Things are not always how they're portrayed

The truth about the face transplant woman

I had missed this part of the story about the French lady who had a face transplant:

Dinoire lost much of her face when she was mauled by her pet Labrador while knocked out from drugs she took to forget a trying week. Her lipless gums and teeth were permanently exposed, and most of her nose was missing.

I’m sorry but just how bad a week do you have to have to take the kind of drugs that knock you out to the point that you don’t notice a dog gnawing off your face? And where were her two kids during all this? What kind of mother self-medicates to the point of general anesthesia in order to forget a bad week? Even the most comatose frat boy would wake from his drunken stupor if an animal was eating him.

At first the story seemed tragic, like the vicious dog had attacked and mauled her. Then we discovered that she refused to stop smoking, even after the transplant…a cardinal sin in medicine apparently. Now we find out that she drugged herself…on purpose.

So she’s a drug addict, an addicted smoker, a miserably reckless parent of two, and apparently she doesn’t feed her dog very often since it decided to munch on her face to tide him over to his next meal. My sympathy level has decreased considerably for this woman.

It’s typical of the media to hide the facts about this case so as to garner as much sympathy and pity for this woman as possible. Heaven forbid anyone be judgmental about her behavior. To the liberal media, there’s no such thing as right and wrong behavior…just excuses for behavior.

Biting the Hand that Feeds Them

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.
Such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s.
"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it weighs the issue.

I’m just guessing here but Jorge should reconsider shutting down 6 major US cities to demand that we make legal that which is illegal. Extortion doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to getting what you want from nations (that excludes Spain which caved instantly when confronted with terrorism).

Not showing up for work, not showing up for school, impeding commerce, preventing people who want to earn a living from doing so, and distracting law enforcement from actual police work will not be viewed favorably by the citizens of the nation in which one squats.

What does it say about a people whose very first act in a new country is to break its laws? What does it say about a people who enter a country illegally and then precede to take advantage of the good will of it’s citizens by demanding food stamps, welfare, free medical care, discounted housing and education, and bilingual education among other entitlements? What does it say about a people who enter a country illegally, demand that the citizens of that country support them financially, and then indignantly refuse to adopt the language and customs of that country?
I can think of four things that define a country. I’m sure there are others but these are the important ones. They are defined borders, defined language, a common basic culture, and the rule of law recognized by everyone.

I have nothing personally against the Mexican people or country, but it seems to me that the US has no defined southern border; it allows massive populations to exist within its cities without ever learning English (dial uno for Espanol) or adopting any American customs; and while many illegal aliens observe the law once they’re here, they began as criminals the second they stepped foot in America.

In anticipation of this day-without-immigrants demonstration, my wife and others have asked, “In addition to declining to work or attend school, will these illegal immigrants also decline US citizen financed medical care, food stamps, housing, and all the other benefits that they extract from the American taxpayer?”

The answer is obviously NO.

How dare people who are criminals take to the streets to demand full citizenship! What right do they have to demand anything except their one phone call from the nearest INS deportation office?

· They fly the Mexican flag above the American flag,
· They threaten to create a Spanish speaking country out of our southwestern states,
· They tell Americans to get out of America…that this is their country,
· They refuse to learn English and demand they we educate their children in Spanish,
· They flood emergency rooms to the tune of 20million dollars annually, leading to bankruptcy resulting in scarce medical care for tax-paying Americans,
· They increase our Federal prison population by 25% (don’t tell me they’re just here for the jobs), and
· They dramatically depress wages far below what the market would otherwise bear.

Certainly I could go on all night but you get the point.

Why in the world would George Bush consider anything approaching an amnesty program? The reason is simple: George Bush is a politician and politicians always look to the next election cycle whether or not they are running. Bush and the Republican leadership see 12 million non-citizens as potential voters down the road and nobody wants to get on the bad side of that many block voters when elections in this country recently have been decided by a few idiots in Florida who can’t fill out a ballot.

Republicans and Democrats are having a goody-bag competition to see who can out-nice the other guys in order to buy the Latino vote. Bush and the Republican leadership are just a craven and disdainful of the American people as the Democrats have always been.
By every poll I’ve seen in the last year, nearly 70% of Americans, regardless of Party affiliation, are in favor of the following:

· An absolutely closed southern border
· A limited deportation program of some sort
· English as the primary language taught in schools
· Repeal of the citizenship-by-birth part of the Constitution
· A heavy tax on financial remittances sent from the US to Mexico
· Penalties for employers who hire illegals
· No free medical care except for emergencies
· No access to social programs intended for down-on-their-luck Americans
· An acceleration of the screening and admittance process for legal immigrants (you want to reward those who obey the law)
· Establishment of a guest-worker program (made of citizens of Mexico who are not already in the US) so that our industries will not suffer

If most Americans are in favor of these measures that would go a long way to solving the immigration problem, why won’t the two Parties consider them? I’m disappointed to have to say that few politicians are willing to anger a potential voting block that large. It’s as simple as that.

I’m so disappointed in Bush and the Republican leadership concerning this issue and others that I’ve almost decided to vote Libertarian in ’06 and ’08 on the national level and I don’t think I’m alone. The conservative base is very disappointed in Bush. He had so much potential and except for the tax cut, Alito and Roberts, and the war on terror, he squandered it all.

With the resident Mexican population demonstrating in the streets and disrupting commerce, the Republicans just might save themselves from disaster when the American people rise up with demands of their own. This is my prediction for the coming elections: Whatever party comes closest to satisfying the American people with regards to the immigration issue will win in ’06 and ’08.

Atlas Shrugged

Finally!!!

Ayn Rand's most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the big screen after years of false starts.
Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to "Atlas Shrugged" from Howard and Karen Baldwin ("Ray"), who will produce with John Aglialoro.
As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

Hopefully, because it’s being enthusiastically produced by an independent film company, the ideas of individual responsibility, unfettered capitalism, and the evils of the politically correct entitlement society will be preserved and conveyed as they were intended to be.

The first time I read Atlas Shrugged I was in my early twenties and I vividly remember seeing the parallels with the different political factions of today. It’s incredible to me how Ayn Rand was able to pinpoint, even in 1957, how a free society will tend toward Socialism if the forces of freedom, responsibility and capitalism don’t actively fight against it.

I told both my kids that if they read Atlas Shrugged before they graduate high school and discuss intelligently its meanings with me and ask questions, they get $100. 1100 pages of objectivist rant is a bit much I realize, but the story is excellent and the eye-opening that will take place is well worth it.

There are a lot of conservative books out there now, most of which are valuable resources for combating the scourges of the Liberalism-gone-wild phenomena that are taking place in political circles in this country. Atlas Shrugged is the original and should be at the top of every conservative's reading list.

I can hardly wait!

This is really cool! I was fourteen when this happened and had forgotten about it until I read about the 30th anniversary in USA Today...

Outfielder Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs dashes between two men in the Dodger Stadium outfield in Los Angeles, in this April 25, 1976 photo, snatching an American flag the men were about to burn. In honor of the 30th anniversary of his saving the American flag, Monday will be honored Tuesday with a video tribute at Minute Maid Park in Houston. By Jim Roark, Los Angeles Herald Examiner via AP


My hat is off to Rick Monday for that. These two idiots deserved worse than to be humiliated on national TV. It'll have to be enough that thanks to Monday's heroics, they were unseccessful in their treachery. It would have been cool if both teams had charged them in the outfield and beaten them senseless...that would have been a fitting punishment.

It's almost to the point where Americans are shy about open displays of patriotism like Monday's. We're told that it might be off-putting for non-Americans, that we might offend somebody from another country, and that because of America's evil deeds around the world leading to the negative perception abroad, we don't have a reason to be proud of our flag and what it stands for.

What a load!

You might see this tape on Fox News but I guarantee you won't see it on any mainstream news outlet because the MSM sides with the two flag-burners. They don't want you to see Americans defending the flag...it might stir some latent patriotism in you and heaven forbid Americans take pride in their country.

Thinning the human heard...

So I'm watching this news story this morning on how distracted drivers are causing an increasing number of accidents. They put hidden cameras in some cars and filmed the drivers going about their daily business. Of course it was no surprise to watch people putting on makeup, looking out their window while still moving, changing CD's, eating a hamburger, or talking or text messaging on their cell phones...lots of really stupid stuff that any idiot should know better than to do while driving a car.

Then they interviewed people on the street who all agreed that something should be done. We should pass a law banning any activity which might have the potential to distract the driver. Cell phones, GPS or DVD screens, loud music, eating while driving all should be banned the report suggested. That's alarming considering that listening to your radio, or a passenger talk to you, or rolling down your window would all qualify as potential distractions. If you had to sit perfectly still, hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, in absolute silence so you could concentrate, you would fall asleep at the wheel out of sheer boredom.

We don't need any new laws. Our freedoms are restricted enough as it is. I say let the natural laws of evolution selectively take care of this problem for us rather than restrict everybody for what a relative few morons are doing.

When our ancestors were living in caves and hunting wild saber-tooth tigers or whatever, there were severe evolutionary pressures on them to survive...much more severe than today. Those cavemen who could run fastest escaped from the tigers. Those cavemen who were smart enough to learn to throw a spear accurately were more able to feed their families and thus be more attractive to cavewomen and therefore have more accurate-spear-throwing children. The guys who couldn't run fast or throw a spear accurately couldn't be counted on as providers and what cavewoman would marry and have children with a guy who can't throw a spear straight and bring home saber-tooth tiger burgers for dinner? Eventually, over several generations, the slow-footed, bad spear throwers eliminated themselves from the gene pool. They were either caught and eaten, or they grew old alone and died along with their bad genes.

