"Freedom was worth the risk."

I see Jeff Jarvis agrees with me regarding the Nazi slurs:

"I find it offensive, even anti-Semitic, when people equate whatever they don’t like with Nazism, trivializing its horrid crimes, and we see one prime example of this in today’s Times, in Stephen Holden’s over-the-top review of ‘Sophie School: The Final Days.’

"How would you behave during the kind of relentless interrogations that Sophie endures? If sentenced to death for your activities, would you still consider your resistance to have been worth it? In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here?"

"Thus Holden is equating with Nazism and fascism and even the Holocaust with — what? — secret data analysis of international phone calls? Taking off our shoes in airports? Mr. Holden, go down to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and stare at the pile of shoes in Washington and then come back and write such tripe as this. Get your perspective, man. And they say that bloggers go over the top and journalists don’t? Bullsh*t."


One can surf all over the web and find such analogies and comparisons. It's all about America being bad. Here is a taste:

Democrats.com gives is this:

"We now seem to be watching the creation of a new World Order. NAFTA is not raising Third World countries up to America's standards of living, as was publicly intended. Instead, America is being dragged down to the Third World level of living. And once America goes in the dumper, so will Western Europe as well. And the rich Bastards doing this? Well, once they've impoverished all of us, they will still have their money and will buy everything up and have an entire country, and indeeed, an entire Western World of subjucated, endentured servants, along with a bloated military industrial machine ready to do their bidding."

and then more:(emphasis mine)

"All the work of the good people at this site and other sites could easily go for naught if someone doesn't come up with a short term strategy to neutralize this ploy. I ask, no I implore, the intelligent, patriotic, decent people at this site, working so hard to save America from dictatorship, to think about how emotion, and particularly terror, often overules our logical powers, and then in your collective wisdom try to conjure up a strategy to counter the terroism card."

OpEdNew.com gives us this regarding the Patriot Act:

"Those bagpipes you hear playing in the background provide a much-needed funeral dirge for freedom, which died this week at the hands of the United States Congress."


Today I took one of my sons to get a haircut. The woman cutting hair told me she was from Vietnam. During the course of the conversation she told how she came to be an American citizen.

10 years ago she got on a boat where one pays to be taken to America. It is very dangerous and many have died in the crossing. Her parents begged her not to go. It was said that once the boat got out of site another boat from Thailand would approach with men seeking pretty women for wives and they would just take them. So her brother helped to put dirt and make up her face in such a way to look as ugly as possible.

The boat she was on took off and sure enough came a boat from Thailand with men. One of the men started to take her. She started to act irrationally, as if she had mental problems. This is what her brother told her to do. It worked. The man left her and she made it to the United States.

Now she has a family and business and she even travels back to Vietnam to visit her family and give them money. I was quite moved by the story. I said, "I can't imagine how terrible it must have been for you to take such a risk to come here." She said, "Freedom was worth the risk."

When I got back and read that post on the Jeff Jarvis site it really made me angry. These smug elite liberals know nothing of living under a dictatorship. They don't begin to know what it really means to have no freedom. It is so easy to mock America and it's leaders when one is FREE to do so.

This is where oppressed people flee. Even when it means they may give up their life to do so. This is America. With all it's faults, it is still the best place on earth.

Would you vote for this man?

A Dallas Democrat seeking election to the Texas House of Representatives has acknowledged that he once worked as a prostitute.

Tom Malin, a salesman and actor, said he no longer works as a prostitute but conceded that his previous life could cost him the nomination in the March 7 Democratic primary.

"I’ve made mistakes in my life, and I’ve stood before my creator and I’ve accepted responsibility for my behavior," Malin told The Dallas Morning News for its editions today.

[…]

He said Thursday that he would stay in the race.

"I don’t regret my past, nor do I wish to shut the door on my past," he said. "I think anyone who has made mistakes in their lives can be a viable member of community and society."

The picture above is from the gay escort website he was on. I won't make the obvious jokes about one profession not being that different from the other. I'll let you guys do that.

via Lonestar Times

Open Thread

Another busy day.

Democrats have taken more money from Lobbyists.

From the Washington Times:

Democrats have taken more money from lobbyists than Republicans during the past 15 years, according to an independent analysis of campaign contributions.

Since the 1990 election cycle, Democrats have accepted more than $53 million from lobbyists while Republicans have taken more than $48 million for their election campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Data provided by the nonpartisan group also shows that when Democrats controlled Congress in the early 1990s, they consistently hauled in more than 70 percent of the town's lobbyist money. The group is a leading critic of Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay's ties to lobbyists.

"When the Democrats were in charge, they were getting an incredibly higher amount of lobbyist money compared to Republicans," said Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Now that the tables are turned there is parity between the two parties."

Which is why the Abramoff scandal will never gain much traction for Democrats. "The Culture of Corruption" involves both parties and everyone knows it.

via Iowa Voice

Gay Pride Parade.....

We think nothing of it here, right? We shake our heads at some of the more outrageous costumes, but that's about it. Well in Russia they kind of have a different view. Seems the country's Chief Rabbi and Islamic leaders (shocking!) aren't very happy.

