We Live In Fear

I used to chuckle at the people who recommended that everyone be required to bear arms.
Now I cringe.
We are no longer a tolerant society, and I am not referring either to religion or race.
We are not tolerant in general. Zero tolerance is the rule now.
A boy writes a short story that a teacher finds frightening, and the boy is shipped off to a psychiatric hospital.
A kindergarten student is suspended for sexual assault. Yes, you heard that right. He touched her underpants. Lucky for him it was a girl - who knows what they might have accused him of it he'd touched a boy's undies.
People are going mad over cartoons. Religious leaders order assassinations - both Muslim and Christian.

And someone wants to arm these whackos?

We live in fear.
We are afraid our kids are going to shoot, that our beliefs can be destroyed, that our civilization will crumble.
We see terrorists under every bed. (Guess the communists have moved out.)
More than we ever did in the Fifties, we live under the Sword of Damocles, certain that doom is a day away, and that there is nothing we can do but decisively crush any threat, or possible threat.
We steer away from dark alleys, stick to our "own kind", and cling to the belief that only brute force can get out of this situation. That's why we want guns. We think that with a gun in each hand, we can get them before they get us. Like Rambo.
Unfortunately, our enemies are not coming after us with AK-47s any more. Rambo didn't have to deal with an enemy that planted a nuke in the city he was in, or released a toxin into the water he drinks. These, you see, are not enemies you can handle with a machine gun.

It's not the Wild West anymore. We no longer live in a world where a fast draw and a 44 can keep you alive, anymore than we live in a world where a rapier and some swordmanship will suffice. It is a new world, and we need a new defense.

Write a note and get committed

An exerpt:
"It’s no wonder many kids today just give up and give in to drugs. Obviously it doesn’t make it right but it would be hard for me not to understand where many of them are coming from. The gap of understanding between adults and children is widening more everyday as both side stick fingers in their ears and scream, “La la la la, I’m not listening.” It’s sad really. It saddens me that in the 12 short years since I graduated from high school the notion of children as being a mild but nurtured nuisance seems to have devolved into regarding children as mass murdering pariahs.I never thought I’d say this but thank God for the ACLU. It’s not fair to judge every child, especially with all the subversive influences out there, by the same measuring stick as the kids who were obviously ill and rampaged through their schools. Had I been born 10 years later, who knows how my parents would have reacted to the childish antics of my youth."

This is a post from a man who wrote "bad" stuff while at school. He was banned from the school newspaper, but that's about it.
The case he is referring to is a boy who also wrote "bad" stuff in school. However, in this post-Columbine world, this other boy was taken by force to a psychiatric hospital.

Read the whole thing here. It's worth it.

Regulators

If a government has any function at all, it is to function as a protector.
First internationally, through the Armed Forces and the State Department. Second, locally, through the police.
And thirdly, through the regulators. These are the most important defenders of the country, because they defend our greatest assets.
Our unity and our trust.
The regulators make sure that the con men and grifters don't prey upon us. They make sure that the medicine we buy is real medicine, and cures what it is supposed to cure. They make sure that the powerful auto manufacturers do not sell us defective cars, that the doctors don't operate while drunk, and that monopolies cannot shut out competition and force us to pay whatever they can squeeze out of us.
Congress and the courts are important components of the regulators. Congress forms the regulations, the laws that prevent the wolves from preying on the sheep. The courts enforce these rules, punishing any errant wolf.
If either of these organizations fails in its job, we all suffer.

Congress falls down on the job unless it deals with changes in society in a timely manner. It needs to learn, from real experts, the nature of the new elements, whether they be computer scams or terrorist movements, and to face these truths without flinching. They need to create new law, based on the needs of society as a whole, not some small section.
Much of the time, they don't. Their actions are based on pork, on re-election strategies, on lobbyist recommendations, on ideology. Such actions debase Congress.
The courts, too, must enforce the law in such a way as to best benefit society. Some might belittle these "activist judges" - but what else is a judge for? A judge must inflict punishments that will act as a true deterrent to crime, while refraining from revenge and cruelty. Each case being different, a judge must use judgment, rather than reliance on precedent, to walk this tightrope properly.
A judge who relies on ideology, on party loyalty, on bias, is no judge.

The greatest harm that scandals like the Abramoff payoffs cause is that it destroys our trust in our regulators. If we cannot trust our regulators, we become prey again for the grifters.
The grifters know this. The grifters want this. This is why the grifters continually try to tempt Congressmen.
This is why Congressmen who succumb, all of them, must be punished, in such a way as to be a true deterrent to the act.
Otherwise, we may as well let the terrorists win. Better them than the grifters.

Gonzales testifies

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified to a Senate Judiciary committee today.
But not under oath. Senator Arlen Spector, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman , stated he didn't have to.
Gonzales told the committee that the program is:
(1) limited to communication between someone in the U.S. and someone in a foreign nation.
(2) triggered when a NSA professional beliefs one of the parties is tied to al Qaeda.
(3) designed to minimize the amount of information collected and disseminated.
(4) reviewed by NSA supervisors and the NSA inspector general.
(5) renewed every 45 days.

Well, Mr. Gonzales,
(1) Why was it so hard to get a FISA warrent for this "obviously legal" wiretap?
(2) How does the NSA professional acquire this "belief" that someone on the line is talking to al Qaida?
(3) And what would that minimum be, sir?
(4) Why not the Senate, as well? They're mostly Republicans - don't you trust them?
(5) So, you're not doing it now, right?
and
(6) Why can't anybody connected to the White House testify under oath anymore? What have you got against oaths?

Oh, and
(7) Why haven't you just said "Mea Culpa - it was wrong, we won't do it again." and go back to using FISA warrents to get legal wiretaps? Why draw this out?

It's all about sex, you know.

What is it about homosexuality and the Religious Right, anyway?
The Ten Commandments say nothing about sexuality. They do, however, ban murder, robbery, and lying. The ban on homosexuality comes from a few Old Testament parables and some apostolic commentary.
Yet Pat Robertson and his friends go after homosexuality with a fervor they never show towards depictions of murder. Brokeback Mountain catches ire, but Rambo never got a peep out of them. Even Grand Theft Auto barely registers on their radar.
The most blatent problem is with "Thou shalt not commit false witness against thy neighbor", which can be translated as "No Swift-boating". No lying about another's nature. No slander.
Now, this isn't an interpretation of an off-subject text, like the arguments against abortion. This is a Commandment - one of the original "set in stone" laws. The meaning is clear, the wording concise and unequivocal. Pat and friends should be screaming every time someone makes a personal attack in Washington.
But they don't.
It couldn't be that the Religious Right are willing to sacrifice their principles for temporal power, could it?

God's Will and Right Wing protesters

Levitate yourself.
Go ahead - just . . . umph yourself upwards. I'll wait.
Hard, huh? They used to say that if God had meant man to fly, He would have given him wings.
What they should have said was, God didn't want man to levitate, so he doesn't.

There are a couple of useful illustrations in this simple fact, applicable to several of today's situations.

First, when God doesn't want you to levitate, you don't levitate.
No going to Korea and levitating there. You don't levitate anywhere. Becoming a secular humanist doesn't get you around God's will, nor does rewriting holy scripture or issuing a papal bull. You don't levitate.

Second, God doesn't need help in preventing levitation. No one has to issue a fatwa, enact a law, start a war, or even carry signs outside a courtroom to prevent people from levitating. It isn't necessary because no one levitates.

Next time you are tempted to protest, or even fight, about something being against God's will, just remember - if that action were really against God's will, there wouldn't be a need for your actions to stop it. God would not let it happen. Ever.

That's the nice thing about omnipotence.
Now stop yelling.

When Criminals Make the Laws

What is a government for, anyway?
In most of the countries of the world, the government exists for the benefit of the governors. These tyrannies and kleptocracies drain the resources, sell off the valuables, and work the people to death in order to provide a few elite individuals with an unparalleled lifestyle of hedonism and luxury.
A few naive nations, however, believe that a government exists in order to create the best lifestyle possible for the citizens.
I hope none of these naive people live in the United States.
The Bush government continues to claim that it has unlimited powers to break laws, due to the war.
The Bush government started the war, on the grounds that Iraq, and its WMD, endangered the United States.
Depending on who you talk to, the WMD are either (a) imaginary; the invention of the Bush government, or (b) in Syria. Either way, they make poor grounds for a war in Iraq.

The Bush government continues to insist that the war in Iraq must be fought until victory is achieved - and, as a result, insists that the Bush government retain unlimited powers to break laws until the War on Terror is won.
The condition for victory in the War on Terror has not been stated, whether it is a pro-Republican government in Iraq, the death of every terrorist in the world, or just the withdrawal of troops. The Bush government claims the right to decide what constitutes victory.
Thus, the Bush government claims unlimited powers to break laws until such time as the Bush government decides to give them up.
And if you disagree, you are an enemy of freedom.

Yeah. Me too.

