Vacation

I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks traversing the nation, visiting Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, Nevada and Arizona. In my absence I have assigned Beaker to watch over the blog. Please direct any comments or concerns to him and he will respond in a timely fashion.

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Oh, This is Very Cool

http://www.okcupid.com/politics


......You are a

Social Liberal
(65% permissive)


and an...

Economic Conservative
(78% permissive)


You are best described as a:


Libertarian

I'm right between The Donald and Adam Sandler

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A BIG WIN FOR THE GOOD GUYS

Okay Kids. What have we learned?

Well, we’re obviously doing something right. That’s the only conclusion any sane person can come to after the Islamic-fascist’s planned sequel to 9/11 was thwarted yesterday. (Kudos to President Bush for finally using the term “Islamic- fascists” to describe these murderers, by the way.)

We have learned that those who told us that our nation has not been made safer since 9/11 were dead wrong. Without the devices and safeguards put in place since that fateful day five years ago we would most likely have had another thousand dead Americans or so to mourn yesterday afternoon.

We have learned that the NSA wiretapping program is essential to figuring out what the terrorists are planning and how they are planning it. It works. Sorry Mr. Conyers, you wont be able to impeach the president on that issue, but you’re a big dummy so I’m sure you’ll continue trying.

By the way, a big thanks to The New York Times for not exposing the government’s information on this plot before these guys could be nabbed at Heathrow. We really appreciate it.

We now know that despite the mistakes that the Bush Administration has made in the war on terror, they are clearly not as incompetent as some would like us to believe. If you can’t admit that this administration has done a good job of preventing another terrorist attack in this country, then your drinking way too much Kool-Aid.

A rather pleasant surprise in this whole ordeal is how big of a help the government of Pakistan was in breaking up this deadly plot. It seems an amazing coincidence that the one guy in that country that doesn’t want to destroy America is also the president.

Based on discussions that I’ve had with people on both sides over the last 24 hours, as well as listening to political radio and television coverage of recent events and the negative vibes that I’m receiving from LAX, I am sensing a high level of support for what has come to be known as racial profiling.

I’ve concluded that this is a great idea that most common sense Americans would love to try out. As someone who could potentially fall into the category of an individual to be profiled, that being a male between the ages of 18 and 45 of Middle Eastern descent, I think it would be to everyone’s benefit to give Muhammad and me a bit more scrutiny at the airport and let Grandma Doris from Minnesota go through without being prodded by the guy with the wand.


Wearing a headdress? Search ‘Em.

Smell like rosewater? You’re getting searched.

Speak Arabic and have a crazy beard? Yup, a little more scrutiny is in order.

Potentially Middle Eastern looking guy carrying a Gatorade and a disposable camera?

Duh!

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all of these terrorists are Muslims.

While today was a great day for America and a huge victory in the war on terror, there are a few folks who one can’t help but feel sorry for.

First among those is Senator Joe Lieberman. If the Connecticut primary had been scheduled for a week later, he would have won.


Many Democrats have had awful short term memory problems since 9/11, but today’s events would probably have served as a reminder to all of them that the terrorist threat still exists and that Senator Lieberman has been one of the only Democrats who has been in support of the positive steps that the Bush Administration has taken to combat it, without politicizing those initiatives in order to pander to the Cindy Sheehan wing of the party which now controls its machinery.

I still believe that Lieberman will win the general election as an independent, but he doesn’t deserve the kind of treatment that he has received from the party which he has voted with 90% of the time. Come on all you Kos-Bloggers, put the poor guys web-site back on-line.

I also feel bad for Cynthia McKinney, who’s accusations of voter fraud will now go largely unnoticed, destroying her chances of returning to office and telling everyone about how the recent terror bust was manufactured by the Bush administration to raise the terror alert level and take everyone’s mind off of the fact that Bush hates black people.

Finally, I feel sorry for the Democratic party as a whole, as well as the liberals who have taken over that party since Bill Clinton left office. They were so close to convincing voters that they were better suited to lead congress, not because of their ideas and competence, but rather because they were not Republicans.

Now that convincing will take a lot more effort.

You see, every time American’s are reminded that terrorism is the most important issue of our time and that the threat from Islamic-fascism is real and still very much alive within this small world which we live in, many of them realize that the aggressive anti-terror policies of the Bush administration are not as awful as the administrations detractors claim.

When they actually see these policies work, swing voters understand and appreciate George W. Bush a bit more, warts and all. I hope that goes for Tony Blair in England as well.

The good guys won today, but we must remain diligent.


Be patient at the airports over the next few days and thank God that the people in those airplanes did not suffer the same fate which befell those in The World Trade Center, The Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania.

Also, regardless of your partisan leanings or what you may think about our government, don’t be too proud to give our nation’s leaders credit where credit is due.

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All Responsibility Still Lies with Hezbollah.

I began writing this article about an hour ago, but then I checked Real Clear and found that this guy had already done it for me.