Rabbi Berl Lazar on Thursday told the Russian news agency InterFax that if the Gay Pride parade were allowed to go ahead it “would be a blow for morality”.

Russian Mufti Talgat Tajuddin said gays could be killed if they go ahead with pride celebrations in the capital. (story)

Rabbi Lazar on Thursday said that anything promoting what he called “sexual perversions” does not have the right to exist.

"I would like to assure you, that the parade of homosexuals it is not less offensive to the feelings of believers than any caricatures in newspapers," Lazar said, linking the pride parade with the current furor over the cartoons of the Islamic Profit Mohammed published in Denmark.

Welcome to the world of Islamic intolerance. Al Gore can rant all day about so called "abuses on Arabs" in this country, but it is quite obvious where the abuses really are.

Maybe we conservatives can't agree on gay marriage, but we do believe in live and let live. That little thing called freedom. Gee, I wish we could promote it in other cultures.

If you look at it from a global aspect, gays who voted for George Bush may have just voted for the one who truly is defending their rights.

Unfreakingbelievable......

Did you know that in 2001 a van containing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) rolled through a checkpoint at the Westchester County airport injuring a policeman? Well neither did I. Seems there were only 6 reports on it at all and the MSM ignored it. Compare that to the 649 reports on the Cheney incident and media frenzy.

Read about it here. God knows you wouldn't read about it anywhere else. I guess liberals get a pass when they are involved in an accident. Oh, and by the way, "according to Monday's NewsMax report on this issue, neither Hillary nor anyone from her office bothered to apologize to the officer, or check in to see how he was doing."

Lovely.

Net War.

Michelle Malkin's site has been attacked by Muslim hackers. Many other sites have as well. Read about it here.

I have to admit that when I check my stats and see that I have been visited many times by Iran, Syria, and Pakistan, it bothers me. Now, I am not a big enough blogger to bother with, I'm sure, but just not knowing exactly who is reading me from this places is disconcerting.

Here are a few of the e-mails Michelle has received: (forgive the bad language)

From: naser jianpour (n_jianpour@yahoo.com)

To: writemalkin@gmail.comMailed-By: yahoo.comDate: Feb 10, 2006 12:04 PM

Subject: we will kill you
I am Iranian I am a mosleme .We will kill you( every )down with you( Crectian & jowe.)world is mine.
***

From: monalisa monalisa (monalisa23h@hotmail.com)

To: writemalkin@gmail.comMailed-By: hotmail.comDate: Feb 4, 2006 5:55 PM

Subject: you are filth the dishonourable the mean the prostitute I'am a müslim and turkish I killyou devil you are go to the hell shit the whore

I think Michelle is brave to blog. She is one of the best out there and I doubt she makes much money off of it. Now she is facing real threats. Keep her in your prayers.

Let me respectfully disagree.

I have a couple of problems with Howard Kurtz's column at Washington Post.com:

"Bill O'Reilly has been arguing that the shooting doesn't affect the average American one whit but that "the press is making a big deal out of this because they despise Dick Cheney."
I'd concede that the vice president is probably not their favorite politician. But in terms of it "mattering" -- did it matter to the average American that Bill Clinton was fooling around on his wife, or that Vince Foster committed suicide (to pick two matters that seemed to matter a great deal to the conservative commentariat)?"

How can he even compare the two? Both of the latter examples were deliberate. Clinton's was an intentional immoral and unethical act within the White House. Cheney's was an accident and has nothing to do with morality. To compare them is ludicrous.

"Had Cheney addressed this right away, it would have been a far more modest story."

I don't believe that for one second. No matter what Cheney did in contacting the press, they would have blown this up into the media frenzy that it is now. The Vice President shoots someone? Too juicy. Sorry. As Cheney pointed out, accuracy is more important than swiftness. But the opposite is true for the media.

The Jerusalem Post has this:

While riots over the cartoon depiction of Muhammad continue to rage worldwide and controversy surrounds an Iranian newspaper's decision to hold a Holocaust cartoon competition, an Israeli cartoonist has come up with his own ironic - some say misguided - response. And it's attracting a wide audience.
Amitai Sandy, 29, a Tel Aviv graphic artist, has launched the Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest, a challenge, led by Jews, to find the best cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips that demonize the Jewish people.

H/T Muslihoon

An interesting look...

at declassified al Qaeda documents.

Willie Nelson releases gay cowboy song.

I'm not kidding .

It's titled, "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)"

I'm not kidding.

Here are the lyrics:

There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas;
There's many a young boy who feels things he don't comprehend.
Well small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes,
No, small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.
Well I believe in my soul that inside every man there's a feminine,
And inside every lady there's a deep manly voice loud and clear.
Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he does with his women,
But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
What did you think those saddles and boots was about?
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother,
Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.
Ten men for each woman was the rule way back when on the prairie,
And somehow those cowboys must have kept themselves warm late at night.
Cowboys are famous for getting riled up about fairies,
But I'll tell you the reason a big strong man gets so uptight:
Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other

That's why they wear leather, and Levi's and belts buckled tight.
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;
There's many a cowboy who's more like a lady at night.
Well there's always somebody who says what the others just whisper,
And mostly that someone's the first one to get shot down dead:
When you talk to a cowboy don't treat him like he was a sister
Don't mess with the lady that's sleepin' in each cowboy's head.
Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other Even though they take speed and drive pickups and shoot their big guns;
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;
There's many a cowboy who keeps quiet about things he's done.

