Revisionist Excuses

I find it embarrassing that former President Bill Clinton was so easily rattled by even a mild hardball question. When Fox News (a Republican propaganda media machine controlled by Bush according to liberals) reporter Chris Wallace asked the question "Why didn't you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President?" Clinton lost presidential composer.

He went into a nearly spitting and finger pointing rant about this question was a "conservative hit job" and that he did more than anybody else to get Bin Laden. He basically just made stuff up...which he is so adept at doing without scrutiny by most of the press.

Can you imagine if Bush had this kind of demeanor with a reporter who asked a mildly tough (and I'll explain why it's only a mildly tough question later) question and then proceeded to say things like "all the Democrats said this" or "all of the military told me that"....within minutes all media outlets would be doing Google and Lexisnexis searches. You would have to do a lot of searching because when you hear it you're saying to yourself...really, that happened?...hmm...lets get confirmation. So, of course, you can't find a partisan chorus of Republicans that complained that Clinton was obsessed with getting Bin Laden...will the main stream media point out this complete fabrication and parallel universe that Clinton apparently lives in? Of course not.

This was as undignified and as poor an interaction as I could imagine from an ex or sitting President as you can imagine. If you hadn't already seen it, see it on Hotair's video blog...the video and his fabrication are laid out plane as day.

Clinton had 8 years of mostly slobbering smitten press questions (with the exception of the Monica issue) during his time in office...and more constant love since leaving office....One little question and he has no class, no skill to deflect it! He could have simply said "you know, I wish I did more, I wish we had got him...but we didn't...it's not an easy thing and I'm sure the current administration would like to have gotten him by now as well"....then if the interviewer keeps pressing they look unreasonable...asked and answered. That's why this was a mild hardball and could have been easily handled.

And apparently Clinton, like many nutroots, blame Bush for his 8 months leading up to 9/11 and in no way Clinton for his 8 years prior to Bush. I guess Clinton was fighting terror in a big way without us knowing, handed Bush terrorism under control on a platter and Bush messed it up in his first 8 months. Clinton was just on the verge of killing off terrorism as we now know it when he had to leave office....it was Bush who blew it.

Clinton can't handle even an occasional tough question....Bush handles questions tougher than this everyday from the entire press core.....Clinton only has to only handle it from FoxNews (the Bush media outlet).

Update: Before someone sends me examples of GOP complaints about Clinton's cruise missile assault on an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan....keep in mind they were complaining he timed that attack to deflect the impeachment vote that was to happen the next day...it was a question of was he wagging the dog.

Update 2: From Dick Morris who was close to Clinton during the time he could have nailed Bin Laden and could have taken the 1993 attack on the WTC more seriously.

Terrorists Rights

I always find it interesting when people will accept a position on a topic as absolutely correct when the topic has no absolutes (it's a matter of opinion) or obtaining such proof requires data that isn't available. When dealing with the human mind and its response to stimulus there is no absolutes and one only achieves a high probability of predicting response with a very very high sample size. You can't just apply straight statistics to human reaction. Every aspect of a persons history, life experience, personality and recent personal relations and events will effect their perceptions at any given time and so predictability is dubious.

So, what the hell am I rambling about? Senator McCain has come out very strongly on identifying by legislation specific interrogation techniques for detainees (terrorist suspects) that are off limits and in fact would constitute a crime. McCain is a war hero in my book...his many years as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam give him that label...no doubt. But I believe his experience actually clouds his judgment on this subject of war time interrogations and that he should recuse himself from playing a role in this legislation. Just as a civil judge who had sued a home remodel contractor should recuse themselves from overseeing such a suits in their courtroom.

McCain's experience alone doesn't make him a definitive source of what interrogation techniques work....or even what's moral, or the "high ground". While I believe physical mutilation or any technique that could result in death should be off limits I wouldn't automatically conclude either happening is evidence of a crime. Plenty of techniques that should be employed to make sure no Jihad loving American hating freak has a shot at my wife, kids, family and friends might in fact cause someone with say a heart condition to die. And if a detainee chooses to physically fight our guards or interrogators well they make suffer permanent physical injury......to F'ing bad.

McCain and others say that taking the "high ground" on this issue will in fact save American military lives when they are faced with being a prisoner of war? I yelled at the radio in my truck when I heard that for the first time....are you kidding me! I know of no enemy of the U.S., whether a sovereign state or a stateless terrorist group like Al-Qaeda, that in my wildest dreams would consider the Geneva Conventions, article 3 of the same, or that the U.S. took a humanitarian approach to prisoner interrogations when they're standing there deciding what to do to their American captive! In fact, I'm sure that they laugh at our public debate on this topic and in spite of the uproar in parts of the middle east over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo those who put themselves in a position to be captured are none to scared of interrogators.

The proposed legislation handcuffs interrogators and will in many cases make them useless as the fear of prosecution or law suits has them playing catch with a nerf football with their prisoners.

I agree with Paul over at Powerline who called McCain (among others) the "terrorist rights wing of the Republican party".

I suspect some of the support for this "high ground" comes from the post 9/11 trend mostly on the part of Liberals to embrace Internationalsim. The idea that we brought on the hatred, that we turned normal life loving peoples into those willing to die to kill us...that actually love the idea of killing us...killing innocent civilians...not military or govt targets but a bus full of school children for example. I suppose those willing to believe such an absurd thing explain how people with a trainload of evidence to the contrary are willing to believe that our government (and our President) could be a part of a conspiracy responsible for 9/11.

For some reason these people ignore the terrorists acts by Islamic/Muslim based groups all over the world to people who can't even be said to be complicit with the U.S., and then there is also the Muslim on Muslim terrorism and murder in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And lastly the fact that cartoons or repeating a 13th century quote that are critical of Muhammad result in violence and the threat of violence and death. Yes, all this anger and willingness to cut off someone's head can clearly be found rooted in something America has done!

Thankfully those of you who think this way are apathetic. If you believe there was even the slightest chance Bush was behind 9/11 or that his actions since have actually caused the creation of thousands of new terrorists you should be advocating physical force to oust Bush and take over the government! I would be doing everything I could to confirm my suspicions and then act on it if it was me.

If you agree with Chavez you're a traitor

Chavez's address to the UN called the US (not just Bush) an enemy of the world and was as Peggy Noonan, more eloquently than I puts it, a call to arms against us.

The leftists and blind Bush haters among us only hear the anti-Bush message in what Chavez says....those of us who don't hate Bush (or love him) heard what the world heard. If what Chavez and Ack-my-lunch-what-a-wack-job said when they had their time at the UN podium didn't get you pissed off as an American...well then, you're not a patriotic American. Worse if you agreed with him (as many leftist in our country do) you're a traitor!

If you're a Chavez aligned traitor you're a spineless one unless you advocate using force to overthrow the US government....you could also choose to leave our country...but that would make you a spineless traitor as well....I prefer you do the later.

Both of these pukes rambled on....but this portion of Chavez's speech had a clear meaning to anyone being honest:

The "pretensions" of "the American empire" threaten "the survival" of mankind. The world must "halt this threat." The American president talks "as if he owned the world" and leads a "world dictatorship" that must not be allowed to "be consolidated." Bush will spend "the rest of [his] days as a nightmare." The U.S. government is "imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal," a "hypocritical" empire that only pretends to mourn the deaths of innocents. But not only the Mideast will rise. "People of the South," "oppressed" by America, must "strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle."

Liar Liar

Get your rainbow badges!

If you work for a major U.S. company you better check the Corporate Equality Index on the gay activists Human Rights Campaign Foundation website. You see, a fair number of companies have put in place policies that, for example, prohibit discrimination and/or call for respect of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Well now....so let me get this straight (pun intended)...previously these companies, given they're big, had policies about ones general attitude towards others (coworkers and customers) at the workplace...but "others" previously apparently excluded gays (and previously mentioned sexual deviants). They weren't excluded because these policies said they were excluded....but because, you see, there are people with certain attributes that everyone knows we don't apply normal human rules to unless they're specifically called out!

