Wednesday, April 9. 2008
A good point. If China were not a totalitarian country, I doubt Tibet would have the same complaints. And why does China want to control Tibet anyway...other than that China is the last imperialist totalitarian nation on earth? Unless you count teensy Cuba and tin-pot dictator and joke du jour Chavez.
Obama campaign: "Get me more white people." Dick Morris: Obama's weakness is weakness Mr. Free Market loves Texas LaShawn on chastity. Fun with Richard Dawkins. Video at Thompson Mugabe evicting farmers, wants revote. I reckon I was wrong to trust that guy. "Prevention" does not reduce medical costs Traumatizing blacks to serve the Left. Am Thinker. The Dem Party is a plantation. Michelle has slides from Petraeus' talk Surber got all the answers: Just Ask Me A website dedicated to "exposing" the "Christian Right." Any excuse to raise taxes: LA wants global warming tax. Meanwhile, Al Gore plans mega-buck advertising scare campaign. Quoted from Jim Miller on wars: Those who know little military history often think that most wars are like World War II, immense and relatively short. In fact, many wars are like our two century long war with pirates, low intensity, but unending.
Americans are often criticized for wanting instant results, and I think there is some truth in that criticism. Perhaps if we knew our own history better, we would be more patient, less ready to expect a quick victory in our wars with the pirates— or in the war on terror.
Tuesday, April 8. 2008
 More on global cooling. But of course it has nothing to do with "climate change." Huh? Isn't cooling "change"?
Paul Mirengoff for 2nd VP Smallest girl in the world. Happy little kid. American Indians were Arabs, claims US textbook. Probably Palestinians, don't you think? Trying to turn the battle of Basra into Tet. If I recall correctly, the good guys won Tet, didn't they? It was Cronkite who lost it. Law School deans prepare for US News ranking changes. Amusing. (h/t, Insty) Obama tries to make it clear that he does love America. Also, Does Obama understand defeat? Generational divisions about climate change. Sad story about how Mexico serves as a stepping stone for illegals. McCain: Dems show failure of leadership. Leadership is an interesting subject. Been thinking about it lately, although I do not lead anything or anybody except, barely, myself. Terrible economy, right? No jobs, right? Dr. Sanity. The media distortion is unbelievable. As Dr. Helen says on another topic: Funny, if a Democrat gets in the White House next year, my guess is that the US will suddenly become a wonderland where pretty ponies and butterflies live.
More on pessimism and protectionism. Heritage Foundation Why Hillary should be winning. Salon Confederate Heritage Month. Prof B. takes a look at the Civil War, suspects it would have happened without slavery as a factor.
Monday, April 7. 2008
Global warming causing disease, says Doc. He's a shameless fear-monger. Shiver my timbers. More pirates KKK supports Obama, says noted commentator Snoop Dogg Bloggers dying? It's an epidemic, a crisis! It's their wishful thinking, thinks me. How surprising. Brit employers like to employ people who want to work hard. We celebrated too soon: Mugabe plans a delay Petraeus comes home to face another battle. I think he can handle it. Privileged teens who "hate America". I thought you had to be taught to hate. Who taught 'em? A "green" 7000 sq/ ft. house? Ugly as sin.
Sunday, April 6. 2008
Bob Brinker noted on the radio today that many Americans would find themselves in the 64% tax rate in some states, such as NY, MA, and California, with Obama's Social Security and tax plan. Brinker said, correctly, that few Americans are willing to work for 36 cents on the dollar unless they are desperate. The entrepreneurs and job-creators would go fishin' or golfin', and cut back hard on their expenses. Thus, on the tax income, job-creation, charitable donation, and consumer sides, the economy would go into an ugly spasm and a downward spiral. "It's nuts," says Bob (who is a political "moderate"). I, for one, would retire immediately and remove my income from the tax rolls: I enjoy my work very much, but I won't be a chump, or a serf or slave to the Federal government. I thought we left feudalism behind us...I think we already had a war about that. Russia now has a 13% flat tax on everybody, on all income. I would be OK with that. How can they be ahead of us? Off topic, Charlton Heston said, before his decline, "I'd like to be remembered as: American, husband, father, actor."
 The internet will become obsolete, beginning this summer. It was nice while it lasted.
"Who says San Francisco doesn't honor vets?" Driscoll The school crotch inspector. Reason Fallacies: A nice example of data selection bias. Coyote The real inconvenient truth: How warming zealotry can damage the earth. Fun stuff at Bits and Pieces How the heavy hand of China creates a Potemkin village for the Olympics A quote from Luskin: WOW. How fortunate are we to live in an age where all major political parties want to stabilize both the Earth's atmosphere and stabilize financial markets." Take THAT, global warmers! Take THAT, subprimates!