I'm not kidding.

A Rightwingsparkle Exclusive!!!!

The Dallas Morning News on the Cheney hunting accident: "Kenedy County sheriff's deputies have redoubled their efforts to investigate the case after criticism of their decision not to interview witnesses until a day after the shooting.""Ms. Armstrong said she faxed a detailed account to deputies on Wednesday at the sheriff's request. She said she would have done so sooner if she'd been asked and added that everyone at the ranch has been encouraged to tell the truth about the shooting."

It's apparent that everyone present at the Quail hunt is a Cheney insider so don't expect anything new there, but RWS has obtained an exclusive interview with the one eye witness that ISN'T an insider and the truth of what happened that horrible day of the shooting is shocking! On a tip, I ventured out close to the Ranch to meet with our eyewitness in an undisclosed bush. Meet Mr. Quail.

RWS: Mr. Quail, thank you for meeting with me today.

Mr. Quail: No Problem.

RWS: Walk us through what happened Saturday evening.

Mr. Quail:Well, I was just minding my own business in the bushes at the Ranch when I heard singing.

RWS: Singing?

Mr. Quail: Yep, it was that lawyer fella that got shot. He was singing "I got the Power" by P. Diddy

RWS: And then what happened?

Mr. Quail:Well, I started to fly up, which is kind of hard without wings and all.

RWS: No wings?

Mr. Quail: Yeah. Those rich bastards can't shoot us when we fly, so they saw off our wings so we have to kind of shimmy in the air.

RWS: Ok, then what?

Mr. Quail: Well, I hear this "BOOM" and I feel a bullet just whiz by me and I look down and that lawyer fella is laying on the ground bleeding.

RWS: Was he saying anything?

Mr. Quail: Yes, he was whispering " I would never have told Dickie boy, I promise."

RWS: Told what?

Mr. Quail: I don't know. You humans make no sense to me.

RWS: So then what?

Mr. Quail: Well that Cheney fella hollers at someone to get Karl Rove on the phone and runs over to the bleeding lawyer. It was kind of hard for him to run since he was wearing a toga.

RWS: A toga???!!

Mr. Quail: Yep, they had that "Shout!" song blasting all afternoon and they were drunker than cooter brown.

RWS: Drunk???????

Mr. Quail: Oh yes, Lone Star beer cans were everywhere. Well, someone musta got hold of that Rove fella cuz next thing I know guys in black ninja like outfits were everywhere threatening all those there. They had pictures of their children with with bullseye across their chest. These guys clearly don't mess around. I heard Cheney whisper, "A horse's head in your bed is nothing."

RWS: Oh dear.

Mr. Quail: No kidding. Oh, and by the way, that lawyer fella died right there.

RWS: Died???!! How do you explain that he is in the hospital right now??

Mr. Quail: Well, those ninja guys scooped up the body and it was gone and the next thing I knew one of them was putting on face makeup to look just like him. It was all very "Mission Impossible" like.

RWS: This is astounding.

Mr. Quail: Tell me about it. It was really awful when they killed that reporter that was there. Because it took them a long time. I think they enjoyed it actually.

RWS: OMG! Who was it?

Mr. Quail: I'm not sure, but I think that is why the White House Press Corp was so angry, it was one of their own. No one wants to be the one to report him missing for the obvious reasons.

RWS: Good grief! I guess the left has been right about Cheney all along.

Mr. Quail: Well, yes, but let me tell you I've seen some things out here in the woods involving The Clintons, Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Janet Reno and women of various ages that would make Larry Flynt blush. So all of you humans are pretty much scum to me.

RWS: Well, thank you for your honesty Mr. Quail.

The Saddam Tapes.

Transcripts for last night's Nightline regarding the Saddam tapes are here.

ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney, a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated the tapes for the FBI. Tierney said the U.S. government is wrong to keep these tapes and others secret from the public. "Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them," says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office.
[. . .]
One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts -- during a meeting in the mid 1990s -- a terrorist attack on the United States. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2 and told the British as well ... that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

It goes on:

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."
The tapes also reveal Iraq 's persistent efforts to hide information about weapons of mass destruction programs from U.N. inspectors well into the 1990s . In one pivotal tape-recorded meeting, which occurred in late April or May of 1995, Saddam and his senior aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence of Iraq's biological weapons program--a program whose existence Iraq had previously denied.
At one point Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and the man who was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction efforts can be heard on the tapes, speaking openly about hiding information from the U.N.
"We did not reveal all that we have," Kamel says in the meeting. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct." Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program. (Kamel returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was killed in a firefight with Iraqi security forces.)
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says the tapes are authentic and show that "Saddam had a fixation on weapons of mass destruction and he had a fixation on hiding what he was doing from the U.N. inspectors."

