Saturday, August 26, 2006

Our Biggest Challenge.

This is what we must change:




h/t Doug

Ah, The high class world of...

..Bill Maher. Who can stand this guy? Seriously. And I don't care how much Hitchens knows about the Middle East, he's as classless as Bill.

Video clip (41 seconds): Real (1.2 MB) or Windows Media (1.4 MB), plus MP3 audio (250 KB)

Trading Visas for Jewlery and strippers?

Mix in Al Qaeda, a past with selling tanzanite to finance the embassy bombing in 1998 and an indicted 22-year State Department veteran and you have a movie being shopped around at Paramount?

No. It's the real thing.

Gee...

I guess some congressional campaigns take bloggers pretty seriously.

I'm sickened, but not surprised.

In case you missed this at Ace:
The Huffington Post sorta wishes for another 9-11 so the right can stop already with this "Bush kept us safe" crap.

It boggles the mind.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Open Thread Friday

I'll be having a fun day at the doctor's office having my 9 yr old's hand set.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Ok, I feel better. I think.

"Does the United States have the power to eliminate terrorists and the states that support them? In terms of capacity, as opposed to will, the answer is a clear yes.
Think about it. Currently, the U.S. has an arsenal of 18 Ohio class submarines. Just one submarine is loaded with 24 Trident nuclear missiles. Each Trident missile has eight nuclear warheads capable of being independently targeted. That means the U.S. alone has the capacity to wipe out Iran, Syria or any other state that supports terrorist groups or engages in terrorism -- without risking the life of a single soldier."


But Walter Williams doesn't think we have the will to use it. We are too beholden to world opinion he says. He reminds us of history:

"Such an argument would have fallen on deaf ears during World War II when we firebombed cities in Germany and Japan. The loss of lives through saturation bombing far exceeded those lost through the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the battle of Midway, and the long string of Japanese defeats in the Pacific, including Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines, had today's Americans been around, they'd be willing to negotiate with Japan for peace, pointing to the additional loss of lives if we continued the war.
More than likely they would have made the same argument in 1945, when German defeat was imminent. Of course, had there been a peace agreement with Japan and Germany, all it would have achieved would have been to give them time to recoup their losses and resume their aggression at a later time, possibly equipped with nuclear weapons.


We might also note that the occupation of Germany and Japan didn't pose the occupation problems we face in Iraq. The reason is we completely demoralized our enemies, leaving them with neither the will nor the means to resist."

He ends with this:

"Anyone who thinks current Western appeasement efforts will get Iran to end its nuclear weapons program and end its desire to eliminate Israel is dumber than dumb. Appeasement will strengthen Iran's hand, and it looks as if the West, including the United States, is willing to be complicit in that strengthening."

He says he isn't suggesting we use our nuclear power, but I'm not sure how we deal with Iran if appeasement won't work. Do we wait for something so dreadful that it is necessary? All I know is that it did make me feel a bit better to read about our nuclear capacity. It's the gun in the closet at our home that we hope to never ever use. But if someone breaks in and tries to attack those we love, we are so very glad we have it.

h/t BigDog

Concerned.

"The Iranian news service Al-Borz, which is known to have access to sources in the Iranian government, predicted that on the first anniversary of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's government, in late August 2006, Ahmadinejad is expected to announce what the news service called Iran's "nuclear birth."

In addition, an August 23, 2006 article about Iran's reply to the incentives proposal, that was posted on the Iranian Foreign Ministry-affiliated website www.tehrantimes.com , implied that Iran's nuclear technology had already reached the point of no return: "... If the West is seeking to impede Iran's nuclear industry, it should realize that Iran has passed this stage."


Link Here. via Ace

I've been posting my concern over Iran for a while, but I found this post I wrote back in January:

I have known people against the war. But they aren't against the war for the same reason my lefty friends are. No, it's a whole different kind of reason. I mentioned this thing with Iran to one of them.

"We better not go into Iran," she said.

"Why not?," I asked. "Are you sick of war? I know I am too. I hate the thought of any more...but..."

"No, no. It's not that. It's just..why should we care about them? We proved our point after 9-11. Let's just focus on building some walls and securing our borders. Let's stop letting the Muslims come here and just let them blow themselves up over there. If we leave them alone long enough they will destroy each other. Good riddance"

Alright then. I see this attitude sometimes. The "who cares about them, let's focus on us" kind of thing and more people feel that way than you might imagine.

