in on terrorist communications Kennedy called it "such an arrogant and expansive view of executive power" that it "would have sent chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers." As usual a vitriol spewing trust fund liberal has no facts and no history (and how about 300 yrs of history and precedence!) on their side. It's amazing how those who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution and laws described in du Pont's piece ignore these and their historical interpretation all in the name of political smearmanship!

Terrorist lovers sue Bush and NSA

Hahahaha...oh..my stomach hurts from laughing so hard...the ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Greenpeace and several individuals filed a law suit against the President and the NSA....I'm not sure what they claim since unless there was even a more serious security breach than the leak revealing this program they can't know that their clients were a target of eavesdropping by this program! And what the hell is Greenpeace a part of this for? Their involvement is a clear break from their charter which is the tenant by which they raise donations from individuals. That would be a miss-use of funds if you ask me.

As for CAIR, check their core principles, note the only principle on violence says "8. CAIR condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state." Why does it limit this to "civilians"? Shouldn't they just delete the words "civilians by"? It's also evident that some of these leftist organizations have clients that ARE NOT citizens of these United States of America...so piss off!

UPDATE: Just in....a clear cut case that the ACLU should take! But don't hold your breath...the defendant would be a school and the plantiff would be a young Republican! They'll talk a non-citizen Muslim over 17 year old Jeff Fraser of Fort Wayne, Indiana every time.

Free but not equal?

"we are free but not equal" Jesse Jackson said in a sermon at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Simpsonville, S.C. on Sunday as part of an MLK remembrance service. Then there's New Orleans mayor Nagin who told a crowd outside city hall who was honoring King with a march "New Orleans will be Chocolate Again". Pastor Cummings of Bethlehem Apostolic Temple in Wheeling Ohio said some good things but then said "I believe America is a better America because people of color are more free." More free, but not fully free! There are plenty of examples like this one, they're not egregious, but they are reflective of an attitude I think perpetuates the very thing they wish to end. But the most pathetic politicization of an MLK event microphone was Hillary who during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, predicting the presidency "will go down in history as one of the worst" also said "the House of Representatives is run like a "plantation" where dissenting voices are squelched". Al Sharpton, who was at the same event, said Clinton's comments were important to her primarily black audience.

Pelosi attempted to better Hillary, but the attempt was a weak one. At a union labor breakfast honoring King the Terminator (Arnold) spoke and afterward Pelosi who was there said "the special election that Schwarzenegger called in November was a threat to King and the social justice for which he fought." This is only but a few of the many examples of partisan grandstanding that trample on MLK's memory and message of unity. Sadly, at a local SF bay area gathering in Walnut Creek Rev. Laurie Manning told the small crowd "Are we keeping the dream alive? How much has changed for African Americans in this country? How little?" Manning asked. "They were, in truth, betrayed by America's promise." "They were waiting for days in the astrodome," continued Manning, following applause. "They were waiting for days to die." Apparently Katrina was in fact a racist weather phenomenon! And you have to love that that an Imam from a local Mosque led a prayer from the Koran following the speeches, read first in Arabic and then translated in English. How appropriate!

Where's the outrage?

Tuesday at 12:01am 76 year old Clarence Ray Allen will be executed at San Quentin. If you were interested in attending the vigil in support of Mr. Allen getting a stay where you can rub elbows with Jesse Jackson, Mike Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg........well you can't. They aren't standing outside the gates for Clarence. Clarence is not black and didn't write a children's book. But like Tookie he was responsible for the death of 4 people (1 he murdered, 3 he had killed by a hit man while in prison). In looking for an image to put with this post I found out that some of the most successful rap/hip-hop stars where, or are, part of Death Row Records. It's amazing that black rap can reflect on prison, or death row, as if it's inevitable for them, or maybe it's a badge of honor? A white group using such caustic images and reference would be the equivalent of a skin head group. If you're black and on death row and about to meet your maker don't worry you will have plenty of celebrity pundits there asking for you to be spared. If you're black you also can freely promote and embrace that a criminal lifestyle is your destiny and not your fault....death row is in your future...the police are the enemy....and really you're innocent because your black. What an unbelievable bad message and horrible role models so many blacks in entertainment and professional sports portray. Not the original subject I wanted to cover, but I was motivated by a terrible record label name and image.

