I got one of those emails last week.  You know.  The ones that have really inflammatory comments supposedly made by the guy across the aisle politically.  The over-the-top comments that are supposed to ignite a fire and passion in the reader so that he becomes a one-man vigilante, a political crusader. 

Usually, I ignore those emails and when I do choose to read them through, I invariably check the source. This time I read the message and immediately typed www.snopes.com into my web browser's address bar.  I was surprised to find verification of every single quote in the email. 

The email contained quotes from "Hispanic Leaders" speaking out about immigration and issues involving the growing Mexican immigrant (legal and illegal) community.  Most of the quotes are from the nineties but seem particularly relevant when you consider the current immigration issue.  They reveal a mindset that is extremely radical and disturbing. From the email:

Augustin Cebada, Brown Berets; "Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the future. You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you. Leave like beaten rats. You old white people. It is your duty to die . . . Through love of having children, we are going to take over.

Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council. "They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They're right. We will take them over . . . We are here to stay."

Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico, "The American southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot."

Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas; "We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. The explosion is in our population . . . I love it. They are shitting in their pants with fear. I love it."

Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, "Remember 187 — proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens — was the last gasp of white America in California."

Gloria Molina, Los Angeles County Supervisor, "We are politicizing every single one of these new citizens that are becoming citizens of this country ... I gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, "I'm going to go out there and vote because I want to pay them back."

Mario Obledo, California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Governor Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."

Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General , "We are practicing 'La Reconquista' in California."

Professor Fernando Guerra, Loyola Marymount University; "We need to avoid a white backlash by using codes understood by Latinos ..."

Are these just the words of a few extremists? Consider that we could fill up many pages with such quotes. Also, consider that these are mainstream Mexican leaders.

I encourage you to click the link above (Hispanic leaders) and to read the rest of the email, if for nothing more than curiousity's sake.  As for my take on it, here goes:

I wonder if Sr. Cebada has considered the ramifications of old white men packing up their toys and leaving the playground.  After all, it is the old white men who are funding the FREE education his kids are getting and who are giving housing and benefits to his illegal and legal border crossing compadres. 

I wonder if Sr. Cebada would consider it difficult to make such radical statements in a country where old white men hadn't written free speech into the most powerful political document ever penned.  I wonder, if those white men hadn't come with their outlandish ideas about liberty for all,  if Sr. Cebada would live in a country free enough to publicly declare his racist opinions without fear of retribution. 

Old white men have made many mistakes, but as far as I can tell, they did a hell of a lot better job than say, those nicely tanned folks in your homeland.  Oh by the way, how is that country that your own people ran into the ground doing these days?  Rumor has it they are on the verge of electing a die hard communist as the national president.  I guess lining up for toilet paper will make even more of your people flock to old white man's land. 

Let me make it clear, Sr. Cebada and you other idiotas who are speaking such hate filled non-sense.  I don't care if you are black, white, or purple.  This land is for people of any color who value freedom and liberty.  It is not an institutional sugar daddy like you seem to think.  And the only people holding Mexican immigrants back are people like you who are determined to make victims out of lawbreakers and hard working law abiding immigrants alike.  You are hurting the people who want a free future.  You are hurting the cause you claim to espouse.  You are the racist bigots who are undermining the cause of those who, but for their own illicit entry into the nation, could be enjoying the liberty and upward socio-economic mobility that my parents achieved for their children in one generation.  You, Sr. Cebada.  You.

And while we're using racist rhetoric, Sr. Cebada, why don't we address the racism that exists in latin America where fairer skin is at a premium.  I lived there for years.  Alone, as a non-citizen. Not as a military wife but in my younger pre-wife and mommy days and I know exactly what it is like.  There, where you "populists" condemn anyone darker than a very creamy cup of java.  Don't come here using colorful talk like that when your apple doesn't fall far from the same historically racist tree. 

As for the whole idea of reconquista, well, you can't reconquer something that the idiots in Washington are willingly giving away. 

That's how I feel, unabridged, uninhibited, uncensored. I still believe that we need some humane and reasonable immigration policy but I also believe we need much stronger enforcement of the laws keeping illegals out.  They must come through the system.  They need to be paying taxes and paid at American wage rates.  They need to be assimilated and welcomed as future Americans not as Mexicans living abroad.  They need the same legitimacy and possibilities that are open to all Americans - that is what drives assimilation and pushes people to move out of the ghettos and barrios and into the suburbs.  And once they have earned their way into the middle class (which usually takes a generation) and are enjoying the American Dream they will be hard pressed to give it up for the likes of Sr. Cebada.  

America - write to your congressmen and senators and lets get some reasonable and humane immigration policies on the books, remove the disincentives to legal entrance, and demand some serious enforcement measures.

 

 

 

A little rated R Democrat on Democrat rumble is happening in Brooklyn.  I'd make more of a comment but hey, what can you say?  It's New York.

 

Foul-mouth pol

Weiner goes bleepin' wild

BY ELIZABETH HAYS DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

State Sen. Karl Kruger (below), recipient of verbal beatdown from Rep. Anthony Weiner (top). Anthony Weiner's mother is probably reaching for the soap right now. In a moment that went far beyond the usual frank dialogue among politicians, the Brooklyn congressman publicly laced into a fellow Democrat - using language that would make a sailor blush. "Do you have a f------ problem with me?" the 2005 mayoral candidate said to state Sen. Carl Kruger at an annual Mill Basin fund-raiser Thursday night, witnesses said. Weiner, thought to be an early mayoral 2009 favorite, also called the Brooklyn senator a "p---y," witnesses said. "I'm going to give you a bad hair day," Kruger shot back, apparently vowing revenge. The exchange, which occurred in the lobby of Temple Shalom, was prompted by Weiner's fierce opposition to acting legend Paul Newman's proposal to bring Grand Prix-style racing to Brooklyn. "They were screaming at each other. It got very close, chest to chest and nose to nose," said one shocked observer. Kruger supports Newman's proposal to bring auto racing to the long-closed Floyd Bennett Field in Gateway National Recreation Area. Weiner has called it "illegal." But what apparently annoyed Weiner was an earlier incident during an April 21 briefing on the Champ car project by Newman himself. At that briefing at the Brooklyn Marriott, witnesses said Kruger tore into a young Weiner staffer in front of the roomful of honchos after he conveyed Weiner's objections to the project. "It was totally inappropriate. He was just a kid and Kruger started screaming at him in front of everyone," said a local pol who was at that meeting. "Weiner was just giving it back to Kruger. If he did it to a member of my staff I wouldn't have waited a week," quipped the pol. Weiner acknowledged he blew a fuse at the 41st Assembly District Democratic Club dinner, but stressed that it was over his staffer's treatment by Kruger. "The conversation I had with Sen. Kruger, I'm sure made it very clear to him that I will not tolerate him abusing my staff," said Weiner. "I don't recall using any profanity. However if the language was too salty for some ears I regret that." Kruger said he was "shocked" by the outburst and said that at the previous meeting he was just trying to send a clear message to Weiner through his staffer. "His temper is a known fact, but to act as he did in a temple in front of a host of community leaders, I thought was very inappropriate." One attendee at the dinner acknowledged that staffers "had to close the door to the banquet room because the dinner was going on and everybody could hear it." When Weiner ran for mayor last year, his mother, a retired public schoolteacher, occasionally appeared with him - making headlines once when she publicly corrected her son during an education speech. Political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said he didn't think the eruption would hurt Weiner's career - but tangling with Kruger could pose problems. "Weiner is showing he can't be pushed around and that's a fine thing, but Kruger ... tries to settle all scores behind the scenes," Sheinkopf said. "That's the way politics works in that part of Brooklyn." With Jotham Sederstrom Originally published on April 29, 2006

Ayn Rand, the Russian born novelist penned those words, and this week in an effort to refuse sanction to the evils of the world, a band of bloggers has dedicated itself to exposing hate-filled terrorist rhetoric.  You could hardly log on to bloghi this week without noticing a post about Dr. Julio C. Pino, apparently known to some as Lover of Angels, and the individual behind the global-war blog.

Tonight's post is less about Pino and more about us.  Our little band.  We've never met except for online encounters and we have no relationship other than a likemindedness when it comes to protecting our nation.  Our views on politics vary wildly on some issues and on others we wholeheartedly agree.  We are ordinary citizens.  With one exception, we are not widely known and wouldn't even know each other if we met on the street.  In spite of our seeming insignificance and our almost absolute anonymity, we found a common purpose this week in denouncing the online writings of Lover of Angels and demanding that his employer, a public university, be held to account for using our tax dollars to fund his anti-American elocution.

As for myself, I find the most offense in the writings that describe, in vivid detail, the torturous pain and suffering he hopes will be visited upon our troops. But, then, it is the job of an Army wife to worry about her man in uniform.  And I do.  And that is why I ask that you speak out.  Don't wonder if your voice matters.  Don't wonder if the ACLU will come to this man's defense.  Don't wonder if signing your name to a petition is enough to stem the tide of hate and anti-American sentiment.

Just believe, as we do, that whether or not it is enough, it is right.  And that is all that matters.

Please read the following posts and then consider whether or not your tax dollars should subsidize speech such as this.

Have you forgotten?

Who is Lover of Angels?

 

Okay, I'll admit it.  I love Tony Snow.  It's not his opinion, it's his presentation.  He just comes across as a nice guy.  And he knows it.  He is hoping to bring a return to civil discourse and I applaud him for the noble desire.  I only hope it holds up when confronted with the likes of Helen Thomas and David Gregory. 

From his interview in Examiner.com:

Snow said he hopes his upbeat outlook helps restore some civility to the political debate.

“It’s all about tone,” he said. “A lot of the people who are caught in the middle of this fight are sick of it.”

The negative tone has resulted in low job approval ratings for politicians in both parties.

“When you have a president in the 30s and Congress in the 20s, that’s bad,” Snow said. “And I think one way you restore it is by behaving, by acting in a genial way.”

Snow decried the “vicious, personal and sometimes unfocused warfare between Democrats and Republicans, or the press corps and the political class.”

“People at home are saying to themselves: ‘This isn’t what I remember when I was looking at the civics book,’ ” he said. “People still have a more exalted view of what government ought to be.”

Snow said he will try to uphold that view.