Many on the right might argue that if we don't do something about the Middle East now, then it will come back to haunt us later. They argue that if we retreat it will only give our enemy more of a feeling of power. To them it is all about keeping us safe by killing the enemy there.

But is it so hard to believe that many of us have been touched by what we have seen on our television screen? A world so backwards that at first you think you are watching a movie about the world long ago. The streets are dusty and people dress as Jesus did. Women are covered in burkas and there is no music in the air, no young girls putting on makeup or fixing their hair. Everyone has lost a loved one to brutality in one way or another. There is concrete and sadness. Has it always been this way. Will it always be?

And what about Iran? A world even worse than Saddam's Iraq. I read in Vanity Fair and posted here about the young girl hanged from a crane in the middle of the city for having sex. As much as I hate so many things about America, it's abortion and pornography, I would hate more an America where we aren't free to decide what we want in our country. I would hate an America that punishes it's sinners of the soul. We can scold them, we can protest them, we can vote them out, we can forgive them, and we can love them. But the sins of our souls is the sad slow dance we have with God and it is ours alone.

Is it so hard to believe that so many of us want a better world for those imprisoned in a desert void of dreams? Where a girl doesn't have to hide her life behind folds of cloth? Where men don't see heaven as a virginal brothel?

This world has held fast to a backward time for far too long. The birth into this century, I fear, will be a bloody and painful one. Even more bloody and painful than it has already been. Great things come at great costs. I don't have the answers and I wish to God they didn't involve war, but when a creature attacks you, do you hope to pacify it? Or do you fight like hell to kill it before it kills you? Especially when you know that beast has caused so much suffering of others and if you defeat it, then the suffering eases and the world is not so much afraid.

Don't try and tell me that we are just 2 faces of the same coin. We are not.

Because we are free.

And no one can ever convince me that being free isn't always....right.

Women! Know Your Limits!



Hilarious!!!

I soooo don't know my limits...;-)

h/t CraigC

Sorry for the light blogging this week.

I have two boys playing football and one of them hurt his hand. We had to go to the Doctor to see if it was fractured. Why don't Doctor's offices have X-ray machines? Doesn't it seem pretty logical to have that there? But no, I have to drive another 15 min to get his X-ray done. Now I am waiting to see what the verdict is. I left the house at 9:30am and got back at 1:00pm. How do full time working mothers do this???

And since I am ranting here, why do medical facilities ask to xerox your insurance card, which has all the information they need, and then require you to write that very same information down again??? And why do they ask for your address three separate times on the same information sheet? And why do they need an address for an emergency contact? Are they going to mail them notice of a emergency? No. All they need is a contact number. Am I right? And why can't I just go directly to get an x-ray? I pay the doctor to look at a swollen hand and say "Well, we won't know anything until it's x-rayed." Well, duh.

Update: Well, his hand is broken. He is going to be so upset that he can't play football or baseball. Man. And now I have to go back to the place for the X-rays, pick them up and take them to the Doctor to get his hand set. I figure a good half day right there. Again, how do working mothers do this??

Conservatism defined.

As I noted in my video blogging below there are many different types of conservatives. Although "crazy libertarian" and "naughty agnostic Jewish academic" may be apt terms for some, Townhall.com did a better job of defining us:

"From the start, the conservatives recognized the existence of a group of country cousins who called themselves "libertarians." The libertarians had been around for a while. Their big obsession was government, which they wanted to keep as small as possible. The conservatives had considerable sympathy for this view, but thought there was more to conservatism than just that. Moreover, the libertarians' antagonism to government action kept them from endorsing wholeheartedly government measures needed to win the Cold War.

Things rocked along this way until the mid-1960s, when a small but influential group of liberals and leftists -- mostly New Yorkers -- got fed up with liberal acquiescence in the antics of the noisy New Left (especially in opposing the Cold War) and broke with liberalism altogether. This group, led by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, long resisted being called conservatives, but eventually agreed to be described as "neoconservatives."

In the early 1970s, a group of young conservatives -- led by Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips -- began arguing that a large number of formerly Democratic blue-collar workers were ripe for recruitment by the conservatives on the basis of their social values (the family, etc.), which were under heavy attack from the left. They were labeled the "New Right," and their analysis was correct: In 1980, millions of former Democrats backed Reagan. Meanwhile, in 1978 a liberal move (subsequently abandoned) to eliminate the tax deductibility of religious schools so alarmed politically quiescent Christians that they organized themselves for political action. Thus was born the "Religious Right."

