When we talk about supporting our military personnel who are fighting in Iraq not only on our behalf and that of the Iraqi people, but on behalf of the free world — do some reading on the history of Islam, get real about the threat posed by the now neutered Saddam Hussein, not just the “Bush lied, people died” malarkey spouted by a bunch of airheaded, anti-American, ignorant, marxist or a combination of all four people who are evidently information challenged — we are talking about actively notifying the politicians (such as they are these days) that represent us in the House and Senate as to our support of the troops and their mission (You cannot support one without the other. Either you want them to accomplish their mission and come home safe, or you don’t. Those who claim to support the troops and then protest the war they’re fighting are what we call shameless, lying liberals, like the men and women with spines of cooked asparagus who stand before Walter Reed on Friday evenings and let the permanently disfigured heroes within “know” that they sacrificed “for nothing” :men and women alike, I call these people toilet cakes) — we are talking about about explaining reality to those who haven’t yet grasped it — we are talking about honoring those brave service personnel, about praying for their success and survival, about thinking of them as we enjoy the trappings of living in this great country while they are living in constant physical danger and discomfort, engaging in mortal combat to ensure that we continue to enjoy those trappings, not least among which are a whole slew of rights Iraqis never dreamed of under Saddam. Hell, a convicted felon here in the U.S. has more rights than most Iraqis did under the Husseins.

Before I go off on the major rant I feel coming, I’d better hand you off to blog buddy G.M. Roper, who has a post up that you’ve really got to read.

It really illustrates just how primitive Islam is as a collective system of belief when those who purport to speak for Muslims demonstrate time and again that they are incapable of offering any compromise or even sitting down and resolving differences of opinions peacefully, as human beings are known to do.

Every solution these people produce to every problem involves violence, almost exclusively against unarmed, innocent men, women and children and the property of others, whether it is burning the vehicles of people they don’t even know, bombing embassies, blowing themselves up in crowded places… There were the transit bombings in London, the recent running amok of Muslims in France, the Van Gogh murder, the butchery of school children in Russia, there is the unending violence in Israel…

Ah, Israel, a country whose liberal lemmings have been ceding important strategic land to the Palestinians in an effort to curtail terrorism, even as the terrorists are sneering in their victory, seeing this as a sign that their terrorism works and vowing still more monstrocities until they’ve run the Jews completely out of the country.

And there’s Hamas, the terrorist organization elected by the Palestinian people to assume the mantle of the ruling class long held by Fatah, a party that was once the militant wing of the P.L.O.

In response to Hamas’ political victory, western nations have cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority(PA) because it’s as plain as day that while much of the money would continue to support Palestinian infrastructure, the bulk of it would be used to purchase armaments and explosives for the continued prosecution of terrorism against the Israelis.

These withheld funds, as I have said before, are yours and my tax dollars, among others, and since it’s our money, it is our decision to whom we give it away. We are under no obligation to give it to the PA or anyone else just because they need money. If these people weren’t murderous animals and instead were willing to honor agreements made with the Israelis and accept that Israel is there to stay, they would have a great trading partner with whom they could flourish and not have to live with a hand out for alms from other countries. Instead, mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice their children to murder the children of others.

Golda Meir once said that there would only be peace in the Middle East when Palestinians came to love their children as much as they hate the Jews.

That will never happen as long as the Palestinians continue to make the wrong choices and support terrorism. In short, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime, sad to say.

Back on topic, as I said above, the withheld funds belong to the citizens of the nations that are withholding them. They do not belong to the Palestinians and we are under no obligation to help further terrorism by disbursing them to the PA as long as it is under Hamas control. The Palestinians got what they voted for, it’s not our responsibility, despite the guilt trips laid on us by wingnuts like former President Jimmy Carter, who says, among other things, that

One clear reason for the surprising Hamas victory for legislative seats was that the voters were in despair about prospects for peace. With American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor.

A) Our liberal ex-POTUS apparently believes that the best way to achieve peace is to elect terrorists with a life-and-death agenda of mass homicide to run a government, and

B) the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years? What does he call the Great Gaza Giveaway and the expulsions of settlers from West Bank towns to make way for Palestinians? I suppose chopped liver, as they say.

So the terrorist regime Carter worships has taken the Islamic approach to the situation.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, on Monday threatened to strike at US and European interests in response to international sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

The threat, the first of its kind, came as PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to hold talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin on the severe financial crisis in the PA territories. Moreover, the threat by Abbas’s Fatah party came as Palestinians marked the 58th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe (the secular anniversary of Israel’s independence).

