No Freedom For The Iranian People

Sadly for the Iranian people, the writing is on the wall, or rather the writing is not on twitter. The voices inside Iran have grown quite, as opposition supporters are beaten, arrested, and Mullahs demand that protest leaders be severely punished or even executed.

There will be no Reagan like "tear down this wall" statement from this President. Obama, waiting to see how the wind is blowing as he usually does, made his strongest statements about a week to 2 weeks too late.

Mousavi's website has been taken down. Neda, the beautiful young girl shot dead in the street, is a reminder to all those who would even go to a protest, much less lead one, how deadly it can be.

We here in America, who pay attention, are troubled with our own disintegrating freedoms. Cap and Trade and Government run health care are being pushed through Congress at incredible speed. Our future is at stake here.

So as we try to fight against the things that will so hurt America, we turn our eyes away from the brave people of Iran who depended on us for support. All they got for their fight and bravery were empty words from our President.

Change will not happen in Iran. There will be no freedom. Not now. Not today.

It's a terrible shame.

I'm Back!!

Geeze, I go away for a few days and all hell breaks loose.

First Mark Sanford, the N.C. governor hits a midlife crisis I haven't seen the likes of since my 50 yr old Uncle left his wife and kids for a blond he met at hooters, got hairplugs, and bought an orange corvette.*

Really guys. It's pathetic. When reading Gov. Sanford's e-mails, one realizes that affairs become like crack. The guy just wants that next high. But like the drug, it all eventually comes crashing down.

I bet no one was happier that Michael Jackson died Thursday than Gov. Sanford. Am I right?

The people of Iran are the least happy that Jackson died. As far as our news media goes, it's more important to do endless interviews with other stupid celebrities who knew Jackson, than to report on a people struggling against oppression to be free.

Does the media have their priorities screwed up or what?

Meanwhile the House passes this abomination called "Cap and Trade" which will affect all of our lives by "establishing the largest national energy tax in history and eliminate 2 million jobs across our country," and no one in America seems really to care. It's up to the Senate now, and is really up to us. We need to stop this thing. Let your Senators know.

Oh, and by the way... I don't care how talented Michael Jackson was, or how sad his childhood was, or how great "Thriller" still is, he was a pedophile in my view, and no kind of talent makes up for that disgusting part of his life.

Both Sen. Ensign and Gov. Sanford should resign. I would like to think that we as Republicans kick our cheating bums out instead of making them iconic Senators of our party like the Democrats do (see Kennedy) or beloved Presidents (see Bill Clinton).

People screw up, I get that. I also get they shouldn't be in public office if they do. Which is one of the reasons I will never get behind Newt Gingrich for President. Loyalty, fidelity, and vows should mean something in this world. They should mean something to us.





* The part about my Uncle..not true. Poetic license...;-)

California Woes

Seems that the Failed State of California is about to issue IOUs to cover its debts. Its fortunate that States can't just spend money they don't have like the Fed does, someone eventually will say no more credit to a state. Unfortunately, the very people who irresponsibly caused the problems in the first place won't be punished for it. Unless you count the people of California who elected them in the first place. Maybe there is justice.



"At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world's richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation's largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes." - Victor Davis Hanson

Wednesday's Links and Things

The US is trailing a Nork ship which may or may not carry weapons they are barred from trading under U.N. resolution 1874. Yeah, those UN resolutions work so well. Boarding said ship would be an act of war... but so is shooting missiles at Hawaii or Japan. But does that matter? North Korea recently officially declared that the truce that has been in force for decades was off. Words like that have real consequences. We - we as in America and/or South Korea - may now resume the war and be perfectly legal and moral to do so, and that means we can board their ships with or without UN Resolutions. We are in a state of war with North Korea now, I say go ahead and board their ships and shoot down their ballistic missiles.


The Minneapolis government is spending over 200k to promote... tap water.

h/t Neals Nuze



The Washington Post actually has an article about the fawning coverage of Obama by the press.