Read the rest.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

30 days of bias

I had to stop watching "30 Days" on the FX channel tonight. They took a young woman who works at an abortion clinic and sent her to spend 30 days at a pro-life maternity home and pregnancy crisis center run by a Pastor and his wife.

I have always enjoyed these "30 days" shows, even though it is obvious that Morgan Spurlock, the producer, is biased and liberal, he still does a good job. But this one was so wrong on so many levels I just had to stop watching it. First of all, he said there are over 4000 pregnancy crisis centers in the U.S., yet he had to find the one run by an older white man. Right. But that is fine because it is obvious from watching that this pastor is taking care of women that no one seems to want to help. The one thing they never pointed out, as the young woman from the abortion clinic kept referring to "choice", was that her abortion "choice" costs women a few hundred bucks, whereas all this pastor was doing for the women, including housing and food for them after birth, was free. Which one is easier to do? Which one is more compassionate? Which one takes sacrifice and generosity of the soul? I think we all know the answer.

But the last straw for me was when the young women sees some pamphlets at the pro-life center that have a picture of an 11 week old unborn child and she turns to the camera and says "I have seen an abortion at eleven weeks and it doesn't look like this." Ok. Let's think about this. I don't suppose it did look like that since the baby was torn apart and no longer intact. But they just let her statement go. Also, it isn't like this is a big mystery. It is quite easy to see what an 11 week old unborn baby looks like. She could check any medical journal. My link is for expectant moms and not political in the least. She could even look at a sonogram if she wished. I suppose it's better to just pretend to yourself that the bloody mess you saw never did look like a real baby.

The owner of the abortion clinic must have referred to a 1982 bombing at her clinic about 3 or 4 times, wanting to leave the impression that pro-lifers are violent. When the truth is that the entire pro-life movement, up to the leader of Operation Rescue, condemned any and all violence to abortion clinics.

The young woman stands away from the Pastor and his wife as they try to talk to some women going into an abortion clinic, telling them that they can help the women have their babies. The young woman is disturbed by this, saying that this day is hard enough for a woman. Let's think about this again. All the pastor was doing was offering help. Not judging, not condemning. Do you think it is fun to stand on a sidewalk and look like a nut trying to help women from making the biggest mistake of their lives? I'm sure it is easy to be so self satisfied thinking you are "helping women" as you book appointments for them in a nice air conditioned office and receiving a paycheck to do it. Who is really going out on a limb for women here?

Ugh. I can't stand it.

Men!

A guy would rather you think he is a terrorist than admit he needs some help in the intimate areas of life.

Momma's boy too. Which explains a lot. Heh. via boing boing

News Alert!

Nuclear war will erupt on Sept. 12th, 2006. One third of the people on earth will die.

On the bright side, this will help will population control and global warming. (although, I'm guessing a nuclear bomb will probably heat things up a bit) Have a nice day!!! via boing boing

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Video blogging!



I cannot tell you what a pain in the butt this was to do for someone who knows nothing about this kind of thing. First of all no matter what I did it starts with this goofy face! And now I can't even find it at YouTube, although I have an e-mail into the editor because I assigned it to the Houston Chronicle group. I decided to explain the political blogosphere to those who don't know much about it.

I didn't have a tripod, so I just made do and guessed I was at the right place. This is Dork 101 here folks.

Oh well, first try. Enjoy.

Here is the link at Youtube. I found it.

Spending some time with the President.

John at Powerline got to get some up close and personal time with President Bush.

I think he was impressed.

This is why I am for McCain.


This is her TENTH Time magazine cover and she isn't even running yet (officially). The cover is legit, the writing not, but you weren't sure, were you? This is what we will face. A blitz of love from the media during the entire campaign. We here in the political blogosphere can go over the issues and her past again and again, but the truth is that most Americans don't read us and they do read Time and other Democrat loving MSM outlets.

via Lundesigns

It's truly amazing...

..the influence the blogosphere is having on the MSM.

Regarding the fake photos scandal, The Boston Herald says "Better no pictures than phony ones."

"It is better for readers and viewers - and for the media - to do without pictures altogether if truth cannot be upheld."

Gee, ya think? Truth. It's all about the truth.

via Michelle

This is my greatest fear.

Reading it from one of my most admired academics really does send chills down my spine:

Thomas Sowell has this:

"It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today."

He continues regarding the threats from North Korea and Iran:

"This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.

Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.


The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work."

The truth everyone ignores:

"Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.

