Same old, same old...

What a startlingly ignorant opinion of the city of N.O. to think that after Katrina, it's even possible to tarnish it's image...

Shootings Tarnish Image of New Orleans
By MARY FOSTER Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The number of deadly shootings here has prompted city leaders and those in the tourism industry - a mainstay of New Orleans' economy - to worry about the city's image and economic recovery.

There have been 78 homicides here this year, down from the 134 in the first six months of last year when Hurricane Katrina forced thousands of residents to move out. But the number is growing steadily. There were 17 in the first three months of the year and 21 in July alone.

I hate to be the one to break it to the city leaders, but the image of New Orleans has always been one of corruption, violence, and crime. I mean does a high murder rate in New Orleans really surprise anybody? We saw what kind of residents N.O. had immediately following Katrina. We also saw that many of the N.O. cops are unreliable at best, and on-the-take at worst. Is killing each other at a high rate really that much of a departure from what you would expect from this group? The astonishing thing is that at this current homocide rate, at some point you have to expect there not to be any more people who need killing. But they just keep raising new ones.

The time is ripe...

Isn't it about time to revisit the use of nuclear power as a major source of electricity for the U.S.? Wacky environmentalists who cringe in irrational fear at the very mention of the word "nuclear", are surely at a tactical disadvantage right now as demand for electricity soars with the current heat wave sweeping the globe. Shortages are common-place and rolling outages can be expected in high-demand states like California.

The price of electricity will have to increase as it should when supply cannot keep pace with demand. Just like with gasoline and oil, new sources of electricity will have to be found.

Of course the Greenies love when the human population is inconvenienced and made uncomfortable by nature. It is just and proper punishment for our abuse of the environment in their demented view. Their solution to the electrical energy crisis is windmills and solar panels for every household. If environmentalists had their way, there would also be an organic garden in every yard, a Segue in every driveway, and liquid reclamation filters in every bathroom...think about it...yuk!
Hopefully as non-petroleum energy prices increase along with gas prices, there will exist a profit motive, significant enough for corporations to jump back into the nuclear energy game. As the public clamors for cheaper electricity, the same as they clamor for cheaper gasoline now, the nutty Druids of the environmental Left will be marginalized to the point of insignificance. What a glorious day for America that will be when they grant the first license in 28 years and counting, to build a nuclear power plant.

Millions of Americans will be supplied with cheap, renewable, safe electricity. "But Ed", you whine, "what about the radioactive waste? Where will we dump it that liberals won't have a caniption over it's effect on a rare speckled newt or some such?"

There are two, maybe three viable choices for radioactive waste disposal: option 1 is we can put it in huge 500 gallon drums and bury it in New Jersey where it won't be noticed for maybe a 100 years. The Gotti crime family surely has burial holes in the Garden State big enough to hold a few million barrels of toxic waste. Option 2 is we store it in barrels until Iran or North Korea finally makes the wrong move, crazy dictators always do, and then we dump it on their country after the nuclear flattening they receive for making the U.S. angry. There will be so much radiation in the Iranian desert after we hit them that nobody will notice a few million additional barrels of waste. Option 3, and this is my personal favorite, is we task NASA to design and build a fleet of reliable, single use rockets whose only mission will be to carry thousands of pounds of nuclear waste into deep space. The benefits will be twofold: it will get rid of our radioactive waste and it will give NASA something to do that is useful to humanity for a change. Why not pollute the universe? It's as big as.....well, the universe. Just put the rockets on a trajectory toward deep space and let them keep on going forever. It'll be at least a few thousand years before anyone notices and get upset with us. Until then we'll enjoy cheap, plentiful electricity here on Earth and after all, aren't human comfort and convenience the most important things?

How can I kill myself...let me count the ways...

This is just an appaulingly stupid way to die...

Woman Dies During Liposuction at Home Jul 31 11:35 AM US/Eastern
FRAMINGHAM, Mass.
A man was arrested on charges of practicing medicine without a license after a woman died during a liposuction procedure performed in the basement of a home, authorities said Monday.

If you're so determined to get skinny that you would let a pretend doctor perform surgery on you in his basement, why not use that determination to diet a little bit and take a couple of laps once in a while?

Seriously, who doesn't know better than to have surgery done in somebody's basement O.R.?

You all know what I think about stupid people killing themselves in the most astonishingly idiotic ways such as frolicking with wild animals, my favorite, but this way is even more insane.

The price of success...

This struck me as odd...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen wearing military fatigues on Monday kidnapped 25 employees and customers from a mobile phone store in the main shopping area of the capital, Baghdad, police said.
The gun-wielding kidnappers barged into the shop around noon and bundled the staff and employees into 15 cars they had arrived in, said police Lt. Thair Mahmoud. The whole operation lasted 10 minutes, he said.
The identity of the gunmen, who were wearing military uniforms, was not immediately known, said Mahmoud. No other details were available.

Seriously...you can get cell phone service in Baghdad? And there are open cell phone businesses employing Iraqi's and doing business there too? The lesson of the day...you can't keep a determined capitalist down.

Guess that explains why they were targeted for kidnapping by the insurgents/terrorists...they represent something with which the jihadists are unfamiliar...success! Those crazy Islamic radicals loathe anything that is post-modern and is not consistent with walking around in dirty night-shirts, throwing rocks at Americans, and resisting progress of any kind that would lift them out of the misery and squalor in which they wallow.

Idiots!

Israel says, "No thanks" to a cease fire...

The Israeli's are pretty much fed up with useless ceasefires which allow the terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas to re-arm, re-man, and re-structure their terrorist apparati...

Ehud Olmert: Israel Not Ready for Cease-Fire
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel would not rush into a cease-fire in southern Lebanon until it achieves its goals there.
"I think it needs to be clear that Israel is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire before we reach a situation in which we can say that we achieved the central goals that we set down for ourselves," Olmert said before Israel's weekly Cabinet meeting. "This requires a ripening of the diplomatic process and a specific agreement regarding the formation of the force that will operate from the areas from which Israel was threatened in this period."

Basically it's like this, every time Hamas or Hezbollah starts something with Israel, and Israel promptly starts to kick the crap out of them, everybody at the UN wails about peace-talks, land for peace deals, cease fires and expect the U.S. to use shuttle diplomacy to broker a settlement that will stop the violence and death. Well Israel comes out on the short end of that particular stick each and every time and they're sick of it. They're sick of Katyusha rockets terrorizing their civilian population in Northern Israel, they're sick of suicide bombers attacking civilian buses and restaurants, they're sick of military incursions into Israel to kill military personnel, and they're sick of the U.N., African nations, most of Europe especially France siding with the terrorists and blaming Israel for the deaths of Palestinians. We've seen dozens of instances in the last two weeks of Hezbollah cowards hiding behind U.N. buildings, civilian shelters, and other non-military sites from which they can fire their rockets and flee.

Finally, Israel is saying to the rest of the world, "We will handle our business first. Then when our people are safe in their beds from the terrorists, and the enemy has been destroyed, or at least in bad enough shape that they don't want to come back for more, then we will discuss a possible cease fire...but not before."

Not a single cease fire in the middle-east has led to peace...not once has it ever happened. It only gave the terrorists breathing room. As difficult as it is to watch the destruction on Lebanon, the Israeli's must defeat Hezbollah once and for all for there to be any chance of a lasting peace.

And I thought Robert Maplethorpe was a sleazebag, degenerate...

Read about this liberal photographer's techniques and then convince me it's not child abuse...

Photographer Jill Greenberg has whipped up a storm of controversy with her new exhibition, End Times. The pictures in the show, for which she deliberately provoked tearful outbursts from children by taking away lollipops she had just given them, have been described by some as tantamount to child abuse.