Now to relate that bit of very accurately documented human history to the distracted drivers of today. The drivers who pay attention, observe conditions, reliably operate their vehicle, and can effectively talk on a cell phone or eat a hamburger while driving, are the fleet-footed, good spear throwers of the 21st century. The halfwitted morons who allow themselves to get distracted by other things while driving are the slow-moving, bad spear throwers. It might not happen today, or tomorrow, but eventually over time, these people will eliminate themselves from the gene pool...hopefully before they can pass their stupid genes on to any stupid children and without taking too many of the rest of us with them.

There are no more saber-toothed tigers, or Velocoraptors, or T-Rex's to apply evolutionary pressures on the human species. (relax, I know that dinosaurs were long extinct before humans were around...it's a bit of literary license as it makes the example more entertaining to think about) And humans have overcome many of the routine pressures that would otherwise have "thinned the heard" so to speak. We have medicines to cure disease, we have coats to warm us and AC to cool us. We have killed off or domesticated any animals which may have posed a threat, and food is relatively cheap and plentiful. New evolutionary pressures arise every day if you look for them and natural-selection-by-distracted-driver is the newest way by which the human heard is thinned of it's less intelligent members.

All I'm saying is that we don't need any new laws to protect us from idiots. Evolution has a way of taking care of idiots without inconveniencing the rest of us. It's part of the 21st century circle of life.

Jesse Jackson to the rescue

As sure as the sun rises in the East and Ben Affleck's next film will tank, Jesse Jackson makes an appearance to stir up racial strife when it appears a black is the victim of whites. You never see him show up when a white person is the victim of black crime. Rather, he rationalizes the black on white crime by pointing to white-imposed poverty, blacks not getting a fair shake in white America, or the economic policies of Karl Rove and George Bush being the source of all racial inequality in the modern world.

It's never that they may have put themselves in a bad situation or that we should wait and see what the evidence says. If there is a white boogie-man that Jesse can manufacture and then point to as the source of all the ills of the black population, he can extract money from them to fight the boogie-man.

I'd like to know when black people are going to stop listening to this racist, charlatan, shake-down artist and start listening to the few black people who actually care about the black population and it's future...Bill Cosby, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, or Thomas Sowell?

See, Jesse Jackson recognizes that it's easier for people to accept their situations, no matter how pitiful, if they can believe that it's not their fault...that somebody did this to them and there's nothing they can do about it but give Jesse money to fight the man.

Jesse made his trip to North Carolina last week to announce that he would be paying for this girl's education. That's great and he deserves credit for doing that, but as it turns out, the evidence against these two lacrosse players is quickly unraveling and there may not be a victim of any crime.

On the other hand they may turn out to be guilty. The point is nobody knows yet so the media should stop assuming these two kids are rapists until all the evidence is in.

The media, and Jesse Jackson, can't help themselves. It's too tempting a story and it fits one of their favorite templates which is (privileged white kids rape a struggling black student). Nothing makes the self-serving liberal media in this country feel more magnanimous than to pretend they are fighting for the underdog, or in this case the downtrodden minority against the white upperclass.

I thought the media was in the business of reporting the news, not assuming the role of advocate for the little guy. Sometimes the little guy is the bad guy...but never to the liberal main-stream media.

Deranged!

Mission Impossible star Cruise vows to eat placenta after birth
By Patrick Mulchrone
TOM Cruise yesterday revealed his latest bizarre mission..to eat his new baby's placenta.
Cruise vowed he would tuck in straight after girlfriend Katie Holmes gives birth, saying he thought it would be "very nutritious".

I'm at a complete loss as to what to say about this.

But what's more interesting is Katie. She must be completely brainwashed and under Tom's control from this Scientology gobble-de-gook. I mean look at any picture of them. They're not together, she's in tow, being led around because obviously she has no autonomy...Tom and the Church of Scientology have total control over her. She's always got that vacant smile which cries out, "somebody intervene and get me out of this". It's no wonder her father is livid about her being with Tom the placenta eating freak!

Protestor disrupt Hu speech at White House

The Secret Service identified her as Wenyi Wang, 47.

She shouted in heavily accented English, "President Bush: Stop him from killing" and, "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong."

A Mandarin-speaking cameraman said Wang shouted in Mandarin: "Falun Gong is good. Stop persecuting Falun Gong, Hu Jintao. Your time is over. Evil people will die early."

Bush, standing next to Hu, leaned over and whispered to Hu, "You're OK," indicating the Chinese leader should proceed with his opening remarks. Hu, who had paused briefly when the shouting began, resumed speaking.

"It's hugely embarrassing," said Derek Mitchell, a former Asia adviser at the Defense Department who is now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China "must know that this Bush administration is good at controlling crowds for themselves, and the fact that they couldn't control this is going to play to their worst fears and suspicions about the United States, into mistrust about American intentions toward China."

I have several points to make about this:

First of all, heckling elected officials is one of the things that makes this country great. The U.S. has a long and storied tradition of protestors briefly disrupting the pompous speeches of presidents on down to mayors. For the most part it's Liberals rudely heckling Conservative speakers but that's all right...political speech has always been, and should remain, the most protected form of free speech. That being said, there are places and means by which citizens should express themselves. One could argue that to heckle visiting national leaders is stepping over the line of decorum but that is one of the prices of free speech...you might not like what's being said, which brings me to the second point...

Free political speech is but one of the freedoms which 1.3billion Chinese people do not enjoy. A few others are, the right to not have forced abortions, the right to not be forcibly sterilized, the right to not have one's execution fasttracked because a rich Japanese guy wants your kidneys, the right to practice whatever religion one chooses, and the right to Google on the Internet any, literally any, topic one wishes. There are many other State human rights atrocities on record in China so for one lady to express her disappointment is not only understandable but expected.

Third, and this really irked me, this hack Derek Mitchell said that it's embarrassing that the Bush administration cannot control it's own crowds. I'm sorry, since when is a political party in the business of crowd control? Since when is political dissent embarrassing in this country? Certainly, as in the case of liberal, Hollywood activists, what's being said and how it's being said can be embarrassing, but political dissent in and of itself definitely should not be.

The message Hu Jintao should have gotten from this is that citizens in a free society may voice, and loudly, their political differences in all kinds of ways, and the state of the Union is made stronger and more healthy for it.

All bark and no bite...

I found this bit of absurdity on the U.N. News Service:

The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan (Tom Koenigs) today condemned the "heinous" attack on a school which killed six children and wounded 14 other people. He called for the end of such atrocities against the youngsters of the violence-torn country.

"We know that all Afghan communities and the entire international community will join us in condemning this atrocity."

If the U.N. ever actually did anything at all, took any action of any kind to stop, prevent or punish this kind of thing, I might have a shred of confidence in it's ability to represent the interests of the nations who genuinely desire peace and prosperity for their people. All the U.N. does is "condemn" this atrocity or that or "strongly urge action" in this third-world, war-torn country or that.

Then when Britain and Australia, led by the U.S. military finally do something successful toward putting a stop to the atrocities, the U.N. is the first body to complain about unilateral action or U.S. imperialism. "Give diplomacy a chance", they whine; meanwhile thousands of men, women, and children perish because of the U.N.'s failure to act.

Here's my take on the U.N.: With some exceptions, namely the representatives of the three countries named above and scant few others, the U.N. is comprised of sniveling, self-interested bureaucratsrats who have no compelling interests to do anything but maintain the status quo around the world and enjoy the trappings of living with diplomatic immunity in New York City.

It is the most corrupt organization in world history by any measure. Otherwise explain how Iran can gain a seat on the committee for disarmament, or how Libya can sit on the human rights committee? By and large, most of these representatives are there to advance their own country's agendas and to protect it's interests, not to join together and do what's right.

If anybody reading this has a valid argument justifying the U.S.'s blind participation in, and obedient bankrolling of, the U.N., I would love to have my mind changed. As it stands, I would like nothing more than for the U.N. to move to Brussels and the U.S. simply send a delegation....maybe even for the U.S. to pull out alltogether.

The only advantage I can maybe see is the need to keep an eye on the other nations so they don't cause too much trouble...trouble with international consent, such as might happen if the U.N. were in Europe somewhere. The "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" axiom seems to apply to the relationship between the U.S. and the U.N.

Other than that, what possible good comes from our membership?

Snakebit!

I found this on Brietbart.com:

A FEMA trailer being used by a couple who lost their home in Hurricane Katrina burst into flames, severely burning the husband and incinerating most of their remaining possessions.

The blast, which followed the January explosion of another Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, appeared to have been sparked by a lit cigarette igniting propane gas that had seeped into the travel camper, fire officials said.

Linda Meyer said she and her husband escaped through a portion of the trailer that was blown off by the explosion Wednesday morning.

Just how luckless can one couple be? They lose what little stuff they managed to salvage from the hurricane to a gas explosion…an explosion that destroyed the second home for them in less than a year. It couldn’t get any worse for these two unless Britney and K-Fed came to baby sit their kids.

And in the understatement of the century…Joseph Meyer, the husband’s brother said,

"I imagine he's going to take this real hard, at least after the storm he had his health."

If that weren’t so pitifully true, I’d be laughing.

I'm not the most sympathetic person in the world, but I genuinely feel for these people.

