Saturday, March 8, 2008

Ann Althouse is disappointed

Why did Obama let Clinton jerk him around over Samantha Power?:
"And now I'm wondering whether there is anything courageous about Barack Obama. Obama supporters, please: Make the case to me that the man has courage. And don't say that he opposed the war in Iraq, because I don't think, in the position he was in at the time, that it took courage to oppose the war. That served his political ambitions. Tell me something he did that was difficult to do, that took some risk to do what was right."

Well, that didn't take long.....

The Soviets really did win.....

Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?
"Women earn most of America’s Ph.D.’s but lag in the physical sciences. Beware of plans to fix the ‘problem.’"
Once again, the social scientists plan on fixing everyone to fit their agendas. Welcome to the return of the USSR....Read the whole thing if you have the time. Quotas in the physical sciences. Sure -- if it's a successful American institution, fairness requires that it must be crippled . . . .

My victimhood is more important than yours!

Mark Steyn on the Chain gang of fools:
A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, ‘My ancestors came to this country in chains; I’m voting for Barack.’ I told him, ‘Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I’m voting for Hillary.’
"...a Democrat nominating process that’s a self-torturing satire of upscale liberal guilt confusions will at least give us a laugh along the way."
Read the whole thing and realize how pathetic we have become.....

I'm not doing that much today, so maybe...

Make a Suit of Chainmail Armor From Soda Can Tabs

Maybe we won afterall...

This Ho Chi Minh Trail Ends at the 18th Hole
IT felt a little odd, even a touch irreverent, swinging a Callaway driver in the land of “Apocalypse Now,” Khe Sahn and Ho Chi Minh. And yet there I stood on a carpet of manicured grass outside Hanoi, looking toward a small flag in the distance.

The good times never last...

Barack Obama Gets Bogged Down:
"Obama was once flying high, writes Bob Owens. But now Tony Rezko’s on trial, his inexperience is showing, and his wife keeps embarrassing him."

Friday, March 7, 2008

At least someone knows it's not 1968 anymore....

Freedom Means Responsibility
Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.
BTW, that's George McGovern.....

Memo to Danny Glover and Sean Penn.....

Does Hugo Chavez help the poor?:
"The usual defense of Chavez, to the extent that there is one, is that he may be wrecking his country's economy, but at least he's helping the poor. Foreign Affairs has an essay by Francisco Rodriguez, the chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly from 2000 to 2004, saying that no, Chavez isn't doing that, either:"
Bill Buckley and the Jews

Read it.....

HERSCHEL SMITH ON Iran and Iraq.

And then realize that there are interests that we must protect across the globe.....

Follow up from last week...

Man Threatened with Discipline by University for Reading Historical Book About KKK

Did the title of this post offend you? I did say “Hitler” . . .

If you answered “yes,” you would make a fine Affirmative Action Officer at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. That’s the university where a janitor pursuing a communications degree received a threatening letter from the Affirmative Action office for the thoughtcrime of reading a historical book about the KKK during his breaks from work:

They really aren't human....

Palestinians Celebrating Mass Murder:
"Just like they did on September 11, 2001, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah and “refugee camps” in Lebanon are partying and celebrating the brutal mass murder of seminary students in Jerusalem."

Read it! You'll learn something

Today's Health Insurance Ain't Insurance:
"Charlie Martin examines the ongoing evolution of the health care landscape, and realizes that what we call insurance these days is anything but."

No kidding....

Backpedaling on Iran NIE:
"“How about the New York Times’ FURIOUS backpedaling on the National Intelligence Estimate? They could have done the same analysis when it was released!”"
The NIE was only important to those who wanted to make Bush look silly (as if he needed the help), especially the Times and the CIA establishment. But EVERYONE knows what's really going on - we just do not want to face it. Maybe we should all become Europeans.......

Well put...

IS OBAMA THE MESSIAH? Heck, some people say he's the Kwisatz Haderach.