Over the course of this year I have been trying to instill within my 3 young sons an appreciation for the blessing that it is to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  We have studied geography and American history, they know the pledge and many patriotic songs better than most adults in this country, I'd wager.  You should hear my four year old sing "America the Beautiful",  it's really something.  In spite of my best intentions, it became clear today that some ideas were still a little muddled. 

We've been learning the song "This land is My Land"  and so I pulled the map off the wall and spread it across the table to talk about where the redwood forests are and to help them identify just exactly where the gulfstream waters lie.  We got carried away discussing all the places we have lived and where mommy and daddy were born.  I showed each of the kids where they were born and we talked about those states.  My four-year old began crying when I reminded him he was born in Georgia.  "No," he said,  "I wanna be from Texas!"  We finally calmed the situation by assuring him that while he was born in Georgia, he definitely had the soul of a Texan.

Later this afternoon, my five year old was playing trains on the porch with a neighbor friend.  "Hey Sarah, this train is named Peter Sam."  He told her, showing off on of his Thomas the Tank Engine trains.  "But he's a little different." he virtually whispered,  "He's from California."

Needless to say I almost wet myself laughing so hard.  I'm sure that must've been something heard on t.v. because I've never said anything that funny in my life, much less around my kids.  I love home schooling.

 

Men having babies - wrong!

Paying a man to speak seditious words and undermine the very government that writes his paycheck - wrong again!

Freedom of speech, particularly the political and religious speech that we prize so highly, should be afforded every human being.  With only minor exceptions for inciteful speech, people ought to be able to speak their minds freely and without fear.  That includes condemning America and her government's policies.  It includes speech expressing anger and hate for the military and the commander in chief.  It even includes waging a personal war against this nation.  What is does not include is a government funded platform or an institutional endorsement, implied, if not explicitly stated,  through silent tolerance. 

If you feel that Americans should not pay a salary to people who declare themselves threats to national security,  please take a stand and read about one way you can announce to our institutions of higher education that you are tired of being taxed to subsidize terrorist rhetoric.

From this week's blogburst for academic accountability:

Lover of Angels, apparently known to some as Dr. Julio C. Pino of Kent State University has attracted the gaze of anti-terrorist activists.  While LOA hasn't shown anything but reasonable deference in his comments on this blog, (much obliged, Dr.)  he has definitely used his own blog, global-war, as a stump for pro-islamofascism.  His anti-American writings have many readers incensed and determined to see him removed from his post as a professor at a public university in Ohio.  For a look at the petition making its way around the country, click here

 

 

Supply-side conservatives are calling it like is it with respect to the national economy. President Bush's biggest failings in office have less to do with the war on terror, immigration policy, or hurricane Katrina and more and more to do with the nominal changes to the tax code which have created an even more bloated system of loopholes and regulations than ever. 

President Bush isn't alone in his failures at fiscal policy - Congress, as always, is mostly to blame.  But, then, Congress didn't promise to simplify the codes and improve the American tax system either.  The policy, albeit it warranted in some areas, of excessive spending combined with tax cuts has left the nation with a projected deficit that is astounding.  The number of tax regulations has grown over Bush's term by 40%.  The failure to remain true to fiscal conservatism has many Republicans outraged and demanding a return to tighter purse strings and much more accountability and restraint in Washington.

Supply-siders have pointed for nearly thirty years to the failings of the high-rate, progressive tax systems and yet the government has done little or nothing to bring about reform.  The Bush tax cuts were a good start but they will not likely become permanent and the increasing number of allowances and loopholes only creates more wiggle room for those who wish to avoid handing their money over to the IRS.

President Bush is left with egg on his face over this issue and Congress, always the real villain when it comes to tax legislation has failed miserably.  And yet, we can only wonder if the midterm elections will reflect any of the discontent felt by conservative economists.  The vast majority of Americans are concerned with issues other than the national deficit and the real impact of global finance is an almost abstract concept to middle class workers for whom having enough is, well, enough.  The long-term impact of living in the red nationally, much like living on credit at home, is fixable.  But it requires restraint and an overwhelming will.  With three more years of George W. Bush in the White House, conservatives need to push the envelope when calling for limited government spending.  And the President needs to prioritize the agenda with a much stricter hand.

Very good articles on this issue:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/060501/1edit.htm

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_GRDNGRG

According to last week's The Economist, women workers are making up an increasingly higher percentage of the labor force.  "A Guide to Womenomics" suggests that the change is due in some measure to the shift of the class of work required in developed nations.  With the expanding number of jobs in the service sector, more women are employable on an equal footing with their male counterparts.  Apparently, girls are proving to be better students, more women are getting college degrees than men, and women are filling most new jobs.  "Arguably, women are now the most powerful engine of global growth."

The most interesting segment of the article, in my opinion, was a section discussing the relationship between fertility rates and the percentage of women workers. While some argue that encouraging women to enter the workforce will result in a fertility decline, the numbers seem to prove the exact opposite.  The nations with the highest percentage of women workers also enjoy the higher fertility rates.  Personally, I don't know how you can make a direct correlation because averaging the number of children born to working women and the number born to stay at home moms seems very disingenuous.  According to the national average, I have born my share and another woman's as well.  But I certainly wasn't thinking of carrying some other lady's statistic when I was in that labor and delivery room. 

The article makes the assertion that countries that make a concerted effort to make motherhood compatible with a career will see marked improvements in national prosperity.  "This may mean offering parental leave and child care, allowing more flexible working hours, and reforming tax and social-security systems that create disincentives for women to work."  The countries that offer less support for working mothers find lower rates of working women and lower birth rates because many women postpone childbearing.  "Japan, for example offers little support for working mothers: only 13% of children under three attend day-care centers, compared with 54% in America and 34% in Britain."

The article also suggests that as women grow in number and value in the labor market, they can provide "a sounder base for long-term growth" and help to finance rich countries' welfare states.

My take:

Okay so women are supposed to have children turn them over to day-care centers and then public schools to raise so that they can fund the lifestyles of people on the welfare roles?  And 54% of American toddlers and preschoolers in day-care is a good thing?

I would argue that if we paid men enough to support their families, then fertility would rise because women would have the liberty of raising their own children.  I would also argue that the welfare roles - and by this I mean all of those government subsidized handouts to people who ought to be working - would be a lot shorter if mother's were educated and skilled women who chose to stay home because they saw the wisdom in teaching young human beings to be self-reliant, responsible and prosperous with the work of their own hands.  Furthermore, if women were at home to teach their children and took that task as the most significant opportunity available to any human being, there would be fewer sons and daughters living out their lives in prison cells.  There would be fewer junkies in need of government funded treatment and services.  There would be fewer runaways and child prostitutes.  There would be substantially fewer social ills requiring government money made on the backs of women who have abandoned the most sacred duty afforded them by God, evolution or the universe.

But that's just the opinion of one educated, skilled and capable woman, who has chosn to see the long term value in walking away from a paycheck in exchange for something of much greater worth.

That sucking sound you hear isn't just the President's poll numbers going down the toilet.  That loud whooshing is Randi Rhodes' audience switching off the radio and running for the door. 

Matt Drudge reports: "the just released radio Winter Book [Jan-Mar 2006] from ARBITRON shows AIR AMERICA in New York City losing more than a third of its audience -- in the past year!  Among all listeners 12+, it was a race to the bottom for AIR AMERICA and WLIB as mid-days went from a 1.6 share during winter 2005 to a 1.0 share winter 2006.  During PM drive, host Randi Rhodes plunged to 27,900 listeners every quarter hour, finishing 25th place in her time slot, down from 60,900 listeners every quarter hour in the fall." 

The book touted as revealing the progressive movement's takeover via the blogosphere isn't doing so hot either. "A book hyped by major media as documenting a progressive revolution of "blogs" and political power, DAILY KOS 'CRASHING THE GATE,' has sold only 3,630 copies since its release last month, according to NIELSEN's BOOKSCAN. [NIELSEN claims only 2,062 copies of DAILY KOS have been purchased at the retail level; the rest coming through 'discount' outlets.]" 

Sounds like the only thing crashing is the movement.

One must wonder if Kent State University intentionally fosters an atmosphere for terrorist rhetoric to flourish or if the good Dr. is just another crazed liberal with tenure.  Here's the story again.  Check the bottom of the post for the latest bloggers to join the effort.

Ever wonder how John Lennon is spending his afterlife?  Well, apparently people find this a question worth answering to the tune of $9.95.  Pay tv service In Demand aired a show Monday night in which a seance was held to reach the passed on Beatle and according to the show's producer and crew he spoke from the grave through EVP (electronic voice phenomenon).

  "Peace... the message is peace."  That was Lennon's comment to psychic Joe Power, or at least to Joe's audio feed which went dead for a few seconds only to buzz, whir and hum back to life with something audible suddenly appearing on it.  At that point the psychic translated John's words and sought the expertise of "EVP specialist", Sandra Belanger to verify the transmission was indeed otherworldly. 

In response the the high demand for advice from the great beyond, I will be setting up a paypal account in the morning after which I will gladly accept $9.95 from anyone who is interested in hearing the wisdom of Buddy Holly.  Once your money is deposited, I will send you an email with the exact transcript of any transmissions I receive during tomorrow's seance.  The transmissions will be verified by an independent SOS transmission expert (Stuck On Stupid).  Thank you and goodnight.

Just a reminder:  There's a $25 Million Dollar Bounty on this guy's head

Looks like it's time to free this guy and give him a new mission... (Don't know if he's even remotely for real but, hey, what've we got to lose?)

 

Although I try diligently never to rip off people's ideas,  I just loved the GOP ad that Amy Proctor is showing over on her blog. For me, just watching this brought back a flood of memories because I actually remember watching the speeches, lectures, and interviews that are strewn together in this video clip of history.  It is a vivid reminder of the shameless way that many Washingtonians play politics with our security and our military.  And it begins in 1998.

1998.  I spent most of that year pregnant and half of it in internal exile (pronounced Kan-sas) in a crummy, old apartment that we rented with the words military families know so well, "It's only for (fill in length of time here) long..."  Overwhelmed with a first pregnancy and nearly complete isolation from family and friends, I spent a lot of time watching my growing belly and eventually rocking my newborn son in front of news shows and the internet. 

There wasn't much to do in the off post apartment complex and I made very few friends - most families doing their stint at Command and General Staff College were living on post - so I whiled away countless hours consumed with the news of the day.  That was when I discovered the internet as a forum for discussing politics.  It was also the first time I watched the entire and seemingly interminable coverage of the Joint Chiefs meeting with the Armed Services committee.  Yup - I had no life.

