Genius?

I'm sure that this result was only because I link to people like Victor Hanson and Mark Steyn, but I'd like to think it picked up my quote:

"Jeremy Clarkson is a pompous jerk"

Cash Advance Loans

Bias? What Bias?

I was looking at CNN this morning and I saw this article from WSDU-TV in New Orleans:

HOUMA, La. -- A state representative in a runoff election infuriated civil rights leaders after she ended a conversation with the mother of the NAACP's local president by saying, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat."
State Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, of Morgan City, acknowledged she made the remark during a Thursday night telephone conversation with Hazel Boykin to thank her for driving voters to the polls.
Buckwheat, a black child character in the "Little Rascals" comedies of the 1930s and '40s, is viewed as a racial stereotype demeaning to black people.

Hmmm..... I'm trying to tell if good ole Carla is a Republican or Democrat. Since they aren't saying, I'll assume she's the latter. Ah wait! A clue! When we get to the bottom of the article we see this:

But the "Buckwheat" remark is the latest bit of trouble for Dartez and her husband, Lenny, who is a member of the Democratic Party's State Central Committee.

Aha! We now know that that her husband is a member of the State Democratic Party Committee, but what about Carla? Are we to assume that she's a Democrat too? It could be one of those "mixed-marriages" that I've heard about.

Since it never says, we'll have to draw our own conclusions. I'll assume that she's a Democrat because if she were a Republican they would have stated that fact in the first sentence of the article and then repeatedly throughout.

This is exactly the kind of subtle bias prevalent in the MSM.

I read that 92% of Washington D.C. journalists voted for John Kerry and I wasn't the least bit surprised.

SCHIPS

Just a question,

Why can't the democrats trot out someone who is not actually eligible for public health assistance but deserve it? As opposed to already eligible, like the Frosts and the Wilkersons.

Is it because they can't find anyone that fits that category? I mean, if I wanted to expand an entitlement program, I would find someone that would be helped by that expansion!

Plenty on this issue over at Michelle Malkin's site.

The Nobel Prize for Science Fiction

I didn't even know it existed until now.

The Goracle has finally joined the ranks of the righteous, alongside:

1. Mangari Maathai (2004), who at a press conference announcing her award told reporters she believes AIDS is the product of a bio-engineering released as a weapon of mass destruction by Western scientists to punish blacks."

2. Shirin Ebadi (2003), who defends Irans nuclear program as economically justified."

3. Jimmy "The Dhimmi" Carter (2002), an anti-Semite and co-creator of the modern Islamic Republic of Iran.

4. EX UN GenSec Kofi Annan (2001), who oversaw the UN Oil-for-Food scam keeping Saddam Hussein in power, enriching dozens of UN officials, journalists and politicians around the world, and contributing to the Iraq war.

5. Yasser Arafat (1994) bus bomber, terrorist, anti-Semite, possibly poisoned by other PLO leaders because he stood in the way of lucrative deals with Israel.

6. Mohammed Al-Baradi, head of the IAEA under who's watch Iran, North Korea, Syria et. al.? have proliferated weapons and/or pursued their nuclear dreams.

I have to go be sick now.......

Why They Hate the Neocons

Roger L. Simon has a post up at Pajamas Media about Neocons. Those of us who have been derisively lumped together with that moniker (justified or not) might find this interesting:

Why They Hate the Neocons

Victor Hanson in Iraq

I highly recommend that you read everything you can find by Victor Davis Hanson. He is as articulate in print as he is erudite. He has just been in Iraq and writing about it in his blog in three parts. This guy is really something special and his essays are always illuminating.

Read this series of eye-opening dispatches:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Marine Hero: The 5 Things I Saw that Make Me Support the War

Marco Martinez:

"Liberals often like to say that "violence is senseless."
That’s wrong.
Violence isn't senseless. Senseless violence is senseless. And I should know."

What he saw:

1. Mass Graves
2. Tongue-less Man
3. Adrenaline-Fueled Fedayeen Saddam
4. Human Experiment Pictures
5. Bomb-Making Materials In a Mosque

Read the whole thing......

Hat tip: Townhall.com

100 Years!!!!!!

Oh my god.....

The humiliating capitulation by my (once) cherished Chicago Cubs has caused me to doubt my faith that there is anything good in this world....

I need to find a way to excise my love for the Cubs from my heart. I feel stupid, cheap, used.....

Curse you Billy Goat!

Blurgh.......

Mission Accomplished?

Well, not quite. But here is a strikingly candid article from the left-leaning British magazine Prospect:

By any normal ethical standard, the coalition’s current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq’s other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition’s role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam’s struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.

Read the whole thing....

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs

The Rush Limbaugh "Phony Soldiers" Debacle

I'm sure everyone has heard about the manufactured brouhaha that was created by Hillary Clinton's Media Matters regarding Rush Limbaugh referring to phony soldiers as well.....um....phony soldiers. I can't add anything to the conversation that isn't stated very well by Betsy Newmark in this column.

Hat tip to: Ankle Biting Pundits

Do Democrats Sound Like Osama, or does Osama Sound Like the Democrats?

When reading the transcript of Osama's latest diatribe, I was struck by the amazing similarity between what he says and what Harry Reid, Keith Olberman, Nancy Pelosi, and assorted other left-wing knuckleheads have to say. I at least give Reid and Pelosi enough credit to assume that they don't believe the BS that they spout. They're doing it out of pure partisan political reasons and although I find that abhorrent in itself, at least they appear to be sane (if self-serving and manipulative). Olberman, Osama, Sheehan, Penn, Robbins, etc., etc. have lost what little sense they were born with and they're all cut from the same cloth. I enjoyed this clip from John Gibsons radio show (hat tip: LGF).

Honestly, I think Osama is reading from the Democratic Party's talking points. How do you think that makes them feel? Vindicated? Worried? Who knows.......

I'm back!

After a long break from blogging due to fatherhood and basic laziness, I've decided to try to give it more of my time. It's rather therapeutic to shout into cyberspace. Some notes:

• The Cubs are in first place in September! Still a close race, but this could be the year!
• Things seem to be improving slightly in Iraq. President Bush visited with the troops in Anbar on his way to Australia this week, something unthinkable a year ago. Fred Kagan has a great article over at NRO about how the Sunni tribes in Anbar are seeing the advantage of working with the Iraqi government. Read it.
• Hurricane Felix is about to slam into Honduras and Nicaragua as a category 5. Ouch! Let's hope everyone comes out ok.
• Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn are must read weekly material for me.
• Did I mention that the Cubs are in first place?