“We won’t remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and other countries,” said a leaflet issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. “We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad.”

The leaflet added: “Let the entire world know that we won’t succumb in the face of the policy of blackmail, siege and starvation. In the past we did not capitulate in the face of the policy of assassinations, detentions and air raids.”

Blackmail, indeed!

“It’s the rest of the world’s responsibility to give us money, even though much of it will be spent to continue our butchery of innocent people.”

Of course it is… NOT!

Another armed group affiliated with Fatah, the Abu Rish Brigades, threatened to launch a new intifada unless the international community agreed to fund the PA. “This will be a merciless intifada that will destroy everything,” said Abu Haroon, a spokesman for the group in the Gaza Strip.

I suppose this kind of response can be categorized, like “going postal”, as “going Islamic”. How, one wonders, do these primates ever expect to earn any true respect from the global community(outside of France, certain other questionable members of the UN and liberals everywhere) if their only dialogue comes in the form of suicide vests, property destruction and bullets?

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that they could care less about the respect of infidels, since the goal of Islam is to rule those infidels by fear, to make the world one big Caliphate, and the “Religion of Peace” preaches that it’s perfectly acceptable to achieve this objective via terrorism.

The bloody real estate dispute in Israel, which the Arabs are now winning do to spinal deterioration among Israelis, is just a small part of a much bigger picture.

Hat Tip: James Taranto

And here is another direct hit from the ever right-thinking Ann Coulter.

Don’t we wish, LOL!

HEALTH QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION

Q: I’ve heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that’s it… don’t waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that’s like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can’t think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain…Good!

Q: Aren’t fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!!!… Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they’re permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It’s the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! ‘Round’ is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember:

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO, What a Ride!”

H/T Brenda.

Now, isn’t this just dandy…

An airline employee spoke with 6News about what he claims are serious breaches in security at Indianapolis International Airport.

The employee, who spoke with the station on condition of anonymity, said workers have been able to put weapons through secure areas and that packages can be put onto planes without proper security checks. The employee also said that workers don’t undergo physical screenings.

The worker told 6News’ Jeremy Brilliant about two airports — the public side, where every bag is screened, every person is checked and some undergo more detailed random searches, and the back side, where ground crews work with no regular inspections and no physical checks of individuals or their belongings.

Now, far be it from me to tell the experts at the Transportation Security Administration{TSA} how to do their job, provided they are actually doing it. I don’t mean doing most of it, I mean doing all of it.

Using a hidden camera, he recorded himself boarding two planes to illustrate how easy it is for a worker to walk onto aircraft unchecked.

“There is a hole and there is a breach. Employees breach security every single solitary day,” the employee said.

Employees must swipe their badges to get access to the secure area of the airport.

The employee said workers encounter no metal detectors or guards. Airline employees are able to bring with them just about anything they want, the employee said.

“(We can bring) handguns, hunting knives, just a variety of things like that that they were able to bring out onto the secure area, or what they call a secure area, with no detection,” he said.

This doesn’t sound like they are doing the whole job to me, it sounds more like the people who strategize and implement security measures at airports are being complacent, lazy, budget-cheap and verrrrry stupid.

For example:

Indianapolis TSA Federal Security director David Kane said physical inspections aren’t necessary, because employee names are continually checked against terrorist watch lists, and the workers undergo extensive background screening before they are given entry badges.

“It’s a layered system. So, it’s not just what you see at the front door and that’s where it ends. It’s not that at all,” Kane said. “As long as we’re making sure that people don’t have the motivation, the predisposition, to commit crimes against the transportation system, the rest of it to me is a relationship between that person, their employer and their personal integrity.”

…making sure that people don’t have the motivation…

What an ass! What a pompous ass that guy is! What qualifies him to determine what’s going on in the minds and personal lives of thousands of airport workers?

…employee names are continually checked against terrorist watch lists.

Terrorist watch lists?

What if some ground crew member with no previous terrorist association agrees to help his second cousin’s friend by stashing some goodies aboard an aircraft, conveniently in the pockets of a list of seats provided him?

… the rest of it to me is a relationship between that person, their employer and their personal integrity.”

Is this David Kane joking, or what? I’m sure Osama bin Laden would see the humor in all this, but I certainly don’t. No Physical Security professional I’ve ever known, and I know several, including myself, would even dream that statement.

A Security organization is not supposed to assume anything where an “employer-employee relationship” or anyone’s personal integrity is concerned. It is not supposed to be trusting in the areas of human goodness, honesty and benevolence. It is there to protect.