So, with no influence from activist groups (ya right) these companies in the above mentioned fruitcake...ah, I mean corporate equality index...have called out those you would normally not give equal treatment to.

One big problem.....you see these new policies don't mention the other people all of us know we don't really need to treat equally (like, liberals, people who sleep with dogs, people with piercings you're forced to look at when talking to them, people with poor hygiene, terrorists, pedophiles, etc.) so how do we know who the gays (and others I don't want to mention) are among us so that we treat them special? I mean since they are called out in the policies unlike people with blue eyes, or people who are happily married, or people who are Catholic...well these people called out specifically in the policies..we really need to treat these folks special...cause, well...they really are special aren't they?

I say give them what they want....make themm wear visible identification that they are special, and then we will all know who we need to treat special!

Union Financial Transparency Outrage?

A fascinating piece in today's WSJ summarizes some interesting facts about the spending habits of America's labor unions. New requirements have resulted in more financial transparency for these unions and what has been disclosed should cause outrage in the membership of these unions. However, I suspect very few working stiff union types get the WSJ and I don't have much faith that the MSM will make noise over what this new disclosures of union spending shows.

Union workers, I would guess, assume that their union and it's representatives spend the vast majority of their time and money on worker salary negotiation, worker benefits management, worker retirement management, worker education programs, and a bunch of other things focused on the worker. But, it turns out the majority of union funds go to political action aligned with the cultural left.....almost none of it can be shown to be in direct support of the union worker. In fact, union bosses seem to have a passion for giving to those whose focus is raising taxes....a proven method of curbing economic growth and thus hurting labor.

The new disclosures show how thousands of union officers and employees devote between 50% and 90% of their time on political activities and lobbying. And of course you find unjustly high salaries, dubious spending and purchasing by the union at non-union retailers....at least union management knows where you get a bargain!

Read the entire piece by clicking "Read the rest..."

Fun Union Facts -- September 19, 2006; Page A20

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney boasted recently that the union consortium intended to pour millions of dollars into this year's Congressional elections -- hardly a shocker. What is news is that this year, for the first time, rank-and-file union members are getting a look at precisely how much of their mandatory dues money is going to fund Mr. Sweeney's political causes, and plenty of other interesting details as well.

This month marks the deadline for the last of the nation's unions to file newly expanded disclosure reports, known as LM-2 forms. LM-2s have been around a long time, though until Labor Secretary Elaine Chao issued a rule requiring an expanded form in 2004, unions got away with providing the skimpiest details. This proved useful to union bosses who wanted to mask their political spending, or in some cases their corruption.

They are now being dragged into the sunshine. Whereas unions used to lump millions of dollars of disbursements into such vague categories as "sundry expenses," the new regime requires them to provide a detailed breakdown of who or what received union money: issue advocacy groups, political consultants, polling outfits, even hotels at which their members stayed.

Hard-working union members deserve to know, for example, that of the AFL-CIO's $82 million in discretionary disbursements from July 2004 to June 2005, only 36% went to representing members in labor negotiations -- which is what unions were created to do. A whopping $49 million, or 60% of its budget, instead went to political activities and lobbying, while another $2.4 million went to contributions, gifts and grants. The National Education Association was even more skewed toward politics, spending only 33% of its $143 million discretionary budget on improving its members' lots.

By our calculations based on the filings, the AFL-CIO spent at least $2.7 million alone on T-shirts, flyers, telephone calls, Web site hosting, and other support for 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry. Groups that received AFL-CIO money included Citizens for Tax Justice, an organization devoted to higher tax rates; the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank that campaigns against Social Security privatization and tax cuts; and the Alliance for Justice, a ferocious opponent of President Bush's Supreme Court nominees.

Dues-paying workers of the world might want to ask: Why is Mr. Sweeney spending more of their money trying to raise taxes, or fighting for the cultural left, than he is on collective bargaining?

The IRS may also want to inspect these forms. That's because, prior to the new LM-2 disclosure rules, at least a dozen large unions had told the tax agency that they spent nothing on politics. The National Education Association's 2004 tax return, for instance, left blank the line for "direct or indirect political expenditures." Yet according to its LM-2, the NEA spent $25 million on such activities from September 2004 to August 2005. Eliot Spitzer could sure have fun with that one -- if he didn't have the NEA's endorsement.

The forms also offer a glimpse at union chief salaries. At least three union heads took home more than a million dollars in compensation in their last fiscal year -- though two were admittedly the heads of the NFL and NBA players unions. The third-fattest union cat was Martin Maddaloni, the chief of the Plumbers and Pipefitters, who took home $1.3 million last year. The Plumbers' "director of training" -- a fellow named George Bliss -- somehow managed to make $456,644 in 2005. Now we know why plumbers are so expensive: They have to make enough to pay the dues that keep their union reps in Armani.

The LM-2 forms show that some 1,015 paid union officers and employees devoted more than 90% of their time to political activities. Combined, these folks took home compensation worth nearly $53 million. Some 1,755 union personnel spent at least 50% of their time on political activities and lobbying.

As for financial management, let's just say some of these union chiefs are having fun in their jobs. United Auto Workers Local 14 reported it spent $67,000 at an amusement park. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers spent $124,000 at a hotel resort. And the Plumbers forked over $225,000 on Nascar advertising.

A couple of other fun facts: Of the 100 highest paid union executives, 93% are men. We hope some class-action lawyer isn't looking to sue for gender discrimination. And, believe it or not, unions report that they spent $624,000 at largely non-unionized big box retailers across the country, including Target, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco and K-Mart. They apparently know a low price when they see one.

When Secretary Chao proposed the new rules, unions were furious and came close to getting them blocked on Capitol Hill, and in court. Mr. Sweeney, the AFL-CIO chief, was quoted as saying the rule "will cost union members an estimated billion dollars a year," and that the average union would have to spend $1.2 million. The actual cost of AFL-CIO compliance turned out to be $54,000, so Mr. Sweeney was only off by 96%.

Unions should have the right to spend whatever they want on politics, and we've defended that right against McCain-Feingold and other campaign-finance limits. At the same time, however, union members who don't like the way their coerced dues are spent have the right under the Supreme Court's Beck decision to ask for the political and grant portion of that money back. May these illuminating LM-2 disclosures be spread far and wide.

Sticks and Stones; Muslims need to clean house

The Muslim, or Islamic, or Arab world.....Whichever you want to label it...has some house cleaning to do. Why? Well, firstly because they have Bin Laden and various junior Bin Ladens around the world trying to recruit western looking Jihadists, and they encourage their new and old Jihadists to kill my kids, your kids, your wife, your husband, your way of life. The theory, and this is just a theory, is that most of the Muslim world loves their life and family more than the idea of killing yours..again this is just a theory. If this is true then they have some renouncing, some cleansing, some house cleaning to do.

But, I suspect, there will be no such movement within the Muslim world and the reaction to Pope Benedict XVI speaking of a dialogue between a Byzantine Emperor and a Persian. The Emperor conveyed that Muhammad's spreading faith through violence is something unreasonable. The Pope, in his speech in Germany this week, merely quoted a conversation between two men that took place in the year 1391. The entire speech wasn't focused on this criticism of Muhammad, but to the Muslim world it might as well have been.

The inflammatory (literally) reaction to the Pope's speech is interesting since it merely comes from quoting someone who was just critical of Muhammad 600 years ago. The Pope was speaking to the need for genuine dialogue among cultures and religion...a plea for peaceful coexistence. But the Muslim leaders who are stirring the fire among their followers are of course not telling their sheep of the context of the "supposed" slam against Islam.

Just read the reactions from various countries and their Muslim talking heads....then look at the Pope's speech. The best reaction, one that shows the backward logic and that criticism of the Muslim world is properly placed was from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry who said "Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence." WHAT?

