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.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
"Freedom was worth the risk."
Would you vote for this man?
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
Friday, February 17, 2006
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
Thursday, February 16, 2006
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
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.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
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.
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.
