Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Good riddance

From Ireland On-Line:

Pop superstar Michael Jackson has confirmed his conversion to Islam, according to reports in the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli newspaper Panorama claims Jackson has announced the move and revealed plans to move to Bahrain, where he has bought property.

This should be a good fit for him as Islam is one of the few religions in the world where ass-raping little boys is acceptable.

Tonight's Music



Feast of Fiddles, recorded at the Gosport and Fareham Easter Festival in 2006.

Paging Dan Brown

From The Washington Post:

Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States yesterday denounced the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity stunt.

Scorn for the Discovery Channel's claim to have found the burial place of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and -- most explosively -- their possible son came not just from Christian scholars but also from Jewish and secular experts who said their judgments were unaffected by any desire to uphold Christian orthodoxy.

"I'm not a Christian. I'm not a believer. I don't have a dog in this fight," said William G. Dever, who has been excavating ancient sites in Israel for 50 years and is widely considered the dean of biblical archaeology among U.S. scholars. "I just think it's a shame the way this story is being hyped and manipulated."

The Discovery Channel held a news conference in New York on Monday to unveil a TV documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," and a companion book about a tomb that was unearthed during construction of an apartment building in the Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980.

James Cameron, the filmmaker who explored the wreck of the Titanic and directed an Oscar-winning feature film based on its sinking, is executive producer of the documentary. Its claims are based on six ossuaries, or stone boxes for holding human bones, found in the tomb.

[. . .]

Dever, a retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, said that some of the inscriptions on the Talpiyot ossuaries are unclear, but that all of the names are common.

"I've know about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists, and none of us thought it was much of a story, because these are rather common Jewish names from that period," he said. "It's a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don't know enough to separate fact from fiction."

Similar assessments came yesterday from two Israeli scholars, Amos Kloner, who originally excavated the tomb, and Joe Zias, former curator of archaeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Kloner told the Jerusalem Post that the documentary is "nonsense." Zias described it in an e-mail to The Washington Post as a "hyped up film which is intellectually and scientifically dishonest."

Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed irritation that the claims were made at a news conference rather than in a peer-reviewed scientific article. By going directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers "have set it up as if it's a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this," she said.

Magness noted that at the time of Jesus, wealthy families buried their dead in tombs cut by hand from solid rock, putting the bones in niches in the walls and then, later, transferring them to ossuaries.

She said Jesus came from a poor family that, like most Jews of the time, probably buried their dead in ordinary graves. "If Jesus' family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem," she said.

Magness also said the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries indicate that the tomb belonged to a family from Judea, the area around Jerusalem, where people were known by their first name and father's name. As Galileans, Jesus and his family members would have used their first name and home town, she said.

"This whole case [for the tomb of Jesus] is flawed from beginning to end," she said.

Reminds me of a novel I read once called A Skeleton in God's Closet about an archaeologist who got pissed off at God because his father died when he was a kid. He became an archaeologist so that he could prove that the Bible was full of inaccuracies. When he couldn't find all the inaccuracies that he felt sure just had to be there he went to Plan B and found the body of a man in his mid 30's who had died from crucifixion and created a fake "tomb of Jesus" complete with a letter from Joseph of Arimathea to Nicodemus detailing how he stole the body to protect it from desecration, but never intended for people to think that Jesus rose from the dead, with Nicodemus' answer that he shoud just keep silent and maybe something good would come of it.

People who believe things like this are just attempting to drown out the "small still voice of God" in their hearts. It is the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and humming real loud so that they won't have to hear something that they don't want to have to deal with.

After all if you admit that God is real then you must decide on what to do about it. Far easier to say that since the Bible speaks of sunrise and sunset that it is teaching that the sun revolves around the earth and write it off. All you can do for such people is pity them and hope that they find some measure of happiness in this life, because there will be none for them in the next. Unless, of course, they repent. Often the people who object the loudest are the closest to salvation and are just "kicking at the goads" like Saul of Tarsus.

Off to the range

I'm going shooting now.

See you later this afternoon.

I wish I'd heard about this guy before

I could have started mocking him sooner.

I saw this over on KisP and though it was worth a laugh. Apparently some tool named Dean Esmay runs some kind of group blog and wants to prove what a good dhimmi he is to his masters in the jihad so he's throwing a prissy snit and kicking all the people who tell the truth about Islam off his blog:

You can be an Islamophobe, or you can contribute to Dean’s World. You cannot do both.

This is meant for front-page contributors, submitters, or even commenters. It is time for you to make a choice, and to live by that choice. Because I certainly intend to.

Simply put, you must agree with all of the following assertions:

1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.

2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by Muslims or anyone else.

3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.

4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.

5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.

Is this a test of “ideological purity?”

Why yes. Yes it is.

If you cannot accept, wholeheartedly, all of the above 5 assertions--without exception or weasel-wording--then if you are a front page Dean’s World contributor you should turn in your keys and say goodbye. You can do it gracefully or ingracefully. You can do it by email or by posting whatever you want on the front page before you go. Your choice. But you need to do it: you need to leave.

Furthermore, I will accept no more debate upon this matter by commenters bent upon snarky, snotty, Islamophobic irrationality. You should either stop using your comment account, or you should be prepared to simply be thrown out without further ado.

Since I've never heard of this guy I can't regard this as any great loss. but the whole thing does bring to mind a point that I've been kicking around in my head for the past few days. Whenever someone is holding a belief which they have accepted on faith and suspect deep within their heart to be false, yet wish to continue clinging to, they will attempt to silence any voice which calls their cherished myth into question.

This is what lies at the heart of the efforts of people like global warming supporters, intelligent design opponents and now deniers of reality concerning the true nature of Islam to summarily declare the debate to be settled and over and would all the people who don't buy into the fantasy please stop upsetting them with facts.


PS - Hillbilly White Trash is a free blog. If any moron moonbat wants to comment here about how great Islam is they are free to do so. They will be publicly mocked, but they are welcome.

I thought Canada was civilized

Also from The Brussels Journal:

The subject of reasonable accommodation between Canadians and immigrants has been in the news in Canada for the past month or so, with the stories of two separate communities. The small working-class town of Herouxville, Quebec, population 1,338, made international headlines when it came up with a controversial and provocative code of standards for immigrants.

The code stipulated the following: That women should be able to show their faces in public and should also be permitted to drive and write cheques. That it is “completely outside norms to [...] kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc.” The resolution had no legal weight but nonetheless, roused passionate debate.

So it's still legal there to stone women, burn them alive or with acid, circumcise young girls, force them to wear burkas, forbid them to drive or write checks, etc.?

Forbidding these things arouses "passionate debate"?

Lock and load

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Paul Belien in The Washington Times, 28 February 2007

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.

On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from "school phobia."

This would present a dilemma. This kind of thing absolutely justifies armed resistance. The parents of this girl would be totally justified in a moral sense to open up on the stepchildren of Himmler when they came to steal their child. But the problem is that they have five other children who need them and as long as they are alive they have some hope of calling enough attention to this abomination to shame the state into turning their little girl loose before she is completely brainwashed, or brain damaged by whatever psychotropic drugs they're pumping into her.

