While the form of treachery varies slightly from case to case, liberals always manage to take the position that most undermines American security. -- Ann Coulter
It's Time To Take A Stand On An Important Issue: Chelsea Clinton Is Hot
I've always felt kind of bad for Chelsea Clinton because her teenage years must have been brutal. Here she is growing up in the White House, in the spotlight, and not only is dad cheating on mom -- which is traumatic in and of itself -- the whole world knows about it. Plus, 1/2 the country hated her dad's guts -- oh, and the "ugly jokes." Here's a little kid and you have all these people yukking it up about how unattractive you are.
Well, Chelsea is all grown up now and her pops is out of the White House, but you still have people making ugly jokes. Check this one out from Moxie:
In case you haven't heard, there's some guy in Kenya who offered goats and cows to Bill for Chelsea's hand in marriage and so Chelsea is supposed to be the cow...you get the idea.
One problem: the joke doesn't work anymore -- at least if you've seen Chelsea -- because wow, she is looking *** hot: ***
Granted, that's a particularly good pic of Chelsea, but just look at her: ouch! That's the type of girl who makes your head swivel when you pass her on the street.
Of course, my gut instinct is that she's probably a psychotic mess because of how rough she had it during the Clinton years, but there's no proof of that and when you look like that, it wipes away a lot of faults =D
So give Chelsea a break, admit she's attractive and also remember that now no one can ever say that I've never said a nice word about the Clintons. =D
Why not bomb Mecca? Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has brought the issue to the table. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that he apologize to Muslims, and commentators left and right have subjected him to vociferous criticism. At the same time, however, he seems to have tapped into the frustration that many Americans feel about official Washington’s politically correct insistence, in the face of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary, that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists.
Although Tancredo’s presidential hopes and possibly even his seat in Congress may go up in the mushroom cloud created by the furor over his remarks, the idea of destroying Islamic holy sites in response to a devastating terror attack on American soil is not going to go away – particularly as long as elected officials rush after every Islamic terror attack to repeat the well-worn mantras about how they know that the overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor violence and reject extremism, and are our faithful and reliable allies against terrorism in all its forms.
However, although the resentment Tancredo has tapped is real and has legitimate causes, his suggestion that “among the many things we might do to prevent such an attack on America would be to lay out there as a possibility the destruction” of Islamic holy sites is still wrong — but not generally for the reasons that most analysts have advanced.
Primarily, of course, it contravenes Western principles of justice which, if discarded willy-nilly, would remove a key reason why we fight at all: to preserve Western ideas of justice and human rights that are denied by the Islamic Sharia law so beloved of jihad terrorists. But even aside from moral questions, which are increasingly thorny in this post-Hiroshima, post-Dresden world, there are practical reasons to reject what Tancredo has suggested.
Tancredo’s idea, of course, is based on the old Cold War principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Both sides threatened each other with nuclear annihilation, and the threats canceled each other out. The Soviets would no more risk Moscow being wiped out than we would Washington.
But applying this principle to present-day Islamic jihad is not so easy. The Soviets did not inculcate into their cadres the idea enunciated by Maulana Inyadullah of al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.” This lust for death runs through the rhetoric of today’s jihadists, and goes all the way back in Islamic history to the Qur’an, in which Allah instructs Muhammad: “Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful” (62:6). Will men who love death, who glorify suicide bombing and praise God for beheadings and massacres, fear the destruction of holy sites? It seems unlikely in the extreme — and that fact nullifies all the value this threat may have had as a deterrent. Nuke Mecca? Why bother? It wouldn’t work.
Others have argued, however, that the deterrent value of destroying Islamic holy sites would lie not in giving jihad terrorists pause, but in showing Islam itself to be false and thus removing the primary motivation of today’s jihad terrorists. If Allah is all-powerful and rewards those who believe in him while hating and punishing the disbelievers (the “vilest of creatures,” according to Qur’an 98:6), wouldn’t he protect his holy sites from these disbelievers?