Apparantly Ms. Greenberg makes these kids cry, with the permission of their idiot, liberal parents, and then titles the disturbing photos things like 4 More Years, Grand Old Party, and Misinformation, to describe the Bush administration's effect on the psyche of Americans. You can find more of this "art" at this link...
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/gallery/0,,1830504,00.html

That demented parents would allow their young children to be subjected to this cruel, nauseatingly wicked treatment just to get a political photo op, speaks volumes about the effects that liberalism has on the parental psychology of the afflicted. How abominably cruel to give a child a lolli-pop and then yank it away, just to make them cry! This is unimaginable to me as a parent...but then liberals don't see their children as little humans who trust them unconditionally, they see them more as possessions, or monkey pets to be used to entertain and impress thier liberal friends.

We don't even take lolli-pops away from terrorists at Guantanimo Bay for fear of liberal wails of torture and inhumane treatement. But man if you need a kid to cry so you can take a picture and use it as political propoganda to attack George Bush...then by all means.

If a conservative photographer had used this sadistic technique to attack a Democrat president, liberals would be screaming from the rooftops about torture and demanding that the children be taken into protective custody.

Where's the outrage from the Left? You won't hear any because if you publically hate George W. Bush, then you can get away with pretty much anything.

What's in Ed's CD player this week?

A friend at work asked me the other day what music I had been listening to lately so I thought I'd put up the last 10 CD's that I listened to in no particular order of preference...

Coldplay -- A Rush of Blood to the Head
Steely Dan -- Showbiz Kids
Foo Fighters -- One by One
Big Country -- The Best of...
The Police -- Synchronicity
World Party -- Goodbye Jumbo
Semisonic -- Great Divide
Peter Murphy -- Cascade
New Radicals -- Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Sting -- Nothing Like the Sun

Also I heard Laura Ingraham talking on her show about the most embarassing CD's that she owns so here are my top 3 most embarassing CD's...

#3 -- The Rembrandts -- L.P.

#2 -- The Best of the Outfield -- Big Innings

#1 -- PotteryBarn -- Hip Holidays III

It turns out they're litter-bugs too...

As if illegal aliens didn't cause enough trouble already...

After three years of cleanups, the federal government has achieved no better than a 1 percent solution for the problem of trash left in Southern Arizona by illegal border-crossers.
Cleanup crews from various agencies, volunteer groups and the Tohono O'odham Nation hauled about 250,000 pounds of trash from thousands of acres of federal, state and private land across Southern Arizona in 2002 to 2005, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
But that's only a fraction of the nearly 25 million pounds of trash thought to be out there.
Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus entrants caught by the Border Patrol dropped that much garbage in the Southern Arizona desert from July 1999 through June 2005. The figure assumes that each illegal entrant discards 8 pounds of trash, the weight of some abandoned backpacks found in the desert.
The trash is piling up faster than it can be cleaned up. Considering that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 577,000 entrants in 2004-05 alone, the BLM figures that those people left almost 4 million pounds of trash in that same year.
That's 16 times what was picked up in three years. And that doesn't include the unknown amounts of garbage left by border-crossers who don't get caught.
Diverse trash found all over
"We're keeping up with the trash only in certain locations, in areas that we've hit as many as three times," said Shela McFarlin, BLM's special assistant for international programs.
The trash includes water bottles, sweaters, jeans, razors, soap, medications, food, ropes, batteries, cell phones, radios, homemade weapons and human waste.

It's bad enough that illegal aliens are depressing wages, draining public tax coffers, over-burdening medical services, refusing to assimilate, and committing crimes, now we can add living like filthy pigs as they dump their trash as they sneak into the country. It's not surprising that a population of law-breakers who have no respect for the laws of the country into which they are sneaking, would have no respect for nature as well.

These people aren't coming here to realize the American dream, they're here to exploit the kindness and blind generosity of the American people, and take the system for all it's worth. As long as politicians see these degenerate law-breakers as future voters, they will gladly look the other way so as not to alienate them...no pun intended.

RINO in Delaware

Here is a nauseating comment by Mike Castle (RINO) about the proposal to raise the minimum wage...

"Whether people like it or not, we need to go ahead with it," said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supports the idea. "There's a general agreement among Republicans (opposing the raise) that "maybe we don't like it much, but we need to move forward with it just for political reasons."

This comment alone explains why the Republican party in Washington is completely out of touch with the conservative base and may lose seats this Fall, not to mention jeopardizing the presidency in '08.

It seems the trappings of power have afflicted the Republicans to the point that they are more concerned with getting re-elected and preserving their hold on political power than doing the right thing.

If the Republicans would stick to the party ideals of conservatism (securing the borders, passing effective immigration legislation, clearly outlining the plan in Iraq, establishing a resultant national energy plan, balancing the federal budget, and not raising the minimum wage because it's politically pragmatic to do so), the nation-wide Republican base would be so energized that their Congressional majority would be likely to expand rather than be in jeopardy of disappearing.

It is astonishing to me that these guys get a grasp on political power and immediately forget what got them elected in the first place. The sad irony is that this idiot Castle thinks that playing nice with the Democrats by voting for a disastrous minimum wage hike will make him popular with voters. It won't. The Democratic voters in Delaware will never vote for a Republican and the Republican voters will likely vote Libertarian if at all, because Castle has abandoned the very ideals which won him office in the first place.

Tell me, how does a politician forthrightly admit that he will cast a vote for something in which he does not believe, purely for craven political reasons, this close to an election, and expect to win the votes of his party?

Hate mail

So I got this delightful comment from a reader who calls him/herself joe mama jihad concerning the possibility that Floyd Landis took testosterone prior to stage 17 of the Tour de France and specifically my post last week about it. Not sure what joe mama jihad means but here it is...

Ed; No comment now that your hero is a testosterone injector. Cheaters ! This is why the Muslims hate you.

This is my reply:

If it turns out to be true that injected steroids explains Landis' otherwise heroic ride on stage 17, then nobody will be more disappointed than me.

That being said, cheating in a bike race in no way rises to the level of the slaughtering of civilians or hiding like sissy, gutless weasels behind the skirts of women while sniping, like pantywaste vermin, at the enemy. Seriously, are these the Muslims with whom you empathize?

The jihadists don't hate us because we cheat...they hate us because we aren't Muslim, but are rich, successful Christians, infanitely more powerful than them. And you are a pansy, terrorist-sympathizer for suggesting that it's for any other reason.

G.W.O.T.

If anybody living in the modern, industrialized world remains doubtful that the current GWOT(global war on terror) is not World War III, then read some of the rantings from al-Zawahri...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader issued a worldwide call Thursday for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, said that al-Qaida now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us."

"It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahri said. "We will attack everywhere."
Spain was controlled by Arab Muslims for more than seven centuries until they were driven from power in 1492.

He said Arab regimes were accomplices to Israel. "My fellow Muslims, it is obvious that Arab and Islamic governments are not only impotent but also complicit ... and you are alone on the battlefield. Rely on God and fight your enemies ... make yourselves martyrs."

He also called for the "downtrodden" throughout the world, not just Muslims, to join the battle against "tyrannical Western civilization and its leader, America."
"Stand with Muslims in confronting this unprecedented oppression and tyranny. Stand with us as we stand with you against this injustice that was forbidden by God in his book (the Quran)," al-Zawahri said. "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli (weapons), but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price," al-Zawahri said.

There are thousands, perhaps, millions of crazy, rabid Jihadists around the world waiting for marching orders from Al-Qaeda. We see them on the news every night in Indonesia, Pakistan, all over Europe and Scandinavia, Canada, the former Soviet states, every country in the Middle-East, Africa, and the U.S. These people want to either convert non-Muslims or kill them...there is no third option. Crazed Islamic jihadists are single-minded in their servitude to the most radical interpretation of the Qaran. Just read the words in red above and then explain to me how we are not facing an enemy bent on the destruction of all things non-Muslim, starting with the Great Satan -- the U.S.