So what do you do?

UPDATE: Additional information on this case is available here.

Looking at the polls

From The Washington Post:

The opening stages of the campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination have produced a noticeable shift in sentiment among African American voters, who little more than a month ago heavily supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton but now favor the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton, of New York, continues to lead Obama and other rivals in the Democratic contest, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. But her once-sizable margin over the freshman senator from Illinois was sliced in half during the past month largely because of Obama's growing support among black voters.

In the Republican race, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who recently made clear his intentions to seek the presidency, has expanded his lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Giuliani holds a 2 to 1 advantage over McCain among Republicans, according to the poll, more than tripling his margin of a month ago.

The principal reason was a shift among white evangelical Protestants, who now clearly favor Giuliani over McCain. Giuliani is doing well among this group of Americans despite his support of abortion rights and gay rights, two issues of great importance to religious conservatives. McCain opposes abortion rights.

This is interesting. The thing about phony "leaders" is that they always have their moistened fingers stuck in the wind to see where the public is going so that they can run very fast in that direction so that they appear to be out front "leading". This describes the black "leadership" on the left; men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and organizations like the NAACP who are good at figuring out where the mob wants to go and then offering to take them there.

If the black population is turning to Obama then the "leadership" will soon get out in front and start marching lockstep with him as well.

The only reason they haven't done so already is the fear that he can't win and the certain knowledge of Hillary's retribution if she attains the White House without them. Well, that and the fact that they know that if Democrats can start winning the White House without black support that their place at the Democrat Table O'Power is history.

After all if you were a Democrat politician would you bow at the feet of a thing like Al Sharpton if you didn't absolutely have to?

But if a (left-liberal) black man actually got himself elected president that would mean that blacks had become more than necessary players in the Democrat coalition. It would mean that they had become senior partners!

This is the dilemma of the black "leadership". Hillary still looks like the safe bet but if they support her and Obama wins they are shown to be irrelevant. Rank and file blacks could start thinking for themselves and that would mean the end of the gravy train for the "leaders". However if they support Obama and Hillary wins the closest they are ever going to get to the Table O'Power again is when they empty the ashtrays and fill the water glasses.

As for evangelicals turning to Rudy it isn't difficult to understand. Rudy is, or at least appears to be honest.

Romney's switches on abortion are just too conviniently timed to aid his political ambitions. McCain is a backstabber who says one thing to the voters back home and another when he's on Meet The Press. He insults Christians and then kisses up to Christians. Nobody believes him any more.

Rudy, on the other hand, is pro abortion and pro special rights for gays and is currently running out the clock on his third marriage, but he isn't trying to hide any of this. His honesty in owning his unpopular positions gives credibility to his promises to appoint originalist judges to the Supreme Court. His history of taking on public sector unions and cutting taxes and controlling spending make him attractive to people who realize that maintaining America's prosperity depends on keeping taxes down and controlling government growth.

His management of New York's affairs speaks of a good administrator and his response to 9/11 reveal a man possessing personal courage and give him good personal reasons to hate and fear Islamofascism. His treatment of Castro shows a man who will do the right thing even world opinion demands that he do the wrong thing.

To sum up most Republicans, the religious right included, feel that he is the best we are going to be able to do this time around. This could change, but right at this minute he is the best person in the race with a realistic chance to win.

His is not a conservative, but with a conservative congress, the thinking goes, he would be unable to do much to enact gun control or bring about nationwide gay marriage so he is worth the risk. Especially when the alternative is Hillary.

All he needs to do now is find a real conservative, preferably from the South, to be his running mate.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Tonight's Music



Loreena McKennitt sings Penelope's Song from the CD An Ancient Muse.

What's behind the global warming scam

From The American Thinker:

The great Global Warming scare is only the latest eructation of European imperialism. Euro-imperialism used to be known as socialism. Before that, it was just called British or French imperialism, because those countries were very proud of it. There was no need to lie. The only reason today's huge European effort to control the world isn't called "imperialism" any more, is that its supporters hate that word. The reality of imperial control is fine with them.

According to one dictionary, imperialism is

"the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies."

That is exactly European policy today with regard to Global Warming.

But that's only the dictionary. The media don't follow the dictionary definition of imperialism. They follow Vladimir Lenin's definition instead. For Lenin, imperialism had to be a capitalist plot. Only capitalists could exploit colonies for their resources; the fact that this is plain unvarnished nonsense was part of its charm. It's like the slogan that Blacks can't be racists. It makes no sense, but to certain people bigger nonsense means more profundity.

[. . .]

All self-respecting capitals of 19th century Europe had their empires. There was the Habsburg Empire, Napoleon's French Empire, Bismarck's Reich (Empire - later the Nazi Reich). Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire, on which the sun never set. The Dutch had an empire in the East Indies. The Belgians owned the Congo (and behaved brutally even by European standards). Even the Swedes and Danes had empires. The Russian Tsars were Emperors (the word "Tsar" comes from "Ceasar.") The Turks had the Ottoman Empire. Spain and France tried but failed to get theirs in South America; and the Germans were just boiling mad that the British Navy ruled the oceans so they couldn't get an empire in Africa. Poor disunited Italy had to wait until the 20th Century to catch up with its empire, too late for the respectable 19th century club . They all felt deserved their own colonies. Imperialism was in.

[. . .]

Comes the Bolshevik Revolution in 1914, and suddenly no progressive intellectual wants to be an imperialist any more. But here's the kicker: nothing changes but the words. Europe still sees itself as the center of the world and the most advanced human civilization. Each European capital has the right --- nay, the duty --- of imposing its language, its utter conviction of superiority, its educational system and its ruling class on properly obedient colonial peoples. Today that pervasive sense of superiority still inspires the European Union --- the new empire-to-be --- and it is a lifelong obsession among French politicians like Dominique De Villepin. French foreign policy is shot through with old-fashioned imperialist ideology. It's why they're so nasty.

Even though Moscow had all the trappings, the world-conquering mission, the bullying of neighbors, the goose stepping Red Army, the KGB, the worldwide espionage (which got Stalin his atom bomb), the egomania, the global export of self-glorifying ideology --- it could not be imperialist because the USSR was not a nation, verstehen Sie? It was the harbinger of Peace on Earth. It was Socialism in One Country, until Stalin found it regrettably necessary to appeal to Russian patriotism to stop the Nazi Blitzkrieg. Russian peasants wouldn't die for the Party, but they would risk all for Mother Russia. In any case, the True Believers never dropped the pretense that Soviet imperialism of the worst kind could not be imperialism, because the USSR was not a nation, but a hope.

Today's European Union also denies being a nation. Like the USSR, the EU is something never heretofore seen. It is a Platonic Ideal realized in flesh and blood. It is the Transubstantiation of the Da-Sein to the Nichts-Sein. It is the socialist meme applied to Brussels rather than Moscow. And it's something Americans better get straight, because we will be flooded with EU-propaganda for the next fifty years arguing that the European Union is not an imperial enterprise, contrary to all appearances.

