You have to give credit where credit is due.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Saturday, December 31, 2005
The message of a picture.
This photo won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize as part of a package submitted by the Associated Press. It is described this way:
A gunman, center left, holds a pistol to the head of an Iraqi election worker lying in Baghdad's Haifa Street on Sunday. The man kneeling at right is also an election worker who was pulled from the car.
This is the story behind the photograph.
One of the Pulitzer photographs carried the credit line "stringer." Fearing deadly reprisals, the photographer remained unidentified after he photographed insurgents, pistols in hand, murdering election workers. Tipped by a colleague about burning vehicles in a city street, the photographer went to the scene and found two cars that were bombed. One continued to burn. Others in the street directed traffic away from the scene. The photographer left his cameras in his car some distance away and sought information from the crowd. "None of your business," he was told. He returned to his car, at which time an explosion nearly knocked him down. He turned and saw armed men in the intersection attacking election workers. Using his camera with 400-mm lens, he shot the scene as two of the election workers were shot to death in the intersection.Tonight when you go to bed, I want you to think about those two election workers. I want you to think about how boring our voting process is. So much so that half of us don't even bother to vote. I want you to think about a people willing to risk a terrifying death to work at the polls. And they paid for it with their lives.
And I want you to think about another thing. The men who shot these people in cold blood do not deserve to walk on this earth. They are evil. We throw that word around alot here until it means nothing. But it does mean something. It means no conscience. It means deliberate innocent death. It means hating a free election so badly that they would drag men out of their cars and execute them in the middle of the street.
This is who we fight and this is why we fight.
via Alive In Baghdad
Some Stuff.
After two decades three big oil companies are back in Lybia. My goodness, things are a'changing. And as Ace says about Bush: "... he peacefully, diplomatically gets countries to renounce WMD's and terrorism for his oil buddies, too. Are there no limits to this man's nefarious machinations??" Heh.
In the "Nothing Sacred" segment. Ugh.
I will say that I may find things objectionable that many may find mild. That is because I haven't wandered into the nasty side of the internet. If you have, then my complaints might seem... quaint.
For my commenters who were mentioning concern over Iraqi civilian deaths, you might be interested in this.
via Ace
Peace Like A River (a milblog) sees an insurgency collapsing. For those worried about recruitment, maybe this will ease your mind.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Women Who Make the World Worse.
Kate O'Beirn has been a favortie NRO writer of mine forever. She talked to Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO about her new book "Women Who Make The World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Agenda Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports." Who knew she was so funny too? Here is the interview. I love her.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Kate, knowing you and your reputation, I was not surprised to read that you were a traitor to your sex even in law school. Does wanting to see other women fail just come naturally to you?
Kate O'Beirne: Having been raised with three sisters and educated by women in a girls-only high school and all-female college, it was jarring to find myself labeled as a traitor to my sex. Some of my best friends were women! But I never believed that men and women were interchangeable, that marriage was a patriarchal plot, or that women's equality rested on abortion rights. So wanting to see feminists fail came naturally to me.
Lopez: You mentioned the influence of the women in your background. But does being the mother of boys make you especially sensitive to women who make male lives worse?
O'Beirne: The men in our lives can shape our views on the most destructive ideology afoot. I have long thought that if high-school boys had invited homely girls to the prom we might have been spared the feminist movement. We live with the destructive feminist agenda because the fathers or husbands of so many of them, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Jane Fonda, never failed to fail them. The views of these angry, abandoned women inform the modern women's movement.
Lopez: You write that "A battle was won when the ETA was defeated, but feminists went on to win the war." How did they win — it lost, for Pete's sake — and if they won why don't they act like winners?
O'Beirne: What feminists couldn't impose by constitutional amendment (thanks to Phyllis Schlafly) they have imposed through the schools, college faculties, and the culture, by judicial fiat and advocacy dressed up as legislation. Don't be fooled by their militant insistence that women's equality has been thwarted. These women are chronically dissatisfied and qualified for only one job: professional feminist. They are generously paid, largely by taxpayers, but also by corporations anxious to look good on "women's issues." The fact that American women are the most privileged women in the history of mankind (woops!) must be vehemently denied.
Because their goal of a sex-blind society is frustrated by biology (see my last chapter — "Mother Nature Is a Bitch"), feminists' schemes are increasingly coercive. In that sense, they are losers.