Shattering 3 Myths About Liberals.

The always provocative John Hawkins of Right Wing News dishes out another beauty to stir the pot......

Shattering 3 Myths About Liberals

Under Cover of Dissent

This is a very well written article by Phil Harris about how Teddy Roosevelt might have judged today's political climate and the numerous lies told unflinchingly about President Bush, not only by moonbat protesters, but also (sadly) by opportunistic elected officials. An excerpt:

To argue that dissent is important and critical to the American Political process is entirely correct. We must guard against damage to our freedoms, and we must protect ourselves from government, which naturally strives to usurp power from the citizen. I would argue; however, that what has been going on these past five years does not rise to such lofty ideals.


Read the whole thing.

It's Official, It's Illegal to be a Republican!

Ann Coulter unloads on hypocrisy:

Shooting Elephants in a Barrel

I'm not a Niggard!

Sorry for the provocative headline, but I'm not. I like to think of myself as a pretty generous person, and everyone knows that all niggards are cheapskates, right? If you don't know that, look it up.

I write this to poke fun at our politically correct world where David Howard was forced to resign his position as an aide to D.C. mayor Anthony A. Williams because he used the word. Some ignoramous (by the name of Marshall Brown) assumed that it was a racial epithet and lodged a complaint, forcing his resignation. Eventually an investigation showed that the term comes from the old Norse word nigla and has absolutely nothing to do with the very familiar racial slur and he was offered his job back. Doesn't anyone in the mayor's office own a dictionary for heaven's sake???

Here's a great article by Bruce Thornton about how our culture is losing control of itself by making it a god-given right (oops, apologies to all atheists who might have been offended by that term) to never be offended our have our feelings hurt. Read this:

The Word Police

Leaving the Left Behind

Here's a great article from Richard King about the how many people on the left have lost their way. Money quote:

Hopefully, the dissident voices of the Left are evidence of a different mood emerging, one that regards the fight against tyranny not as a distraction from liberal values, but rather as the arena in which those values find their most profound expression.

Read the whole thing.

Anatomy of Iraq

Another lucid viewpoint from the fantastic VDH.

How did we get to this baffling scenario?

More on the Hypocritical Goracle

I always anxiously wait for Mark Steyn's weekend gems. I'm rarely disappointed. A quote:

"Are eco-celebrities buying ridiculousness-emissions credits from exhausted run-of-the-mill celebrities like Paris, Britney and Anna Nicole?"

God I love this guy......

Read the whole thing.

Iraq War Recalls Past U.S. Conflicts, Controversies

I am constantly sparring with people who think that conducting a war is so simple that only someone as stupid as George W. Bush could screw it up.

Most people are so focused on the "here and now" that they have absolutely no historical perspective by which to judge the challenges of our times.

Fortunately, Prof. Victor Davis Hanson has ample historical perpective to share with all of us:

Nothing in Iraq comes close to the furor over Korea, either. Again, suppose the following: President Bush conducts an ongoing public fight with the new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who in turn serially whines to the press that he is being backstabbed by an unsupportive administration. Bush then fires Petraeus. The general returns to the United States to tickertape parades, while the president becomes even more detested as thousands more Americans are killed.

That scenario sums up the Truman-MacArthur row over the stalemate in Korea. During that conflict, President Truman fired Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson; fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his senior military commander in the theater; and faced calls for impeachment from U.S. senators, including the venerable Robert Taft. By February 1952, Truman's approval ratings had hit 22 percent - the lowest-known polls of any sitting U.S. president, George W. Bush and Richard Nixon included.

Read the whole thing.

I Love Ann Coulter....

I know, I know.... Her prose is always over-the-top (especially on abortion), but I just love her "in your face" way of beating down the idiotarians. Since I am officially a global warming skeptic, I particularly enjoyed this week's column. A quote:

"They think they can live in a world of only Malibu and East Hampton -- with no Trentons or Detroits."

Read the whole thing.

Lies and Damn Lies....

I'm going to print this post by Cal Thomas in its entirety because these episodes are so maddening. It's so frustrating to hear Democrats like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry lie through their teeth that Bush "mislead" us into war. They know it's not true, but who cares about the truth when scoring cheap political points, eh? Bad enough that middle-class class warriors in Che Guevara t-shirts say it, but Democratic presidential candidates intentionally lying?

Madness.......

Cal's column hits the nail on the head:

Lies and Damn Lies
By Cal Thomas
Thursday, March 1, 2007

In the words of Hollywood mogul David Geffen, "Everybody in politics liesŠ" But when some politicians tell lies that damage a person's character in the eyes of voters and ultimately lead to his defeat, those are damnable lies that need to be corrected.

Last fall, about a month before the November election, the Associated Press ran a story that claimed Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, had failed to disclose stock options he had earned while serving as a director of Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. (CBI). The story suggested Allen might have violated ethics rules because the company, which is based in Richmond, had conducted business with the state when Allen was governor. Allen had served on CBI's board between his departure as governor and his election to the Senate.

Allen reported the stock options in 2000, but he did not file subsequent reports because the price of CBI stock plunged, making the options worth less than he paid for them, denying him a profit.

Last October, the Associated Press ran a story that said Allen had failed to report his CBI stock options and hinted at possible wrongdoing by Allen when he was governor because the company had done business with the state. This was all that Allen's challenger, now Sen. James Webb, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headed by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer needed. They prepared an attack ad, alleging that Allen's stock options were worth $1.1 million and were not worthless, as he had claimed. The ad also made the connection between CBI and the state, charging Allen tried to "steer government contracts to a company that paid him in stock options." AP did not report anything about Allen trying to steer government contracts to the state, but Jim Webb "approved this message" anyway.

An analysis of the negative ad by AP political writer Bob Lewis revealed its inaccuracies. One must conclude that, since the information was available to Webb and Schumer, the two deliberately used factual inaccuracies in the negative ad. But why let truth get in the way of an effective election strategy? The damage was done and since the ad fit nicely into the Democrats' theme of "the culture of corruption" in the Republican majority, the desired result was achieved. Allen lost the election by 9,000 votes.