Now Europe has two practical problems, imperialism-wise. One is that it's pathetically weak and occupied with bitter arguments behind the scenes, between the French, the Germans, the Brits, the Low Countries, and now the Poles-Czechs-Greeks-Spaniards-Italians-Serbs-Austro-Bulgo-Hungarians. (See: Airbus, Concorde, German subsidies for French farmers, etc., etc., etc.). The EU is not a union; it's a vendetta.

The second weakness is that Europe has relied on the United States for its real defense since 1946. And still does. So the European Empire can't resort to the imperialist shtick of expansionist warfare. Instead, its tax money goes to universal health care, welfare payments for the fast-growing offspring of Muslim immigrants, the latest vote-buying schemes, plus sex, drugs and rock n' roll to distract the people. The Romans called it "bread and circuses" --- keep the common folk well-fed and staring at the boob-tube, and you can do whatever you want.

Bottom line: Europe needs the United States but despises us. Not because of anything we do --- anti-Americanism goes back long before we were a power to reckon with. It's a major historical theme. You can see it in European literature --- in the Sherlock Holmes stories, for example, where a disproportionate number of its sex-obsessed villains come from the American West and the colonies. Thomas Jefferson as Ambassador to Paris was outraged to hear that the French intellectual class was convinced that American animals are invariably smaller than European ones --- because they were degenerate offspring of the Euro originals. That conviction of innate superiority has always been part of the European psyche, and nothing has changed today.

So Europe needs to control America in order to carry out its imperial mission. Don't ask why; that's the wrong question. Europe needs to control us because they do. The explanations change from time to time. Today the explanation is that the US is just not as peace-loving as the hopelessly weak and gutless elites of Europe. In the 19th century it was the opposite: The US was not warlike enough compared to the Prussians, the Russians, the French and the English. Europeans felt sure about it. They were the proud aristocrats. We were their weakling rejects, remember?

So how does one control America from Brussels? One way is to shout at us until we give in, a method pioneered by the Soviets and other bullies. A closely related method is to apply all the principles of agitprop, learned during the Soviet phase, from spontaneous popular demonstrations (these days it's polls) to the voices of "world renowned scientists" to put their stamp of approval on the Global Warming scam. Give Al Gore a Nobel Prize, and stack international gathering spots like the UN and Davos with party members.

We can't forget how close the European Left came to exporting Eurosocialism to America: Harry Hopkins, FDR's closest advisor, turns out to have been a Soviet source, perhaps an agent of influence, perhaps a spy. (It's
hard to know exactly.) Ronald Reagan turned against Stalinists when he saw how they tried to control the unions in Hollywood. Henry Wallace was almost elected Democrat candidate for President over Truman. Al Gore Sr. was a close friend, ally and financial beneficiary of Armand Hammer, the millionaire KGB paymaster in the United States, who boasted of owning his personal US Senator from Tennessee.

(Al Gore Jr., the leading American agitator for Global Warming, was therefore raised to become a member of the American ruling class, and president some day. Which is why the Florida recount came as such a shock to poor Al; it wasn't supposed to be that way. He was fated to rule America. He's still shell-shocked. The Nobel Peace Prize, the OscarTM, even worldwide acclaim as the Goracle of Global Warming will never be good enough.)

And then the Soviet Union, through Castro's Cuba, almost managed to provoke Marxist rebellions throughout Latin America, with the enthusiastic help of our Democrats --- leaving a legacy of anti-American hatred that still pervades the chattering classes South of the Border. Those were all different aggressive salients of European Imperialism.

Americans are prone to ask "why do they hate us?" A good answer is that we're the leading pop culture of the world --- which is why teens all over the world imitate American rock music, wear torn jeans, and cuss in English. Europe is elite-driven, and elites despise ordinary people; it's their main source of self-esteem. So today they say they hate us because of Global Warming, but for many years they hated us for the West's failure to help the Soviets and Chinese become high-polluting industrial giants. It used to be not enough pollution; today it's too much.

The underlying psychological drive hasn't changed. Imperialism has always been primarily driven not by greed but by a lust for glory: The self-glorification of elites with fragile egos. When you do the math, some scholars aver, the British Empire under Queen Victoria cost more pounds than it earned for Britain, but that wasn't the point. The Empire demonstrated the superiority of the British ruling class. Today, substitute the "BBC Class" for "British upper class," and you've got the same thing.


[. . .]

The big problem with the Global Warming riff is that China and India will never accept it, and they are quickly outpacing the West in carbon dioxide emissions. China was tyrannized in the most horrific way by European Socialism, first as the "Chinese melon" carved up by the European powers, and then under Mao Zedong, killing tens of millions of his people. India never had a Communist revolution (though it was tried), but instead adopted Jawaharlal Nehru's British Public School Socialism, which Nehru had learned in London. It ruined the Indian economy for decades.

Having been burned badly by Europe's ideological imperialism in recent history, will India and China swallow the new version, a.k.a. Global Warming? And sacrifice their own growing prosperity to avoid a disaster that never will be? When even Europe itself is just pretending to be lowering CO2 emissions?

India and China would be utter fools if they fell for Europrop again. How many decades of ruin do you need, before you begin to suspect the snake oil salesman?

So watch for Al Gore to run out of steam in a couple of years. Soon the Greens will be looking for another false alarm to scare the chickens with. What will it be? Asteroids crunching the earth? Aliens from outer space? That old stand-by, the international Jewish conspiracy? Regardless, you know who will be wearing the White Hats and the Black Hats. Because the story always stays the same. Only the details are changed.

There is a time limit on global warming hysteria. China and India, Europe and the Third World will not do anything meaningful to reduce their carbon emissions and the science cannot be fudged forever. In a few years it will become impossible to ignore the fact that human activity has virtually nothing to do with any changes occurring in the Earth's climate.

As to what the left comes up with next to justify stealing our wealth and freedom I would say that, based on current trends, it will be a revival of the Jewish conspiracy.

Perhaps Dan Brown and James Cameron are already working on a film version of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Perhaps to star Sean Penn, George Clooney and Genine Garofalo?

Here's a new one

Hello Friend,

My name is Mrs.Rosemary King I am a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to charity through you.You may be wondering why I chose you. But someone has to be chosen. I am 59 years old and was diagnosed for cancer about 2 years ago,immediately after the death of my husband who had left me everything he worked for.I have been touched by the lord to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to charity through you for the good work of humanity,rather than allow my relatives to use my husband's hard earned funds inappropriately.

I have asked the lord to forgive me all my sins and I believe he has,because He is merciful. I will be going in for an operation,and I pray that I survive the operation. I have decided to WILL/Donate the sum of $5.5 Million (Five Million five Hundred thousand Dollars) to charity through you for the good work of the lord, and to help the motherless,less privileged and also for the assistance of the widows. At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls, due to the fact that my relatives are around me and I have been restricted by my doctor from taking telephone calls because I deserve all the rest I can get.

Presently,I have informed my lawyer about my decision in WILLING this fund to charity through you. I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others.If you are interested in carrying out this task, I will inform my Family Lawyer so that he can arrange the release of the funds to you.