 

 

The Religious Coalition for Marriage spoke out today and released the following statement with wide support from religious organizations across the nation.  The list of signers on this statement is impressive.  It includes, Jews, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Mormons, Presbyterians, you name it. 

The Coalition's website includes a list of ways that individuals can make their voices heard before the June 6th vote on the marriage amendment.  I wholeheartedly endorse this effort and encourage all who value traditional family values to do the same.

I have posted the statement in its entirety below.

A Letter from America's Religious Leaders in Defense of Marriage

Throughout America, the institution of marriage is suffering. As leaders in our nation's religious communities, we cannot sit idly by. It is our duty to speak. And so across the lines of theological division, we have united to affirm, in one voice, the following:

For millennia our societies have recognized the union of a man and a woman in the bond of marriage. Cross-culturally virtually every known human society understands marriage as a union of male and female. As such marriage is a universal, natural, covenantal union of a man and a woman intended for personal love, support and fulfillment, and the bearing and rearing of children. Sanctioned by and ordained of God, marriage both precedes and sustains civil society.

Marriage is particularly important for the rearing of children as they flourish best under the long term care and nurture of their father and mother. For this and other reasons, when marriage is entered into and gotten out of lightly, when it is no longer the boundary of sexual activity, or when it is allowed to be radically redefined, a host of personal and civic ills can be expected to follow. Such a point has always been stressed by the world's great monotheistic religious traditions and is, today, increasingly confirmed by impeccable social science research.

Long concerned with rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and absentee fathers, we have recently watched with extreme alarm the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference. This does not so much modify or even weaken marriage as abolish it. The danger this betokens for family life and a general condition of social justice and ordered liberty is hard to overestimate.

Therefore, we take the unprecedented stand of uniting to call for a constitutional amendment to establish a uniform national definition of marriage as the exclusive union of one man and one woman. We are convinced that this is the only measure that will adequately protect marriage from those who would circumvent the legislative process and force a redefinition of it on the whole of our society. We encourage all citizens of good will across the country to step forward boldly and exercise their right to work through our constitutionally established democratic procedures to amend the Constitution to include a national definition of marriage. We hereby announce our support for S.J. Res.1, the Marriage Protection Amendment.

May God bless all marriages and all those who labor to protect the sanctity and promote the goodness of marriage throughout this nation.

In case you haven't had a chance to review the facts about Iraq's WMDs,  Sam Pender lays out some interesting information in the The New Media Journal.  In a five part story he extrapolates the story behind the story of Saddam's WMD program from the Duelfer Report and Saddam's Secrets,  a book written by Iraqi General Georges Sada.

To peruse Pender's prose click the ad:

In a slam dunk of an article that begins with the Duke Lacrosse rape case and ends with an "Amen and Praise Jesus!",  Ann Coulter points out the simple truth behind humans behaving badly.  This is a great read, even for Liberals, and if you can ignore the pointed political jabs for just a moment, you'll find an underlying truth that we should all be able to agree with.

  Check out Ann's article Lie Down with Strippers, Wake up with Pleas.

Bin Laden speaks and rails against the West for abandoning Hamas and what does Hamas do in response?  They back slowly away, hoping that no one sees them slinking toward to door.  (I think that whimping sound you hear is Sami Abu Zuhri begging for money...)

---

Hamas Distances Itself From Bin Laden  By IBRAHIM BARZAK  The Associated Press

Osama, apparently, awoke in a bad mood.  No, no one peed in his Corn Flakes.  He's just a little miffed because Western governments have decided to stop forking cash over to the Hamas led government of Palestine.  Clearly, Bin Laden is a flaming liberal and, like his Berkeley educated ideologues, has confused the American taxpayer with a great big fee-free Automated Teller Machine.

Not only are we supposed to babysit anyone and everyone who considers hard work a hassle, now we're supposed to pass checks out to those who demand the right to blow us up in the middle of the market.  Now that Saddam's assets are frozen, it would appear that Hamas needs a new sugar daddy.  I guess life's tough when you're a terrorist...

See His Helplessness here:

******************************Update****************************************

Now His Highness of the handouts is calling for a boycott of Western goods (yeah!  That'll teach us!)  And did I mention he wants the Mohammad cartoonists turned over to Al-Quaeda to (cough, cough) stand trial?

After the startling announcement last night by the press that the second stripper in the Duke Lacrosse rape case actually contacted a NY PR firm to ask how to spin her story for personal benefit, more news out of North Carolina seems to indicate that the facts are being hung like window dressing to create a picture of an alledged rape that may or may not be accurate. 

Apparently, the photo identifications made by the 27 year old stripper whose accusations have made national headlines, may be completely invalid.  Instead of providing the mother of two with a random sample of photos with the Duke players pics added to the mix, the Durham PD only showed her photos of the white Lacrosse team players.  This eliminated the possibility that the stripper's credibility could be at issue and garuanteed that she would pick suspects from within the group.  Sounds like these guys learned how to operate from political poll takers!  Talk about a loaded question.  "Which one of these men raped you?"  And then they hand her the team photo. 

Aside from assuring that the Durham PD would get an answer they liked, and eliminating the possibility that the stripper could reveal any inconsistencies in her story by selecting wrong pictures from the lineup, this skewed procedure eliminated the possibility that anyone else was in attendance at the party.

The most fascinating aspects of this story are still unfolding.  A taxi driver positively identified one of the boys that the stripper fingered with "100% accuracy" as having been in his cab and headed across town at virtually the same time the rape was supposed to have taken place.  Can't wait to see the commercial receipt that proves he was not even at the party at the time of "the incident" - that's what defense attorneys claim to have on hand.  This case just keeps getting weirder and weirder....

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga writes an interesting article for the American Prospect attributing a personal, political shift from Republican to Democrat to a short three year stint in the Army.  The Soldier in Me describes the author's experience in combat boots as a revolutionary, ideology-changing period that altered forever perceptions about the relationship between society and government and the individual.

There’s a reason most vets running for office this year are running as Democrats. The military is perhaps the ideal society -- we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return. All our basic needs were met -- housing, food, and medical care. It was as close to a color-blind society as I have ever seen. We looked out for one another. The Army invested in us. I took heavily subsidized college courses and learned to speak German on the Army’s dime. I served with people from every corner of the country. I got to party at the Berlin Wall after it fell and explored Prague in those heady post-communism days. I wasn’t just a tourist; I was a witness to history.

The Army taught me the very values that make us progressives -- community, opportunity, and investment in people and the future.

The expressed sentiments are true.  The Army is a community like no other and membership does have its privileges.  But what is noticeably absent from the author's description is the real purpose for enlisting or accepting a commission.  There is no talk of service to the nation.  No talk of patriotism and of a sense of obligation to the nation that offers you freedom and citizenship unlike any other place on this planet.  There is no reference to the selfless sacrifice.  Only a commentary on the benefits and personal rewards for swearing the oath.  Never a mention of self-sacrifice and duty.  No mention of honor or serving a greater good.  Only a litany of "what have you done for me lately". 

What those well-written phrases reveal is a desperate need to be less individual and independent and a desire to abandon self-reliance in favor of a communist style system of institutionalized care.  But let's set the record straight.  Those military benefits are compensation for long days and late nights, for deployments and field time.  They are compensation for willingly putting yourself at risk on behalf of an occasionally grateful nation.  They are not simply handouts issued like welfare checks or WIC coupons.  To suggest otherwise is demeaning to the men who put years of blood sweat and tears into the missions at home and abroad. 

That Zuniga escaped combat duty during a brief enlistment has created a false understanding of what it really means to serve.  In spite of the hand up military service offers to many,  it is not the hand out described in this author's opinion.  What the article is, however, is an eye-opening view at how this Daily Kos proprietor and the liberal left view the government:  as a paternalistic cash cow designed to fund a lifetime of self-indulgent behavior. 

Writes Zuniga: And after my three-year stint, while I was stationed in Germany and missed deploying to the Gulf War by a hair, I emerged as a Democrat.  Why am I not surprised?  After traipsing all over Europe, partying at the Berlin wall and being a "witness to history", the threat of being actually called upon to do the job you're paid for scared you into becoming a Democrat?  Notice, everything was all well and good when the benefits were doled out and the only requirements were ruck marches within the confines of an Army post but let someone ask you to do your job...

In spite of this warped view of military service,  I am grateful that Markos has penned these thoughts.  Let them serve as an expose on the real weakness of the liberal mind and it's lazy, self-indulgent and self-serving, socialist leanings.  And I'm grateful for one more thing:  that Zuniga ran fearfully from the ranks and abandoned the nation's true heroes.  Heaven forbid the cowardice set in when someone's life was actually on the line.

Okay, maybe not dinner, but they'll be hanging around the front gate at lunchtime.  Soulforce, the LGBT community's version of Hitler's youth have been traversing the country to fight "religion-based oppression".  They are parking themselves on college campuses nationwide to denounce religious and government refusals to accept homosexuality.  In the words of one of the "equality riders", he believes "the Soulforce Equality Ride can have a tremendous impact on spreading truth about the wholeness and goodness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people".

The wholeness and goodness.  Interesting word choices.  They scream acceptance, not equal treatment.  Which I guess is why they are protesting at religious schools and military academies, church and the military being the last bastions of traditional family.  LOL.

I was thinking of counter-protesting with a sign that reads "We love the Boy Scouts of America".  ROTFLMBO...  Or maybe a picture of troops with the words superimposed, "Overgrown Boy Scouts".  What do you think?

The conspiracy theory and anti-Bush spokeperson du jour, Charlie Sheen, has been eviscerated by his soon to be ex, Denise Richards in court papers.  Ouch.  There's just not much to say about this - it's all too sick to delve into.  But if you're interested, the link leads to the smoking gun's site with all of the graphic and disgusting details.  It is interesting however that Charlie made headlines when he supported the 9/11 conspiracy theories recently.  With friends like these..... well, you know the rest.

If you search the internet with any regularity, you know that there appear to be a myriad of reasons to support the idea that our own government perpetrated 9/11 to lead us into a war with Iraq.  Of course, you can also discover that Elvis is alive and that aliens have impregnanted a man in northeastern London, but, I digress.  The fundamental flaw with this conspiracy is simple:  it doesn't pass the reasonable man test.