The Allen camp asked for a formal ruling by the Senate Ethics Committee and on Feb. 16, it came. In a letter to Allen, signed by committee chairman Barbara Boxer, California Democrat and committee vice chair John Cornyn, Texas Republican, Allen was exonerated of any wrongdoing: "The committee has determined that your ownership of CBI stock options did not constitute deferred compensation during the relevant reporting periods." Therefore, they said, Allen was not required to amend the reports.

Allen made his share of mistakes during his re-election campaign, but this was not one of them. His opponent and Sen. Schumer, neither of whom has apologized or retracted their accusations, unfairly smeared him.

In commenting on the Senate Ethics Committee letter and the incorrect negative ad that contributed to Allen's defeat, a Richmond Times Dispatch editorial asked a question familiar to many public figures who have been unfairly slimed, "So where does George Allen go to get his reputation back, never mind his job in the Senate?"

Where, indeed? The AP printed a story on Feb. 21 correcting the errors in its earlier story that were used in the Allen attack ad, but it came nearly four months too late.

This saga is important for a number of reasons. First, it cost a good man an important job. Second, it significantly contributed to a change in the balance of power in the Senate. Third, it again exposed an unholy alliance between liberal politicians and the leftist big media who are quick to attack someone whose policies and party they don't like, but rarely correct errors of their own making, or investigate bogus charges when they help the policies and party the media prefer.

Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside......

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison

Al Gore (aka The Goracle) uses more energy per month to power his home than the average homeowner uses in a year. He's stammering to come up with a good excuse for what rightfully looks like hypocrisy, since he's Mr. "reduce your carbon footprint".

One thing that Global Warming hysteria provides is a convenient way for those who still haven't figured out that socialism doesn't work to weasel their way toward more government control over the evil capitalists by using junk science and alarmism.

If the end result of this latest environmental craze is that we power our world in a cleaner and more efficient manner, that's fantastic. But I'm afraid it will cause knee-jerk decisions by well-meaning politicians, which only manage to spread more misery via unnecessary and detrimental controls on the economy.

We'll see.......

Here are a couple of great posts on the issue:

Global Warming: Fact, Fiction and Political Endgame

Questions for Al Gore

Allies.....

There's a great post by Bret Stevens in the WSJ online. An excerpt:

On Oct. 2, 2001, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took the unprecedented step of formally invoking Article 5 of its 1949 Charter, which says that "an armed attack against one or more of them. . . . shall be considered an attack against all of them." Lord Geoffrey Robertson, then NATO's secretary-general, gave a press conference saying he wanted to "reiterate that the United States of America can rely on the full support of its 18 NATO Allies in the campaign against terrorism."
In recent weeks, we've been reminded once again just how cheap those promises were. On Thursday, Stéphane Dion, who leads Canada's Liberal Party, announced that as prime minister he would bring an end to the country's 2,500-strong military commitment to southern Afghanistan. "Neither Canada, NATO nor the Americans anticipated how violent and dangerous Kandahar would become in 2006," he said, adding that the proper role for Canadian forces is "to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people."

Read the whole thing.

Good News for Those of Us Who Travel from Switzerland

I've been sorting out our flights home (Chicago) for next July and everything is terribly expensive and requires connections, adding to the length of the trip. However, help might be on the way thanks to knee-jerk "green" rules in the EU.

Lufthansa threatens to move hub operations to Zurich to evade EU green plan

Strange Bedfellows

David Thompson takes a look at the bizarre tendency for the Guardian to sanitize radical islamic views:

al-Guardian & the Brotherhood

(hat tip: LGF)

Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?

Pascal Bruckner blasts multiculturalism back to the stone age in a devastating essay (français / English).

(Hat tip: No Pasaran)

The Inconvenient Truth

There's a great piece up at Townhall by Suzanne Fields. Here's an excerpt:

All this could be great fun if it weren't so dangerous. Winston Churchill, after all, once observed that he liked pigs because "a dog looks up to you, a cat looks down on you, but a pig accepts you as an equal." But when politics, fashion and entertainment fuse with scientific "factoids," truth drowns in a flood of misinformation. In his new book, "Eco-Freaks," John Berlau, a policy director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank devoted to environmental policies, catalogs the tragic mistakes imposed on the rest of us by the environmentally correct. After Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring," DDT was banned nearly everywhere. Most of her "evidence" later turned out to be all wrong, but 2 million poor Africans die every year of malaria that DDT was on the way to eradicating. Al Gore, of course, blames global warming.

Asbestos, like DDT, gets a bad rap in the popular media, but nothing else comes close as a shield against heat. The original plans for the World Trade Center called for the interior steel in both towers to be covered with asbestos-based fireproofing material. Asbestos was eliminated when environmentalists objected. Engineers think the twin towers might be standing today but for the politically correct construction. Asbestos would have at least slowed the spread of the fire and the melting of the metal, giving hundreds of those who perished a chance to escape.

Hurricane Katrina need not have been the tragedy it was. In 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build large steel and concrete "sea gates" below sea level to prevent hurricane force winds driving storm surges into Lake Pontchartrain, overflowing into low-lying New Orleans. Such gates have been enormously successful in the Netherlands. But the Environmental Defense Fund, which had been a party to the lawsuit leading to the banning of DDT, persuaded a judge that the sea gates would discourage the mating of a certain fish species. Fishy romance trumped the lives of 3,100 Orleanians. "If we had built the barriers, New Orleans would not be flooded," says Joe Towers, who was counsel for the New Orleans District of the Corps.

Read the whole thing.

A World Without America

Here is one of the videos produced by Brit Tim Montgomerie and the great people at www.18doughtystreet.com

A World Without America

This is a rather old post by Peter Brookes, but it has inspired some of our British friends, most notably Tim Montgomerie to produce some videos along the same lines. Read it:

A World Without America

In spite of a mainstream anti-Americanism prevalent in British society, they remain our stalwart friends when it really counts. American's in general hold Britain in very high regard for good reason. I thank Tim Montgomery for his continued efforts to counter the anti-American feelings so shamelessy exploited by morons like Jeremy Clarkson (see previous posts).

Disingenuous Democrats...

The erudite Prof. Hanson:

Democrats Disingenuous in their Anti-War Rhetoric

The ever-acerbic Ann Coulter:

John Murtha: Caving in to Arabs Since 1980

Death to the Chief!