And speaking of grandiosity, our friend Sissy notes in Saint Obama awaits his Michael Kelly that Michael Kelly's 1993 NYT essay, St. Hillary, which Peggy Noonan refers to as the first and definitive Hillary take-down, can be read online. A quote from Kelly: ...asked if she has always been impelled by what she called, in a recent interview with the Washington Post, "a burning desire" to "make the world better for everybody," Mrs. Clinton say, with a slight, self-conscious laugh: "Yeah, I always have. I have not always known what it meant, but I have always had it."
Sheesh. Who asked her to fix my life? I am an adult. I just want the govt to leave me alone. Virtue sure can be creepy when combined with vanity and power. And speaking of Mrs. Clinton, another repeated campaign lie comes out. It's a campaign based on lies from start to finish. From an intriguing essay on the psychology of voting by Sewell at Am. Thinker: Erich Fromm can tell us a lot about what is behind how most people vote. He makes the point that most people are terrified of being an on-their-own, take-care-of-themselves, free, adult human being. So, we attach ourselves to surrogate family units and surrogate parents to escape from our freedom. That translates to belonging to and becoming psychologically dependant organizations as diverse as the company for which we work and our boss, to the church we attend and its clergy, and the political party to which we belong and the parent figure who gets our vote. Identifying with the group becomes our new collective identity, and we surrender our individual identity and freedom.
Ask any priest, pastor, rabbi, teacher, psychotherapist, supervisor, or elected official and they will be happy to confirm that the people they deal with are all trying to work out their childhood agendas on any available authority figure.
Photo: Wuzzat? A reader sent in this photo of somebody's well-decorated Butterfly House. Do those things work? How soon before it's filled with bees and wasps?
Saturday, April 5. 2008
 Islam has taken over the UN's Human Rights Council
Thinking about prayer. Dr. Bob Drug companies invent new diseases? Sometimes, maybe. Good example. The Fed caused the credit crunch. Mankiw Writing mastery eludes NYC schoolkids. It eludes me, too. Mercedes Marxists: The Clintons Insty: LARRY KUDLOW: "Recessions are part of capitalism. They happen every so often. We’ve had two in the last 25 years. And it looks like we are entering a third one after today’s jobs-loss report."
Sexual harrassment in Kindergarten Finally, someone in the MSM admits: No current global warming Luck vs. hard work. A poll, by country Who are the people who stiff the banks? Colorado College punishes for satire. What idiots (h/t, Minding the Campus). They might expel Jonathan Swift and give tenure to Ward Churchill. MSM bias joke Cow humor Hillary's error, from Dick Morris. A quote: The Clintons' entire approach to this campaign season was based on learning the wrong lessons from their political history. They survived the Lewinsky imbroglio, the pardons scandal, and the theft of White House gifts and assumed they were bulletproof. They confused our forgiveness with gullibility and came to feel that they could get away with anything. When Hillary won her Senate seat in New York, after Giuliani dropped out and Lazio could offer only nominal opposition, she believed she could sell voters any kind of chimera and they would fall for it.
Friday, April 4. 2008
From Byron York's 527 donation update at The Corner: The top 2007 giver to 527s is — drum roll, please — George Soros, with $3.5 million in contributions to Democrat-affiliated groups. The rest of the top ten are Rachel Mellon, with $3.48 million to Democratic-affiliated groups, Sheldon Adelson, with $2 million to Republican-affiliated groups, Fred Godley, with $1.1 million to Republican-affiliated groups, Donald Sussman, with $1 million to Democratic-affiliated groups, Stephen Bing, with $883,000 to Democratic-affiliated groups, Robert Bingham, with $812,000 to Democratic-affiliated groups, Lee Fikes, with $600,000 to Democratic-affiliated groups, John R. Hunting, with $593,000 to Democratic-affiliated groups, and Francine Goldstein, with $500,000 to Democratic-affiliated groups. (It should be noted that the two Republicans in the top ten, Adelson and Godley, gave most of their money to Gingrich.) And you should remember that these are 2007 figures — off-year figures — and the contributions will likely go way up in 2008.
Well, so much for McCain-Feingold. The Lefties took advantage of that loophole before the Repubs, didn't they?
