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."
Monday, February 13, 2006
A Sweet Valentine.
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.
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
Sunday, February 12, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Reason #682 of why I HATE the dark side of the web.
Ugh. (it's a link to Boing Boing discussing the site I am disgusted with, but the top banner is NSFW)
To the commentary about privacy rights, I say boo freaking hoo. If you are an adult playing this game you're an idiot and a pervert, which of course, is your right, but it doesn't mean you have a right to a game online that might entice kids. Boing Boing makes the point that she got in (as a child might) anyway without too much trouble. So that is suppose to make the fact that they are trying to make it strictly for adults only not worth it????? To me it just means there needs to be even more of a security system involved.
You all know how I feel about this. It just DRIVES ME CRAZY that we care more about our own perverted desires than the accessibility of filth like this to our kids.
Don't try and defend it. It will just make me not like you.
Cartoons and Craziness.
I was reading at the Captain's about a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler circulated by European Muslims as a tit-for-tat response to their outrage over the Jyllands-Posten editorial cartoons.
I just had to shake my head at the absurdity of it all. People have actually been killed at some of the "protests" over the Muslim cartoons and now we have those trying their best to come up with something that will insult Jews as much as possible.
As you might imagine, the "Jews" aren't taking the bait. Thank Goodness. Imagine WWIII be started by CARTOONS!!!!
It's sort of like the siblings who yell "he touched me!!!!!" As parents we know that someone lightly touching their brother/sister with the tip of their finger is hardly a reason for them to get into a full blown knock down drag out fight, but we also know that if we don't intervene, it will become just that.
So, as absurd as it is for these cartoons to be making the impact that they are, I think it best if we stop it in it's tracks and not let it get to the point of a knock down drag out fight. Which is why the Bush administration and news outlets ect.. are trying to calm things down by either recognizing the insult or refusing to air the cartoons.
This is not, imo, a surrender of free speech or hypocrisy on the side of CNN and the like who would think nothing of airing cartoons depicting Christians in a negative light. It is simply recognizing the fact that this isn't worth the grief that it is causing and that trying to simmer it down is not a bad thing.
In America it's always about proving our point. Maybe sometimes it should be about not letting ridiculous things get out of hand, whether our point is made or not.
This has got to hurt....
The Democrats just can't get a break.
More on Harry Reid's Ties to Jack Abramoff.
More on the unseemly conduct of the Democrats at Coretta Scott King's funeral.
Surveillance Wins Some More Backers.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Check it out...
My buddy Charmaine Yost at Reasoned Audacity . She has the clip where she was on CNBC on "On Your Money" discussing this month's Vanity Fair cover.
Michael Yon
The LA Times has a great story on Michael Yon and his blogging from Iraq. If you loved his blogging as much as I did and wanted to know more about Michael and where he came from, this article is a good place to start.
Stuff.
Powerline points to polls that says Hillary is VERY unpopular. I still say she gets the '08 nomination no matter what the polls say. (And the polls say she will get the nod too)
Cindy Sheehan says she is not running for the Senate. Darn.
Reid Aided Abramoff Clients. I'm actually starting to feel sorry for Howard Dean.
This morning Bush gave some details on a 2002 terror attack that was thwarted.
Out of the kindness of my heart...
I am giving you lefties a tip. Someone out there get in touch with the Democratic side of the House of Representatives and let them know that Stephen Colbert is not a real reporter.
Colbert has been having this segment where he goes to Representatives of different districts and "interviews" them and makes a complete fool of them. Very funny stuff and so far it seems to be only Democrats. Now, I don't know if that is because Republicans are on to him or what, but even if you knew who Stephen Colbert was and you were ready for him, you have to know that they edit the interview to make you look foolish anyway, no matter how prepared you are.
I think Stephen Colbert is hilarious. I love his show, but I do feel sorry for the politicians that get caught in his "interviews." So, someone...Please. Tell your Representative to BEWARE.
Crossing the line.
Ever since I mentioned how wrong I thought it was to report on politician's children, the left has brought up Rush making some reference to President Clinton's daughter and a dog. I have never really heard that reference or even know how he said it. If someone has that, let me know.
As I have said before, I checked out of politics during the Clinton administration. I simply couldn't bear it and I was busy busy with small babies. I obviously missed TV at the time too because just in the last week I have seen two references to Chelsea in old SNL skits. One had Hillary and Barbara Bush during the 92 campaigns debating and Barbara refers to Chelsea looking like a dog. The one I saw today was with Paulie Shore saying "Did you hear that Clinton has been renting out the Lincoln bedroom for $50,000? For another $100 he will throw in Chelsea."
Awful. Just awful. It seems that Chelsea was beat up pretty bad with comedians during the Clinton years. Yet the only thing the left seems to remember is Rush saying something which I have yet to hear exactly what he said. If we are going to be outraged over someone crossing the line then I think we need to be consistent. Don't forget to be outraged just because the person making the joke is someone you like or a TV star.
The backlash regarding the Mohammad cartoons, whether the protests were organized or not, doesn't mean that people should not be allowed to make fun of what they wish. Freedom is freedom after all. But it also doesn't mean they have to either.