I don't think the tapes reveal anything that reasonable people didn't already know. The one question that no one seems to be asking is how Saddam was so sure that terrorism was coming to the United States?

The tapes do not tell us why they were so determined to hide information for UN inspectors either. If you have nothing to hide, why do this?

via Redstate

As Redstate reminds us:

...the tapes remind us why the world believed Saddam was so dangerous back in the days before the main stream press and looney left started their campaign to revise history with the Bush lied meme.

Sometimes being a Muslim Cleric...

Is. Just. Too. Much.

I go run a few stupid errands...

And I miss this. I suppose the media feeding frenzy will be all over it, right? I mean it's not a hunting accident, but it is something.

Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction will be the subject of an ABC "Nightline" program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.
The tapes are being called the "smoking gun" of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The panel's chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), declined to give the Sun details of the content or context of the recordings, saying only that they were provided to his committee by former federal prosecutor John Loftus.
Loftus has been tight-lipped about the tapes, telling the Sun only that he received them from a "former American military intelligence analyst."
On Tuesday night, Loftus told Cybercast News Service that ABC's "Nightline" would air an "extensive report" on the tapes Wednesday night. Loftus also described an ABC News "teaser," which reportedly contains audio of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with WMD. "Nightline will have a lot more," said Loftus.

via Ace

Hypocrisy abounds.

The leftwing media says Muslim cartoons should not be printed, even within the context of the story. But the Abu Ghraib photos? Go for it. Even though it will clearly anger Muslims.

Which proves that it isn't about not offending Muslims, but making the U.S. look bad.

Dang I missed it!

NRO has this:

VPOTUS ON CHENEY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
I just saw the first excerpt from the Cheney Hume interview on FNC. There will be more to the interview, of course, but what they've shown so far did what was, perhaps, the most important thing: He humanized the whole thing. It's not THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND AN ACCIDENT HE TRIED TO HIDE! It's a man, who happens to be vice president of the United States, who shot a friend in a bad, embarrassing accident. He tells Hume, taking public responsibility for the shooting: "I'm the one who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

I did just see an excerpt and Cheney makes clear that it was his fault and not Mr. Whittington's.

Update: I'm watching the excerpt of why the friend who owned the ranch was the one who put out the story. Cheney said he thought that was a good idea since she was an eye witness. She could give the exact and correct details. She chose a reporter that she knew well. Given the reputations of reporters, I would certainly want to call one I trusted as well.

Makes sense to me.

Why are Canadians....

so weird?

Republicans are happier.

No surprise there. Surfing the right and left sites will tell you that. But Powerline has this:

One of the things tracked by the Pew Research Center is happiness. Since the 1970s, the Pew pollsters have been asking Americans how happy they are and analyzing the results. This year's survey came out on Monday, and, as always, it shows that Republicans, on the average, are happier than Democrats:
Some 45% of all Republicans report being very happy, compared with just 30% of Democrats and 29% of independents. This finding has also been around a long time; Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey began taking its measurements in 1972.

"We Will Drink the Blood of the Jews"

They are freakin insane.

Political Correctness gone wild.

We have a local thing going on here. We have a new soccer team here in Houston and a few weeks ago they announced their new name...Houston 1836. That is the year Houston became a town. But it it also the year that Texas gained it's independence from Mexico. It seems some Mexican-American people felt that was offensive.

Offensive.

It is so incredibly idiotic I can hardly stand it. And the worse thing is that the team is going to change it's name. A spokesman for the team was on the radio this morning and he said this was an economic decision as well. Too many companies that would be sponsors don't like to hear the word "boycott" thrown around about a new team.

Now the truth is that 99.99% of Mexican Americans and any other kind of American don't even know where the 1836 came from. When told that it was when Houston became a city, they would nod and say, "oh, ok" and it would never occur to them that that was also the year Texas gained independence. Even though you learn that little fact in school, it isn't a date that sticks in your head. In fact an Hispanic commissioner was a key player in the unveiling of the name. I guess it never occurred to him to be offended. He must be a Republican.

So the bottom line is a few in the P.C. crowd get to push others around with threats and cost the team money to change a perfectly fine name. Ugh.

Open Thread.

I'm busy this morning. I'll be posting later.

Harry Whittington has a minor heart attack.

Cnn says:

The hunter shot and wounded by Vice President Dick Cheney suffered a minor heart attack after a piece of birdshot moved to his heart, a hospital spokesman said today. "Some of the bird shot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart ... in what we would say is a minor heart attack," said a spokesman for the Texas hospital treating Harry Whittington.

I've been encouraged to read Kos more. Wish I hadn't. Here are few choice posts on Whittington.

Setting us up? (4.00 / 3)
Did this guy even survive?
by LauraC on Tue Feb 14, 2006 at 11:38:16 AM PDT

Weekend at Bernie's (4.00 / 4)
It's like the movie... the guy actually died over the weekend but we're going to label it a 'complication' instead.

did this guy (none / 1)
even make it to the "hunting trip"?