Lopez: You write that "The Jobs Rated Almanac reveals that twenty-three of the twenty-five jobs rated as the worst are over 90 percent male." I bet a man wrote that.
O'Beirne: That's just one of the many uncomfortable facts that feminists ignore in order to make their dishonest claims. Men make up 54 percent of the workforce, but account for 92 percent of job-related deaths. Jobs that are flexible, fulfilling, and safe (so typically favored by women) pay less. Feminists hate it when that happens.
Lopez: Seriously though, feminist always go on about unequal pay when most pay discrepancies simply make sense and are, in fact, fair, right? Why can't anyone get them to shut up?
O'Beirne: The persistent fable that women are denied equal pay for equal work has been a never-empty tank of gas that fuels feminism. A sympathetic public is largely unaware that the claim that women face widespread wage discrimination is a myth aggressively advanced by feminists. Disparities in wages exist between women with children and men and single women. This is not sex discrimination, but if that were better understood feminists would have to get real jobs.
Lopez: Abortion gets the rap as the topic you can't bring up in polite company, but daycare is pretty incendiary too. Talk about day care's healthy and developmental drawbacks and you're mommy warring. But our reticence to talk about it is a problem, isn't it?
O'Beirne: Any discussion of day care's drawbacks invites the wrath of the child-care industry and their friends in the media. Proponents of the male model of career success for women and substitute care for young children — typically working mothers themselves — use subterfuge and censorship to thwart the free choices women make. As you'll learn in Chapter 2, "Day Care Good; Mother Bad," the propagandists don't just insist that day care benefits children, they see stay-at-home mothers as a timid and fearful lot whose full-time attention damages their children.
Lopez: In 1977, Jean Stapleton, hanging out with Bella Abzug announced that Edith Bunker would support the ERA "if she understood it." Does that pretty much sum up what the feminist establishment thinks of many American women?
O'Beirne: The modern feminist movement has never enjoyed the allegiance of a majority of American women and that condescension represents feminists' explanation when confronted with the evidence. The rest of us are too stupid to recognize our oppression. One of the most celebrated feminists you'll meet in the book dismisses the surveys reporting that married women are happier than single women by attributing their contentment to being "slightly mentally ill."
Lopez: "Modern feminism's biggest enemies are the smallest humans." Without caricaturing the Left too much: What about "Her body, her choice?" People get into tough situations. Is it really fair to characterize it as a war against unborn children?
O'Beirne: Feminist fundamentalism holds that the battle of the sexes can't be won unless women make war on the tiniest enemies of their independence. How can we be the equal of men when our bodies betray us? These women aren't arguing that abortion must be available for the hard cases. They believe that women's fertility makes us inherently inferior to men, so there can be no restrictions at all on abortion. Lacking the public's support for their radical abortion agenda, they wrap their demands in a tissue of euphemisms and lies and fiercely fight to keep the issue in the courts insulated from public opinion. The majority of the public, including the majority of women, oppose the majority of abortions.
Lopez: Why do you raise questions about women in the military while we're at war? Don't we need every man or woman we can get in our overstretched military?
O'Beirne: In the lull of peacetime, regulations that kept women in uniform at a safe distance from combat were lifted. We are now paying the price and being made to think that our national defense rests on the ability to deploy teenage girls and single mothers. What a disgrace. In the name of a phony equality, the military shouldn't ask women to serve where they don't have an equal chance to survive. Experience with integrating the service academies and the great majority of military specialties has shown that women can't and don't meet the male physical standards. The institutionally self-confident Marine Corps hasn't integrated its basic training and has little trouble recruiting the kind of good men who recognize that women should be protected from physical threats.
Lopez: Do you want men to beat their wives? How can you be against the Violence Against Women Act?
O'Beirne: It's possible to recognize that physical abuse within a relationship shouldn't be considered a "private matter" and not support enacting an ideological agenda dressed up as legislation. The feminist conviction that marriage is inherently abusive and all men potential assailants won a federal imprimatur, and well over $1 billion, with this legislation that congressmen were too intimidated to resist. This program, packed with feminist pork, has the female psychologist who declared that "all female-male relationships [are] more or less abusive" on the public payroll training police, prosecutors, and judges.