The President's Energy Plan

This is what George W. Bush promised in the State of the Union address, when he promised to work towards oil independence.
Coal. $281 million to develop clean coal technologies.
Solar power. $148 million to research solar power technology.
Wind power. $44 million for wind energy research.
Ethanol. $150 million for research into ethanol powered cars.
Plug-in hybrids. $30 million, to research vehicles that will use virtually no gasoline.
Hydrogen. $289 million, to develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

A few observations.
1) Notice that all of this money is for research. They don't have to produce a single new invention; they just have to do the research.
2) Most of this money is to go into the auto industry - the industry that produces cars, be they ethanol, hydrogen, or treadmill powered. A total of $469 million to revitalize the Big Three, who have been shutting down plants because they can't compete with Toyota. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
3) The second biggest morsel went to the coal industry. Whatever happened to the Power of the Free Marketplace, which Rewards good businesses, Punishes bad businesses, and Can Monitor Itself? Apparently, if you control enough political clout, you don't have to worry about things like fair competition.

I wonder - has anyone told the President about Tidal Generators? Little turbines placed in a row offshore that are turned by the movement of the tides? Has anyone told the President about Ocean Thermal systems? Deep water is colder than surface water. You take a long pipe and warm the water down there, which rises. Put a turbine in the shaft, and you get electricity. Power the heater at the top with solar power, and you're in business.
Are any of these ideas getting funding?
Or is it all pork?

The State of the Union speech - with comments

Here's some of what was said - with observations. After all, Observations are what this blog is all about.

"In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger."
So, you won't be calling Murtha a coward anymore, right? Fat chance of this happening, George - the neo-cons are the most insult-happy people on earth!
"In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on Earth. Today, there are 122."
Name them. Places like Zimbabwe, Egypt, and all the other democracies-because-we-SAY-they're-democracies don't count, by the way.
There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat ... The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil."
Battle of Cannae - Hannibal pulls back his center. The Romans rush forward. Hannibal pulls in his flanks, encircles the Romans, and wipes them out. One of the greatest victories in the Ancient world. Sometimes there's victory in retreat, George, so long as you're a good general.
"We are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory."
"Shoot them all" is also a clear plan for victory, George. Do you have a workable plan for victory? And what do you consider victory? If a united Iraqi people decide to sell oil to China exclusively, and resolves never to speak to the US again, would that be victory? What is it you are trying to accomplish?
"Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy."
So what is responsible criticism, George? When you're failing, every criticism sounds like defeatism. Second guessing may not be a strategy, but the first step to revising a strategy is second guessing. And acknowledging that something is wrong.
"The Palestinian people have voted in elections – now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace."
You just threw out their election platform, George.
"America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."
Just don't do anything we don't want you to, own any weapons we don't want you to have, elect any governments that don't espouse Western values, or sell your oil to China.
"Fortunately, this Nation has superb professionals in law enforcement, intelligence, the military, and homeland security. These men and women are dedicating their lives to protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime – so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act."
Drug trafficking and organized crime are flourishing, George - your superb professionals need new tools. And pay raises. And more staffing.
"It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al-Qaida operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack – based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute – I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America."
And hopefully the unsuspected al-Qaida operatives will be stupid enough to hold phone conversations as if they were characters in an episode of Get Smart, so that you'll notice them. And hopefully nobody will be tempted to use these intercepts for less noble purposes.
"If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaida, we want to know about it – because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
And if your superb professionals tell you about it, will you listen this time? Gathering the information is not the problem. Interpreting and acting on the information is the problem, George, and you are not famous for doing either.

There's more - Bush says we must seek alternatives to oil (I'll believe that when I see it - Exxon has a lot of pull around here - ), says we must have illegal immigrants because the economy depends on them ( - although not as much pull as Haliburton does.), refuses to allow further stem-cell research (no biggie - all the CEOs will just have to go to Korea for treatments), and says that the economy is strong, with 4.6 million new jobs (minus the ones Ford cut.).

More later.

A different state of the Union

A few looks at what's going on.
- Just last month, the GAO issued a report warning that the administration still had no plan in place for freezing terrorist cash assets. So, we'll listen to their phone messages but we won't stop their spending. Cute.
- Ford received $250 million in tax credits as part of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. They just eliminated hundreds of jobs. Cute.
- Vincente Fox estimates that there are 23 million Mexicans in the US illegally. They have been given maps to help them get here, and the Mexican Army has been known to provide them with fire support, "accidentally" of course. The government response: hire them to rebuild New Orleans.
- Saddam's WMD may have been shipped out of Iraq right under the government's noses. Pardon me, guys, but while you were raving about how Saddam could use these weapons on us at any moment, shouldn't you have been watching to make sure they weren't? I mean, getting them out of Iraq would have been the first step, right?
- The Abramoff scandal: Republicans respond to corruption charges by saying that the Democrats took money, too. As if that made it all right. Hey, guys - if the Democrats jumped off a cliff, would you jump too? Meanwhile, the president has just "promoted" the head investigator to a new job. As reported elsewhere, Abramoff got away from his last scandal, in Guam, when the president removed the US Attorney running the investigation.
- Exxon, which just posted record profits for the year, wants the money - $5 billion - it spent on the Exxon Valdez disaster . . . refunded.
- China, future enemy #1, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, while France, the neocon punching bag, is number 2. America's annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means all those America-First ultra-patriotic corporations, like Haliburton and Exxon, are either not selling too much, or are putting their profits into offshore banks. So much for their faith in America.
- Domestic spying, by both NSA and the Pentagon, defended with the statement "national security". In other words, we need to do this in order to know if anyone is planning to attack us. Meanwhile, bin Laden announces - on international TV - that he intends to attack us.

And so it goes.

What happens to wiretap info?

As George W. Bush continues to defend his wiretap policy as essential for the defense of the country, one has to wonder what he would do with the information once he got it?
FEMA is still a shambles. The police and fire services still haven't received any extra money for hiring. The FBI is still looking for a computer system that works. Customs still works on random sampling. Cargoes still enter port with only superficial checks.
Why do I get the feeling that if the NSA intercepted a call saying "All is ready. Begin the operation in two days.", the only thing the Bush government would get out of it is a two day head start on the Blame Game?

The Small Town Hick also appears on the Blogger News Network.

The Catholic Supreme Court?

An article in The Economist implies that the Republicans have engineered a Catholic takeover of the Supreme Court, as part of its long range plan to capture the catholic vote. Conservative Catholics have allied with Protestant Evangelicals over things like Abortion and Family Values.
Thus, men like Alito are nominated.

There is an old saying - when the gods really hate you, they grant your wishes.

What happens, I wonder, when the laws are changed?
A not-insignificant number of evangelicals consider the Catholic church to be the tool of the anti-Christ. A lot of Catholics don't consider Protestants to be "saved".
When the rulings they are both after become fact - something that could come about before the end of Bush's term of office - will the two allies part company?
If so, the Republicans will have loaded the court and gained nothing.

The Pope has already come out against Bush policies once. I wonder whether the Catholics on the Supreme Court are willing to support Bush over the Pope.
I wonder what Bush's reaction will be if he finds out he has turned the Third Arm of the Government over to the Pope?

Syria has the WMD.

From Blogs for Bush:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

He says this in his new book, Saddam's Secrets, which is now likely to enjoy a GOP surge in sales comparable to that book Osama boosted a few days ago.
I suspect that if Syria really did have WMD, the Bush government would have done something by now - if it were really serious about such things.
Anyway, now I guess we've got something on everybody over there. Iran has nukes, Syria has WMD, Palestine is ruled by Hamas, . . . we've got justification to do anything anywhere in the Middle East.

Elections in Palestine

The Palistinian elections are drawing to a close, with Hamas a close second to Arafat's ruling Fatah party. Voters stated that they wanted to punish Fatah for it's 12 year history of corruption.
Sounds like the Canadian election. I wonder if this is the start of a trend?

Rebuilding Canada's Military

Canada's new Prime Minister, Steven Harper, has several big jobs ahead of him. One of the hardest and most expensive will also be one of the easiest and most rewarding.
Rebuilding the Canadian military.
Canada has a superb body of troops; well disciplined, well trained, well motivated - and saddled with equipment no self-respecting Third World nation would keep around. The latest acquisition was a set of leaky second hand submarines, one of which nearly went down for the final time during delivery.
The Liberals never really believed in the military. They were content in the fact that the US would never allow an invasion by a foreign power, since it would endanger the US as well. Therefore, the ruling party felt it could safely earmark military funding for more appropriate uses - like patronage.
As a result, the Canadian Armed Forces are equipped with leaking subs, ships with metal fatigue, 20 year old tanks, unarmored patrol vehicles, and obsolete everything.

Fortunately - perversely - this helps.
The Harper government now has reason to scrap everything - start from the ground up. New planes. New guns.
After 20 years of Liberal multi-million dollar make-work programs in the Maritime provinces, that lasted a year each, the Conservatives can set up a military shipyard and build state of the art patrol ships. They could retire the current (hah!) fleet, and re-equip the navy with vessels that can do the job.
Unlike the NATO powers, who must rework their anti-Russian forces into anti-terrorist forces somehow, the Canadian army can just rebuild straight into a 21st century military.

Let's see if Harper and his people are smart enough to see the possibilities.

The Small Town Hick also blogs on The Blogger News Network.