Apparently the entire Muslim world is like one of those guys who suddenly looses it on our congested American roads and succumbs to road range and gets violent...the entire Muslim world! Can a group who is so brain washed, so prone to violence from simply being critical of their prophet peacefully coexist with us? I'm beginning to wonder!

Upate (9/18): Islamic reaction to the Pope's message that violence shouldn't be part of the worlds religions trying to co-exist was predictable. They of course say the Pope was instead saying that Mohammed and Islam are about violence...and so to make their case they prove the fake Pope message correct by threatening death and violence. So, how many Catholics will threaten to kill, or actually kill, because Muslim's all over the world burned the Pope in effigy? Ah, I would guess ZERO. Now imagine even one demonstration where Mohammed is burned in effigy.

Update (9/19): The Muslim Cleric who organized the Danish Embassy cartoon protest calling to 'Behead Those Who Insult Islam' weighs in and is demanding the Pope be executed....you gotta love those peace loving Muslims!

Stupid Human Tricks of the Week...so far!

Well, there seems to be plenty of stupidity to go around this week. Here's a few of my favorite stupid human tricks that made there way into the news this week:

Judge Rules You Can't Ask Voters To Prove Their Identity! And I love Wizbang's idea on how to point out just how stupid this is!

Liberal Lesbian Tells Mindless America Who Watches TV Midday That "radical" Christians in America are just as much of a threat as the followers of radical Islam who piloted hijacked jetliners into New York's Twin Towers!!!! No other commentary needed!

Stupid #1: Harvard invites former President of Iran to speak at the Kennedy School of Government. Stupid #2: Audience sits silently as Khatami justifies the death penalty for gays. That same audience would jeer loudly if Bush spoke about say military tribunals for terrorists caught on foreign soil!

Minnesota Democrats give primary win to less than honest Muslim and Nation Of Islam follower. His claims he didn't know the NOI was anti-Semitic are laughable.

Stupid #1: That the UN still gets funds from the U.S. and that anybody thinks they do ANY good at all. Stupid #2: That Kofi Annan would have any reason to visit Castro.

Stupid #1: That anybody, U.S. citizens, the EU, or anybody else thinks that terrorists and insurgents are covered by the Geneva Conventions. Those who are not fighting under the flag of any country or wearing the uniform of any country's military and are, therefore, not shielded by the Geneva Convention! Stupid #2: That Colin Powell, McCain and others feel if we don't feel these scum by the GConventions that it will make it worse for our solders! WHAT? Oh, so instead of the Islamic fascists torturing a solder before cutting his head off, they'll just go straight to the decapitation IF ONLY the U.S. give their kind Geneva Conventions rights! The time for worrying about those in countries who populace supports evil acts towards Americans think has long past. Now is the time for us to crush and instill fear in those that will supposedly just as easily be a peace loving Muslim or be a bomb-belt wearing terrorist.....not worry about whether they think we are being moral hypocrites.

How not to be taken seriously

Have an important cause, issue or crisis? Want the attention from international government officials? Have an opportunity to address the UN Security Council and make your case for help from the international community?

So here's your plan, first get Nobel Laureates to join your organization and help...shows that smart thoughtful people who you assume do their homework believe in your cause....their accomplishments give credibility to their position on your cause. Second get an actor who has played a TV doctor, a demon killer, a con man and a secret agent in the movies. This will......(sound of a record being stopped by hand with that terrible scratching noise of the stylus dragging across multiple groves in the vinyl)....WHAT?

Look, celebrity endorsement of products, your clothing line, your hair products...in fact I suspect they really know their hair products, is great. But when you have George Clooney speak to the UN (let alone the Security Council) about an issue in a country he visited for days or weeks...an issue he's not a known expert on, an issue involving political turmoil, dictatorial leaders, tribal relations, genocide, etc.....you loose every intelligent person questioning the legitimacy of your issue. Everything they say can be correct and heartfelt...but generally we don't want to hear such things from self important pseudo intellectuals who think because the celebrity adoring public and paparazzi fawn over them that they suddenly have enlightened knowledge on nearly any topic.

Darfur is messed up and I'm sure has been inappropriately ignored by those who claim to care for the human condition around the world...but in my opinion there's no better way to turn powerful people away from your issue than to have a celebrity like George Clooney lecture them on it.

Left is, as Left does

A new CNN pole says basically there is no change in those who blame Bush (and/or Clinton) for the 9/11 attacks since 2004...but CNN chooses the Bush bashing headline "More Americans blame Bush for 9/11". In fact the poll shows the number of people who blame Bush, a little to a great deal, for the 9/11 attacks only differs by 2% from those who also blame Clinton.

But a 1-2% change in this stupid poll doesn't make a story...what should make a story is that an attack in the planning for many years, and that Islamic fascists were carrying out terrorists acts for a good decade prior to 9/11/01...and yet some think it's all Bush's fault that roughly 6 months into office this attack happens?

How stupid are these people? Their dislike of a Republican who also believes in God (oh my) is so great that all logic, reason and a grasp of the facts escapes them. As PowerlineBlog points out, the left (no longer just the angry left) blames everything on Bush that couldn't even possibly be his fault....amazing.

I'm not in love with Bush.....but on the left there is a deranged hatred that hurts us as a whole.

Duplicity in this derangement is those media outlets that attempt to make news instead of "report, you decide". The enlightened intellectuals in the media no longer think you're capable of deciding what anything means (GWOT, Global Warming, civil rights, etc.)...so at CNN they will just tell you what it means. The Riehl World View said this about the CNN pole:

"if you take into account the polls margin of error (3%) and the fact that they used a partial sample in 2001 (MOE 4.5%) and, for some reason, have no results for Clinton in 2002 ... the fact is, there is no significant difference between the numbers for Bush and Clinton, except for right after 9/11, when Clinton stood at 45% to 40% for Bush.
Now, look at the top three categories, which would mean any blame at all. Clinton polls 62%, Bush 64% in a poll with a 3.5% margin of error = no significant difference."

The Arab Problem

As we slip past the 5th anniversary of our generations Pearl Harbor I wonder if it's appropriate to feel that our efforts to thwart another terrorist attack on our soil is working? After all dates and symbolism seem to be important to the Islamic scum who desire our demise. Would they not have done great harm to our sense of safety to even mount a small attack on any anniversary up to this point? If you believe they are fearful that the symbolism of another attack on a 9/11 anniversary would re-awaken the sleeping giant with a vengeance not seen before, think again. There not that smart, nor do they understand our kind of patriotism.

I'm not suggesting we are employing all the best tactics in fighting this war...some are in fact laughable. And to not TARGET MUSLIMs in police work and intelligence work of this fight is stupid and dangerous.

What is worrisome is the attitude in the overall Arab world where one would assume that all are not extremist and some not even Muslim. A great blog on Iraq and the Arab world, by two brothers who should know since they're blogging out of Baghdad is Iraq The Model. One of the brothers, Mohammed Fadhil, has a piece to this point called Blaming the Victim in today's WSJ. Fadhil points out the Arab medias focus on our response to 9/11 as opposed to the act itself. To ignore the provocation is dishonest but also speaks to the attitude that America deserved this. Fadhil also shares my belief as he answers the question on whether the West can appease these ruler and clerics by our changing our strategy:

I don't think so. Those dictators and extremists always seek to keep a state of low-level confrontation and to keep the possibility for war open because their dominance over their people depends on their ability to create enemies and convince their people that those enemies are whom hatred and anger must be directed at.

A poll just published on Jihad TV's (Al Jazeera) website further illustrates the Arab attitude. I found this on www.littlegreenfootballs.com but you can see the original page of the terrorist medias poll on a Google translation page. My pal, Glock26, points out one positive in the poll...that the majority don't want to visit our great country!