Lopez: Was there ever a gender gap? There had to be a problem selling George W. Bush to women or the campaign would have never bothered with a "W Is for Women" gimmick, right?
O'Beirne: What can I say? Republicans can be dopey about the so-called gender gap. It was first aggressively promoted in 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat Carter among women voters, but by a smaller margin than his win among men. Hyping the supposedly intractable gender gap was useful to browbeat Walter Mondale into picking a female running mate. While Geraldine Ferraro was busy making history on the other ticket, Reagan was winning over women voters — by a margin of 56 to 44. As I show, convincingly I hope, there is no monolithic women's vote and there is no monolithic women's agenda.
Lopez: What's the worst thing that women who make the world worse do?
O'Beirne: They put us at war with the men in our lives, the fathers, husbands, and sons who love and support us. Because men don't like arguing with women and naively assumed that if they gave feminists what they wanted they would be left alone, the allegedly fierce patriarchy collapsed in the face of the feminist assault. The moral intimidation feminists inflict on men means that other women have to take on the modern, destructive women's movement. In the pages of my book you will meet some of the smart, admirable women who take on the feminists. The feminist message is crippling to our daughters, but we mothers of sons in particular have to defend our offspring. We are not raising unindicted co-conspirators in the gender wars!
Lopez: Has Hillary Clinton's work making the world worse only begun? Would a President Rodham Clinton unleash a destructive feminist nightmare on the world much worse than anything Geena Davis could ever portray?
O'Beirne: Oh boy. Hillary Clinton is a committed feminist. She's a true believer in the grievance agenda and promotes the myth of stunted progress for women's equality. She would reliably be one of the women who make the world worse by endorsing all of feminism's pet causes — strict sex quotas for college sports, "girl power" in our schools, the "epidemic" of domestic violence, abortion on demand (despite her phony rhetoric), universal, federally funded day care, enforced "equal pay for equal work" and women in combat. I have to lie down now.
The "Nothing Is Sacred" series continues.
— Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.
Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he's not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.
"It is an active statement against Christianity," Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."
The label's makers say it's more of a joke, but Atldax insists his graphic designs have a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, a "force of evil" that he blames for sparking wars throughout history.
Why don't they just go ahead and make "Jew" jeans with lots of pockets for all the money they make. Or maybe a label with Auschwitz and a smiley face? Or a Muslim blowing himself up? Or a "black person" jean showing him hanging from a tree.
Come on! Why not? If we are gonna offend 1.2 billion people on this planet let's include the rest!!!
Why is it OK to offend Christians, but not anyone else?
Just Keep Us Safe.
The Washington Post has an article on Bush, the CIA, and covert operations.
"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert
action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to
2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert
action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty
details of operations."
See now, this is the kind of President I want when we are fighting these kinds of monsters. He doesn't give a damn about what past Presidents did, he promised he would protect us and he did. And that is one fact no one, not even the Michael Moore types, can argue with.
There are complaints from former CIA officials that Bush will justify anything based on the resolution passed soon after 9-11:
... authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those
nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."
Which is why Bush was re-elected. I haven't seen one thing that Bush has done that hurts Americans or tramples on our rights. What he has done is make sure none of these blood thirsty insane terrorists get NEAR US.
The blowup over the wiretapping is nothing more than the Democrats way of making an issue out of nothing to make Bush look bad. Period.
The GTS program mentioned in the article, which is "the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War", was Bush's way of shaking up the CIA and getting together the type of covert organization we BADLY needed to protect us. I just don't understand how anyone could have a problem with that.
The article seems to want to paint a picture of a President shutting Congress out with little accountability. But I see a President determined to create a way to keep us safe and knowing that Congress and others would leak information that was vital to doing that (and God knows we have seen plenty of that), he chose to rely on those who know how to be a efficient spy organization.
I think most Americans understand that we are fighting an evil force never encountered before. Not an army that seeks to overthrow or invade, but individuals that simply want to kill us. US. You and me and anyone American. And they will kill themselves in order to do it.
Remember when Clinton said he almost "got Bin Laden?" Remember when the 9-11 commission detailed how we completely missed the clues of the planning of 9-11? All of these types of things were what were unacceptable to President Bush. Another attack was just not going to happen on his watch.