The Canadian Election

The Conservative Party of Canada has won, with a total of 124 seats. The Loyal Opposition will be the Liberals, with 103 seats. Bloc 51, NDP 29.
For the sake of all those readers out there in the heartland of America who don't keep up with Canadian politics, a short explanation.
The two main parties are the Liberals and the Conservatives - the equivalent of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Here's what you need to know about the Liberals. They have been in power, barring a few politically humorous interludes, since Nixon. They have become arrogant and corrupt. They considered control of Canada to be somewhere between a birthright and a sure thing. The last Prime Minister, Paul Martin, executed a political coup to gain control of the party. They have just been implicated in one of the biggest patronage scandals in the nation's history - just the latest in a string of scandals lasting over a decade.
Here's what you need to know about the Conservatives. They couldn't win a majority while running against the Ottawa Thieves' Guild.
The party, as it is today, is a fusion between the moribund Progressive Conservatives, a backbiting group that hasn't had a strategy since the early 60s, and the Reform Party, an American style right wing fundamentalist party started in Alberta, aka Texas North. The oil-rich cowboys of the Canadian West were tired of being controlled by the white collar East, and created their own party to take control.
Now, they've got it. Sort of.
There are two other parties. The Bloc Quebecois is the latest version of the Quebec seperatist movement. Imagine if America's southern states created a Confederacy Party, running on a platform of secession from the Union. That's the Bloc in a nutshell. It makes Canada unique among all Western Powers in that its government has its own self-destruct mechanism.
The other party, the NDP, consists of everyone who wouldn't join the Liberals because they weren't far enough to the left. They are probably the main reason for the Liberal success over the last few decades - all the tree huggers and fuzzy thinkers that have plagued other left wing parties like the Democrats, driving away the moderates, all left and created their own party.
Now look at the vote figures again.
In Canadian politics, the magic number is 155. That is the number for a majority vote.
Notice that of the four parties in power, only two can control a majority between them, other than that of the two main parties. That is the Conservatives and the Bloc.
This probably means that, to stay in power, the Conservatives are going to have to appease the Quebec seperatists.
But note, also, that to defeat the Conservatives, the Liberals must have the support of both the Bloc and the NDP - both of whom are going to be acting as power brokers for the next few years. The Far Left and the Self-Destruct Mechanism - the DealMakers and DealBreakers.
Just remember that, next time you hear "interesting" news out of Canada.

A Post 9/11 View of the World

"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong." Karl Rove said today.
What is a post 9/11 view of the world, Mr. Rove?
It isn't the idea that someone out there hates America, Mr Rove. Even the Small Town Hick read Lederer's The Ugly American when his was young - and the book's been around since the 50s.
Is it the idea that somebody out there can actually hurt SuperCountry? Has the World's Only Superpower discovered that most of the world's nations has a stock of kryptonite?
I think that everybody, from the farthest left appeaser to the farthest right apocalyptic, knows that now. So, no, I don't think that this is what Mr. Rove was thinking of.
No, I suspect that Mr. Rove's view of the world, post 9/11, is that only strength counts. You can't talk with these people, you can only shoot them. Might is Right.
Wrong.
Civilization depends on talking with people. Even Ghengis Khan didn't kill everybody, even Hitler negotiated.
The Rove post-9/11 view of the world is a cowboy sitting at the door of his house, rifle in hand, peering out into the darkness. He's told the womenfolk and hands that this is Injun Territory, and that the woods are probably full of savages, waiting to charge in and kill them all. He hasn't done much of a job of barring the doors and windows, everything he does do, whether the hands like it or not, is always excused with the comment "You want the injuns to get you?" Inside, he is hoping that the cavalry has done its job of keeping the injuns busy; he may even believe it. Thing is, he won't know until the first face peers in through the window, whether he is safe or not. And of course, by that time it's too late.
However, the Rove view doesn't allow any other course. No peace pipe, no bars on the window, no detatchment of cavalry kept nearby, no asking the neighbors for help. Stubborn old coot.
And while he's in control, that's how it's going to stay.
Let's hope he's right. If he's not, . . .

The Osama tape

By now, you've all heard that Osama bin Ladin has released another tape to the media.
In this one, he offers a truce, stating that Americans don't really want a war, and threatens another terrorist act within America itself.
Let's look at these two statements.

1) The offer of a truce has been touted on the right wing blogs as Osama giving up. Yeah, right. He's running out of suicide bombers and Number 2 men. Much more likely he wants to regain control there in Iraq. If you haven't noticed, the bombs haven't been aimed at Americans much anymore - they've been aimed at civilians. That's the trouble with living in a cave, incommunicado - your people start taking the initiative.

2) The right has also been laughing off the threat, when they've paid any attention at all to it. The futile posturing of a defeated man, they say. Perhaps. But if he DOES have something set up, this is the time to use it. Bush has labeled himself as the war president. Whenever anyone has asked him about the scandals that have risen up around him and his government, he brings up 9/11, the war on terrorism, and his devotion to winning it.
It was his image as warrior that won his re-election; people saw him as a better protector than Kerry.
A successful terrorist attack, right now, on US soil, could very well ruin him. It would crush his last talking points, and those of his party.
Which is what makes the timing so interesting. The NSA scandal is in full swing, and the Congressional elections are at hand. Proving that the NSA wiretaps were useless - didn't stop bin Laden! - and that the Republicans had frittered away the last 4 years doing nothing for security, would probably mean a Democrat majority in the House.
Which could mean a hostile government that would hound Bush and his people right out of office.

I don't know about you, but I'm staying away from monuments until after the next election.

Martin Luther King - the legacy. Maybe.

January 20 is the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. I have been reading many blogs that have "celebrated" this holiday.
April 4th might be a more appropriate day to remember Dr. King. It was the day of his death. And for years now they have been trying to kill off his legacy.
In the last week I have read about how MLK would have hated affirmative action, fought against quotas in universities, and supported the war in Iraq. Nice that he's not around to dispute these opinions, isn't it.
Martin Luther King wanted people - all people - to be treated like people. He would have hated affirmative action but he would have supported it as well, until its job was done. He would have fought against private schools and breaks for the rich while the poor couldn't get medical treatment.
But the vast majority of pundits don't care anymore what HE wanted. They use his reputation, his arguments, to promote their own positions.
Yes, I think most of those in power right now would like to celebrate his death, rather than his birth - because April 4th was the day his name and reputation became theirs, to do with as they wished.

The Nature of Conservative thought

I just read an interesting post on the conservative way of thought here.
I decided to test it by checking out the local conservative blogs.

Blogs:

Blogs For Bush: latest topics
A Tale of Two Cities (Alito post)
Blogger Conference Call with Reps. Chocola & Barrett
B4B Podcast: Episode 1
Hitting Below The Beltway Blogroll
Party Likes It's 2006
Alito Heads Towards Easy Confirmation
Iranian Bluster
Liberal Delusions On Alito
On Pundit Review Radio Tonight

Little Green Footballs: Latest topics
Egypt Denounces Iran's Manhattan Project
The Hebron Riots
Markos vs. Sullivan
Democracy Palestinian Style
"May Allah Destroy Her"

The Right Wing News: Latest topics
The Democratic Underground Post Of The Day: The Dems Are America's Sunnis?
The Gang-Of-14 Deal Was Good For The GOP? Get Serious...
Harry Reid's Abramoff Problem
GPS Devices For Guns?
Animal Loving Freaks By Alan Caruba

Ogre's Politics and News: Latest topics
Eating Cake (humor)
Martin Luther King Day
Guard Our Borders!
How Bad Do You Want Freedom?
Charlotte Observer Hates Free Speech
NC Lawmakers Want Cash (anti-lobbyst)
USS Clinton (funny picture)
Just Wondering (Pat Robertson post)
Kyoto Treaty is Dead

Right On!: Latest topics
Can We Quote you On That? (Iran)
WalMart
Wow (Islam)
A Middle American View on Politics
A Soldier's Point of View

Conservative Trail Head: Latest topics
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Nuclear Iran
Abortion Transition
When is Abortion OK?
Dems Win - DeLay Out!

Look for yourselves.
What do you think?

The spies who couldn't shoot straight.

In the middle of a firestorm about NSA spying, comes a failed attack in Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was supposedly in the village of Damadola.
Unfortunately, the intelligence was wrong. He was not in the village when the CIA-ordered airstrike killed 18 people - none of them terrorists.
Senator Evan Bayh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that the problem was that the Pakistani government was unable to control that part of the country. Wrong. The problem is that America is firing blind - it cannot find its enemy, so it shoots anything that rustles in the grass.
The apologists who have been touting the Iraq war as being about fighting the enemy over there so that we don't have to fight them over here, have been silent on the correlation between the NSA story and the Pakistani tragedy.
One says that they may be here anyway - why else spy on US phone calls? The other says we don't know where they are, and can't keep them under observation for very long.
That doesn't sound reassuring. The news that the terrorists are switching to disposable cell phones is even more depressing. How do we fight an enemy we can't find?

King George

President George W. Bush has in his possession executive orders giving him absolute dictatorial power over the government. These “national security initiatives” were put into place by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. President Reagan signed off on the initiatives and they have remained in place, dormant, until now. They would allow Bush to impose martial law, institute mass arrests of "subversive" individuals, and send troops into the streets.

Afraid yet?

Gun Safes not safe

There's a new sport in Canada, and it doesn't involve ice.
Organized groups are breaking into the homes of known gun collectors and robbing their gun safes.
If this were a matter of them getting away with some museum quality muskets and WWII Lugers, it would be bad enough. but these gangs are getting ahold of some serious modern weaponry.
Just as an example, two of the weapons netted in a recent robbery were Steyr AUG assault rifles - modern military weapons.
These guns are turning up in the hands of Toronto gangs, and have been pushing the Toronto homicide levels up.