The reasonable man test is a diametrical opposite to Dr. Ian Malcolm's chaos theory.  Instead of suggesting that the same exact action could produce an unlimited number of widely varying and unpredictable results, the reasonable man argument suggests that there are reasonable courses of action for a given circumstance.  In the case of law, an attorney might ask, "What would a reasonable person of ordinary prudence have done in the defendant's situation?"  This presupposes that there are a limited number of reasonable behaviors for each circumstance.  It is basically, Occam's razor applied to human behavior. 

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, or  entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

When predicting behavior, the reasonable man test implies that human action will follow a logical and fairly predictable course within the defined paradigms of its subject, and, according to Occam's razor, generally, the simplest, most reasonable expectation is the most accurate explanation. 

Even Palestinian suicide bombers are predictable within the paradigm of a certain set of beliefs as are serial killers.  Certainly, profilers predict characteristics of suspects by adapting the parameters of 'normal' behavior.  I'm not suggesting that we are unthinking robots rather that we nearly always act within reasonable and defineable parameters. 

When a behavior defies all the bounds of reason it is invariably either inaccurate or a readily apparent abberation.  This is why cases like that of Andrea Yates hold so many people fixated upon them - because the human behavior is so unpredictable.  Contrast the Yates case with the largely ignored case of any one of a number of liquor store robberies - the latter being cases where human behavior is driven by a self-interested need or addiction - a predictable and patterned course of action.

Back to 9/11. I sat through Loose Change in its entirety today (thanks to a scheduled teacher work day) and was consistently underwhelmed by both the science and the logic.  The piece relies heavily on fundamentally flawed premises such as the eyewitness accounts of emotionally involved observers,  film and photograph scrutiny of the same sort that felled Pierre Salinger, and the constant innuendo of a shadow conspiracy with weak motives, lurking like Dorothy's wizard, just behind the curtain.  

After watching this engaging bit of filmography and listening to various parts of the narration multiple times, it became apparent that the writers of the film were stringing together large compilations of unrelated and in many cases unsubstantiated bits of information.  The last three minutes were the most troubling, frankly, when there were references to trucks packed with gold under the trade center being evacuated.  The suggestion that all this was done for money is intrinsically flawed. 

If a reasonable man, and in this case very powerful, influential and wealthy, reasonable men wanted the gold, why wouldn't they just steal it?  If they were after oil,  couldn't they have manufactured more readily available disinformation?  They could have simply used that 'voice changing apparatus' to create false statements issued by Saddam.  Wham! Bam! Thank you, M'am.  It would've been a done deal.  They could have created tapes of him making threats and discussing dirty bombs with Osama.  That would've been so much more believable than the subsequent scramble for intelligence that has left the President and the entire Federal government looking foolish and incompetent. 

The film also indicates that the passengers of the hijacked flights were removed from the planes and are being held somewhere.  This begs the question, why such deferential treatment when nearly 4000 lay dead in the uptown rubble?  Perhaps, they are Lost on some deserted south Pacific island...(recently reunited with "survivors from the tail section")

Conspiracy ideas are being popularized and endowed with increasing legitimacy as the internet becomes a more respectable news source. Theories like the 9/11 myth are reaching a larger audience and becoming more and more commercial.  But that still doesn't make them reasonable or truthful.

It isn't that I don't believe in conspiracies, secret societies, or evil people working in league.  It's just that in this case, it is much more reasonable to believe that a group of dedicated conspiracy lovers who delight in uncovering sinister plots are fascinated with the nearly unbelievable and strange happenings of that September morning than that thousands of people are involved in keeping silent the murder of almost 4000 of their own neighbors, friends, and family members.  And in sending into war their sons and daughters and brothers at arms.  That just isn't reasonable.  There are so many opportunities for failure in a conspiracy of that size and scope that the odds of successfully carrying off an event of the magnitude of 9/11 have about the same chances of my winning the lottery - without ever buying a ticket.

And then there's the issue of the increasingly available stream of information that justifies the administration's choice to wage war with Afghanistan and Iraq. 

I will admit that President Bush and his administration have been hawkish and have changed American foreign policy in ways that I don't altogether agree with.  A preemptive strike position opens a veritable Pandora's box of problems with respect to intelligence and human rights - the worst case scenario is Minority Report on a national scale.  Nevertheless, the information slowly trickling out of the Middle East and reaching the masses via mainstream media at a dismally, and arguably, intentionally, lethargic rate corroborates the initial reasons for entering Iraq three years ago. And the strength of that position also undermines the 9/11 myth, if for no other reason than that the same outspoken critics of the war in Iraq are the among those adherents of the conspiratorial claims.

"Bush lied" that's the mantra.  And yet, the foundation for that indictment is crumbling before the eyes of its adherents.  As the information slowly trickles out of the Middle East and intelligence is continually unearthed, the original suppositions that led the US into war in Iraq are being consistently supported by factual data.  Here are few of the latest nuggets that seem to reaching the mainstream media at an unbelievably torpid speed:

Media reports from the late 1990s connect Saddam to Al-Quaida & 9-11 plot

Yes, Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger

and, of course, the Intelligence Summit reveals the truth about WMD

Had a few moments to surf the net tonight and came across a few choice articles. 

The anti-racist racist:  A graduate student working as a temp employee uses the Penn. state bar to legitimze her hateful emails.  And reveals herself as a serious bigot in the process.

If you can't beat 'em, pay 'em?:  France begins paying illegals to leave the country.  $2400 per adult and $600 per child.  At that rate, I could take my family over and get free air fare to return home...  hmm, how's summer in Paris?

Democrat talking points = The New Age Bible:  Unsatisfied with the characterization of anti-baby, anti-monogamy, anti-traditional marriage, the Dems turn to an ancient text for inspirational campaign slogans.

And finally, I didn't know David Horowitz was a chic magnet:  A librarian at Ohio State University-Mansfield has been slapped with sexual harassment charges after suggesting that freshmen expand their political reading materials to include conservative commentaries.  Perhaps Ann Coulter's blouse was a little low cut on her latest book cover...   Actually, when I first saw this article, I was surprised.  Then it occurred to me that maybe there is something in the water in Ohio - I mean, they've given LOA a pulpit and they're subverting the first ammendment with claims of a "hostile work environment".  What else could it be?  Perhaps, our resident conspiracy theorist could investigate... Dugg?

Retirement time is fast approaching.  It won't be much longer before the Colonel wraps up his military career and our family settles into civilian life.  As we traveled East this past weekend to finalize the purchase of our "retirement" home, we've had the wonderful opportunity to spend a little time with my family.  Driving south on I-95, we were met with billboard after billboard advertising the Airborne and Special Operations Museum just outside of Fort Bragg, NC.  It was so nice to see signs with slogans like "How do you think America stays free?"  and "Sleep in Peace, we're standing guard."  With so much anti-military sentiment building among the leftist peaceniks in this country,  it really felt like old home week.  Like I was returning to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Then, on Easter Sunday, a lay speaker at my parent's church spoke about the death and resurrection of Christ.  In describing the New Testament passage, "greater love hath no man than this" this man, now almost 90 years old, shared a personal experience from his World War II days.  As a young officer, he and his men were on patrol when a hand grenade was thrown right into their midst.  They all reacted with complete shock, just standing mouths agape.  All that is but one, the wise and battle hardened platoon sergeant, threw himself onto the grenade and lost his life absorbing the shock of the explosion and sparing his fellow soldiers.  The willingness to lay down one's life for others is not unique to the Savior, he said, but only Christ had the power to take his life up again and to die, not to save our bodies, but our souls.  It was a beautiful story and a reminder, not just of the sacrifice on the cross, but of just how selfless our soldiers have to be in performing their service to the nation.

Soldiers are such a hodgepodge - a melting pot of Americans, united, in spite of their vast array of differences, in one noble and necessary cause.  Growing up among them, the daughter of a retiree, I seriously underestimated the dedication that soldiering requires.  I couldn't see past human flaws to the honorable service they were providing.  Thank God for my husband, who stole my heart before I ever saw him in BDUs and who took me on the most incredible journey into the real heart of America. 

Thank you to all of the Americans who recognize and respect the sacrifice made by men and women in uniform.  Your words of appreciation are powerful tokens and mean so much to those sent all over the world to do our nation's bidding.

Armed and dangerous.  Baby killers.  Cold and heartless.  When people describe the American military, they generally speak in a Hollywood vernacular that reveals the severe limitations of their actual association with men and women in uniform.  Dehumanizing descriptions that refer to the Department of Defense and the U.S. military establishment are great for furthering conspiracy theories or writing anti-American propoganda, but they simply aren't accurate.

Any soldier will tell you that for all the hooah bluster,  soldiers are extremely reticent to fire their weapons at people.  While it is very easy to teach American soldiers to fire accurately with simple target practice, overcoming the natural inhibition to shoot a human being takes more concentrated training.  Pop-up targets of uniformed and armed enemies are used to define the parameters of discharging their weapons.  Soldiers train with these targets repeatedly so that they will not freeze in combat.  In these live fire exercises, soldiers are exposed only to combatant images. 

In contrast, MILES exercises, Army sponsored laser tag is used to teach discernment between combatants and innocents.  Soldiers and their superiors are penalized severly for friendly fire incidents or non-combatant casualties.  In fact, in this training environment, a 15-6 investigation, the military inquiry that determines responsibility and can lead to criminal charges, frequently takes place in response to improper discrimination of targets.  The accountability for human life is huge - even when the victim is just a volunteer spouse running around in a laser harness.

In spite of the growing violence in American culture, most of our soldiers simply aren't exposed to purposeful, malicious violence on a routine basis.  They must be trained to shoot human beings and they are trained extensively to discriminate between enemy combatants and civilians.  Contrast their need to be taught guarded and controlled violence with Baathists, Serbs and Columbian drug lords.  When our soldiers cross the borders into many other nations, they are met with people who know little more than violence or who, at the very least, have come to anticipate it as a fact of everyday life.

The compulsion to act against natural tendencies, occasionally creates a lingering malaise on some soldiers who return home from war. A few even act out violently upon their return.  A fascinating psychological study would examine whether the cause for such trauma is simply the exposure to the disturbing realities of extremely depraved societies or a reaction to violence that the a soldier personally meted out.  It is certainly interesting that some soldiers seem to have a desperate need to take responsibility for the horrific nature of humanity.  Why, for instance, did some soldiers return home from Vietnam convinced they had participated in atrocities when their closest buddies dispute such tales?  Perhaps, because the reality that other human beings live daily in a Lord of the Flies environment is just too unimagineable to accept.  Any way you look at it, soldiers who want to bear the burden of another nation's inhumanity are an ironic testament to the good life we in America enjoy.