1) Is the world safer after September 11? Yes - 4.2 % No - 95.8 %
2) Do you support Osama bin Laden? Yes - 49.9 % No - 50.1 %
3) Do you think that the war on Iraq is a war on Islam? Yes - 79.8 % No - 20.2 %
4) Do you think that there is a link between the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq? Yes - 23.4 % No - 76.6%
5) Do you wish to travel to the United States? Yes - 27.6 % No - 72.4 %

A disconnect that's hard to explain

I have often alluded to the hypocrisy one can observe in the words and actions of Democrats on the key issues as compared to Republicans in the post 9/11 era. I'm not suggesting that the right is perfect, just that the left seems to have en masse abandoned key principles and values they once (although still claim) to hold dear.

This hypocrisy is so obvious that it's perpetration is confusing...They don't even try to disguise it and so I theorized, some time ago, that it must literally be a mental disorder. How else can one explain intelligent people yelling 2+2=5? And so I called it Bushdisdainia!

On this 5th anniversary of attacks on our way of life by Islamic fascists I feel the same way I felt on that morning...I was pissed, I was patriotic, tears were easy to come thinking about those who lost their lives. But one thing I have never felt..not even in the slightest...is that in any way we brought this on ourselves. I believe most conservatives feel the same. Sadly many (maybe even most) liberals feel differently...it really is shocking to me that liberals feel that these Islamic extremists could be quelled by anything other than our destruction. Some have compared Hitler to some of the Islamic anti-semitic leaders....but would Hitler give up his desire to rid the planet of inferior Jews from simply having some sort of appeasement talks?

DJ Drummond over at Wizbang has an excellent (albeit long) essay on this disconnect I encourage you to read. A small sample that hit home for me:

But the modern Liberal has abandoned most of what Liberalism used to mean. Where the old Liberal wanted all people to be treated as equals, the modern Progressive (to use the word they stole from Teddy Roosevelt to pretend to respectable intention) demands preferential treatment and advantages for a select minority. Where the old Liberal fought against Racism and Sexism, the modern Progressive is happy to take up those very causes, in order to advance their agenda. Even where the Conservative outrage about CBS's "The Reagans" is matched in the media with Liberal anger about "The Path to 9/11", methods differ sharply, as Democrats have even threatened to attack ABC's very broadcast license if they do not get what they demand. The Progressive Method is Hypocrisy in action, and eschews the Constitution by design.

Never Forget

Our turn for Fake But True

Apparently various Clinton administration alum have their knickers in a bunch over an ABC two part mini-series called The Path to 9/11. I find it interesting that they say ABC (and parent Disney) acknowledge the show is fiction and contradicts the 9-11 commission report but I cannot find any such acknowledgement.

It's also interesting that specific complaints from people such as Sandy (that's not a document in pants) Berger and Madeleine (I've never been wrong in my life) Albright are based not on their viewing of the series, but of someone else's account of certain scenes.....ah, ok....while they may in fact have a bone to pick they don't really know for sure. Of course you know darn well that anything that makes 9/11 look like anybody other than GW Bush's fault will be contested aggressively. I'm surprised these Clinton-ites aren't just saying 9/11 was a conspiracy and executed by the government under Carl Rove's direction. Oh wait...the planning and placement of all those building demolition charges and miles of wire had to be done before GWB was even elected..OH MY GOD....this proves that those crazy Bush cronies stole the election....they had to ensure they would be in office on 9/11!

The truth is only interesting to the left (of which the media is a major part of) when it supports their position. The stunning apathy on the left and in the main stream media that in fact the Valerie Plame leaker was an opponent of Bush policies named Richard Armitage. The calls from the left, and the MSM, for Bush to step down, impeachment for this and for Iraq, for someone to go to jail, that Rove, Cheney, etc. were evil and played with our security (as if Plame was a real operative), that this was just more proof of the evil right wing.....OOOPS......so are they calling for Armitage's balls?

I think the past behavior of those who are (and are yet to) yelling about this ABC series will in fact tell us that the events laid out in the drama may in fact be right on the money...at least thinking that puts a smile on my face.

Update: Hugh Hewitt has seen the ABC piece (unlike the complainers) and he says it's very critical of the Bush administration as well....but you don't see Bush or the GOP complaining do you? Clinton, who hasn't seen it, is saying he just wants it to be accurate...ok, any guesses on whether it will illustrate the 3 chances he had to take out Osama and didn't? A concise op/ed on Clinton's blown chances by Investors Business Daily.

Update: The new Dem power brokers, exemplified by the DailyKos, is employing an all out assault to censor or kill the ABC docu-drama.....the left is so mortified that it's base is so fragile that they can't survive any portrayal of their past leaders looking weak..truly amazing!

Update: UN-F'ing believable...the Democrats are the most chicken-sh*t bunch of hypocrites the world has known....they supposedly care about civil liberties...yet a docudrama that might paint any of them in a bad light must be pulled off the air? Can you imagine if Republican leadership was trying to pull this same stunt...the Dems would be making comparisons to book burnings, censorship and not trusting the public to make up their own minds whether ENTERTAINMENT was anything close to the truth. The Dems are cowards in facing scrutiny let alone in fighting the war on terror.

Update: You could have guessed this was going to happen....ABC is going to make changes to the content? If Clinton really did make a call to them I would love to hear it..... "Mr. Former President, but did Sandy really stop the CIA from doing it?" Clinton: "it depends on what your definition of IT is".

And as the WSJ's Tarranto put it "one wishes the Clinton people had been as aggressive in defending the nation from bin Laden as they now are in defending their own reputations." See his blog today, the story "Democrats Embrace Pre-Emption" midway down.

Sure, it's totally believable that Clinton wasn't distracted by the Lewinsky affair...that was just business as usual for Slick Willy!

Update: Excellent essay by Dean Barnett at TownHall on why the "Clintonistas" are all up in arms over this mini-series..and his final thoughts here:

But 9/11 changed everyone else's world view. It became apparent to most of America that we had to kill the would-be criminals before they actually became criminals. To most Americans, this was disquieting but a common sense necessity.

But the left never escaped its previousmind sett. Liberals remain exactly where they were 10 years ago; desirous of a policy that waits for a terrorist act and then lets law enforcement mop up the aftermath.

The fact that people are talking about the Democrats' attitude towards terrorism is horrifically damaging to the Democratic Party. There is, however, a way out for the Democrats. Truly, it would be best for the country and their party if they could arrive at a clearly articulated policy about what they would like to do, rather than simply loudly express primal emotions about how much they detest their domestic political opposition.

Alas, that's all they have. And this controversy brings their intellectually bankrupt status into the open.

The Muslim slippery slope!

Yesterday on the Wall Street Journal opinion blog was an item where the Muslim beauty, and the 2005 Miss London, Hammasa Kohistani postulates that "even" a moderate Muslim can slip right into becoming terrorists because of the attitude others have towards them in today's Islamic Jihad rich environment. WHAT??????

You mean that Muslims are so fragile, so inherently prone to unspeakable evil that some dirty looks, or a few anti-Muslim signs, or being singled out in an airport screening line will push, say an accountant, into a bomb belt wearing suicide west hater? You know instead of playing in that cricket match, I'll strap on some C-4 and get on a bus!

Oh, my....so we better listen to Kohistani and not profile Muslims. Never mind that the most unifying link to nearly all terrorists acts around the world in the last 10 years is that those involved are Muslim extremists.....if we just act nice, don't stare...don't do that....they will just sit on the fence with normal loving person on one side and terrorist on the other.....it's so easy for them to become terrorists...so don't push them!

Exact text from James Tarranto of the WSJ opinion blog:

Moderate Terrorists
"The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England has warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism," reports London's Daily Mail:

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent
England in the Miss World pageant. . . .

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year.
Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves.
They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It
will take a long time for communities to start mixing in
more. . . ."

So let's see if we follow this argument. According to Kohistani, Muslims are so thin-skinned and so violent that they respond to prejudice with terrorism.

Um, isn't that an invidious stereotype?

How many degrees between you and a modern day Hitler?

Yesterday my brother-in-law was telling me about how over the weekend he heard a women use the phrase "six steps of separation". Turns out she had a few glasses of wine at that point and so we were joking maybe she was mixing AA's twelve steps with the phrase she was trying to use "six degrees of separation".