I know i have never met you but my mind tells me to do this,and I hope you act sincerely.I will pay you 30% of this money if you will assist me because I am now too weak and frigile to do things myself because of my cancer.

NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished,as I don't want anything that will Jeopardize my last wish.

Rosemary King.

I feel so blessed to be a part of this!

McCain is circling the bowl

Dick Morris writes John McCain's first political eulogy (except for the ones I've been writing since I started this blog):

The John McCain candidacy, launched amid much hope, fanfare, and high expectations, may be dying before our eyes.

Even worse, it may go out with a whimper instead of a bang.
It may not end in an Armageddon style primary defeat, but just dry up from lack of support, money, or interest.


Throughout all of 2006, McCain sat atop the polls right next to Rudy Giuliani. In the Fox News survey of December, 2006, he was getting 27 percent of the Republican primary vote to Rudy's 31 percent. But, after Giuliani announced that he was running, the Arizona senator fell to 24 percent while Rudy soared into the stratosphere at 41 percent of the primary voters. But even when McCain was polling well, he wasn't raising the money he needs for this campaign.

In the last quarter of 2006, during a time when he was tied for front-runner status in the GOP and doing well in general election matchups against likely Democratic rivals like Hillary Clinton, he raised only $1.7 million according to his filing with the Federal Elections Commission.


Even worse, he had less than $500,000 on hand, pocket change in a presidential race and barely adequate for a run for Congress.

You can read the rest if you want, but all it proves is that Morris still doesn't get it. Here's why:

Fundamentally, he failed to heed the Shakespeare's admonition "to thine own self be true." The John McCain of the 2000 campaign is nowhere in evidence in 2007.

Instead of challenging the party establishment, he pathetically waits at its door, hoping to be invited. Where he used to challenge the religious right, he now panders to them. Once he led the battle against big tobacco, for corporate governance reform, in favor of campaign financing changes, and in support of action against global warming.

This is why he lost the nomination to George W Bush and why Republicans still hate him. This is why he is never going to be the president. If Rudy had not announced McCain might still be in the lead over Romney, but that would only be because Republicans would be thinking that McCain might stand a better chance of beating Hillary than Romney.

This is why liberal Rudy is doing so well in the polls among Republicans. We think he can beat Hillary and we don't disagree with everything he stands for. Most Republicans know that if you don't choose the lesser evil you will wind up with the greater evil, as proven by the disastrous Carter Administration. Yes Gerald Ford was a RINO, but he would have been far less harmful to the nation than Jimmah.

There is still time for a real conservative to step up and take Rudy's place, but that time grows short.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Tonight's Music



Lisa Kelly of Celitc Woman sings The Voice accompanied by Mairead Nesbitt on the fiddle.

Night is falling on Europe

From The American Thinker:

Although European elites imagine that their political and social models are so obviously attractive that they will be adopted by the rest of the world, ordinary Europeans don't seem to think so. In fact, demographic trends suggest that most Europeans don't even believe in the European ideal in sufficient numbers to want to pass it on to the next generation.

According to the European Commission, the average birth rate for the European Union as a whole is now 1.4 children per woman, which is well below the 2.1 replacement rate. By way of example, the country with lowest fertility rate in the world is Spain, where women have an average of only 1.07 children.

As a result, deaths will start out-numbering births in every member state of the European Union by as early as 2010. But some countries have already reached that point. According to Germany's Federal Statistics Office, more people died in that country in 2005 than were born. And Germany's demographic decline is the norm, not the exception in Europe. Indeed, Europe's population is forecast to decrease by more than 100 million by 2050.

[. . .]

Europe, however, is also a magnet for immigration: It will attract up to 1 million newcomers this year. But the European experience with immigration is quite different from that of America. Part of the reason is that many immigrants to Europe end up on welfare, while in the United States, almost all immigrants take one or more entry-level jobs and work their way up the economic ladder. Welfare is simply not the American way.

The Muslim population of Europe has more than doubled since 1980, and according to some estimates, there are some 25 million Muslims living on the continent today. Demographers predict that this figure may double by 2015, and that the number of Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in all of Western Europe by mid-century. This prompted Princeton University's Bernard Lewis to tell the German newspaper Die Welt that ‘Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.'

This reality is already influencing European foreign policymaking and does not auger well for the future of transatlantic relations. Indeed, many analysts believe that the steady weakening of Europe is the underlying cause for the widespread anti-American and anti-Israel bigotry found among Europe's elites, many of whom are bowing to pressure from Muslim residents as a way to buy a fake peace with radical Islamists. Says Fouad Ajami, a well-known authority of the Arab world: ‘In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam.'

History shows that when Islam takes over another culture that it will keep some things which it finds useful and destroy the rest, as they did with the mathematics developed by the Hindu civilization which they conquered (we call them Arab numbers because they transmitted them to the West, not because they invented them).

If this pattern holds in Europe we can expect the latter half of the 21st century and the first half of the 22nd century (at least) to feature an Islamic European Union governed under sharia law by Wahhabi mullahs who regard Osama bin Laden as a shining example of Muslim piety and possess the excellent naval shipbuilding capacity of Italy, the military aircraft industry of France and the aircraft carriers and nuclear submarine fleet of the United Kingdom. Along with the arsenal of nuclear weapons owned by the UK and France.

And we can add the land warfare capability of Germany into the mix. The only reason that the M1 Abrams main battle tank is superior to the German Leopard is that the Leopard is a maintenance hog compared to the M1 (the flaw in a great deal of German technology is over engineering).

It will take at least two generations for the marital traditions which still lay latent under the surface of European society to completely fade. During that time the Eurabian caliphate will command a near First World armed service armed with First World military technology.

Imagine the IRES (Islamic Republic of Europe Ship) Mohamed Atta, a nuclear submarine, slipping into the Chesapeake Bay and launching nuclear cruise missiles at New York, Washington DC, Baltimore and Boston. Maybe you have trouble believing that the mullahs wouldn't commit suicide by starting a full scale nuclear war but are you really willing to bet millions of American lives on the sanity of men like Mullah Omar?

Of course it really isn't a "bet" because that implies that we could make a choice. The truth is that things are out of our hands. There is really nothing we can do to force the European people to reclaim their Christian faith and with it the lost hope which lies at the root of their failure to reproduce. America has no power to reach into the European psyche and rekindle a sense of pride in the achievements of their culture. We cannot convince them that despite all the sins of European colonialism that it still left the world a better place.

In other words no one outside of Europe can make the Europeans believe that their culture deserves to survive and is worth fighting for. If they cannot find the will to continue within themselves there is nothing for them except for decline and dhimmitude.

America cannot afford to bet that the Europeans will do what no nation in the history of the world has done before and pull themselves back from so steep a decline and loss of faith in themselves. It behooves us to build up other alliances, principally with India, a nation which has suffered terribly at the hands of Islam in its past, which lives under the threat of a nuclear armed Muslim neighbor with which they have a history of belligerence and whose Hindu population nurtures the bone-deep hatred of Islam which all free people will need to develop if they are to have a hope of survival in this new millenium.