Here's My Take on This Whole Mess... (none / 0)
...Cheney desperately needed a distraction and he, and his co-conspirators figured this 78 year old guy was worth the sacrifice..
..These blood-thirsty Republicans will stop at nothing to change the focus of the public..
..Have we heard anything about Plamegate? Katrina report scheduled to come out tomorrow? Abramoff and Bush ties?
...I'm sick of this already. Let's keep our eyes on the ball.
by heavysole on Tue Feb 14, 2006 at 01:10:34 PM PDT

Point well taken, but (none / 0)
negligent homicide by the Veep while "hunting" wingless quail in a hunting preserve (essentially blasting birds trapped behind fences) is a pretty big story.

I think that Cheney was drunk, probably all of them were actually. Most states would require a BAC test. It would be interesting to know if Dick was tested.
by smtfsc on Tue Feb 14, 2006 at 01:28:04 PM PDT

So now Cheney was drunk and Whittington is probably dead and was from the beginning. It's being covered up. And what the hell is "wingless quail?"

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE????

House with a Bride.

Buy a house, get a bride. (I didn't figure you guys would care about seeing the house.)

You might be wondering why I have my listing at $600,000.00 plus myself for bid as “priceless”. First, I estimate the value of the house with furnishings at approximately $600,000.00. When I asked my girlfriends their advice on what I (the “bride”) was worth, most responded that I was “priceless”. I hope to find that special man, who wants to build a life with me and share this special home with me. Ideally that man is between 40 and 60 years old, is well educated and well spoken, and has a professional career. Since I am the daughter of a minister, spirituality is also important to me. Other important traits include love of travel and adventure, a good conversationalist, and a lover of animals. Although I don’t have children, I do love them, and am very open to the role of “step-mother”. It is important to me that a man be open and caring, kind in words and deeds, spontaneous to a certain extent, and takes pride in his appearance. It also goes without saying that I want to be with a man who is realistic about and committed to a relationship.

Nothing like wishing for the moon. I'm betting she gets more than her asking price.

h/t Simon

Check out the Cotillion!

This week! Cross posted at Darleen's Place.

That's what I'm talking about...

Ace has this:

It's from an email, Mudville Gazette says, and you know those are often very unreliable. Still... worth linking, unless it gets knocked down as spurious:

In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful
To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.
To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.
To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.
Our city was the main base of operations for Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. The city was completely held hostage in the hands of his henchmen.... Their savagery reached such a level that they stuffed the corpses of children with explosives and tossed them into the streets in order to kill grieving parents attempting to retrieve the bodies of their young. This was the situation of our city until God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats to the surrounding areas, where the bravery of other 3d ACR soldiers in Sinjar, Rabiah, Zumar and Avgani finally destroyed them.
I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

Update: Yep, it's legit. Scroll down.

Saddam Shouting.

Here are some of he and his co-horts shouting slogans in court:

"We have been on hunger strike for three days to protest the way they brought us to court."

Do you think anyone cares if you die of hunger? Maybe you could experience a little of the suffering you imposed on so many, not to mention the gassing of women and children. Why don't you hunger strike us out of having this trial?

"God is great."

Yes, he is, but what would you know about him?

"long live the great Arab nation."

Like the one you had? The killing, raping, and torturing one? Yeah. Real. Great.

"I say to all Iraqis fight and liberate your country."

Oh, it's liberated alright, just not in the way you imagine.

"Down with the traitors. Down with Bush."

Just get a MoveOn.org t-shirt and get it over with.

To the judge Saddam says:

"Hit your own head with that gavel.''

Just like a third grade despot.

Ibrahim Barzan, Saddam's half brother and Intelligence Chief said:

"I sacrifice my mother and father for the great Baath Party"

Probably wasn't such a good idea. Just like showing up in court in your long underwear. Bad decisions all the way around.

Democrats endorse wiretapping.

Blogs For Bush has this:

Tom Daschle, Jane Harman: Don't Stop Wiretap Program.

Well, what do you know? Democrats do indeed pay attention to polls.

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, along with the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, said emphatically yesterday that President Bush should continue his controversial terrorist wiretapping program.

As Senator Bayh (D - IN ) just said, If the people of America don't trust us with their lives, they aren't likely to trust us with anything else.

Watch for more and more Democrats to endorse protecting this country from terrorist, as we get closer to Election Day.

Update: The American Daily has this:

General Hayden, principle deputy director of national intelligence and former director of the NSA, spoke to the National Press Club on Jan. 23rd and "admits that we knew that Mohamed Atta and his crew were in the US. But he says that “we did not know anything more” because prior to 9/11 “Mohamed Atta and his fellow 18 hijackers would have been presumed to have been protected persons, U.S. persons, by NSA."

It goes on:

When FISA was created there were no cell phones, no internet, no personal computers, etc. Hayden said “I don't think that anyone can make the claim that the FISA statute is optimized to deal with or prevent a 9/11 or to deal with a lethal enemy who likely already had combatants inside the United States.

Once again, we are faced with a pre-9/11 system for a post 9/11 world and to better illustrate that point, Hayden used a revealing example.

“I testified in open session to the House Intel Committee in April of the year 2000. At the time, I created some looks of disbelief when I said that if Osama bin Laden crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York, there were provisions of U.S. law that would kick in, offer him protections and affect how NSA could now cover him.

