Party's Over

All good things must come to an end. Maybe Amazon could set up a donation site to keep her party going. Not!

Terror in Pictures

Right-Thinking has 2 of the most dramatic side by side photos of a South Asian island I've seen yet. Go check it out.

Have you donated yet? I have. Then I saw this today. Check out the guy's t-shirt in the background. Now how is that suppose to make me feel about donating? I'm not wanting a refund, an entire population should not be penalized due to this one knuckle-head, but crap.....

(2nd link via LGF)

That Crazy Vatican

If you are catholic, or if you are just curious about the latest shenanigans of the Vatican, you must go read this post.

(Link via LGF)

1st Round: PowerLine

By now most everyone surfing the net should know about the vindictive column written about the PowerLine guys and their rebuttal. I really admire these guys, systematically taking on their local newspaper with valid challenges. Every newspaper should be under the same scrutiny.
My favorite responses to the attack on PowerLine comes from one of my most favorite sites: Brain Terminal. Evan takes the columnist, Nick Coleman, to task with some surprising insights of the old media:

Coleman also lets slip something that tells us quite a bit about the mentality of today's press:

Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism.

That's funny; I always thought the purpose of journalism was to describe noteworthy events, to tell what happened. No, in Coleman's world, the purpose of the media is to "toot their horns in the service of [...] the downtrodden." Of course, they get to decide who's downtrodden, they get to decide how the downtrodden should be served--it always seems to be through the election of liberals or the support of big government programs--and they get to decide what facts to leave out and what details to spin in order to further their goals. Gotta give Coleman credit for honesty, but I bet he wishes he could take back that bit of candor, because it proves that he's a "journalist" with an agenda--and that he thinks the rest of the media shares this agenda.

BwaHahahahahaha...the MSM can't constrain themselves any longer! The cracks in the Dam are starting to look like a waterfall. It won't be long now.

Fisking Carter

Jimmy Carter is the first president that I have a clear memory of from my childhood. I can remember always being proud that a southerner had made it to POTUS. Needless to say I was very young and most naive. Without a doubt, he was an absolute disaster as president and continues to embarrass this country at every corner. Well, Happy New Year, Jimmah has been fisked.

Stealing Children

Fox has just reported that the death toll has topped 80,000. No link needed, sadly, that number will change. Cox and Forkum has a telling cartoon marking the disaster with some excellent links such as this one. Here's a very sad, small sample of the full story. It will absolutely break your heart.

The U.N. organization estimates at least one-third of the tens of thousands who died were children, and the proportion could be up to half, said UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside in New York. He said communities are suffering a double loss: dead children and orphaned boys and girls. ''Our major concern is that the kids who survived the tsunami now survive the aftermath. Because children are the most vulnerable to disease and lack of proper nutrition and water.''

Children make up at least half of the population in Asia. Many of them work alongside poverty-stricken parents in the fishing or related industries in coastal areas, so they were in harm's way when the tidal waves came. Many children from the more affluent families would also have been on the beaches for a stroll or for Sunday picnics.

In Sri Lanka, which suffered the biggest loss of life in the tsunami, crowds had come to the beaches to watch the sea after word spread that it was producing larger-than-normal waves.

Thousands of children joined their elders to see the spectacle. The waves brought in fish. The old and the young collected them. Many waited for more fun.

Then the 15 feet-to-20 feet tidal waves hit the tropical island of 19 million people.

''They got caught and could not run to safety. This is the reason why we have so many child victims,'' said Rienzie Perera, a police spokesman who said reports from affected police stations indicated children made up about half the victims in Sri Lanka.

On Monday, parents wept over the bodies of their children in streets and hospitals across the island, even as some dead children still dangled unclaimed from barbed wire fences.

The scenes of unimagined grief and mourning were repeated across Asia.

''Where are my children?'' wept 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for her 11 missing children in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian city closest to Sunday's epicenter. ''Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I've lost everything.''

On the day disaster struck, Malaysian Rosita Wan recalled watching in horror as her 5-year-old son was gulped by the sea while he swam near the shore at Penang.

''I could only watch helplessly while I heard my son screaming for help. Then he was underwater and I never saw him again,'' said a sobbing Rosita, 30.

I don't know when I'll ever want to go back to the ocean.

What Bush Should've Said

From Bush's press conference today.

Asked about a U.N. official who accused Western nations of being "stingy" with humanitarian aid, Bush responded that the United States is a very generous, kind-hearted nation, and the response that is emerging from the government as well as individuals is indicative of its nature.

"I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed. Take, for example, in the year 2004, our government provided $2.4 billion in food, in cash, in humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year. That's $2.4 billion. That's 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year," he said.

Now for what Bush should've said:

"I think that socialist asshat should pack up and get the hell out of our country. He is obviously an idiot that knows nothing of which he speaks. Next!"

Ahhhh....wouldn't that have been nice? I think the medias' heads would've spinned right off their necks at that moment.

The Stingy U.S.?

Here is the quote that started it all:

"It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really," Egeland told reporters, according to Bill Sammon of the Washington Times. American and European politicians, Egeland complained, "believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more."

Who is this asshat to say how much taxes I want to pay? Well, Jonah Goldberg puts facts to the U.N.'s unbelievable hyprocrisy.

The United States supplies more than one-fifth of the United Nations' total budget (and 57 percent, 33 percent and 27 percent of the budgets for the World Food Program, the Refugee Agency, and Department of Peacekeeping Operations, respectively). We've been the United Nations' biggest donor every year since 1945. Taxpayers reluctantly agree to such largess because we're told of the good works the United Nations does. And yet, whenever there's a catastrophe, Uncle Sam is asked to dig deep into his pocket for more money.(/snip)

Nobody objects when the United Nations helps victims of natural disasters, so U.N. defenders always use disaster relief and peacekeeping as their chief tool for fundraising. The problem is that the United Nations is not an impartial philanthropic organization. It is a political institution where a broad coalition of nations hope to curtail the power and influence of the United States. France uses the organization to leverage its relatively meager power by rallying African and Arab nations against us. Kofi Annan uses his megaphone to decry the moral and legal legitimacy of American foreign policy. Its Human Rights Committee is festooned with torture states, but it seems capable of issuing only condemnations inconvenient to the United States. And we foot the bill.

This is the Catch-22 of the United Nations. Politically, it's often reprehensible and inimical to American interests. But we're never asked to pay for that stuff. This comes out of the general budget. It's only when human beings are suffering in vast numbers that we're shamed for being "stingy" - because the United Nations understands how to exploit America's decency. If only we could be shaken down for more money to pay the light bill in the General Assembly when they play whack-a-mole with the United States.

The larger picture Mr. Egeland fails to appreciate is that America's wealth and prosperity - partly sustained by low taxes - is a greater bulwark against human suffering than the United Nations ever has been or likely will be. America guarantees global stability by keeping the sea lanes open, by preventing North Korea from invading South Korea and China from seizing Taiwan. We did it by preventing Saddam from keeping Kuwait. We ignored the United Nations and intervened to stop genocide in Yugoslavia, and we have 150,000 troops in Iraq working to create a democracy - while the United Nations is still too scared of terrorists, and too anti-American, to help.

Meanwhile, American citizens, partly thanks to those stingy low taxes, send some $34 billion in private aid around the world every year. That's 10 times the United Nations total budget. America's Christian ministries, private foundations and agencies all do far more in direct charity and aid than the United Nations. But bureaucrats - some who've grown fat on oil-for-food money - measure stinginess in terms of support to the bureaucracy, not to the constituency the bureaucracy was intended to help.

Can't you just smell the hypocrisy. The thing is, our MSM and lefty friends are going to jump all over this. It doesn't matter that the guy retracted his words, they are smelling red meat and Lord knows, facts can never get in the way of hating America. This lie is what they will focus on rather than the 60,000 dead. Shame on anyone who falls for this sham.

The Military Knows

If you haven't read John Podhoretz yet today, you should go now:

The military wants to fight this war. Democrats don't. How long before Democrats decide that our men and women in uniform are just extensions of the president and party they detest — a bunch of warmongering, bloodthirsty and stupid imperialists?

Democratic Party bottom-feeders — like the odd and unpleasant people who inhabit the comments sections on Web sites like dailykos.com and democraticunderground.com — have already long since started spewing their bile at our soldiers, sailors and Marines.

Soon, however, the bottom feeders may rise to the surface, just as they did during the Vietnam War. These will be underground opinions no longer.