However, Muslims have weathered such shocks to their system in the past. In 1924, the secular government of Turkey abolished the caliphate; the caliph was considered the successor of the Prophet Muhammad as the religious and political leader of the Islamic community. By abolishing the office, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk hoped to strike at the heart of political Islam and create a context in which Islam could develop something akin to the Western idea of the separation of religion and state. Instead, his act provided the impetus for the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first modern Islamic terrorist organization, in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood and its offshoots (which include Hamas and Al-Qaeda), and indeed virtually all jihadist groups in the world today, date the misery of the Islamic world to the abolition of the caliphate. The ultimate goal of such groups is the restoration of this office, the reunification of the Islamic world under the caliph, and the establishment of the Sharia as the sole law in Muslim countries. Then the caliph would presumably take up one of his principal duties as stipulated by Islamic law: to wage offensive jihad against non-Muslim states in order to extend Sharia rule to them also.
The abolition of the caliphate, then, accomplished precisely the opposite of what Ataturk hoped it would: it gave the adherents of political Islam a cause around which to rally, recruit, and mobilize. In essence, it gave birth to the crisis that engulfs the world today. It is likely that a destruction of the Ka’aba or the Al-Aqsa Mosque would have the same effect: it would become source of spirit, not of dispirit. The jihadists would have yet another injury to add to their litany of grievances, which up to now have so effectively confused American leftists into thinking that the West is at fault in this present conflict. But the grievances always shift; the only constant is the jihad imperative. Let us not give that imperative even greater energy in the modern world by supplying such pretexts needlessly.
This content was used with the permission of Robert Spencer from Jihad Watch.
Back in 1995, North Korea -- for reasons unfathomable to mortal men -- invited World Championship Wrestling to come there and do a show. Previously, I've posted about Eric Bischoff's North Korean odyssey, and in a book I recently finished, Ric Flair's "To Be the Man," he talked about the trip as well. Flair had some fascinating stories that will give you a little insight into the North Korean mindset -- plus, there's a hell of a good Muhammad Ali tale (Yes, he was there, too, for some reason) included.
"...The second we arrived in Pyongyang, our passports were confiscated. Then each of us was assigned a "cultural attache" to follow us everywhere; these guys even sat in the dressing room while we went over our matches. In the dining room where the wrestlers ate, there was a camera in each corner, monitoring every movement. When Scott Norton called his wife and said, "This place sucks," his phone line suddenly went dead.
Muhammad Ali and I were taken everywhere in separate vehicles, while the rest of the guys were on a bus surrounded by government cars. They split us up at the hotel -- the way they did suspected traitors they wanted to segregate and brainwash. I didn't see anybody until our handlers decided the time was right.
The event itself was unlike anything I ever witnessed. A total of 380,000 spectators attended over two nights....During the show...(t)he fans held up different colored placards to create incredible mosaic images. It was beautiful, but also creepy. The first couple of sections were occupied exclusively by guys in military uniforms. The spectators cheered on cue. I almost got the feeling that they had been ordered to attend.
...At one point, my minder asked me how much my watch cost. When I told him, he marveled, "Can anybody really have that kind of money? That's more than I make in five years." I asked him his salary. It was the equivalent of about seven American dollars a week. Had I realized that, I never would have worn that watch in front of him.
Because of the ravages of Parkinson's disease, it was difficult to understand Muhammad Ali when he spoke. But at one function, we were sitting at a big, round table with a group of North Korean luminaries when one of the guys started rambling on about the moral superiority of North Korea, and how they could take out the United States or Japan any time they wanted. Suddenly, Ali piped up, clear as a bell, "No wonder we hate these motherf*ckers."
My hair practically stood up on my head. "Oh, sh*t," I whispered, "don't start talking now."
Before we left North Korea, our handlers requested that I make a speech at the airport. They even had specific points that they expected me to articulate -- things like North Korea being a worker's paradise, and that America sucked. I looked at Bischoff and told him, "I can't say this." The last thing I wanted was to be quoted in the American press making statements that I didn't mean. So I just spouted some generic comments and thanked everyone for their hospitality.
This is how I was quoted by the official North Korean press agency: "Before I leave this beautiful and peaceful country, I would like to make a tribute to the great leader, Mr. Kim Il Sung (the late father of the current dictator), who devoted his life to the Korean people's happiness, prosperity, and Korean unification. His Excellency, Kim Il Sung, will always be with us."
As soon as our plane landed in Japan, I bent down and literally kissed the ground. I was so glad to be back on friendly soil."
Man, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, one who could speak Korean, in the dinner where Ali popped off to all those Nork heavies. Now that would have been fun...