Parents of the year!

There’s bad news for what might possibly be the two worst parents in the whole world…

BRITNEY Spears and her husband are being quizzed after their baby son suffered a suspected fractured skull.

Six-month-old Sean smashed his head falling to the ground from his high chair. His injury emerged when Britney, 24, took him to a doctor six days later after he became groggy and tearful

Let’s review a few of Britney’s poor decisions regarding her life, future, and baby…

1. 1. She demonstrated her casual attitude toward marriage by getting hitched on a dare to some idiot from her childhood. The marriage lasted less than 24 hours.
   
2. In what is undoubtedly the worst husband/father choice since Whitney Houston married Bobby Brown, Britney married the biggest pothead, degenerate, looser half-wit that she could find…one Kevin Federline aka, K-Fed.
   
3. She actually made a baby with half-wit described in #2.
   
4. She operated her vehicle with the infant in her lap.
   
5. Finally, as if the baby isn’t going to be stupid enough already with these two idiots as gene donors, they managed to drop it on its head. What follows, qualifies as the most astonishingly bad parenting the world of entertainment has ever seen, and that’s saying something considering Courtney Love has a kid: Britney and K-Fed wait almost a week before getting the injury checked out by a qualified pediatrician. It turns out the kid has a cracked skull….a cracked frickin’ skull!!!
   

He was already going to be taking the short bus to school by virtue of his gene pool being no deeper than a bird bath...now; he’ll also be one of those kids who have to wear a helmet on the playground. He doesn’t have an Ethiopian chicken’s chance of surviving past adolescence with his brain even minimally intact.


How miserably incompetent can two people be? Pathetic!

Shut up and do your job!

This really irks me...

By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - A newly elected councilman in a tiny Florida village has refused to take an oath of office pledging support for the U.S. government because he adamantly opposes the war in Iraq.
Councilman-elect Basil Dalack, 76, a Korean War veteran, won an uncontested election to fill a vacancy on the five-person council of the southeast Florida town of Tequesta
Village Manager Mike Cuozzo said the oath is contained in the city charter, which can only be changed through a voter referendum.
"He has a job to do with the village and we don't need the village to be a platform for national issues," Humpage quoted constituents as saying.

Now, you can't tell me a 76 year old veteran didn't know about the oath of office. Practically every oath of office in America says pretty much the same thing...I promise to uphold the laws, pledge allegiance to the flag and country, and vote regularly on American Idol.

I'll give him a little room because he's a veteran but not much. Good luck to him getting the conservative voters in Tequesta to change the oath.

I believe Americans are getting sick and tired of these baseless attacks on their patriotism.

If it's not the smelly, hippie war protesters, it's the Godless ACLU types. If it's not the MSM drawing moral equivalence between America and terrorist regimes, it's illegal immigrants from Mexico brazenly displaying upside down U.S. flags. If it's not college professors teaching our kids that America is the cause of all evil in the world, it's a local school board telling a kid she can't wear a flag lapel pin because it might offend some kid from another country.

If there's anything that can rescue Republicans in '06 and '08 from their own incompetence, it is the inevitable backlash from the rampant anti-Americanism coming from the Left in this country.

Let's hope it's not too late.

Weirdo!

This guy has totally gone off the deep end!

Renowned medical expert Tom Cruise once again disparaged the use of psychiatric drugs, this time attacking the drugs used to help people kick addiction.

Said Tom,

"I've always found the 'if it makes me feel better, it's OK' rationale a little suspect. “I think it's appalling that people have to live a life of drug addiction when I have personally helped people get off drugs."

During the interview he claimed that he could defeat heroin addiction in three days using the Church of Scientology’s detox program.

It’s took me longer than three days to get over the total and complete waste of the 8 dollars I paid to see “Vanilla Sky”.

What annoys me most about Leftists (and there’s a lot to choose from) is the belief that personal choices don’t play a role in life circumstances. Certainly, people don’t have to live a life of drug addiction…they choose a life of drug addiction. Just once I would like to hear a Hollywood do-gooder acknowledge the role that personal responsibility plays in life outcomes. Ever notice how they always talk about people who have made bad decisions, and are suffering the consequences of those decisions, in the passive? It’s as if these people had nothing whatsoever to do with the situation they’re in. The drugs sought them out and targeted them for a lifetime of addiction.

“Dude, the drugs just took over his life…it’s not his fault.”

Here’s my theory about Scientology: These self-indulgent, aging actors have experimented with just about everything there is searching for fulfillment. Eventually, like everybody else, they get around to trying religion. But regular old Christianity is too mundane, too strict, and way too Republican. So in order to maintain their coolness and liberal “street-cred”, they dabble in strange, cultish, quasi-religions like The Kabala, The Unitarian Church, and Scientology. It will surprise no one that none of these “religions” holds their practitioners to any standards of behavior or accountability…how convenient for the anything-goes lifestyles enjoyed by the idle, rich Hollywood crowd.

How ironic it is that Tom’s “drug of choice” is very precisely an “it makes me feel better” cult/religion.

The weirder Tom gets, the more difficult it becomes for me to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the Mission Impossible movies.

Just shut-up and act already!

Tastes like chicken!

PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Czech man ate frogs and other small animals for four days after he was trapped on an island cut off by flooding, the daily Pravo reported Wednesday.

Zdenek Bucek, 30, was taking a short-cut through the woods near the southeastern town of Breclav when a flood wave trapped him on a small patch of high ground.

Bucek was not carrying a cell phone and the water was too cold to swim through. To survive, he caught frogs and drank the floodwater until he flagged down an emergency crew passing by on a boat four days later.

"I had no idea a flood was coming. I had not even noticed that the forests were declared off limits," he said.
Pravo said Bucek had matches, but did not elaborate on how he preferred his frogs.

I think after only 4 days, I would still be drinking water from my boot, eating berries and leaves, and holding out for rescue. I suspect that Zdenek had a taste for frogs long before he got stranded.

Hillary's latest...

Hillary claims, preposterously, that the Senate immigration bill would make her a criminal.

First of all, proving once again that they are the Party devoid of ideas, the Democrats continue to obfuscate and demagogue the immigration issue. Here’s the reason, besides their seething hatred of George Bush of course: faced with a dwindling voter base (upwardly mobile blacks, no longer reliable Dem voters, are increasingly recognizing the benefits to them and their families of the tenants of conservatism) the Democrat Party has to find a voting block whom they can take for granted each election the way they’ve been able to rely on the black vote. Having failed to secure for convicted felons the right to vote, the Democrats salivate at the prospect of tens of millions of needy, dependant, uneducated, entitlement-minded Hispanics becoming voters. Soon, the Democrats will probably trot out an amnesty plan that includes mandatory minimum wage and voting status for the guest workers. It only stands to reason, since the Democratic voting base is primarily the uneducated, dependant, entitlement class, that they would court this new demographic as a potential replacement voting base. Of course, if they’re given the right to vote, and only then, the Democrats will shower them with billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways designed to purchase ballot loyalty at election time.

Second, despite Hillary’s shameless demagoguery, the bill is specifically aimed at those who help illegal immigrants cross the border and then offer safe-harbor to them to prevent capture and deportation. It is in no way targets those who offer humanitarian aid such as medical, social, or basic survival assistance.

Lastly, political memory endures only as long as the next election cycle so lest anyone forget, here’s just a partial list of the things that do actually make Hillary a criminal:

• -Whitewater: HRC and the McDougal’s gypped retirees out of thousands in money and land. Everybody associated with that deal went to jail except Hillary.
  
• -Cattle futures: HRC made $100,000 in a few days from a $1000 investment. The odds of making that kind of profit on cattle futures is estimated by brokers to be about 1 chance in 250 million.
  
• -FBI file-gate: she had 250 FBI files, curiously of her political adversaries, illegally sent to her office in the Whitehouse. Club bouncer Craig Livingstone was installed as Whitehouse chief of security, presumably because an actual law enforcement officer could not be intimidated into performing such an obviously illegal act.
  
• -She claimed that she was named for Sir Edmond Hillary; the man who climbed Mt. Everest. Edmond Hillary was an unknown bee-keeper at the time of Hillary’s birth. I know this is not criminal, but it is criminally stupid when it’s so easily checked. Notice how Liberals try to endear themselves to voters by associating themselves with seminal moments in history. Ex: Hillary claiming to have been named for Sir Edmond Hillary, Bill Clinton, speaking to a black audience, claiming to have witnessed church fires in Arkansas as a child when there were no church burnings on record in Arkansas, and my personal favorite: Bill Clinton (at 9 years old) claiming to have given up his bus seat to a black girl so he could take a stand against racism in Arkansas like Rosa Parks had done the day before in Montgomery. It turns out that all Arkansas schools were still segregated at that time so there couldn’t have been any black children on his school bus.
  
• -Johnny Huang: A tangled web of campaign cash, political influence, foreign banks, and the Communist Chinese intelligence service’s acquisition of top-secret satellite technology through illegal intelligence transfers in exchange for money.
  
• -Hillary “sold” seats for campaign cash, on the U.S. Department of Trade and Commerce Commission to people over whose businesses the commission had influence.
  
• -Travel-gate: Billy Dale and 7 long-time staffers are fired after Hillary dreams up malfeasance and kickback charges. Hillary hires her personal travel agent friend from Arkansas who provided 1 million in fly-now-pay-later campaign trips to the Clintons. Every single charge was thrown out and all 8 defendants were acquitted after only 2 hours of deliberation. Most of them are now in financial ruin because of having to defend against Hillary’s lying treachery.
  