As a proud Illinoisian, I am as disappointed as Robert Novak with this disgraceful display of political correctness by my father's alma mater. Read Mr. Novak's comments on the U of I's decision to axe Chief Illiniwek:

Death to the Chief!

McCain Sings Streisand

Why His Haters Can’t Do Without George W. Bush

Here is an interesting article from Keith Thompson:

Why His Haters Can’t Do Without George W. Bush
2/20/2007 9:45 PM

Destroying a president is not much of a strategy to win a war, but it's all the Democrats have….The important thing is to "keep hate alive." If hate worked in '06, maybe it will work again in '08, when the stakes will be considerably higher. — Wesley Pruden

It’s tempting to say it has been a very long time since America has witnessed animosity toward an incumbent president comparable to the hard left’s malice toward George W. Bush. But in reality it hasn’t been that long at all.

Remember what his partisan defenders called the "inquisition" against Bill Clinton? Try this on for size: The left’s monolithic crusade against anything and everything Bush is more than similar; it’s identical to the worst of the hard right’s take-no-prisoners offensive against Bill and Hillary. (Who can forget the oft-repeated claim that the Clintons ordered White House counsel Vince Foster murdered?)

True, the personalities are different. So are the political issues and circumstances of the two administrations. Still, the emotional dynamics can be viewed as interchangeable — with one important exception. Serious conservatives of the 1990s rolled their eyes at the Vince Foster allegation. By contrast, today's progressive movement takes as an article of faith that Bush/Cheney masterminded the September 11 attacks.

Bush’s enemies reject this analysis, for they consider their vendetta different in kind from what they considered unfair attacks against Clinton. This allows them to insist that their destructive quest is motivated by the highest of principles. As opposed to driven by group psychological dynamics of the most primeval kind.

To consider that possibility might tempt Bush haters to look in mirror — never a good idea when maintaining your team’s identity as righteous and pure depends upon attributing abject evil to your opponents. Also, "owning your projections" is not a terribly useful strategy in the reflection-free zone of 24/7 cable news, which requires polarized contenders whose fingers of blame always point away from themselves.

No, it is indispensable to find a scapegoat who personifies everything that’s wrong, bad, evil; someone who does so monolithically. Only when that person is banished can order, integrity, and goodness be restored to the kingdom.

Enter George W. Bush, the “identified patient” of the left.

I first encountered this phrase at a seminar led by Carl Whitaker, an early pioneer in family therapy, or systems-oriented therapy. Like most psychologists schooled in psychodynamic methods, Whitaker had begun his career talking with individual patients about their personal problems, life challenges, goals; their “issues.”

Over time, Whitaker noticed that his patients had something in common. They all talked a lot about people with names like Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Grandpa and Grandma. Whitaker got the curious idea that it might be useful to invite as many of these actual people into the therapy room at the same time, to speak for themselves and describe the family drama, tragedy, or comedy as they saw it.

Since each patient was actualy part of a “family system” with traditions, norms, rituals, and rules — spoken as well as unspoken — why not create a therapeutic framework in which the actual system could be observed in real time and space? As Whitaker began conducting multigenerational family therapy, he noticed dynamics that hadn’t been apparent with the “one patient in a room at a time” framework.

In particular: Assembled families tended to identify a particular member of the family unit as the primary source of the family’s problems!

Whitaker soon realized that this "identified patient,” or I.P. (drug-dealing son or slacker daughter; dad who drinks too much or mom who constantly complains) acted as a stand-in for some other problem that the family refused to address. Moreover, he discovered that by serving as the family’s “symptom bearer,” the I.P. permitted the other members of the family to continue their own dysfunctional behaviors.

Such a deal: one person gets to be “it,” the others get to be righteous. Sound anything like family gatherings you’ve attended?

Early on, Whitaker figured out that anything resembling family health could only be achieved by strategically taking the onus off the I.P. Not because he or she was a saint, but because no one else in the room was. Using methods sometimes indistinguishable from mischief, including making paradoxical remarks that (not always gently) nudged participants from their fixed perspectives, Whitaker became quite skilled at shifting the family’s collective gaze from the identified patients to the family system per se. He did so by expanding the symptoms.

For instance, during sessions when someone in the family pointed to the identified patient, Whitaker refused to talk about the identified patient. At such moments he sometimes literally put his arm around the scapegoat’s shoulder and said playfully said, “Hey, these folks have really got it in for you.”

To say the least, this had the effect of distributing anxiety more equally among all family members.

This way of “perturbing” the system’s existing dynamics generally led families to behave in more intelligent, flexible, adaptive ways. The family got healthier to the extent that everybody realized their role in the “Don’t blame me” racket and took responsibility for their role in maintaining the family’s fixations.

Concerning George W. Bush, how clear does it need to be? With the fervor of castle-storming villagers and witch burners of ages past, today’s impeachment-now zealots have transformed the president into their very own “identified patient.” The hard left’s demonizing of Bush has the convenient effect (secondary or primary, you tell me) of disguising their true political agenda: slash defense spending, disable the military, annex American sovereignty to some putative global authority, restore confiscatory taxation, implement a European-style welfare state, open the borders to Mexico, continue class warfare and bitter sectarian rivalry in the name of “diversity.” This is the short list.

By blaming Bush for everything, his inquisitors keep America’s attention off that agenda — sensibly, since most of its tenets are opposed by a majority of Americans in today’s center-right political reality. Nancy Pelosi understands that Democrats captured congress by advocating a vague “new direction” that amplified the country’s ambivalence about Bush, especially his Iraq policy.

Pelosi means to stay with this approach until her party returns to the White House in 2009 — a possibility that Republicans can no longer hope to stave off by shouting “Hillary!” in a tone that conveys “Antichrist!”

None of this is to say that identified patients don’t bring real problems of their own; to the contrary. In addition to serving as a screen for the family’s distorted projections, and generally as catalyst for the family’s decision to seek help, scapegoats invariably make their own contributions to the pathology of the system as a whole. Hence the ease with which the rest of the family targets them in the first place.

“Oh, we’d be fine as a family if it weren’t for the bad stuff Jimmy does.” Or the Susie’s meth habit, or Mom’s selfishness, or Dad’s recklessness. Or George W. Bush.

The president’s errors of judgment, policy, tone, substance, style, and tactics are legion; and therefore beyond the scope of this piece. I’ll simply say that the administration’s confusion of priorities in Iraq — the attempts to establish democracy before creating order and security — represents a strategic blunder of incalculable dimensions. In the “family system” that is America’s body politic, George W. Bush has his own accounting to do for the stunning mismanagement of the Iraq war.