I believe we(the U.S.) have to remain diligent with our border security, more dedicated than ever to intelligence gathering and decisive in our willingness to act when threatened with jihad here at home and with our assets and allies abroad. Right now, Israel is demostrating her willingness to take the fight to the jihadists rather than letting the fight come home to them. We should not only let Israel continue to wage war on terrorism without pressuring them to agree to a disastrous ceasefire, we should aid them in every way possible.

Kofi Annan is a meathead!

What an idiot...

"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon,'' Annan said in a statement.

"I call on the government of Israel to conduct a full investigation into this very disturbing incident and demand that any further attack on UN positions and personnel must stop,'' Annan said in the statement.

Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman expressed his "deep regret'' for the deaths but denied Israel hit the post intentionally.

Then Gillerman, obviously annoyed by Annan, had this sarcastic observation for Kofi.

"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the hasty statement of the Secretary General, insinuating that Israel has deliberately targeted the UN post,'' he said, calling the assertions "premature and erroneous''.

There is absolutely no conceivable reason for Israel to bomb a UN outpost in Lebanon. Put aside for a minute that fact the majority of UN represented countries are anti-Israel and that the UN is impotent in pretty much all matters in which it sticks it's nose, what would Israel have to gain from killing UN personnel?

That the UN blue hats are incompetent and corrupt begs the question: why is the US continuing to host and underwrite such a vile, crooked, and useless institution whose agenda is opposed at almost every turn to what is in the best interests of the US?

Liberals always want two things from Americans...their money and their guns

This is a very good thing...

WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to prevent law enforcement officers from confiscating legally owned guns during a national disaster or emergency.
Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said firearms seizures after Hurrican Katrina left residents unable to defend themselves.
"Many of them were sitting in their homes without power, without water, without communication," he said. "It was literally impossible to pick up a phone and call 911."
The House voted 322-99 in support of the bill. Senators voted 84-16 earlier this month to include a similar prohibition in a homeland security funding bill.
The limitation would apply to federal law enforcement or military officers, along with local police that receive federal funds.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., repeatedly called the bill "insane."
He and some Democrats said the bill might satisfy the gun lobby, but it would put people into more danger during already perilous disasters.
"The streets of an American city immediately after a disaster are no place to abandon common sense," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y.

If there's anything you can count on, it's liberals demanding that the general public be releived of their tax money in ever-increasing sums, and their weapons. If every non-criminal resident of New Orleans had owned a gun, there would not have been any post-hurricane violence, looting, muggings or slayings.

Ignorant Democrats like to claim to believe that guns cause violence and use then use that flawed reasoning as an excuse to seize guns from Americans, ostensibly to protect us from ourselves. Every where gun seizures have been tried, violent crime has skyrocketed because the criminals didn't turn in their guns...because guess what? They're criminals! If I am a would-be criminal, I have to think carefully about finding a new line of work knowing that all potential victims might be armed.

Jerry Nadler...what a moron!

A rock and a hard place...

I would hate to have to make this decision...

Residents of a drought-stricken Australian town will vote this week on whether they're prepared to drink water recycled from sewage -- the first such scheme in the country and one of only a handful in the world.
The controversial proposal has divided the town of Toowoomba in the state of Queensland, which has faced water restrictions for a decade.

Local Mayor Dianne Thorley, who is leading the "Yes" campaign, said that without drought-breaking rains the town's dams could dry up within two years.
She insisted the 73 million dollar (US 55 million dollar) plan to pump purified wastewater back into the main reservoir for drinking was safe.
"Somewhere, sometime we have got to stand up and change the way we are doing things," she told AFP as the town prepared for the July 29 referendum.
"Otherwise our great grandchildren are going to be living in something like the Sahara desert."

So, this is the state of the human condition...being reduced to consuming our own waste to survive a catastrophic drought. If only Bush had signed Kyoto.

Something a little different...

Here's the picture of Miss Puerto Rico right after she won Miss Universe, but right before she fainted from apparent starvation and loss of blood to her head from holding that bizarre smile for the last 5 days of the competition.

Let's see who can come up with the best caption for this picture. I'll start it off...

Ed#1: "I can't believe they picked me after I ate that blueberry for breakfast...I'm such a pig."

Ed#2: "My Barbi collection is going to be so proud of me."

Saddam should be Kevorkianed...

WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- White House spokesman Tony Snow Monday confirmed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is on a feeding tube as the result of a hunger strike

Why don't they just Kevorkian this guy while they have him tied to a bed?

Where are Terry Shiavo's doctors when you need them?

the payoff...

Finally, after two weeks of operations, it looks like the IDF has secured from Hamas in Gaza, in theory at least, the release of Gilad Shalit, the soldier whose kidnapping started all this...

Gaza groups ready to deal on cease-fire, release of Shalit
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent
All groups in Gaza, including Hamas, would now accept a cease-fire deal with Israel which would include releasing Gilad Shalit, according to the Palestinian Agriculture Minister, who also heads the coordinating committee of Palestinian organizations there. Ibrahim Al-Naja said the factions were ready to stop the Qassam rocket fire if Israel's ceased all military moves against the Palestinian factions in Gaza. They are also ready to release Shalit in exchange for guaranteeing the future release of Palestinian prisoners.

See, you cannot deal diplomatically or rhetorically with terrorists like Hamas. Israel, finally, took the fight to Hamas in Gaza and appears to have gotten a committment from Hamas to release Shalit. This never would have happened with a spineless, UN-centric Democrat as president. Kerry, Clinton, Carter, or Gore...each of those guys would have or did, attempt diplomacy to get Israel to stop killing Palestinian terrorists. It worked for about two weeks, then the suicide bombings of Israeli civilians started all over again each and every time. I think Israel has finally had enough and will not stop the incursions into Lebanon until they are convinced Hezbollah has been rooted out or has been at least pushed so far North that their Kaytusha rockets cannot strike Israel.

I think Isreal should continue to take the fight to Hezbollah and Hamas until they feel they are safe from suicide bombings and rocket lobbing and force all the Arab nations in the region to take sides.

Every terrorist that Israel kills is one less terrorist we have to kill.

Ya don't say?

I stumbled across this bit of groundbreaking wisdom today...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Your parents were right, don't study with the TV on. Multitasking may be a necessity in today's fast-paced world, but new research shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later on.

"What's new is that even if you can learn while distracted, it changes how you learn to make it less efficient and useful," said Russell A. Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

And all this time I thought my average grades were a reflection of an astounding lack of self-motivation, a rudderless academic path, and a pathalogical carom toward under-achievment.

As it turns out, I was just watching too much TV.

You won't hear a peep about this outrage...

Here's your quintessential, liberal Euro-trash scoring some points with the Bush-hating media...

NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.
Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.
"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.
"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

Her young audience clapped and cheered -- obviously taught well by their liberal Euro-trash parents.

No person could get away with saying something this vile about a liberal. But it's all right to loathe Bush and the press will nod and smile because they feeeeeeel the same way.

Seriously, what's the point?

To save my own life, I cannot figure out the appeal of "beauty" pageants...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Forty minutes into her reign as Miss Universe, Miss Puerto Rico Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza collapsed during a post-pageant news conference and was rushed offstage on Sunday night.
Pageant officials immediately said the lithe 5-foot-9 18-year-old was all right and had fainted.
"She's OK. She's fine," pageant representative Lark Anton told Reuters. "She got dizzy. Its very hot up here. Her dress is tight - as you could see it was beaded and heavy. She passed out."

If you are so starved of life-sustaining nutrients that your waifish frame cannot even hold up a skimpy dress...perhaps you should consider mixing in a sandwich or two between practicing your "talent" and taping your boobs.