19) Roger Ailes: You Are the Message (A: This a reread, but it's always good to brush up on your communications skills)
18) Ann Coulter: High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (B: Lot of good info on the scandals in the Clinton administration, but it's a little dry and incessant lobbying for impeachment feels a bit dated at this point)
17) (Can't Say): (Can't tell you the name of the book yet) (A-: This book is months away from being published and the author asked me to keep it quiet until it goes live. So you'll have to wait)
The Extremist Skeleton in John Roberts' Closet -- Satire By Liberal Larry
Leading democrats in congress have generously requested that Bush's Supreme Court appointee meet only two simple requirements. As stated in the Constitution:
1. He must not allow idealogy to interfere with his decisions, and
2. He must be head-over-heels, red-hot, crazy-in-love with abortion.
So far, Judge Roberts hasn't been very forthcoming concerning his opinions about a Woman's Right to Choose. His reluctance to burst into giddy squeals of joy at the mere mention of "abortion" is cause enough for alarm. Nonetheless, gracious democrats were willing to accept him as a "moderate" until evidence could be manufactured to the contrary, and then repeated in a hysterical furvor until it drowns out all else. However, there have been quiet rumblings from the general vicinity of Ted Kennedy's stately blowhole that suggest Roberts is an extremist in moderate's clothing, a religious zealot who seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and condemn millions of innocent abortionists to death by starvation. While Roberts continues to stonewall, several notes scrawled on the back of a Boston-area buffet menu suggest that Roberts is less than enthusiastic about the concept of tearing a fetus apart inside its mother's womb and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Suddenly, Bush's pick doesn't seem quite the "moderate", does he?
The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice should not be taken lightly. A Woman's Right to Choose is the magic hat from which all other rights are conjured - from a Right to Same-Sex Marriage to a Right to a Living Wage. As a jury member in an active court case, I have a deep respect for the sanctity of our judicial system, and refuse to entrust to a side show freak who becomes squeamish over the thought of a baby's brains being sucked out through its skull so mommy won't have to miss a party.
This satire was used with the permission of BlameBush!.
When you click on these links, it helps make sure my advertisers get their money's worth, which means that they're more likely to advertise on RWN again, which helps me pay the bills. Seriously, I'd appreciate it if you could click on even one or two of these links...
Unfortunately, I'm feeling a bit under the weather and that means there will be no updates Thursday on Right Wing News. However, RWN will return on Friday. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Until I return, feel free to use this as an open thread.
There have been several articles written of late about Mitt Romney throwing his hat in the ring for the 2008 Republican nomination and many of those pieces seem to spend an inordinate amount of time speculating on whether the fact that he's a Mormon will play a huge role in the primaries.
But while Romney being a Mormon certainly wouldn't help him in a run at the White House (Some things Mormons believe in come off as very strange to most Americans), his real problem is that he's generally considered to be a squishy Republican from a liberal state who has now decided to pretend to be pro-life in order to be a viable candidate in the 2008 Republican primaries.
Even if you set his religious beliefs aside, conservatives in 2008 are likely to be deeply suspicious of a Romney candidacy and, quite frankly, it seems highly unlikely to me that he has any chance whatsoever in 2008.
Bush Energy Bill: Defeat the Arabs, Take Their Oil -- Satire By Scott Ott
The Bush administration today unveiled revisions to the energy bill, currently moving through Congress, designed to decrease U.S. dependency on foreign petroleum.
Under the terms of the amended legislation, the United States would "defeat the Arabs and take their oil."
Without such an amendment, the current energy bill would only slow the increase in U.S. dependency, which is projected to exceed 68 percent of domestic consumption by the year 2025.
Americans now get about 58 percent of their fossil fuels from other nations, almost all of which is burned in Sport Utility Vehicles during trips to children's soccer practices.
Although the White House plan would not change the global oil distribution infrastructure, it would colonize Saudi Arabia as a U.S. territory, moving Saudi oil into the "domestic production" column.
"I don't know why we didn't think of this before," said an unnamed White House spokesman. "After we invaded Iraq and got all of its oil we should have just turned the troops south and headed for Riyadh."
Democrats in Congress immediately spoke out against the amendment, saying that annexing Saudi Arabia would make the U.S. responsible for the environmental devastation that oil drilling causes to the habitats of sand-based creatures.