Ah yes, the friend of the common man...

Power Line:
"The moral I would draw is, if you have choice between going to work for a skinflint capitalist and a Friend of the Common Man, choose the skinflint capitalist."

An odd piece of football trivia...

LAST U.S.F.L. PLAYER RETIRES Sean Landeta, the last active player from the United States Football League, officially retired from football. The retirement coincides with the 25th anniversary of his first professional game.

Landeta, 46, spent one game on the Giants’ roster in 2006, the season after Doug Flutie retired. Flutie was his competitor for the longest-tenured U.S.F.L. player.

Landeta, who played for Jim Mora on the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars of the U.S.F.L., is best known for his nine seasons with the Giants, which included Super Bowl championship teams in 1986 and 1990.

Playing by Clinton Rules

David Brooks
...Clinton can’t compete on personality, but a knife fight is her only real hope of victory. She has nothing to lose because she never promised to purify America. Her campaign doesn’t depend on the enthusiasm of upper-middle-class goo-goos. On Thursday, a Clinton aide likened Obama to Ken Starr just to badger them on.

As the trench warfare stretches on through the spring, the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage. People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself. And even if he goes on to win the nomination, he won’t represent anything new. He’ll just be a one-term senator running for president.

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Besides, the real softness of the campaign is not that Obama is a wimp. It’s that he has never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona.

If he can’t explain that, he’s going to lose at some point anyway.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

So am I...

Protect them from themselves?
"But I'm persistently disturbed by the notion that most of our fellow citizens are intellectual children who need to be forced to do what is good for them even at massive cost to their liberty, and ours."

Let's give 'em a state.....

A Bloody Night in Jerusalem
In Jerusalem, the mourning is mingled with worry as to how events will unfold over the next 24 hours. Police on the television immediately put out a public plea for quiet and warned they would be dispersed across the city. Friday is never an easy day for security forces in Jerusalem, as Arabs gather at the al-Aksa mosque for prayers. This week it will be more tense than ever. Police are expecting a long night, followed by an even longer day.

In Gaza City, residents went out into the streets and fired rifles in celebration in the air after hearing news of the attack on the seminary. “This is God’s vengeance,” blared a loudspeaker in a Gaza City mosque.

What will it take?

ALI ETERAZ on Harvard's gym-closing mistake. Meanwhile, some readers wonder if Harvard will close its gyms to openly gay men at certain hours, so that straight men who are made uncomfortable by gays can work out without being uncomfortable. It appears that they're in sync with Islamic thought . . . .

Everyone is in favor of peace

But this seems special:
"That sounds an awful lot like the argument between the candidates in this year's election. When asked what his personal contribution to peace has been, Jamaledine responds, 'killing terrorists.' Will the American people find that answer more persuasive than the candidate who simply keeps repeating 'I am in favor of peace'?"

Longing for the "good old days"?

Peace . . . or something . . . through bombing
I really don't know what to think about the bombing of a recruiting station in Times Square. The obvious inference it that it's some dimwit who thinks that if he acts like the Weathermen, he'll be magically transported back to the halcyon days of 1969, when the LSD ran like wine and every student in America lined up to press their righteous crusade. But the police say it may be linked to two bombings of the British and Mexican consulates, which makes it sound more like a random lunatic who likes to watch things go bang. Either way, it's pretty sickening.

Too many pork chops?

Muqtada Al-Sadr Comatose In Iranian Hospital

In other words, make sure you don't tell the truth...

Society of Professional Journalists Advocates Whitewashing Islam

Homeland Security - my foot!!!

Flight School Fiasco: No Lessons Learned After 9/11:
"Last week, in one of the most damaging reports on the TSA to date, ABC News revealed that in the program’s first year under TSA control, there were “some 8,000 foreign students in the FAA database who got their pilot licenses without ever being approved by the TSA.”"

What else is new?