The good news is that the world has changed since the 1960s. Last week, when The New York Times shamefully tried to resuscitate the Vietnam-era leftist fantasy about tens of thousands of crazed war vets returning to haunt our shores here at home, conservative media voices gave it but good to the Old Grey Lady.

If they really want to fight a culture war rather than this just war to advance democracy and retard Islamofascism, we're more than ready for them.

Yep! Everyday the blogosphere grows and we are ready to fight the MSM and expose their true motives. The lies and distortions will not work this time. I am proud to be a teeny, tiny microbyte microbe in this fight. Bring. It. On.

Life is Difficult

The past few days I've been pretty frustrated with our job choices and the options available to us. But I just realized that I've forgotten one of the major facts of life that I know to be true. Life is difficult. I learned a lot about this fact of life from the famous book The Road Less Traveled, required reading for all, young and old. The concept I'm referring to can be read here (hit the right arrow button twice). Basically, the deal is that life is difficult and that once you accept this fact, by that very action, you can transcend the situation and therefore, life is no longer so difficult.

I have forgotten this in the past few days. Everything is back in perspective again.

Another great point of the book is Peck's definition of love. Everyone has their own ideas of love and what it is, but I must say that I have adopted Peck's definition into the way I think about love. Basically he says that to love someone, you have to enhance the spiritual growth of that person, i.e., you can not love your golf clubs or garden because you can not enhance the spiritual growth of those items. He goes on to give examples of over-protective parents not loving their children if they, for example, drive their child to school everyday rather than allow him/her to ride the bus with the rest of the kids. The child will miss out on important everyday interactions, friendships, and yes, hardships that will cause that child to grow and learn in ways not offered in the safe haven of Mom's car. This is just an example, please don't take this in a way, that if you drive your kids to school, that I'm saying you're not loving your child. I have personally been driven to school, walked to school, driven myself, and have taken the bus throughout my elementary/middle/high school career.

I have personally seen children that were robbed of every normal interaction with their peers under the pretext of "protecting" them. That is not loving your child. Those kids absolutely could not interact normally in different social interactions, simply because they had zero experience in doing this. Their spiritual growth had been stunted...

Anyway, I don't hear a lot of people talking about the definition of love and I actually think about it a lot. What's your definition of 'love'?

A Tiny Miracle

This is simply amazing:

While thousands of people lost their lives when a tsunami hit the region, a 20-day-old baby survived, thanks to a floating mattress. 

“We were all caught off guard when the wave hit us. I was thrown several metres away but managed to hold onto one of the posts but my 12-year-old daughter was swept by the wave,” said A. Suppiah. 

Suppiah, 55, said his wife, Annal Mary, 40, braved the strong wave to open the room door to save their baby. 

“I thought I had lost both my daughters but thank God the mattress was floating in about 1.5m of water and my baby was crying. My other daughter, Kanchana somehow managed to get to her feet and run to safety,” said Suppiah who injured his right ankle. 

How much more tightly will this mother hold her daughters for the rest of their lives? I would have a hard time ever letting go again.

The Fair Tax

I am all for this. (The video automatically starts playing.) A plan like this, and we could scrap the I.R.S. Just think how much money, that alone, would save us. Go and learn the details of this, if W. gets his way, this may be one of the options that gets passed.

(Link via Brain Terminal)

Quake Perspective

I liked Jonah Goldberg's Perspective on the earthquake that moved an island.

The earthquake moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet. I looked it up. Sumatra is 182,859 square miles. It has a mountain chain. California is 162,707 square miles.

It moved 100 feet.

That is massive.

Hating Dallas

Warning: Rant ahead....You have been advised.

Hate is a strong word. Such a strong word that I will not let my boys use the word, and I try to do the same. So why did I just feel the strong need to use it? Because frankly, it is just how I'm feeling right now. My hubby has this great job waiting for him in Dallas and we are moving there in 6 months. Dallas is a great, big beautiful city, but with a huge problem. Their schools suck. Not just a little, but a lot.

There is only one little public school oasis within 'the loop' in Dallas. The area: Highland Park. It is a beautiful, very old neighborhood. Matter of fact, we've been told it is the most desirable neighborhood in the city. Needless to say, that title brings tremendous real estate prices. Matter of fact: HUGE Real estate prices. So why don't we commute you ask? Well, my hubby could spend a few hours on the road commuting a day....but then there are those 5 call nights a month....if we live more than 15 or so minutes from the hospital, he will automatically be spending those nights in the hospital and not be able to come home at all.

What is really ironic about all of this is that TX does not have an income tax, but purely a property tax. So if we buy in Dallas rather than Highland Park, we will still pay outrageous property tax to fund those sucky schools and then we'll be forced to pay private school fees so that our kids will actually be able to read, write, and add a few numbers. See the outrage?

Not to mention, that if we buy house in Highland Park for a gazillion dollars, it will be a small house with a postage stamp sized yard. Forget a play room, office, or media room. Just the basic stuff....Am I still in college?

This April my hubby and I will celebrate our 10th wedding aniversary. I met him when he was a 2nd year surgical resident. We've been together through surgery residency, 4 years of Air Force, 2 years of basic science research and about to complete 2 years of a fellowship. This fellowship has been pure hell for all involved. My sons will go 3 - 4 days at a time not seeing their Dad. The next time the MSM does a story about residents or fellows being restricted to an 80 hour work week. Laugh and laugh loudly. Only on paper...that's all I can say.

The point here is that we've worked our tails off, have sacrificed, my son's never see their Dad, and now we're going to end up somewhere that has god-awful real estate prices, high property taxes and some of the worst schools around. I'm having a problem seeing this as a reality.

So where would I like to go? Thanks for asking. Well it just so happens that our hometown of Shreveport, LA has a tremendous need for a Pediatric Surgeon. Matter of fact, a lot of money (10's of millions) are being earmarked to open a children's hospital. What's the problem, right?? [Post Update] I've changed the rest of this post from the original due to a very fluid situation in Shreveport. I know that that is a blogging no-no, but well, right now our entire life-long future plans are a little bit more important. Just pray that God will open the doors and show us the right answer as to where he will like us to serve.

Anyway, did I say that I already hate Dallas????

The Bloody Hands of the Anti-War Left

David Horowitz takes on George McGovern's silly letter to the editor that appeared in the LA Times on Christmas Day. In his letter, McGovern calls for the immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Horowitz has an impressive personal story to tell on the topic of anti-war leaders and the consequences of those activities. His parents were communists and he was one of the early anti-war leaders of the Vietnam war.

Three years earlier, Nixon had signaled an end to the draft, and the massive national antiwar demonstrations had drawn to a halt. But a vanguard of activists continued the war against America’s support for the anti-Communist war effort in Vietnam. Among them were John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. They held a war crimes tribunal, condemning America’s role in Vietnam, and conducted a campaign to persuade the Democrats in Congress to cut all aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia, thus opening the door for a Communist conquest. When Nixon was forced to resign after Watergate, the Democratic congress cut the aid as their first legislative act. They did this in January 1975. In April, the Cambodian and South Vietnamese regimes fell.

The events that followed this retreat in Indochina have been all but forgotten by the Left, which has never learned the lessons of Vietnam, but instead has invoked the retreat itself as an inspiration and guide for its political opposition to the war in Iraq. Along with leading Democrats like Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe, George McGovern called for an American retreat from Iraq even before a government could be established to assure the country will not fall prey to the Saddamist remnants and Islamic terrorists: “I did not want any Americans to risk their lives in Iraq. We should bring home those who are there.” Explained McGovern: “Once we left Vietnam and quit bombing its people they became friends and trading partners.”

Actually, that is not what happened. Four months after the Democrats cut off aid to Cambodia and Vietnam in January 1975, both regimes fell to the Communist armies. Within three years the Communist victors had slaughtered two-and-a-half million peasants in the Indochinese peninsula, paving the way for their socialist paradise. The blood of those victims is on the hands of the Americans who forced this withdrawal:  John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and George McGovern – and antiwar activists like myself.

Here's his brilliant conclusion on withdrawing from Iraq:

If the United States were to leave the battlefield in Iraq now, before the peace is secured (and thus repeat the earlier retreat), there would be a bloodbath along the Tigris and Euphrates. The jihadists will slaughter our friends, our allies, and all of the Iraqis who are struggling for freedom. Given the nature of the terrorist war we are in, this bloodbath would also flow into the streets of Washington and New York and potentially every American city. The jihadists have sworn to kill us all. People who think America is invulnerable, that America can just leave the field of this battle and there will be peace, do not begin to understand the world we confront.