Thanks to Samizdata for the link. Their perspective:

Apart from Fox, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, a few niche publications like the American Spectator and the blogs, Mr Obama has had a remarkably easy ride and it does not seem to be ending soon. In part this is because much of the liberal media, even if some of its more intelligent denizens know that this is a bit silly, are playing as a "team" for Their Man, and don't want to be seeing doing anything that might help the other side.

There has always been, and always will be, slanted coverage of public affairs, and it will continue. Even if the BBC in the UK were scrapped tomorrow and its reporters sent off to planet Titan, the fact is that there will be a substantial block of leftish/liberal media types and pundits. But the sheer, jaw-dropping bias of the White House press corps is something to behold.

Does anyone watch Whale Wars on Animal Planet? Setting aside their ideology and intent to stop whaling, I have never seen such a collection of incompetants. The captain is a self-involved narcissist who hides in his cabin when things become difficult. The First Mate has no idea what he is doing and the crew are a gaggle of trust fund kiddies who have no training. One season the radar operator was a guy who spent three hours reading the manuel before they set sail. The entire series has the fascination of a train wreck in motion. Things break and no one knows how to fix it. If it were not for GPS and modern communications, I think they would have gotten themselves killed long ago. At least this season they have stopped showing the crew partying it up with drugs and alcohol every chance they get. In the end all they accomplish is to occasionally throw stink bombs at the Japanese who are too civilized to retaliate in kind.


Cause of the Day

Tea Parties are being organized for around July 4th to oppose socialized health care. On the home page of the Tea Party national site is this tidbit:

Government spending is filled with pork earmarks like this: The National Institutes of Health will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

'nuff said


Laugh of the Day

If spending your tax money to train Chinese prostitutes to drink wasn't funny enough. The city of Toronto photoshopped the cover to their Fun guide to show how inclusive they were. Bureaucrats should not be allowed copies of photoshop - it always ends badly. My favorite part is that they altered the fingers of the woman on the left to make them look like they were from the shopped man on the right who presumably has the longest arms in the world.

Men... and women too

I've been pondering lately the notion that American men are indoctrinated from an early age in school and bullied by women into becoming miserable pansies held in contempt by their own wives/girlfriends for being such sissies.

Klavan always has something evocative to say about culture, and seems to follow the rule that brevity is the soul of wit. So I will throw his latest column out there for reactions.

American Nursery

I’m the old-fashioned King of the Castle type: my wife knew it when she married me, she knows it now, and she knows where the door is if she gets sick of it. And you can curse me or consign me to Feminist Hell or whatever you want to do. But when you’re done, answer me this: why would a man get married under any other circumstances? I’m serious. What’s in it for him? I mean, marriage is a large sacrifice for a man. He gives up his right to sleep with a variety of partners, which is as basic an urge in men as having children is in women. He takes on responsibilities which will probably curtail both his work and his social life. If he doesn’t also acquire authority, gravitas, respect and, yes, mastery over his own home, what does he get? Companionship? Hey, stay single, dude, you’ll have a lot more money, and then you can buy companionship.

All right, I know, I’m a mean old man. But I’ve also been blissfully married for 30 years to a woman who wakes up singing. I think some of these young guys have been sold a bill of goods, I really do. I think they’ve been told what they’re supposed to be like and have sacrificed what they are like. Maybe their marriages are more “fair” than mine but just looking at them, I think they’re miserable. And I suspect, deep down, their wives are probably miserable too.

Random Thoughts and Links

Live Free or Die

"You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die."


Seems the Feds cherry picked data and misrepresented a research to 'prove' man-made global warming, and the scientist whose research was cited is not happy about it.


Speaking of hot air...

Cause of the Day

The Hot Air Tour comes to the northern plains opposing Global Warming alarmism, lost jobs, higher taxes and less freedom. The Tour will be here in South Dakota tomorrow following a long string of rallies around the nation. Sign up to get updates on future events! Free food and free hot air balloon rides. Should be fun.

The tour is a project of Americans for Prosperity, a limited government and free market group.


Chuckle of the Day

"There's not really any question that zombie movies reflect left-leaning politics."

The author might have a point here. Romero's Dawn of the Dead had as its central theme the shopping mall, which Romero portrayed as banal suburban materialism where mindless people wasted their lives and after death they continued their mindless mall existance as zombies.