• -Castle Grande: Hillary lies for two years about the whereabouts of the subpoenaed Rose law firms billing records which suspiciously turn up in the Whitehouse residence wing having “sat unnoticed on a table” the whole time. Yeah Right!
  

It’s ironic that Hillary, a criminal by any measure many times over, complains falsely about legislation she says might criminalize her. The bottom line: Hillary and the Democrats will use any imaginary excuse to oppose any bill which denies them the chance to make loyal voters out of the vast underclass of illegal immigrants

What's good for the goose...

Italicized parts borrowed loosely from Frank Gaffney in Jewish World Review…

Just imagine for a minute if the U.S. decided to apply these same laws to Mexican illegal immigrants in this country as Mexico would apply to U.S. citizens in that country illegally…outrageous!

According to an official translation published by the Organization of American States, the Mexican constitution includes the following restrictions:

"Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.”

This is not just about voting rights. It applies to campaigning, donations, and especially political protest marches like the ones in L.A. and other cities recently.

"Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners under equality of circumstances for all classes of concessions and for all employment, positions, or commissions of the Government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable." Jobs for which Mexican citizenship is considered "indispensable" include, pursuant to Article 32, bans on foreigners, immigrants, and even naturalized citizens of Mexico serving as military officers, Mexican-flagged ship and airline crew, and chiefs of seaports and airports.

There’s no such thing as equal employment opportunity in Mexico. What amounts to racial profiling that benefits natives is the rule down there.

"Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership of lands, waters, and their appurtenances, or to obtain concessions for the exploitation of mines or of waters."

Article 11 guarantees federal protection against "undesirable aliens resident in the country."

What is more, private individuals are authorized to make citizen's arrests. Article 16 states, "In cases of flagrante delicto, any person may arrest the offender and his accomplices, turning them over without delay to the nearest authorities." In other words, Mexico grants its citizens the right to arrest illegal aliens and hand them over to police for prosecution.

"the Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining he may deem inexpedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action."

So the average Mexican citizen is not only allowed, but encouraged to make citizen’s arrests of illegal aliens. Then the offending illegal may be deported without due process. How dare Vincente Fox bang his spoon on his highchair and tell us we’re being nativists and Xenophobes when the Mexican constitution demands the same treatment for illegals in Mexico? Unbelievable!

Motorists Open Fire on Hell's Angels

By MATT APUZZOAssociated Press Writer
WEST HAVEN, Conn.

A motorist opened fire on a group of Hell's Angels motorcyclists along Interstate 95, killing one and injuring another, police said.

The bikers were traveling near West Haven around 3:30 p.m. Sunday when they were shot, said State Police spokesman Sgt. J. Paul Vance.

Members of the motorcycle club gathered at Yale-New Haven Hospital Sunday night, prompting police to station officers there to keep order, though police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester said there were no incidents at the hospital.

If these idiots will open fire on the Hell’s Angels, who won’t they open fire on?

Al Gore

Al Gore has become a caricature of a cliché of a parody of himself…
This borrowed from Drudge:

Gore argued that by refusing to face up to the threat of global warming, Bush is just like the disgraced British prime minister who appeased the Nazis before World War II. "Where there is no vision, the people perish," Gore writes, quoting the Bible to bash Bush.

So, Clinton’s co-conspirator and the inventor of the internet equates what amounts to a natural warming trend in the Earth’s climate cycle with Nazism and the Holocaust? How more bizarre can this guy get before Tipper has him committed to a rubber room at the laughing factory? With off-the-deep-end spokespersons like this, it’s no wonder the Democrats may never win another election, despite the Republican’s remarkable inability to stay on message of late.

Warning that Bush and the Republican Congress have displayed "a blinding lack of awareness" about "the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization" — global warming — Gore also blames the incumbent for ignoring the threat of 9/11.

Bush "was warned on Aug. 6, 2001, of an attack by Al Qaeda.’Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US,' said the intelligence community in a message so important that it was the headline of the President's daily briefing that day, five weeks before the attacks," Gore seethes.

"Didn't he see that clear warning?" asks Gore. "Why were no questions asked, meetings called, evidence marshaled, clarifications sought?"

As for Bush's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, "Once again an urgent warning was ignored. The videotapes of one session make clear that the President heard the warnings but, again, asked not a single question."

Americans are finally acknowledging "that Katrina, as horrible as it was, may have been the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us over and over again," Gore rants.

It’s not easy being green.

I’ll bet it’s not easy being Gore’s team of shrinks either!

Is it really Gore’s strategy to wrap the Holocaust, global warming, 9/11 and Katrina all into one Bush-hating fantasy of blame? Clever! Let’s see how that plays in November.

Youths Protest Jobs While France Crumbles

Borrowed (in part) from Tom Heneghan

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac announced on Friday he would sign a controversial youth job law despite weeks of protests, but promised it would be amended right away to weaken two of its most disputed reforms.

Leave it to Chirac to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He caved to the unemployed slackers even before the law was in effect…how typically French.

Trade union and student leaders promptly rejected his proposals as insufficient and vowed to press on with their protests, including a nationwide action day next Tuesday.

Who is feeding and housing these jobless lay-abouts while they protest the very system that funds their worthlessness? Oh, I forgot. France is the cradle of modern Socialism so they were probably each issued a tax-payer subsidized meal and lodging card, good for three-hots-and-a-cot at hotels conveniently near most protest venues.

Even before he spoke, students gathered in Paris and other main cities to continue protests against the First Job Contract (CPE), which will let employers fire workers under 26 without cause during their first two years on the job.

Even before he spoke they gathered to protest. That’s rich!

"It is time to defuse the situation," Chirac said in the televised speech, in which he said he understood the concerns of youths who could not find jobs. Youth unemployment is running at 22 percent, high above France's 9.6 percent national average.

He said he would sign the law but then have amendments passed to shorten the permitted trial period to one from two years and require employers to give a reason for any dismissal.

French youths must be every bit as stupid as their reputation suggests. Don’t they get it? Chirac is trying to pass legislation to assist them in getting jobs. This new CPE law will encourage employers to hire young workers. Sure they’ll have to prove themselves worthy…that’s reality Jean-Paul…buck up!

More on illegal immigration

This excerpt from Andrew Greeley’s latest column in the Chicago Sun Times caught my eye:

Moreover, if one could effectively arrest all the 11 million felons in the country, where would replacements be found to fill their jobs? The American economy would grind to a halt. The illegals are, in a nice irony, essential to American prosperity.

With all due respect Mr. Greeley…you are a moron!

The very instant the 11 million illegals are no longer available to toil in the lettuce patch for $2/hour, the grower would be forced to raise his wage to whatever it took to entice Americans to pick his lettuce: it is as simple as that. His only alternatives would be to let the lettuce rot on the ground or have Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie pick it for an episode of “The Simple Life”. Maybe prices would increase moderately at the store (actually only about 3-5% of the cost of produce is harvest labor), but what American would not gladly pay an extra 50 cents for a head of lettuce in exchange for the dramatically reduced demand on social services that the low income, under-educated immigrant population ravenously consumes? Their pay scale is so low that their tax burden, if they have one at all, is miniscule compared to the vast treasure of American taxpayer funded entitlements they demand.

No matter how the pro-illegal immigration crowd rationalizes it, I keep coming back to this one question: Why, in heaven’s name, do people who are criminals in this country, and citizens of another country, have any demand at all to even a single tax dollar of Americans’ in the first place? Unbelievable!

Adequately derisive words to describe the utter stupidity of the last sentence in the excerpt of Mr. Greeley’s wildly farcical, pro-illegal immigration essay escape me, so I’ll just state the obvious:

No single group of anything or anybodies is indispensable to American prosperity, Andrew. If you don’t understand anything else (and it appears that you don’t), try to grasp this:

What is essential to American prosperity is the preservation, at all costs, of a dynamic, adaptive, legitimate free market economy, complemented by a competitive labor force which is undiluted by a vast underclass of unskilled illegals willing to work for pennies on the dollar.

Regardless of the piddling, unskilled day-jobs they perform, millions of illegals dramatically depress wages forcing Americans into unemployment and onto public assistance, consume vastly more tax-payer subsidized resources than they contribute, further burden the already over-burdened criminal justice and education systems, and remit tens of billions of dollars each year out of our economy into Mexico’s. Tell me if you can Andrew, how this set of conditions is essential to American prosperity.

There’s one more thing about his comment that bugged me: he asked, “…where would replacements be found to fill their jobs?” Just to clarify: employees do not own their jobs; they merely fill them for a price. Jobs belong to the employer and he contracts with the employee to do that job for a time. Apparently Mr. Greeley, like most Liberals, believes, wrongly, that workers have a right to “their” jobs and the benefits that go with them…they don’t! Employees serve at the pleasure of their employer.

Bombs Away!

Borrowed (in part) from Brietbart.com

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

Instead of testing it uselessly in the desert, why not test it where it is likely to be used…that is, wherever the best intelligence suggests Osama Bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Alec Baldwin is hiding?

Wah! Wah! Wah!

Paraphrased from contactmusic.com

Apparently Harrison Ford hates the internet because anyone can spread malicious gossip about him.

Dude, you should feel lucky to have people talking about you at all.

He whined, “Any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and can have a (expletive deleted) life of its own.”