There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves."

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations -- land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west. "

This is what is important to understand, there is no gain that will satisfy them, only the end of us.

He ends with this:

"After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"?

We are fast approaching the point of no return."


So many don't get this. Especially the Democrats. I have yet to hear one, with the exception of Joe Lieberman, that has expressed an understanding of the dangers we face.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Going Green? .....Please.

How did I miss this one on Al Gore?

"Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Gore loves to instruct us on how to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. He claims he lives a "carbon neutral lifestyle."

Yet:

"For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

*note: Why would anyone need a 10,000 square foot home? Isn't it just he and Tipper at the house? Wouldn't a nice condo suffice?

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.


And you know how Bush is all for making money off those "evil" oil companies. Guess what? So is Gore:

"So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either."

Such hypocrisy makes me laugh. He hosts and promotes the biggest hyped film on global warming to date and smugly drives a (expensive) hybrid, yet he heats and cools a 10,000 square foot house he doesn't need, plus two others. Limo liberals are the worst, aren't they?

Forget the rain dance...

Just get naked.

via Fark

more:

I'm embarrassed for him.

I have a feeling it's not just South African women.

JonBenet murder hype? It's Bush's fault, of course.

IDF soldiers still alive.

"An Italian official said Monday that two IDF soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah terrorists on the northern border are still alive but not in “great” condition."

via Cathouse Chat

I totally agree with Juan Williams???

"Banish the Bling" at the WaPo:

"Have we taken our eyes off the prize? The civil rights movement continues, but the struggle today is not so much in the streets as in the home -- and with our children. If systemic racism remains a reality, there is also a far more sinister obstacle facing African American young people today: a culture steeped in bitterness and nihilism, a culture that is a virtual blueprint for failure."

This past weekend I was standing with a group of white college kids waiting to cross the street when a car pulled up ahead of us and parked. It's bumper sticker said "Good people come in all colors." Someone read it out loud and another voice in the back said, "And bad people only come in one color." Everyone laughed. I turned around to say something and caught my daughter's desperate look of "please don't embarrass me" and I didn't say anything. I learned a long time ago that it's useless to try to argue with smart alec kids in a group anyway. But it stayed on my mind, this generation that grew up with diversity and yet still has a stereotype of black people. Reading this article of Juan Williams helps explain why there is still this stereotype. Although I have had friends and co-workers of all colors who are smart, intelligent, and living the American dream, many black Americans don't live the American dream. We have to ask ourselves why given all the strides the black community has made in the last 30 years. I think Juan Williams answers it pretty well.

Check out Hot Air Today!

One of my favorite writers, Mary Katherine Ham from Townhall.com, is standing in for Michelle on the Vent (Video blogging!) Take a look not only because Mary Katherine is very cute, but she is good.

My editor at my Houston Chronicle blog, TexasSparkle, has been encouraging us bloggers over there to videoblog. The Chronicle has it's own group.

Mary Katherine has inspired me. I might try it this week. If I do, you guys will be the first to know.

YouTube Elections.

It really could change everything.

It use to be that a politician might say something stupid and it was reported on once on the nightly news. Now, with cable news, it is repeated quite a few times. But with YouTube it's a forever kind of thing. Anyone, anywhere, can pull it up at anytime.

According to the NYT's article, YouTube didn't even exist until 2005, so we have yet to see how it will affect elections. But rest assured, dumb statements, mistakes, and misspeaking will forever be repeated. As the story points out, there is no editor who might decide not to run the story because he doesn't want his candidate to look bad, or he feels it is shallow or not newsworthy. The power of the decision is up to anyone with a computer.

Just ask George Allen.

Happy Blogoversary to ME!

Two years ago yesterday I started this blog. If I had known how much time it was going to take up and how addicted to it I would become, I never would have started it.

Thanks to all of you for reading me. I'll never understand why you do....;-)

Sunday, August 20, 2006

I can see you guys had fun...

while I was away. Regarding the banning of trolls. I am reluctant to ban anyone unless they keep breaking the rules. This is what I think we should do. If someone makes a civil point of disagreement then answer them in the same fashion. If they are just ranting, using talking points or making over the top ridiculous assertions just type "ignoring trollish behavior" and then IGNORE THEM. I know this is hard to do when you want to point out how idiotic something they said is, but unless they can write it in a debatable form without a bunch of snarkiness and ranting, then they don't deserve to be answered anyway and they will eventually leave.

That's my suggestion anyway.