Global Warming's dirty little secret

A new study finds that 10% to 30% of the methane produced annually is from living plants and methane is considered one of the more problematic green house gases. The study posses the question of how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked all this time by the global warming community. DUH! Because it would suggest that green house gases have been around for millions of years. It would support the argument that warming (and cooling) are cyclic and that natural sources of green house gases (living and decaying plants, volcanoes, etc.) dwarf those produced by man.

I also have a dream

Monday is MLK day. Like MLK, I too have a dream. My dream is that one day those who profess that racism, in particular against blacks, abounds will no longer promote separatism and instead racial homogeny...a color blind society. But my dream is not promoted by those who claim to be my dreams biggest proponents. The "supposed" black leaders of today will speak at one gathering, or another, this Monday and speak of no progress, divisive rhetoric towards Bush or conservatives, and continued calls for special treatment of blacks. I have always been amazed at the hypocrisy of those who call for special treatment, special laws targeting someone by their skin color (or some definition of minority) all under the label of "equality". I'm certain that a search of the stories on MLK day gatherings when we reach Monday evening will show a lot of hate speech and miss-guided vitriol that would not be favored by MLK himself.

UPDATE (1/16): Not exactly what I was expecting but Gore used a MLK event and speaking engagement to attack Bush (and his administration) with hyperbole and innuendo. Gore talks about an abuse of power and any legality issues as if it's a foregone conclusion that there is wrong doing. No proof, he has no inside information so since he can't get in trouble for implying it's all evil he does so. Just a sample of this is Gore says at this MLK event that our executive branch has been "caught" eavesdropping....and ads "It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored." As if Dubya is eavesdropping on joe average citizen. And you explain to me how this diatribe by Gore that lasted for 7400+ words, and all the way through was mostly an anti-Bush fest, isn't an insult to MLK's memory?

Extremism on The Supreme Court

Just for fun I decided to do some research into Supreme Court nominees and I found a few very interesting facts.

For example: One past nominee has expressed sympathy for the viewpoint that there’s a constitutional right for both prostitution and polygamy.

A past nominee characterized the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as sexist institutions and proposed abolishing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replacing them both with Parent’s Day.

A past nominee called for an end to single-sex prisons because they believed that if male inmates are going to return to society they need to know that males and females are equal and prison would be a good place to learn that important lesson.

A past nominee held the opinion that courts should order employers to have racial quota’s even with no evidence of discrimination on part of the employer. This same nominee owned an office for over a decade in a town that was majority African American and yet and never hired a black person.

You probably think that there’s no way such a person could ever be approved as a justice to the highest court in the land. You would be wrong, that person is Ruth Bader Ginsburg; she was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by a 96-3 vote.

In His Own Words (Not So Much)

So the New York Times has an editorial about the Alito nominations today. The title is "Judge Alito, in His Own Words", I thought by the title it might be an enlightenng piece.

The problem being that in the 709 word diatribe against Alito they used only 23 of "his own words". I'm sure they never once took him out of context either.

Excellence in journalism yet again! Thank you New York Times!

Grasping at Straws!

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are grasping at straws! It's very clear that there is no smoking gun, or flaw, in Judge Alito's past or testimony that is going to rise to the level of supporting a filibuster. It's amazing that, for example, they say he's inconsistent! So he said he has an open minded on abortion, but he wouldn't echo the phrase Judge Roberts used on Roe v. Wade who called it "settled law". Alito referred to it as "an important precedent of the Supreme Court". That's not inconsistent with saying he has an open mind! Then there is his membership in a Princeton University group called CAP from 30 yrs ago....which he listed on an job application 20 years ago. CAP as a group, or maybe individuals of CAP (it's not clear) had some issue with women and minority enrollment at Princeton. The judge can't remember being a member, actively or otherwise. So people say why didn't he denounce CAP later? Why should he? He had no political aspirations. If he was member of a group AND actively participated in questionable activities, or views, then you have a good concern. Short of that it's like saying I'm a racist because it comes out that a coach of one little league team, where I also coach a team in the same league, won't allow blacks on his team.