These were not easy targets. The rifles mentioned above were taken from a 770 lb safe. These people are capable of breaking into any storage facility.
Is this a problem for the States? Depends. Smuggling goes both ways, and the price of a Steyr might be beyond that of a local gang.
More importantly, it goes to show how far the modern criminal element is willing to go to get their hands on some firepower. Remember we are talking about Canadians here - even their hoods still say please and thank you.

It is time to rethink the gun issue. It does no good to have a gun in the house if somebody just steals it. If you're going to keep a gun, you need to have a gun attitude.
As in keeping it with you, and knowing - really knowing - how to use it. If you're not willing to make the 24/7 committment, you need a new hobby.

Pat gets another 15 minutes of fame

Pat Robertson has apologized.
Duh.
Has anyone else come to the conclusion that these "off the cuff" remarks are not mistakes? That Pat - and his 700 Club - are not sorry at all about remarks Pat now refers to as "inappropriate and insensitive in light of a national grief"?
After all, this is his third major gaff in the last few months. You'd think that somebody in the organization would be putting him on a 7 second delay, and telling him to stick to the script.
Instead, he continues to make outrageous statements, which get him a lot of press, and for which he later apologizes, getting more press. He has become an advertisement for the 700 Club, attracting the attention of reactionary zealots, and no doubt filling his coffers with their money.
As a Christian, I am shocked and appalled by this man, by this organization, by its crusade to ruin all that is good and right about my faith in order to maintain their political and financial position of power. Pat Robertson's appeal to the flagellants of the country denigrates the values he pretends to uphold.
It is time to remove this hypocrite from the airwaves, and shut down his network of hate, whose sole purpose in existing is to continue to raise money for unChristian political purposes. His messages of intolerance and fake piety, played out before the national media so that he can expand his power ever wider, is no longer acceptable.
Even his allies are deserting him. He was leading a group of evangelicals planning a $50 million evangelical Christian heritage center along the Sea of Galilee. They have kicked him off the board, so to speak. The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that evangelical leaders "must exercise sensitivity and grace towards the people and leadership of the nation of Israel."
Duh.

Elections of the North

For those of you who don't watch what's happening in Canada, there's an election going on.
The Dominion of Canada has been governed by the Liberal party, barring a few blips, since Nixon was in power. That's a long time, especially when you take into account the No-Confidence motion. Any member of Parliament can dissolve the government and cause an election just by calling for this vote, and having a majority of members vote yes. Beats impeachment all to heck - if the US had this system, both Clinton and Dubya would have been removed from office within their first terms.
Anyway, the Liberals were just caught in a multi-million dollar pork scam. A huge scandal. The Conservative party had no problem winning a vote of non-confidence.
At the moment, it looks like a probable win for the Conservative party, led by Stephen Harper, who may be the closest thing to a Bush-style neo-con in the North. Much of the opposition to the Conservatives, such as it is, has been caused by the fear that he will do for Canada what Bush has done for the US.
So, if Harper does get in, expect a big change in how Canada and the US does business.

1984, 22 years late.

Has Orwell's world come at last to the United States of America?

The war on Terror is a remarkably easy one. No victory is needed - just vigilance. No evidence is needed - just whisper "national security". Meet every question with the accusation of "fellow traveler". Seize absolute power - and claim it's the only way to keep everyone safe.
How quickly we forget.
This generation's islamofascist is last generation's commie, with the black cloak and homberg replaced by a turban and robe. Again he waits under the bed, waiting for you to grow complacent so he can sneak out and enslave you.
The march of time has changed him a little - he now wants to blow you up instead of fluoridate your water, but he's the same guy. The same imaginary bogeyman used by demagogues all over the world to keep the masses quiet and obedient.

The McCarthy tapdance is back.
"What are you doing?"
Can't tell you. Top Secret."
"Is it working?"
"Can't tell you. Top Secret."
"You're breaking the law."
"Traitor! Only a commie or fellow traveler would say that. I want a list of anyone you know who thinks like you do."
"You can't do that!"
"If I don't, communists will pollute our precious bodily fluids. You don't want that, do you?"
And on and on.
And when it was all over, the commies turned out to be a bunch of geezers on the other side of the world, and McCarthy turned out to be a panic-monger.

Only a nation can defeat a nation. Only if we are all looking, all peering into the alleys and listening at the next table, can we beat terrorism. Together, we can find and defeat the terrorists. A secret organization listening to taped conversations cannot do that. Nor can a government that won't tell us what's really going on, that won't trust us.
We have to have a government that trusts us, our judgment, and our loyalty. A government that restricts our freedoms and lies to us will collapse to outside attack.
If you don't believe me, just look at Russia.

Smarter - but for how long?

"We both have meritocracies. Yours (America) is a talent meritocracy. Ours (Singapore) is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well - like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."
So spoke Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister of Education of Singapore, in this week's issue of Newsweek. He was pointing out why Singapore's children test better than Americans in math and science, but do worse in the real world, producing fewer inventors, entrepreneurs, and executives. Here, Americans have the edge.
Will this last?
Already we are teaching ourselves not to be curious, not to make waves, not to question. Church and government both expect their subjects to accept their word as fact, and to support their positions without question. Whether it is Intelligent Design or Intelligence without Oversite, we are told to forget what facts and reason tell us, and to rely on faith. Or else.
We have seen this before. Russia crippled itself with Lysenkoism and Five Year Plans; it now struggles to reclaim world power status.
The days of American manual labor are numbered. Foreign workers make things cheaper. Foreign programmers type cheaper.
What keeps Americans - what will keep Americans in the lead - are the qualities Tharman mentioned. Curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to challenge authority.
Lose that, and the U.S. becomes another Russia - a third rate nation with nukes, crooks, and thugs, lusting after lost glories, and endangering the world with schemes for power.

Bowl Games

I've spent the last few days watching football. So sue me.
I have learned two things from watching these games.
1) They're better than the NFL. The college players really TRY. And the crowds are more into it, too.
2) The networks have categorized the fans - and it's not a nice category.
Look at the commercials - beer and trucks. Look at the game - they now mark where the line of scrimmage is. Like you couldn't figure it out for yourself. The commentators all speak in catch phrases.
In short, if you watch football, you're a redneck.

I'm a hick, but I'm not a redneck. I have a job, I have an IQ, and I bathe.
I don't like the creeping implications the media is painting

We Remember

At the end of the year, I like to look back and remember some of the people we lost, and to celebrate their lives - especially the ones you may not have heard of.

It was a bad year for cartoons. Tigger, Piglet, Fred Flintstone, Tony the Tiger and the Jolly Green Giant all lost their voices.
Bad year for Star Trek, too. The franchise died, along with the Chief Engineer. So Long, Mr. Doohan.
Bad year for Our Gang. Butch and Porky both bought it.
Bad year for Music. Shirley Horn died. Go find one of her records. Now. Lalo Guerrero, father of Chicano music, died. George Scott, of the Blind Boys of Alabama. Robert Moog, the synthesizer man, who thereby invented 70s music. Skitch Henderson, Tonight Show bandleader. Link Wray, guitarist who inspired many of today's artists. R.L. Burnside, the bluesman. Long John Baldry. Go buy his record, too.

Other notables you may not have heard of:
Will Eisner, the comic book creator of the Spirit, and the graphic novel. The man who pretty much changed comics from Cape-Man Saves the Day to serious stuff.
Peter Foy, the theatrical effects creator. Before they said "You will believe a man can fly", he made two women fly - Mary Martin in Peter Pan, and Sally Field in The Flying Nun. An artist from the days before computer imaging.
Philip Johnson, the architect who popularized the "glass box" skyscraper, thus making sure that every city in the world looked like New York, and vice versa. He redeemed himself in later years.
Dale Messick, comic strip artist, inventer of the first female investigative reporter, Brenda Starr.
Evan Hunter, creator of Ed McBain, the police procedural, and as a result, inspiration of just about everything on TV right now.
Frank Gorshin. 10,000 voices, one of them the one and only Riddler. Sorry, Carrey.
Stan Berenstein. If you have kids, you know about the Berenstein Bears.
Dennis Flanagan, who revitalized Scientific American.
Samuel W. Alderson, inventor of the crash test dummy.
George Atkinson, inventor of the video rental business.
"Hack" Hackworth, America's most decorated veteran at the time of his death.
Gerry Thomas, inventor of the TV dinner.
John Van Hengel, creator of the food bank.
Alexander Yakovlev, key framer of the policies of Glasnost and Peristroika.
Peter F. Drucker, writer of the first "management" book.
Jay Hammond, the former governor R-Alaska, best Republican ever.
Joe Grant, one of the last of Disney's team.

They will be remembered.

The National Loss of Faith

And no, I'm not talking about the secular Christmas nonsense.
I'm talking about the loss of faith in our institutions.

We have become a nation of conspiracy theorists. We have convinced ourselves that every organization around us is secretly trying to screw us around.
Whether you are left or right wing, we have one thing in common - we both think that half of our elected politicians are traitors, to America and to American ideals.
The number one book on the market alleges that the Catholic Church has been running a cover-up since St. Peter was in charge - a cover up that has included over the years everything from Opus Dei to Freemasonry, in a plot that wouldn't have made the cut for an X-Files episode.
Don't get started on JFK. I understand the newest theory implicates everyone except L. Ron Hubbard and E.T. So many groups have been named over the years that the Presidential limo should have looked like Bonnie and Clyde's flivver.