The dead aren't listening

BERLIN — Seven suspected neo-Nazis went on trial Monday charged with incitement and disturbing the peace of the dead for allegedly burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary during a celebration last year.

The men, aged from 24 to 29, are accused of holding a ceremony on June 24 during which they praised the Nazis and denied the Holocaust.

The indictment accuses Lars Konrad, 25, of throwing the book into the fire in front of numerous spectators and the other six men standing nearby. The seven men are also accused of using neo-Nazi and Nazi language to ridicule Anne Frank and all the victims of Nazi concentration camps.

Now I have no love for Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, in fact you could throw them into the bonfire and I'd break out the wieners and marshmallows, but "disturbing the peace of the dead" as a crime?

Anybody but Iran?

From The New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 — A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran, but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.

The new evidence includes infrared sensors, electronic triggering devices and information about plastic explosives used in bombs that the Americans say lead back to Iran. The explosive material, triggering devices, other components and the method of assembly all produce weapons with an Iranian signature that has never been found outside Iraq or southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is believed to have used weapons supplied by Iran, the Americans say.

But critics assert that nearly all the bomb components could have been produced in Iraq or somewhere else in the region. Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible.

"Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible." Yes, people in totalitarian nations like Iran where disobedience to the rulers earns one a not necessarily quick but always unpleasant death are highly prone to go freelancing in the area of foreign policy. Especially when that freelancing could bring about a devastating military strike from a nation as powerful as the United States.

I find it amazing that people who upon seeing a photograph of Lindy England leading a naked Iraqi terrorist around on a leash could conceive of no other reason for her to act this way other than the personal orders of George W Bush as relayed to her personally by Donald Rumsfeld now cannot make their minds grasp the possibility that Iran, the world's foremost sponsor of Shiite Muslim terrorism just might be aiding the Shiite Muslim terrorists in Iraq.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Tonight's Music



I posted this video of the Kathryn Tickell Band payling Small and Wild eariler in the month, but YouTube pulled the video less than 12 hours after I put it up. It was repostd on YouTube so I am reposting it for all those of you who didn't get a chance to see it.

This is a really good tune off of their Air Dancing CD.

Benedict Murtha shoots himself in the foot - again

From The Washington Post:


The plan was bold: By tying President Bush's $100 billion war request to strict standards of troop safety and readiness, Democrats believed they could grab hold of Iraq war policy while forcing Republicans to defend sending troops into battle without the necessary training or equipment.


But a botched launch by the plan's author, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action, a score of House Democratic lawmakers said last week.


It is a very good thing that the "Murtha Standard" wasn't applied to the US armed services during WWII or those of you seeing this on the East Coast would be reading it in German while those of you on the West Coast would need the "translate into Japanese" feature.


If every troop sent into a war zone had to be trained and equipped to the Murtha standard there would not have been enough warm bodies to hold the Pusan Perimeter until MacArthur's landing at Inchon turned the tide.


The size of the military and the fluid nature of a war do not provide the leisure to do things as Murtha would have them done. Not to mention that the Pentagon doesn't have the budget to do things Murtha's way. Now I would support defunding every social program that the government is currently throwing money away on and transferring the cash to the military, but try getting Pelosi and her cast of clowns to sign onto that.


In a related matter, every time you see a photograph of Murtha don't you just want to kick him? That pudgy, petulant look he always seems to wear. Like he is always on the verge of bursting into tears at the injustice of a world which would insist on judging him on merit and therefore deny him the greatness to which he feels entitled.

Today's economics lesson

Thomas Sowell comments on B. Hussein Obama's economic ideas:

Senator Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then.

He thinks higher teacher pay is the answer to the abysmal failures of our education system, which is already far more expensive than the education provided in countries whose students have for decades consistently outperformed ours on international tests.

Senator Obama is for making college "affordable," as if he has never considered that government subsidies push up tuition, just as government subsidies push up agricultural prices, the price of medical care and other prices.

He is also for "alternative fuels," without the slightest thought about the prices of those fuels or the implications of those prices. All this is the old liberal agenda from years past, old wine in new bottles, a new face with old ideas that have been tried and failed repeatedly over the past generation.

Senator Obama is not unique among politicians who want to control prices, as if that is controlling the underlying reality behind the prices.

There is much current political interest in so-called "predatory lending" -- the charging of high interest rates for loans to poor people or to people with low credit ratings.

Nothing will be easier politically than passing laws to limit interest rates or make it harder for lenders to recover their money -- and nothing will cause credit to dry up faster to low-income people, forcing some of them to have to turn to illegal loan sharks, who have their own methods of collecting.

The underlying reality that politicians do not want to face is that here, too, prices convey a reality that is not subject to political control. That reality is that it is far riskier to lend to some people than to others.

That is why the price of a loan -- the interest rate -- is far higher to some people than to others. Far from making extra profits on riskier loans, many lenders have lost millions of dollars on such loans and some have gone bankrupt.

But politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.

Left liberals think that they live in a vacuum, that nothing that they do in one area has any impact on anything in another area. The last thing they wan to consider is the idea of unintended consequences.

The real shame is that the average citizen is too ignornt to know the difference.

Defective Glocks

Sharp as a Marble has an open letter for Glock:

Dear Glock,

I recently purchased a 10mm Glock 29 and I am sad to say that your reputation for producing "quality firearms" is undeserved. Since my purchase, your firearm has completely failed to live up to its promise.

I have been told time and time again that easy access to firearms is the number one cause of violent crime in today's society. Well, being a concealed weapons permit holder, your so called 'gun' is always within reach and to this day, I've yet to shoot anyone over a parking space. Why just this morning, some jackass decided to cut me off on the highway. The way the newspapers make it seem, a quality firearm would have leaped out of my holster and immediate put several rounds in said jackass' fender block. This did not happen.

Also, I've noticed that when I go shopping, your 'sidearm' completely fails to open fire on innocent bystanders. To this date, I have not experienced a single "accidental discharge" that has maimed or killed a nun holding a newborn infant.

Over and over again we are informed on how carrying a weapon makes even cloistered priests violent, snarling beasts. I can't manage anything more than a polite smile and a "hi" when I greet others.

I have been assured repeatedly by the Brady Campaign, The New York Times, and various anti-gun sites that simply owning a firearm makes one a killer and here I sit without even so much as a speeding ticket to my name. I couldn't even muster up enough rage to pull my weapon and point it at the loud patron who sat behind me at a concert, singing off key to get him to shut up.

I am totally dissatisfied with your weapon. It's almost like everything we're told by the media about guns and gun control is a lie, but I know it's really just a defective pistol I bought.
Sincerely,


Sharp as a Marble

You know now that he mentions it none of my Glocks has ever up and kilt anyone all by itself either and I've owned more than ten of them starting with a first generation model 17 way back when they were first introduced. This goes beyond an individual gun with a defect and speaks of a fundamental design flaw.

I think all of us Glock owners should consider filing a class action suit. We should hire John Edwards to represent us. After all he became rich enough to buy a US Senate seat trying cases with every bit as much merit as ours.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Tonight's Music



Steve McDonald's Per Mare Per Terras from the Sons of Somerled CD.