 This came in over the transom:
CBS is developing a "Texas Version" of the popular TV show "Survivor." The rules are so simple that even a non-Texan can follow them. Each of the contestants must drive from Amarillo to Wichita Falls then Abilene, Fort Worth, Dallas, Waxahachie, Waco, Tyler, Lufkin, Vidor, Houston, skip Austin, on to San Antonio, Burnet, San Angelo, Midland, El Paso, then back to Amarillo through Monahans. Each contestant must do this while driving a Prius with a prominent bumper sticker which reads, "I Voted for John Kerry, I’m voting for Barry Hussein Obama, I Think I'm Transgender, and I'm Here to Take Your Guns." The first one back intact wins.
h/t, Theo
 Limited government vs. expansive government. No Left Turns
Blame these monsters for airline drink policies Radical gays vs. Moslems: Who wins? Protein takes an interesting look at Barone's piece on academics and Jacksonians in the Dem party. Especially the racism part. Speaking of Obama, Coulter read his book. See what she found. Related - Obama, Community Agitator. Israpundit Did Al Gore go nuts in 2000? Am. Thinker Skook made me think about possibles bags, ie pocketbooks, and I was reminded that guys needed them because clothing didn't have pockets. Who invented pockets?
Thursday, April 3. 2008
Hillary has been a dead man walking, while the media has pretended that it's been a race. The fix is in: It's over.
 Obama-Gore 08? Dino. Good grief. And Obama gets another endorsement. That sure will help him.
I don't care how they check up on foreigners on American soil, but I do not like this. Where is our Constitutional right to privacy? And speaking of observation, Garbage Men double as cops. That really stinks. Immigration does nothing positive for the UK. Small Dead Armadillos. No kidding. Iraqis line up to join the army. Ace. Hmmmm. Maybe these dudes know something. A mom discusses raising her autistic kid. Video. "A slice of heaven" It's what's for dinner: Ted Turner says warming will cause cannibalism. He suggested no recipes. Speaking of impending cannibalism outbreaks, it was 19 degrees here this morning when I went to Dunkin Donuts. Why don't "they" like America? AVI thinks about it. I would debate the premises. Exactly who doesn't "like" America, and why should it matter? Clinton lie du jour: No spectacles in the army? The crisis of barmaid ogling in the UK. They are also dealing with the crisis of Euroland bus routes. Aren't they lucky to have folks who really care about them? Speaking of Euroland, poll shows they've had enough with the Moslems. Darn hypocrite racists. The Prof takes a look at McCain's Annapolis speech, and is not impressed by its content. Me neither. Needs a bit of the vision thing. A bit of inspiration and cheerful optimism. (h/t, Insty). Repubs nominated the man - now he needs to become a candidate and show some zip. Since Obama will corner the market on negativity about America, John needs to ring some positive, uplifting bells. Bells of Freedom, I hope. Note to illegals: Get your Maine drivers licenses now, before they go away.
Prof Deneen wonders whether Malthus was right. The sliding scale, from Viking: The sliding scale between "rich" and "poor" - I guess it depends on whether you're being taxed or receiving benefits.
Photo: A Mr. Free Market-style wave of the Capitalist cigar to Buddy and to Roger de Hauteville, (ex-King of Sicily) whose recent efforts at humor have struck a chord. That's a '96 Montecristo #10 - too strong for my taste.
Wednesday, April 2. 2008
Thanks, Buddy.
This note came in over the transom: Saturday, March 22, 2008 Subject: MARINES' AFTER ACTION REPORT From: Dill Lt Col Jeffrey J (AAMNF RCT-5 1/7 Battalion Commander) Family and Friends of the First Team, As this is the final First Team update from Iraq, I would like to start out by thanking all of you for your endless support, generosity, and most importantly, your prayers. During our entire deployment we were nearly overwhelmed with care packages, letters, and cards from all of you and countless other Americans who just wanted us to know they supported us and our mission. After nearly five years of sustained combat operations, the American people are as supportive and generous as ever. The support, care packages, letters, and prayers were truly appreciated by every Marine, Sailor, and soldier within the TF. I must specifically thank the Battalion's Key Volunteer Network. These incredible women focused on ensuring every family was taken care of while their Marine or Sailor was deployed. Their efforts ensured we could focus on the mission here in Iraq as we knew our families were in good hands. The First Team could not have hoped for a better KVN. We are all indebted to them for all they have done for us and for our families. The past seven months have been very busy ones for your Marines and Sailors. To say I am proud of them and their accomplishments would be an incredible understatement. During this deployment they have driven in excess of 150,000 miles under the constant threat of IEDs, they executed over 12,000 mounted and dismounted combat patrols in the cities, villages, and deserts of our AO, they discovered and removed from enemy hides over 20,000 pieces of ordinance that could have been used to make hundreds of IEDs, and they detained over 200 suspected insurgents. The massive amount of pressure put on the enemy by the TF's sustained surge operations resulted in the tactical defeat of AQI and insurgent groups in our AO. While the units that preceded us certainly set the stage for our eventual success, it was the unrelenting pressure and pace of the Marines and Sailors of 1/7, coupled with the continued development and improvement of the Iraqi Police and Army, which finally broke the enemy's back. But your Marines did a lot more than combat operations, and certainly more than what they were originally trained to do. They worked with the local government officials, mayors, and city councils to improve their processes and efficiencies in running a government and showed them that public service constitutes unselfishness and at times self-sacrifice. They spent hours upon hours teaching classes on the Iraqi Rule of Law, the Iraqi Constitution, and other civic functions to local leaders, police officers, and soldiers.