"The horrors of ANWR pale in comparison," said one unnamed Senate Democrat, referring to Bush administration plans to eliminate the caribou herd by drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. "In Saudi Arabia, we're talking about terrorizing desert snails, geckos and jerboa. Their blood would be on our hands."
This satire was used with the permission of Scrappleface.
"(Dean) also said the president was partly responsible for a recent Supreme Court decision involving eminent domain.
"The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is 'okay' to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is," Dean said, not mentioning that until he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court this week, Bush had not appointed anyone to the high court.
Dean's reference to the "right-wing" court was also erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the fourth dissenter.
The court's liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer combined with Justice Anthony Kennedy to form the majority opinion, allowing the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize private properties for commercial development." -- CNSNews
It's as if Howard Dean has internalized the worst traits of Bill Clinton and John Kerry. At this point, he'll say absolutely anything he thinks might sway a few voters. It doesn't matter whether it's true, it's false, whether it means he tells different crowds completely different things, it's all the same.
You hate abortion? Good, Democrats hate abortion, too. They absolutely hate it...well, unless they're voting, then they love it! You angry about the Supreme Court allowing local governments to take your house? That's exactly how Dean feels, too...well, unless you know that all the liberal justices voted for it and then it's "almost as if God has spoken." You have a Confederate flag in your pick-up truck? Then Dean wants to be your guy! You think people with Confederate flags are redneck, racist hicks? That's what Mad How believes, too! What about religion in politics? Aren't you sick of that? So is Howard Dean....unless you're a Christian, in which case he'll quote you a Bible verse.
The Democrats should cut to the chase: replace the donkey with a wishing well. Then they could officially claim to support every position that anybody has, anywhere in America. That would save the Dems a lot of time and a lot of embarrassing Howard Dean speeches...
I can’t think of a better example of left-wing moral equivalency when it comes to terrorism than this press release from Amnesty International.
Armed groups opposed to the US-led multinational force and Iraq’s government are showing utter disdain for the lives of Iraqi civilians and others, continuing a pattern of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said in a new report published today.
At the end of one of the worst months that saw some of the highest number of killings by armed groups since the beginning of the war in Iraq in March 2003, Amnesty International denounced the armed groups’ failure to abide by even the most basic standards of humanitarian law and said there can be no valid justification for deliberate killings of civilians, hostage-taking, and torture and killing of defenceless prisoners.
“Those who order or commit such atrocities place themselves totally beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour,” said Amnesty International. “There is no honour nor heroism in blowing up people going to pray or murdering a terrified hostage. Those carrying out such acts are criminals, nothing less, whose actions undermine any claim they may have to be pursuing a legitimate cause.“
“Armed groups.” How do you like that sh*t? Murderous scumbags who specifically target women and children aren’t terrorists. Vile fascist vermin who kidnap and behead innocent civilian contractors aren’t terrorists. Subhuman filth who kill anyone trying to turn Iraq into a democracy by serving as police or military aren’t terrorists. No, my friends, these are “armed groups.” Of course, the US detention center at Gitmo is a “gulag.” They have no problem stating the evil of that place using loaded, inflammatory language. But call a terrorist a terrorist? Perish the thought. To do so would, well, require them to place the Islamists on a lower plane than the fascist Amerikkkan occupiers, and that simply can’t be permitted.
In its 56-page report, Iraq, In Cold Blood: Abuses by Armed Groups, Amnesty International recognises that many Iraqis oppose the continuing presence of US and allied forces in their country, and that these forces have themselves committed grave violations, including killings of civilians and torture of prisoners.
“But abuses committed by one side do not and can not justify abuses by another,” said Amnesty International. “This is all the more the case when the principal victims are ordinary Iraqi men, women and children attempting peacefully to go about their everyday lives. All sides to the ongoing conflict have a fundamental obligation to respect the rights of civilians or of those who are rendered defenceless. Those who breach this obligation, on which ever side they stand, must be made to stop and they must be held to account."
In other words, the Americans and other allies who are fighting and dying over there right now to try and stabilize Iraq and turn it into a democracy are on an equal plane with the vile terrorist scum who are actively targeting civilians, women and children, police, politicians, or anyone else opposed to letting Iraq fall into the chaos of another Islamist dictatorship.