It's no wonder that people are embracing everything from Intelligent Design to UFOlogy. When you believe that your whole life is a fraud, facts become suspect.

Well, folks, here is some old Hick advice.
Secrets are things held by two people, not twenty. The Catholic Church did not keep a secret for 2,000 years. Somebody would have lost their faith and spilled the beans before now. JFK might have been killed by the mafia, but not by the Illuminati, the Cubans, or the Secret Cabal That Has Run The Country Since 1963.
The Democrats are not traitors, they are just idiots trying to get re-elected. The Republicans, ditto. The ACLU is clumsily trying to help, not revive communism.
The world is in the state it's in because of plain old fashioned incompetence, greed, apathy, and ignorance. No secret plan exists to keep us down.

So have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas, and do what you can to make people's lives a little better this season. Don't preach, don't picket. Don't assume that PETA is full of terrorists, conservatives want a dictatorship, or that the guy at the end of the road works for Al-Qaida.
Be safe. Be happy. For one day, anyway.

When is enough enough?

So, what action by the current administration IS too much for the Right?
Is there anything, other than sex with an intern, that the right wing blogs will not explain away, deny, or refuse to talk about?
So far, they have not balked at:
- Bush acknowledging that the reasons he gave for invading Iraq were false,
- Media manipulation galore, from Gannongate, to pay-for-play in this country (remember Armstrong Williams?), to pay-for-play in Iraq.
- Scandals involving DeLay, Abramoff, Plame, Brown, Libby, bridges to nowhere, wiretaps, . . .
- flip-flops on Social Security, troop withdrawls, Supreme Court nominees, . . .
- Bush's inability to move quickly, seen on 9/11 (storybook time), and Katrina (guitar time).
- endless statements on how Iraq is going well - after 4 years, we now have an election most of the participants are calling corrupted . . .
- the abandonment of the chase for Bin Laden; in 2006, the only troops who will be working in force in Afghanistan will be the CANADIANS!
- FEMA
- the Budget
- torture

Meanwhile, most of the accomplishments of the Bush administration have been negative accomplishments.
Terrorists have NOT struck.
. . . at least, Al-Qaida has not struck in this country. Several eco-terrorist groups have successfully eluded the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security. Al-Qaida seems to have spent its time attacking other countries - and have managed to do so despite America's wiretaps, interrogations, and surveillance. Either that, or America just didn't bother warning anyone.
Plus, this also excludes all the attacks made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe Al-Qaida is lazy, finding it too easy to attack Americans abroad to bother attacking the mainland. So, hats off to America's brave fighting men and women, staked out like Fay before King Kong, with the government hoping that Al-Kong will take the sacrifice and leave them alone.
The country has NOT entered a depression.
. . . although this could be more due to the actions of American businesses rather than the administration. There is no sign that oil companies are hiring, despite the windfalls they got from the government this year.

Merry Christmas.

Where are their medals?

For four years now, American troops have been in constant danger, constant combat. They have been through a hell we can only barely understand. Through it all, as in all wars, there have been moments of bravery, of valor, of heroism.
Why have they not been rewarded?
Why have I not heard, from any source - MSM, government, or blog - of any award for valor given out to a soldier in Iraq?
Has no one in the last four years produced even one act worthy of the Silver Star? The Medal of Honor?

There are several ways in which a country honors its troops. One of them is to reward their bravery. When is the government going to do so for the men and women in Iraq?

Terrorists may be using your cell phone.

The phones of top executives from Canada's Rogers Telecom had been the target of repeated cloning by a group linked to Hezbollah. (Cloning is the duplication of a cellphone's identity by copying its number and encrypted security code.)
Rogers apparently does have a method of detecting unusual patterns of calls (such as you, having made local calls only for years, suddenly calling Syria daily.) However, they are sometimes unwilling to shut off service.
The main reason is that most of the "clones" are of phones belonging to top executives, both of Rogers and of other companies.
“They were using actually a pretty brilliant psychology. Nobody wants to cut off Ted Rogers' phone or any people that are directly under Ted Rogers, so they took their scanners to our building, like our north building, where our senior top, top, top executives are. They took their scanners there and also to Yorkville, where there are a lot of high rollers and like it would be a major PR blunder to shoot first and ask questions later. . . . Nobody wants to shut off Ted. Even if he is calling Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait.” said a company spokeperson.

Nice.

Thanks to The Toronto Globe and Mail for the information.

The words from Iran.

Question: does calling someone a Holocaust Denier enough to invoke Godwin's Law?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now trying to become the white supremist poster boy. He has called the Holocaust a myth, and wants the Jews sent back where they came from. He's done everything but shave his head and wear Doc Martins.
The fact that he's doing it is not suprising - he is, after all, an embattled leader in a Mulsim theocracy. Threatening Israel and badmouthing the US comes right after praising Allah in the Iranian campaigner's diary. What's unsettling is that he's doing it with American military forces on two of his borders. One would think he isn't too concerned with invasion.
He may be right. This is the final repercussion of the bad intel/lack of planning that has plagued the Iraq War. Iran, and Syria, are not afraid of the United States right now. They see Uncle Sam as a bungler, vulnerable to a few suicide bombers.
So, now what? Do we ignore him, confirm their beliefs, and get ready for a wave of terrorist attacks? Or do we attack, and commit overworked soldiers to another series of battles?

Where's the Religious Right Now?

While shopping for Christmas presents this year, I came across a set of cards called Guardian Angels. Created by the aptly named Angela McGerr, it is a card drawing oracle designed to help provide you with guidance for your life.
Why hasn't the Religious Right jumped all over this?
For all its nice art and better intentions, this is a tricked up Tarot deck. It is magic in Christian clothing. It includes a book of 100 angels, like Aratron, Guardian Angel of Nature's Magic. I do not believe I am familiar with that name, neither from the Bible nor the Apochripha. Nor have I heard of Och, Guardian Angel of Chrystal Alchemy. I'm sure I would have remembered THAT name. Unless Ms McGerr is claiming divine contact, it is a total invention which she wishes us to believe is a sending of God and a guide for our lives.
It is a lie, and a dangerous one.
Using this set replaces judgement and knowledge of God's plan with a faith in the draw, and the randomness of chance. The unfortunate believer has as much chance of getting a correct answer to his problem than he has of drawing to an inside straight.

Dobson and Robertson are hyping the "de-Christing of Christmas" as the greatest assault against Christianity since the fall of Rome, yet this insidious little game - and all the other similar little angelic oracles - are a greater danger by an order of magnitude. They are an assault on the core beliefs of the religion, not just on the public use of language.
If the Religious Right really cared about the faith, they would be concentrating on getting these sets out of the Christian book stores. To heck with what they call the 25th!

The voice of the Right?

Just in case you were wondering whether Fox News was really the fair and balanced voice of truth and true Americans, . . .
During last month’s street riots in France, Fox News ran a banner during a news segment, that read “Muslim riots.” Billionaire Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal didn't like it. He phoned Murdock. He had it changed to "Urban Riots."

That's right folks. While the army's been paying Iraqi reporters to print pro-US stories, al-Walid has been getting anti-Muslim statements off the air. And, seeing as he owns 5.5% of Fox, he didn't even have to pay.

The ACLU - love it or hate it.

Here's some of the love.

And here's some of the hate.
And here.

Much of the ranting against the ACLU appears to be that it pursues lawsuits for people some others don't feel deserve lawsuits, or against people who don't deserve to be sued.

Defender of rights, or too PC? Arguments exist on both sides.

Side-tracked

Why are we all getting so bogged down in trivia?
Terrible things are going on in our world, in our country. The damage from Katrina has not been repaired yet, and we have no idea whether we can afford next year's blows. Bird Flu is on the horizon, terrorists are still on the march, and . . .

And the left is trying to get a Crip off death row. Because he wrote children's books.
Suppose he wrote self-help books, or an autobiography. Would it be ok to execute him then?
The man is a cold-blooded killer, with ties to a group that spans the continent. He needs to feel what the law can impose upon him, and his friends need to see it done.

Meanwhile, the right is frothing at the attack on Christmas. They are pissed that WalMart and Target are selling "holiday trees" instead of Christmas trees. Maybe if they looked at how those trees are made, and by whom, out there in the third world, they might have second thoughts about associating HIS name with them. Ho Ho Ho that, boys and girls.
Anyway, if the Soviet Union, Red China, and militant Islam can't kill Christianity, then Sam Walton's juggernaught won't either.

Meanwhile, the left are objecting to the new Narnia movies, on account of the "Christian" subtext. What, they've got holiday trees in it, or something?
Yes, C.S.Lewis was a Christian apologist, and there are traces of Christian thought in the books, and movie. There are also creatures from Greek myth, Norse myth, and Germanic myth.
Or did you myth the fauns, dwarves, and giants?
Honestly, this is the old Dungeons and Dragons argument again. D+D is satanic because it has devils as adversaries. Narnia is Christian because some of the ideas are Christian.
Well, Lord of the Rings had the same sorts of elements. Go rain on that parade for a while.

Meanwhile, . . . the birds are coming. And so are the hurricanes.

Generalities

The biggest things crushing debate in the US are generalities.
All Muslims are evil. Their "religion of peace" is a sham. They are all anti-American.
Do you believe that? Then why are thousands of American soldiers risking their lives to save them? Why are they taking all this abuse when they could just sweep across Iraq, Iran, and Syria, getting rid of all the terrorists?
All Democrats are moonbats. All Republicans are nazis. All fundamentalists are crazy. The list goes on.