What is the message anyway, that pageant competition sends to young girls?

Answer: that you are only as valuable as you are appealing to men. I'm no feminist, and I support women doing anything they want to, including ridiculous pageants but, if I had a daughter there would be none of this pageant nonsense.

"But Ed", you argue, "there are scholarships to be had, girls can land lucrative modelling contracts. It doesn't matter if they have to objectify themselves to leering men."

There are lots better ways of getting scholarships than parading around in skimpy swimsuits and high-heels looking like hookers. Try studying. And starving yourself to the point of fainting is just idiotic.

Appeasing the appeasers...

Bush sent Sec. Rice to the mid-east to project the appearance of trying to stop the fighting so the media will feeeeel good about the U.S. efforts toward peace...

SIDON, Lebanon - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Monday to launch diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 13 days of warfare as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into the country in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas.

Rice arrived in Beirut in the afternoon and was to meet with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora in the previously unannounced stopover before she heads to Israel, Saniora’s office said.
“We all want to urgently end the fighting. We have absolutely the same goal,” Rice told reporters traveling with her before arriving in Lebanon.

Immediately following the umpteenth commencement of middle-east hostilities, the American media, and to a certain extent the Europeans but for different reasons, have come to expect whatever current American administration to reflexively broker a middle-east peace deal by shuttling the Secretary of State back and forth between Israel and Lebanon. Why you ask, do they think this will work to stop the violence when it has never worked a single time since Isreal's creation in 1948?

Here's the "template for peace" that has worked so famously in the past: the current American administration brokers a diplomatic solution that temporarily stops the violence which is so distasteful to the media. The deal always requires Israel to give up some land, or settlements or demands some other disastrous concession to the terrorists in return for a cease-fire. The hostilities cease for a time and the delicate American media fawn and preen all over themselves for helping to quell the violence. Within two weeks, the Palestinians, or Hamas, or Hezbollah are lobbing more bombs back into Israel and the cycle begins all over again. And of course the media blame the Israelis.

Why do we insist that Israel not protect herself? The simple answer; because the American media draw a moral equivalency between Israel and the poor, down-trodden Palestinians. They feeeeeel that Israel is just as much to blame, if not more so, for the back and forth sniping between the two. The fact is that Israel would not do anything agressive toward the Palestinians but for the endless rock-throwing, and Kaytusha rocket-firing by the Palestinian extremists, into Israel killing civilians.

So, Condi Rice is meeting with the various leaders as to appear to attempt war-averting diplomacy. The Europeans, the other oil-exporting nations in the region, and the Islam-sympathetic media in America can feeeeeel warm and fuzzy because the U.S. is not taking sides and is once again using diplomacy and feel-good dialogue so solve terrorism -- the standard liberal solution for dealing with people who want to kill you. I think it's a charade. Hopefully Bush doesn't have any intention in stopping Israel from defending herself. He sees the wisdom in letting Israel take the battle to the terrorists, just as he has done. It is afterall, a "global" war on terror.

Parenting 101...from Hillary Clinton...ugh!

This is just the beginning, but watch out for Hillary Clinton pandering to every perceived conservative or mainstream group and cause with whom she can land a speaking gig leading up to '08...

Hil frets chips will be put in kids' brains
BY MICHAEL McAULIFFDAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Madison Ave. ad execs are so bent on taking control of America's children, they'd put computer chips in kids' brains if they could, Sen. Hillary Clinton said yesterday.
Saying advertisers have found so many new ways to get at kids through video games and the Internet, Clinton warned that we're verging on a society out of a grim science fiction novel.

"At the rate that technology is advancing, people will be implanting chips in our children to advertise directly into their brains and tell them what kind of products to buy," Clinton said at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"People are spending billions and billions of dollars enticing children basically to be obsessed with food," she said. "These foods are almost universally unhealthy." Clinton has offered legislation to study the effects of the "advertising-saturated, media-intense" world on kids.
Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University, said Clinton and other politicians like to attack advertising because it's easier than trying to ban bad food products or fund broad education programs.
"To go after advertising really makes no sense," he said. "It's sort of a backdoor tack, but it's the safer one politically."

Here's the standard liberal playbook of how to speak to a group of voters in a family organization: 1. Scare them by describing an imaginary threat to their children. 2. Coax them into believing you are on their side by feigning outrage at the perceived threat. 3. When they are sufficiently scared and clearly clamoring for a solution, tell them you will champion their cause with new government regulations designed to protect their children.

Typical of liberal dogma regarding parenting, never once is there uttered the phrase "parental responsibility".
In keeping with her transparently socialist book "It Takes a Villiage", which she had ghost written, it is her intention to have the government responsible for taking care of your kids. I don't ever remember her suggesting that parents simply turn off the computer, television and playstation.

If it were me speaking to a family group about childhood nutrition, I would say, "What are you people, idiots? When your bratty kids demand another twinkie...just say NO."

Another practical solution is just don't buy unhealthy food and keep it at home. When the kid asks for chocolate frosted sugar bombs for breakfast, tell them to shut-up and eat their oat-meal. Oh, I forgot, it might damage the childs self-esteem to be told NO...can't have that. All this angst over nutrition would be moot if parents would kick their kids out of the house in the mornings, and not let them back in until dinner...they can have a peanut butter sandwich on the porch for lunch. This way they have to be active in order to entertain themselves...then they can have all the junk food in the world and it won't hurt them.

Bottom line with Hillary or any other liberal for that matter: more government is good. The fewer freedoms we have as Americans, the better the liberals believe the world will be. Ordinary Americans aren't wise enough to make decisions for ourselves so the government, with Hillary in charge of course, will make our decisions for us.

I can't begin to describe the nausea that overtakes me when I imagine her as President.

Vive la Floyd!!!

In case you were wasting time at work this morning instead of home watching the Tour de France like you should have, you missed what has already been called the single greatest one-day performance on a bike in the modern days of the Tour.

The Setup: Floyd Landis from San Diego, team leader for Phonak and yellow jersey wearer after 15 stages, struggled on the alpine stage 16 and lost the yellow jersey and 8:08 in time to Oscar Pierero. That, for the lay race fan, is typically an insurmountable lead with only one day in the Alps left. (Generally the Tour de France is won and lost in the Alps. It's difficult to make up time on the more flat stages) In addition to being the Phonak team leader, Landis also bears the responsibility of being the American heir apparent to Lance Armstrong who retired from prfessional cycling after last year's 7th straight victory. Not only does he have those shoes to fill, he announced a week ago that he requires full hip replacement surgery as soon as the Tour is over (the hip is not exactly a seldom used joint in cycling).

The Ride: Having only one realistic day to try to fight back into contention and knowing that he needs to make up at least 7 minutes on Pierero and 7 other guys, to have a chance to wear yellow in Paris, Floyd attacked the peloton as soon as they hit the first climb of 4 difficult climbs today. He picked up the pace and nobody could keep up with him going up the mountain. He continued to put distance and time between himself and the yellow jersey and his other rivals. Alone, he toiled in the saddle chasing the earlier break-away of 12 or so non-contenders. After the struggle he endured yesterday, nobody thought he had anything left in the tank. He steadily closed the gap with the break-away and passed them, receiving unbelieving double-takes from each one as he rode up the second mountain past them. The peloton started to panic as they realized that he was gaining significant time on them so they started to pursue. Team after team took their turn setting the pace to catch Landis but he would have none of it. Only one man stood between Landis and the finish line in the alpine villiage of Morzine-Avoriaz. Landis caught him on the third climb of the day. Together they rode with Landis setting the pace and the T-Mobile rider not doing any of the pace-setting. (Generally riders help each other on a break-away and then fight for the finish once they've beaten the rest of the field) On the final climb, the Col de Joux-Plane with a gut-wrenching 8% grade over 11.7 Km, Landis, tired of dragging the T-Mobile rider up and down hills all afternoon, gave him a glance and took off at a blistering uphill pace, leaving the T-Mobile guy to suffer alone. Now the only question was could Landis maintain his lead and win the stage. He crossed the summit with a 6:35 lead with Carlos Sastre of Team CSC, a formidable climber and serious podium contender in this year's Tour, in hot pursuit. Landis needed to gain 8:09 on Pierero and not let Sastre gain on him too much.