We believed him. We re-elected him. And for once, a politician kept his promise. So the Democrats can whine and complain, but they can't deny the fact that we have been SAFE.
via Red State (which has an excellent take on it as well)
Nothing Sacred.
I think I'll start a series called "Nothing Sacred" that chronicles the offensive and degrading things some people come up with. I've mentioned the Dennis O'Leary Christmas special and The SouthPark episode about Mother Mary. So now you have this:
Controversial images of Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush and Jacques Chirac
apparently having sex have been removed from billboards in Austria.
It's art, don't cha know?
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Stuff.
As you can see I now have comments on the sidebar. I like it because you can instantly see if there is a response to your comment. I also got my blockquote thing fixed. All this courtesy of the so very sweet MacStansbury.
Now, news of the weird:
A Central Dauphin School District teacher faces charges of assaulting a
Lower Paxton Twp. police officer and possession of illegal drugs after being
arrested earlier this month while standing naked in the snow outside of his
home, police said.
It goes on to say:
According to court papers, when Lofton was asked if he was okay, he
responded, "No, I am ... crazy, and I need a menthol cigarette."
When
asked
where he lived and why he was naked, Lofton is alleged to have said
that he was
"Jesus Christ" and that the officer must be "God," court papers
say.
A
scuffle broke out between the two men during which Lofton is
alleged to have hit
the officer over the head with a long plastic toy
trumpet which he scooped up
from nearby.
The officer used his pepper
spray on Lofton, at first to no
avail. Then a cursing Lofton advised the
officer that "'Jesus' is now blind,"
court papers say.
H/T BigDog
What is it with teachers these days? They seemed to have turned into postal workers with drugs rather than guns.
I'm grateful.
The Ithaca Journal is encouraging Blue state people to take a walk on the Red side. He graciously included me in this walk:
For a different view of the war, if you have Internet access, take time on two days to read a military blog such as the Mudville Gazette (www.mudvillegazette.com) and an Iraqi blog such as The Messopotamian (http://messopotamian.blogspot.com).
For a different view of domestic politics, read two days of black conservative La Shawn Barber (www.lashawnbarber.com/), of the gay conservatives at Gay Patriot (http://gaypatriot.net), and of the hot conservative blond Rightwing Sparkle (www.rightwingsparkle.blogspot.com.
Finally, go to church or mosque and give thanks for the blessings in our lives, the blessings we in all our differentness are for each other, and the genius of those who built the sturdy constitutional framework that shelters us all.
I'll go give thanks that at age 40ish someone still calls me "hot." (my mom made me change the age thing...;-)
Sometimes you have to wonder if this stuff isn't just made up.
Mosnews has this:
A man charged with the attempted murder of the U.S. President George Bush in Georgia (Russia) has sewed up his mouth in what he says is a protest at a violation of his rights.
via The Jawa Report
The Bottom line on the wiretapping story.
From President Bush:
I want to make clear to the people listening that this program is limited in nature to those that are known al Qaeda ties and/or affiliates. That’s important. So it’s a program that’s limited, and you brought up something that I want to stress, and that is, is that these calls are not intercepted within the country. They are from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa. So in other words, this is not a—if you’re calling from Houston to L.A., that call is not monitored. And if there was ever any need to monitor, there would be a process to do that.
A reminder about the current state of the law, from the 2002 FISA Court of Review ruling:
The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President’s power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government’s contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable.
via Protein Wisdom (who has tons of more detailed posts on this if you are so inclined)
The Good News.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- When troops from the Georgia National Guard raided a Baghdad home in early December, they had no idea that their mission in Iraq would take a different turn.
Read the whole thing.
via Michael Yon
Ridiculous misconceptions.
If you want to get a peek inside the mind of an everyday liberal look no further than the Buzzflash mailbag. The actual site is pretty looney too, but here are a few gems from the mailbag:
The fact remains that only a small minority of people in this country hold right-wing views. I'll take my true liberal positions and match them up against another person's true conservative positions and my views would be more popular in Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, or any Southern State than the true right-wing positions. (And, no, I don't want to hear about how one can't find liberals in small towns. The liberals there only remain silent because they fear violence. If you all speak out, you will put the cons back in their place.) Big Dave From Queens
A small minority? Right. And yes, if I hear a liberal speak out around here I will kick their a**. That's right. Right in front of my four kids and parish Priest. Break some bones, draw some blood. You betcha.