So it’s OK for Bush-hating, Hollywood liberals to post on the internet all kinds of lies about the President and conservatives and hide behind nonsense like “artistic expression” or “the first amendment”, but when it happens to them, Oh my! The sky is falling! It’s not fair…something must be done.

Look, I’ll be the first to point out the failings of President Bush and Republican leadership; they are many. But the shrill, fanaticism, passed-off as serious political thought, coming from the Left in this country is breath-taking.

Just a few quotes from the stone-throwing, self-adoring, Hollywood Left:

Wacky Lib #1 – Alec Baldwin:
“Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately”

Wacky Lib #2 – Kanye West:
“Bush doesn’t care about black people. He’s sending troops down here to shoot us”

Wacky Lib #3 – Susan Sarandon:
“We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States."

Wacky Lib #4 – Jennifer Anniston
"Bush is a (expletive deleted) idiot."

There’s no way prominent conservatives would get passes for posting on the internet stuff like that about Hillary, Kerry, Gore or any Democrat.

To be sure, we conservatives have our share of whack-jobs on our team too (Pat Robertson for one). The difference is that when our nuts say something stupid, we call them on it. When the idiots on the Left say something stupid, Liberals shrug and give them a pass as if what they said was recognized as fact.

The internet may indeed provide a vehicle for distortions and rumor, but it also has a way of exposing hypocrisy and the mirror-loving Lefties who practice it.

New Orleans

This would be laughably pathetic if it weren’t so actually pathetic…

Starved for cash, the New Orleans school district is taking a long shot and hoping to sell its flooded, unsalvageable school buses on eBay.


Let’s review two of the many abysmal decisions made by Ray Nagin in the days leading up to and in the months since Katrina…

Screw up #1: in what may prove to be the single greatest example of disastrous leadership judgment since the CEO of Coca-Cola went with New Coke, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray “chocolate city” Nagin, elected not to use the city’s 260 school buses, or the 364 NORTA buses, to evacuate the stranded residents of his city who lay helplessly for days in the path of a category 5 hurricane. (I never heard anyone suggest this but surely somebody did, only to have been vetoed by Nagin no doubt: In the days leading up to landfall of Katrina, why didn’t Ray Nagin recruit willing bus drivers (there were hundreds), have them run their normal school-day pick-up routes, over and over, collecting any people plus one piece of luggage who needed a ride out of the city, and deposit them somewhere, anywhere North, away from direct harm? I cannot be convinced that 624 school/city buses, operating around the clock for 4-5 days, shuttling the huddled masses out of the city, could not have easily removed every single resident that wanted to be removed from the path of Katrina.)
Ray Nagin’s negligence boggles the mind!

Screw up #2: A scrap metal company out of Texas offered to pay the city of N.O. 5 million dollars for the right to clean up all the abandoned vehicles from the flooded sections of N.O. that litter the streets and hinder clean-up efforts. Predictably, the mayor of “Brown Town” (his words, not mine) passed on the deal, instead shrewdly negotiating for the city of N.O. to pay 23 million dollars to have the vehicles removed by a different company. That Ray, he’s a slick customer. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on him.

The obvious question here is where were the keys to all these vehicles in the days before Katrina and why didn’t the helpless, downtrodden les miserables of N.O. drive their own cars out of the city? My guess: all those vehicles had Breathalyzer locks on the ignitions and since everybody attended pre-Katrina parties, nobody could get their blood alcohol content low enough to start the cars in time to escape the flood water.

What a satisfyingly ironic conclusion to the whole school bus affair: The school buses (the best resource, by far, for rescuing thousands of citizens) weren’t good enough to save his people from disaster, but are the only resource now available to rescue the schools at which the children of the people he could have rescued will hopefully be educated.

All you can do is shake your head and laugh at what miserable, abject, derelict failures the leaders of that city were when its residents needed them most. Astonishingly, they want to be re-elected. And just in time for hurricane season. Yaaaay!

I borrowed this from Boortz.com because this idea certainly strikes a chord with me and I thought it might with you too. Check it out…

Tuesday -- March 28, 2006

PERHAPS THIS IS A SOLUTION TO THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

Let's noodle this illegal immigration thing through for a minute. Why are these gate-crashers coming to America? Well, because nobody's stopping them, of course, but why do they want to be here? Hint: It's not to worship God as they chose, nor is it to have the right to free speech. It's economics. They come here because they have little hope of improving their lives where they live. History shows that free enterprise and capitalism do more to lift people out of despair and poverty than any other economic system. In spite of the best efforts of the socialist left in this country, free enterprise still pretty much powers our growing economy. Our low unemployment rate is the envy of the rest of the world.
So .. what if we were to crank up the economic engine in the United States to previously unheard of levels? What if the job-creation machine went into overdrive? What could bring this about? Well, how about a new tax code that completely removed all taxes from business and labor? What if such a tax code made America the world's number one tax haven for businesses? What if companies and manufacturing concerns from around the world started to make their plans to move manufacturing, production and distribution facilities into the United States to take advantage of our tax structure?
Two things would happen. First, job growth would be such in this country that we would have no problem at all assimilating the 11 to 12 million illegal aliens that now reside here. Remember, as I told you yesterday, these people are here to stay. They aren't going anywhere.
Secondly, other countries would start to become very alarmed by the drain of commerce to the United States. They would be unable to compete in a global economy with a country that places absolutely no tax component on labor or businesses. Oh, to be sure, these countries would start howling to the United Nations and to the European Union about "unfair tax competition" from those nasty Americans. Our response would be simple. You aren't going to beat us, so why don't you join us? Industrialized nations that want to maintain any significant portion of their manufacturing base would be compelled to play the same game America is playing. Understand, please, that these countries would have no choice. What are they going to do? Are they going to continue to tax the puddin' out of their own manufacturing base while the United States sits there across the pond, or north of the border, inviting all the world to come play in our tax-free business environment? Sooner or later, they have to play the game; and when they do it would usher in a new era of freedom and economic growth for the people of those countries. No longer would they have to leave their homes to find the opportunities they desire. The opportunities would come to them.
Now all we have to do is figure out such a tax system.
If you haven’t already, read the FairTax book. It’ll change the way you think about taxation in this country.

Update about the peace activists

This is an update to the story about those three peace activists in Iraq who had to be rescued from throat-slashing, terrorist vermin. Rather than thank their liberators, they vilified American, British and Canadian troops as illegal occupiers. The irony just gets richer…

The co-director of the Christian Peacemakers Teams says the family of freed Christian peace activist James Loney kept his sexual orientation quiet out of fear for his safety.

Doug Pritchard says the family feared Loney might come to harm at the hands of his Iraqi captors had they known he was gay. Pritchard says it likely wouldn’t have helped if Loney’s partner, Dan Hunt, had come forward with public pleas for his release.

Hunt made his first public appearance since Loney’s ordeal began last November when he greeted his partner Sunday at the airport.

So this idiot was over there in sympathy with practitioners of Islam who would gladly slash his throat, precisely because his sexual orientation is an abomination to Islam. How many of these stories do we have to read before we stop calling it the Religion-of-Peace?

Those Clueless Frenchies

Those clueless Frenchies

Is it just me enjoying the misfortune of others again, or are the recent youth labor riots in France kind of funny in an anyone-could-have-predicted-this kind of way? Right on the heels of the Muslim cartoon riots a few months ago, which were right on the heels of the Muslim youth car-burning riots a few months before that, comes the latest labor riots over proposed legislation that would make it easier for employers to fire workers under the age of 26 without cause. Heaven forbid that a young person should have to compete and prove themselves to their employer!

Entitlement-minded, French youth, expecting government guaranteed job security, weeks-long employer-paid summer holidays, and lavish retirement packages at no cost to them, have taken to the streets to claim what is rightfully theirs. (Of the few of these idiots who are employed, do you think their bosses let them off work to protest?)

The unemployment rate among young French workers is already at like 23%. Why? One reason is because employers are afraid to hire young, unproven, untrained workers who are impossible to get rid of if they turn out to be loafers. In a Socialist economy, the government controls the means of production and distribution, so it can dictate labor laws that make the workers happy voters. Eventually, company earnings decrease because the workers, having no incentive to work hard, become complacent and unproductive. (It is estimated that on any given work day, 15-20% of the French work force calls in sick) They can sit around the cafes smoking and drinking lattes during the day without risking job loss since jobs are guaranteed by the government. Rather than risk having to pay an unproven employee who is impossible to fire, French managers have rightly calculated that it is more profitable to keep the few good workers they have and not hire anybody untested, even if production declines.

The new law would allow managers to maintain a competitive, productive work force…at least until the employee reaches 26…then it’s back to the entitlement mentality.

This law describes the capitalist paradigm under which practically all U.S. employees work…and thrive. All this hiring and firing and labor competition that the French find so unpleasant, and our unemployment rate is still like 3.2%. We have to prove ourselves almost daily to keep our jobs because we know somebody else will take it from us if we become slackers. A competitive, dynamic labor force maximizes earning for companies, overall productivity of the American economy (both of which create more jobs) and most importantly, the wage and benefits packages employees can demand for their services. France could implement this system and return to its days of economic competitiveness if it wanted to…but it won’t. The politicians don’t want to give up political power and the people want to be taken care of rather than be responsible for themselves.

Question: Which slice of American society does that sound like?

What we are seeing in France is one of the predictable end results of Socialism (of which Liberalism is a watered-down version): a population of whining, petulant brats who don’t want to work or compete for anything because they’ve come to expect the government to provide for them from the cradle to the grave. Beware…if Liberalism is allowed to run its natural course in the U.S., in 50 years we’ll be where France is today, and I would not look good in a beret.