Like it or not, there are baby killers.  There are cold, hearted evil, people.  There are many who are armed and dangerous.  And we must support the American soldiers who wage war against them.

Dan Brown's novel has inspired more backlash than almost any true anti-Christian treatise.  With the upcoming release of the motion picture based on The DaVinci Code,  the furor over the novel is reaching new extremes.  Accuracy in Media has an article out today that addresses comments made by director Ron Howard in which he suggests that perhaps the film will open new avenues for dialogue about the nature of Christianity.

Cliff Kincaid, columnist for AIM, condemns the media for actively crusading against Christianity in a way that would be unacceptable were the same sort of cultural attacks made against, for example, Islam.  Actually, this is the only argument against Brown's Code that's even remotely valid.  Not because his argument makes any sense but because it doesn't. 

The book is a work of fiction based on one of the world's most impressive conspiracy theories.  To quote from the AIM article:

Carl E. Olson finds fault with Ron Howard, director of "The Da Vinci Code" and little "Opie" on the old Andy Griffith shows, for saying that he wants to see the film stimulate "conversation" about the nature of Christianity. "On the surface that sounds reasonable," Olson tells AIM in an interview. "We are a free society and we encourage debate. But one of the questions I would ask is: would we encourage open and honest debate with people who deny the holocaust or who say that the world is flat or say that Stalinism was a wonderful thing and people thrived under it. Where do we draw this line?"

Filled with factual errors, the Code is simply a wonderful (and I repeat, FICTIONAL) read.  I loved it.  Read it twice.  For the same reason I read a lot of things - it was completely entertaining.  Unfortunately, some Christians have felt the need to come out swinging as if the book presented a logical argument instead of just a good story.  Admittedly, some people who don't understand their faith will find this book and the film, scary and confusing.  In such instances, I can only say, get over it and learn more about what you believe. 

The truth is nothing to be afraid of.

For years now American liberals have been pointing to President Bush's religious devotion as a sign that he believes he is on a mission from God.  In spite of the fact that he has never claimed to hear divine voices guiding him on policy issues, they continue to paint him as a fanatical Christian leading America toward a future of submission to fundamentalist dogma.

There is truth to the argument that some leaders do use powerful political platforms as starting points for faith based movements.  But it has become increasingly clear over the past few years that George Bush isn't the devotee that we need to fear. 

Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after this week's announcement that his country has successfully enriched uranium, has reiterated his threat that not just Palestine, but all of Israel will soon be "freed" from it's Zionist occupiers.  If you think that GWB's piety is a force to be feared, hold onto your hat because Mr. Ahmadinejad is redefining the term "state religion".  A man whose "zeal led to the overthrow of the shah" and whose "religion sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths" has created a cult of personality with himself playing the pivotal role of both devoted and humble servant as well as champion of the hardline Muslim cause. 

According to Newsweek, "Ahmadinejad's spirituality is not simply a matter of expediency. The religious ideology of the Islamic republic is tied to the belief that the Supreme Leader—first Ayatollah Khomeini, and since 1989 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—is a temporary guide for the masses until the return of the Imam Mahdi, who vanished more than a thousand years ago. Ahmadinejad has linked himself to a movement that believes the way must be prepared for the return of the Mahdi."

Those calling for public service without the impediment of private religion,  may have a point.  Perhaps they can change the world one psycho-Muslim national leader at a time. 

Freedom.  It's the fundamental principle in American political life.  It's why the Pilgrims came to Plymouth and why the Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled by the Puritans.  It's what allows anti-war protesters to stand outside of Walter-Reid and it is what allows Pro-lifers a sidewalk spot in front of abortion clinics.  Freedom.

In America we consider freedom to be God-given.  Endowed by our Creator.  But there is one group that willingly observes an almost unAmerican level of compulsive conformity.  One group within which there is very little room for some of the freedoms Americans generally enjoy.  The military.

Within the Armed Services, many basic freedoms are curtailed.  Service members are not allowed to be openly partisan or outspoken against the government, an administration or its policies.  Strange that the people who willingly die for us to have political free speech are denied the same.  Or is it?

Anyone who has endured combat knows that conformity and dependability are key and essential qualifications for effectiveness.  The urgency of relying entirely on others for your safety and, indeed, for your very life, demands that each person who swears the oath literally be willing to place his personal opinions and dissensions on the alter if only for the sake of the men whose lives hinge on nothing more than one solder's word. When a soldier, sailor, airman or marine swears allegiance to the government of the United States, he also swears an oath to all comrades who stand beside him.  His is a promise to do his country's bidding, without question.  Once he dons the uniform, he makes the choice to do what is asked.  He places his trust in those who make the plans and other men place their trust in him.  Without each man's unflinching conformity to the chain of command, there can be no assurance that any man is being protected by his brothers in arms.  The uniform requires the sacrificing of the self to maintain the sanctity of the whole.  Weak links make the entire chain useless and bring about structural failure.

Any child who has ever played Red Rover, Red Rover understands that cohesion in the line is always the key to success. 

Unfortunately, there has never been a demand for cohesion between the American military and the civilian population that benefits from the blood shed on their behalf.  Citizens wield the right to free political speech like a dagger aimed at the heart and often into the back of their own greatest defenders.  The counterproductiveness of attacking the men in uniform when your frustration really lies at the feet of civilian politicans belies a complete misunderstanding of the very powerful essence of what it means to be in the military. It reveals a lack of depth and an inability to understand the profound truth that individualism, in certain circumstances, is a devastating weakness.

The same soldiers who fight in Fallujah also feed the hungry in the Phillipines.  The sailors who send fighters into the sky also serve and supply those suffering from natural disasters.  What if these men and women choose to object conscientiously, not to war in Iraq, but to delivering AIDS medications to Africa or rice and flour to Pakistani earthquake victims.  What if, they objected to searching New Orleans for survivors?  What if they'd walked away from Auschwitz or been, perhaps,  unimpressed with Pearl Harbor?

And yet, unlike most Americans, they simply go and do as they are so ordered because they recognize that theirs is not to question why.  They see that theirs is to support and sustain the civilian American leadership, in every assigned cause. And they know that theirs is to be unfailingly reliable when called into action.  They understand that there just may be someone in the next foxhole who is depending on them.

The Catholic rottweiler speaks out against the disintegration of modern society and the sickening disease of self indulgent affluence. The unholy disparity between a culture of liposuction driven vanity and a society of starving and suffering impoverishment is described by His Holiness in the following terms:

 “Lord Jesus, our affluence is making us less human, our entertainment has become a drug, a source of alienation, and our society’s incessant, tedious message is an invitation to die of selfishness.”

Pope Benedict also addresses the concerted effort to undermine the family. 

“Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family.”

There is a moving meditation for the Eighth Station, where Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, describing the “River of tears shed by mothers, mothers of the crucified, mothers of murderers, mothers of drug addicts, mothers of terrorists, mothers of rapists, mothers of psychopaths, but mothers all the same”.

Catholic or not, Christians can all unite around the papal admonitions pronounced today.  There are some basic standards of human decency that have been severely violated in an attempt to embrace enlightened secularism.  Relegating religious observance and moral tradition to realm of the insignificant and decrying it as the fodder of the undereducated has done grave damage to the very fabric of our society. 

Talk about "Truth to Power"!

A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant fired a group of women who missed their morning shift in order to attend an immigration rally.  Activists and the fired women are steaming over the action and are demanding a redress of their grievances.

One of the newly unemployed is Mercedes. 

"It was not fair,'" said Mercedes, a 31-year-old Detroit woman who attended the rally and was fired. "We went to fight for our rights." Mercedes is undocumented and asked that her last name not be used.

In response I have penned my own letter to Mercedes.

Dear Mercedes,

You don't have rights.  You are not an American citizen. 

                                         Yours truly, Cate

P.S. Life is not fair.  Get used to it.

Should any of you run into Mercedes, please feel free to pass on this message or direct her to this website. Thank you. 

(Reprints are available in Spanish.)

 

 

For all the folks out there who are absolute know-nothings about the DOD, here's a tidbit you might find interesting.  Unlike most Washington bureaucrats,  the folks over at that five sided military complex just north of Crystal City, VA don't work in reactionary mode.  That means that instead of reacting to events, they prepare for them in advance. 

There are generic plans on the shelf for operations in any and every country on this planet.  There are plans.  There are contingencies. There are branch plans (plans that account for changes in conditions after a contingency plan has already begun).  The operational planners, and there are lots and lots of them, sit and draw up plans all day every day so that in the event that some unforeseeable conflict forces the military into action, the DOD can go to work almost immediately. 

Do you realize what it takes to mobilize a million man military force?  We are talking about operational orders that outline  down to a major unit what has to be done, when, where and how.  Once these plans are called into action, the actual units are named and then those units get to work projecting the force movement and accounting for every soldier and piece of equipment that has to be moved. 

To suggest that the world should be in a tizzy because we have a plan to invade Iran is extremely naive and completely uneducated. There are tons of declassified military documents that are readily available and give great insight into how the DOD makes things happen - or you could just peruse the Military Times ocassionally.

According to the latest numbers and the most recent analysis of the American labor force, the job market is looking pretty good.  Friday's announcement that the unemployment dropped another notch to 4.7% was good news but there's even better news hiding behind that figure.  The jobs that are being created are not all low-end minimum wage, unskilled jobs.  Only 40% of job growth is in that category.  Much of the growth is at the other end of the pay scale and roughly 1 in 3 jobs created last year were higher paying professional positions.  The creation of jobs like these stimulates upward mobility across the board.  As people move up, others must move into the newly vacated positions and the pay increases trickle down along with the promotions.  This trend has a positive impact across the board pulling wages up and raising the general American standard of living.

According the the Christian Science Monitor's report:

At this point, perhaps midway into an expansion phase, it's not unusual to see the job mix improve and pay to rise in new and existing jobs alike. "I would expect wages and compensation to increase faster," says Rae Hederman of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

As the market continues to climb and the employment numbers stay amazingly low, it becomes increasingly apparent that the proposals to stimulate the economy over the last few years have been very effective.   Where are the critics who blamed Bush for a sour economy and then lambasted his efforts to push initiatives designed to grow the struggling economy?  You remember the whole "tax-cuts are just for the rich" mantra.  And let's not forget "they're just helping big business".  As it turns out,  the proof is in the numbers and the critics are surprisingly and suddenly, very soft-spoken.