LIKE MOST JOURNALISTS, the folks at The Atlantic wouldn't stereotype black people or gays the way they stereotype members of the military.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Ahhhh — the sound of a coalition party in action.

Who needs benefits?

Looking for Franken
Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken is a guy who casts himself as being in the Wellstone mold, and he may be, at least in this one respect. It now turns out that Franken owes a $25,000 penalty to the New York State Workers' Compensation Board for failing to carry workers' compensation insurance for employees of his namesake corporation (Alan Franken Inc.) from 2002 to 2005. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, New York officials have made numerous attempts to contact Franken about the matter since April 2005 but have gotten no reply.
We are all Hizbullah now

Let's see what happens...

An exercise in discrimination at Harvard
"But despite stiff competition, when it comes to “allowing” anti-Semitism and the promotion of terrorist violence, the over-achievers at Harvard still stand out.

When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were looking for a place to publish their “beware the Jewish lobby” propaganda, they found willing partners at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

And who invited former Iranian president Mohammed Khatemi to speak on the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11? Who else? Not only is he a lifelong member of the murderous Khomeini regime, but Khatemi helped create and develop Hezbollah.

There are institutes of over-the-road trucking and schools of straight chiropractic that wouldn’t have allowed him on campus. But at Harvard, he’s an honored guest."

Fighting the Nanny State....

The Picador Project
"The Picador Project was started in order to combat what many of us see as a root problem underlying the pernicious rise of the nanny-state mentality in our society. Namely, that too many people believe they are entitled to gifts from the government, coupled with a government all too willing to hand those gifts over in return for a few basic human freedoms and a monopoly on “truth.” This sort of trouble being a perennial consequence of basic human nature, utopian schemes of running off and starting over are never the ultimate solution. Thus, if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to face these troubles here at home and conquer them."

I like Ben Affleck too, but.....Geez!!!

Understatement of the week...

Iran Marches Ahead Towards Nuclear Weapons:
"Don’t put much faith in the latest sanctions on Iran, warns Richard Fernandez. The mullahs hold too many cards and the West has too little resolve."

Sounds like me...

Is Liberal the New Conservative?:
Ever since I “came out” after 9/11 as someone who “goes both ways” - pro-gay marriage and pro-War on Terror - I have been accused of being a conservative.
Read the whole thing. Poor Rodger, like so many of us, is trapped in old paradigms that are perpetuated by an ignorant media and an even more ignorant bureaucratic structure that needs to be blown-up before it kills everything.

Heh....

"Madam Speaker, approximately 1400 years ago war was declared on us by an ideology of hate and violence which arose at the time and was proclaimed by a barbarian who called himself the Prophet Mohammed. I am referring to Islam."

Welcome to 1984.....

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, university employees would be punished for reading the wrong books. And they were right!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Surprised they even printed it...

City Sees Decrease in Homeless Population

The happy family....but don't worry - there is NO threat!

WORSHIPPERS OF DEATH:
"Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber."

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."
Read the whole thing. Dershowitz always has disturbing facts and insights on this subject, which is why he is villified.

Columbia University...

All utterly predictable

He has such a way with words...

Instapundit.com
REPORTS OF eco-terror in Washington. If somebody were burning down environmentalists' headquarters, this would get more attention.
Earth And Moon As Seen From Mars

See anyone you know?

Members of the House of Representatives that have sworn off earmarks:

Swearing Off Pork = Members who have taken the earmark pledgeRep.
Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)
Rep. John Campbell (R-CA)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Rep. Louie Gohmert, (R-TX)
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, (R-TX)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Rep. John Kline (R-MN)
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA)
Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA)
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)"

Say goodnight, Gracie....

Sharia Comes to Harvard:
"Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle RecreationalSwimming_muslim_1 Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men.

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress."

Geniuses at work...

Nationalize the Schools?

And I almost forgot...

Remember the other thing to look out for while watching tonight's Ohio results: The possible demise of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
An Iraqi Sea Change: "...New York Times. The paper of record, which for the past few years could accurately be described as a body count with a styles section..."