Or if they understand it, they have tilted their allegiance to the other side. McGovern’s phrase “as earlier conquerors learned,” speaks volumes about the perverse moral calculus of the progressive Left. To McGovern we are conquerors, which makes the al-Zarqawi terrorists “liberators,” or as Michael Moore would prefer, “patriots.” The Left that wants America to throw in the towel in Iraq is hypersensitive to questions about its loyalties but at the same time can casually refer to our presence in Iraq as an “invasion and occupation.” It wants to use the language of morality, but it only wants the standard to apply in one direction. There is no one-dimensional standard, and a politics of surrender is not a politics of peace.

People living in fantasy worlds is a very dangerous thing. I am so glad that I've always been a Republican. Never, ever once flirted with the idea of being a liberal or 'progressive'. What is so frightening is how dreadfully serious many Americans took the candidacy of John Kerry. What an absolute joke.

To be soooo blind.....

What a Year for the Blogosphere

Tech Central Station has a great read up detailing the Top 10 Blogosphere events of the past year. I only started blogging in September. Dan Rather talked me into it. The day bloggers step-by-step disassembled the "TANG" story I watched it all live. I felt like I knew the people behing the blogs after reading them for so long....and knew they were fair-minded intelligent people. So when Rather looked into the T.V. that night and called all the bloggers "partisan political operatives", that was it for me. I said to myself: "I want to be a partisan political operative!"

Go read the article and re-live the past year of great blogging. Guess which story got #1?

Post-Christmas Sadness (Again)

Another devastating earthquake has occurred the day after Christmas. May God touch the heart of all of those who are sufferring and grieving. When there is so much death, it is hard to know where to begin. I'll leave that to the news agencies.

As I was viewing photos of the disaster this morning, I got to thinking: Wasn't it about a year ago that that earthquake destroyed the small city of Bam in Iran? I did a google search and discovered that not only was it a 'about' a year ago....but from the information I can gather, it was exactly a year ago, possibly within an hour...

Thousands of Iranians have gathered in the southeastern city of Bam to mark Sunday's one-year anniversary of the earthquake that claimed more than 31,000 lives and devastated the ancient city.

The powerful quake shook the city before dawn on December 26 last year, killing thousands as they slept.

From the first news link, the earthquake yesterday occurred at 7 AM.

Does this mean anything? Probably not....but I think it's pretty dog-gone coincidental and very weird.

Spanking the Times

Power Line takes on Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and gives him a point by point spanking. They take his Sunday News Quiz and debunks almost every point he tries to make. The misinformation the Times continues to spew week after week is nearing the level of immoral. Some unsuspecting people actually read and trust the times. I know, pretty unbelievable, but I'm sure they are out there. Anyway, it's a great post, so go and make your brain bigger.

Merry Christmas to All!!

Merry, Merry Christmas to all of my friends, family, internet pals, and regular readers. I've truly enjoyed the past 4 months of blogging and hope to continue for a long time. Here's a pic of my 2 sons tonight on Christmas Eve.

They've been begging to go to bed!! I will make their wish come true, as I have some toys to assemble.

May God bless you all and stay safe.

Squa'Mores

So what do you get when you send your hubby to the grocery store to pick-up that one item you forgot? This case was large marshmellows to make S'mores:That's right boys and girls. Square marshmellows. Obviously, it cost alot more money to make square marshmellows. Those babies cost about four bucks for about...are you ready for this?? About 8 marshmellows.

If my husband thinks that stunts like this will keep me from sending him on errands, he has badly miscalculated. ;)

Oh Yeah, I've been informed that these marshmellows are 100% Organic. Big Whoop.

Santa Always Knows

How cool of Santa to greet our Sailors!

Bush's Game

John Podhoretz has a great piece on the games of Washington and how George W. only plays by his rules:

After all, this is Washington, where the great sport is the getting of scalps, the forced sacrifice of reputations and jobs as atonement for policies that haven't gone perfectly.

The drumbeat starts. People say things on TV. They say things in op-eds. They are quoted by other people on TV and in op-eds. The drumbeat is relentless.

But the president is George W. Bush. And the one thing you can say about George W. Bush is that he doesn't like it when people try to make him act in accord with a growing conventional wisdom.

And so, yesterday morning, the president held a rare press conference that seemed to have little purpose — until he was asked about Rumsfeld. And on two occasions, the president practically lifted Rumsfeld on his shoulders and paraded him around the room with pride.

Ha, Ha, Ha...I just love W.!!! The elitist can't even trick themselves into the game. Up here in this Blue state, I see bumper stickers that I'm sure most of us have seen: "Somewhere in Texas, A village is missing their Idiot." Somehow I think the village idiots have gathered in Washington and New York and can't even figure out how to play.

Santa Attacked by Massive Idiot

Cox and Forkum has a great new cartoon depicting how hard things have gotten for Santa. Go see who is beating him over the head now.

Update: Upon further review of above linked cartoon, I am issuing a content warning....Visible Prickly Belly...Eeewwww!!!!

Oscar's Passion

Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood....will they ever learn? Still upset over the election, I guess they want to exert their revenge by denying Passion of the Christ the most deserved Oscar nomination I've ever witnessed. This movie reached people and affected them deep in their souls. To view this movie with an open, loving heart is nothing less than a true religious experience. Patrick Hynes of The American Spectator has a detailed article debunking the excuses Hollywood is using to deny this most important movie a nomination for an Oscar.

Even from a purely movie-critiquing point of view, Passion was one of the most beautiful, well-acted movies I've ever seen. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Mary flashes back to Jesus's childhood: He falls as a toddler, she runs to Him to cradle her son and give Him comfort. At this moment in the film, Jesus falls once again in the sand as He is being forced to carry His cross. She runs to him and kneels in the sand so they are face to face near the ground. His face and body are completely covered in blood. Jesus looks at His mother and cups her face in His hands and says (to my recollection): "Look Mother, I'm making all things new!"

If that does not move you, I don't know what to say. Go read the article so that you may be well equipped to speak the truth to what the MSM will faithfully be spewing to the uninformed masses in the coming months.

(Hat Tip to my fellow New England conservative friend, Sean O.)

Christmas Time in Newport

I've been busy this week with my family that has come all the way from Louisiana to Rhode Island, just to see little ole me! Today we went to Newport and toured "The Breakers" pictured here.
It is quite beautiful and had been decked out in Christmas decorations. The Breakers was the summer home of the Vanderbilt family.

We then walked down the Cliff Walk. If I had time to pour myself into a hobby, I would study photography. Especially Black and White. One of the first purchases I want to make when we get out of here is a very cool digital camera. Probably this one. Anyway, my brother had a roll of B&W film, so I took lots of shots of him and his wife. However, I was not use to his camera at all, so I can't wait to see how they come out!

So, I am very tired and the lack of blogging should prove it! I'll be checking back in.

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Kofi's Legacy

Kofi Annan is a coward and needs to go. This Opinion Journal piece details his cowardice in detail:

But it isn't just the stench of death I remember so vividly; the odor of betrayal also hung heavily in the Rwandan air. This was not a genocide in which the U.N. failed to intervene; most of the U.N.'s armed troops evacuated after the first two weeks of massacres, abandoning vulnerable civilians to their fate, which included, literally, the worst things in the world a human being can do to another human being.

It did not have to happen. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N.'s force commander in Rwanda, sent Mr. Annan a series of desperate faxes including one warning that Hutu militias "could kill up to 1,000" Tutsis "in 20 minutes" and others pleading for authority to protect vulnerable civilians. But at the crucial moment, Mr. Annan ordered his general to stand down and to vigorously protect, not genocide victims, assembled in their numbers waiting to die, but the U.N.'s image of "impartiality."

Go read the full article for this is just one example. The sooner we cleanse our country of the immoral hypocrisy of the U.N., the better.

Kidnap and Ransom: In the Name of Islamic Law

The RoP is being used to justify the kidnapping of 5 Swedish children and the demand of ransom.

The welfare - perhaps even the lives - of five Swedish children is being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

Swedish mother Elizabeth Krantz's five children were kidnapped from Sweden back in June 2004 by her estranged Palestinian husband Ismail Nowajah. The children - Adam, Amina, Zakarias, Miriam and Sara - range in age from six to sixteen. They were taken to the Gaza Strip against their will and in contravention of Swedish law, and have since been incarcerated in separate locations. Their mother, from a small town outside Gothenburg on Sweden's west coast, has official custody of the children, with visitation rights granted to her estranged husband.