I didn't really know the story behind this phrase other than it had to do with linking someone within those six degrees to actor Kevin Bacon....so I looked into it. Well Six Degrees of Separation was a stage play in 1990, then a film in 1993 (Bacon was in neither) but both are based on the premise that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than 6 acquaintances. Supposedly the phrase got linked to Kevin Bacon by a trivia game created by 3 college students who also got booked on the John Stewart Show. The game was to link any actor to Kevin Bacon within six acquaintances in films, TV shows or plays that actor had been in. The producer who booked the three students supposedly called the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

I think, in fact, it is interesting how many people you can connect to when you get to 3 or 4 degrees of separation. The number of people in your pool at that point is in the thousands or tens of thousands. However, with no separation (you have had direct contact) or just one degree...well that limits you in a big way.

For example how many of you have no separation between you and Hugo Chavez? Or only one degree of separation between you and our modern day Hitler Iran's Ahmedinejad? While this story isn't really about Cindy Sheehan, it's about these other two, that's how connected Cindy is to each of these.

Cindy visiting and kissing Chavez is well known...and the recent closeness of Chavez to Ahmedinejad has also been in the MSM....but what I doubt will make it's way into the MSM is that Hezbollah is apparently developing a following (thru marketing) in Chavez's country. A must view is the video blog on this very topic over at HotAir, where you should make regular visits to see the daily video blogs.

It's very scary that these two anti-American leaders are cavorting in any way. Together they could cause economic havoc messing with their oil production and price, let alone working together to build an Islamic extremist terrorist mentality in South America....this kind of thing will not be stopped by playing nice with meaningless UN resolutions..

Update: Part 2 of HotAir VBlog on Hezbollah in Latin America

Exclusive: Tom Cruise signs with Scientology Studios

Tiny's has learned that the mysterious, and not believable, $100M hedge fund that will bank roll Tom's movies now that Sumner Redstone booted his ass from Paramount is the recently formed Scientology Studios! That's right, the one headed by the much maligned eccentric studio head Xenu. More on this exclusive story as details come in!

Of course I'm basking in Tom's newest travails (note the word choice) much as I did during the bizarre baby birth episode (Tiny's: Cannibal or PR genius?), or the South Park fun (Tiny's: Cool Cat Scientologist).

So with the recent news that apparently intelligent, lucid and non-believer in 60M year old aliens Sumner Redstone decided to not renew Tom's contract with Paramount my crack staff went to work. Tom's wacky partner (this Wagner women) immediately started spouting off it didn't happen this way, they were going to split with Paramount anyway, blah, blah, blah. Apparently Mrs. Wagner (or is it Ms.?) didn't get the Scientology memo about using any psychological drugs!

It's also interesting how all the Hollywood friendly press is writing how this will backfire, how Redstone stepped on his Paramount studio chiefs, and so on. Hey Hollywood most everyone has a boss including your precious study chiefs. I for one hope Redstone did this primarily because it was the right thing to do given Tom's bizarre and very public beliefs. To a movie studio marquee actors are the product, if you product has a virus what do you do? Continue to sell it even if people will buy, or do you change the product? But it would be refreshing if Redstone actually put values ahead of money. On the other hand it could very well be that Tom and his freaky lady friend wanted to much to renew and Redstone figured since they won't renew with them might as well shoot em on their way out the door...hey, that's business!

Tom, even with being short and an idiot, will land on his feet...but I'll enjoy the negative press surrounding him and Scientology until he does!

Update: Tom raises less than $3M as the supposed $100m hedge fund still hasn't materialized....any bets on if his new investor is a Scientologist?

Global Warming believers cover your eyes!

If you believe in GW then you'll probably dismiss this story, or say it just supports your position. So here it is, you be the judge! A newly released study of 247 of the 350 glaciers on Disko island off Greenland's coast found 173 of those glaciers have been shrinking for the past century "suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming".

What I found interesting is that the researches say they studied 95% of the area covered by glaciers on Disko. So wouldn't that mean they should have studied 95% of the 350 glaciers or 315 instead of only 247? If 247 glaciers are on 95% of Disko island that means the remaining 103 glaciers are on just 5% of Disko they didn't cover?

Ok, this aside....it would be interesting to know if 173 glaciers on this island have been shrinking for over 100 years what's up with the other 74 in the study holding steady? Guess what, the article says that they also identified that there were more "galloping glaciers" than had been previously estimated....75 of them!

This is getting interesting....173 glaciers are shrinking for 100 years at around 8 meters a year...but the study also found 75 glaciers caled galloping glaciers that have growth spurts of several years (lets say 2) at a rate of 50 meters day..while most of the time growing at 20 meters a year. So 173 glaciers shrunk over 100 years by 800 meters each. But 75 galloping glaciers each grew as much as 36500 meters in the 2 years of galloping growth, and another 1960 meters for the 98 years of normal 20m/yr growth for a whopping 38460 meters of growth!!!!!!

I realize I'm averaging things here, and that all glaciers are not of the same size...but it sure would be interesting to see if the tremendous growth of the 75 growing glaciers balanced, or surpased, the lost ice of the slowly shrinking ones!

Update: It's always interesting to find a study, or a scientist, that refers to something as a certainty that is in fact as of yet unproven theory. Here's an example of your findings not fitting your theory so you claim what you found is caused by the theory. So apparently now global warming is also to blaim for more ice! And note the last quoted sentence of the researcher and how he/she refers to global warming as if it's a certainty.

Living in the victim-hood

Juan Williams is a smart guy. It's interesting when I see a smart person I don't notice their race. Think about a public figure that inspires you....is your immediate thought of their race, or is it the thing that you admire in them? I don't see Juan as black, just a smart guy. Juan has, in a sense, taken the baton from Bill Cosby in saying what's wrong with black America. Juan's new book ENOUGH: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It echoes much of what Bill Cosby has been saying for years and taking heat from those who are a major part of the problem. Juan also has a piece in today's WaPo on this culture of failure for blacks.

It's really all very simple....black leaders (figures in popular culture, politicians, educators, etc.) could have the biggest and most efficient change to the future for black youths...and yet they seem against it. They largely promote a victim and entitlement message to the black community.

The best training ground for self reliance and responsibility is of course the home, but given the epidemic of broken black families the black leaders can have the biggest effect on the youth. In my childhood I can remember various influences (parents, popular culture, school, my pier group) that lead me to understand my future was up to me. It was a given that you needed to be creative, you needed to work for things, you needed to do things with integrity. I did a lemonade stand on occasion, had a kid's version of a garage sell (the early version of eBay), rebuilt and painted and then sold bicycles, moved up to a paper route, pitted apricots at a local ranch, worked pool maintenance at the local swim club, worked as a stock boy during college and so on. I never assumed that the end goal was to live on some form of assistance. I also never assumed the end goal was to work for someone else. While my father, and most fathers around me, worked for large companies and would retire on company pensions the environment they created for me had a spirit entrepreneurism.

It's clear that spirit is missing from the poor black communities, but worse is that you could argue it has been replaced with the notion of a Cliff Notes shortcut to "making it" is through crime. The messages that permeate black popular culture embrace crime, drugs, disrespect for women, being smart is acting white, big business is bad, the police are evil, everyone else is prejudice, blah, blah.

I have posted on the idea that black leaders get their power from their communities believing they're victims and that their race (and it's baggage) entitle them to something, or everything. If most black fathers stayed married to their children's mothers, if most blacks believed in doing well in school, if most blacks believed in the American dream of working hard and anything is possible, if most black entertainment was smart, civil and uplifting, if most black sports stars were model citizens....in that world what would the message from the likes of Jessie Jackson, Luis Farrakhan, Julian Bond, Cynthia McKinney and Kanye West be? Are these figures influential in the black community preaching a message that will inspire a black child to do well in school, that they can accomplish anything but that it's up to them?