Continue reading "An Iraq After Action Report"
As if to reinforce our post below, we finally learn why she was fired from the Watergate hearings. This is amazing (but not surprising), at Hot Air. Let's see whether the press is brave enough to be all over this or not. She is a sociopath, just like hubbie - but not as slick as he is. "Birds of a feather..." It's the final nail. She's done. (And I think Obama is done, too, with his Farrakhan story. Unless he tries to explain, once again, that I wouldn't understand because it's "a black thing.") Dems sure can pick 'em. I bet Chris Dodd and Joe Biden are looking pretty good to them now. Update: More on the story here.
re Hillary's lies, from Hitchins at Slate (I like that distinction between the two kinds of lies), a quote: The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.
Michelle flipped the switch - on. Speaking of meaningless but vanity-feeding gestures, a great bit from Thompson. A quote: If not to have a discernible impact, directly or by example, what, then, is the point? What drives this level of anxiety over soft drinks and peanut butter residue? Unless much of this is indeed about seeking out pretentious guilt and then wringing one’s hands for public display and personal gratification? It’s not that I necessarily believe that my eating a KitKat is going to lead directly to the death of a baby in the developing world, or that drinking a Fanta means one more “disappeared” trade unionist, it’s more a case of knowing that if I do these things I’m letting myself down, that I’m going against the standards I’ve set for myself.
Standards that apparently serve no objective purpose, whether enacted or not. Could these ineffectual standards then be about something less tangible and more intimate? Could they perhaps be about how a person wishes to seem, to themselves, or in certain kinds of company? I don’t care what anyone else thinks of me.
But of course. What was that about unrecycled peanut butter jars? I usually just give up and throw it in the bin (as long as no one’s watching).
"Punished with a baby..."? True, changing diapers at 3 AM is an annoyance, but is that what Obama meant? Granola strikes out grittily against oppression. Jules Do jails do any good? Betsy The Prophet's pedophilia banned in the Netherlands. If I were a holy prophet, I wouldn't want that advertised either. A note to Alice Walker, from Phyllis Chesler Mugabe is gone! Who'd a thunk it? The rising price of biofuels How to lie with statistics, Swiss style. See how they selected 1961 as their index for the second graph? It's in the fine print. McCain in his own briar patch. Am. Thinker. McCain has been wrong about a few things, but McCain-Feingold has been the worst. As has been widely noted, that law limits the individual's political speech - but not the political speech of media (and, thus far, not the political speech of blogs and websites). It's nuts. I thought Villainous Company was on hiatus, or had retired. I guess not. She has a good piece up about "conversations on race." (h/t, Anchoress) Roger's snaggle-tooth blood-pudding eaters piece (below) effectively fisked the newspaper article. The photos were worthy of Pallywood, and they ignored the aggressive efforts over the past few years of the Dept. of Agriculture to expand the food stamp program.
Tuesday, April 1. 2008
I'm being silly, of course. The feckless Stilton scarfers are actually looking down their aquiline bluenoses at us. The Independent, which is a sort of digital newspaper for wrapping your crappy online fish and chips, says in the Headline: USA 2008 The Great Depression. They've even got the requisite breadline picture: 
Woe is us, huh? Here's the accompanying text. Warning! Englishmen don't know how to pluralize things properly. You know, not like Americans, who are important people, and not doily-fetished tea-slurpers. Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.
The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.
Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country's economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story. Yes, and after all, "telling a story" is exactly what you're attempting to do. You're just not very good at it. But I want to be kind to our friends on that miserable pile of rocks and coal across the pond. I think it's swell that they've taken time from their busy schedule of crushing each other to death against fences at soccer games, throwing up on themselves in the gutter outside pubs, and surrendering to imams to pay any attention to our festering hive of poverty and depravity here in the States. I especially like the fellow that's the centerpiece of their pieta of poverty there in the picture. Let's zoom in on him, shall we? 