Ismail Nowajah says he disapproves of the upbringing the children were getting in Sweden, where they were born, and that he wishes to bring them up according to a stricter Islamic code, which he says cannot be done in Sweden but is possible in Gaza. However, he has signaled that he is willing to release the children back into the custody of their mother against a payment of five million Swedish kronor (about 720,000 US dollars).

The children are Swedes. They are unfamiliar with Arab culture and have no knowledge of the Arabic language. They are thus unable to communicate with the surroundings into which they have been forcibly thrust. They are being denied schooling, and 15-year-old Miriam suffers from an unusual form of diabetes - type 1 - that requires special medication, treatment that has thus far been denied her by her father.

"A Sensitive Issue"

Commenting on the case, the Swedish Foreign Office noted that the situation is highly sensitive since the children have dual nationality - Swedish and Palestinian - and that according to Palestinian law, the children are the wards of their father.

This is a remarkable point of view on several accounts. Firstly, because Swedish law applies to Swedish citizens, the more so since they were kidnapped from Sweden. No other legislation is relevant until the children have been returned home. The father is in breach of Swedish law, for a crime committed in Sweden.

The second consideration is the illogic of the Foreign Office's standpoint: the children do not - and in point of law can not - have dual nationality. There is no country called Palestine. While the emergence of such a country may well be a highly desirable goal for reasons of geopolitical interest, Palestine does not today exist. The children therefore do not have dual nationality, and Sweden accordingly need take no such consideration into account.

Five children are being hung out to dry by their native country because, God forbid, we say a politically incorrect (however 'correct' it may be) assertion and call a spade a spade. The immorality of this situation is endless. I'm sorry, where exactly in the Koran does it allow for ransom? The article dives into great detail of the enormous logical disconnect of the situation. Go get it all and pray for these poor children.

(Link via LGF)

The Armored-Humvee-Lie Continued

Once again bloggers are doing the MSM's job on the fake armored-humvee story. Instapundit has all the links with excellent commentary, so go learn what the MSM is too lazy to investigate.

Hanukah at the White House

Dennis Prager has a wonderful experience to relate to all americans, but especially to Jewish-Americans. He talks of attending a Hanukah celebration at the White House:

It is an incredible blessing to be an American Jew (or "Jewish American" — both terms are accurate). We are doubly blessed. An Israeli interviewer once asked if I were first a Jew or an American, "I have two fathers," I said. "George Washington and the patriarch Abraham." So to be one of about 200 Jews invited to celebrate Hanukkah at the White House with the president of the United States was about as profound a personal moment as I have experienced. My two loves -- America and Judaism -- in one place, reinforcing each other.

I suspect that this feeling was shared by just about every Jew present, including bearded Orthodox rabbis heretofore not prone to affirming any non-Jewish national identity. As a yeshiva graduate, I never thought I would live to see identifying Jews, let alone Orthodox rabbis, so happy to be in a room with a menorah and a Christmas tree. Yet that signified a sea change taking place in American Jewish life — the realization that Christianity is no longer the enemy or the great Other but, for the first time in 2,000 years, a great ally.

Go get the full dose, as it will make feel very proud to be an American.

Missing the Rumsfeld Point

Jack Kelly, one of my favorite writers, has a heads-up article for all of the Monday morning quarterbacks on the Iraqi war out there. I love how he takes Bill Kristol to task as well! A little over due if you ask me.

Rumsfeld was "passing the buck" when he indicated it was the Army's responsibility to put Spc. Thomas Wilson in an armored truck, said The Weekly Standard's William Kristol in a snarky Washington Post op-ed, and "arrogant" when he told Wilson that "you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the one you'd like to have."

Does Kristol think there are no generals in the Army competent enough to whom to delegate responsibility for putting armor on Army vehicles? Is Rumsfeld derelict because he himself isn't welding rivets at the Hess-O'Gara plant outside Cincinnati?

The real burr under Kristol's saddle is that Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks attacked Iraq with what he thinks were too few troops. This complaint is shared by many who have more military experience than Kristol, which is zero. Sen. John McCain declared he has "no confidence" in Rumsfeld.

But the complaint is mostly bovine excrement. U.S. and British troops swiftly defeated the Iraqi forces, with very few casualties. This would have been true even if some of the Republican Guard formations which mysteriously melted away had stood and fought.

There is much, much more. Kelly takes on almost every post-invasion criticism. If you have not yet discovered him, now would be an excellent time. And also, if you're not afraid of having all of your left of center Bush criticisms thrown out the window!

(Link via RCP)

Our Man is "Man of the Year"

Time has done the right and just thing and named GWB "Man of the Year". Like we needed them to tell us. Something good to say about Time: The picture of W looks good. Here's a little on Bush's political boldness:

An ordinary politician tells swing voters what they want to hear; Bush invited them to vote for him because he refused to. Ordinary politicians need to be liked; Bush finds the hostility of his critics reassuring. Challengers run as outsiders, promising change; it's an extraordinary politician who tries this while holding the title Leader of the Free World. Ordinary Presidents have made mistakes and then sought to redeem themselves by admitting them; when Bush was told by some fellow Republicans that his fate depended on confessing his errors, he blew them off.

Here's a good graph comparing W. to Reagan and Clinton:

For candidates, getting elected is the test that counts. Ronald Reagan did it by keeping things vague: It's Morning in America. Bill Clinton did it by keeping things small, running in peaceful times on school uniforms and V chips. Bush ran big and bold and specific all at the same time, rivaling Reagan in breadth of vision and Clinton in tactical ingenuity. He surpassed both men in winning bigger majorities in Congress and the statehouses. And he did it all while conducting an increasingly unpopular war, with an economy on tiptoes and a public conflicted about many issues but most of all about him.

Now the bad: This partisan, biased rag just can't help itself. Here are some examples from above link on other titles in the edition:

Mel Gibson and Michael Moore made very different movies with the same message: The truth shall make you free.

To not be knowledgeable on the lies and distortions of F 9/11 is a signal of just how deeply partisan these folks are. The above sentence is insulting on too many obvious levels, but a good example on what to expect from Time.

This one, I thought, was pretty funny on blogs:

How three amateur journalists dethroned an icon and turned the mainstream media upside down, all without quitting their day jobs.

And of course, here's a completely demeaning example on diversity in Bush's cabinet..

The Benetton-Ad Presidency: Joe Klein on how Bush quietly put together the most diverse Cabinet in American history.

I thought it was the liberals who are so concerned with diversity? But when Republicans show that they are truly the open, diverse party, the libs strike out. They can't help but show their colors, and look at the wealth of blogging material just from their title page.....what a sham.

U.N. Retreat

Lee at Right-Thinking has a concise post on the quality of U.N. soldiers. Do we really want our guys depending on the pitiful U.N. soldiers? Go check out the post.

Christmas Miracle

No doubt about it, this is one of the most wonderful Christmas miracles that I've heard in a long, long time:

December 18, 2004 -- The little girl, prematurely ripped from her mother's womb, survived because of "divine intervention," a leading obstetrician said yesterday, calling the survival of the 8-month-old fetus a "miracle."

"Certainly this is one of these miracles where God protects a child no matter what happens," said Dr. Manuel Alvarez, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J.

"Obviously, this was an extremely stressful birth, and we won't know what the ultimate outcome of this child will be as she gets older," he added.

The 23-year-old mother of the infant, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, had apparently been strangled before her attackers gruesomely cut the baby from her womb.

To remove the fetus required cutting open the mother's abdomen, cutting open the uterus, severing the umbilical connection to the placenta, and extracting the baby from the wound, doctors said.

The grief the father of this child is feeling right now is, I'm sure, all consuming, but by God's grace he has his little baby girl. That is a wonderful thing to focus on while putting the pieces of your life back together again. I had serious doubts that this most horrific murder would have this positive outcome for the baby. This is nothing short of a miracle, straight from heaven.

Charles on Christmas

Last night I attended a school Christmas concert with my 5 year old son and it was simply one of the most laughable affairs I've been to in a long time. The children sang songs concerning snow, winter, Hanukah, Kwanza, and "Holidays". No Christmas...nope....nothing. They wrapped up with what was once the traditional song "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", but of course they did not sing Merry Christmas but: "We Wish You a Happy Holiday and A Happy New Year!" What a farce.