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Agreed, several members of Congress have proven themselves guilty, as have several bloggers. But it doesn't hurt to listen to alternate arguments. Think of it as a test of your cognitive functions. Read what they say, and try to come up with a counter-argument that doesn't contain insults, off-topic references, or circular reasoning.

Oh, and several Muslims don't believe in terrorism. Including, by the way, the families of those being killed by the terrorists - at a greater rate than Americans, right now.

Still loved by the Iraqi

According to a Knight Ridder report, Iraqi newspaper, TV and radio reporters who join the "Baghdad Press Club" -- a group formed by U.S. Army officers last year -- receive as much as $50 per "favorable" article from the United States.
So, we have gone from being greeted by cheers and flowers to having to BUY favorable press.
But we're still number one in their hearts, right?

Lennon

Today is the anniversary of John Lennon's death - an event which shows just how far some people are willing to go for fame.
I wonder if some people in Iraq have learned this lesson?
Another bunch of peace activists have been kidnapped, and their captors demand the release of all prisoners.
What will that accomplish?
The prisoners go free. The hostages die anyway. New prisoners are taken. The wheel turns again.

Merry Christmas to the troops in Iraq.
Merry Christmas to the troops in Afghanistan, a group of people who have been mostly overshadowed by the more (un)popular conflict next door. Their job is just as arduous, just as dangerous.
But their stories are not getting on CNN. Merry Christmas, folks.

Wasted Time

The Bush administration will go down in history for, if nothing else, all the wasted potential.
They've had a firm majority for years now, both in the House and the Senate. They cleaned out the bureaucracy and inserted their own key people.
And for what? What have they really accomplished?
True, the war was a major distraction, but so what? They should have been able to leave the war to the Pentagon and concentrated on domestic issues. That's what the Pentagon is for.
Can you name a major bill or initiative that the Bush government has managed to push through? No Child Left Behind is being left behind. Social Security reform vanished.
For all their talk that they don't need to defend their record, the Bush circle is spending a lot of time defending their record, and not much time sponsoring legislation, bringing it to a vote, and passing it.
The bills they have passed, I've noticed, have been seriously underplayed. The government does not brag about what they've managed to do. They haven't even mentioned it. If they are that sensitive to criticism with a majority, what will they be like with a minority?

Come on, conservatives! Make some noise. Brag a little.
Start by doing something to brag about.

The only Intelligent Design argument you need.

Is right here.

Very funny. Very true.

Troop reductions? Or just a change in tactics?

So, the US Government has decided on a troop pullout.
Or has it?
Follow the following link, and see what's really in store.
From The New Yorker ...

Congressmen injured in Iraq

Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pennsylvania, and Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, were both injured while on an inspection tour of Iraq. Thei vehicle was hit by an oncoming truck. This was not considered a terrorist attack.
Ike Skelton has partial paralysis of his arms from polio. What is HE doing in a war zone? Aren't there any politicians out there with full use of their limbs?
Note that I am not calling Mr. Skelton's intelligence, or courage into question. But let's get the political correctness out of the way. The man is in a situation where your life depends on doing the right thing quickly, and although I applaud his triumph over a crippling disease, he is STILL not the man to send into a war zone. Why is he there?

Abolish Democracy NOW!

Top 10 Reasons we should abolish democracy in the United States.

10: The large group, growing larger, that believes that drunk driving is the fault of the liquor companies, shootings are the fault of the gun salesmen, and drug crimes are the fault of some cabal in Columbia.
"We is all jus' pore white folks, wit fif' grade ejucatons, an' we don't know nuttin 'bout things, 'cept how to call our lawyer when we is hurt or sumpin', an' we couldn'ta even have dun that witout him programmin' the speed dialler 'for us." Too many voters believe that they are not responsible for anything, and that no matter what happens in life, there is somebody to be sued. Somebody should sue them. And keep them away from anything important, like the running of a country. After all, they aren't responsible people.

9: The rise of the anti intellectuals, especially the astrologists, creationists, UFOlogists, and conspiracy theorists - anyone who thinks that their beliefs are more important than the facts.
Your brain does not dictate reality. You are not that important, and I don't think egoists like you should be allowed to control a country.
Besides, you'd just give the place away to the Martians.

8: People who think their leaders should be "one of them". That's just what we need - a self-deluded, ignorant truck driver who can't get laid, leading the country.

7: The voter turnout. When we get to the stage where a 50% turnout is good, it's time to relieve all those poor, set-upon citizens of that nasty old vote.

6: The growing belief that God created an entire class of people for you to prove your faith against. This includes those who beat gays to death, shoot abortionists, and pilot airplanes into office buildings. God saved all those you kill, even the aborted. You're just sending yourself to hell. Also, who'd give any sort of responsibility to someone who thinks that a life of killing women who have sex out of wedlock, is going to win them seventy-odd virgins? Do you really think they're going to put out for you? You'd kill them!
Given the many examples from the 20th Century of what happens when people who believe in killing fellow citizens for "wrong" behavior get into power, it's best they not get a vote.

5: The cult of celebrity. I have great doubts about any voter who pays attention to the political views of someone who plays Make-Believe for a living. Not that it's dirty or anything, it's just that spending all that time learning lines leaves them little time to consider the ramifications of the SALT treaties.
I also have serious doubts about anyone who can't find Iraq on a map, but knows who Jennifer is dating now. And who knows who I mean by "Jennifer" without mentioning a last name.

4: The Great Christian Meltdown. This includes, but is not limited to. . .
- The people who think that because WalMart no longer says "Merry Christmas!", that Christianity is in danger, even though Christianity survived Nero and his lions.
- The people who listen to Pat Robertson, or for that matter any Christian leader who believes that the embodiment of peace and forgiveness wants certain people to burn in hell.
- Those who believe that the agnostics of our generation are so important to God that he will be willing to suspend natural laws, unleash the AntiChrist, and destroy the entire world, just to win them over - unlike the agnostics of, say, 1932. They can go to hell.

3: The rise of Multiculturalism, and the belief that our careful designed culture, polished over 8,000 years, influenced by everything from Hammurabi to Sun Tzu to Napoleon, is no more moral than some stone age tribe that ate raw monkeys and killed their daughters.
Look, the many cultures that have graced this world have contributed thousands of good ideas. Fire. Tea. Rubber. Dancing.
They have also contributed more than their fair share of bad ideas.
Mutilation. Abuse. Murder by decree.
There is a growing number of people who think that multiculturalism goes beyond contributing a new china pattern, to become an excuse for committing any sort of behavior, on the grounds that sometime, somewhere, one of your ancestors thought is was proper.
Your ancestors were barbarians, and I don't want you running things.

2: The state of Modern Education. I don't mind that a functional illiterate can get a B.A. by examining the effects of Lesbian Vampires upon Japanese anime. I just don't think these people should be allowed to vote. They may decide to elect a lesbian vampire, and then where would we all be?

1: The continued dominance of Me-ism. Anyone who thinks that nothing in the country exists that is more important than their own personal comfort should be safely ensconced in a secure little facility, where they can be taken care of while real people run things.

Name Droppers

Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.

I will discuss ideas and events on this blog.
Not people.
Every conservative blog I've turned to today has had the word Murtha in the title.
Forget Murtha. If you want to discuss the struggle in Iraq, fine. But I will not discuss the man.
Murtha is not dissing MY ideas. Or me. I will not diss him.

Merry Whatever

Christmastime is here again. A time of joy, a time of cheer.
A time for the most bent members of the Religious Right to get even more twisted.
Christianity is under attack - because schools and stores say "Happy Holidays" and insist on restricting nativity scenes.
I guess the message of peace and joy has nothing to do with Christmas. It's all about the slogans.
Listen guys - the stores say "Happy Holidays" because they want the Hannukah crowd to come in during December, too. Why is the wisdom of the marketplace trusted in every other instance, but not THIS instance?
The schools practice religious-neutral activities because if they didn't, they'd be sued. Ours is the most lawsuit-happy culture in history. The political-correctness issue, the zero-tolerance issue, and the no-nativity scene issue all stem from a bunch of cranks willing to file a $10 million suit if their child "perceives an inappropriate idea" in a public place.

Get over it guys. Before someone sues you.

Why Johnnie can't fight

Despite its current reputation, the American army has never done well with tactics. Battles they have won have, for the most part, been grinding affairs, with heavy casualties.

The Revolutionary War started out very poorly for the Americans, with loss after loss. They were almost ready to throw in the towel at Valley Forge. Other than a few bright spots, such as the battle of Cowpens, American generals produced no great victories during the war. Meanwhile, the British, who declared war on France, will also face Spain, who will declare war in 1779 as an ally of France, and the Dutch, who have been engaging in profitable trade with the French and Americans. In addition to America, the British will fight in the Mediterranean, Africa, India, the West Indies, and on the high seas, while facing possible invasion of England itself by the French. In 1782, Parliament, tired of all the fighting, and demoralized by the loss at Yorktown, decides not to pursue the war any longer.

The War of 1812 was a non-starter. After a few naval actions, the Continental Army invaded over the Niagara River, met the Canadians at Lundy's Lane, and the two sides shot each other to pieces.