Scotland I can hear you callling / Homeland in my soul you're calling / County Antrim to Islay / O'er the hills and far away / Per mare, per terras are we / From across the isles to Inverness / On Highland hills the sun she sets / Per mare, per terras are we / And I sing oh, Scotland calls / Scotland calls / Brothers from across the ocean / Yearning with deep emotion / From Mull of Kintyre / to the Isle of Skye / Cross my heart and hope to die / Per mare, per terras are we / And I sing, oh Scotland calls / Scotland calls / And all the while / I think of thee / Over land and over sea / Per mare, per terras are we / Per mare, per terras are we.

We can hope, can't we?

From The Telegraph:

Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an "air corridor" in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.

"We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important," said the official, who asked not to be named.

If this wasn't from a British paper I would assign some credibility to this. However it is not impossible that the US and Israel are doing some contengency planning.

I hope they are, anyway.

Know them by their allies

Apparently the Fudds are circling the wagons and starting to shoot back, with the help of the mainstream media.

War on Guns has the story.

Dick Cheney is my hero too

From The Washington Post:

In Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed allegations that the resolution against the troop surge gives moral support to the terrorists: "We don't support America's enemies - we only support their mission!" she said. "In the interest of our children - and our children's children - we have a moral responsibility to do what appears easier in the short term."

Speaking with ABC News during a visit to Australia, the vice president addressed the criticism of Pelosi, who earlier this week said that Cheney's remarks were "beneath the dignity of the debate we're engaged in." She also spoke with White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten to register her complaint.

"She accused me of questioning her patriotism," Cheney said. "I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment."

"Al-Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That's their fundamental underlying strategy: that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we'll quit and go home," Cheney added. "And my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it."

Let me ask a question. If Pelosi and her Democrats were not patriotic Americans who did not love their country and want to see it win its wars what would they be doing differently?

Think about it. The American people do not want to see their country lose a war. They do want the war to end as quickly as possible and they do want the troops to come home as soon as they can, but only within the context of victory. The people are unhappy with the way that the war has been managed, mainly because they have been fed a steady diet of defeatism by a media which is serving an agenda other than the truth, but this doesn't mean that they wan to lose.

The Democrats know this. They know that if they cut off funding for the war that they will lose the House, Senate and White House by landslides in 2008.

So given these factors assume, just for the sake of argument, that the Democrats were a bunch of traitors who hated the United States and wanted to see its enemies triumph in this war, but were unwilling to commit political suicide to achieve this goal.

What would they do differently than what they've already done?

Al-Qaeda replies

The People's Cube has al-Qaeda's reaction to the House's "non-binding resolution":

A new cave video released by Ayman al-Zawahiri praised the non-binding resolution against Iraq troop surge passed in the House today, describing it as a step in the right direction, while also criticizing the bill as "inadequate and meager kickback for the tremendous effort and sacrifice" al-Qaeda's had given to help the Democrats win the mid-term elections. "What in Allah's name is a non-binding resolution?" al-Qaeda's number two shouted while shaking his AK-47 in the air. "We sacrificed thousands of our best men, raising body count of US troops and Iraqi bystanders to unprecedented numbers so that you could work your ungodly media polls to win the House and the Senate. And now you're basically telling us that 'the check is in the mail'? Really? If our IEDs were as symbolic and non-binding as your resolution, Pelosi wouldn't be your speaker. The question that many Jihadists are asking today is, can we trust the Democrats?"

"The warriors of Allah are justifiably frustrated by the lack of progress," al-Zawahiri went on to say, "and the price paid by our Jihadists has been heavy. But what is needed now, especially in Washington, is not despair but decisive action - and soon.

"Let there be no doubt: Our failure in Iraq would be a strategic and moral catastrophe not just for al-Qaeda, but also for the Democrat Party, as well as our natural allies in the anti-war movement, media, academia, and trivial entertainment industries. If Iraq avoids civil war and becomes secure for business, it will be a tremendous victory for America - and nobody wants that, we know it because we watch CNN.

"We know that the daily scenes of death and destruction are heartbreaking and infuriating. That's why we're doing it. We provide the carnage; Democrats make sure it gets the coverage. Keep your end of the bargain and convince Americans that there is no better strategic and moral alternative for your country than hand-wringing, carping and calls for withdrawal. US Congress has a moral responsibility to do what appears easier in the short term - pull out of Iraq and let us slaughter all their moderates, America's sympathizers, and Jew lovers.

[. . .]

In Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed allegations that the resolution against the troop surge gives moral support to the terrorists: "We don't support America's enemies - we only support their mission!" she said. "In the interest of our children - and our children's children - we have a moral responsibility to do what appears easier in the short term."

Go read the whole thing. The People's Cube is better than The Onion.

The MSM's controlled demolition of McCain continues

In years past taking the op-ed pieces written by The New York Times Maureen Dowd apart and demonstrating how poorly written they were and how inferior the thinking process was which created them was a cottage industry in the blogosphere. In fact this was done with several of the Times' "star" writers. It got so bad for them that their pool of "star talent" was becoming a liability.

Given that the Times is run by socialists they responded not by dumping the duds and replacing them with writers whose work would not be so easy to eviscerate but by hiding their work behind a pay-per-view firewall. This has generally worked since few people are willing to shell out one thin dime to read the tortured prose of blockheads like Paul Krugman.

However I noticed in this morning's digest of Times headlines that Maureen Dowd's latest piece has this tag line:

There’s one huge group that John McCain is not pandering to: Americans.


I have no idea what she has to say about this because I am one of those who has far better uses for my money than paying the Times for the privilege of reading the brain-farts of cretins like MoDO. You know like giving it to the first piss-bum I see so he can buy another bottle of Thunderbird.

However the fact that MoDo is apparently being critical of John McCain is another example of something I predicted here. The MSM is getting ready to destroy McCain. He was useful to them when he was out trashing other Republicans but now that he is attempting to gain the Republican nomination and keep Hillary out of the White House he must be ruined.

Now I'm sure that whatever effort that Dowd makes to take McCain down will be as confused and semi-literate as anything else she writes, but the fact that she is making the effort is what is significant.

If you hate McCain as much as any right thinking conservative who loves his country and has a hope of heaven should the next year is going to be fun.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Tonight's Music



Eliza Carthy -Worcester city

The Fudds will never understand

Dumbass Fudd David Petzal made some remarks about "black rifles" back in the runup to the Clinton Gun Ban:

"Gun owners -- all gun owners -- pay a heavy price for having to defend the availability of these weapons. "The American public -- and the gun-owning public; especially the gun-owning public -- would be better off without the hardcore military arms, which puts the average sportsman in a real dilemma".An Uzi or an AKM or an AK-47 should be no more generally available than a Claymore mine or a block of C4 explosive"

Now he is trying to slither out of his past comments. This from his blog today:

Here’s some other relevant information: When I wrote it, black guns were not nearly as important a part of shooting as they are now. We can’t afford to sacrifice them, just as we can’t afford to sacrifice .50-caliber rifles (which I wrote about positively a couple of issues ago in a story called “Way Out There”).