And Amnesty International wonders why so many people in America completely ignore them. Here’s why. When an organization that purports to exist under the guise of human rights is so vapidly unable to refer to terrorism as terrorism, then their opinion is absolutely worthless.
"We urge armed groups to immediately cease all attacks against civilians and all other abuses” said Amnesty International. “Armed groups, like other parties to the conflict in Iraq, are required to comply strictly with international law in all their acts and remain accountable for their actions."
Gee whiz, why didn’t we think of this before? The solution to terrorism isn’t to, you know, kill the terrorists before they can kill you. No, it’s to point out that the terrorists are violating international law! And that if they don’t stop violating international law, Amnesty International will issue… a press release! Because if there’s one thing that terrifies men so warped by their religious dogma that they are willing to kill and die for their cause it’s international law.
“Aziz! We must not blow up that bus full of infidel Jew schoolchildren. Amnesty International will denounce us for it!”
“Muhammad, you are correct! Despite the Koran telling us that it is our sworn Islamic duty to convert or kill all infidels, the thought of a press release by Amnesty International is a risk that Allah cannot expect us to take. Come, let us go and get real jobs.”
In American society, soldiers are typically spoken of with reverence, especially in wartime, and rightfully so. Our troops do difficult, extremely dangerous work, far away from their families and generally they work for peanuts and love of country.
Moreover, the sacrifices our troops make are extraordinarily important to our country. As Zell Miller said in his magnificent speech at the Republican National Convention last year:
"Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.
And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home."
Of course, not all Americans look at our soldiers that way. There are plenty of liberals out there who have an entirely different view of our military. So, in the name of fairness and balance, I'm going to show you a column about the military in the New York Times written by liberal history professor David M. Kennedy.
What follows is the summary of the central points of the column which Mr. Kennedy undoubtedly penned far up in his ivory tower at Stanford.
1) The US military is now full of the same sort of filthy Hessian mercenaries who spilled the blood of our ancestors during the Revolutionary War!
THE United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with the dangers in store, as current recruiting problems testify.
Some will find it offensive to call today's armed forces a "mercenary army," but our troops are emphatically not the kind of citizen-soldiers that we fielded two generations ago - drawn from all ranks of society without respect to background or privilege or education, and mobilized on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms was absolutely necessary.
2) We're more than 200 years overdue for a military backed coup and you sheeple don't even realize the danger!
But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights. This is worrisome - for reasons that go well beyond unmet recruiting targets.
But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked. It was for the sake of that link between service and a full place in society that the founders were so invested in militias and so worried about standing armies, which Samuel Adams warned were "always dangerous to the liberties of the people."
3) We need to weaken our military and make it harder and more expensive for our country to send troops into battle!
But thanks to something that policymakers and academic experts grandly call the "revolution in military affairs," which has wedded the newest electronic and information technologies to the destructive purposes of the second-oldest profession, we now have an active-duty military establishment that is, proportionate to population, about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And today's military budget is about 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to nearly 40 percent during World War II.
The implications are deeply unsettling: history's most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. We can now wage war while putting at risk very few of our sons and daughters, none of whom is obliged to serve. Modern warfare lays no significant burdens on the larger body of citizens in whose name war is being waged.
This is not a healthy situation.
4) You know what this country needs? A good old fashioned draft!
The "revolution in military affairs" has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres. War is too important to be left either to the generals or the politicians. It must be the people's business.
Summing It Up: Our good liberal professor seems to think our military is full of mercenaries who might overthrow the government so we need to weaken the military, make it more difficult to wage war, and have a draft.
I can't say that I agree with Kennedy, but who knows? If he sticks to his guns, there might be a spot for him at the Department of Defense if Hillary Clinton is elected ;D
Quote Of The Day: Money Isn't The Problem With Our Public Education System
"In international comparisons of per-pupil expenditures, the U.S. ranks near the top of the list. According to OECD figures, the U.S. spends 78 percent more per primary school student than Germany, 58 percent more than France, 31 percent more than Japan, and 71 percent more than the U.K. But despite these large spending differentials, American students perform no better than average on international comparisons of math and reading skills.
Comparisons over time reveal a similar story. From 1960 to 2000, inflation-adjusted spending on education in the U.S. nearly tripled, yet test scores show little improvement, dropout rates are high, and a large racial achievement gap persists." -- Veronique de Rugy and Kathryn Newmark
I Get Letters: Why Aren't You Talking About Rove & Plame?