The Finish: Landis summits Col de Joux-Plane with a 6:35 lead on Carlos Sastre and 7:00 on Pierero in the yellow jersey. The finish is all down hill and Landis, being a former mountain bike champion, is a fearless, superb descender. Floyd sprints across the finish line for his first ever Tour stage win and he's gained an additional 30 second on Sastre and put still more distance between himself and the yellow jersey. The clock starts ticking and Sastre digs down and finds the energy to cross with a mere12 second lead on Landis followed by Pierero who finishes having relinquished all but 30 seconds of his lead on Landis from yesterday. It is agreed by the commentary team that Landis's performance will go down in the history of the Tour as the single greatest individual performance in Tour history...and that's huge considering all the great performances Lance turned in.

Recap: Landis is in the catbirds seat going into a flat stage tomorrow and a long individual time trial the next day. Landis is by far the best time-trialer of the stage contenders in the Tour this year and can surely make up a lousy 30 seconds that day, on his way to wearing yellow in Paris on Sunday.

Vive la Floyd!!!

I say leave 'em there...

Here we see the deplorable, inhuman conditions Americans are forced to endure to escape war-torn Lebanon...at taxpayer expense of course.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Americans wiped away tears, hugged relatives and grumbled about evacuation delays Wednesday before boarding a luxury ship that was to carry them from war-torn Lebanon. Many expressed frustration that it had taken the U.S. government so long to get them out of Lebanon while Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports already have fled by the thousands.
"I can't believe the Americans," Danni Atiyeh, a 39-year-old civil engineer from Kansas City, Mo., said as he stood with his pregnant wife and sons Ali, 10, and Adrian, 6, while waiting for buses that were taking them to the ship. "Everybody else has gone home ... We're still here."

After criticism from Congress, the State Department said it dropped plans to ask Americans to pay for their rides on commercial vessels. Earlier, authorities planned to make Americans sign a note pledging to reimburse the U.S. government the price of a commercial flight from Beirut to Cyprus - usually $150-$200.

Look, this isn't Cozumel. Nobody told them to vacation in one of the world's most dangerous places for Americans. Nobody told them to ignore a dire State Department travel advisory for Americans thinking of a holiday in Beirut. Now they have the nerve to complain that the U.S. government(translated: their fellow taxpayers) hasn't come to fetch them fast enough and save their stupid rear ends from kidnapping and possible death. What did they expect? What kind of idiot holidays in Beirut? And if that weren't shameful enough, they resent the idea of having to pay for their trip on a luxury boat to Cyprus. They absolutely should have to reimburse the taxpayers for the trouble of rescuing them from a country they had no business going to in the first place. Were they not paying for their trip home anyway? Look at these idiots tanning and drinking bottled water or maybe beer while they await departure to Cyprus...looks real uncomfortable!

When an ambulance has to come rescue you for whatever reason, you have to pay for it. Why should these idiots not have to pay to be rescued?

Creepy!!!

No doubt the enviro-knuckleheads will find a way to blame this on pollution and the Bush administration for not signing the disastrous and idiotic Kyoto Protocol. Or better yet, they'll claim it's absolute proof of evolution...

A fish caught in Lubbock, Texas, with teeth that look like they belong to a human has baffled wildlife officials in the area, according to a report.

Fisherman Scott Curry reeled in the 20-pound fish on Buffalo Springs Lake and immediately noticed the catch had human-like teeth. A game warden photographed the fish and is attempting to identify it.

General Manager of Buffalo Springs Lake Greg Thornton told KLBK13-TV in Texas that he has never seen anything like the fish in the 36 years he has lived near the lake.

In related news, officials also announced they've received reports of a man-like creature exhibiting a human-like personality promoting the pseudo-documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

PETA is having a caniption over this idea...

California-based Liborio Markets, a Latino-based grocery store, is branching out to Colorado.
Eight stores in all are planned for the state, the first one to be called Rancho Liborio in Commerce City.

"We are proposing to have live poultry processed here at the store," said owner, Anthony Trujillo.

Trujillo says about 150 chickens a day would be brought to the store in climate-controlled trucks, where they're then unloaded into a climate-controlled room in the back.
Every morning, the chickens are given a fatal electric shock, de-feathered, cleaned, cut, and put on the shelves. Trujillo says no live chickens remain in the back for more than five hours.

However, nearby residents, like Claudia Barnes, don't like the idea at all.
"We're just appalled," she said. "If they want to do this in the privacy of their home, I don't care. But we're just opening up a keg of worms if this happens."

Barnes argues that Commerce City law states no livestock is allowed to be killed in the city where zoning has not been approved for that purpose.
"If they make an exception for them, they're going to have to make an exception for everyone," she said.

I agree purely on free-enterprise economic principles that if Mr. Trujillo can gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace by slaughtering chickens right there in front of the customers then that is good, however; if the city ordinances say that you may not slaughter livestock on property not zoned for that purpose, then that's the law. The legislative law generally supersedes the law of supply and demand and we are nothing if not a nation of laws.

That being said, is there really a market demand for yard-bird that's still warm from the slaughter? I'm one of those carnivores who heaves if my dinner resembles too closely it's former self in the barn-yard. Seriously, is this peculiar to Mexican cuisine culture or are we Americans spoiled in the sense that we love to eat meat but we just are too squeemish to have it look at us before we dine on it?

If all American news consumers are as dumb as CBS viewers are, there is no hope...

One would think that after the National Guard document scandal with Dan Rather, CBS News would at least attempt to start covering world events in a more even-handed manner, if for no other reason than to try to gain some credibility for their network when it comes to serious news. Now they've hired Katie Couric to read the news and from her listening tour she has "learned" the following...

I borrowed this from Mary Katherine Ham over at Townhall.com...

Viewers told her they want more perspective and "a better understanding of the ramifications of the news," she says. "I got the distinct sense they want us to go a little bit deeper" with historical background and "how is this relevant to their lives.

More perspective? Relevancy to their lives? Freighteningly, this puts Katie in the direct position of telling Americans exactly how they should feel about the story she just gave them. CBS undoubtedly will be not only reporting the news, they'll be advising the dumbed-down, public school graduates who will be watching how to feeeeel about it as well. The Perky One continued...

(And) we heard from many people the news is just too depressing. Obviously, we can't sugar-coat what's going on, but there are cases where we can be more solution-oriented."

Some Americans are just a bunch of sheep, they want to be led, to be taken care of. They don't want to think about what they've heard and come to their own conclusions, they want to be told what is the correct way to think about a particular story.

Have self-reliant Americans become so soft and devoid of self-confidence that we would abdicate to a news organization the responsibility of giving to us the solutions to our problems? How pitifully hopeless, and depressing it will be for those Americans who will sit on the edges of their couches every night, clutching pillows and listening breathlessly to Katie's doom and gloom stories about war in the middle east, the environment, the economy, and the evil Bush administration...and then eagerly look to her for the solutions.

What a bleak, pathetic picture Katie paints of the American news watcher. Then there was this puzzler of a statement...

Some thought the media portrayed a "polarizing of the country that they don't see," thought TV news "abdicated its role, really talking about facts and information rather than points of view," and want "more thinking, less spewing."

Anybody who doesn't see a polarization of the country has been living under a rock and isn't qualified to even make a statement about the political environment in America. Seriously, do these people to whom Katie refers actually want more points of view rather than facts and information? Facts and information is the news! Idiots!