This proves that he still doesn't get it.

It doesn't matter one damn little bit how "important" a type of firearm is to shooting. We can't afford to sacrifice any of them ever!

The Second Amendment is not about hunting or target shooting or collecting or any other damn thing except creating a civilian population so heavily armed that any foreign government contemplating an invasion would think twice because of the losses they would take and no American government would dare attempt to oppress the population out of fear of what that heavily armed population would do to them.

That is the be-all and end-all of the Second Amendment. Live it, learn it, believe it.


PS - Please Mr. Petzal tell us what guns today are "not important enough" a part of shooting that we can afford to sacrifice them?

Some Republicans are just as worthless as Democrats

Here's something to turn the stomach. From the Opinion Journal:

One big question when Democrats took over Congress was which industry would be first to feel the new majority's populist rage. Oil? Pharma? Banks? Corporate America just got its answer, direct from the angriest man to have been empowered in the past election: Republican Sen. Trent Lott.

The Mississippian was "infuriated" by the insurance industry's refusal to shell out for certain Katrina claims, most notably his own. So Mr. Lott is spearheading a ferocious campaign of political revenge that would make even Henry Waxman envious--replete with investigations, voracious trial lawyers, ambitious state attorneys general and threats of punitive federal legislation. And like most personal grievances that get morphed into policy battles, it's ending badly for consumers.

Mr. Lott's beachfront property in Pascagoula--one of three homes he owned--was swept away entirely by Hurricane Katrina's waters. Like many Gulf Coast residents, Mr. Lott was soon reminded by his insurer, State Farm, that his policy only covered wind damage--not flood damage. The senator surely knew that, which is why he'd also purchased federal flood insurance. According to his flood policy that was in effect when Katrina hit, he was covered up to $350,000 in flood damages, and he presumably collected in full. (Sen. Lott's office didn't return my call.)

State Farm, however, refused to cough up, inspiring Mr. Lott to embark on a campaign ripped straight out of the Democratic playbook. First was to pay a call to the favorite mob squad of the left, the plaintiffs' bar. Quicker than you can say "tort reform," Dickie Scruggs, the legal kingpin who engineered Mississippi's tobacco shakedown, was representing Mr. Lott in a high-profile lawsuit against State Farm.

Mr. Lott probably didn't have to do much special pleading, since Mr. Scruggs is his brother-in-law, and had also suffered Katrina damage. Mr. Scruggs is also a pal of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, who within a few weeks of Katrina had filed a lawsuit against insurers over their "unconscionable" decision to not pay for damage they didn't cover. By December of 2005, the Lott-Scruggs-Hood triangle was proving a gale force storm for insurers.

For his part, Mr. Lott has been busy cranking up the pressure in Washington. Not that he didn't give fair warning. In July of last year, he placed a call to Chuck Chamness, the CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, to let the industry know what was coming. Mr. Chamness later sent a letter to Mr. Lott, summing up the call. The key passage: "Your comment that you will dedicate your next term of office to 'bringing down State Farm and the industry' through all means available to you, including legislation designed to harm the property/casualty insurance industry, was very unsettling, to say the least."

I started to write that Lott should be duck taped to a wooden kitchen chair and beat to death with a pipe wrench, but then I reconsidered. Some moonbat would pretend to take me literally and claim that I was really issuing a death threat on the worthless Senator. So I'll just say this.

Trent Lott should be duck taped to a wooden kitchen chair with his eyelids stapled to his forehead and forced to watch Hillary Clinton stump speeches, Dixie Chick videos and Rosie O'Donnell on The View until his brain overloads and he has seizures so violent that he snaps his own neck.

Dems opening their eyes at last

From The Boston Globe:

HOLLYWOOD MOGUL David Geffen has kicked up a storm by saying publicly something that Democrats usually only whisper privately.

A former Friend of Bill, Geffen told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Clinton is "a reckless guy" who "gave his enemies a lot of ammunition to hurt him and to distract the country." What's more, said Geffen, "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person."

What comes next is some clueless defense of Bill Clinton's "legacy" and then this:

And yet, in his personal conduct, he displayed a breathtaking recklessness -- a trait that renders him a risk as a candidate's spouse. Although his impeachment was an orgy of partisan excess, it's still hard to believe that, attuned as he was to the realities of American politics, he would risk his presidency on a fling with a Generation X flibbertigibbet.

This is what so many leftists don't get about Bill Clinton. For the most part the women were the point. Every last shred of information we have about Bill Clinton's personality tells us that he was a truly hollow man. Inside there was just nothing. His whole life. all he worked for and accomplished was about building a sense of self worth based on the opinions of others.

This is why he hates to be alone. When there is nobody there but him he ceases to exist. This is why he is obsessed with sex. During Bill Clinton's youth women did not share their bodies capriciously. For a woman to "give herself" to a man was validating. It indicated that she saw some worth in him. This is why he can't shut his mouth about how rich he has become. The fact that people will pay large sums to hear him speak is another form of validation.

When Bill was getting his pole waxed in the Oval Office he wasn't "risking his presidency" he was fulfilling his life's ambition. Now he wants to go back for seconds so he is filling his wife's campaign war chest by schlepping all over Asia and the Arab world pocketing large checks for giving meaningless speeches to his nation's enemies who are buying access to the future Ms. President.

Do we really want to put this dysfunctional family of Arkansas trailer trash back into the White House?

Don't mess with our vets

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — An American senior citizen killed an alleged mugger with his bare hands, and his traveling companions aboard a tour bus fended off two other assailants in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said.

A retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 put suspect Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus, Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of San Jose, said Thursday. Segura was later declared dead, apparently from asphyxiation.

The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves during the Wednesday attack. Afterward, the tourists drove Segura to the
Red Cross where he was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.

The tourists left on their Carnival cruise ship after the incident and Hernandez said authorities do not plan to press any charges against them.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," he said.

Hernandez said Segura had previous charges against him for assaults.


This is what people born into a generation which taught self reliance can do. It doesn't say which branch of service he was in, but since they didn't have SEALS 50 years ago I'm betting on the USMC.

Shameful "honors"

From The American Spectator:

The Jean Hersholt Award.

If you're an Oscar watcher, already buying the popcorn for the February 25th ceremonies, you know what this is. In the words of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hersholt Award "is given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry." In other words, this is one of the few awards given out by the Academy that does not honor the recipient for his or her artistic achievements. It chooses among the Hollywood elite who have used their success in motion pictures for various humanitarian causes.

The award includes among its honorees Elizabeth Taylor (her work on AIDS),
the late Audrey Hepburn (the United Nations), Gregory Peck (a variety of charities and causes) and even Charlton Heston in his pre-conservative incarnation as spokesman for the National Rifle Association (for support for Civil Rights, among other things.)

But there's a name missing from this list, and the fact that it is missing highlights the reason so many conservatives dismiss not only the Oscar but a number of other prominent awards. The missing name, of course, is Ronald Reagan.