Ungrateful Wretches

File this under “Ungrateful Wretches”
From Pulse24.com

Last November, James Loney, Harmeet Singh Sooden, both Canadians, Norman Kember of Britain, and American Tom Fox, were kidnapped in Baghdad while working with the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams. After the tortured body of Tom Fox was found on a Baghdad street riddled with bullets last month, the worst was feared for the remaining three men.

On the 22nd of March the hostages were found when American-led multi-national forces raided a house in western Baghdad, acting on information from one of two detainees interrogated late Wednesday night.

When asked to comment on the Multinational Forces who risked life and limb to free them, the three poster-children for Stockholm Syndrome issued this astoundingly unappreciative statement: "We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end. “Today, in the face of this joyful news, our faith compels us to love our enemies even when they have committed acts which caused great hardship to our friends and sorrow to their families.
“We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq. “During these past months, we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Why have our loved ones been taken? Where are they being held? Under what conditions? How are they? Will they be released? When?

Not one word of thanks or appreciation. Just a self-righteous harangue one might expect from useful-idiot, Leftists agitators. And they always seem to take the side against America. That’s what this is about. It’s not about peace; it’s about getting some attention by hating America.

“…we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread…”. Who talks like that? They ought to be on their knees thanking American, British and Canadian troops who delivered them from dying a Tom Fox death.

The real story, but one the main stream media will not tell you, is that these same Multinational Force soldiers would go in and save them again and again if they had to, regardless of their wretched thanklessness. These three stooges-of-the-Left didn’t do anything to be proud of. The soldiers are the heroes of this story.

Under the Bus: the story of Russ Feingold

Monday, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold introduced a resolution of censure of President Bush regarding the NSA wiretapping program, indignantly claiming it to be unconstitutional and a violation of American’s civil liberties. Rank and file Senate Democrats roundly supported the bill adding their criticism of the NSA program to Sen. Feingold’s.

This is where it gets good: Bill Frist, Republican Senate Majority Leader basically said, “OK, boys. You obviously like to talk tough, but can you play tough, let’s have a vote right now, today, so you can show the American people how seriously you take national security.”

That weasel Feingold was nowhere to be found in the Senate chamber. It turns out the Democrats didn’t want any part of actually going on the record by voting. They just want to give the fawning media good copy but not actually be on the record as having voted to censure a sitting U.S. President during a time of war. When Frist called their bluff, they (Dems) were happy to throw Feindgold under the proverbial bus so they wouldn’t have to actually (gasp!) take a stand. They backpedaled like circus clowns. One Frist staffer laughed, “He pushed them to the mat today and they blinked. He dared them to vote, and Democrat Leader Harry Reid looked like he was going to be sick as he said ‘No”.

I love hardball politics!

Liquid Water on Enceladus

And this exciting news from Drudge: Liquid water reservoirs found on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus

If there was one event that shaped me into the science geek that I am today, it was Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. So count me among the few who think space exploration is still really cool. I realize Enceladus is kind of far from the sun and highly reflective (thus -330 F surface temp), so relative to Mars, it’s of little value other than plain scientific curiosity. That said, the possibility, no matter how remote, that NASA could drop a probe down, scoop up some dirt and find evidence that something once crawled around there, would be awesome.

If vast subterranean bodies of water are found as suspected, Do you think congressional Democrats would voice bug-eyed objections to Dubai World operating the ports there too? Just a thought.

Negative perception of Islam Increasing

Let’s begin with this groundbreaking news flash from the Washington Post: “Negative Perception of Islam Increasing”

No kidding? Talk about stating the obvious! Why not run this story too…

“Apathy About John Kerry’s ’08 Presidential Bid Increasing” or
“Failure Rate of Ted Kennedy’s Field Sobriety Tests Increasing” or
“Hostility Toward Hollywood for Cramming Gay Cowboy Movies Down America’s Throat Increasing”?

A growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now says that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence.
Half of Americans have a negative view of Islam and one in four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims.

Well let’s see now…a partial review is in order, of the terror-related incidents around the world in which radical Islamofascists were the known perps: the first WTC bombing in 1993, the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of the USS Cole, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the train station bombings in Madrid, the subway bombings in London, the hotel bombing in Bali, Indonesia, the weeks of pointless rioting and mayhem in France by unassimilated Muslim thugs, the ideologically motivated stabbing of movie maker Theo van Gogh in Holland, the petulant, imbecilic rioting in Denmark over some STUPID CARTOONS, and the ultimate expression, to date, of Islamoradical hatred for anything not Islamic…9/11. Yeah, I think “unfavorable” would be a justifiable description of American’s views of the religion of peace.

Americans are some of the most tolerant and accepting people in the world…up to a point. The Danes, Dutch and French tried unlimited tolerance for the religion-of-peace and what did they get in return…murder, mayhem, rioting and violence directed specifically at non-Muslims. I don’t think Americans are unfairly labeling Muslims as prone to violence…they’ve proven around the world that they are indeed violent. Of course, not all Muslims are bomb throwers but by not standing up and ratting out those who are, they are guilty by association. It’s a tough spot to be in but sometimes you have to choose sides. If you had information, which exposed a vicious gang that murdered your neighbors, yet you didn’t tell the police, are you not guilty of criminally bad citizenship and deserve to be viewed unfavorably? Until Muslims in this and other countries start taking a pro-active, public stand against the radicals among them, and prove that their citizenship in the U.S. means more to them than their ideological loyalty to the terrorists, they will have to accept American’s unfavorable views of, and prejudice toward, Muslims.

This is disgusting!

This is disgusting! – (CBS)

Woman Sues Hotel After Suffering 500 Bed Bug Bites

All I can say is…YIKES!!!

A Chicago woman is suing a hotel for $20 million after waking up one morning with more than 500 bed bug bites.

I think reading this story will turn out to have been a watershed event in my life. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, I believe that’s the day I became a science geek. The day I discovered Jif tastes more like fresh peanuts is the last day I ate Peter Pan. After today, I can never sleep in a hotel again without thoroughly checking the sheets and I’ll probably start taking my own pillow.

Leslie Fox, 54, awoke to find red, itchy welts all over her body. “I had no idea what was happening to me. We noticed blood on the bed and I became very upset and alarmed.”

Ya think? Let’s see, you wake up and your skin is on fire, your bed looks like somebody slaughtered a goat in it, you look under the thin hotel sheets and there is an undulating mass of thousands of sucking bugs directly beneath where you slept, and you’re 5 minutes late for the Continental breakfast in the lobby. I don’t think upset and alarmed would adequately describe my state of mind. (I’m about to hop in bed right now and it’s freaking me out!) Then this cracked me up:

When the couple reported to hotel officials that their room was infested, the officials offered two free nights.

“Wow, two free nights! I got my blood mostly sucked out by a churning colony of bed ticks and for that I get two free nights, in this same hotel? Throw in a couple of pay-per-view movies and that about makes us even.” Do you think those hotel officials still have jobs?

I hate to have to say it, but all the therapy $20 million can buy will not make the nightmares go away.

Let the Ball roll!

Let the Ball roll!

With a well-heeled Iraq, and a quiet North Korea for now, the attention of the U.S. has turned to the gathering nuclear threat in Iran. That radical jihadist of a president is pressing forward with his state’s nuclear power program. In a recent IAEA board meeting, U.S. delegate Gregory Schulte said that the 85 tons of feedstock uranium gas already produced by Iran “if enriched, could produce enough material for about 10 nuclear weapons”.

In response to suggestions that the 5 permanent members of the U.N. Security Council consider sanctions, Iran’s delegate bravely challenged, “The United States has the power to cause harm and pain but the U.S. is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if that is the path that the U.S. wishes to choose, let the ball roll.”

Do you think he really said, “…let the ball roll”? That’s like hopping down into to the grizzly bear cage at the zoo and poking him with a sharp stick. It’s mighty big talk for the representative of an unproductive, third-world, cat box populated by hashish-addicted, zealots who drive around all day in Toyota pick-up trucks shooting their guns and mistreating their women. I wouldn’t be surprised if a Daisy Cutter found it’s way to his house the night the carpet-bombing starts.

He mentioned harm and pain…perhaps he’s unfamiliar with harm and pain’s friends, Shock and Awe. Obviously some folks around the world have short memories and might need a gentle reminder of the peril one risks by directing bully-boy rhetoric, coupled with nuclear weapons production, toward the U.S. A precision-guided, tactical, nuclear strike on the Iranian president’s house should jog their memories.

If that doesn’t happen, once again, the abysmally useless and corrupt United Nations will fail to do anything about this threat because everybody at the U.N. resents the U.S. and hates Israel and would enjoy seeing one or both of us suffer. Russia and China will not sign on to any embargo or sanctions because they are big consumers of Iranian oil and value their trading relationship. The E.U. countries recognize the threat but won’t contribute to a solution lest they offend their resident Muslim populations who are still banging their spoons on their high-chairs about those stupid cartoons. So, no nation but the U.S. will stand up to protect Israel which means we or Israel will be forced to launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites if it looks like they’re close to successful development of WMD’s.

Arab country kicks sand in our face – the U.S. crushes them into oblivion…
Another Arab country threatens to kick sand in our face – the U.S. will crush them into oblivion…
Recognize a pattern here? It’s the Geo-Political Circle of Life in the post 9/11 world.