Academia and journalists in the black community also share blame for sending the wrong message and for taking a stance against those with the right message. Case in point is Peniel E. Joseph, a teacher of African Studies at Stony Brook University, who rebukes the message of Juan's book. Joseph's final message is that William's thinks the civil rights movement had a beginning, middle and an end but that the truth is we are in an "unfinished saga of racial struggle". That's exactly the problem! People like Joseph believe if your black and poor, if your black and a hoodlum, if your black and at the bottom rungs of a job it's because of racism and nothing to do with you.

Hat tip to www.powerlineblog.com where I found both WaPo pieces linked above.

Out of order, I'll show you out of order

Here we go! A federal Judge has ruled in favor of an ACLU suit filed on behalf of some journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the NSA surveillance program is unconstitutional (a breaking story from Wizbang). It's nice that these leftists think the possibility of minor infringement of free speech and privacy trumps the lives of what could have been 3,000 or more saved by the break up of the UK airline bombing terrorist plot.

How F'd up are people who think this way? I suspect if the plot in the UK had happened, and 3,000 were killed, and that the authorities came out and said that if they had been allowed to have unfettered realtime monitoring of communications, financial transactions and location surveillance the plot would have been stopped...these same people would still want protection from such access to the extreme. The bar this side of the argument wants for this access is so high (and time consuming) as to require law enforcement to already have enough evidence such that they would no longer need the surveillance.

Let's hope higher courts have a better understanding that this is not a simple issue of regular police work, this is a war.

Update: Well what do you know....our lovely judge is a Jimmy Carter appointee and a known liberal whose politics play a role in her actions on the bench.

Update: WHHHAT? Even the Wapo agrees this was A Judicial Misfire

BUT, the NYTimes would be ok to sacrifice you, your wife, your new baby and say a few thousand of your neighbors to protect the "honey pick up some milk on the way home" phone call. The enemy is among us!

Update: Pretty strong words from the well reasoned Hugh Hewitt, and I agree: "Any vote for any Democrat is a vote against victory and a vote for vulnerability."

The logo fits!

Jimmy Carter demonstrates (like many others) why a jackass is a perfect logo of the Democratic Party.

That Carter believes Israel is the bad guy in the conflict with Hezbollah, and uses his stature as an ex-US President to express that belief along with what I consider anti-American ballyhoo...well, a jackass is a perfect visual!

Liberal Anti-terrorism feels good

So it has begun. Liberals are foaming that Dubya's lumping together all the terrorists using the label "Islamic fascists". This is type of talk could "inflame anti-Muslim tensions" and this label is "unhelpful under the circumstances".

Puulease! Hey Democrats...this kind of politically correct peacenik attitude will get us killed. The DailyKos (Kos himself helped Lamont win over Lieberman in the CT primary) and most of the sites regular followers have an issue with you calling these wack jobs anything other than just terrorists I guess.

At the police department in DailyKosville all of their wanted posters just describe each suspect as the "terrorist". No physical description for fear of associated an innocent with the guilty. If the ideology of the bad guy is known, it's not disclosed for fear that this would be "unhelpful" or "inflame" bad feelings.

Lot's of FEELING stuff going on in the world run by liberals! If we just change our foreign policy, if we just remove Bush from office these poor confused YOUNG MUSLIM ISLAMIC FASCIST MEN, oops..I mean terrorist. will have their years of brainwashing hatred of westeners vanish....oh, why didn't conservatives think of that. We just need to make these young men with no common physical appearance or common ideology who are terrorists feel good and they will be good.

Update: Read Glock26's comment...great stuff! Plus the WSJ editorial board (whom liberals call a Whitehouse puppets) sums up my sentiments with 'Mass Murder' Foiled A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose. Similar to the point Glock26 makes, the WSJ points out that in the wake of news of the thwarted terror plot:

"Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot? And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?"

Update: 40 more arrested in Italy now....their connection to those in the UK is unclear at the moment but I love how it is reported where the 40 were arrested: "Islamic gathering places". Also from todays' SF Chronicle...I love it.

MSM love affair with evil

It's too bad we didn't stick some plastic explosive in Mike Wallace's 88 yr old keister and triggered it as he had his love fest interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Wallace's comments on Ahmadinejad:

"He's actually, in a strange way, he's a rather attractive man, very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way," Wallace said. "He's very, very short but he's comfortable in his own skin."
John over at Powerlineblog sums it up nicely

What is this, a Tiger Beat interview? Just once, I wish MSM reporters would adopt the same adversarial attitude toward foreign leaders who are deadly enemies of the United States that they take toward members of the Bush administration.

And yes, as John says, maybe Wallace does draw out and expose the evil of this man, but so far what's come out suggests that's unlikely.

Anybody else for profiling at Airport Security?

With 20+ UK born men, supposedly of Pakistani descent, in custody after their efforts to kill what could have been as many or more than on 9/11 were thwarted maybe more card carrying ACLU types might consider profiling for airport security a good tactic? NOT LIKELY! Because God forbid that we embarrass or inconvenience a nice Arab looking person, instead we do it to 80 yr old white women.

And, hmmmm....guess what else we are sure to find those involved in this UK incident have in common with nearly every other terrorist caught, or known to commit a terrorist act in the last 10-20 years? MUSLIM ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS!

But hey, you liberal Americans just keep listening to people like Michael Moore and vote for people like Lamont and I'm sure we will have nothing to worry about.....ya, because they know that this is only happening because Bush and Co. have made MUSLIM ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS hate us and want to kill us. If we just make France, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon and every other country just like us everything will be fine. Sure, that will work...normally these people who listen to Islamic preachers about jihad and killing westerners would just ignore such ideas, but we have given them reason to suddenly become killers....we can reverse that with an approach that gets them to like us. Whenever we would like to employ some foreign policy just run it by diplomats from countries like those and if they like it, well then it must be right. Because if those folks don't like it, it must be wrong....we need to start thinking internationally and not nationally. Hold hands, and sing songs...ya, that's it!

Michelle Malkin has a nice timeline on the terrorist plot broken up by Scotland Yard....check out the various links and video at the end.

Update: of course the moonbat leftists are already calling this failed terror plot being made public today all planned by Bush & Co.....it's scary how many people really should be on some kind of meds!

Update: Nothing like confirming your blog readers are stupid F'ing morons with a survey that confirms it...these people are nearly as dangerous as the Islamic Fascists! And the dailykos himself helped Lamont beat Lieberman and even appeared in Lamont TV ads.

You're either with us or with the terrorists

I'm not a great fan of Dubya with the exception of his unwaivering stance on fighting those who want simply to erase us from the planet. Just after 9/11 he said something like you're either with us or you're with the terrorists. It's the same with Israel, you're either on the side of Israel's right to exist, their right to protect its citizens, their right not to have those sworn to kill each and everyone one of them sitting just down the road with weapons...You're either for those things or you're on the side of terrorism, Islamic extremism and Iran. It's truly is that simple.

Israel is not being imperialistic and didn't start this fight. But because media types and liberals (interesting how those two are nearly always ideologically aligned) are completely ignoring or unwilling to accept that Hezbollah:

1. believes all Israelis should be exterminated
2. targets innocents (women and children)
3. started this current conflict by KILLING some Israeli soldiers (not just kidnapping 2) and firing rockets into Israel
4. is simply an extension of Iran

Because of this they frame Israel as the bad guy in this conflict. They throw out idiotic notions of proportional response. Talk of negotiation and cease fire. What has history shown us with respect to negotiation with Israel and their enemies? Just as a pedophile is born with, and cannot change, their sick desire Hezbollah will not accept the existence of Israel. Just as we would not negotiate with al-Qaeda they should not with Hezbollah.

Those of you who think Israel is being a bully are therefore sympathetic to Hezbollah and must therefore be anti-semites. How else can one explain your disdain for Israel trying to protect its citizens and your complete ignorance of the facts. Israel isn't targeting Lebanese civilians, Hezbollah is putting Lebanese between them and the IDF.