From RWN reader SeattleLiberal...
Mr. Hawkins,
Over the course of the past few days, you have quickly any and all blog comment areas concerning Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, et al.\
Is the heat getting to be a bit much for your tastes. I can totally understand your feelings, as the scope and breadth of this scandal is just begining.
I think you do your readers, both supporters and adversaries a big disservice.
Much to the chagrin of social conservatives, this story has legs, so to speak.
Have a great day!
SeattleLiberal
This is worth addressing because the lefty blogs are still filling inches and inches of blog space daily on this topic, hearts palpitating madly as they dream of seeing Karl Rove frog marched off to a cell!
Ooooh, it's just so exciting -- oh wait, it's actually wonky and boring.
At this point, the whole Rove/Plame ball of wax has degenerated into nothing but wild speculation and spin based on unverifiable leaks. All the liberal blogs talking about this story sound exactly the same and even the conservative blogs responding to all this pointless minutiae are so dull that I usually wake up from a sound sleep 15 minutes after trying to wade through a paragraph or two.
What it all comes down to is that most conservatives seem to think, based on the available evidence, that Rove did nothing illegal or unethical and liberals think the opposite. That was the case two weeks ago, it's the case today, and that's how things will likely stand until Patrick Fitzgerald finishes his investigation.
So until there's some actual news of substance to report, I've relegated the whole Rove/Plame story to the "Dullsville file" and don't plan on putting everyone to sleep by pontificating endlessly on the newest minor details released to the press via anonymous leak...
I Get Letters: Which American City Will Bush Nuke Next?
Normally, I save the hate mail and loony letters up so I can post them at one time, but this one was too good to wait...
From: (joeyblong@*******)
Subject: WHICH AMERICAN CITY WILL BUSH NUKE?
WHICH AMERICAN CITY WILL BUSH NUKE? THE NEOCOMMS ARE DESPERATE TO KEEP POWER, AND A "NATIONAL EMERGENCY" OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD ENSURE THEY KEEP IT. 9/11 DIDN'T QUITE DO THE TRICK. WILL IT BE SAN FRANCISCO? THEN BUSH COULD SITE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SODOMITES AS PROOF THAT THE LORD HATES DEMOCRATS AND LIBERALS. AMERICA, AS A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY, IS SOON TO BE NO MORE.
IN JESUS’ GLORIOUS AND HOLY NAME,
DEAN BERRY – REAL AMERICAN
Actually, Dean, as a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I can tell you that if Bush were going to set off a nuke in California, he'd want to go for San Fran, Oakland, and LA, because that would wipe out enough liberals to turn the state Republican indefinitely, thus guaranteeing an endless string of Republicans in the White House.....just kidding, just kidding!
But wait, if Bush were to set off a nuke in San Francisco, using Tom Tancredo logic, wouldn't we have to nuke Crawford, Texas as retaliation? Again, just kidding, just kidding, come on, laugh it off, Dean.
PS: Here's a special message for Dean. People who worry about Bush setting off a nuke in the US are really crazy!!! So crazy that I have to use 3 exclamation points to show just how crazy they are!!! Get help!!!
Tom Tancredo Should Know Better Than To Threaten Mecca
Tom Tancredo recently suggested bombing Mecca as a possible reaction to a nuclear attack on the United States:
"Campbell: Worst case scenario, if they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that -- what would our response be?
Tancredo: What would be the response? You know, there are things that you could threaten to do before something like that happens and then you may have to do afterwards that are quite draconian.
Campbell: Such as...
Tancredo: Well, what if you said something like -- if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, um, you know, you could take out their holy sites . . .
Campbell: You're talking about bombing Mecca.
Tancredo: Yeah. What if you said -- what if you said that we recognize that this is the ultimate threat to the United States -- therefore this is the ultimate threat, this is the ultimate response.
I mean, I don't know, I'm just throwing out there some ideas because it seems to me . . . at that point in time you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine and because other than that all you could do is once again tighten up internally."
Since then, Tancredo has had ample opportunity to clarify, to change course, to apologize, but instead the Congressman has chosen to stick to his guns and portray his critics as being driven by political correctness.