”In other words, the U.S.A.’s biggest enemy would be, in essence, invisible to our security agencies if he were to get inside the country. I don’t know about you, but using our Constitution to protect our enemies at the expense of our own citizen’s life and limb is absurd. But it is an absurdity that the left wants to wallow in.

As to the new authority that Bush did require of the NSA after 9/11 Hayden assured us that the NSA reviewed all that was asked of them by the Bush administration, not just in terms of possibility, but also in legal terms. “… our lawyers weren't careful out of fear; they were careful out of a heartfelt, principled view that NSA operations had to e consistent with bedrock legal protections”, Hayden said.

Read the whole thing. It really details how the MSM totally got it wrong in reporting the NSA program and how Democrats are being less than honest in their assessment of it. via The Anchoress

The Kos Curse....

continues. From the New York Times:

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.

Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.

Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.

But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress.

"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

I remember some lefty commenter going on and on here about how the veterans of the Iraq war running for congress was Democrats. I guess that doesn't mean much to the party leadership.

Also, does Kos even realize how hurtful he is to the party? Or does he just enjoy losing?

A Sweet Valentine.

Little Melissa comes home from first grade and tells her father that they learned about the history of Valentine's Day.

"Since Valentine's Day is for a Christian saint and we're Jewish," she asks, "will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?"Melissa's father thinks a bit, then says "No, I don't think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a valentine to?"

"Osama Bin Laden," she says. "Why Osama Bin Laden," her father asks in shock."Well," she says, I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give Osama a valentine, he might start to think that maybe we're not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit. And if other kids saw what I did and sent valentines to Osama, he'd love everyone a lot. And then he'd start going all over the place to tell everyone how much he loved them and how he didn't hate anyone anymore."

Her father's heart swells and he looks at his daughter with newfound pride. "Melissa, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard."

"I know," Melissa says, "and once that gets him out in the open, the Marines could blow the @#*@ out of him."

Ted Rall is a whiny twerp.

Ace has this:

Coulter reportedly said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.: "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions."

Rall announced on his blog that he would look into taking legal action against Coulter if readers of his blog wanted him to -- and if they pledged the $6,000 needed to draft and file a lawsuit in New York.
"If enough 'yes' votes come in with enough serious pledges, I'll see Ann in court," wrote Rall. "If not, well, chalk up another victory for the Right."
Rall said people were voting roughly 3-1 in favor of suing. And he told E&P Monday that pledges are coming in fast. "If pledges continue to come in at the present rate, I'll have the $6,000 available by tonight," Rall said. "A lot of people are fed up with how Coulter has turned slandering liberals into a cottage industry and want to see her held to account. I'm actually fairly overwhelmed by the response -- more than 300 pledges, many in the $20 to $100 range."

This makes me sick, really. Even if what Ann said was out of line, what does Ted do for a living but insult people? Try this and this and this and finally this. Is this man a hypocrite or what?? And the worst thing is that he is asking readers TO PAY FOR IT. If he wants to sue, he can pay for it himself and not use his reader's hatred of Ann pay for his revenge. What complete idiots they are to give him any of their hard earned money.

The Money Shot.

Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez raised quite a bit of money for his primary campaign against freshman Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas’ 28th District with this picture of Rep. Cuellar getting some Presidential love from Bush after the SOTU address.

Since no one seems to want to talk about anything else but Cheney's hunting accident, we might as well have a caption contest with this pic as well.

What the heck is wrong with the White House Press Corp?

I'm sitting here watching the press conference with Scott McClellan and the press is practically foaming at the mouth about not being informed about the hunting shooting accident the moment it happened. One reporter actually asked if the Vice President was preparing to resign!!! McClellan just said that was an absurd question. Really. What is wrong with these people?

The truth is they are ticked that a local reporter got the story before they did. Maybe they did make a mistake by letting the Corpus Christi paper have it first, but there is no need to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Tricked out Computer Screen!

Why should pimp cars have all the fun?

via Boing Boing

Hillaryland.

The New Republic (subscription required) gives us some insight into the powerful world of Hillary: (emphasis mine)

Ever since 1992, when a young campaign staffer answered a phone call from Hillary with the greeting "Hillaryland," the future first lady and her devoted, mostly female aides have embraced the cutesy sobriquet as a way to describe their unique, un-Bill (and sometimes anti-Bill) sorority. In the 1992 campaign, it described a small corner of office real estate in Little Rock where her staff toiled. In the Clinton White House, Hillaryland grew into an influential but often frustrated power center inhabited by dutiful staffers whose first allegiance was to the first lady, not the president. "[W]e were also our little subculture within the White House," Hillary writes in her memoir. "My staff prided themselves on discretion, loyalty and camaraderie, and we had our own special ethos. While the West Wing had a tendency to leak, Hillaryland never did. While the president's senior advisers jockeyed for big offices and proximity to the Oval Office, my senior staff happily shared offices with their young assistants." Bill Clinton staffers regarded the dwellers in Hillaryland as Kool-Aid drinkers with awful political judgment. Hillarylanders saw Bill's people as showboats and referred to them dismissively as the "white boys." Hillary "took a dim view of many of her husband's West Wing advisers," writes John Harris in The Survivor, his excellent account of the Clinton years, "who she regarded as too immature and too worried about currying favor with the Washington press." Hillaryland was different.