Apparently anti-semites are so blinded by their ideology they can't even recognize when they're supporting evil since good God fearing people when never do that. Oh, I forget those in the media, or are liberal, are not God fearing! :) Case in point, the Huffington post website apparently thinks this video make Israel look bad. While I wish the Israeli spokeswoman would have laid into this bimbo CNN anchor this video shows the common lack of understanding of terrorism, war and Islamic extremism by the media and peace-monger liberals.

No honest look at Israel's military history and actions in this current conflict would label Israel as warmongers. Yet apparently the media, and most liberals, take the position equivalent to the police officer continually asking a sniper to stop picking off people in the streets from the top of building while he continues to do so, and you have him in your sights. Wrong, you put one in his head. Item 4 above is also key given that today Ahmadinejad said "Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented". Too funny....oh sure, drop your weapons and come out, I won't shoot...wink, wink.

Finally, if you're still not on the side of Israel do you still think Jews control the media? Just one more thought....if the drunken anti-semitic rant of one man is so relevant and revealing then so is one self proclaimed American Muslim shooting 6 at the Seattle Jewish Federation.

They don't want to know

It's apparent that the MSM and many around the world don't what to know the truth about what's going on in Lebanon. The press, and the public, swallow whole what the Islamic terrorists serve them. The bias in the media is clear.....why wouldn't the MSM be taking a closer look at Qana as evidence mounts that things may not be as they first appeared? The area bombed by the IDF in Qana was shown on video to be a site from which rockets were fired into Israel. Israel and others have shown evidence that the house didn't collapse until some 8 hours after the IDF bombing. The Red Cross is reporting the number of dead from that house at half that reported by the Iran/Hezbollah controlled Lebanese officials (see story linked below). Photographs on the Internet showing plain clothed men on truck mounted rocket launchers within residential homes in Lebanon show the tactic to draw fire and make women and children unwilling martyrs.

Note the Lebanese Red Cross volunteer quoted in this story who says "The priority is for the wounded, then we return, as much as we can, to take out the martyrs''. Wouldn't you normally call the women and children pulled from that house as victims?

Then there's this Lebanese terrorist mouthpiece who mentions his regret that the "Qana massacre did not horrify the conscience and did not bring about a UN decision for a ceasefire".

You don't have to look to hard for this look and sound like it was a staged event many hours after the IDF had bombed that area and make Israel look bad, to shock the world and garner support for Hezbollah and maybe coax the inept UN into trying to broker a ceasefire.

I'm not saying it's a certainty that Hezbollah staged the Qana deaths but to ignore its possibility is to shut your eyes to something you wish not to see.

Update (8/2): Nice video blog by M. Malkin that also asks about Qana, check it out. And the MSM still ignores the possibility Qana was staged. As usual you're too stupid (in their mind) to form the right opinion so they will make it for you....just try to find a journalist who will present the entire spectrum, with backup and sources, on ANY story and let you decide what it means.

Cracker says "tar baby"....oh my!

This weekend a "cracker" used the phrase "tar baby" to describe the issues with the big dig (and why did anybody outside of Boston or MA need to pay for that?). Of course anybody with even a few brain cells knows the use of this phrase referred to the big dig being a sticky mess (basically the original definition). But apparently some black leaders think Gov. Romney was calling the big dig fiasco an especially dark skinned black person!

Hey black leaders...get over your F'ing self! We are all not fixated on a hatred for black people and so use terms "supposedly" used by some in a derogatory way towards black people but use them instead for bad situations or inanimate objects!!!! It's not all about YOU! You obviously hate yourself, being black and black people since you're constantly bringing negative attention to a race problem in situations where it doesn't exist. I suppose if Bush was heard telling someone at a dinner that he loves having a few Oreo's at night with a glass of milk that these same people would say his statement was racist and not about eating cookies!

Romney felt compelled to make an apology after these mysterious leaders, who lead all bitter-my-lot-in-life-is-some-crackers-fault blacks, cried "racist"....now I have less respect for Romney. He should have just said give me a break....the term means a sticky mess...end of story!

Do your homework

There's a lot going on in the world. The most important thing going on is a human cancer called Islam. You can take the position that I'm be unfair painting all those who follow Islam as a cancer...but you would be wrong. I know because I have done my homework. From around the world I've read probably 100 blogs and articles and dozens of interviews from news outlets across the spectrum. The key to forming a meaningful and absolute position is having enough information from many sources pro and con. On my calling Islam a cancer I base this on countless first hand accounts from those effected by and living among this cancer in the many countries that have seen the cancer in action in the last decade.

This cancer has many names...Islamic extremist, Islamic fundamentalist, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and so on. But the common thread with these groups spread across the globe is Islam and a evil interpretations of Sharia (Islamic Law) and of the Qur'an (believed to be the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad). This is our enemy and he is loves the idea of his own death and yours more than we love our life. That is not a mentality that one negotiates or co-exists with. It is one that must be exterminated at all costs.....if you don't understand that you HAVE NOT done your homework...research, study and stop single sourcing your opinions and unless you're a died in the wool pacifist you'll agree with me.

Back to my main message of "do your homework". Everyday I see a person on tv, or hear them on the radio, or chat with them at the work coffee machine, or at a family dinner, or on the sidewalk in front of my house....and they have not done their homework. Not just on the issue of Islamic terrorism, but on every issue that would make the top 20 of today. Everyday I'm subjected to dozens, or hundreds, of people who have formed strict unbending positions on a topic without understanding the topic at a grade school level. How do I know this? Because I ask questions of my unscholarly victims and it rarely takes more than a few questions challenging their position before the charade of their understanding the topic is apparent. I'm not saying these people are stupid, merely lazy.

What's almost as scary as the global Islamic cancer is the number of people who see one tv news story, or read one story in their local paper, or hear from a single friend a passionate oration, and they have their solid position. They're sure this is the correct position and they will even talk about it with passion and as if it's as certain as 2+2=4. Could they be right, or better put could their position hold up to scrutiny and research...sure it could...but it would be lucky if their one source of knowledge on the topic turned out to the best one. But see, that's not my point...that you must have the RIGHT position...my point is don't be so sure, so foaming at the mouth, so righteous when you do not have the facts at hand. If you've not done a good job at trying to understand the positions of those at the poles of a topic as well as seeking a source that has the appearance of independence, well then your staunch position is dishonest.

So before you believe in your position on Iraq, Israel, Iran, North Korea, Global Warming, Nuclear power, Gay marriage, trickle down economics, public schools, affirmative action, illegal immigration, military interrogation methods, and countless other topics....before you set your position in stone...do your homework!

He would get my vote!

If only there were a lot more congressional candidates like Vernon Robinson. Glock26 shot me a link to the best campaign tv ad I've seen and it's Vernon's! check out Vernon's latest Ad here. If he was in my area of California, instead of North Carolina, he would get my vote....of course living in Silicon Valley is the twilight zone so sadly his common sense would be his undoing in this area!

Partisanship in your face

First....I'm back!

It's just amazing that the Dems haven't done something about Dean....the picture of a section from this morning's www.drudgereport.com says it all...just amazing. And to illustrate the level of Dean's partisanship and hypocrisy Powerline asks why Dean calls the Iraqi prime minister an "anti-Semite" yesterday when he failed to condemn Hezbollah in a speech but not John Dingell, John Conyers, Nick Rahall, Pete Stark, and Neal Abercrombie who all voted against the House resolution condemning Hezbollah's attack against Israel. Powerline then goes on to point out that unbeknownst to me the embarrassment of Georgia (Cynthia McKinney) also has some issues with Jews but her lack of delicacy goes without criticism from the left.

Moonbat vs. Me

I've often wondered what the term "moonbat" meant. I know that it's used to describe liberals on the far left but I wasn't sure what made someone a moonbat. (And I'm still curious what the genesis of the term is as well).