What Tom Tancredo inexplicably doesn't seem to get is that it's not about political correctness or whether people are offended, it's about strategy.
Since the war on terrorism began, George Bush has made it clear that we're not at war with Islam, we're at war with terrorists and the rogue regimes that support them.
Admittedly, at times, that strategy has been grating to those of us who take the war on terror seriously. On the one hand, we have Bush saying "Islam is a religion of peace" and on the other hand we have terrorists talking about Jihad and screaming Allah Akbar while they decapitate innocent hostages.
On the other hand, Bush's strategy has paid a lot of dividends. We crushed the Taliban and Saddam. The governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have partnered with us against Al-Qaeda. We've seen Syria pull out of Lebanon, free elections in Lebanon, Libya has given up WMDS, and most (but not all) Muslim regimes across the globe have cracked down on terrorism.
Now is that enough? No, we want more help fighting terrorism and extremism from Muslim regimes, more moderate Muslims to speak out, and we want to see Democracy continue to spread through the Muslim world. None of this is happening as fast as we'd like -- the wheels of history always turn slowly -- but if you compare the world on 9/10/2001 to the world today, you'll see that we have made enormous progress.
Which is where Tom Tancredo comes in.
There are two problems with Tom Tancredo's idea of responding to an nuclear attack on the US. The first is that it shifts the ground we've been fighting on from a war on terrorism, to a war on Islam.
Put another way, if the terrorists believe it's plausible that we'll destroy Mecca if they nuke the US, all of the other Muslims in the world are also likely to believe it & hold it against us.
How would you feel if you were a terrorist-hating Muslim living in Saudi Arabia and heard that the United States was planning to nuke your home country if the terrorists nuked them first? Do you think the Iraqi and Afghan soldiers fighting side by side with our troops would feel the same way about us if they knew we were going to destroy Mecca? How about Egyptians who are sympathetic to the United States? Oh wait, we don't have to wonder how they feel because The Big Pharoh, a Muslim who has actually protested terrorism in the streets of Cairo, did have something to say about Tancredo:
"I couldn’t believe that such words would come from a US congressman, supposedly someone who is trying to build a bridge between the US and the Muslim world. His words are a spit in the faces of millions of Muslims around the world and Muslims in the US and in Colorado. Upon visiting Tancredo’s website, I found out that he is very active in helping the Sudanese people of Darfur. I am sure that those people whom he is trying to help won’t appreciate his stupid comment given the fact that most Darfurians follow the Muslim faith.
...This morning several independent newspapers carried major headlines such as “US congressman wants to nuke Mecca”, “Nuking Mecca, the latest call of American extremism.” America should thank Tancredo for the great service he has done for the US!!"
Can you blame him for writing that? I mean if your "friends" are threatening to bomb your holy sites, then can anyone blame you if you start wondering if you need some new friends?
Let me also add that I'm not sure that threatening Mecca would have any effect whatsoever on Al-Qaeda's willingness to use a nuke in the United States.
I know, I know, they're supposed to be so "religious." But, how many mosques have they destroyed? How many innocent Muslims have they tortured, used as human shields, or killed? They're not exactly the Muslim version of the Flanders family, are they?
Despite their pretense of piety, Al-Qaeda seems to mainly use religion as a tool to gain new recruits, keep people in line, and to convince mopes to strap dynamite on their chests and blow themselves up. For people like that, there's no greater gift we could give them than to prove that we're the crusading, Islam hating, "Great Satans" that they always said we were by slagging Mecca and Medina.
That's not to say that stopping nukes from getting into the United States isn't a serious problem. But, threatening to bomb Mecca is a "solution" that will alienate our allies in the Muslim world and would likely be of minimal value as a deterrent. Tom Tancredo should understand that already...
Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for keeping on top of this story.
Well, At Least She Didn't Hit Anyone Up At The Funeral For A Campaign Contribution
There's a scene in Cadillac Man where Robin Williams' character, who is a car salesman, tries to persuade a widow to purchase a car from him with the insurance money she'll get from her husband's death...While. She's. Still. At. The. Funeral!
Cadillac Man wasn't a great movie, but that was a great scene because it was so over the top, so sleazy, so outrageous, that it was actually funny. I mean, who would actually go to a funeral and make a pitch to the bereaved widow? Nobody could be that crass, right?