More here...

Follow this story to find out where your freedom is headed...

Wilders Film To Air, Dutch Government Terrified

Wake up and smell the gunpowder..

Obama Adviser Samantha Power Wanted to Invade Israel
Having placed Israel's leader on par with Yasser Arafat, she called for massive military intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, to impose a solution in defiance of Israel and its American supporters. Billions of dollars would be shifted from Israel's security to the upkeep of a "mammoth protection force" and a Palestinian state—all in the name of our "principles."

Something to be very concerned about...

Iraq Rolls Out the Red Carpet For Ahmadinejad

I didn't think it was allowed

Why did it take so long for the media to ask Obama hard questions?:
"It took many months and the mockery of 'Saturday Night Live' to make it happen, but the lumbering beast that is the press corps finally roused itself from its slumber Monday and greeted Barack Obama with a menacing growl."

What to say?

Protecting the Powerful:
"The Federal Protective Service is responsible for security in federal buildings across the United States. Its budget is tight, and the ABC television affiliate in Phoenix did an investigation that found that many important federal buildings in Arizona and other Western states have never been inspected or assessed by FPS.

There is one building, though, where FPS has spent a great deal of time: Dianne Feinstein's $16 million house in San Francisco. In fact, Feinstein's home has been classified as a Level 3 federal facility. Perhaps it's only natural for the FPS to pay more attention to the security of Feinstein's house than to major, public federal buildings: as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she helps determine the agency's budget."

The politicians are still just politicians

Spitzer Helps Donors Skirt $10,000 Limit He Set
A review by The New York Times found that the governor raised more than $1 million from at least 50 individuals or business entities that donated $10,000 to Spitzer 2010, the governor’s campaign fund, and then far more than $10,000 through the state party. The two entities are housed in the same Manhattan office, one floor apart and connected by a spiral staircase.
Let's hear it for our "progressive" leaders!! Always a reminder that they should NEVER be given the powers that they seek to run our lives......

Wild story if it's really true

Richard Nixon's Secret Plan to Bring Peace to Vietnam:
"On the morning of October 27, 1969, a squadron of 18 B-52s — massive bombers with eight turbo engines and 185-foot wingspans — began racing from the western US toward the eastern border of the Soviet Union. The pilots flew for 18 hours without rest, hurtling toward their targets at more than 500 miles per hour. Each plane was loaded with nuclear weapons hundreds of times more powerful than the ones that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Monday, March 3, 2008

We are our own worst enemy...

A book fair in Paris:
"If the West is ever defeated in the culture wars -- which is probable, given that the only settings in its shifter are Park, Neutral and Reverse -- it will be less due to the skill of its enemies than the absolute failure of its leadership. They have atomized their communities and trivialized the most sacred traditions of their culture. Under the banner of 'tolerance', they proceed to lead their states (society would be an inaccurate term) towards the absolute destruction of self-confidence and positive belief."

This is what happens when you're happy to be dead...

Hamas claims Gaza victory:
"Hamas declared victory after Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Monday following a U.S. appeal to end days of fighting that killed more than 100 Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said despite the culmination of the five-day operation, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed, Israel would take further action in the Gaza Strip until cross-border rocket fire was cut significantly."

Come and find me

In a Town Called Bill, a Boomlet of Sorts

Sunday, March 2, 2008

There is no comparison...

PC Magazine

Mac OS 10.5 Beats Vista

More to follow...although my grandmother, may she rest in peace, could beat Vista.

Anyone see this in the MSM?

Al-Dura Shooting Was 'Staged'
An independent French ballistics expert has concluded that IDF bullets didn’t kill Mohammed al-Dura.

No, you're not allowed...

Isn't Self-Defense Common Sense?
Obama evidently considers that de facto prohibition a "common-sense regulation," since he recently cited Washington's law as an example of constitutionally permissible gun control. "The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gangbangers and random shootings on the street isn't borne out by our Constitution," he said.