Then there was the Civil War. America's one great shining light, Robert E. Lee, along with a more than competent staff, kept the South in the game years longer than they should have been able to. They were helped in no small measure by the Generals of the Union, and it helps us in our understanding of the mindset of the the American general to look at them. McClellan, who was loved by the troops - on both sides, since he was an overcautious tactician. Burnside, one of the worst generals in human history. Sherman, master of the Army Ant School of warfare, whose only tactical innovation was the willingness to kill and burn everything in his path. Many later US generals would take a page from his book. Grant, the old drunk who was able to finally make use of his army's numerical and material advantages to bring the war to an end.

The pattern was set, and has been followed ever since. Casualties be damned, finesse be damned. Git there fastest with the mostest. Use numerical and material superiority to grind your opponent into the dirt.
Every war the US Army has ever fought has been fought the same way. And when that basic tactic hasn't worked, the US Army hasn't won.

There was WW1. After sitting as a neutral for three years, presumably getting reports on the fighting, the United States entered the war in 1917. They had no aircraft; they bought French planes. One year after Cambrai, they had no tanks. Two years after the Somme, their first battle had them go over the top into German machine gun fire, causing them to join the stalemate. One year later, a fed-up German army essentially went on strike, and the war ended.

WW2. Again, the US sat out the fight until the Japanese convinced them of the folly of isolationism - a lesson that the US would have to relearn 60 years later. Again, the US went to war with no modern tanks or aircraft. They won their early victories by overwhelming their German opponents - and defeated the Japanese by technical innovation. There was no tactical innovation by the Americans in this war. Patton read Rommel's book; Nimitz copied what the Japanese were doing, and beat them at their own game. The Sherman tank beat the Tigers by numbers, sacrificing 3 out of 4 tanks to kill their opponent, and counting on the fact that they had 5 Shermans for every Tiger the Germans had.

Korea saw the Americans armed with WW2 weapons try to beat the Chinese. With the UN's help, America managed a draw. MacArthur's Inchon invasion stands out amidst a lackluster performance by American generals. However, the Chinese were too numerous to overwhelm, and America eventually just sealed off the border and went home.

Vietnam showed off America's weaknesses to the world. The US Army had learned nothing since The Battle of the Bulge. They fought a blitzkrieg in the jungle, and lost, unable to bring their enemy to bear. This was only a few years after the French had lost to the same army in the same way - and only a few years after the Australians had beaten a similar army using more practical tactics. Tactics that America failed to learn.

Finally, after years of Cold War, America was presented with the perfect conflict - the Gulf War. Textbook tank terrain, an opponent inferior in numbers, technology, and training, a noble cause, no outside allies for the enemy. Bush Senior's army rolled over the Republican Guard.

Then came the 21st Century, and the neo-chickenhawks. They had been chafing since Bush Sr. had left Saddam untouched. They decided to go over and do things right.
For a while, it was the Gulf War all over again. The precision missile strikes, the tank attacks.
Then the war changed, from blitzkrieg to guerilla. And the army faltered.
With tactics still unchanged from the streets of Berlin, 60 years ago, the men of the United States army now attempts to fight a 21st Century war. At the platoon level, the troops are first rate. Barring an ambush, they can take on all comers - and they can usually deal with ambushers, too.
It's at the staff level that it all breaks down. The generals cannot seem to get their head around the problem of an enemy that plants bombs along the road, or sends suicide bombers against their troops.
They say that they cannot leave until the job is done.
Then go back to their war of attrition.

We need a Guderian. A Napoleon. Someone to think of a whole new way of making war.
Something the United States has never had - a military genius. Robert E., where are you, now that we need you?

War/Pieces

Why is the army still in Iraq?
Think about it. The most powerful military machine in the world, for that matter the most powerful military machine of all time, is still fighting 4 years later against a 3rd world power. Less than that, since Saddam, his army, and his followers are toast.
Why?
Well, believe it or not, it's because of liberal ideas.
Since the Vietnam War, the idea of the army as peacekeeper has become standard. Soldiers are urged to "be all that you can be", and the weary dogface has become a policeman-at-arms. The new army stands tall, protecting the public and standing between harm and the innocent.
Sorry, Kofi.
The army is what it has always been - The Fourth Horseman incarnate. Its job is to break things - armies, countries, dictators. They shoot people. In any terrain, at any time, in all weather.
Unfortunately, in both Democratic and Republican circles, this image is verboten. The US invaded Iraq with the notion that the army was the perfect tool for rebuilding, policing, and reempowering the populace.
It wasn't. It isn't. Peace is NOT their profession. You want to run a war, they're your man. You want to run a peace, you call the Peace Corp.

The House was able to make $50 billion of reductions in the rate of growth of the budget over the next five years. Those cuts will affect poor and middle class families. At the same time, the Senate passed legislation granting $60 billion in tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy, on Thursday.
Pardon me? Isn't this a little silly?
On second thought, strike the "little". And the "silly". This is insulting.

Muslims killing Muslims

The next time someone defends a Muslim extremist group by saying that they are striking back against America's injustices, ask a simple question.

"Name one Muslim terrorist organization that has never killed Muslims."

The most recent attacks in Iraq have been in mosques. The most recent Al-Qaida attack was in Jordan. Today, extremists threatened the King of Jordan, calling him a traitor.
Attacking Americans has almost become a sideline for these people. Apparently they want to purge the religion of any moderates before taking on the real enemy.
Which, I suppose, fits the extremist mindset very well.

I highly recommend this book: http://www.StellaAwards.com/book.html

The Great Divider

The one sure legacy of the Bush Government we can see, is that he will be known as the Great Divider. The man whose government turned American against American, liberal vs. Conservative, blue vs. red.
Oh, we can pass some of the blame onto the bloggers, the media, or the lunatic fringe. But not all of it. We can't even pass most of it.
Bloggers? The most widely read of them have an audience of only a few thousands. They aren't affecting the majority of citizens.
The media? There are few media personalities trusted the way America trusted say, Walter Cronkite. Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh may have voiced the opinions, but their targets just responded with a few books and T-shirts. No divisiveness there.
The lunatic fringe we have always had, raving and frothing. But nobody ever paid attention to them before.

No. It has been the government's policies and statements, demonizing dissenters and championing an Us or Them state, that has separated the United States into two separate States.
I only wish I knew how this was going to end.

Intelligence

Perhaps there is a way for the Bush government to improve its analysis of intelligence.
Stop hiring oil executives to do it.
PFIAB, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is a group of appointees who advise the President on all intelligence matters. They have access to ALL top security information, and are expected to give expert and objective advice concerning it, and how well the various agencies are giving it.
Oilman Ray Hunt, financier William DeWitt Jr., Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, and former Commerce secretary Donald Evans are all members of the current PFIAB. THESE are intelligence experts? These are the men Bush depends on to decide whether a CIA report is worth the paper it's written on?

Now What?

The Republicans have finally awakened to the fact that someday the troops are going to have to come home, and that if they intend to stay until the terrorists are all gone and the threat ended they had better import brides and start reproducing a new crop of privates.
I'm sure the Right will condemn all the traitors in the Senate who adopted this new measure. Some of them may even have a good reason for doing so , other than the fact that it contradicts the known wishes of George W. Deity.

Look.
Here's the scenerio.
Your mission is as follows. There is a nation of several hundred million people. 500 of them are terrorists. You must destroy the five hundred without greatly disturbing the lifestyles of the several hundred million others.
You may choose from the following force options:
a) A carrier task force and 3 armored divisions.
b) An impeccable intelligence agency and 10 SEAL teams.
c) A strategic nuclear arsenal.

The correct choice was (b). Too bad nobody chose it.
Now the US is stuck trying to crush cockroaches with a sledgehammer.
It's time to change. Time to lose the sledgehammer and bring out the bug traps.

This is not surrender. It is not retreat. It is strategy.
If only the loons could see this.

Profits

Can one of you nice connected people out there help the ol' Small town Hick with the answer to a question?
Haliburton has been in charge of supplying the Army in Iraq since the beginning, as well as running the reconstruction. Last I heard, ther had been overcharging for gasoline (something that seems to have dropped off the radar), and the troops were still having to provide their own body armor and hummer plates.
A Haliburton subsidiary has been in charge of the Katrina cleanup, and recently the news has been that KBR has been bringing in illegals and underpaying them for the work. I haven't been hearing any cheering from the bleachers about KBR keeping the price of the cleanup down, so I assume they've been billing the government for proper salaries, even if they haven't been paying them.
So, my question - does anybody have any idea, even an estimate, of how much money Haliburton has been paid by the government since the election of George W. Bush?
And how much of that is profit?

Losing Patience

I am losing patience.
Losing patience with the Bush government, with the conservative blogs, with the liberals, with everybody.

The White House has said "These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs."
The White House has said "More than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."
The question is, Is the White House giving bipartisan Senate investigations the same information that the House and Senate received during the buildup to war, ie. wrong information?

I am sick and tired of all the defenders of the "CIA should be able to torture" argument.
Even assuming - assuming - that the information acquired by torture can be trusted, ie. is not being made up on the spot just to stop the torture,
If the enemy knows we are torturing people, they will take countermeasures.
Torture is not new, and neither are the ways to circumvent torture. Giving out information on a need-to-know basis, giving false info to people likely to be captured, and so on.
Reliable intelligence is the kind the enemy doesn't know we are collecting - informants, hidden microphones, phone taps, and so on. Especially informants - nothing is better than someone on the inside who likes you more than them.
Unfortunately, you must be more likeable than they are. With all that's happened over the last few years, that isn't likely.
In fact, it is possible that the enemy is getting information from us. Lots of liberals hate Bush right now, including all the people in the intelligence departments who keep leaking damaging information to the press. Who's to say that one isn't leaking someting to Al-Qaida, too?