Yes, just as paranoids have real enemies, scapegoats commit blunders deserving of criticism. No disagreement from me about that.

Still, given the current dynamics I’m taking the side of the identified patient named Bush. From a "systems" perspective, I find it telling that so many of those who despise him are also people who clearly seek to hasten — many seem to welcome — American defeat in the Middle East. That is enough to get me to take the seat next to Bush, and whisper with a nudge, ““These guys really do seem to have it in for you.”

When a sometimes discouraging president is hated for coming late to the right policy — securing Baghdad with troop reinforcements — and when his haters are demagogues who anchor their political fortunes on the failure of that country’s fledgling democracy — hell, I’ll go with the latecomer any day. Give me a choice that’s hard.

Jeremy Clarkson is a Pompous Jerk

I watched the recent Top Gear segment in Alabama (linked in previous post) and I was disgusted enough to use part of my lunch hour to compose the following rant......

Jeremy Clarkson is a pompous jerk.

Anybody should be able to watch that segment and see exactly what was going on, but sadly most everyone misses the real point, because we all know exactly what everyone in Alabama is like, right? They're all ignorant, stupid, white-trash, bigoted rednecks. Everybody knows that!
Isn't it nice to feel superior to people who can be stereotyped as having lesser intellects than ourselves?

It might feel good, but it's called bigotry, and it's not nice. It says a lot more about Clarkson and Co. than about those random people he was ridiculing.

Unfortunately most people saw it and (thanks to editing that would make Michael Moore proud) thought that those dumb rednecks attacked them because they said "NASCAR Sucks", or for any of the other stupid slogans.

Those people knew exactly what those smarmy Brits were saying about them, their friends and their families. "You people down here are stupid and ignorant, so we (of superior intellect) are going to ridicule you while our camera crew captures it all on film". That's what they were saying and it was obvious even to those "rednecks" from Alabama. By the way, if you're not certain if someone's stupid, you can tell for sure by their Southern accent, right?

The Top Gear crew were run off for insulting those people personally and they fully deserved it. None of those people cared that they put "Hillary for President" on their stupid car, but that Clarkson and Co. thought those things were the height of sarcastic wit. Like poking dumb animals with a stick perhaps? They were out of order and deserved a shoeing.

Although Dubya was listed by Mr. Clarkson as the number 1 "religion" there, Kerry got 40% of the vote in Alabama, so at least 40% of the people are smart in Clarkson's eyes, right? I know, I know, it was the black people in Alabama who voted for Kerry because, as a democrat, he's black too.

Interesting too how although only a very small portion of their trip was in Alabama, that's where they chose to display their bigotry, knowing full well that Alabama is synonymous in Britain with all things stupid and American.

The "article" above by Clarkson that shows exactly what an anti-American bigot he is. It's a vicious diatribe rife with falsehoods and dripping with hatred. Read the whole thing (click on the image to get full size).

To rebut a bit of his article: 99% of the stories of violence in New Orleans turned out to be false. Street rumors fueled by a willing press who (like Mr. Clarkson) couldn't be bothered to check out the source. The many stories of charity and brotherhood, which were true by the way, just don't make good press or cement negative stereotypes. People (black and white) in all of the neighboring states opening their homes to strangers (black and white), billions of dollars in private charitable contributions, and on and on. Who cares about stuff like that? Certainly not Mr. Clarkson. And blacks weren't over represented as casualties in New Orleans, but old people were. But I don't suppose even Mr. Clarkson would accuse us stupid Americans of being "anti-old white people" though, we need to be both stupid and racist to cement his image of us.

And they didn't call in the "Marines" either, they called in the National Guard. That's one of the things the Guard is for, disaster relief. I would know, having volunteered for flood duty during the devastating Mississippi River flood while a member of the National Guard. And they didn't shoot anyone from a helicopter gunship for stealing food either. What they did do was work 18 hour days, 7 days a week saving people and providing them with security, food, water, shelter and medical attention. Only to be smeared by the superior intellect of Mr. Clarkson.

Clarkson should stick to cars and stay away from politics.

And he can shove his rabid anti-Americanism up his pompous English backside.

Jeremy Clarkson's Anti-American Bigotry on Display.

Surrender Without Responsibility

That should be the Democrats' new slogan....

Hot Air

Instapundit linked to:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2751.html

Obamamania....

From the NY Post:

February 14, 2007 -- Quite an introduction Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is getting to the campaign trail. And quite an introduction America is getting to Obama.

One moment it's a feud with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

The next he's telling Iowans that the lives of American soldiers and Marines killed in Iraq were "wasted."

Incredible.

Yes, Obama quickly said he had "misspoken." And the next day he offered an "apology" to military families he might have offended.

Might have offended?

We can only imagine.

All of America should be offended.

As we noted here yesterday, Barack Obama is but two years removed from a backbench seat in the Illinois legislature.

We suggested that he needs a tad more seasoning in foreign affairs before seeking the nation's highest office.

Now that appears to be among his lesser shortcomings.

He needs to grow up, too.

"Higher Education"

This is sadly all too common amongst the educators in America, who are indoctrinating more than educating these days.

Read this (if you have the stomach for it):

Moonbat "professor"

CNN Cafferty Comforts Iran

I really don't know what to say. Cafferty is so infected with BDS that he seems to support the Iranian's providing more lethal support the "insurgency" in Iraq than they would otherwise have. If there is any doubt of the bias on Cafferty, Blitzer, and CNN in general, this should (but unfortunately won't) dispell it.

Muslims say God bless America (MUST SEE)

Now here is some must see TV. Many people don't want to hear this, or will discount him as an American "stooge". I hope (and believe) that he represents a majority of Iraqis. I'm very impressed that MEMRITV allowed him to speak his mind.

Global Warming Hysteria

I'm a global warming skeptic, so shoot me.....

I wish I could be an oil company stooge. I'll bet they get paid more than I do. I'm just a GW skeptic for no profit whatsoever. What's wrong with me???

Read this:

Dennis Prager

And this:

Thomas Sowell

Truly Inappropriate Behavior

“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.”