Charles Krauthammer expresses perfectly what I can not, as he dissects why people behave like fools at Christmas time, trying to embrace a holiday that celebrates the birth of our Lord and Saviour and avoiding the word "Christmas"....:

It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.

To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses in public so that minorities can feel "comfortable" not only understandably enrages the majority but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions.

The second is the sin of incomprehension -- a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the communal American religious experience. Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, the United States does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.

America transcended the idea of mere toleration in 1790 in Washington's letter to the Newport synagogue, one of the lesser known glories of the Founding: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights."

More than two centuries later, it is time that members of religious (and anti-religious) minorities, as full citizens of this miraculous republic, transcend something too: petty defensiveness.

Thanks Charles. As alway he should be read every Friday, top to bottom.

An American Hero

PowerLine has an incredible post that tells the story of a brave marine that you probably have not heard of before. This marine was courageous and selfless to the very end:

On the morning of November 15, 2004, the men of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines awoke before sunrise and continued what they had been doing for seven days previously - cleansing the city of Fallujah of terrorists house by house.

At the fourth house they encountered that morning the Marines kicked in the door and "cleared" the front rooms, but then noticed a locked door off to the side that required inspection. Sgt. Rafael Peralta threw open the closed door, but behind it were three terrorists with AK-47s. Peralta was hit in the head and chest with multiple shots at close range.

Peralta's fellow Marines had to step over his body to continue the shootout with the terrorists. As the firefight raged on, a "yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade," as Lance Corporal Travis Kaemmerer described it, rolled into the room where they were all standing and came to a stop near Peralta's body.

But Sgt. Rafael Peralta wasn't dead - yet. This young immigrant of 25 years, who enlisted in the Marines when he received his green card, who volunteered for the front line duty in Fallujah, had one last act of heroism in him. (/snip)

Go read what this marine did for his squad....and grab a tissue. These stories make me so proud to be an American, may God bless every service person and their families.

The story also compares how the MSM treats this hero versus a real American weasel:

You see, Pablo Paredes, a Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class, did something the liberal elites consider "heroic" and the media consider "newsworthy" - he defied an order. Last week, Paredes refused to board his ship bound for Iraq along with 5,000 other sailors and Marines. He showed up on the pier wearing a black tee shirt that read, ``Like a Cabinet member, I resign.''

We know this because Petty Officer Pablo Paredes had the courtesy and forethought to notify the local media that he would commit an act of cowardice the following day. Perhaps he hoped to follow the lead of another famous war protestor who went on to become a U.S. Senator and his party's presidential nominee by throwing away his military medals. Petty Officer Paredes stopped short of trashing his military I.D. in front of the cameras because he said he didn't want to be charged with the destruction of government property. The media, we are promised, will continue to follow this story intently.

It is a shame that the media focus on such acts when they could tell stories about real heroes like Rafael Peralta who "saved the life of my son and every Marine in that room," according to Garry Morrison the father of a Marine in Peralta's unit - Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison.

Yes, this is who our MSM will focus on. Their decline is only fueled by continuing the anti-american bias. Good riddance.

AssHats

Cry me a river:

"We call it the giving tree because it's meant as a season of giving and that's what it's for," explained Patrice Cole, who just made a donation.

The tree is adorned with requests for gifts from needy families.

It generates nearly $25,000 dollars worth of donations.

So, you might be surprised that Sidney Stock would look at this tree and say, "I resent it."

Sidney and Jennifer Stock are atheists.

They asked the city council to remove the tree because it represents Christmas which is a Christian holiday.

Stock says city hall should "Act as a place where everybody feels welcome. It is impossible for everybody's religious belief to be displayed and non-religious belief to be displayed, so therefore, no religious beliefs be displayed."

The courts already sided with the city on this one.

Barbara Ramey, spokesperson for the city explained. "Courts have ruled that Christmas trees are actually a secular symbol so given that, we are within the court precedents set on this issue," says Ramey.

The Stocks complained after a city worker told them the tree makes him feel out of place, and if he says so, he fears for his job.

The couple's already gotten hate filled phone calls, but they speak out anyway, because they believe many people feel the way they do but stay silent.

"There are a lot of people who've come to this country, maybe have been here for years, who don't feel freedom to say anything," says Jennifer Stock. "So we feel we're saying it for those people. Not just for ourselves."(emphasis mine)

First off, these jerks need something to do. Second off, if you look at the bolded statement, anyone with a brain should realize that you can not, Yes, I said CAN NOT EVER make everybody happy all of the time. This circular logic would only make sense to a bunch of atheist who clearly need hobbies. I have never, no never, been offended by other people's religious symbols. Candles for Hanukah? Not offended. Catholic rosary? Not offended. A nun's habit? Not offended.

A Nun's habit.....now that brings up an interesting question. According to these atheist's logic, a nun volunteering in a state run hospital would need to be banned from the premises? No? The stupidity of man never ceases to expand.

Busy, Busy

Sorry for the lack of posting....I've got students to grade, continuing education to complete for licensure, my brother and sister-in-law are coming in tomorrow night, so lots of cleaning to do ;), and ,oh yeah, Christmas is around the corner!! My cards came in today, so I need to get those in the mail too! That's right, snail mail....the only time during the year that I use it. I'll try to post soon, if not, peruse what's below....there's a lot of posts to explore!!

ACLU Color Coded Christmas Warning System

The ACLU has issued a warning system for Christmas that should be taken very seriously. Hat tip to Right Thoughts that has the image. Go now so you too may be warned.

; )

Global Warming Fiction

When I went back home this past Thanksgiving we watched the movie The Day After Tomorrow. It was a silly movie that we only watched for the special effects. We were trying out the new media room with a projection T.V. and surround sound. Believe me, a Scooby-Doo cartoon is more intellectually stimulating than that piece of trash-science turned movie.

So if you've been wondering what has been going on with Global Warming, and who isn't, check this out:

Clear-eyed enviros know they're losing. A frank new report, "The Death of Environmentalism" (available at www.TheBreakthrough.org), issued last week by two Green strategists, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, admits that warming advocates have failed. They haven't "come up with an inspiring vision, much less a legislative proposal, that a majority of Americans could get excited about."

True. But don't wait for the Greens to lead. Instead, responsible advocates are building a consensus around the right approach, which concentrates not on destroying the economies of developing countries through limits to growth, but on improving those economies through the use of more energy -- the best leverage for boosting living standards. Wealth, after all, makes health. As a nation gets richer, it gets cleaner.

Poor farmers in China, India and Africa burning dung and charcoal are releasing not just CO2 but real pollutants into the air. The role of rich nations should be to transfer technologies that produce cleaner energy more efficiently.

Meanwhile, there's important research to be done. We still don't know whether the rise in temperatures is natural and cyclical (it was warmer many centuries ago when the Vikings colonized Greenland) or human-induced.

But the radicals are losing. (/snip)

Read it all to understand how it is a complete sham. Then go and read the brilliant Mark Steyn as he discusses the enviromental issue as only he can:

Stuff happens, things change, adapt or die. Perhaps he'll give us some hard numbers in his lecture but, insofar as I can tell, Prof Peck's doomsday scenario depends on a lot of "ifs". In the course of several decades, the temperature might indeed increase sufficiently, and that might reduce the algae, and that might diminish by several billion the number of krill, and that might impact the lifestyle of the Antarctic penguin by, oh, 2050, 2060.

But, on the other hand, somebody might have invented a thing the size of the Palm Pilot you staple to the seabed that automatically lowers the temperature by two degrees and we'll have wall-to-wall algae. Who can say?

What we do know for certain is that the krill's chances of survival are a lot greater than, say, those of the Italians, or the Germans, or the Japanese, Russians, Greeks and Spaniards, all of whom will be in steep population decline long before the Antarctic krill. By 2025, one in every three Japanese will be over 65, and that statistic depends on the two out of three who aren't over 65 sticking around to pay the tax bills required to support the biggest geriatric population in history.

Does the impending extinction of the Japanese and Russians not distress anyone? How about the Italians? They gave us the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, Gina Lollobrigida, linguine, tagliatelle, fusilli. If you're in your scuba suit down on the ice shelf dining with the krill and you say you'd like your algae al dente in a carbonara sauce, they'll give you a blank look. Billions of years on Earth and all they've got is the same set menu they started out with. But

try and rouse the progressive mind to a "Save the Italians" campaign and you'll get nowhere. Luigi isn't as important as algae, even though he, too, is a victim of profound environmental changes: globally warmed by Euro-welfare, he no longer feels the need to breed.(/snip)

Now you should know that everyone must go and get the full dose of Steyn.