Seriously. This person BELIEVES this. Good grief! Does he even know anyone who is conservative???? Read on.
Apparently Cindy Sheehan visited Oklahoma City for an anti-war appearance recently. My friend reports that goons were all over the place taking pictures of everybody who came to hear Cindy and other war protesters. No doubt license plates were taken, too. In the small community where he is living, which will remain anonymous for his safety (and I'm not kidding), the locals are adamantly pro-war and pro-Bush. Most think anybody who dares to speak out against the administration, the president or the war should not be allowed to. I've heard comments on local talk radio to the same effect: freedom of speech and expression should apply only to those who support Bush and everything he does.
These people, at least, don't have to worry about being spied on at a local library. You'll never find one of these simpletons reading a book, unless Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly have someone read it to them. Scott Fayetteville, AR
Right. Cindy Sheehan is SUCH a threat that the CIA is all over her. You did catch the "for his safety" part? What paranoia are these people living with?
Even on sites that are much more conservative than I am, I have never heard one suggest that liberals shouldn't have a voice. And just because we differ on political opinions we are not intelligent? We don't read? Geeze.
Regarding the wiretap program:
"Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."
I was appalled to learn from Bush that there are people running around this country who have a history of blowing up trains, weddings and churches.
Gosh, every American must have bombed at least one train or church or wedding by now, since Bush is illegally and un-Constitutionally using the NSA to spy on all of us.
In order to keep myself out of harm's way in these troubled times, I hereby vow not to get married in a church while a derailed train comes crashing through it. Thanks for the heads-up, Mr. President! Jon Krampner Los Angeles, California
This one is particularly sad and disturbing. Does this guy not remember the recent wedding in Jordan where a celebration was turned into a bloodbath??? The carnage of the blown up train in Madrid??? Perhaps the reasons he feels so safe here, safe enough to be sarcastic about such a serious threat, is that Bush and our military have made us safe since 9-11. And did it ever occur to him that one of the ways we have been safe IS BY WIRETAPPING!!!! So we know what the bad guys are planning???
I have many liberals who comment here. Please tell me that these people do not represent you in any way. Please.
Iraqi elections.
This is why I love the blogopsphere. Where else can I get this kind of information direct from an Iraqi on the day he writes it? (link fixed)
Another losing issue for the Democrats.
WND has this:
According to Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports, 64 percent of respondents said the super-secret NSA should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. Just 23 percent disagreed, the survey found.
The liberals can't win for losing. You will see they have their teeth sunk into this and they are not going to let go and it's a losing issue. It also makes it seem as if they don't care about national security.
The article also says:
...defense lawyers in terrorism cases around the country say they are preparing letters and legal briefs to challenge the NSA program on behalf of their clients..
Isn't that special? The NYT's, who broke the story, is now responsible for terrorists suspects to do some legal wrangling and waste more of our tax dollars.
To liberals it seems nothing is more important than to make Bush look bad. To hell with the consequences.
Maybe some things are sacred?
I was just hammering on Comedy Central, but it seems it yanked a South Park episode about a Mary statue and the Pope called "Bloody Mary."
I can't bring myself to describe it. Read about it here.
I've never watched Southpark, but from what I've heard nothing, and I mean nothing, is sacred. So I wonder why they backed off here?
Interesting.
UPDATE: One of my commenters said he saw the episode last week on Comedy Central so boing boing was incorrect that it didn't run.
It was too much to hope for.
UPDATE2: Looking into it a bit more it seems that Comedy Central was running a mini-marathon and THAT is where they declined to re-air it.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Virgin Mobile or MAD TV?
I'm flipping through channels and there is some kind of holiday themed commercial for a cell phone. What caught my attention is when two guys using the phone said, "Let's ask a Jew!!" I was like.. what???? And then it shows 2 men dressed as orthodox Jews on the cell phone and next it shows a guy dressed up as an elf answering a phone with a sign in front of him that says "gay elf" and he says "call me if your curious."
At this point I'm thinking it must be MAD TV or something, but nope, the Virgin Mobil label came across the TV at the end.
What the heck????? Anyone else seen this?
I found this while looking for the ad on the internet. Seems Virgin Mobile is kind of known for this stuff. Who knew?
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