 

Anyone who has children or knows anyone with children knows that the cardinal rule of parent interaction is never to judge each other's parenting style or technique.  At least not face to face.  The truth is that as long as you are raising your kids, someone is going to think you are doing it all wrong and you will undoubtedly be the subject of a few backyard barbeque gossip sessions or some catty critiques over coffee. 

Gather your mugs, friends.  Today, I'm going to tell you all about my neighbor and her son Eddie Haskell. 

I call my neighbor's son Eddie Haskell for reasons obvious to anyone who has ever viewed an episode of Leave it to Beaver.  This kid is all "Yes M'am.  No M'am" when an adult is present but the minute he believes he is unsupervised he is as devious as the day is long.  At eight years old, Eddie enjoys a reasonable measure of freedom and runs between the neighborhood common areas and the playground at will.  This child frequently plays with my oldest son in our yard and because I have younger children and I always leave the windows open to hear them in the backyard, I have frequently overheard little Eddie scheming and planning bad behavior.  Usually, I simply intercede or call my own kids in for a few minutes.  On occasion, I have had to talk to Mrs. Haskell.  But because Mrs. Haskell and I are friends and because Eddie's dad is currently deployed, I have been more reticent than ever to enlighten her about her son's behavior.

That is, until yesterday.

The kids and I were all enjoying the beautiful weather when Frodo, my one-year old, got a little cranky.  I took her in and was in the process of starting dinner when my oldest, the DELL boy, came running through the front door.  "Mom!  Eddie and Ron are tackling **** for no reason!  They're being mean to him."  Immediately, my inner lioness took over.  I hurried out the front door and rounded the corner but didn't hear ****, my four year old, crying.  I calmed down.  He wasn't crying so he must be alright, right?  I slowly came around to the back of the house, purposefully pausing behind the edge of the fence so that I could observe undetected.  Sure enough, my four year old is climbing the hill from the playground and running up from behind was 8 year old Eddie who yelled to his partner in crime, "I'm going to tackle him before you are!  I'm going to win."  4 year old **** was completely unaware that he was about to get pummeled.  He wasn't giggling, he wasn't running away, he was simply making his way up the hill.  It was evident that the boys had decided to play "Tackle ****" without discussing the matter with my little boy.  I interceded and prevented what I later discovered was the last of many tacklings they'd given him.

I'm not one of those parents who mistakenly thinks my kids are perfect and that they are unwitting victims to everyone else's rotten children.  In fact, the 4 year old little darling at the center of yesterday's drama has been such a tyrant during the last few months that we call him "Veruca Salt" at home.  My other boys, Johnny B. Jones - named after Junie B. Jones who he very much resembles in personality, and the DELL boy, so named after the whiz kid in the computer commercials who follows his parents around talking incessantly, aren't saints either.  They've spent a fair portion of their young lives in time out and with sore bottoms.

Anyway, the bullying episode forced me into Mrs. Haskell's living room.  I explained everything I had witnessed and then listened as her boy lied to her face about the whole deal.  I interjected and corrected his story frequently.  There were four older boys out there when the "game" began at Eddie's initiation.  All of the other boys upon further questioning gave exactly the same account - an account that Eddie alone disputed.  DELL boy ran in to get me and the other 7 year old who was present stood by but would not participate.  Only the two 8 years were actually involved.  Well, initially, Mrs. Haskell took a hard line and told young Eddie that he could not attend baseball practice last night. He responded by stomping and snarling "Yes, I am going to baseball!"  She was furious.  but within a half hour of his whining and begging, she came back outside, excused his behavior, saying he didn't understand why it was such a big deal and let him go to baseball practice.

To say that I am ticked off would be a gross understatement.  Not only did she let him get away with bullying, he got away with talking back in just about the ugliest fashion I've ever seen in a prepubescent child, and on top of that was rewarded by getting to go to baseball practice with his buddy from school.  Now, this kid knows that he is top dog in the neighborhood, because even though both I and the mother of the other 7 year old who was a non-participant gave her the same account - as did three of the four boys, she gave in to Eddie. 

All kids behave badly at times.  For heaven's sake, they are just learning how to interact - it's our responsibility to teach them how to do it properly.  But right now, I want to scream at Mrs. Haskell, "Are you his mother or his freaking enabler!  Grow a spine, woman!"

Grrrr!

 

The results are in on the DNA samples taken from caucasian members of the Duke Lacrosse team.  You'll remember that a stripper performing for the team at a frat house party made the accusation that several white boys on the team brutally raped and sodomized her after separating her from the other stripper she was working with.  The accuser stated that she left the party and was convinced to return, which she did hesitantly.  Her story became even more highly charged when she stated that her attackers were white and used racial slurs.

Last week the defense attorneys for the Duke students exposed the checkered past of the stripper and while DNA samples from 46 caucasian Lacrosse team members were being analyzed, lawyers for the defense also attacked the stripper's story about the events of the night in question. The stripper, who stated that she returned to the party with great hesitation paused upon reentering the house to pose for pictures in which she appears, according to defense lawyers to be nothing less than happy.

Around the country, prosecutors weighed in on the defense team's strategy of 'attacking the victim'.  One such opportunist, Wendy Murphy, herself completely personally uninvolved in the case was quoted in local papers.

"Wendy Murphy, a former Massachusetts prosecutor and adjunct professor at Boston's New England School of Law who teaches a seminar on sexual violence, said releasing details of the photos was a sign that lawyers were worried the DNA testing would produce a match with some of the players.

'If the DNA isn't going to match, they wouldn't need to do this," she said. 'It's almost comical that they think a photograph is proof positive that a rape didn't happen. It's not a smoking gun. It's a muddying of the waters.'"

Won't Wendy be surprised to find that late breaking news out of Raleigh tonight reveals that not one of the 46 DNA samples matched anything found on the victim!

As for the actual events in question,  I won't hazard a guess as to what happened, I wasn't there and since no charges have been filed and no trial is underway, we simply just don't know enough.  But, what I love more than anything is to see evidence refute smarmy, know-it-all lawyers and media who make assumptions when there is so little actually known about a case under investigation.  Didn't these people learn anything from the 2000 presidential election?  Wait until the results come in and the evidence goes before the court.

A few posts back I referred to the correlation between AIDS and homosexual behavior at which point I was immediately attacked for my archaic thinking.  I believe the exact quote was "And, actually, the highest rate of HIV infections in the US today are in the black female comunity.  You're knee-jerk linking of AIDS to gay is simply based on decades-outdated information and stereotypes.  So unless you're racist too, which doesn't take much of a stretch of my imagination.  I hope you realize that this is a serious disease that can affect anyone, including yourself and your family."

Well, apparently, those scientifically minded city officials in San Francisco have the same misunderstanding that I do.  The San Fran Health Dept. has been investigating the incidence of HIV among the gay community.  It turns out that one out of every four gay males in that California city are infected with the virus.  Hey... wait a minute!  Where's the study on black women and HIV?  Didn't someone tell me that they were the up and comers in the world of AIDS? 

Here is a quote from the knee-jerking, and obviously racist, public health department of San Francisco aka the "gayest city in the world":

"Despite an overall loss in the population in San Francisco in the last five years, we think there has been an absolute gain in gay men," William McFarland, head of HIV/AIDS statistics at San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said in an interview. "From all the data I have seen ... it's the gayest city in the world."

McFarland has compiled the city's first survey in five years on gay men and HIV to be presented at a meeting next week to discuss HIV/AIDS prevention.

He said it found an estimated 63,577 gay males aged 15 and above in San Francisco, a city with a total population of 764,000. That figure represents nearly one in five of the city's males above the age of 15.

0ne out of every four gay males -- 25.8 percent -- is infected with the HIV virus, giving San Francisco an estimated total of 16,401 HIV-positive men, said McFarland, an epidemiologist who has also worked on studies in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Egypt."

What is it with these people?  Don't they know that AIDS is not a "gay" disease?  They're conducting whole studies now about gay men and HIV!  How completely backward of them.

While Jon and my other homosexual friends and acquaintances continue their effort to convince me that "we just want equal rights under the law", San Francisco's overwhelming gay population jumps right into the fray and makes my point for me.

San Fran, the new city of brotherly love, and its Board of Supervisors has passed an anti-Catholic resolution condemning the church's position on homosexuality. 

Loony S.F. bids adieu to Catholics       (written by John Leo  & posted on John Leo's blog)

President Bush has spent a good deal of his time in office discussing the principle of ownership but the idea of an "ownership society" predates Bush 43, Bush 41 and indeed the entire American nation. 

"The concept of "ownership society" has been embraced since the time of Aristotle and has found adherents among such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and most pertinent to today's debate, the American Founders. The central tenet of the ownership society is that we tend to take best care of the things we own, and through which we exercise our liberty; property rights inspire people to act responsibly, to treat one another with dignity and respect, and to create wealth for themselves and others." (Cato Institute)

The idea of ownership doesn't begin or end, however, with small businesses, social security, or even suburban homes with white picket fences.  The most powerful form of ownership is the owning of ideas.  With that in mind, I propose the following somewhat radical change to the American system.

All children born on American soil to American parents are granted natural citizenship which shall remain theirs through their 18th year.  Upon a minor's 18th birthday, he/she is required by law to register to vote at which point he/she is also required to complete and sign a citizenship form which garauntees the extension of natural citizenship through the rest of his/her natural life, barring, of course, the renunciation of that right by the individual.

In the 11th grade, as part of U.S. History, all students will be required to attend a 6 week course in citizenship which offers comparative analysis of the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship and those in a representative sampling of other nations.  All students who drop out of school may take the free course, offered monthly, through their local voter registration office. 

!8 year olds who opt not to maintain American citizenship will upon their birthdays become non-citizens, abdicating all of the rights and benefits of citizenship.  They will not be allowed to vote nor will they be garaunteed any other rights that are strictly limited to citizensp.  They will have up to two years to apply for citizenship to another nation or to seek American citizenship through the naturalization process that immigrants currently use.

Through this process, America will be garaunteed a citizenry that has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the representative democracy established by the founders and each individual will have a personal stake in the continued success of the "American Experiment."