More Silly Dems

The 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Hey Dems, Do you believe in any of the above anymore?

LANCASTER - A Democratic city councilman has demanded that a baker remove photos of President Bush from his stand in Lancaster's venerable farmers' market, saying the city needs a "healing period" following the bitterly contested presidential election.

City Council member Nelson Polite approached David Stoltzfus last month and asked him to remove the pictures. When Stoltzfus refused, Polite vowed to pursue a city ordinance that would ban all political items from public places in the city.

Polite said the photo offended city Democrats.

"I just feel that since it was a close election and the city's so divided, that we should have a healing period," Polite told the New Era of Lancaster.

What an embarrassment.

(Link via Blogs for Bush)

Clinton's Blood Money

Is there a more disgusting person than Bill Clinton? I guess Marc Rich is in very close running:

In January 2001, in the final hours his presidency, Clinton bypassed law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to wipe the books clean for Rich after being subjected to intense lobbying from former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Rich's jet-setting ex-wife, Denise, who donated more than $1 million to Democratic campaigns — including Sen. Hillary Rodham's first Senate race — along with an additional $450,000 to Clinton's library fund.

Investigators still do not know how recipients of the vouchers led to Rich, but say his relationship with Saddam goes back more than a decade.

A report by the House Government Reform Committee on Rich's clemency deal established that it was well known to the CIA and other U.S. law-enforcement agencies at the time of the pardon that Rich had been dealing with Saddam since the early 1990s — after the Persian Gulf War when Iraq was the subject of an international embargo.

The report, which relied on several classified briefings by the CIA, said Rich loaned money to the cash-strapped dictator in exchange for favorable treatment on oil prices at a later time.

Someone really should start a running list of the ways that the Clintons have hurt this country. Now when Hillary kicks off her presidential campaign in 08 how many reporters are going to be talking about those donations? Having to guess from the shameful behavior of the MSM during the past election, it will probably be zilch. Shall we start the betting now?

A King for Moonbats

Somebody needs to point out to the Pasadena Weekly there's a moonbat loose in their building. Not only loose, but actually writing for their publication. The rant is one for the record books that will make any deranged liberal proud. Here is a very small taste:

By God (or Diebold), you've [Bush] earned it. You've hoodwinked the evangelicals. You've threatened the journalists. You've built a propaganda machine and disguised it as a legitimate cable news network. You've used it to force-feed every right wing loon from Ashcroft to Zell down our throats until they began to sound normal. You've used phony government alerts to manipulate the trailer park patriots, and you've dismantled the separation of church and state to the point where the Stars and Stripes represents the anti-choice, fuel-guzzling, homophobic God of the blow-dried televangelists.

This is just the tip of the iceberg written by this guy. Please someone get the Haldol!

(HT: LGF)

Addressing Reality

Here's a link to more Dems providing other Dems analysis on the past election so that they may start work on winning elections again. But here's the part I thought to be noteworthy:

Analysts who believe changing demographics will lead to a new Democratic majority should take a careful look at this election. According to that theory, women and the increasing number of minority voters will lead to an emerging Democratic majority. In this election, the percentages of women and minorities in the electorate indeed increased. But President Bush made significant gains among both groups. He won white women by 11 percentage points, 10 points more than his 2000 margin. Among Hispanics, Bush cut a 27-point deficit in 2000 to just 9 points this time. In the critical battleground state of Ohio, Bush secured his victory by winning 16 percent of the African-American vote, nearly double what he won in 2000.

We got out our base, but our base is not what it once was. The biggest blow in this election is how badly we lost the middle class.

It's no surprise for Democrats to lose white men and evangelicals. But in this election, we also lost white women, married people, couples with children, high school graduates, college graduates, people over 30, and, by our estimate, voters in every annual household income category above $40,000. Our coalition consisted of high school dropouts (though we won them by only 1 point) and those with postgraduate educations. That coalition is not the foundation for building a durable Democratic majority.

These are the groups I belonged to that went for Bush: "white women, married people, couples with children, high school graduates, college graduates, people over 30, and, by our estimate, voters in every annual household income category above $40,000. I also belong to the 'evangelical vote' and the 'post graduate education' group. Guess that means Kerry lost my vote on almost every level possible.

There's Stupid, and then There's Stupid Denial

OK boys and girls, when you're laying in bed and looking like this:

It's time to seek help. I'm always amazed to hear of these stories of denial. It has to be denial, because if not, then the person is just really, really stupid! This lady might have been obese, but not so overweight that she would not have noticed 66 pounds of tumor!! Here's the story:

Grace Radtke said she knew something was wrong, but had no idea it was a 66-pound tumor that was causing her pain.

"I couldn't believe it," Radtke said. "It just floored me."

Last week, Radtke underwent surgery to remove the giant ovarian cyst -- the size of three watermelons -- that was lodged under her ribs.

Radtke weighed more than 300 pounds when she suddenly started losing weight without dieting. Her family encouraged her to get medical attention.

Doctors said the tumor had been growing for at least one year with huge blood vessels attached. She said despite losing weight and having difficulty walking, she was nervous about seeing a doctor.

"I was so scared. I didn't know what the outcome would be," she said.

Dr. Greg Duma, a gynecologist who performed the surgery, said if they hadn't removed the tumor, it would have continued to grow.

After hours of surgery, four people were needed to lift the heavy tumor. Doctors said they had to roll the tumor onto a stretcher.

"My hat was soaked with sweat and they kept having to blot my glasses because it was very physically demanding," Duma said.

What's amazing is that these stories come up about every 2 years or so. No one likes going to the doctor, but this is truly ridiculous. And in case you were wondering exactly what a 66 pound tumor looks like, wonder no more:

Get Perspective

So if you've been down on all the fascism in the U.S. lately, this should provide some perspective:

New Delhi - A young couple from a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar were stripped, tonsured, flogged and driven out of the village for daring to get married, it was reported on Sunday.

Galo Kumari, 19, and Bishnu Naik, 22, of Khunti village ironically belong to different sects of the same tribal caste. Galo's family are traditional tribal priests, while Naik belongs to a "lower" caste of the same tribe, the Times of India newspaper reported.

The police said at least 300 villagers from Khunti looked on helplessly on Thursday as male members of Galo's family and some village council members rained blows on the young couple after they were stripped, tortured and made to run several kilometres.

Her tonsured head covered by a shawl and eyes swollen from sleepless nights, a tearful Galo said her only fault was that she had fallen in love and married someone from a different caste.

Oh yes, we are so oppressed and tortured here in the U.S.

What It Is All About

As Christmas is upon us, I want to remind everyone the reason for the season:



I read on another blog, I can't remember where, the correct sentiment: "Christ=Christmas; No Christ=No Holiday Season."

It really is that simple folks.

My youngest son had the great priviledge to play baby Jesus in our Church's Christmas production. It was 2001 and he was about 6 weeks old. He almost got bumped for the gig because at 4 weeks of age he spent 5 nights in the hospital for viral meningitis. I can not tell you how difficult it is to put your baby's name and meningitis in the same sentence. It took months before I could talk about the incident without a huge lump in my throat. But we persevered and this mommy made sure he kept his leading role. He was healthy and ready for the part!

UPDATE: In the spirit of Christmas and for the love of our soldiers, don't dare forget these guys. Grab a tissue and watch some of the most moving/uplifting photos from the war zone. On a lesser note, if you love photography you will love this link. (Kudos to INDC Journal for the link)

Why We Like Israel More Than You...

Solomonia has a great post fantasizing what Colin Powell should have said at a useless arab conference:

In my imaginary, perfect fantasy world, Colin Powell would seize the mic and say the following:

"OK, it's true. We do favor Israel over you, and I'm going to be very frank with you and tell you why.

We favor Israel over you because Israel is a democracy and you are not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel has a free press and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel enshrines freedom of speech and expression and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel practices freedom of religion and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel does not persecute its homosexual citizens and you do.

We favor Israel over you because Israel has Nobel winners in the Sciences and Universities that foreigners consider attending. You have none of either.

We favor Israel over you because Israel's press, government and religious establishment do not incite hatred against us and yours do.(/snip)

And there is much more...Go check out the entire post, for it is very good.

My Snow Angel

Just testing out this photo-hosting stuff:

My then 4 yr-old making his 1st snow man.