August 03, 2006
Journalists Fail to Explain Qana
By David Warren
My reader may be wondering what happened to all the coverage from Qana. As usual, when the "liberal" media begin to realize they've been had, the story disappears. But it is never properly corrected. We get a few days of blazing headlines, and round-the-dial TV coverage of an "Israeli massacre", laden with innuendos, and then -- the fade-out. This will not do.
What happened at Qana was, almost certainly, what happened at Jenin in 2002, what happened on a beach in Gaza a few weeks ago, and what has happened on innumerable other occasions. The Israelis are instantaneously accused and convicted of a monstrous and perhaps intentional act of butchery, by people quite incurious about the facts. Their pathological hatred of "Zionism" is all the proof they need. These are people who seldom bother to shed even crocodile tears when Jews are blown to pieces by suicide bombers, or rockets are fired indiscriminately into their homes; but become tremendously excited when the news breaks that some Israeli retaliation may have gone wrong.
It took several months to clarify what had happened at Jenin -- a staged massacre. It will take several months before something like the true story emerges, from Qana. By which time no one will be listening. (The ideologues will continue citing the original lies, regardless.) And yet in both these cases -- Jenin and Qana -- indications of fakery were visible from the beginning.
The Israelis quickly released real-time aerial reconnaissance footage to show the Hezbollah firing rockets from between houses in Qana; then pulling the launchers immediately afterwards into civilian buildings. The Israeli military logged three air strikes around Qana in the course of the evening in question, including one next to the houses that were destroyed. So while it was possible the Israelis had dropped the bombs that killed 54 people -- coincidentally all women and children -- it was, at the worst, unintended "collateral damage" near a valid military target.
The Israelis had extensively leafleted Qana for more than a week before the air strikes, telling civilians to evacuate, and warning just what would happen. Over the same period, Hezbollah pumped 150 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel from in and around this village. Hezbollah are notorious for refusing to allow civilians to evacuate (as U.N. observers have attested), and even preventing their flight at gunpoint. The argument that people "could not get out because the Israelis had wrecked the infrastructure" is rubbish. Once invited by Hezbollah, journalists got into the village quickly, all the way from Beirut. It follows that Hezbollah bears not some, but all of the moral responsibility for civilian deaths at Qana.
But we are still assuming the Israeli air strikes collapsed the houses. That theory begins to crumble, itself, when you look at the times logged for the Israeli air strikes. The houses were first reported to have been destroyed more than seven hours after the air strike next to them (the other strikes were about half a kilometre away). And even if they collapsed by delayed effect, why were women and children allowed to spend the night in a building on the point of collapsing?
Now look at the media pictures. Immediately you see several fishy things. For one, bodies displayed to media are removed, successively, from a single neat hole in the ruins. There is no evidence of a rescue mission having been mounted, or of a continuing search for bodies elsewhere under the rubble. The battered bodies do not resemble those which are seen after most real explosions and building collapses: their wounds do not look recent. All the blood and gore seems to be on just one body.
Moreover, as bloggers such as "Eureferendum" have demonstrated, by juxtaposing press photos from various newspapers, the men showing off the bodies -- and identified in captions as "Lebanese rescue workers" -- are the same as had been present at previous alleged atrocities. They are obviously not rescue workers, but Hezbollah propaganda agents.
The way they are handling and displaying the bodies is entirely inconsistent with rescue work. For instance, they hold up a dead child's head for the cameras; they point to a pacifier still strung around his neck. But notice: the child's body is covered in plaster dust, but the pacifier is clean. Such evidence of staging is glaring, everywhere.
Obvious questions: Did all or any of the victims die at this site? Was the event staged to produce exactly the effect on "world opinion" that was achieved? And in a symbolic location, last used to a similar purpose in 1996?
I do not see how full-time journalists, specializing in the Middle East, can excuse themselves for not asking such questions immediately. I do not see why they cannot spot with their own eyes, what bloggers can spot in their photographs and reporting, thousands of miles away.
We know all about Hezbollah. It is for the journalists now to explain what they were doing, playing the clowns in an Hezbollah circus.
*
Update: Since this was written, I see the Lebanese Red Cross has reported the number of bodies at the site was 28, not the 54 or 57 that our press and TV took on faith from Hezbollah. And, persons presented as survivors adjusted the time of the incident to coincide better with the proximate air strike the Israelis logged. I have no idea what actually happened. But in the absence of a credible investigation, nobody else has, either; and the dramatic media presentation of the story "as told by Hezbollah" must be assigned to the annals of anti-Israeli propaganda, not journalism

The truth is that despite their early successes against Israel, Hezbollah cannot win this conflict if it continues much longer.



They must rely on world opinion to turn against Israel, even more than it was to begin with, in order to force a cease-fire, regroup and then start terrorizing Israel all over again.

By using human shields in order to guarantee that Israeli bombings always kill civilians, especially women and children, and then getting the media to report this news which makes Israel look bad, (they are always happy to do this by the way) they make it harder to justify Israel’s completely justifiable actions.

What most people fail to realize is that the world is full of Mel Gibson’s. Less talented, ugly Mel Gibson’s.

They are all over Europe and obviously everywhere in the Middle East.

While every educated individual with anything resembling a moral compass knows that Gibson’s views are ignorant and bigoted, what they don’t realize is that Gibson’s views are very similar to the views of a HUGE chunk of the world’s population and they’re not all Arabs.

They want to believe the worst about the Jews, just like many in our nation always want to believe the worst about the president, whoever he may be.

Just like any terrorist organization, you can’t trust Hezbollah to do the right thing or to tell the truth, so the responsibility lies with the media and the international community (UN, I’m looking in your direction) to be honest and not jump to conclusions due to their bias against Israel.

As Americans we should make no mistake as to who is to blame for this current situation. It’s Hezbollah, and we should take any attempt by the rest of the world to pin wrongdoing on Israel with a grain…..no…..a brick of salt.

Remember, these images are the best weapon that the terrorists have in their arsenal, and as we know they are not squemish about destroying innocent life in order to achieve the desired effect. Not only will they sacrifice their own lives, but they will take the lives of those misguided, yet peaceful individuals who are on their side in order to win the holy war and of course achieve their long term goal of killing every Jew and American on the face of the planet.

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