Lucky me, I ran across the blog of one of my former professors from the University of Oregon, Dr. Deb Frisch, (if the name rings a bell it's because she's been in the press lately because of some insane comments she made on a right wing blog) where she defined the term for me. Here's what she has to say about it:

"Moonbat is the derogatory term used by rightwingnuts to describe people who:

a. were against the war in Iraq from the get-go
b. tend to think the whole idea of a "war on terror" is an oxymoron initiated by a moron
c. we haven't heard the whole story about 9/11
d. we're in the end-game of fossil-fueled society and in transition to a more sustainable way of capitalizing on our scientific and technological accomplishments only most people are in denial about this and think the spigot of oil's gonna flow forever.
e. global warming's a bigger threat to our long term well being than taywrism
f. judeo-christian fascism is just as scary as islamofascism
g. the two-party system we've got is right and far right

I love the moon and I love bats and I am happy and proud to be a moonbat."

I'll take it point by point:

a. That one I have no problem with at all.

b. Is it just that they want to rename it? Should we call it "the war on people who want to make war on us"? That's just too long and it's an awkward acronym "TWOPWWTMWOU". See, that's just not going to work, so lets stick with GWOT.

c. I think the proper phrase there would be "we haven't heard the story we really want to here about 9/11; like how George Bush plotted to kill us all".

d. (This from Walter Williams) "Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for the Italian energy company ENI.

There are an additional 2 trillion barrels of "recoverable" reserves. Mr. Maugeri says these oil reserves will probably meet the "proven" standard in a few years as technological improvement and increased sub-soil knowledge come online. Estimates of recoverable oil don't include the huge deposits of "unconventional" oil such as Canadian tar sands and U.S. shale oil, plus there are vast areas of our planet yet to be fully explored.

During the 1970s, the Club of Rome report, "The Limits to Growth," said that, assuming no rise in consumption, all known oil reserves would be entirely consumed in just 31 years.

So I'll side with the Italian energy guy over the liberal professor on that one.

e. I had to go look up taywrism cuz I had no clue what she was talking about. Turns out that taywrism is her word for terrorism. Right, so the 1 degree increase in ground temperature over the last 100 years is worse than the 5401 acts of Islamofacist terrorism committed since 9/11.

f. Refer back to the 5401 acts of Islamofacist terrorism versus the number of Judeo-Christian attacks.

g. I freaking wish! So John Corzine, Patty Murray and Dick Durbin are just the same as George Allen, Sam Brownback, and Jon Kyl. Right.

So my former professor (who was actually a pretty good teacher) is proud to be an idiot. Good for her!

Another Accurate Portrayal of the Military

I just watched a rerun of "Without a Trace", which I generally think is a decent show, nothing great but it's okay.

This one was about a guy who went AWOL after returning from Iraq. Here's a quick sum up of how they showed our boys in their best light.

1. Main character goes AWOL as mentioned, tries to rob a bank, kills a gal in the bank, then makes the FBI shoot him in the final scene (he ejected his magazine before heading out the door to be shot - so at least he wasn't a total psycho, thanks for that guys)2. Main characters buddy gets kicked out of the Army early for stealing from Iraqi villagers.3. Officer in charge of these two is incompetent and indifferent.4. One soldier has his leg blown off and is teling his buddies to get his foot for him and they say "Hey it's okay, this is your ticket home."5. The military didn't pay the guy enough to afford his girlfriend and her spending habits.

Okay, any one or two of these things in a show probably wouldn't bother me that much but the intense negativity toward the military throughout the show was a bit much.

Our military isn't perfect and there's more than a few bad seeds in it but do we really need to focus on the negative while our troops are in harms way?

I think not.

Meaningful Images

The Democrats have a tasteless new ad to recruit voters. Go ahead and watch it for yourself.

Here's my take. Once again it's all about how crappy life is here in the good ol' US of A. Factories are shut down, gas prices are sky high, Bush lied and soldiers died, and Bush causes hurricanes and then doesn't do anything about them.

That's all fine and dandy except for the showing of coffins of warriors returning from Iraq. That's crossing the line; especially in light of the fact that the majority of democrats voted for the war and John Kerry's recent "Retreat Resolution" was met with an 87-13 vote (I may be off one or two votes on that but I'm close).

It's a shameless party that has lost it's way.

Ode to Conspiracy Theorists

My favorite talk radio host is Michael Medved and once a month (every full moon, fittingly) he does his whole show about conspiracy theories. He opens his show to callers who are true believers in a conspiracy, any conspiracy, so he gets callers who cover subjects from JFK, to the Bilderburgers, Bush's ties to Hitler, Bohemian Grove...all the way up to what is certainly the Holy Grail of conspiracies now - 9/11.

I think that 9/11 conpiracists are the worst by far. Their belief that our own government was behind it is just mind boggling to me. Anyway, yesterday on Medved's show a gal called up who was the director of 9/11 Truth in LA or something like that. So she's giving him all the standard lines and he asks her, "Lynn, how many people do you think would have to be involved in this conspiracy? I think it would have to a huge number considering the people inside the administration who have to know about it, the militray involvement, the four planes, the air traffic controllers, the planted explosives...how many do you think it would take?" Her answer; "Well it wouldn't have to be that many, I think maybe 20 at most."

Okay, here's a seemingly sane individual who thinks that 20 people are behind 9/11. Unreal.

But wait I can here you CT people saying; "But Splash - the government says that 19 hijackers pulled it off". Well yes, they did that with a huge amount of support from Al-Qaeda, plus all of the people who funnel money into Al-Qaeda's pockets. And more importantly, they didn't have to keep it secret from the 300 million people who live here after they pulled it off.

This may seem to be a trivial thing for me to worry about, well gentle reader, it's not. As a matter of fact at the University of Wisconsin Madison a professor there will be teaching his students that the Bush Administration was behind the whole plot.

So if any CT'ers happen by I will be happy to engage in debate, I'll even check out your claims, and we'll see if we can't straighten this whole thing out.

What The Media Lies Have Wrought

Here's a story that shows just how damaging the coverage of the Iraq has been.

US army officer refuses deployment to Iraq (Jun 22 9:53 PM)

"A young US army officer could face court martial after refusing to obey orders to prepare for deployment to Iraq, claiming the war is illegal, his supporters said.

Lieutenant Ehren Watada, 28, was confined to his base of Fort Lewis, in the northwest state of Washington, and restricted from communications with anyone outside but his lawyer, according to people in Watada's support committee.

They said he was the first US military officer to refuse orders to go to Iraq. Watada's mother Carolyn Ho called his refusal an "act of patriotism." "As an officer, he believes it is his duty to disobey illegal orders," she told AFP, adding that they had argued over his decision and that he was influenced by questions about the US government's reasons for invading Iraq."

So what's wrong with this? Well lets see; here's the oath he took when he VOLUNTEERED TO SERVE in the Army:

"I, Ehren Watada, do solemnly swear, (or affirm), that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

So the lies of the left have so twisted this poor SOB that he's actually going to spend time in military prison, if you believe the reason he's giving. Could be he's just a huge pussy who thought that he was joining for some reason other than defending his country but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one for now.

However, disobeying completely lawful orders, in this case the "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq" which was passed the House on October 10 by a vote of 296-133, and by the Senate on October 11 by a vote of 77-23. It was signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2002. I believe that would give it LEGAL status.

In case you don't know what was in that particular resolution here are some of the reasons given to use force against Iraq:

Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 cease fire
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region"
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population"
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people"
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt of former President George H. W. Bush, and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War
Members of al-Qaida were "known to be in Iraq"
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations"
Fear that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against the United States

So where in the world did this young Army officer get the idea that this was an "illegal war". Well, I have to give all the credit to the left wing and the MSM.

It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who said in an address at Harvard on June 8, 1978 :

"Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification.

The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything."

But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas."

More prescient words were never spoken!

Here's a young man who's life will now be ruined because he believed the lies, and in turn he will be seen as a hero by some when he's really just a dupe of the mainstream media who's lies he bought.