Late night special

A commentator over on TalkLeft has identified themselves as a “moderate Republician.”

Now I ask you. Have you ever seen anyone identify themselves as a “moderate Democrat?” I mean, I can’t remember such a thing happening. Are there no moderates left in the Demo Party?? Have they all become anti-war zealots?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The real Star Wars

You have probably seen the video of our missile destroying our failed space station, but if you have not, here it is.

Link to video source.

Now, if you will look at a globe you can easily see why Iran and Russia do not want our anti-missile missiles in Poland.

The world, gentlemen and ladies, changed and no one really seemed to notice.

Bump and Update

A reader sent the following comment. While I agree with her, I think there are also some other points that the US voter needs to consider.

You can be sure that many people noticed. It's awesome. It's a technological show of defensive strenght. It's done at a strategic moment.A strong President is leaving. An unknown one is coming. USA is saying to the world: "We have what it takes. No matter what."

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, be ready for war. It works!

It's the way President Reagan secured the peace of the world during the Cold War. I had two sons in their twenties at that time. I've been forever grateful to him for his political courage.

But what is often forgotten is that all of the military might in the world is of no value in preventing attacks if the enemy does not believe they will be used. We should never forget that when Hitler marched into the Rhineland his Generals were ordered to retreat immediately if France exhibited any resistance. As he expected they did not, and the rest, as they say, is history. Very bloody history.

Such as it is with Hussein Obama. He is running on what is, essentially, a peace platform. If elected the world will see us as embracing surrender to al Qaeda, and that will be a disaster. Like Kennedy who emboldened the Soviets by withdrawing from Cuba, the radical Moslems will believe that they can attack at will. At that point the voter will demand a response and we will have, even more history. Very bloody history.

It is written

that during the surrender by the British at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War a British band played, “The World Turned Upside Down.” Like much of history that claim has now been disputed. But there is no dispute about the UT vs. UM game. The final score was the University of Tennessee 66 and the University of Memphis 62. Stunning. UM was at home, with a perfect record. And while a close game was expected, UT was supposedly 6 or so points the weaker team. If the world was not turned upside down, it was at least tilted far to one side.

I confess to having lost interest in college basketball, tracing that loss back to the institution of the shot clock. Without the clock ball handling and strategy are so much more important. Now the games are pro style with a super pace and great athletes making impossible moves. But like ballet, I admire the dancer. But to mix a metaphor or two, my interest wanes long before the seventh inning stretch and the fat lady sings.

The game last night was one of the best games I have ever seen. But too often the team with a couple of super players wins by 20 points and my interest fades at halftime. Before the clock a good ball handling and foul shooting team had a better chance of winning. While that may not count in the pros, you expect them to do both, at the college level I would like to see what the attendance records have been over the past several years. My gut feeling is that outside the very top tier, attendance is declining simply because the expectation of an upset is no longer there.

You heard it here first.

The sky is clearing and the evil sleet and rain storm moved northward over night, proving again that Pope Algore knows more than he lets on, and that he hears all, even those most humble of his servants. His command of the weather is exceeded only by the Evil Bush Rove and they must use a complicated Hurricane Machine. I sometimes think the picture to the right is a beta model of the evileeeeee machine, but I have lost my tinfoil hat and may be under the influence of rays from the man made global warming community.

But on to more sober thoughts.

The comparison of the Left’s desire to surrender to radical Muslim terrorists remains a topic, but has been reduced as we continue to have success in Iraq, and the media devotes their time to attacking, in their mind, even more dangerous targets, aka John McCain.

What was especially interesting yesterday was the announcement that al-Sadr has graciously extended the “truce” for six months. Although I usually don’t make predictions. I predict that he will direct his minions to start new attacks in September in an attempt to influence the US election in favor of the Democrats who have stated they will leave Iraq.

Remember where you read it first.

This, of course, is the fruit of being thought to be weak. And to our everlasting shame as a country and as a “culture” some call “western civilization,” we an easily look back and see the results of Chamberlain, and others, who thought they could do business with Hitler. That lapse in judgment cost only 10,000,000 lives or so, including 6,000,000 or so Jews.