Merry Christmas Michael Moore

Wow!! Somehow I missed this link the other day. You must go and see it, and please, remove all liquids from around your computer before doing so...."Spew Warning" in effect.

Heh, Heh....consider sending one to Michael Moore yourself....

Missed Poisoning Attempt

It is now official, Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with Dioxin. I did some reading on the internet about this and found this news story to be pretty well researched on the technical facts of the case.

Dioxin — one of the contaminants found in Agent Orange — is formed as a by-product from industrial processes such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching.

Exposure to the toxin can lead to chloracne — a type of adult acne that Dr. Zimpfer has said can take a long time to clear.

Dioxins are a normal contaminant in many foods, but a single high dose can trigger illness, London-based toxicologist John Henry said last month.

Shortly after the announcement of the diagnosis on Saturday, Henry told British Broadcasting Corp. television that Mr. Yushchenko's case was, in his experience, unique.

"We've never had a case like this, a known case of large, severe dioxin poisoning ... It's normally fairly mild. It can cause liver damage," he said. "It's usually low-level, long-term poisoning. A very large dose, nobody has any real idea of what it would cause. Now we do know."

Mr. Yushchenko had returned to the hospital later in September for further treatment and checked in for a third time Friday.

Dr. Nikolai Korpan said "no functional damage will remain."

In 1976 Italy had a little 'accident' with Dioxin, the link takes you to a medical journal abstract describing the effects of those persons affected. That experience also supports the reversibility of the damage.

All patients suffered burnlike skin lesions and all but two recovered without residual effects. Chloracne occurred in 12 of these cases; it was mild in almost all and has now disappeared. Systemic functions were repeatedly evaluated in all cases and no evidence of visceral lesions was obtained. Immunocapability was normal and chromosome aberrations were within the normal range.

Historically, Dioxin is not your usual poison of choice. Cyanide usually gets a lot of attention for poisoning, but people 'in the know' knows of better choices. Succinylcholine would've been the much smarter choice to achieve your poisoning goals. I'll never forget sitting in Organic Medicinal Chemistry class when the professor first introduced this drug. He drew the structure on the board and turned to us and said, "The perfect murdering drug, Succinylcholine." It is perfect because you naturally have an enzyme that breaks down the drug to just choline, a naturally occuring substance, so therefore, it is not detectable. There are some people who, due to genetic reasons, have a deficiency in this enzyme and in those folks, you could detect the drug. And how does succinylcholine kill you? Well it paralyzes all of your skeletal muscles, including the very important diaphragm. It would be a very cruel death, because the victim would be completely conscious and completely paralyzed, unable to move and breath. We use this drug everyday, thousands of times a day, in hospitals for intubating patients. Every now and then you'll see a movie or murder mystery focus on this.

So in conclusion, whoever cooked up this idea of poisoning Yushchenko obviously did not do their homework. I wonder if they are still alive?? Hmmmm..... I wonder what the Russian government does to someone who screws up a poisoning attempt on the leader of the political opposition??

Stein Knows What's Right

I agree almost always with Ben Stein. He is always very interesting to read and listen to. Today Ben does not disappoint with this piece. Go and read about a gift from his father-in-law, but I found this the most profound:

I have relatives and friends who get out of bed every morning and do an hour of exercise to keep them fit. I don't do that. My exercise is that I get out of bed and hit my knees and thank God for waking up in America, where I live in peace and freedom, no Gestapo chasing me, no KGB putting me in the Gulag, no Hamas blowing me up. All thanks to men like Col. Denman and the heroism he showed capturing this Luger.

Amen.

The Unpatriotic Left

Yep, that's right, I just called some members of the left 'unpatriotic'. Remember in this past election, everytime a criticism was levied against anyone with a 'D' behind their name concerning their official voting record, the standard retort? It was: They (Republicans) are questioning my patriotism!! It was silly then, but now a wacked member of the left has made a tremendous case for himself:

The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.

I don't mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to comprehend.

The tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis. They have come in the quest to extend the American empire in this "new American century."

So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat for a simple reason: It isn't the defeat of the United States -- its people or their ideals -- but of that empire. And it's essential that the American empire be defeated and dismantled.

The fact that the Bush administration says we are fighting for freedom and democracy (having long ago abandoned fictions about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties) does not make it so.

We must look at the reality, no matter how painful. The people of Iraq are better off without Saddam Hussein's despised regime, but that does not prove our benevolent intentions or guarantee that the United States will work to bring meaningful democracy to Iraq.

In Iraq, the Bush administration invaded not to liberate but to extend and deepen U.S. domination. When Bush said, "We have no territorial ambitions; we don't seek an empire," on Nov. 11, 2002, he told a half-truth.

The United States doesn't want to absorb Iraq or take direct possession of its oil. That's not the way of empire today; it's about control over the flow of oil and oil profits, not ownership.

In a world that runs on oil, the nation that controls the flow of oil has great strategic power. U.S. policy-makers want leverage over the economies of competitors -- Western Europe, Japan and China -- that are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

The Bush administration has invested money and lives in making Iraq a platform from which the United States can project power.

That requires not the liberation of Iraq but its subordination. But most Iraqis don't want to be subordinated, which is why the United States in some sense lost the war on the day it invaded. One lesson of contemporary history is that occupying armies generate resistance that, inevitably, prevails over imperial power.

When we admit defeat and pull out -- not if, but when -- the fate of Iraqis will depend in part on whether the United States makes good on legal and moral obligations to pay reparations and allows international institutions to aid in creating a truly sovereign Iraq.

We shouldn't expect politicians to do either without pressure. An anti-empire movement -- the joining of anti-war forces with the movement to reject corporate globalization -- must create that pressure.

We should all carry a profound sense of sadness at where decisions made by U.S. policy-makers -- not just the gang in power today but a string of Republican and Democratic administrations -- have left us and the Iraqis. But that sadness should not keep us from pursuing the most courageous act of citizenship in the United States today: pledging to dismantle the American empire.

The planet's resources do not belong to the United States. The century is not America's. We own neither the world nor time. And if we don't give up the quest -- if we don't find our place in the world instead of on top of the world -- there is little hope for a safe, sane and sustainable future.

I don't know which is sicker: The words written by this moonbat, or the fact that a news organization actually gave him space to spew this unpatriotic, enemy-enabling filth. And to all the lefties who agree with this idiot, just how much control have we maintained over the oil flow in Kuwait? By his rationale, we should be controlling every drop of oil coming out of Kuwait. Where is it? A link would be nice.

(HT: LGF)

Even a SF Secular Humanist Get's Christmas..Mostly

With the PC police out in force this Christmas season, and many corporations and city governments lacking a spine any common sense, it is refreshing to read stuff like this coming out of *gasp* San Francisco.

In recent years, various California schools have banned the hideous "Silent Night" (in Sacramento's San Juan School District), banned "Jingle Bells" because of offensive religiousness (in Fresno, where outraged parents quickly overturned the ban) and removed red-and-green lights that were seen as a "provocation" (in a Newport Beach school). One pundit questioned whether upscale Newport Beach should also take down traffic signals.

Most parents don't realize Christmas is being banned at their school because the media don't really give a rip.

Yet blacklisting of angels and stars of Bethlehem and Christmas trees is not required by any law, anywhere. I am a secular humanist with no religion. But I wince each year as my intolerant secular humanist brethren increasingly shame teachers into stamping out Christmas.

The courts say the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause can't be used to promote hostility to a religion, such as Christianity, in schools. Religious expression is allowed if there's a legitimate secular purpose -- such as, oh I don't know, perhaps explaining to children the most widespread cultural holiday in America, observed even by many nonbelievers?

Lance Izumi, with the conservative Pacific Research Institute, says bureaucrats and teacher colleges work hard to convince teachers there's a mystery Christmas ban. "Everybody is walking on eggshells when discussions of Santa or heaven come up. And how dare Arnold call it the Christmas tree? ... Yet we have this huge multicultural effort to teach multicultural methods and multicultural instructions to our teachers, where you are supposed to value everyone's culture. Christians are a major part of society, and they have a culture. But it conflicts with the PC ethic."

This PC intolerance is why we blue states are viewed by the heartland crowd as hostile, godless places.(/snip)

Feeling a need to act in a world gone insane, I'm boldly saying "Merry Christmas!" this year. As I learned from my irreligious father, having religion is not a requirement for cherishing the warmth and decency of the most widespread cultural tradition in America.

So for all of you secular humanist out there, take notes and learn that by saying "Merry Christmas" our society will continue moving right along just as it had before uttering those most special words.