The D.C. gun law, passed in 1975, isn't really about gangbangers, which it has not exactly disarmed, or random shootings on the street, which it has not noticeably curbed. In effect if not intent, it is about disarming law-abiding residents who might want to protect themselves from gangbangers and other violent criminals.

The Times tells us how nobody was paying enough attention

Disintegration of a Mother’s Life Was Long Hidden in Plain Sight
"Last Sunday, Ms. Brewer dialed 911 to report that she had drowned the children one by one in the bathtub in their small, neatly kept apartment here. Ms. Brewer said she first had subdued the oldest, 6-year-old Jewell Ward, by stabbing her repeatedly with a knife. Ms. Brewer then threw herself from the second-floor bedroom window."

In a tight-knit community where a dozen churches and scores of family members were within walking distance, where individual social workers and case workers were known on the street by sight, the social safety net in all its guises seemed to have been as much at a loss as Ms. Brewer herself was in those solitary walks with the empty stroller.

Among the factors contributing to the failure of government to protect Ms. Brewer’s three children, officials said last week, were privacy regulations. Police, mental health, child protection and Family Court officials all had case files on the family, Dr. Curtis said, yet none was in communication with workers in the other agencies — a problem officials said they would try to remedy.

He is consistent, if nothing else

Frank Rich is the most mean-spirited and angry little prick on the planet. Never a positive thing to say about any body or any thing, and always seeing conspiracies. This is not my defense of McCain in any way; but what I have found in life is that those who are the most suspicious of everyone else are those people who can be trusted the least.

There is the (very) old story about the woman who walks into the butcher shop, picks-up a chicken and begins sniffing every crevice of the dead animal up-close and personal. She turns to the butcher and says "This chicken stinks!"; and the man replies "Madame, could you pass that test?"

Hmm....not a bad analogy for the press in general.

Well worth reading....

Religion Is Less a Birthright Than a Good Fit
"When it comes to religion, it seems, Americans prefer a buffet of the spirit."
Whether we like it or not (attention ACLU and Chris Hitchens!) we are ALL into religion. Some of us are just not willing to admit that our obsessions - work, athesim, vegan ism, environmentalism, etc. - are one-and-the-same replacements for a structure and belief system that we all seem to need.

Good Sabbath to you all!!

Now you know why they are no longer running

What I’d Be Talking About if I Were Still Running

Classic election pandering

Why is it that someone as supposedly intelligent as a Presidential candidate needs a simple lesson in economics from Ben Stein?

When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives quaffing Champagne in Texas. It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans.

So, Mr. Obama, which union pension plans — and which blue-collar workers who benefit from them — will be among the first you would like to deprive of the income that flows from Exxon’s rich dividends?

The demise of a great institution...

CHUTZPAH AT DUKE: "After tarring and feathering and discriminating against the Duke lacrosse members at a critical juncture in their college careers and lives, the Duke Administration has gone to court trying to shut down the players' website, which contains the pleadings in their recently filed case against the university and a compendium of press coverage about the case."

This is consistent with Duke's demonstrated commitment to fairness, openness, and freedom of expression.

You can always count on the UN...

U.N. Security Council urges end of Gaza violence
"The U.N. Security Council on Sunday urged Israel and Palestinian militants to cease all violence in Gaza after the U.N. secretary-general condemned what he called Israel's 'excessive' use of force."
How dare they defend themselves!

Atlas Shrugs , of course, has her own take on it. As does Pajamas Media:
As rockets from Gaza rain down on her neighborhood, Laura Bialis wonders how the western media still manages to portray Israel as the aggressors in this weekend’s bloody conflict.

Only in LA.....


It is not a new cafe heralding gentrification, but rather a McDonald’s, newly renovated with the consultation of experts in feng shui, the Chinese practice of creating harmonious surroundings.