Although our security forces have had great success, sooner or later something very bad will happen to us, in this country. When it does, we are apt to respond directly. Consider this from Walter Russell Mead It offers some interesting thoughts.

In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians—not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki……

Why is it that U.S. public opinion is often so quick—though sometimes so slow—to support armed intervention abroad? What are the provocations that energize public opinion (at least some of it) for war—and how, if at all, is this "war lobby" related to the other elements of that opinion? The key to this warlike disposition, and to other important features of American foreign policy, is to be found in what I shall call its Jacksonian tradition, in honor of the sixth president of the United States……

If Jeffersonianism is the book-ideology of the United States, Jacksonian populism is its folk-ideology. Historically, American populism has been based less on the ideas of the Enlightenment than on the community values and sense of identity among the British colonizers who first settled this country. In particular, as David Hackett Fischer has shown, Jacksonian populism can be originally identified with a subgroup among these settlers, the so-called "Scots-Irish", who settled the back country regions of the Carolinas. and Virginia, and who went on to settle much of the Old West—West Virginia, Kentucky, parts of Indiana and Illinois—and the southern and south central states of Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Jacksonian populism today has moved beyond its original ethnic and geographical limits. Like country music, another product of Jacksonian culture, Jacksonian politics and folk feeling has become a basic element in American consciousness that can be found from one end of the country to the other.

The Scots-Irish were a hardy and warlike people, with a culture and outlook formed by centuries of bitter warfare before they came to the United States. Fischer shows how, trapped on the frontiers between England and Scotland, or planted as Protestant colonies in the hostile soil of Ireland, this culture was shaped through centuries of constant, bloody war. The Revolutionary struggle and generations of savage frontier conflict in the United States reproduced these conditions in the New World; the Civil War—fought with particular ferocity in the border states—renewed the cultural heritage of war.

I hope I am wrong.

One more brick in the wall

Over at TalkLeft a reader quoted this from Hussein Obama.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world,

The problem with this is that I cannot remember any of those “best impulses.” Instead all I have read/seen about is hundreds and hundreds of years of rulers oppressing their people, killing Jews, infidels and other Muslims who are of a different sect. This includes the current group who don’t grasp the desire for change that Hussein is selling, and who can’t quite seem to grasp the necessity of rounding up and killing the terrorists who are determined to return the world to the 7th century.

The more I read/hear what he has said the more I come to understand that he is, at best, educated but clueless. It is frightening to think of having this man as President trying to negotiate with, say, Iran. He will make Chamberlain look like Dr. Strangelove.

Wish I had said that.

…….Obama, on the other hand, sounded like a man who believed all wisdom came from term papers.

The audience seemed to consist mainly of young people, who, with their whoopin' and cheerin', provided a good case for raising the voting age to 30. Make that 35. Would you go to 40?

The above is from William Katz at Urgent Agenda, one of the best new blogs on the Internet. Of course he has an advantage; he is knowledgeable, smart and can write.

It also falls squarely into the “Wish I had said that” category.

And never have I seen the ignorance of youth demonstrated so well as by the cadres of Hussein ditto heads. You need go no further than listening to them explain that using someone else’s words without attribution is not Plagiarism while ignoring dictionaries and other reference works.

is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement.

Evidently part of the “Change” that Hussein invokes includes changing the meaning of words. He surely makes Humpty Dumpty proud.

But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
Lewis Carrol “Through The Looking Glass.”

Through The Looking Glass Humpty Dumpty.

UrgentAgenda

Plagiarism




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Did you ever

have a discussion with someone and after walking away think of a dozen things you would like to have said??

I think most of us have.

A few months ago on another blog one of the Left Wing commentators drew himself up and declared that I had said he was un-patriotic and that he was insulted. To my shame I assured him that I didn’t mean to imply that he was.

What I should have said was this.

I understand that you consider yourself a patriot. That you embrace this delusion is your right, and I do not challenge the fact that you believe. But belief does not confer fact.

And the fact that you think you are does not mean that I must agree with you, or in fact do agree with you. In fact, I do not. What I believe is that you are terribly misinformed and are the end result of a failed education system and a life experience that, evidently, is so different from mine that I cannot imagine how you came to embrace the causes you do and the positions you espouse. But that is your life and your problems.

All I can do is offer my sympathy.