It sounds like Katie's viewers want more thinking, just not done by them. Katie's viewers want her to do the thinking for them and then advise them on the conclusions they should have. I realize Katie's influence is the result of an embarassing cult of personality on the part of her fans, not because she's a stellar journalist, but that people obviously want to be led by the nose, rather than think and decide for themselves, has larger implications for the country.

Ceding responsibility for analytical thought to others and desiring softened, regurgitated, more pleasant versions of information portend a sad decline for American society...a decline leading to intellectual weakness, the deterioration of individualism, the inability to draw conclusions or make hard decisions, and the unwillingness to take actions because of dwindling self confidence.

Make no mistake...this is exactly how liberals want the population to be. An intellectually dependent population is an easily controlled population.

Words do not properly describe the sleazyness of this man...

The ability and willingness of this embarassing disaster of a president to pander to whatever audience he's speaking to, never ceases to amaze me. This guy will say absolutely anything with a bitten lip, a sincere furrowed brow, and that I'm-about-to-cry crackle he affects in his voice to give whatever lie he's telling just the right amount of heartfelt genuineness. Read this account of his address to a Jewish charity this week and try not to vomit...

WASHINGTON: Former US President Bill Clinton who many Arab thoughts was more even-handed on the Palestine question than his predecessors shocked many when he asserted in Toronto last week that, “The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die,” Clinton told the crowd at a fund-raising event for a Toronto Jewish charity Monday.

That otherwise seemingly intelligent people continue to fall for his schtick is appauling.

Global warming is upon us...and it's all Bush's fault...

You just know Al Gore is loving every minute of this heat wave we're in. But then Democrats have always relied on the misery of Americans as a source of political power. Check out these dire sounding headlines from Drudge today...

Britain set to sizzle in hottest temperatures ever...

120 degrees in South Dakota?

Heat Wave Broils Much of Nation

N. America avoids blackouts amid record power use

11,000 Without Power in Yonkers

I can't tell if this is Al Gore in the screen shot from his pretend documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, or an actor playing him, but either way...loose the Members Only jacket, the greaseball coif, and the tight jeans, tough boy pose...what a goob!

An excellent historical review of the middle east tensions

For those of you who wish to really get the low-down on the history of the middle east conflict, it's motivations and the major players and their alliances, go to this article. I came across it on RWN this morning. I only takes a few minutes to read and combined with the geography and history lesson in my previous post, you should be pretty much up to snuff in following the current conflict...

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0502/mideastfacts.asp

Why can't there be peace in the Middle East?

With what could turn into a full-scale regional followed by an actual world war beginning to take shape in the Middle East, I thought a map of the ME and a brief synopsis of the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict would be in order. It's difficult to understand the news reports every night without at least a cursory knowledge of the overall geography, disputed territories, and the region's history.

-Click on the map and it will open in a larger window so you can find the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. These are the disputed territories about which everybody is fighting. Israel won all these territories in the Six Days War but has been forced by international pressure and idiotic land-for-peace deals to incrementally return it to the various Arab states from whom they won it.

As I understand it...

The state of Israel was formed on May 15, 1948. It was then that the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry proposed the immigration of 100,000 Holocaust survivors to the land of Palestine. A group of the United Nations, specially formed to work on this area, suggested on May 15 of the same year, to separate Palestine into different Arab and Israeli states.

The day after the State of Israel was formed, the surrounding Arab states met and attacked. The war was won by the barely formed Israeli army, but took about a year. This was known as the War of Independence. It ended with 6,000 Jewish deaths, both civilians and soldiers.

1967 Arab-Israeli War, Six Days War, or June War, was fought between Israel and the nearby Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. The war was initiated after the Israeli response to Egyptian aggression. This aggression included the Egyptian blockade of Israeli shipping in the Straits of Tiran, the removal of the UNEF peacekeeping forces from the Sinai, and the deployment of a large military force in the Sinai which borders Israel. In repsonse, Israel launched a preemptive attack against Egypt. Jordan in turn attacked the Israeli cities of Jerusalem and Netanya. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

So, I can sort of see the beef on behalf of the Palestinians, getting kicked off their land and all, but historically, does Israel not belong on that particular land? I read an article by Hal Lindsay in which he observes that the Palestinians are descended from the Philistines from the Bible. The Jews and Philistines have been waring for over 2000 years at least. Israel has suffered weekly terrorist attacks since their reclaiming of their historical homeland in '48. Why shouldn't they be allowed to fight back, keep land that they conquered in battle, and defend themselves and their territory the same way any sovereign nation would be expected to do when under attack? If Canada decided to lob a few missiles into New York every week or so, the U.S. would tolerate it for about a month and then Canada would cease to exist as a nation. Should Israel not have the same sovereign right of self defense?

I'm getting sick of people urging restraint and moderation. I'm glad Israel has finally committed to destroying Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran, an avowed Jew-hating, Arab nation, finances the operations of Hezbollah to the tune of $350 million annually, as well as long-range rockets and other modern weaponry with which to slaughter the eeeviiil jooooos. If the Palestinians would stop hating Israel for one minute and look around, they would see the economic opportunities afforded them and could rapidly lift themselves out of squalor and misery to become an economic haven...but they can't stifle the hate long enough. Instead they keep on blaming Israel for all there troubles because it's easier than accepting responsibility for themselves.

Feel free to add to the historical picture any bits of insight you might have. Use the comments section and I'll address them as they come in.

Comment thread post...

I thought this was an interesting comment thread featuring various contributors who wrote about my post at http://therightrant.blogspot.com/2006/07/these-hate-america-hollywood-types.html, so I'm posting it for your reading pleasure...feel free to dive in with a comment of your own.

At Mon Jul 10, 10:19:05 AM CDT, Liliana said...
The world hates George W. BushGeorg Bush is the most dangerous person in the world. Every day people die becouse of him...are the americans blind?

At Mon Jul 10, 12:12:07 PM CDT, Ed said...
Is this Cindy Sheehan using a pen name?How many people do you think died because of Saddam? How many die because of Kim Jong Il? How many died because of Hitler? Did mommy-coddling work with Hitler? With the Imperial Japanese? With any despotic regime in the history of the world? Tell me Liliana, how would you put a stop to the human rights atrocities, the rape rooms, the gassing of hundreds of thousands, the torture, the executions, and the financing and exportation of terrorism? How Liliana, how would you handle it? With diplomacy? With dialogue and understanding? With massive amounts of taxpayer dollars in aid? Seriously Liliane, I want to hear from you. How would you have handled Hitler if not by force?

At Mon Jul 10, 01:44:04 PM CDT, Reid said...
Ed: You are right. We need to use force as we need to. I know you agree that there are times when diplomacy needs to run its course, and if unable to come to a solution, then resort to force(IRAQ). Diplomacy did not work there, although it was pursued for a long time. I feel that we need a very level headed person in charge of the government, and am personally glad that Bush is doing his job (well I might add), listening to a plethora of opinions and basing decisions on facts and truth not on feelings of his degree of masculinity. Eathan Hawke can saty in whatever foeign country he is in. Tell him to round up Tommy Boy Cruise, his mindless live-in, and Johnny Depp and they can all live in France where life is always great. You don't even have to be masculine to be there, unless of course you are a bald headed retiring soccer hooligan who head butts his opponent. What a bunch of classy guys. Thankfully Italy beat the Frenchies. I just wonder what would happen to good ole Eathan, if after emigrating to NOKO, he decides to disagree with my buddy Jung2. Think he lives long, or is his skinny little liberal body strapped to a test missile and fired into the Pacfic? Oh well thankfully for Hawke, he has men and women who are willing to stand up and defend the idle USA bashing he is doing, and do it because they love this country. Thankfully, also, is that George Bush is in that group of our countries defenders, or Eathan might be complaining about a truly deplorable lack of masculinity condition from his cell in the gulag. It is too bad that hawks are protected from being shot, or it might be fun to sell some hunting licenses.