And now: Is WP a chemical weapon? No. It's an incendiary, like napalm.
OK. Technically, white phosphorus is a chemical weapon. TNT is a chemical weapon, because TNT is a chemical. However, we don't classify TNT that way. There are explosive weapons, there are solid shot weapons.
And there are all the other weapons. White Phosphorus counts as one of those.
Is it inhumane? Does it cause a lot of suffering?
Yes. So is TNT and the spent uranium in the anti-tank shells.
Next question.

The Queen of England is now on the Al-Qaida hit list. Near the top, no less. Not bad for a figurehead with no legislative power.

And the Iowa activists have announced that anyone who opposes Alito's nomination can forget about running for president next time. Oh, this is RICH!
1) The people who will be opposing Alito will be running for SENATE. And only two of those will be affected by an Iowa vote. Plus, with the current mood of the country, the Iowa activists may turn out to be 1% of the vote.
2) Anyone who hitches his wagon to the Bush star can probably forget about being president next time. The record of the current government - scandal, cronyism, overspending, incompetence - means that thre next conservative who runs against the neo-conservatives is likely to run them out of town.

Iran may have nuclear weapons. We need to do something about it.
Too bad our troops are conmmitted to a job they shouldn't have to be doing, isn't it?

I've had enough for one post.

I want to know.

I want to get to the bottom of this.
Blogs for Bush says that there isn't a grain of truth in the anti-war arguments, and that they are aiding the enemy.
Well, the enemy is in retreat, and there are still a lot of questions that even I want to know.

I want to know where the WMDs are. There are 4 possibilities.
1) They exist, and the US found them. If this is true, then the Bush government should be publishing photos, instead of letting all this speculation go on.
2) They exist, but we never found them. If so, then why did we call off the search? Are we just going to let enriched uranium sit under the sands somewhere until somebody accidentally finds it?
3) They exist, but they're no longer in Iraq. If so, then somebody's got a LOT of explaining to do. We went to war to destroy the WMD. If Al-Qaida got away with them, and perhaps also looted one of Saddam's arsenals (unsecured at the time by US troops.), then the war is a bust.
4) They don't exist. Supported, if by nothing else, by the changing explaination for the war - was WMD, then was Remove Saddam - this would be a horrible crime to have perpetrated upon the United States Armed Forces and their families.
I want proof. One way or the other.

Second, I want to know who's lying in the Plame case.
The case is not a farce, as some on the right have said. The evidence may be a farce - the case is deadly serious. An intelligence system in disarray, trying to bring down a sitting president - this is NOT a farce.

Third, I want to know what's being done about Al-Qaida.
Bin Ladin's still out there. Agents are still blowing things up.
Fighting the terrorists who don't happen to be in Iraq is a matter for US intelligence. Which may want to bring down the government more than it wants to save the country.
The police will not help us against terrorists. We ALL have to be involved. We all have to know what we're dealing with, and what to look for.
We're not being told.
This is total war, people, against an enemy that strikes from the shadows, and looks like the kids from the tenaments. England and France have both been struck, not by Iraqi, but by people who have lived in those countries all their lives.
They live in New York, too. And Los Angeles.

I want to know these things.
So do you. Whether you say so or not.

Australia

There you go.
You get a pro-democracy, anti-terrorist population together, and you get informants willing to rat out terrorist cells.
As soon as the Iraqi learn this, Iraq will settle down.

Who's Right?

Whatever you think of George W. Bush, he is a second term president. He will not be re-elected.
Who should be the next Republican candidate for President of the United States?

I just watched West Wing, and I was very impressed by Alan Alda's performance. I wouldn't mind voting for the character he portrayed. However, seeing as Vinnick is fictional, we need to ask ourselves whether we can elect someone like him. In other words, how close can we come?
We need someone with the right mix of morals, integrity, force, and intelligence to lead the US out of what is going to be a rough decade. The current scandals, like it or not, pretty much exclude Bush's inner circle.
Any suggestions? The floor is open.

France

Nobody has a national identity more distinct than the French.
From language to cooking to history, French culture is legendary.
That may be the problem.
You see, French arrogance is also a byword. To a frenchman, the world is divided into the French and the barbarians. The French voted down the EU constitution mainly because it would have forced the French to treat other Europeans as though they were French - intolerable!
And now we have riots..
They say it's the rise of the Muslims. Hogwash. It's the rise of the Africans. It's the Watts Riots, moved to Europe. No clansman, no redneck sheriff, was ever more intolerant of non-whites than the French. It's taken an extra 40 years, but desegregation is finally coming to France.
Too bad there was no French Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King to speak out for non-violent change. Or maybe there was, and we English speakers never heard them.
Well, it's done now. The French have two choices - integration, or a "final solution".
And despite what a lot of my colleagues have said about surrender monkeys in the past, they may choose the latter this time.

No Torture

U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney asked Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions from a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody.
Mr. Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.

Dear Mr. Cheney.
No.

Torture is wrong. It is UnChristian, it is immoral, it is unethical.
I will not live under a system of government that condones torture.
Everything that my father fought for in WW2, and my grandfather in WW1, was to save us from having to live under a regime that condones things like torture.

We are not terrorists. We are not torturers.
Other nations have turned to terrorism and torture, both against others and against their own people. They do it because it is effective, they do it to maintain order, they do it to maintain their positions.
Their excuse has been that it keeps the trains running on time. Their excuse has been that they are trying to keep communists from destablizing their governments.
Their real excuse is that they are willing to do anything to keep themselves in power.

They are not us. I am willing to die rather than become a torturer. I WILL NOT support a government of sadists, of butchers, of gestapo. I will not support a policy that will destroy the dignity of this nation, or discard all that generations of good men have fought for.

Mr. Cheney, this country will survive with dignity, or not at all. We are members of the Republican party, not the Donner party. We do not do whatever it takes to survive. There are fates worse than death.

Bias

The latest argument against the nomination of Samuel Alito goes like this: His nomination would leave the Supreme Court with 7 white men, one woman, and one black.
OK. Help the ol' Small Town Hick out with this. A case comes up to the Supreme Court, and Justice "X" says "This is an interesting case. A pity my fellow justices cannot see the nuances that I can, seeing as I grew up in the ghetto."
Are not "nuances" in this case the same as "biases"? Are the things we are really looking for in minority nominees not a set of preconceptions that rich educated Americans do not have?
Are we saying that the Supreme Court rules, not by the law, but by deciding in favor of "their" group? And that what we want now is that the Supreme Court should rule in favor of "our" group?
If so, I am in favor of disbanding what has become just another battleground for liberals and conservatives, and let the elected figures fight it out.

By the way, if you'd like to see more of the kinds of legal reforms The Hick would like to see, go to this website.
http://www.StellaAwards.com

Bullets

The Newhouse News Service stated yesterday that U.S. troops are running out of .50-caliber ammunition -- "in some cases dusting off crates of World War II machine gun rounds and shipping them off to combat units."

I thought the country was on a war footing. I thought the country was at war. I haven't heard any news about a surrender or peace treaty, other than that "Mission Accomplished" banner.

So why aren't the munition plants running 24/7?
For that matter, why are the troops STILL waiting for hummer armor?

Every conservative website say "Support the Troops" on it somewhere. Where's the support?

20 million People.

That is how many will receive a flu vaccine under the current plan outlined by President Bush.
What is the current population, again?

Should America be moving towards a Canadian-style medical system?
That is, in essence, what is being contemplated when the Presdident states that Americans need to have vaccines against any flu that comes along, avian or otherwise.
After all, why stop there. Should we defend ourselves against influenza, only to die from the newest version of typhoid or cholera? Shouldn't the US stockpile, at government expense, agents against every disease, ready to give out should one develop into a pandemic?

Sounds expensive.

Feel Free to Disagree.

We're not so different, Liberals and Conservatives, Muslim and Christian.
We all want a good woman, a fat wallet, and the right to make everybody in the world think and act the way we want.

Yes, you too, liberals. Tell me you're willing to make conservation voluntary. Or gun control. Tell me you'd be willing to allow racist free speech.
You too, conservatives. Many of you are good this way, but there's still a few of you out there willing to start and end an argument with the word "moonbat".

I WELCOME free speech, especially the kind I don't like, don't agree with, and/or think is incorrect. The only way to fight bad ideas is with good ideas - and the only way to get bad ideas to fight is to get them out where everybody can see them.

Political correctness is incorrect.
Gun Control is useless. Untrained gun owners deserve to get killed.
Racial epithets are acceptable. By both sides. At least the hate is out in the open.
Bullies remain bullies whether you give them councelling or a smackdown.
A central government is good for a few things, but local government should handle the bulk of all governing.
Replace every sentence of a year in prison with a week of torture. Less expensive, easier to compensate the falsely convicted, and a "life sentence" becomes more of a deterrent.
Anything that happens in the house, stays in the house. If they bring it outside, THEN intervene.
Introduce sex at a young age. Include pictures. By the time they reach puberty, it won't look so desireable. Especially if the pictures are of real people, rather than airbrushed 15 year old Asians.

Feel free to disagree.
But include arguments. Simple objections will be ignored. I have the right to do so.