Today, Hillaryland is a vast political empire based in Washington and New York that, in its scale and ambition, is unrivaled in Democratic politics. But the spirit of Hillaryland, as well as many of its leaders, remains the same. Alan Patricof, Hillary's Senate campaign finance chair, who has been raising money for the Clintons for two decades, says, "She's got a very loyal group of people around her who have supported her for a long time." In fact, everyone in Hillaryland says that. They prefer to compare Hillary's operational style to George W. Bush's rather than Bill's. The unspoken, and sometimes spoken, premise is that, unlike her husband's White House team--not to mention the last two Democratic presidential campaigns--there are no mercenaries in Hillaryland, only true believers, a culture they say is hardening now that many Democratic sharks are circling Hillaryland, looking for a way in. "I have been involved with her for seven years. [Advisers] Patti [Solis Doyle] and Maggie [Williams] are going on 15," says one close adviser. "There is an intense loyalty."

For anyone who doubts that she will get the '08 nomination, you seriously underestimate the empire that Hillary has carefully and systematically built.

...getting answers to simple questions is always a little harder in Hillaryland. Part of the problem is that there are so many power centers. For most senators, there's only one--their Senate office. But, in Hillaryland, the Senate is just one outpost in a sprawling political organization. Says an adviser, straining not to offend Hillary's Senate aides, "Let's just say there are big and important players outside of the Senate office."

The office is, however, an interesting microcosm of greater Hillaryland. It is relentlessly on-message and extremely wary of reporters. When I called the communications director to ask about the culture of the office and the backgrounds of its senior employees, she read me a staff directory. "Tamera Luzzatto is our chief of staff. ... Miguel Rodriguez is the counsel. ... Phillippe is the press secretary...." According to other denizens of Hillaryland, the Senate staff is especially tight-lipped because many aides don't have longtime Hillary connections and realize that most of Hillary's top strategists and advisers work elsewhere. "It's a unique Senate staff, in that the main decisions don't get made by the Senate staff," says one Democrat.

A look into Hillary's "centrist" move tells us how she will shape her presidential bid including moving to the right of her previous issues.

..for example, Hillary's new legislative director, Laurie Rubiner. The newest senior staffer in Hillaryland, Rubiner came to Hillary by way of former Republican Senators John Chafee and Bob Dole and, most recently, the aggressively centrist New America Foundation, where she ran a program on universal health insurance. Her hiring says a lot about where Hillary is headed on the issues that may define a presidential campaign. Rubiner favors a universal plan, whereby the government mandates the purchase of health insurance, just as it does car insurance, from competing private providers, while subsidizing the neediest. Back in the '90s, this was the centrist alternative to Hillarycare, and it was sponsored by Rubiner's ex-bosses, Chafee and Dole.

The Senate office has also been instrumental in executing Hillary's high-profile campaign to co-sponsor legislation with practically every extremist Republican in the Senate. Her policy seems to be: The more right-wing the co-sponsor, the better; extra points for anyone involved with her husband's impeachment. There was the legislation to ban flag-burning, co-sponsored with Utah's Robert Bennett. There was the video game violence bill with Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum and the work on National Guard benefits with impeachment leader Lindsey Graham. Most of the issues on which she has allied herself with Republicans are symbolic, an effort to show, in the words of one senior adviser, that she's "a little more socially conservative than people think."

She is making sure no one can call her a leftwing radical. I believe that every single step she has taken in the Senate is carefully planned with a white house run in mind and always has. I don't think she is guided by principles any more than her husband was. The difference is Bill wanted to be liked, Hillary just wants to win.

The article describes the small population of Hillaryland. It is a close tightknit group of people devoted to Hillary. They are powerful and loyal and they make sure that nothing but good press goes out regarding Hillary and they are very good at it.

And then there is the money. Oh goodness..is there money:

If you really want to understand Hillaryland, you have to look outside the Senate at the array of political machinery that runs and finances the Hillary empire. Between her own political and campaign committees and the fund-raising she has done for other Democrats, aides say that Hillary has raised some $50 million since 2001. In true Hillaryland fashion, the person who actually manages this expansive operation is almost unknown in political circles. She rarely talks to the press, save for an occasional anodyne quote about successful fund-raising numbers or one repeating how focused Hillary is on her Senate reelection, not the White House. She never appears on television. She declined to cooperate with this article. Her name is Patricia Solis Doyle--Patti to everyone in Hillaryland--and her job is running Hillary's two main fund-raising entities, HillPAC, a so-called leadership committee, and Friends of Hillary (FOH), the senator's reelection vehicle.