There is clearly no grounds for a filibuster here, and to mount one will create a bigger rift between the parties which in the end will not achieve any political gain.

Poll Bogosity

I have been in work meetings starting at 8am today and finally came out of my last meeting drained at 3pm. I was anxious to see how the Alito hearing was going. Checked a few blogs and it appears he's doing pretty well. Then I decided to visit some MSM sites to see what they were saying, but I got distracted. The first site I hit was CNN's and what I knew would be a bogus and slanted CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll was on the front page "Poll finds U.S. split over eavesdropping". What I hate about this is that most people don't bother to look at the actual polling questions and see if they think they are asked in a unbias way. Of course I don't think I have ever seen a poll (at least one anybody uses for their cause) that is unbiased. What's interesting is that this poll asked questions in way, I suppose, they thought would elicit an anti-Bush sentiment...it didn't.

For example they asked "Do you think the Bush administration has gone too far, has been about right, or has not gone far enough in restricting people's civil liberties in order to fight terrorism?". You could argue that since the NSA eavesdropping program was only done on those shown to have some connection (like their phone number shows up on a suspected terrorist's cell phone speed dial!) to a suspected terrorist. So a more appropriate question on this would be "Do you think the Bush administration has gone too far, has been about right, or has not gone far enough in monitoring communications of those shown to have ties to suspected terrorists?". They did ask the question in this form when they asked about how much people were following the story. But in the end the responses didn't go against the intent of the NSA program. Only 38% thought the Bush administration went to far, a total of 59% said it was about right or not far enough! I think the poll shows that more people than probably liberals would like to believe see our security as trumping the "civil liberties" card so often played. None the less CNN starts the story saying "Though Americans are growing more skeptical of the White House record on civil liberties...." and I assume they based this leap on a poll number they show for 2003 where 69% (10% more than today) say it was about right or not far enough. And I'm sure if you asked it in 2002 it would have been 79%. They could have as easily said that 4+ years after 9/11 the majority of Americans think the administration is on track or could go farther in restricting people's civil liberties in order to fight terrorism.

Haters of America and Freedom

You must be kidding me!....in my ideal world Belafonte should be the target of NSA eavesdropping! Do people like Belafonte and Glover actually do any homework on the dictators (Castro, Chavez, etc.) they love to meet with, idolize and adore? I suppose they will say the mountain of examples of evil and disregard for their people, and their freedom, is all fakery by those who oppose these leaders. Belafonte say Bush is "the greatest terrorist in the world" and I guess by comparison Castro and Chavez are humanitarians! Is this a case of dementia?

Single Issue Democrats!

As we start the confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito this morning I predict his confirmation will not come without some Democrats looking like single issue demagogues. The abortion topic is surely one of the most polarizing for all. I believe that Democrats who harp on abortion and their theory on Alito's personal opinions (which are not the same as his rulings or interpretation of the law!!!!) do so not because their strong beliefs but in order to play on the emotions of the populace for political advantage. The paper trail on Alito's judicial career is vast and unless a Senator presents examples that clearly show incorrect application of the law in favor of personal bias they don't have a logic case for opposition. The typical MSM Democrat darlings (Schumar, Feinstein) were giving the predictable sound bites this weekend. While they pretend that they are concerned about Alito's position on: presidential powers, his 20 yr old application for deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, a case involving strip search of a mother and daughter and machine gun ownership....it was clear from watching Schu-stein the vitriol was evident when Roe v. Wade came up. The NYTimes a hit piece on Alito this weekend and of course their case is made by being incomplete. Professor Bainbridge does a good job demonstrating that point. But the bottom line is MOST Americans are not single issue devotee's and yet for political advantage both sides play the game as if single issues define people. We do not live and die under the specter of abortion. There is also no evidence, I have seen, to show that the President or members of the Senate/House have an agenda to overthrow Roe. Yes, plenty don't like Roe but that's a far cry from actively trying to nullify it, which doesn't make abortion illegal as many will imply.