At Mon Jul 10, 03:07:27 PM CDT, farp said...
Liliana...seriously...George Bush- the most dangerous man in the world?? Are you kidding? Do you even know who Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein are? Do you know what all they have done to their own people? Did you see the footage on the news where the North Korean woman is trying to leave the country with her little girl. Her daughter was yanked from her arms, kicking and screaming, while her mother was shot and killed on the spot...right in front of her daughter. Look at how many men, women and children have been raped and murdered under Saddam's regime. Please tell me what George Bush has done that even comes close to what these vicious dictators have done in their attempt at total control. What would you have President Bush do? You, like so many others, offer criticism but no answers...what would YOU do.

At Mon Jul 10, 05:07:11 PM CDT, razorboy said...
The ball would appear to be in your court Liliana.

At Sun Jul 16, 02:54:02 AM CDT, Cedric Ward said...
It's too bad that you boys (and I DO MEAN BOYS) never fail to discern the deathly disaster that is George Bush, as compared/contrasted with the other megalomanical psychopaths of history, and the present, that have managed to leave the path of their existence strewn with the mangled bodies of so many numbers of common men and women.You doofuses who have the audacity to critizie Liliana for her implied questioning of the murderous rampage upon the world of the current occupants of the White House is the perfect example of mental inadequacy.The mere fact that you boys (Ed and his myriad sycophantic followers) can come up with a simplistic idea to vent your rage upon the other cultures that exist on this planet doesn't eliminate the possibilty that other, more effective, ideas might trump your pitiful rantings about how might makes white...oops...I mean right.

At Sun Jul 16, 03:45:27 PM CDT, Ed said...
Cedric, I have long suspected that you have drunk insatiably and blindly from the Michael Moore, kool-aid vat of Liberalism, now you have provided confirmation. You imply that Islamofascists, Jihadists, and Communists, represent little more than different but equal cultures when compared to our Democracy(actually a Representative Republic), and as such, occupy equivalent moral grounds. Any thinking person must reject this as asinine. There exists in the world, good and bad. The fact that the Islamic Jihadists are trying to annhiliate us is what separates the U.S. as the good guys and them as the bad guys. Obviously you are a believer in moral relativism(a tell-tale symptom of kool-aid dependence). I reject the bogus concept of moral relativism. There are certain criteria that define human existence, one of which is moral absolutism: The acknowledgement of the existence of right and wrong and the willingness to take action to defend that which is right. Terrorism, genocide, killing civilians, ethnic cleansing, rape rooms, denial of private ownership, the subjugation of women according to Sharia law, governmental denial of individual rights of speech, press, and worship...all of these things and more are absolutely morally wrong...period, regardless of whether Islamists perceive them to be moral and right. I disagree with George Bush on many things, but as the President of a country which does not engage in any of the above moral violations and the leader of the free world, he has the moral authority to defend the U.S., and those countries unable to defend themselves, against violent aggressors. Finally Cedric, not everything is a race issue. Screaming "racism" everytime someone poses a policy disagreement with you demeans the valid issue of racism, which ironically, is practiced most egregiously by the cultures you defend.

Vive la France!!!

OK, let us stop bashing the French for this one day and recognize that their current form of government started out in a very similar way as the U.S...a popular uprising of the commoners against a dictatorial monarchy in order to achieve self rule...

Bastille Day is a National holiday in France. It is very much like Independence Day in the United States because it is a celebration of the beginning of a new form of government.

At one time in France, kings and queens ruled. Many people were very angry with the decisions made by the kings and queens.

The Bastille was a prison in France that the kings and queens often used to lock up the people that did not agree with their decisions. To many, it was a symbol of all the bad things done by the kings and queens. So, on July 14, 1789, a large number of French citizens gathered together and stormed the Bastille.

Just as the people in the United States celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the beginning of the American Revolution, so the people in France celebrate the storming of the Bastille as the beginning of the French Revolution. Both Revolutions brought great changes. Kings and queens no longer rule. The people rule themselves and make their own decisions.

That's right, though the daily bashing that the French receive is well deserved, we Americans should pause for a day to appreciate the successful struggle for self determination of the French people which began on this day 217 years ago. It's just a shame they overshot the goal and ended up Socialists, but we should celebrate with them anyway.

14:57...14:58...14:59.......

Once you get used to fame, it's hard to let it go...

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said Friday they decided to sue Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove because they engaged in a "whispering campaign" to destroy her career.

Joe Wilson and his wife are long-time Democrats who like most long time Democrats, would attempt almost anything to hurt George Bush in order to coddle favor with the power players in the Democratic Party. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that no laws had been broken in the Valerie Plame leak affair, and only indicted Scooter Libby for misremembering what he said in an obscure conversation months before. The indictment had more to do with justifying the investigation than in actually catching somebody in a criminal act.

Here's how the statute concerning the exposure of covert operatives is read by most people...

In order to have illegally exposed a covert operative one must 1) have had to secure the information from classified information; 2) intended to use the information to expose her identity: and 3) that operative must have worked in a covert capacity at some point in the last five years.

None of those requirements were met in this case. Joe and Valerie Wilson have been used by the Left to attack the Bush administration. Now, the Left have cast the hapless "ambassador" and his CIA coffee-fetcher wife, and moved on to use others in that capacity. The problem is that Joe and Valerie aren't ready to be washed-up puppets of the Left just yet, so they are extending their time in the spotlight by filing a ridiculous lawsuit. They figure if it has any traction at all, they can recover their status as darlings of the Democrat sympathizers in the media. When the law suit gets tossed out on lack of grounds, they will write a book blaming it's failure on the smear campaign waged against them by the Bush administration, followed by another round of whining appearances on Left-friendly talk shows like Oprah, Larry King, and the CBS Evening Variety Hour with Katie Couric.

These two pawns of the Left are almost too pathetically desperate to bother commenting on but, with the exception of the Israeli/Hezbollah war about to break out, it's an otherwise slow news day.

A world of trouble...

This is what it looks like when an Israeli F-16 drops precision ordinance on a bridge in the Gaza strip.

I would strongly advise against this...but then nobody asked me...

Israel has information that Hizbullah guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. Hizbullah guerrillas, who are backed by Iran, seized the soldiers Wednesday in a cross-border raid.

If Hezbollah manages to get those two captured Israeli soldiers into Iran, lookout! Iran being involved automatically escalates the war by orders of magnitude. This picture is of a bridge in Gaza that the Israeli's blew up today, effectively blocking escape from Gaza for anybody. The last thing the world needs is for Iran to become directly involved in the fighting and there is little doubt that Israel would waste no time attacking sites there if they had intelligence that Israeli citizens were being held there.

Of course France took the wrong side of the conflict, as surrendering cowards always do. Having allowed millions of radical Muslims to thrive there, France has no choice but to take the Muslim side, otherwise Paris will suffer violence, mayhem, burnings, and killings at the hands of their Islamic jihadist guests.

We in America can only hope that Israel can prevent this eventuality and contain the war in Gaza. If Iran gets involved militarily, which they will with pathological madman Ahmadinijad at the reins, the entire Middle East will be at risk for all out war against Israel. Russia is on the side of Iran, all the other Muslim states will side with Iran and the Palestinians and the U.S. will have to actively take sides. Not that Israel cannot dish out much damage herself, but fighting all those other surrounding Muslim countries would require our help...who else will do it?

Last but not least, the price of a barrel of oil hit a new all-time high yesterday at $76. As the third leading exporter of crude, Iran cannot get involved in a shooting war. The world price will skyrocket to over $100 and higher on fears of a dramatic shortage. What will $4.00 a gallon gas do to the world's economy?