-President Abraham Lincoln-

CORRECTION: The above quote was not said by Honest Abe but by some dude named J. Michael Waller, see below:

http://www.factcheck.org/article415.html

The line between admirable dissent and shameless grandstanding for political purposes couldn't be more clear.

Read this from Frank J Gaffney Jr.

Burn the Witch!!!

Obviously, this guy hasn't drunk the global warming kool-aid....

Nigel Calder

Neither has Mr. Steyn.....

My Views on Global Warming.....

Ok, I feel the need to weigh in on the global warming issue. In a nutshell, my views are:

1. Global warming is a reality.

2. The extent to which man is responsible (if any) is still in question.

3. No matter what you've heard. There is no "consensus" about global warming and very respected scientists that are skeptical about the so-called "consensus" are not all oil industry stooges.

4. Whether or not man is responsible, the extent to which we can do anything about it is still in question.

5. Science and politics don't mix, and when they do, it's dangerous.

6. When studying a complex issue, if you already know the answer you're looking for, you usually find it.

7. Knee-jerk solutions and hysteria will only confuse the issue and the motives of many who advocate these "solutions" are questionable.

8. However, if the discussion accelerates improvements in the way we produce power, transport people and goods, provide clean water, provide food, and basically fuel our lifestyle, while not hindering growth (especially in undeveloped countries), that can only be a good thing.

9. Much global warming hysteria is steeped in ill-informed anti-Americanism.

10. Al Gore is a snake-oil salesman.

Some articles on both sides of the issue:

George Will

Wall Street Journal

Robert Samuelson

Dennis Byrne

Debra Saunders

Paul Driessen

Some sites on both sides of the issue:

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://www.junkscience.com/

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

http://www.ucsusa.org/

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

From Brainster:

Global Warming Roundup

The first Canadian to earn a PhD in climatology says it's bunk:

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Meanwhile, the Lefty bloggers are incensed that a new poll reveals that very few Republicans believe in their Global Warming revelations. David Roberts has a cow:

But we survey the Democrats and find a patchwork of apathy and equivocation. We find endless hearings and tepid cap-and-trade proposals. Only two bills -- Waxman's Safe Climate Act in the House, Sanders' Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act in the Senate -- even pretend to target the 80% emissions reductions by 2050 scientists say will be needed to avoid irreparable damage. Suffice to say, those bills -- the closest thing on offer to alarmism -- are not supported by 87% of Congressional Democrats.

Of course he uses this to bash Republicans.

Defense spending and GDP

Another great article from Tigerhawk:

The Wall Street Journal's front page this morning features an interesting article (sub. req.), "How War's Expense Didn't Strain Economy." The article focuses on economic considerations and fund flows, but the heart of the matter is this: The wars of the last five years have been very inexpensive as a proportion of our national income, which is the only measurement that matters. As the graph at right makes clear, the twin wars of Afghanistan and Iraq have pushed the share of national income going to defense to around two-thirds of the level that prevailed when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. In fact, we're still spending less than at the trough of Jimmy Carter's post-Vietnam defunding of national defense.

It is incredible that the ridiculous argument that these wars are fiscally unsustainable has worked its way into the national dialogue. I had dinner with a well-informed and (but?) fairly lefty cousin a couple of weeks ago, and she cited the huge cost of the war among her various reasons for opposing it. I made the (to me) obvious point that defense spending was actually still very low by post-war standards and a fraction of the level that prevailed even in the 1980s. Her response: Why doesn't anybody know that? Well, perhaps NPR doesn't dwell on that sort of thing. The New York Times certainly doesn't.

The persistent claim from the left that we cannot "afford" these wars may or may not be true in a larger sense -- the "affordability" of American casualties or lost "prestige" among transnational progressives is obviously a matter of weighing one value against another -- but it is patently false as a matter of fiscal policy. We know we can afford to spend 4% of GDP on defense and still grow the economy more than 3% a year.

Outrage over child soldiers

From Tigerhawk:

Outrage over child soldiers: "Save the Children" forgot some

Outrage over child soldiers: "Save the Children" forgot some The British arm of the charity "Save the Children" is getting some pick-up of a press release decrying the recruitment of child soldiers ten years after the promulgation of the Cape Town Principles against that practice.

According to Save the Children, there are 13 offending jurisdictions: Fighting forces are recruiting and using child soldiers within Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, Nepal, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Save the Children "forgot" to notice some child soldiers.

Here are the names of just a few of them (age at death or capture): Ismail Abu Nada (12), Anwar Ill Azi Mustafa Hamarna (13), Yosef Basem Yosef Zakut (14), Abdullah Quran (12), Hussam Abdo (16), Nasser Awartani (15), Muataz Takhsin Karini (16), Ahmed Bushkar (17), Ayub Maaruf (16), Aamer Alfar (16), Mahmoud Tabouq (15 or 16), and Hassan Hashash (15).

They are Palestinian Arabs.

The question is, did Save the Children ignore them because it does not care about Palestinian Arabs, or because it supports the cause of the armies recruiting them to such a degree that it is unwilling to condemn their crime even in a press release devoted to the subject?

What could be the third explanation?

The Joy of Blogging

This is my first foray in the blogging world, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest and wants to share it. Especially (as in my case) when one doesn't get a chance to share it very often.

I have an interest in politics, especially as they relate to American foreign policy. I spent 21 years in the Air National Guard and retired just before 9-11. I wish I were still in, but that's not possible once you retire. And even if it were, I have settled in Europe and started a family. However, I am still very sympathetic to our military, and I have always been a very patriotic guy.

Unfortunately, people here don't want to talk about it unless you subscribe to their group-think and suffer from BDS. That is unless you want to be a whipping boy and suffer from an endless onslaught of cynical and ill-informed talking points gleaned from wackos like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, or John Kerry.

I started this blog give myself an outlet other than my long-suffering yet still sympathetic wife (god bless her).

It's like shouting in the wilderness when no one's listening. Very therapeutic.....

Part of me will be disappointed if anyone actually looks at my blog.

But to be honest, I wouldn't mind sparring with a couple of liberals. I'm a glutton for punishment.

War and Presidential Popularity

Frederick Chiaventone has a great article at Real Clear Politics. Give it a read:

War and Presidential Popularity

Victor Hanson on the "New Ugly Americans"

As a yank living in Europe, I understand the tendency to bash the Bush administration in order to ingratiate yourself to people in this overwhelmingly Bush-deranged continent. But I can't do it. I don't care what they think, I have to be honest regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, no amount of reason or facts can penetrate the rock-hard shell of liberal self-righteousness that most Europeans have built around themselves. So these days, I just avoid the discussion. You can actually lose friend over here by defending the United States' foreign policy. To be honest though, when that's happened to me, it was never a big loss, even if it might have seemed like it at the time.