Just my own 44 years of observation, but I find it fascinating that nearly all liberals I have met that support abortion with tremendous passion (and today's environment supports very late term abortion) are also passionately against capital punishment. How they justify putting an undeniably innocent unborn child to death while opposing it for convicted and mostly poor excuses for human beings is beyond me. Oh, but of course all those on death row are innocent or have "changed"!

Meet supporters of the US Iraq strategy

I'm not surprised that Al-Qaida's No. 2 man Ayman al-Zawahri has now come out calling the US's recent public announcements on troop level draw down in Iraq a victory. Regardless of whether you think we should have ever gone into Iraq to leave it a breeding ground for Islamic extremists can't be an option. Bush and team are screwing up big time by talking about, or implementing, a strategy that has a timeline component versus measured progress. The left, who started the pull-out drum beat, will have American blood spilled on our soil on their hands if we don't finish the job...they have unfortunately pulled what was once a right thinking administration into their delusion.

Warp Speed Mr. Scott!

I found this item on instapundit.com about a "hyperspace" engine, ok a theoretical engine, that would essentially enable what Star Trek fans call "warp speed". Of course healthy skepticism is warranted but if you don't challenge barriers it's unlikely they will fall accidentally. The short description of this theoretical craft is one that could create an enormously powerful magnetic field (around the craft) which allows the craft to slip into another dimension where the speed of light is faster. You could travel at sub-light speed in this other dimension which would equate to faster than light speed in ours. So do other dimensions exist?

The emergence of superstring theory proves, or more accurately put requires, a universe with 10 dimensions. Well, at least there is mathematical proof in the minds of the very few who understand the freaky math used in this research. For most a simple integral (basic calculus) is hard to grasp but the multidimensional math used in superstring theory is hard even for those who "say" they understand it to describe. Equations are used to describe the 6 dimensional Calabi-Yau shape (named for the two mathematicians who did the math) to which you add the 3 dimensions we all are familiar with, along with the dimension of time makes 10. While a lot of the math and physics behind these theories is "out there" the biggest challenge, I suspect, would be to create a powerful enough magnetic field around a craft...maybe a flux capacitor is in our future after all!

Birds of a feather?

I find this story about Hillary's 2000 campaign and financing interesting as it parallels Tom Delay's problems down in Texas. So why isn't a prosecutor somewhere trying to indict Hillary? The case you could make against her has what looks to me to be more meat than in the Delay case...but of course we know why nobody is making noise on this don't we?

Washington For Sale

With lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleading guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion we may be looking at the start of the biggest story for 2006. Abramoff apparently took a plea deal where he will sing the names of those whose influence he bought and the list could take down a fair number of key politicians and could see others go to jail. The MSM isn't jumping on this story with the blood in water frenzy I would have thought but maybe that will change. And as yet another example of my previous post many stories, and talking heads (like Pelosi), immediately opined this was evidence of the corruption of the Republicans in general. While it is likely to be a serious problem for some Republicans there are plenty of Democrats who took green from Abramoff.

Do they teach fact checking?

This weeks tragic mining incident shows the media's systemic inability to get facts right. It would have taken a few minutes to confirm if in fact all, or most, of the miners were found alive with one of the many officials on the scene but many ran with the incorrect story. Playing fast and loose with the facts is so prevalent in the media I have to wonder how many journalist have journalism degrees and do they teach fact checking? The equally evil twin of playing fast and loose with the facts is story spin. There was probably a time when any media story labeled news had little to no spin...ah, the good old days. These days the media and politicians throw around innuendo, guilt by association and outright lies with impunity. This mining accident story also illustrates how disconnected the media is from news with tabloid journalism taking its place. Many media outlets, with FOX being notably bad, had 24 hour coverage of the incident and then when the outcome was clear went on incessantly about the timeline of how the incorrect news of surviving miners got out.