Bush and Merkel, meeting today in Germany, had better think of some way to keep Iran out of the mix and let Israel take care of it's business. And when Bush meets Pootie Poot in St. Petersburg for the G8 summit, maybe Bush can persuade him to yank the chain of Iran and keep them out of it.

Man, what is happening in the world? Just look at the hotspots that if escalated could easily descend into a multi-fronted world war: Iraq v U.S., Palestinians v Israel, Iran v Israel, the whole Middle East v Israel, U.S. v Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan v India, North Korea v U.S., North Korea v Japan, China v Taiwan, East Coast rappers v West Coast rappers, and I would mention all the conflict in the horn of Africa but as bad as it is, it doesn't really have far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

It's all sort of scary to me, in a global, biblical kind of way.

how the other half lives...

For $135 million you, too, can live like a prince.That is the asking price for the palatial Aspen compound of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, a real estate financier confirmed Tuesday. It is the highest real estate price in U.S. history, and possibly in the world, experts said. The price tag trumps Donald Trump, who had the previous highest offering on the national market, $125 million for a beachfront home in Florida.Bandar is the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. His 95-acre Starwood Ranch property includes a nearly 56,000-square-foot mansion, and several smaller homes and buildings. The main home is larger than the White House, and includes 16 bathrooms, 15 bedrooms, stables, a tennis court, an indoor swimming pool, outdoor water features and a snowmelt driveway.

This is really pretty but how far to the nearest Piggly Wiggly?

Peace cannot exist without one side achieving military victory...

I have a feeling Israel is about the lay the smack-down on Hizbollah.

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) - Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed up to seven Israelis in violence on either side of the Lebanese border on Wednesday, further inflaming Middle East tensions.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the Hizbollah attacks as an "act of war" by Lebanon and promised a "very painful and far-reaching" response.

Everybody always blames the bully Israelis for whatever bad happens in that region. Look at the picture of these kids holding up two fingers as they celebrate the recent captures. I don't have any sympathy for these people...they deserve whatever the Israelis do to them.

I'll start to consider their gripes and complaints when they stop lobbing bombs into Israel to kill innocent civilians, when they stop sending suicide bombers into Israel to slaughter women and children on buses, when they cease their enthusiastic support of the terrorist organization Hizbollah and it's boundless determination to destroy the Zionist entity, and when they decide to become citizens of the civilized world by contributing something to it besides violence and mayhem.

Much to the chagrin of beauty pageant contestants everywhere, there will never be peace in the middle east unless Israel goes ahead and completely defeats it's enemy on the battle field.

Politicians legislating morality...always a bad outcome

At a time when our lawmakers should be grappling with the issues of global terrorism, energy costs, illegal immigration, and the axis of evil, we find them self-righteously wringing their hands about the evils of internet gambling...absolutely unbelievable!!!

Internet gambling is addictive, dangerous and should be outlawed, lawmakers argued Tuesday as the House took up a bill to prevent people from using credit cards or other payment forms to settle online wagers.

Wait a minute, why is internet gambling more addictive than casino or lotto gambling? It's still gambling. Why not outlaw all gambling of that's really what's bothering them? Alchohol and cigarettes are ten times more addictive, dangerous and thus should be outlawed by that ridiculous logic.

"The ease of Internet gambling poses a very serious threat to our families and our society," Rep. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., said in support of the bill.
The legislation would clarify existing law by declaring Internet gambling illegal. It would cut off payments to betting Web sites and would allow authorities to work with Internet providers to block access to gambling Web sites.
Osborne and other bill supporters contend that it's too easy for online betters to lose money and to become addicted.

It's not internet gambling that poses a threat to families, it's the person who chooses to engage in e-gambling who threatens his family. That's like saying SUV's pose a threat to drivers of Yugo's...as if the driver's actions are inconsequential and SUV's have evil intentions in the mind of their own. Bad human behavior and decision making is the threat, not the SUV or gambling itself. To self-righteous conservatives like Tom Osborne, people have to be protected from themselves because they are incapable of making decisions. It doesn't matter that gambling in other forms is a perfectly legal activity. If it's gambling itself that is the threat, why not outlaw it all?

Critics point to exemptions that they say would allow online lotteries and Internet betting on horse racing to flourish while cracking down on other kinds of sports betting, casino games and card games like poker. Many conservatives back the bill on moral grounds, arguing that Internet betting is harmful to society.

That's splitting hairs. If you believe specific forms of internet gambling are bad for society based on which game is being played, then you must accept that all gambling is bad for society...it all constitutes gambling.

John Kindt, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied the issue, calls the Internet "the crack cocaine" of gambling.
"There are no needle marks. There's no alcohol on the breath. You just click the mouse and lose your house," he said.

Nobody makes you click the mouse any more than somebody makes a crack-head stick the pipe in his mouth. You have make the choice to turn on the computer, log on to the gaming site, enter your password, type in your credit card number, and pull the handle on the virtual one-armed bandit. Every one of those actions represents a bad decision for that person. If he manages to not do even one of those things, he doesn't loose his house. I'm sorry, but that guy is trying very hard to be a gambling addict, just like the person who becomes a heroin addict. It takes a good two months of almost daily use to develop a physical addiction to heroin which means that you have to try very hard to become one. Literally, you have to wake up one day and decide, "I think I'll start today and in two months I will have made myself into a miserable heroin addict." Gambling requires a similar dedication to self destruction. People like that will mess up their lives anyway. Why punish the rest of us for the weaknesses of a few? I'll ask it again, why not ban all gaming if it's that bad for society?

Most reading this have already figured it out but for the others, here's why they don't ban all gambling: because the casino bosses contribute huge sums of money to the campaigns of representatives in Congress who sit on the committees which oversee gaming issues, and offshore internet gambling is a huge threat to casinos. Why go to Vegas or Atlantic City when you can do it from home? Tom Osborne doesn't think gambling is that bad, he's just saying that as his reason for outlawing internet gambling so he can keep the Vegas money flowing into his campaign coffers. And playing the credit card angle is the way to stop internet gambling without making the rest of the gaming industry look equally threatening to society. Nevermind that you use your credit card to get cash with which to gamble in Vegas.

Anytime a politician tells you that he's taking away your right to engage in an otherwise legal activity, simply because that activity is bad for you individually and society collectively...beware!

As a Republican, Tom Osborne should better grasp the concepts of personal responsibility and individual determination. The government should not be in the morality business any more than churches should be in the legislative business.

You cannot defeat an enemy you are unwilling to name...

Looks like the radical Islamic jihadists have struck again, this time in India...

Seven bombs hit Bombay's commuter rail network during rush hour Tuesday evening, killing at least 105 people and wounding more than 300 in what authorities called a well-coordinated attack. Chaos engulfed the crowded rail network in India's financial capital following the blasts that ripped apart train compartments as authorities struggled to treat the wounded amid heavy monsoon downpours. Doors and windows were blown off the train cars, and luggage and debris were strewn across the tracks. The bombings in Bombay came hours after a series of grenade attacks by Islamic extremists killed eight people in the main city of India's part of Kashmir.

This evening, watch the news and take an informal pole seeing if the media link this terrorist attack with a radical interpretation of Islam. They will look for every possible target for blame (regional politics over Kashmir, cultural strife between Indians and Pakastanis, George Bush is evil incarnate) to avoid mentioning that the perps were most likely Islamic.

Since when did it get to be so awful to name your enemy? The enemy is radical Islam. It's not unassimilated Arabic youth. It's not disgruntled north African immigrants who can't find jobs. It is anybody who subscribes to the radical interpretation of Islam which states that all infidels must be converted or killed.

Who came up with the name, Religion of Peace, anyway?