Over the course of a forty-year career in almost sixty films, Reagan served not only as president of the Screen Actors Guild but as a master of ceremonies of the Oscars themselves. Yet the only actor to serve as president of the United States, the man historians now credit with winning the Cold War and freeing millions from bondage, the man who just the other day was rated as second only to Abraham Lincoln in terms of presidential greatness -- for this actor there was not a snow ball's chance in hell of being honored by his peers.

Clearly, the reason had to be Reagan's conservatism. Does anyone seriously think that a former President Robert Redford or former President George Clooney would be unrecognized by the Motion Picture Academy? Of course not. This very year no less than Al Gore -- Al Gore!- is up for a golden statue for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

The real inconvenient truth about a number of these high profile awards is that if you are a political conservative you can simply forget about applying. The amusing part of all this is that the same-old-same-old results of ignoring conservatives or blatantly choosing winners based on their liberalism winds up demeaning the award itself, degrading its value to the point that fewer and fewer people even pretend to care.

Who today has the same kind of respect for the Oscars, the Grammys, or even the Nobel Peace Prize, all of which once seemed to have a dazzling glow? Let's be real. The reason Reagan was ignored by the Oscars is the same reason the Dixie Chicks won a Grammy and Jimmy Carter got the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter -- and both Bill and Hillary Clinton -- even got a Grammy for reading an audio version of a book!

It has nothing to do with the stated purpose of the awards in question. The question of who wins these things is settled ahead of time by the recipient's politics. Does anyone really believe that if an ex-Vice President Dick Cheney made a film about the inconvenient untruths of global warming doctrine he'd ever see the inside of the Kodak Theater as an Oscar nominee?

At the end of the movie K-19: The Widowmaker the captain of the submarine is reminiscing with his executive officer and members of the crew about the incident dramatized in the movie. He tells them that he attempted to get the engineer who deliberately exposed himself to a lethal dose of radiation in order to repair the sub's reactor and save the lives of his crew mates declared a "Hero of the Soviet Union" (the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor). The award was turned down by Moscow because it was not a time of war. He contemptuously asks "what value are awards from such men?"

That is the question I would ask about awards like the Oscars and the Grammys and the Nobel Peace Prize. Of what possible value are awards which can be won by men such as Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore?

To a moral person, a thinking person, a decent person to be handed an "award" which put one in the same category as creatures such as that would be a mortal insult not an honor.

Here is the next attempt to get us to accept amnesty

Slimy Dick Morris is riding his immigration reform mule again:

A revolution is underway among America’s Latino population that will have profound implications for the future of American politics. Of the 41.3 million Hispanics in the United States today, 37 percent identify themselves as “born-again” or “evangelical.” Just 10 years ago, the proportion that did so was about 15 percent. All told, there are now about 11 million Evangelical Protestant and 3 million Evangelical or Charismatic Catholic Latinos in the United States. In 1996, there were only 4 million.

This explosive growth in Evangelical religious affiliation among Latinos — about 1 million converts annually — portends huge changes for American politics. With the Latino population swelling from 22 million in 1990 to 41 million in 2004, any change of these proportions in the beliefs of Hispanic-Americans will have a momentous impact on politics.

Evangelicals, of any race or ethnicity, are fertile ground for Republicans and may provide a huge opening to swing the formerly Democratic Hispanic vote toward a more even-handed stance or even make it a core element of an emerging Republican majority.

I recently met with Rev. Sam Rodriquez, the leader of the national association of Evangelical Latino churches. He’s a Republican dream: pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and a Bush voter. He notes that the growing religious faith and the increase in Evangelical enrollment — particularly in the Pentecostal Church — may presage a sea change in Hispanic political affiliations.

I guess that Morris has despaired of convincing religious conservatives that they should just shut up and vote for Rudy. Now he is attempting to convince us that the illegal Mexican peasants are really wannabe Republicans because some of them are converting to Christianity.

First off let me welcome my Mexican brothers and sisters in Christ to the faith and urge them to read the 13th chapter of the Book of Romans. After this I'm sure that they will comply with the Lord's command to obey secular law and return to Mexico to await legal entry into this country.

Next I would remind Morris that a person's economic status has more to do with his political affiliation than his profession of faith. The fact is that Democrats are always going to pay more for votes than Republicans and unless the average wetback suddenly gets a college degree and a middle class job they're not going to start voting Republican no matter where they go to church.

The most likely outcome of this trend, if it continues, is a change in the Democrat Party's stance on abortion. This will be amusing to watch as the new Latino block battles for domination of the Democrat Party with the old guard of the Marxist/feminist/labor axis.

Morris then goes on to say:

It is pure folly to say that we will force 11 million people back across the border in order to obtain legal entry. Such a forced population movement would be unparalleled in American history and would be reminiscent of German-Polish-Russian forced migrations during the years right before, during, and after World War II.

Notice the change in rhetoric. Before it was flatly impossible to move that many people out of the country. Not impossible politically, but physically impossible. Now the possibility of moving that many people is acknowledged but doing so would make us Nazis or Stalinists.

Let me give Mr. Morris a lesson in morality. Moving a large number of people from one place to another place is a morally neutral act. The good or bad of it comes from the identity of the people being moved, the reason they are being moved and the destination they are being sent to.

The Germans moved innocent Jews to extermination camps for the purpose of committing genocide. The Russians moved innocent people who desired freedom behind the Iron Curtain in order to enslave them and moved national populations around inside the Soviet Union in order to divorce them from their ethnic, national and religious roots in order to make them less likely to rebel against the evil oppression of Communism.

These movements of large numbers of people were done by evil people for evil reasons therefore they were evil.

The movement of millions of Jews from all parts of the world to the nation of Israel so that thy might build a Jewish nation where Jewish people can live as Jews is a good thing. Loading large numbers of New Orleans residents onto school buses and moving them out of the path of hurricane Katrina would have been a good thing.

Moving millions of alien criminals out of the United States where they have no right to be and where they are doing far more harm than good back to their homeland where they have every right to be and where they have the potential of doing far more good than harm (by becoming involved in the Mexican political process and reforming their nation so that it no is longer a poverty stricken hell-hole which people seek to flee from) would be a GOOD THING.

But as good as rounding them all up and moving them home in mass would be there is a better and cheaper way.

Cut off all social welfare benifits for them except for emergency medical care (which would be followed up by a free trip back to Mexico) and land like the proverbial wrath of God upon those businesses who hire them and when they see that there is no possibility of making a living in the US they will deport themselves back to Mexico. Or maybe they'll try their luck in Canada, which is actively seeking immigrants. Either way it won't be America's problem any more.

Some Europeans are still our friends

I'm moving this to the top because I don't want it to be overlooked.



This was produced by the website Britain and America.com. Here is what they say about it:

It is impossible to make detailed arguments inside two minutes but the advert points to the many political, economic and technological benefits of an outward-looking America. This website is a passionate believer in the special transatlantic relationship and will continue to fill these pages with arguments against the anti-Americanism that is sweeping too much of Europe.

The ties which bind together Great Britain and her children, the US, Canada and Australia are deep and strong and will not be eaisly severed.