Anti-materialist contempt for malls is really quite non-sensical. Humans have always liked to hang out in trade centers, socializing, eating, chatting and entertaining themselves. The modern shopping mall is not much different than the town trade square or bazaar. As for the materialism of mass produced goods, well... that stuff is better. Mass production provides high quality goods for a low price. Handmade goods in the past were not necessarily of better quality, handmade could be made with ten thumbs. Now, we use mass produced goods of consistant quality for the majority of our needs and if you can afford it, buy custom made stuff from a craftsman. Its a win all around. Real craftsmen get paid well, the wealthy can distinguish themselves with quality custom goods, and everyone else can enjoy a high standard of living with inexpensive goods.


Video of the Day

The Dowd Conundrum: Why Vulcans and Other Intellectuals Don't Belong in the Big Chair

This is a pretty neat video. You need to sit through an advertisement and the setup is a little long, but it gets going when Whittle talks about the characteristics of leadership.

Rational Religion

Confessions of a Lapsed Atheist

But Atheists aren't content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they've come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.

You see, for liberal Atheists, the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy?

And so, they accuse local governments of trampling the Constitution in the name of God and they find subliminal Christian iconography in political ads. They wring new meanings from Thomas Jefferson's notion of separation between church and state, and condemn our country's motto and the status of Christmas as a national holiday. But above all, Atheists stoke fear among religious and nonreligious alike that conservatives view government as a tool to force religion down your throat.

Speaking as a doubter, Christianity is a good thing in general for several reasons.

First, Judeo-Crhistian ideology provides a clear moral code to follow. This is very important as humans are not born with an innate understanding of right and wrong. Our instincts and need to nurture and protect one another are well and good, but a society requires more than that. We have to understand at an intellectual level why a moral or ethical code is best for the individual and group. We need to be trained to habituate just behavior. The Judeo Christian ethic assumes we are flawed, imperfectable, and will from time to time fail.

It is, imo, a rational and realistic understanding of humanity. Whereas the leftist ideal of the perfectibility of humankind is doomed to failure.

That brings me to my second reason. When a person believes in God, they are less likely to believe in some other faith based ideology like Marxism, Socialism, Environmentalism or Global Warming.... er, -ism. The vast majority of people have faith in something unprovable. A belief in something greater than themselves which appeals to their better nature.

Judeo-Christianity, as stated above, is benign. It accepts our imperfections, while encouraging us to be better, and offering the reward of life after death. Well and good. Non-religious belief systems are more pernicious, leading down the road of quite earthly tyranny.

Its no coincidence that Leftists of all stripes are hostile towards religion and often claim to be enlightened Atheists. Religion is a rival for the faith of followers. Religion is an alternative to the State for charity, social life and affection. Religion challenges foundational precepts of Leftist ideology - the perfectibility of humans. I'd bet money that the author's father's contempt for religion stemmed from his belief in a leftwing politics.

As pointed out by many thinkers in the past, many self-proclaimed non-believers don't simply not believe in God, but personally hate Him. It is my opinion that the very people who react most emotionally - anger, contempt, derision - towards religion do so for that very reason. Hostility is a symptom of something deeper, for example the adolescent desire to not be judged. A higher being who sees through all your evasions and darkest impulses is terrible concept to one whose public face is to strive for a more perfect world.

I have met several non-believers in my life who were not hostile towards religion. They have been uniformly NOT leftists, and accepted other people faith as a matter of personal conscience. Other people going to church and praying to God is hardly a bother to anyone else, so why be hostile towards religious people? Most of the criticisms of religion as violent, intolerant and benighted don't apply to America's mainstream religions, if they ever did. Funny how these same criticisms are not applied by the Left to genuine religious bigots.

The time has come again when the beach calls my name and I must go. I will be gone all week. I hate to leave with all that is happening, but this has been planned for a while. BUT NO WORRIES. BigDog will be here and you will probably learn more about everything, because he is so much smarter than I am. So keep checking in! I'll be back soon, tanned, rested, and ready to blog.