You can’t, in any conscience, say you’re protecting a principal by barricading the front of his house while leaving the rear and side doors open. In the case of the TSA, the principals are passengers and air crew, ultimately millions of people who look to the Transportation “Security” Administration to protect them. Protecting other people is one of the noblest of callings and it is one that engenders serious, inescapable responsibilities, tenacity and thoroughness among them.

An aviation report card issued by a national pilot’s trade association gave the industry a failing grade for ground crews, because they aren’t screened.

“If they had evil intent in mind and they’re not being monitored, they could do just about whatever they want to do inside a wheel well of an aircraft or inside the cabin itself,” said Jay Norelius, of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association.

This doesn’t sound like security, it sounds like Swiss cheese, and not screening these employees all but negates all of the front end efforts. Just go around the back, the door’s unlocked. Great.

The worker told 6News he made his superiors aware of what he perceives as a threat months ago, but he said they shrugged it off.

“They pretty much just said … it was unrealistic — that yes, they’re aware that something maybe could happen, but the chances of that happening were very slim,” the worker said.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!?

… they’re aware that something maybe could happen, but the chances of that happening were very slim.

Maybe something could happen. Chances very slim.

How slim were the chances that terrorists would hijack four commercial airplanes and crash three of them into heavily populated buildings? Do those incompetent, lazy bean counters need to wait until an airplane or two explode in midair or crash into nuclear reactors or petrochemical plants before they get up on their hind legs and do their job?

Just to be completely straightforward, those who have read this blog for more than six months know that while I am now a resident of North Carolina, I moved here from San Francisco. In the City On The Bay, unless you are completely devoid of any social life and have all your meals delivered to you in a house or apartment you never leave, you know and/or do business, personally, with gay people. You get to know them, become friends with some of them, male and female…. But being a “straight”, you don’t become involved in their “lifestyle”. Fine, there are some really great people in the gay community, they simply possess different, er, “lifestyle” preferences.

I parenthisize “lifestyle” because it is a purely PC term, which, like the word “gay”, has been transmuted in the English vocabulary from its original meaning to something else. If you tell someone today that you’re “happy and gay”, for example….

Being immersed as I am in conservative forums, I subscribe, both free and otherwise, to scores of email-distributed publications, alerts and bulletins. Most of them are right on point while others, sadly to say, tend to venture even more to the right than this neocon has the extremist bus fare to travel.

That is, they attack firms like airlines and automobile manufacturers that advertise in gay newspapers and magazines. WTF!!!??? That’s simply marketing, gay Americans are still Americans, and they’re a market. In fact, they are a significant market.

In that respect, the moralists ought to leave gays and those who market to them alone. Basically, it’s none of their business. People have been doing things behind closed doors for centuries. To interfere in such matters would be “un-American”.

However, that’s their “thing”, right? As long as they keep it in their community, no problem.

Unfortunately, the liberals who control our educational system don’t all see it that way, as far as they’re concerned all children should grow up with an intimate knowledge of the world of homosexuality.

“Fine,” I’d say, “let ‘m do what thay think they’ve gotta do,,,,”

Except that what they feel they’ve “gotta” do both may be and is contrary to the wills of parents who believe that the taxes they pay for their childrens’ education should ensure that their offspring learn “The Three Rs”, as it were, not be force fed the details of an “alternative lifestyle” alien to the morality of the parents and, in fact, society as a whole, and that the non-mainstream, “feel good” political intent behind such academic impartations be left in the realm of adulthood or within the purview of parental discretion as far as the “when” of learning about the abnormal life preference is concerned.

I mean, face it: People don’t send their kids to school to absorb the details of liberal or any other political doctrines, they send their young ‘uns through the educational system to learn the skills they’ll need to either make it into and through college or make it through basic life in or around the work force, and be able to both function and live within that framework. Not to develop a rapport with or a knowledge of folks who sleep with other folks of the same gender.

That’s another social issue driven into the classroom by liberals, who want us all to feel that same-sex bedroom, marriage and parental affairs are no different than “straight” ones.

Sorry, they are different, we all know they are and they should not be forced into the zone of mainstream values where teaching our society’s children is concerned. Such teaching is a parental responsibility, period.

Greg Crosby’s got a column out this week that kicks proverbial butt on the subject as regards the broader California(left coast, what do you expect?) sentiments on this issue here.

You wanna force feed homosexuality on the masses, let’s not skimp, right? Read the column!