Anyway, a dose of reason and Kerry bashing from the erudite Prof. Hanson:

The Ugly American

Steyn on Darfur Dems et. al.

Mark Steyn is one of the best writers out there today. Always good for a dose of sanity. Please read his very sobering book "America Alone".

For today however, I offer:

Old U.S.S.R. made Old Europe look new

Kaus Beats Down Hagel

Take it away Mickey:

How is Hagel "Brave"???

The World According to Iowahawk

Iowahawk has discovered the first draft of Prof. David A. Bell's disgusting diatribe about our "over-reaction" to 9/11: Historically Speaking, Shit Happens

Historically Speaking, Shit Happens

[Found in a dumpster behind the Encino Galleria: first draft of historian David Bell's gripping L.A. Times OpEd]
by David A. Bell

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. Okay, I know we’re talking a fantasy here, but just roll with it. Guess what? This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and I don’t remember Uncle Joe Stalin getting his panties in a bunch about it. Maybe these stoic Bolsheviks could teach us crybaby Americans a thing or two about perspective in our current “war” “against” “terrorism.”

This historical thought experiment raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? If we did so, why are we still doing so, and how can we best stop doing so? By show of hands, how many of us have navels that are “innies”? Does history provide us any insight?

Of course it does, dumbass. Lucky for you that one of us has a Ph.D. in the subject.

Read the whole thing.

Saddam and Osama!

I shouldn't have found this funny, I know.......

Saddam and Osama

Admiral Fallon's Confirmation

Adm. William Fallon's confirmation hearings to head up the US Central Command have begun. He has completed a pre-questionaire.

Read it

Citizen's Report on Iraq

Here's something very interesting. It's not going to be in the NYT, WaPost, or anywhere else in the MSM. Just not newsworthy. Give it a read.

Citizen's Report on Iraq

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

More Sandypants.....

Hopefully this story won't die....

Opinion Journal

Kerry in Davos. Sleeping with the Enemy?

From Brutally Honest:

This was John Kerry just one year and two weeks or so ago:
"Ultimately if we are not able to find any diplomatic resolution in the next weeks I don't think we have any choice but to take it to the international community. I think Iran has made a very dangerous and a very silly decision and it is inviting confrontation not with the United States but with the global community that cares enormously about the control of nuclear weapons."

This is John Kerry now:
Addressing a world Economic Forum meeting in Davos Switzerland on Saturday, Kerry also strongly rejected West's demanded prerequisites for the resumption of nuclear talks with Iran. Kerry, whose remarks followed a speech by Iran's former President Seyed Mohammad Khatami, stated his support for Khatami's views, and said Americans find out - only when they are outside their country - that the world is different from what they imagine. "We should give up pessimism and pick up a realistic view," he said, and further stressed the need for the US to change its policies towards the world countries and issues. The US politician also approved of Khatami's views about increased tension and violence in the world, and concluded, "As Mr. Khatami said, violence increased in the region after the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and Bin Ladenism."

I can't believe this guy came so close to being the President. Thank goodness that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy holds sway over Diebold.

He's made the front page of the Iran Daily, but no mention of his remarks in the NYT.

Big surprise, eh?

Here's more from Michelle Malkin

Sowing the Seeds for 9-11...

Jimmy Carter is a sad old man...

His recent book "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid" is an abomination of omission and historic revision. How this peanut farmer from Plains, Ga became President is still a mystery to me. I actually toured Plains when I was in high-school. Our marching band was on a bus to Florida to perform at Disney World and we stopped on the way to tour magnificent Plains, Ga. We went to Billy's Gas Station and everything. Ah, good times.....

Anyway, Jimmy Carter was the worst President in my lifetime. Here is a good article about Jimmuh's administration enabling the islamist movement:

Dinesh D'Souza

The man has absolutely no class. There was always the unwritten rule in D.C. that former presidents do not publicly criticize sitting presidents, but that went out the window with Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton. They spend so much energy trying to cement their own legecy that they are willing to undermine the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war. Often while being paid by America's enemies. Sad really....

UPDATE:

Here are several great articles on this subject (Hat tip to LGF):

Joshua Muravchik

Alex Safian, PhD

Kenneth W. Stein

Victor Davis Hanson is Da Man.....

Here's another fantastic essay by my favorite political writer and historian, Victor Davis Hanson. VDH is one of the most eloquent essayists out there and he always makes a good read. Read this:

VDH

While you're there click the archives and read some of his past essays. You won't be sorry you did, he's always lucid and illuminating.

Pigs Fly!!!

I absolutely cannot believe this made it past the editor's desk at Der Spiegel.....

Henryk M. Broder

The vaulting ambition of America's Lady Macbeth

Gerard Baker is one of my favorite Brits. Thank goodness there is someone in the British media that hasn't drank the BDS kool-aid. He works for the Times, one of the most respected British newspapers.

The vaulting ambition of America's Lady Macbeth

Um gee....no kidding....

Here's one for the "that's obvious" section of the Iraq debate.

As referenced in a previous post, the symbolic, non-binding resolutions criticizing the recent troop build-up in Iraq would encourage the terrorists. Duh. Do you think? How can anyone of sound mind argue otherwise? It borders on giving aid and comfort to the enemy!

Sadly, I am afraid that congressional democrats (except Lieberman) don't care about anything but humiliating President Bush, and many republicans don't care about anything but saving their cushy jobs. I'm disgusted with the lot of 'em. To hell with the troops, to hell with the Iraqis, to hell with everyone except our do nothing selves.....

There are exceptions of course, but you don't hear about them.

General Petraeus has said it, Sec. of Defense said it, you'd think the senate would believe it. But no, partisan politics trumps all these days.....