6 year old Robert Turner of Detroit was a dutiful son on February 20th of this year when he called 911 to seek help for his unresponsive mother.  Unfortunately, while Sherill Turner lay dead or dying on the floor of her apartment, a 911 operator accused her 6 year old son of making a prank call.  The experienced operator even warned young Robert that she'd send the police and then he'd be in trouble.

It turns out that the 911 operator is the one who's gotten into trouble... but not much.  The female voice at the other end of the line who was not identified in today's news release will be "disciplined" but not fired due to her long years of service.  Personally, I think getting fired would be a mild punishment.  She ought to be held liable for criminal negligence.  After all, that's less than the life sentence Sherill got and the lifetime without a mother that is young Robert's fate. 

Hear Robert's story.

I'm looking around the internet for the outcry of peaceful Muslims about yesterday's desecration of the burning remains of an American pilot.  The bloodied body of this soldier was dragged across a field by "extremists" who videotaped the event and then posted it on the internet along with postings on several Islamist sites claiming responsibility for shooting down the plane. 

Anyone out there come across outraged followers of the religion of peace?  They seem awfully upset when they see a cartoonist...

With all of the criticisms of the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping, George W. Bush is being depicted as an iconoclast of libertarian ideals.  Liberal Americans quick to raise their fists and shout "Truth to power" are only showing their complete ignorance of this nation's history with hateful rhetoric and baseless claims that the current president is undermining cherished freedoms.

In 1798, our second president, federalist John Adams, faced the threat of war with France.  In those days, France was a force to be reckoned with and the radical French government had subversives in many nations stirring up trouble.  In response to French provocation and against the will of the Republicans, Adams and the Federalists in Congress pushed through the Alien and Sedition laws, a series of four acts that dramatically expanded executive powers where national security was concerned.

These acts gave Adams the power to deport any citizen of a hostile nation and to deport any citizen of friendly nations if he deemed them a threat.   The time requirement for naturalization was raised from 5 to 14 years and it became illegal to "write, print, utter, or publish" anything critical of the President or Congress.

While the Judiciary has effectively rewritten the Sedition act to allow for any speech that is not intentionally malicious (see NY Times v. Sullivan 1964), the Court's intervention was not even necessary.  The Sedition act expired at the end of Adam's term. The Alien laws remain on the books today.

The Presidential concern with Sedition did not end in 1801, however.  Under Lincoln, the Congress enacted Sedition legislation in 1861 and similar legislation was enacted to silence opposition to the government in 1918, under the guiding hand of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Interestingly, the 1918 Sedition ammendment to the Espionage Act of 1917, was much harsher than anything we now endure.  While the Espionage act of 1917 made it illegal to help wartime enemies of the U.S., the Sedition addendum " forbade an American to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language "about the United States Government, flag, or armed forces during war. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to dissenters of government policy during wartime." (Wikipedia)

Under Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Eugene V. Debs, socialist and outspoken anti-war activist, was imprisoned for 10 years.  In 1921, when it was no longer expedient, the Sedition law was repealed.   Consider the ramifications of such a law today. 

Cindy Sheehan would have traded her treasured t-shirt for an orange jumpsuit.  Rachel Corrie would still be alive but imprisoned.  And 90% of the bloggers at Daily Kos would be on trial and unable to collect their packages from the USPS.

Congress knows as does anyone with a sense of American history, that at some point the wartime policies and practices used to insure national security will fade into non-existence.  Until then,  my liberal friends, just be glad that Republican George Bush is not Democrat Woodrow Wilson and that the year is not 1918.

Most of you have probably seen Michelle Malkin's write ups over the last two days about NBC'c attempt to provoke discriminatory events for the camera.  This incident is a clear example of at least three enlightening facts about the news media: 

1- The media has to create news because there simply isn't enough sensationalism to fill a 24 hour news cycle

2- The media is enormously above strength and these people are reduced to tabloid style reporting just to keep the limelight.

3- NBC, who plans to film at a NASCAR event, thinks race fans are bigots which ironically indicates that NBC is riddled with bias against people they perceive as typical NASCAR fans. 

Here's my suggestion:  Post a HUGE sign out front of the event that says "Muslims welcome.  Journalists must wait at curb."  Or perhaps a separate drinking fountain and bathroom for NBC reporters....

 

I'm no star-gazer so I don't usually pay attention to the entertainment news but can somebody call the scientologists because Tom Cruise needs an exorcism. 

Now he wants poor Katie to chomp on some kind of pacifier so that she doesn't scream during labor.  I say let's drive Tommy over to the proctologist, shove a watermelon where the sun don't shine and give him a NUK.  This guy has become a walking, talking abnormal psych experiment.

Apparently, L. Ron Hubbard thinks women should keep quiet during the birthing process so as not to traumatize the baby as he/she is born.  What part of being pushed forcefully through a canal that isn't nearly big enough to accomodate you and then being pressed up against a pointy human pubic bone just before being squeezed through a hole that is so dramatically disproportionate to your head circumference that your rubbery bones have to be compressed to even get the job done makes a little screaming so freaking traumatic?  Has this moron ever seen childbirth?  Does he realize many babies break or dislocate their shoulders during the process?  Is he aware some come out bruised severly?  Not to mention the ones who come "sunny side up" and get their noses caught on mom's bones or the necks strained and twisted?

Personally, I hope she does what I did my first time and pukes on that baby's father. 

Tom, here's a special bit of advice from the man who watched me give birth four times.  "Don't wear shoes you intend to keep."

 

In a free nation, a certain amount of "obedience to the unenforceable" must exist if that nation is to maintain freedom.  As citizens continue to push the boundaries of decent behavior to meet the limits of allowable behavior, legislation must continually be enacted to protect the innocent, the offended, and even the perpetrators themselves.  Thus we all become less free.  This process spirals into  chaotic madness when morality is completely removed from culture.  A culture devoid of the unthinkable will in short measure find itself rapidly becoming more base and more degraded than the definition of humanity permits.  The descent into the dark heart of man has a deevolutionizing effect and creates, not men of beasts, but beasts of men.

The perversity of thought that establishes personal freedom as the paramount virtue of society is a classic example of Isaiah's warning about men who call good evil and evil good.  How can freedom be evil?  Isn't free will a fundamental at the core of humanity itself?  Freedom is good, yes, but freedom unfettered by personal and private morality is the breeding ground for a host of societal ills.  It is the very reason the son of the morning fell.  Unchecked freedom.  The liberty to do what we ought not dare.

Take for example the case of rent for sex.  In a trend noted in this morning's news headlines, online ads placed at Craigslist.org are asking for sex in lieu of money for rent.  In exchange for room and board you are required to sexually satisfy your landlord.  Suppose this prostitution were deemed allowable under the law. After all, prostitution is legal in Nevada and a free market places a high demand on fair exchange of goods.  Soon the legislatures of the nation would be forced to regulate the exact worth of sex acts in order to establish a fair market value for rent.  Of course, those laws would be enacted as "Lindsay's Law" in response to some young, fair-haired college coed who was forced to pay "rent" to the extent that she became a sex slave to her 57 year old building superintendent.  Poor, poor girl.  From that we would have the religious right - those extremist whackos - chasing down everyone who was paid in pounds of flesh instead of dollars and cents.  Which would lead to more laws to protect the innocent - the innocent landlords who don't deserve to have their names published on predator.com

Nowhere is the link between uninhibited freedom and civil society more evident than in our own American culture.  Americans, subject to a determined and focused effort of conspiring men and women whose purpose is to undermine the moral constraints that have bound us through the centuries, fall like dominoes under the pressure of an immense immoral ad campaign. The social mores of yesterday are becoming increasingly tenuous and we find ourselves perched on shifting sands watching the free world become less of a civilized society and more of a Darwinian jungle.  Do we allow the continued disintegration of civility?  Do we try, like zookeepers, to create legal pens in which to contain the wild? 

Perhaps we can do no more than wait, watch, and wish for the arrival of a galvanizing figure to walk among us, lead us from under the leafy canopy, across the jungle floor, and out into the light. But until then, we must cut through the underbrush, expose what sun we can, and fight the hostile environment with every ounce of strength.

It's nice out and all the kiddos are playing outdoors so I have a few minutes of down time.  Frodo is in bed taking a nap.  She broke out this morning in a beatuful red rash all over her trunk and upper body.  Roseola, I'm sure.  Nothing serious.  By child four you start weeding out the serious issues from the routine ones.  This one's routine. 

EB,  This note's for you specifically.  I know that I tend to err on the side of leiency when it comes to immigration.  That is because I have known many wonderful people who were illegal aliens and because we had such a difficult time trying to get a friend into the country.  However, most of my experience was with people who desperately wanted to be American, struggled to learn English and were actually decent Christian people who saw this nation as a place to feed their families.  I did not have many dealings with these people.  These people ought to be jailed twice - for unlawful entry into the country and for vandalism.  I am starting to get miffed.  Also Michael Savage had a congressman on yesterday afternoon who was very middle of the road and I'll be darned if by the end I didn't feel like building the fence myself.  "Almost thou persuadest me" came to mind.  This issue is so complex.  I'm going to need some more caffeine before I address it again.

Okay,  son number 2 came in and wants me to put on an alligator puppet.  I'm off to eat the tree frog puppet right off of son #2's chubby little fingers...  LOL.  Gotta run!

Ever surf the 'net and feel like you've walked into one of those bars in the Star Wars movies?  You know, everybody out there seems really different...  Well, tonight, I stumbled innocently into the world of the "different" and found myself delving in to verify sources and to understand conspiracy theories I'd never even heard of!

I started doing a little research on overpopulation as a result of the comment's on Susan's blog and ended up at www.savethemales.ca website of PhD Dr. Henry Makow.  This site, where Makow makes numerous accusations about issues like feminism, homosexuality, and the undermining of Christianity and the traditional family naturally piqued my interest.  I'm still fact-finding on this professor and validating his sources but it's worth a perusal. 

Dr. Makow, who presents his ideas in an academic manner, comes off a little like Jerry (is that his name?), Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory.  The next website owner I bumped into appears to fall more into the category of that singing blue alien in the Bruce Willis movie the Fifth Element.  Just too strange not to pay attention to.  Another anti-establishmentarian, Jeff Rense, combines a love of UFOs with a complete mistrust for all Jews.  Reading this site is like watching a car accident unfold - you just can't turn away because what you are seeing seems entirely unbelievable.  What's scary is that Rense who seems completely cukoo quotes Makow who seems a little off but still sympathetic.  Uh-oh, I crossed the line between soft and hard core weirdness ...