My Conservative Democrat{were all Democrats to be real ones, like those I grew up among, instead of the blame America first liberals that are served up as a lame excuse for today’s Democrats — sigh –} Aunt Brenda is batting a solid grand today, with this one:

We rarely get a chance to see another country’s editorial about the USA . Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper. The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title “C”ntarea Americii, meaning “Ode To America”) in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei “The Daily Event” or “News of the Day”.

~An Ode to America~

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart.

Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, and the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.

After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing.

On every occasion, they started singing their traditional song:
“God Bless America!” I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being?
Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace.

I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion… Only freedom can work such miracles.

Cornel Nistorescu

Good observation, Cornel, imagine if those planes had been crashed into buildings in Paris. There would still be millions of crapeau running around frantically, looking for someone to surrender to.

Sorry, I really can’t, so…

Bill and Hillary are at a Yankees home game, sitting in the first row,
with the Secret Service people directly behind them.

One of the Secret Service guys leans forward and whispers something to
Bill.
At first, Clinton stares at the guy, looks at Hillary, looks back at the
agent, and shakes his head “no.” The agent then says, “Mr. President, it
was a unanimous request of the entire team, from the owner of the team to
the bat boy.”

Bill hesitates…but begins to change his mind when the agent tells him
the fans would love it! Bill shrugs his shoulders and says, “Ho-Kay! If
that is what the people want. C’mere Hilly, baby.”

With that, Bill gets up, grabs Hillary by her collar and the seat of her
pants, lifts her up, and tosses her right over the wall onto the field.

She gets up kicking, swearing, screaming, “Bill you “!^$#@&!”. The crowd
goes absolutely wild. Fans are jumping up & down, cheering, hooting and
hollering, and high-fiving. Bill is bowing, smiling and waving to the
crowd.

He leans over to the agent and says, “How about that! I would have never
believed how much everyone would enjoy that!”

Noticing the agent has gone totally pale, he asks what is wrong.

The agent replies, “Sir, I said they want you to throw out the first
Pitch.”

H/T Brenda

Here in the United States, the rights we take for granted are but a distant dream to our counterparts in a large part of the world. The idiots who abuse their freedom of speech rights, for example, using them to attack and otherwise demean the selfsame system of government that allows us these freedoms, have absolutely no clue as to what it would be like for them if our form of government were not one whose Constitution guarantees us these rights.

In Egypt, for example, whose government attempted to demonstrate not long ago how democratic they are, human rights oriented bloggers and activists are being snatched up Gestapo style and tossed into the hoosegow without so much as due process, held for a 15 day investigation period that can be extended without a whole lot of pomp and circumstance and, if the powers-that-be decide to do so, be indefinitely extended so as to become what may be a permanent disappearance.

We’re not talking about criminals being arrested for murder, larceny or battery, simply non-violent dissenters, yet they do not have a fraction of the same rights as the murderers, larcens or batterers whose wrists liberal doctrine has forced us to slap here in America.

Right now, as we speak, an Egyptian blogger and others who fight for the same human rights we conservatives do here in the United States are in serious danger from their own government.

We all need to address this together, in many ways it’s like running across the street to stop a rape or a mugging.

To get down to brass tacks, let’s go visit my blog brother and friend Kender and get this sorted out.

There are no African, Mexican, Asian or other categorized Americans. This hyphenated X-AMERICAN thing has got to go. Either you’re an American, period, or you’re not. Becoming an American means exactly what it says: American.

The liberal “multicultural” bit that incorporates X + American is nothing more than a piece of PC crap designed to garner votes for Democrats. Prior to this boneheadedness, we American taxpayers weren’t forced to translate such publications as drivers’ handbooks, etc, into a trillion languages. You moved here, your priority was learning to read, write and speak the Gringo language. The left has altered that for the reason of getting votes.

When you become a naturalized American, you leave your previous nationality behind. Case closed. If you want to be a Mexican-American, stay in Mexico and just be a Mexican. If you want to be an African-American, stay in or move to Africa and be an African. How many American born citizens of foreign countries call themselves American-Africans, American-Mexicans or American-Asians?

NONE.

Going further, the English language is “coin of the realm” here, total allegiance to this country should be a requirement of new citizenship, as it was when my grandparents came here from eastern Europe. Move here, enjoy the benefits of citizenship, learn the language. So let’s have a look below:

The wisdom of our fathers

Teddy had it so right! Not Kennedy, but Roosevelt!

Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes
here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he
shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an
outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or
birthplace, or origin.

But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming
in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be
no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but
something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one
flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and
that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole
loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Well said, Teddy!