Hecklers harass families of US soldiers killed in Iraq

Hecklers harass families of US soldiers killed in Iraq - Breitbart.com

Forgive me for being unable to describe adequately the wickedness and depravity exhibited by these God-forsaken wretches:

Five women sang and danced as they held up signs saying "thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of an army sergeant who was killed by an Iraqi bomb. For them, it was the perfect way to spread God's word: America was being punished for tolerating homosexuality. The Westboro Baptist Church first gained national notoriety when they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. They have since picketed the funerals of Frank Sinatra and Bill Clinton's mother, celebrated the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an act of God’s wrath, and have even targeted Santa Claus and the Ku Klux Klan. Founder Fred Phelps said he and his congregants are targeting the funerals because God's way of punishing an "evil nation" of "fags and fag enablers" is to "pick off its children."
"I don't have any sympathy for these parents. They're all going to hell," Phelps said. "The family's in pain because they haven't obeyed the Lord God."
The group is so outrageous that some among the extreme-right have speculated that Phelps is a plant aimed at giving the anti-gay movement a bad name, said Mark Potok, the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks hate crimes. "I don't think they have any constituency beyond their own members - even the Nazis aren't interested," he said. "This man probably thinks more about gay sex than any other person in the United States of America and one can only guess at what that means," he said. "Many of the most homophobic people are deeply afraid that they might be gay."

First of all, I wish someone would explain to me the connection between US soldiers dying in Iraq and homosexuality, Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell notwithstanding. That they are doing this in God’s name is beyond blasphemous. Regardless, whatever is in store in the way of karma for these idiots is not nearly severe enough.

Secondly, does the Bible not teach tolerance? I don’t mean the politically correct kind. I mean the kind by which human beings may disagree with, or even be judgmental about, a person’s behavior, yet remain respectful of and compassionate toward that person as one of God’s children. Did Jesus ever rejoice in anyone’s discomfort, much less his or her grief about a lost loved one?

Third, these guys are so degenerate, even the Nazis can’t stomach them. I mean how loathsome do you have to be to get shunned by Nazis?

Fourth, reasonable Americans are for equal rights, period. We are not for preferential rights or discrimination based on orientation…just simple equality. That being said, the notion, while intriguing, that this half-wit Phelps is a plant by the gays to give the anti-gays a bad name, implies a conspiracy far too clever for the same ridiculous group that gave rise to the Village People. Besides, you cannot persuade even the stupidest person in the George Michael fan club to concoct a persona this hateful and then maintain it for years, just to make anti-gays look bad.

Lastly, Mark Potok nailed it: these morons are in greater denial about their latent homosexuality than Britney is about her parenting skills. Their only hope for eternity is to cling to that old axiom that goes something like, “God protects fools, children, mad dogs and Englishmen”…or something to that effect. Absent that, there’s a special place in you-know-where for this bunch.

Barry, Hank and the Babe

Barry, Hank and the Babe

Well it looks like Barry Bonds, sitting comfortably at 708 homeruns, (after that many shots in his rear-end, how is sitting possible at all?) will easily pass Babe Ruth’s 714 early this baseball season. Here’s my take on the whole Bonds thing: Having only played 14 games last season, he’s had plenty of time to contemplate his post-baseball life and realize that A) nobody likes him, B) his commercial prospects are bleaker than Brokeback Mountain’s ticket sales, and C) because of his steroid use, nobody (baseball fans) really cares if he gets another homerun record? Clearly Barry Bonds is a great hitter, maybe the greatest ever- steroids or not - but, cheating to get sports records ruins the fun of watching them be set in the first place. I think his spring training antics and reality show are part of an effort to endear himself to baseball fans prior to his last season and to possibly salvage what might have been his, as the greatest homerun hitter of all time. Bonds has already hedged on the strength of his knee lasting through this season. Bearing that in mind, I’ll offer a prediction: Bonds has never been equivocal about his desire to make people forget the Bambino and he will eagerly break the Babe’s record for dingers and hit many more, but he will intentionally stop short of Hank Aaron’s 755, feigning injury to his bum knee. He doesn’t appear to revere much, including the integrity of the game of baseball, his body, or the law, but I believe Bonds has respect for Hank Aaron’s 755 clean home runs.

I was a twelve-year-old kid sitting with my family in the second to the top row of Fulton County Stadium when Aaron hit #715. I’ll never forget the older black gentleman a few seats down from me crying during the celebration after Hank trotted the bases. Somehow, I doubt there will be any tears of pride or joy when or if Bonds hits #756.

Yale Taliban

TALIBAN SPIN DOCTOR AT YALE

From the New York Times’ Chip Brown
The Taliban’s former spokesman, Rahmatullah Hashemi, is now an undergraduate at Yale University. In fact he appeared at a Yale forum representing the Taliban a few months before 9/11. “In some ways,” he says, “I’m the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanomo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale.”

You’ve got to be totally kidding me! Thanks to Norm Manetta and his reckless, PC no-profiling policies at the Department of Transportation, this terrorist mouthpiece applied for and actually received a visa to this country? I’m a Bush fan in principle but, in that particular instance, he was a spineless half-wit to have bowed to the Democrats and non-existent bipartisanship, by appointing a liberal Clinton holdover as Transportation Secretary. C’mon ‘W’, you won, act like a winner!

Three Heads

THREE HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE?

You can’t make this stuff up! UPI reports from Mumbai, India that [residents of a Mumbai neighborhood have been staying indoors after dark because of fear of a three-headed woman bringing death…she goes after babies and small children and looking into her eyes is said to bring death…many residents have chalked the name of Lord Ram on their doors believing that he is an incarnation of Vishnu the Preserver.]

Three-headed women, Lord Ram, Vishnu the Preserver…is there a long lost J.R.R.Tolkein book they’re reading over there that we don’t know about? It’s funny how the largest Democracy on Earth, which produces highly educated and talented programmers and scientists by the thousands, can also give rise to back-woods nonsense like this. Then again some Puerto Ricans believe in the Chupacabra and some residents of the Pacific Northwest believe in Sasquatch. I guess every culture needs to invent boogiemen now and then. Come to think of it, we haven’t had a good boogieman myth to scare everybody in this country in a long time. But then again, with Al Gore and John Kerry getting a few hanging chads away from the Presidency, and now with Hillary craving higher office, who needs to make up nightmarish urban legends?

Storm the Whitehouse

STORM THE WHITEHOUSE
(originally posted in March 2006)

The following event sounds like a really good time, check out the announcement (in part) from the Birkenstocks and hemp crowd over at UnitedforPeaceandJustice.com…

Wednesday, March 15th 2006 12:00 AM
Washington, D.C. USA

TAKE THE WHITEHOUSE BY STORM – Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation

It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation and theft of land is illegal. Murder of journalists is criminal. Remove the traitors who have stolen the U.S. budget and used it to commit international crimes against humanity.

[we must storm in…] The World Criminal Courts need to incarcerate Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld…

And this is just priceless: The Political Cooperative will put a new, temporary government in place that is comprised of people from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and all the organizations that have finally made us aware of the truth of the savage practices and illegal policies of our government…

[The] Political Cooperative? What in the name of Timothy Leary is that? It sounds like a commune in Idaho where the great unwashed nation of smelly, aging hippies gathers to munch granola, listen to Joni Mitchell albums, and plot it’s triumphant return to the glory days of the sixties which, is the last time, and regretfully then, they were anything resembling relevant.

Seriously for a minute, this is the plan?
[First: From around the country, they’re going to gather as many incense-reeking, soap-averse, under-achieving, flower children, together in the Nation’s capitol…at least as many as can Visine their eyes long enough to read a roadmap from Berkeley, or Soho or wherever].
O.K., so I don’t have a problem with smelly hippies traveling the interstate system from across the country. It’s just that there is perhaps an overreaching assumption by organizers that a significant percentage of them can arrive on time, having avoided Under the Influence arrests on the way.

[Second: They lawfully assemble in front of the Whitehouse.]
Peaceful assembly is still constitutional the last time I checked so I’m still cool with it.

[Then: they storm in and install a temporary government.]
OK, let’s say the whole storming-the-Whitehouse thing works. (Disregard the fact that the likelihood of even getting past the front gate successfully without getting shot is as remote as Paris Hilton getting past pre-algebra.) From the sound of it, the new government will evidently be composed of other smelly hippies. Only these hippies are employed by hippie organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. (Ex. A.I. and H.R.W., consistently with Leftist hippie creed, found no crimes against humanity in Somalia, Sudan or Iraq but railed hysterically against imagined voter intimidation in Florida in ’00 and ‘04) Now, while hippies are fond of running around in swarms of buzzing flies, hemp smocks and rose-colored John Lennon glasses in their every day life, the very nature of employment implies not only bathing, but the wearing of decent clothes to work. Compared to your garden-variety hippie, these “working hippies” at A.I. and H.R.W. probably appear enlightened and quite successful. I guess clean clothes and bug-eyed anti-Americanism qualifies one to hold Executive offices in the new government…what did they call it…The Political Cooperative? You just gotta love the patchouli oil and tofu bunch! We’ll be watching on the 15th…Good luck!