"Relatives of the late Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich are upset over what they consider to be Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll's cynical intrusion on their mourning.
...He died July 10 in a mortar attack in Hit, Iraq. Friends and relatives packed St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Carnegie on Tuesday for the infantry unit leader's funeral.
Knoll was among those in attendance.
Rhonda Goodrich, 38, of Indiana County, the fallen soldier's sister-in-law, said Knoll slipped into a pew next to his aunt, Linda Kubiak of Bethel Park. Through Goodrich, Kubiak declined to comment.
Rhonda Goodrich said Knoll, 74, of McKees Rocks, began chatting with Kubiak during the communion service.
"When (Knoll) found out (Kubiak) was Joe's aunt, she handed her a business card and told her she attends 90 percent of these 'functions' across the state," Rhonda Goodrich said.
"This was not a 'function,' " she continued, fairly spitting out the words. "A function is a dinner or an awards ceremony. This was my brother-in-law's funeral."
According to Rhonda Goodrich, Knoll then said what continues to leave Joe Goodrich's survivors shaking their heads: "She told Joe's aunt that the (state) government was against the war."
An odd thing to say, because the state never has taken a position on the Iraq conflict. An offensive thing to say to those who knew Joseph Goodrich loved being a Marine and fighting for his country.
"Whether you're for the war or against the war, to say something like that to a relative of someone who just died in combat was just repulsive," Rhonda Goodrich said.
Added Patricia Goodrich of the South Side, the slain soldier's mother: "When my sister-in-law related that to us (after the service), everyone just gasped. We didn't feel it was appropriate at all."
..."She never said to anyone, 'If there's anything I can do to help, just call my office,' " Goodrich said. "It seems like she's going to funerals and using business cards as campaign fliers."
Who goes to a funeral to try to hustle up votes from the grieving friends and family of the deceased? It's just sounds so creepy and wrong...which is apparently how Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell sees it, since he is going to apologize:
"Written apologies will be sent to a fallen Marine's relatives angered by Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll's uninvited appearance at the soldier's funeral and her criticism of the war in Iraq, Gov. Ed Rendell said Sunday.
Rendell said he will send a personal letter to the family of the late Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, of Westwood, and will ask Knoll to do the same. Goodrich, 32, a police officer and infantry unit leader, died July 10 in a mortar attack in Hit, Iraq.
Rendell said he hadn't spoken with Knoll about the incident, but was disturbed by the family's charge that she made a political statement against the war.
"It's not the business of state government to support the war, but our state supports the men and women who are fighting this war," Rendell said during an appearance in Mt. Washington.
...Rendell said he thinks Knoll, 74, of McKees Rocks, meant no harm by attending the memorial service last Tuesday. He believes Knoll gave her business card to a family member so that Goodrich's family would have a contact within state government if they later needed help securing benefits.
..."I'm going to talk to her," Rendell said. "I think she should send a letter to the family, clarifying (her intentions). As head of the state, I'm going to also send a letter."
Does something here not strike you as more than a little odd? While Rendell is doing the right thing by apologizing, why is he the one going public on this issue instead of Knoll? How can it be that he is apologizing for Knoll and speculating about her motive, but hasn't talked to her about an incident that occurred on Tuesday the 19th? Is the Lt. Gov. living in a Unabomber style shack somewhere without a phone? What's going on up in the Governor's mansion in Pennsylvania?
In any case, Knoll is a real embarrassment and someone should clue her in to the fact that a funeral isn't an appropriate place to troll for votes.
Hat tip to Michelle Malkin, who has been all over this story.
Excerpt Of The Day: The Pro-Abortion Movement Loses Steam With Younger Americans
"...(A)ccording to a CBS/New York Times poll cited in the article, 49% of 18-29 year old women believed that abortion should be "available to anyone who wants it" in 1993. In 2003 among the same age group, only 35% of respondents believed abortion should be "available to anyone who wants it." In 2005, only 28% of respondents favored making abortion "available to anyone who wants it."
Furthermore, in 1993, 30% of female respondents in the 18-29 year old age group believed that abortion should be "available, but with stricter limits." By 2005, the number had risen to 40%.
Most encouraging of all, only 19% of respondents in 1993 believed that abortion should be "not permitted." By 2005, the number had risen to 30%." -- RedState