I did find a great sight about the population issue after all was said and done.  The Population Institute Research website is a veritable goldmine of information to counter the overpopulation propaganda used to justify abortion and other anti-family values. 

And if nothing else,  I was reminded that just as on freeways of asphalt, they'll let anyone almost anyone drive on the information super highway.

Ahh the pains of being a soccer mom and still trying to maintain virtual relationships!  I never seem to get more than 2 consecutive minutes on the computer lately which leaves very little time for adding meaningfully to the public conversation that my blog has turned out to be. (So much for an online journal.  LOL!) As a result, I find myself returning to hastily published posts like a criminal to the scene of a crime.  Typos, gramatical errors and  hastily written misspoken thoughts abound.  It turns out I can't find a good way to maintain a blog and be a great mom of four without making some compromises that I don't want to make.  That means - the blogging takes a backseat.  No more lurking when I run a load of laundry upstairs and no more sneaking up for a quick post while the kiddos are doing their independent school work.

I'll try to post at night after the children are sleeping but no guarantees and I promise to keep reading even if I don't write.  It's been fun, real fun, but for now, I've got to step back inside the matrix.  Man, it's beautiful in there!

 

 

I've taken to calling my one year old nine-fingered Frodo because she's at that stage where her curiosity compels her to open every door, drawer and cabinet and she has yet to learn how to avoid to danger of squished digits.  Every day one or more of her fingers is pinched, puffy and pink.  Today was no different.  Frodo tried to close the folding closet door (what moron invented those anyway?),  the silverware drawer and the cabinet that is home to my pots and pans.  She was not a happy camper.  Her one year molars are coming in with a speed only rivaled by the running of a river of frozen molasses.  And to top it all off, today she descended the hardwood stairs in a very unpleasant, inverted, fashion.

Personally,  I think this is why God allows us to forget the first few years of life.  If a thirty year old could only drink milk through a straw, lost all his hair and had to endure searing toothaches for months on end, he'd kill himself.  And forget about the whole diaper issue - what a downer.

Oh well, mortality isn't for the faint of heart.  And apparently, neither is Congress.  Goodbye, Mr. DeLay. 

 

Another dastardly plot was uncovered today.  Thank heavens for the hard working men and women in our intelligence services!  This article comes from one of the world's most widely read dailies with an advertised ranking of "8th highest circluated newspaper".  I've included the full article here for your careful examination:

AL QAEDA PLANS TO DROP GAY BOMBS
Men within 30 miles of the blast will instantly turn queer!

By Nick Jefferies

EXTREMIST Muslim scientists are developing a bomb that turns anyone within a 30-mile radius of its blast into a homosexual, say U.S. Intelligence insiders.

It's all a part of the Al Qaeda master plan to pull our country apart and kill the patriotism that makes us strong. "

They believe that making more Americans gay will start civil war between gays and ultraconservatives," says one highly placed intelligence officer. "They also figure it will lead to a decrease in the U.S. population."

The Gay Bomb was already in the planning stages when Osama Bin Laden and close, intimate friend Muhammad Atef founded the international terrorist group Al Qaeda in 1989.

"Atef and Bin Laden spent many late nights together during that time of revolution," reveals an ex-Al Qaeda member, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

"One morning, I entered their living quarters and they had worked so hard the night before they had fallen into bed together, suffering from exhaustion.

"That's when I saw the blueprints for the bomb. I asked about it, but Bin Laden said to leave it to the scientists. He and Atef had accidentally set one off the night before."

The explosive device is a foot long and shaped like a cigar with a pair of land mines at one end. Planes carrying the weapons will drop them on all major U.S. cities, except, of course, San Francisco, reveals the source.

The Gay Bomb will detonate the instant a heterosexual male steps on one of the mines, releasing potent waves of the female hormone estrogen into the air.

Within hours, heterosexual men will experience terrible urges like: "I'm dying to make out with my buddy in the next cubicle," and "I want a divorce from the witch I married," and "I wonder if I should redecorate the living room."

By the end of the day, the nation will be thrown into chaos. Wives and husbands will square off, leaving a trail of broken families from Hollywood to New York City.

Children will sob: "Why is Daddy moving the furniture and who is Judy Garland?"

Civil war will break out between conservative heterosexuals and newly single guerrilla fighters whowill likely call themselves the PLH, or Proud Latent Homosexuals.

"The only way to stop this horrible vision of the future is to analyze an exposed person's biochemistry and come up with a vaccine before the gay bombs strike," explains a government scientist.

Fortunately, Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge has stepped forward and volunteered for the dangerous job.

"We will reconstruct the gay bomb from the ex-Al Qaeda member's memory of the blueprints and set it off," says the scientist.

"Mr. Ridge will be as queer as a three-dollar bill until we find an antidote. Hopefully, we will discover the cure before it becomes permanent and he remains a gay man forever."

Published on: 08/10/2004

The truth as I see it:

America has been around as an established institution since 1776.  If you count from Jamestown, we're still only talking roughly 400 years.  Go back to Columbus - and America as a discovered and colonizable continent tops out at a whopping 514 years old.  And yet, the world is all up in our faces about supposed American "atrocities".

Remember:

Muslims have been dismembering people for more than twice as long as it's been since Columbus disembarked.

Arabs have been slaughtering each other since before Mohammad was a twinkle in his daddy's eye.

Africa is still filled to overflowing with people killing each other for no good reason and their violent acts are recorded all the way back to when the word media meant a clay tablet and wedge.

As for Europe, yeah, they've been killing each other off forever, too.  There's not an inch of the black forest that hasn't been fertilized with human remains and that assessment goes for all of that continent and its neighboring continent of Asia where as we speak, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, doesn't just slaughter people he hates, he abducts little girls from across the border and uses them as playthings.

So the way I see it,  the big kid on the block has some catching up to do and if you want to be on the winning side of this fight, you'd better line up behind the guy in the red, white and blue.

Have a nice day now.

 

This week I had a chance encounter with an old friend who gave me some truly enlightening information about the controlling powers that run the media and dominate most of the world's industry and governments like puppeteers pulling strings.  I posted below exact quotes (italicized) taken from this reunion with my source:

"It is a well-known fact... there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world known as The Pentaverate, who run everything in the world including the newspapers and meet triannually at a secret country mansion in Colorado known as The Meadows."

So, who's in this pentaverate?

"The queen, the Vatican,  The Ghettys,  The Rothchilds,  and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up."

Of the Colonel, our source says, "Aah, I hated the Colonel with his wee, beady eyes and that smug look on his face. 'Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken - ooh!'"

How could anyone hate the colonel, you ask?

"Because he puts an added chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, smarta$$!"

And now you know the facts.  Straight from the Weekly World News.

Pro-family advocates are calling attention again to the determined effort to mainstream homosexual behavior.  www.Boycottford.com  is a website that has been set up to outline why to boycott Ford and how to express your dismay at their continued effort to undermine traditional family values.

Ford even has a campaign specifically targetting LGBT "families".  A reminder for those who slept through high school biology.  It requires a man and a woman to create offspring.  No gay couple and no lesbain couple can create a child without scientific and medical intervention.  While I realize that this simple definition also marginalizes a minute percentage of hetero couples - when we refer to their inability to conceive it is not because they are not biologically designed to do so, it is because there is to some degree a biological MALFUNCTION.  The only way to create a gay "family" is to raise the child born to two hetersexuals or to use donated genetic material from a member of the opposite sex.  GET IT?

Give me a break.

The May 27th edition of Time magazine has a one page interview with Bette Midler.  Smack dab on page 8 she's dutifully answering question in hopes of promoting her latest album.  I'm going to be honest here.  I'm not a fan.  I heard Ms. Midler in a televised clip once using words that I'd never before heard aloud, rarely had seen written outside of my high school bathroom, and I can only imagine they were the typical vocal fare of 19th century pirates.  That was a turning point - no matter what beautiful sounds she uttered from that point forward, I could only hear the debasing and degrading comments I heard her say before the camera.

Nevertheless, this week Bette gets one big thumbs up from me.  Here's why:

Time:  As an environmentalist, were you happy to hear President Bush, in his State of the Union speech, say we ought to look for alternatives to oil?

Midler:  I guess [the oil companies] made enough money.  If he means it, not a moment too soon.

Time:  Any other thoughts about the President?

Midler: I'm not going to be political.  It is so ugly out there right now.  And I don't want to add to the ugliness.  I have my views.  Most people who know me know what they are.  I will tell you that I've never lived through anything like this.  And that's all I'll say.

Now anyone can guess how Midler feels about the administration from the little jab about the oil companies - but she deserves some credit for being astute enough in this interview to realize that America couldn't care less about her politics.  Perhaps Midler is getting what seems to be a completey foreign concept to most celebrities, that we don't want pay for a celebrity's political views but for his/her generally overrated and certainly overpaid talent.  Or perhaps, Bette, just doesn't want to affect her album sales with political statements that would alienate a significant portion of her target audience. 

Either way,  thanks Bette, for once, for keeping your mouth shut.

In many respects, the United States has been waging and often losing the public relations war against terror.  This fierce struggle for the hearts and minds of Arabs in the Middle East has been complicated by the presence of media outlets that publish print and television propaganda.  A notable battle was won last week, however,  on the media war front. 

According to the Coalition to Stop Terrorist Media, Hezbollah's satellite television operation Al-Manar has finally been named a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization" by the U.S. Treasury Department.  "By prohibiting transactions between U.S. entities and al Manar, and freezing any assets al Manar may have in the U.S., this designation gives the government the tools it needs to cripple al Manar's internationally broadcast incitements to terrorism."

Clifford May's article Turning off Terrorist Television explains further the difficulties of countering propaganda in this technologically advanced age.  He also encourages all, as do I, to view a bit of terrorist propaganda. 

"If  you've never viewed al Manar's programs you've missed a singularly vile experience. In one al Manar video, the Statue of Liberty transforms into a ghoul dripping blood as a narrator menacingly intones: “America owes blood to all of humanity.” On al Manar, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah calls for “Death to America!”

Viciously anti-Semitic, al Manar ran the infamous “dramatization” of Jews slitting the throats of children and draining their blood to use in holiday baked goods." (Clips are available online at stopterroristmedia.org)

A big thumbs up to the DC suits who made a difference this week.  And good luck shutting down Hezbollah's weapon of mass disinformation.