Here are some articles about this issue:

Townhall

Hugh Hewitt

Fred Barnes

SandyPants Berger Gets Off Easy

Not enough has been said in the media about Sandy "Sandypants" Berger and the stolen documents, so I'm going to link to a couple of stories about him. This was the National Security Advisor for heaven's sake! And he was stealing documents from the National Archives and destroying them before the 9-11 Commission could get their hands on them. Who was he trying to protect? Gee, I dunno. Himself and B.J. Clinton perhaps? The sad part is, he plea-bargained before we knew the extent of his shenanigans. He got off with a slap on the wrist (a $50,000 fine and a 3 year suspension of his security clearance). My guess is that kind of loyalty will find a place in the next President Clinton's administration. Heaven forbid...... Check out these articles:

Townhall

Ann Coulter

Ronald A. Cass

Joel Mowbray

There's more out there, but you won't find much about this criminal in the MSM (mainstream media). For some reason the NYT, LA Times, and WaPost don't seem to care.....

Oliver North, True Patriot

I had to link to this recent article by Ollie North. I've been a fan of his since the Iran-Contra hearings in the 80's. His exemplary conduct during the hearings when faced with the questions posed by smarmy congressmen was inspiring. He now spends his time as a journalist, often embedded with troops overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. His articles are always spot-on. Here's his latest at Real Clear Politics, one of my favorite sites:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/does_anyone_in_congress_care.html

What is Germany's Intelligence Service Doing in Iraq?

I found this interesting.....

http://www.worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=498

Hat tip: David's Medienkritik

Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism

I received this mail from one of my friends who suffers from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). If you’re not familiar with that term, it was coined by conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer (great name eh?). He defines it as:

"the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush."

Anyway, this message is being forwarded around as “proof” that this administration (in this case Dick Cheney) thinks that the President shouldn’t be criticized. Thankfully the VP stopped short of mentioning that anyone who criticizes Mr. Bush should be transported to one of our many secret gulags in a black helicopter.

Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 12:03 AM
To: deleted
Subject: FW: Presidential criticism?

Q How worried are you of this nightmare scenario, that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then in the end, they're going to turn against the United States?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Wolf, that's not going to happen. The problem that you've got --

Q Very -- very -- warming up to Iran and Syria right now.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs. You've got to deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we've made major progress, we've still got a lot of work to do. There are a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There's more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time. But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger that the United States will validate the terrorist strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task --

Q Here's the Nouri al Maliki --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- that we don't have the stomach for the fight.

Q Here's the problem.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's the biggest threat right now.
Vice President Dick Cheney 1-24-07
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/25/cheney/index.html

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
"Theodore Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149May 7, 1918

Great mail, eh? At least they used a real quote, as opposed to the oft-used erroneous quote: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” from Thomas Jefferson (which he never said).

It's obvious to me that Dick Cheney isn't saying that we can't, or even shouldn’t, criticize the President. This was (although not noted in the above post) in the context of the new democratic resolution in the senate condemning the strategy in Iraq, and what he's saying is that all the democrats who at one time agreed that Saddam needed to be deposed (see quotes below), now see fit to undermine the morale of our troops and embolden the enemy via their ill-advised "resolution", which is just playing politics for their BDS affected base. In my opinion, the troops and the war trump any partisan calculations, but many people, including some of those in Congress, seem to actually want us to lose in Iraq because of their childish, petulant hatred of George Bush. I have put the Democrat's quotes at the bottom of this post.

First though (from Hugh Hewitt):

Eager to assure that the Senate somehow undermined the war effort, however, Virginia’s John Warner once again stepped forward with a second, slightly milder resolution blasting the president’s war strategy in its most crucial aspects. Some GOP senators indicated they were favorably disposed to the Warner resolution, including Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

On Wednesday, general David Petraeus, widely regarded as the best man for the job of winning the war in Iraq, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In response to a direct question from Senator Lieberman, General Petraeus testified under oath that any resolution denouncing the strategy in Iraq would encourage the enemy. There can be no doubt about what the question was and how he answered.

What does it mean to “encourage the enemy?” It means to increase their will to fight on, and their courage to do so even in the face of the arrival of reinforcements. It also means to increase –substantially—the likelihood of redoubled and retripled efforts on their part to kill American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. To vote for the sort of resolution that General Petraeus addressed is a profoundly wrong action.

General Petraeus was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday --which has to mean that the senators who voted for him have confidence in his military judgment.
Many Democrats are willing to encourage the enemy if it means hurting George W. Bush. They are willing to disregard the advice of the general they have just sent to do a mission if it serves their political purposes.

Chuck Hagel is thus far the only Republican to indicate that he is willing to issue the same encouragement to the enemy.

Senator Warner’s resolution has the same effect as Senator Biden’s. General Petraeus testified as to any resolution blasting the new strategy. Biden’s resolution blasts all of the strategy. Warner’s blasts the most important parts.

There is no meaningful difference in my eyes –or the eyes of General Petraeus, the MSM, or the eyes of the enemy—between the two resolutions.

And now for the quotes from some anti-war Democrats, and if you think that Bush knew that Hussein's arsenal was greatly diminished, but lied to congress about it, you're a certifiable moonbat. Don't even get me started on the hundreds of chemical artillery shells found after the invasion, or the multitude of semi-trucks that left Iraq for Syria while we waited for months of hand-wringing at the UN before the invasion.

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction." - Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

By the way, have you been reading about Sandy Berger lately? This was President Clinton's national security advisor, who stole top secret documents from the national archives and destroyed them to keep them away from the 9-11 Commission. If you haven't heard about SandyPants I'm not surprised. It was on page 47 of the New York Times, page 14 of the LA Times, and missing completely from most major papers. If Condoleeza Rice had done that, I'll bet it would have been front page news for 4 straight months. But there's no liberal bias in the MSM, couldn't be......

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton. - (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and th! e means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." - Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

Flip-flopping doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Say It Ain't So!!!

This is terrible news! One of the reasons that I started this blog was to enjoy laughing at this guy's expense:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/01/24/kerry_to_bow_out_of_08_presidential_race/

Ah well, there will be others to make fun of besides Mr. Kerry

Still a bummer though.....

Hello Blog World!

Hello Everyone,

This is my new blog. I will use it as a venue to express my own opinions about life, politics, and anything else I want. That's what blogs are for.

I'm an American who has been living in the heart of Europe for over 9 years, and I hope I can give some insight from the point of view of a proud American living abroad.

It seems to me these days that the only Americans that Europeans like are the self-loathing kind. I'm not that way and it causes some difficulty as one can imagine.

I'll start posting soon and I hope to update daily and link to articles and blogs that I find interesting and informative.

Until then, back to work!

Mojo