You see, in the thumbnail view of the picture, the noble Bob Cratchit figure is holding his poverty-numbed fingers in the universal sign for "Please sir, can I have some more porridge?" It's a shame to ruin it by showing him in closeup, fiddling with his MP3 player to get just the right mix, and shod in elaborate, new, expensive footwear and clothes. Because what we're looking at here, is indeed a line of people who are willing to stand in a line to get free stuff. You're right there, Percival. Unfortunately for you Someone at the National Review Online read the caption on the image you used, and it reads: NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 30: People wait on line to receive donated coats at the kickoff of the 17th annual New York Cares Coat Drive a the Bowery Mission November 30, 2005 in New York City. Bloomberg helped give out coats to residents of the Mission and the coat drive hopes to collect and distribute 80,000 coats to needy New Yorkers by New Years. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
But your point is made, even if fraudulently. Very truthy, Cedric. People are lining up virtually, if not physically, for free food coupons, which you inartfully mention later in your article can be illegally sold to unscrupulous people for seventy cents on the dollar to buy drugs and booze and... well... I don't know, maybe MP3 players. I might mention that this isn't much of a line in a big, strapping adult country like the United States. It might impress you over there in that little dollop of dirt you live on, the remaining wreckage of your "Empire." Do you guys even get to lord it over Scotland anymore? You guys shed power and influence like dandruff, I can't keep up. But let me assure you that if that was a line to get free Hannah Montana tickets, that line would reach to New Jersey. You remember New Jersey, don't you? We beat your inbred monarch-ass-kissing fruity wig-wearing generals like a drum there in the 1700s. With guns we used to shoot squirrels with. But I digress. After all, it's not fair to compare Hannah Montana tickets to Food Stamps, as Hannah Montana is more important than food to a teenage girl. And Hannah Montana is bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of Great Britain. But then again, what isn't around here? In the article, those Malvinas-pestering cold-water-flat-loving hollow-chested Britishers refer to everybody in the picture as "disadvantaged Americans." Fair enough. I'll use their criteria: that queuing citizens trying to get free stuff from the government is a sign of an apocalyptic breakdown of a whole society. Hey, Alfies: 100% of the population of Great Britain gets in line to get their chit to see a doctor. So by your reckoning, your entire country has collapsed. And it's been collapsed since 1948, if you go by the National Health Service. You know, right after we saved you the trouble and expense of German lessons. I was always enchanted when I was a lad to read compelling news stories of daring Britishers swimming the English Channel. Shame you just end up in France, though. Nothing to do there but warm your hands over the burning cars. So I have some advice, you crumpet nibblers. Swim west from now on. You might like it here. I bet the NHS doesn't hand out MP3 players with the calendar you get to plot your wait times for your medical care.
A remarkable short video. Who knew where penguins really spend the winter?
In the WSJ, Peggy Noonan begins thus: I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.
Read the whole thing, which I think sums it all up.
 Link to Maggie's Farm or we will drown these puppies. (Thanks to Sipp for this brilliant blog marketing concept from his I'm the only serial killer in MA)
"I'm just so sick of this world, and Obama can fix it." Cinnamon. Also, Obama busted. What the clean energy scam is doing to Brazil. Heartbreaking Media "selling us on fear and recession for years now." Speaking of which, The Independent declares with glee: US heading for a great depression. That is ridiculous, but schadenfreude sells papers. Speaking of schadenfreude, Leftists claim that the GOP coalition is terminally broken. Our friend Right Wing Prof takes a look. Something in Rick Moran wants to walk away from Iraq. And something else in him doesn't. As Never Yet Melted notes, nobody is saying about Europe, "After 60 years they still can't stand up for themselves." I hope we will still have troops in Iraq in 10 years. Tiger has a good take on the Basra deal. Zimbabwe "election" update: The Independent (h/t, Norm) "Poll shock: America not like Hollywood." Steyn Crime update, in the UK A quote from the always-interesting Mediocracy: The idea that we should seek to equalise outcomes between the "highly motivated" and the "less well motivated" is interesting. It suggests that giving everyone the chance to do well means (in the minds of people like Baroness Blackstone) neutering "doing well" to the point where everyone does well, regardless. Demanding that all universities have resources "concentrated" on them, across the board, is equally vacuous.
Man-made global black holes: Be very afraid. Al Gore should take this crisis on: The End of the World Picking a VP for McCain. Blackburn? (h/t, Insty)
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