Imminent Domain

A Man’s Home is the State’s Castle
By Ed Phillips
(originally posted in March 2006)

A truly free society could be described as, among other things, a self-governed citizenry, made up of individuals living their lives, un-intimidated by the State. Fundamental to the individual’s pursuit of happiness in such a society is the concept of ownership. William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson described the sovereign individual in terms of self-ownership: exclusive control over his or her own body and life without the interference of governing powers. In addition to body and life, the idea of self-ownership has broadened in the post-modern world to include labor and property. (Obviously, no man may own another man’s labor or that man is a slave.) Historically, the courts, except for a couple of very narrow areas, have settled the tenets of self-ownership. Body-ownership (specifically with respect to reproduction) remains contentious, but the area I’m interested in is the area of property rights.

Ever since the New London vs Kelo Supreme Court decision was handed down, revenue-hungry townships in dozens of states have seized the opportunity to increase the city’s tax base using the power of imminent domain. The original intent of imminent domain was to provide townships with means to provide for the general welfare of its citizens by taking private land with the intent of public use…but with just and fair compensation. Only the most craven liberal would disagree that public use should be limited to schools, public roads, bridges, fire stations, etc. Thanks to Justice O’Connor, now thankfully in semi-retirement, the “public use” clause had it’s meaning changed to the broader “public purpose”, as she put it.

Prior to Kelo, the most recognizable, alternative meaning of “public use” was to describe toilets at the airport.

Now “public use” can mean anything that represents higher tax revenues for the city…strip malls, condos, office parks or whatever the commercial developer pays the city council member to define as public use. The Constitutional breech occurs not when the city seizes land from the individual, it occurs when that land is transferred to another individual. If your city council members decide that you and your land don’t contribute enough taxes they can unilaterally condemn your land as blighted, kick you out for a “fair market price”, and give it to the commercial developer who’s been bankrolling their re-election campaigns. As it stands, the members of the city council, clearly conflicted by the opposing interests of voters whom they serve and developers who line their pockets, have sole authority to decide what constitutes neighborhood blight. Blight used to be defined as a neighborhood having high numbers of abandoned houses or buildings, property under general disrepair, a high crime rate, and overall lacking in vitality. Now it includes “failure to contribute adequately to the tax base”.

There is nothing in the world wrong with a developer persuading people to sell to him their land as long as it’s done within the confines of the free market system, that is: the developer should have to pay whatever is required to get the people to happily agree to leave, whether he believes the price to be fair or not. If no mutually agreeable price can be reached, tough luck! But rather than find another piece of property, the unscrupulous developer foots the bill for a weekend getaway for the city councilmen and their families and the next thing you know, the neighborhood occupying the land he covets gets labeled as blighted.

Here is where the community falls apart when property rights of land ownership are threatened. If a citizen fears that the State may arbitrarily seize his property for which he possesses lawful documented ownership, where is his incentive to invest himself in his home, land, or neighborhood? Why invest your money and labor into something that is not guaranteed by law to remain yours until you decide to sell it? It’s why rental property is rarely well-maintained…why take pride in something that’s does not belong to you? One need only look at the former Soviet Union, where all property belonged to the State, to understand the value to society of individual ownership. The Soviet State owned the factories, farms, homes and labor of all citizens, and look at the poverty, despair, and misery those poor folks endured for generations. Where was their entrepreneurial spirit to invent, to create, to improve their own life through hard work and dedication? Incentive, motivation, hope and pride disappear when the State, not the individual, is the beneficiary of his inventions and labor.

When the State (read: city council) chips away at the Constitution by diluting and weakening fundamental rights, other individual rights are threatened as well. While the State can curtail the expression of speech and assembly for instance, they cannot be seized per se, because these rights are ethereal and exist only when one exercises them. Property however, is physical, tangible, and permanent. It is owned. You can point to it and state, “That is mine”. If absolute property ownership is not guaranteed, how fleeting might free speech, assembly, and other rights be? The concept of a-man’s-house-is-his-castle is rendered meaningless if you possess your “castle” only at the pleasure of the State. If the State can take it away, simply because it wants it, is it really yours?

Port Security

Something is Rotten…Somewhere
By Ed Phillips
(originally posted in February 2006)

I’ll be the first to admit that when I heard about the plan for a British company to sell its operational control of some U.S. shipping ports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, my response was, “What is Bush thinking?” After all, two of the 9-11 terrorists were UAE nationals and reportedly, huge sums of money have been funneled through the UAE to fund Al-Qaida operations, (kind of the way Communist China funneled huge sums of money through Buddhist Temples to fund Clinton/Gore operations). Then I heard there was bipartisan antagonism toward the deal. Ever the skeptic, I thought, “Wait just a minute, Republican and Democrat togetherness? That’s as likely a duet as Pavarotti and Federline, but then who am I to second guess koom-ba-ya bipartisanship?” Then a funny thing happened on the way to celebrating this new political paradigm…

While the initial opposition from Republicans was predictable red-state stuff, there was a quality associated with the Democrats’ bug-eyed opposition to the port deal that didn’t quite pass the smell test. Now, when the likes of Hillary Clinton, Chuck Shumer and Barbara Boxer say “nay” to a proposal, I am compelled as a citizen, a Republican, and scoffer of all things liberal, to reserve judgment until I’ve given the “ayes” the benefit of every doubt. Since there are still things unknown about the deal, I hesitate to choose sides just yet. For now let’s examine a much more interesting dynamic: the reasons driving the Left’s opposition to the port deal.

For years, and especially since 9-11, we’ve been lectured by finger-wagging, self-righteous Lefties about not judging others before we know their motivations (and usually not even then), about equal opportunity, about minority access to markets, and about the unacceptability of ethnic profiling no matter the stakes, even when very bad people fit a very narrow, specific profile.

Allow me to recount a relevant personal anecdote from 2005: In preparation for taking my wife and kids to Mexico for Spring Break, I shared our itinerary with my mom. It turned out that she and some friends (one of whom was in her 70’s and temporarily wheelchair bound) also had travel plans for that weekend which, like ours, included a morning flight from Atlanta. Maybe you’ve heard, Atlanta has sort of a busy airport, so we figured the chances of running into them were slimmer than an Olsen twin on Atkins. Anyway, standing in line at the security gate, we prepared ourselves for the indignity of searches by Homeland Security goons by pre-untying our shoes, checking for clean underwear, and cleverly slipping a set of brass knuckles into the carry-on bag of the French looking gentleman in front of us. Much to our delight, we breezed through security without so much as a glance from authorities, in spite of me appearing very 9-11ish, what with my tanned complexion, short, dark hair, dark, beady eyes, and Death to Infidels T-shirt…obviously I’m kidding...my eyes aren’t beady. Well no sooner had we cleared gate security, respectfully averting our eyes lest we embarrass the French guy receiving an on-the-spot cavity search, than we looked up agape! There was my mom’s traveling party. Her friend was standing spread eagled, arms outstretched next to her wheel-chair receiving the “business” from two Homeland Security types, ever vigilant to protect Americans from shifty, up-to-no-good seniors. What did they think she was going to do, swipe a few extra contraband artificial sweeteners from the airport McDonald’s into her purse? Seriously, if anybody had gotten the “business”, it should have been me.

The purpose of that story was to illustrate the absurdity, when it comes to American air or shipping port security, of the whole ethnic-profiling-equals-violation-of-civil-rights nonsense that the Left preaches. Bearing that in mind, let’s get back on point…

Why would Liberals object so vehemently to the idea of allowing a foreign company, from a very friendly Arab country who, itself is a target of Al-Qaida, and with whom the U.S. is an ally in the Global War on Terror, access to our economic markets? Aren’t folks like Clinton, Shumer and Boxer in favor of equal, if not preferential, opportunity and access for minorities? One expects justifiable, National Security based race objections from conservatives. But coming from Liberals, who believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world (the lone exception being Karl Rove), it seems suspect. Could it be that there are unseen forces at work? Perhaps an ulterior motive compels the Democrats to take such a puzzling and hypocritical position. I’m afraid there is but one conclusion…I’m shocked, shocked I say, to have to tell you that the Democratic leadership in America has profiled the citizens of the UAE and found them to be suspicious and untrustworthy based on their race alone! Why this issue? Why now when we conservatives have been suspecting and distrusting Muslim Arab nationals openly for like five years?

The answer: with moistened fingers held high in the political breeze, Democrats sensed a weakness in George Bush’s right flank. Americans, like me, reflexively and ignorantly asked, “Say what?” when the UAE port deal was announced, and Democrats seized the opportunity to exploit a perceived vulnerability, previously unavailable to them: Bush appearing weak on national security to conservatives. With mid-term elections around the corner, Bush’s approval numbers down around 40%, and polls showing Democrats can’t be trusted with national security, Democrats (and to be fair, Republicans anticipating close re-election races in November) saw the opportunity to get on Bush’s right on Defense, making him look weak by comparison.

“It’s just election year politics”, you say, “All is fair”. Fine, but I would not want to be in the position in the run-up to November, of having to make the following embarrassing rationalization, with a straight face, to the American people: Racial profiling by law enforcement is bad, and equals violation of civil rights, even when the profilee is a carbon copy of known terrorists, however; racial profiling by Democrats is OK because it is a necessary means toward achieving a worthy political end (the re-acquisition of political power).

By presenting manufactured, indignant outrage over the sale of the ports to Muslim Arabs, Democrats appear strong on national defense and in touch with red-state values; values they don’t hold, but have been told by their pollsters are popular among voting Americans. In their minds, the charade will result in Congressional gains in November, foretold by their defeat of George Bush’s UAE port deal.

It’s politics all right; shameless, craven politics! And it stinks!