Where Did That Bush Doctrine Go??

Cox and Forkum again has a brilliant cartoon and post asking the simple question: Why in the heck is Bush paying off terrorists??? They quote Charles Johnson of LGF:

It's amazing how nobody in the world wants to hold Palestinian society responsible for anything. Their economy is devastated because of four years of senseless violence, all right -- perpetrated by the Palestinians, in spite of a historic peace offer from Israel.

For a people who talk endlessly about having their own state, they have done almost nothing positive, on their own, to achieve it. The world has given them countless billions of dollars, much of which vanished into anonymous bank accounts, and the Palestinian people have nothing to show for it. Why are we giving them another huge handout?

It's like giving an alcoholic more alcohol to continue the unhealthy addiction, and then wondering why they won't quit drinking. Be sure to go to the LGF link to see the sick picture of what the Palestinians were up to last month, but only on a steady stomach....

And if you're wondering about the Bush Doctrine referred to in the title, check out my "must reads" on the side bar and link to WW IV for a comprehensive paper on this most important issue.

Christmas Cards I Like

Link here to see the best Christmas card to send to get under your liberal friends skin. Heh, Heh.. 2 birds with one stone. It would definitely be worth it to send these babies out to a few people!

(Link via Right Thinking)

CheckMate

Here's a post in honor of my hubby, a chess nerd:

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A 16-year-old boy has won the U.S. Chess Championship, making him the youngest player to claim the title since 14-year-old Bobby Fischer won it in 1958.

Hikaru Nakamura of White Plains, N.Y., won the $25,000 prize Monday after beating Alex Stripunsky, 34, of Rego Park, N.Y., in two overtime matches. The 11-day tournament in San Diego began with a field of 65 competitors.

Nakamura, who was born in Japan, was taught chess by his stepfather and began playing competitively at age 7. A little more than two years later, he qualified as an American master. Nakamura became an American grandmaster last year, eclipsing by a few months Fischer's record of attaining grandmaster status at age 15.

My 5 year old knows how to correctly set up the board and is learning from his dad each night about the individual pieces. Who knows who the next whiz kid will be???

Mineta Must Go!!

With all of the cabinet 'resignations' you'd think Bush would get rid of a true dinosaur. On this point, I completely disagree with Bush. Norm Mineta may not be much of a newsmaker, but he certainly should not hold a position where he gets to make decisions concerning my safety or anyone elses. Michelle Malkin has an excellent post compiling what has been written about this incompetent cabinet member and also quotes his words, so go learn what an idiot he is.

Then to make the case in point, head on over to HunterByrd's Place and read how disgraceful the TSA is treating some of our female travelers. Not only is it time for the TSA to stop feeling up our grandmothers, but it is time for some common sense to enter this equation of Airport Security. An equation that has no room for PC thinking that has been exhibited by Norm Mineta.

Rumsfeld Answers

I can't believe that I'm about to link to Instapundit, but here it goes. Heh, heh...like everyone is not already reading his site anyway! Well here's the deal: He has an impressive post on Rumsfeld's question/answer session in Afghanistan. It should be read from top to bottom, because it is just that good! Here's a taste:

UPDATE: Reader Tim Morris emails: "I think it's interesting that everyone seems to be missing the real point - the Secretary of Defense, essentially second only to the President in the civilian portion of the chain of command, was called to account by an enlisted solider, and a low ranking one at that, and he stood there and took it because that's his job."

It's certainly an interesting contrast to the way that, say, Dan Rather receives criticism.

And there's much, much more....Go get it all!

The Soft Influence of Daughters

USA Today has a surprisingly moving piece today on the tremendously important contribution of little girls in the family and society, that unfortunaetly, China is missing out on. Their one-child per family policy is a horrible indictment of that country that will have far reaching ramifications. The male to female ratio is badly skewed, which is never good for the health of a society. Here are a few words on daughters and their dads.

Ironically, some of the people who know this best are the family members with whom daughters often have the least in common: dads.

Daughters have a tendency to evoke from their dads a tender "soft love" that comes far less naturally to men than the "tough love" that fathers typically show their sons. And while it is obviously true that fathers (and mothers) should seek to be neither too soft nor too hard on each of their kids, there is an almost-universal recognition that fathers should probably err a little in one direction with boys and a little in the other direction with girls.

Indeed, a son who has not been adequately toughened by his father is often derisively called a "mama's boy." Yet a daughter who enjoys a special place of endearment in her father's heart is affectionately known as a "daddy's girl."

Interestingly, the father of our current president displayed a keen understanding of the unique role that little girls play in family life. In 1958, George H.W. Bush wrote a moving personal letter mourning the tragic death of his daughter, Robin.

"There is about our house a need," Bush wrote. "We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to offset those crew cuts. We need a dollhouse to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousands of baseball cards. We need someone to cry when I get mad — not argue. We need a little one who can kiss without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl."(/snip)

Indeed, when I say that I wish all of the men in China could have hearts as heavy as mine, I am not trying to be cruel.

I am instead lamenting the fact that hundreds of millions of Chinese men will never experience the unique pleasures that I have known as the father of a daughter. Hundreds of millions of Chinese men will never know the special joys of having a "daddy's girl."

You see, the reason my heart is so heavy is because a little girl has made it full. And while I know that America can hardly stand in judgment of China's policies, somehow still I wish the Chinese could love their daughters, too.

China is destroying their own national treasures under the saddest of circumstances.

Druggie Trust

Pharmacists are once again among the top of the 'most trusted professional' list says a yearly Gallup poll.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's annual survey on the honesty and ethical standards of professions finds improvement in the public's perceptions of six professions compared to the last time Gallup asked about them: pharmacists, military officers, judges, day care providers, newspaper reporters, and state officeholders. Perceptions of nurses' ethics dropped slightly this year, to levels found in 2000. Pharmacists and state officeholders are rated more highly now than at any time since Gallup started measuring the images of these professions over 20 years ago.(/snip)

The current poll finds that 72% of Americans rate the honesty and ethical standards of pharmacists as "very high" or "high." When Gallup first measured the profession in 1981, 59% of Americans gave pharmacists this rating, and by the late 1980s, the percentage had increased to 66%. Throughout the 1990s, ratings of pharmacists averaged 65%, ranging from 60% to 69%. From 2000 through 2003, 67% of Americans, on average, rated pharmacists as highly honest and ethical. A few years after they were added to the list, pharmacists became the most highly rated profession, displacing clergy. However, nurses have generally topped the list since they were added in 1999.

There's tons of graphs for many professions, so go see how you're doing in the poll! I don't quite know what to make of the slight increases for state officeholders and newspaper reporters....Go figure. But I am proud my chosen profession has been able to maintain such a high level of public trust and approval.

(Hat tip: Dean's World)

Clinton's Cheap Drugs

Tech Central Station has this column today describing Bill Clinton getting a dose of his own medicine. Find out how, even for Bill Clinton, what goes around comes around.

CIA 'Cranks'

The Weekly Standard has some great questions for the C.I.A. The questions center around how the CIA decided to allow a book titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", originally authored by 'Anonymous' who we now know was by a fella named Scheuer, be published:

No one I know of at the Agency was happy about what [Scheuer] was saying and doing. His seniors tried and failed to manage him. It was believed that perhaps he could anonymously blow off steam without being turned into a celebrity whistle-blower. Some believed, naively, that the media would actually read some of Scheuer's wacky rantings (e.g. "American soldiers are paid to die" or his laudatory comments about [Osama bin Laden]) and dismiss him as a crank.

But such an explanation only raises more questions. For one: Why would the CIA have a "crank" on its payroll? For another: How did a "crank" who was prone to "wacky rantings" and needed to "blow off steam" become the head of the CIA bin Laden unit, and then maintain that position from 1996 until 1999? And finally: Why must the CIA rely on media outlets to "dismiss" its own employees?

Go get all the details....The C.I.A. needs major housecleaning. One of the many facts I learned during the past election season is that the CIA is, sadly, a partisan organization that cares more about their own ideology than supporting the POTUS. This is a very sad state of affairs, because through my own delusions of CIA grandeur, I innately had a lot of faith in the organization. Probably due to all the "Spy" movies we watch growing up, where agents are doing everything they can and barely saving the day from world destruction as we go about our daily lives not having a clue. I now know different. The reality is quite the opposite. Another reason to pray every day for not only our personal safety, but for our nations safety.

(Hat tip: Jayson J. at Polipundit)