The money machine continues:

HillPAC, which is really the holding company for Hillary's political machine, supplements the salaries of Hillary's Senate staffers. It pays the consultants who write Hillary's speeches for, say, a Gridiron dinner. It pays for the Beverly Hills firm Capital Strategies, which lassoes Hollywood money for Hillary. It pays about $5,000 a month to Hudson Media Partners, the political arm of the Glover Park Group, the powerhouse corporate consulting firm of Hillary's top communications guru, Howard Wolfson. It writes checks to Occasions, the swanky Washington caterer that outfits Hillaryland events at Whitehaven. One of its largest expenses is to direct mail firms like O'Brien, McConnell & Pearson and Merkle Response Services, which are canvassing every nook of the United States for Hillary donors. By 2008, Hillary may have the most massive fund-raising database in politics.

Where does the "middle of the road" messages come from?A man named Mark Penn.

Penn has been the messaging mastermind of Hillaryland. His stubborn centrism, arrived at by sifting through tons of granular-level psychographic polling--that is, psychological and demographic--has long angered liberals, and it is likely be the greatest source of future tension in Hillaryland.

Like Bill, Hillary will depend on locking into what the people want. Not just through polls as Bill did, but by even more intense probing of the American mind. She will discover what people really want and run on that. Of course we all know that doesn't mean she will govern that way. I feel pretty confident that the deep lefty politics that she is devoted to will emerge when she wins and I figure the left will hold their nose at the right of center messages to get her elected.

Everyone here wonders why I still think McCain is the one to run against her. Let me assure you of something. No novice, no first timer, no matter how wonderful, is going to overtake the Hillarymachine. No way. McCain is the only one I see having the political muscle to take her down.

Annan to ask Bush for help with Darfur.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General
Kofi Annan intends to ask
President George W. Bush on Monday what the United States can contribute to a mobile UN force to stop the killings, rape and pillaging in Sudan's Darfur region.

From everything that I have read about this I think we should be more involved. I know we can't help everyone in this world, but this seems beyond the pale. Let's do it.

H/T Muslihoon

Vice President Shoots Friend.

I bet that has never been a headline before. Cheney accidentally shot fellow hunter Harry Whittington, who is doing fine at a Corpus Christi hospital.

I wonder if they could have tried any harder to find a snarling picture of Cheney. I surfed over at the lefty blogs just to see how crazy they would get with this and Democrats.com actually had a pretty funny "Dick Cheney's Top 10 Excuses For Shooting Fellow Hunter." Heh.

The SobekPundit interview....

with me. Enjoy.

30 days as a Muslim.

I watched this program last night on FX channel about a 34 yr old Christian white guy who goes and lives with a Muslim family for 30 days. Have you guys seen this show? I think it is called "30 days." They are advertising the next one where some black people get a makeover to live as white for 30 days and some white people do the reverse. I bet that was interesting. I can't wait to see it.

Anyway, I was kind of surprised by how much the Christian guy didn't know about the roots of Christianity and that he didn't know that Allah was the same "God" that we worship (according to their beliefs) The show was interesting and I think the Christian guy did come away with a desire to defend peaceful Muslims against those who equate the entire religion with terrorism.

He did ask the Muslim family why they don't come out more against terrorism that is done in the name of Islam and one Muslim man basically said why should they apologize for what fanatics do? I thought he might have a bit of a point there. When I think of those few that have set off bombs in abortion clinics, I don't consider them pro-life, I consider them insane. They aren't what pro-life is about. In fact, they are the complete opposite, so maybe Muslims see the terrorists in the same way?

The Christian man said that he admired the Muslim's discipline. And it does take a lot of discipline to live a Muslim lifestyle. The dress, the prayer five times a day (done in an exact physical way), fasting, and the meal preparation must follow strict rules. For example, the meat they eat must be slaughtered facing east (toward Mecca) and the religiously trained slaughterer must recite the name of Allah when doing so. These types of restrictions and rules are common throughout every aspect of a Muslim's life, from sexual issues to washing to death. I noticed at one point a cleric asks the Christian man if the way he was sitting was proper. The man seemed confused. It seems when putting one leg up on the other knee and showing the bottom of the shoe to the person you are speaking with is rude. (or rude to Allah, I wasn't sure which)

I found the life so restrictive that I wondered how they ever have fun at all. This summer I posted about seeing 2 Muslim women at a waterpark. They were dressed head to toe in black. They went into the water with their children that way as well. But I noticed that their husbands were bare chested with regular swimsuits on. If the women are suppose to be keeping men from lusting after them by dressing this way, then do the men not worry about that as well? It just seemed so oppressive and unfair to me.

I think that such discipline is actually something that draws people to Islam as well as keeping the children in the faith. Living in a part of the world where nothing is stable and everything seems out of control, it is probably a relief to them to have something that is so rigid and controlled define their life. There is a lot of comfort in structure.

On the cul-de-sac where I live I have neighbors who are practicing Baptists, Hindus, Jews, and Evangelicals. One is a non-practicing Muslim. Our kids play together and we all get along well. But none of these faiths have such a restrictive lifestyle where it would interfere in the normal course of a day in a kid's life. None require a certain dress that would make them stand apart from the other kids. It is in this way that I can see why it would be difficult for a Muslim family to fit in with people of other faiths.

After watching the "30 days as a Muslim" show, I only felt what I felt that day at the waterpark watching the two women covered in black on a hot Texas day..... a sadness I couldn't explain.