I had a bug of some sort over the past weekend, flu-like symptoms and so forth, and kept somewhat low key. It’s still there, but seems to be finally clearing up.

Needless to say, I watched a lot of movies and, being me, imbibed large quantities of my favorite flu medicine, a prescription whose suffix is VSOP.

One of the DVDs I watched is one of my absolute favorite all-time action films (I hadn’t viewed it since it was released nearly 30 years ago, and had looked for it on and off for some time before finally discovering that Second Spin had about half a dozen copies — suddenly, right out of the blue, and I ordered it at once), The Wild Geese.

The Wild Geese is about mercenaries on a mission in Africa.

The acting was majorly enjoyable (Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Roger Moore, Hardy Krüger and Stewart Granger), and the action was more realistic than that in most such films, as the technical director of the movie was one Colonel “Mad Mike” Hoare, a “been there, done that” real life merc who’s among the best known in his chosen field.

The above linked Answers dot com bio gives testimony to Hoare’s rather colorful professional background and references the books he’s written on same. Faulkner, Richard Burton’s character in The Wild Geese, was based on Mad Mike.

If you want to see a truly enjoyable action flick, one that’s going on three decades old yet hasn’t gotten nearly enough fanfare, this is it.

(On a note of interest, Richard Burton passed away early on during the filming of Wild Geese II, which, both without him and via the plot, etc, was, in my humble opinion, a “968 thumbs down” offering.)

I am forever hearing liberals complain about “income inequity”, whose dubious statistics the Democrats and the MSM use to press for more and more government interference in the marketplace. When you tell a lefty that a major reason Congress has such a low approval rating is that they haven’t accomplished a thing since the Democrats assumed leadership on the Hill, he or she invariably replies that “they raised the minimum wage”.

Then the more “informed” among them (the ones who read the New York Times), will give you bogus income statistics to show that the average wage has decreased. Some attribute this falsehood to a failure of the Bush tax cuts to help the “little guy”.

My stock reply is that the only thing that might offset the positive effect of the tax cuts is the increase in the minimum wage. Whenever it increases, everybody gets a raise, not just the guy at the bottom of the wage scale. An employer has to pay that increase x 8 x 40 x 52 to all his employees, and that adds up, often to such measures as downsizing to pick up the slack for significant decreases in company net revenues.

Naturally, that falls on deaf ears as liberals believe that a business is responsible for assuming the role of a social services department for employees, even if it loses money in so doing.

But I’m getting a little off track, here.

Where this so-called decline in employee wages is concerned, I am in complete agreement with an article by a columnist I have long considered to be as spot-on as one can be, Thomas Sowell.

Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating. Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the Census Bureau, which seem to indicate that.

On the other hand, income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005.

The top one percent — “the rich” who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent.

Meanwhile, the average taxpayers’ real income increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005.

How can all this be? How can official statistics from different agencies of the same government — the Census Bureau and the IRS — lead to such radically different conclusions?

There are wild cards in such data that need to be kept in mind when you hear income statistics thrown around — especially when they are thrown around by people who are trying to prove something for political purposes.

One of these wild cards is that most Americans do not stay in the same income brackets throughout their lives. Millions of people move from one bracket to another in just a few years.

So much for “the rich get richer…”

The column can be read in its entirety (highly recommended, it’s brilliant) over here.

I’ve debated (actually, given the propensity of liberals to screech and try to talk over dissenting opinion, “argued” might be a better word) with subscribers to both liberal doctrine and the MSM over their misbegotten statistics regarding the results of the Bush tax cuts, notably among them millions of jobs that have been created as companies invest surpluses created by their lowered tax bills in expanding their interests and hiring more people.

They say that the average wage has decreased.

I say that “Well, what do you expect? When jobs are created en masse, most of them are entry level. People who had no jobs are suddenly working again, and they are starting at the bottom.”

Most of them will eventually earn promotions and pay raises and, as Thomas Sowell said, they will be followed by others who, while starting off on the lower rungs of the compensation ladder, will progress, as time goes by, into higher income brackets.

Mainstream liberals are, for the most part, either financially comfortable or on food stamps. Neither group has any idea whatsoever as to the other’s realities, though the former believes they are experts on the latter’s realities.

Right.

A liberal who earns two hundred thousand bucks a year, up from fifty G’s right out of college, hasn’t a clue re the life of, say, “the guy who sweeps”, a dishwasher, a retail sales clerk, a cabbie, a homeless person, a bus driver or a welfare mother of three. The valet who parks the liberal’s car at his favorite night club, a busperson in a restaurant, a cashier at a gas station or convenience store, a desk clerk at a hotel, all are ciphers due to the very reality of their being there to serve. Individually, they are outside the equation. All the subjects of liberal attention, with the exception of specific opportunities to play the dreaded “race card” or conservatives ripe for attacking for political ends, are anonymous masses, which allows for a plethora of creative statistics and the interpretations thereof.

Unrelated to the topic at hand but relevant where disinformation by the MSM is concerned, Ann Coulter has a column out on the fearless leader of the liberal propaganda and lies community.

…an awesome Thanksgiving to all!

I really enjoyed this one…

Chester and Earl are going hunting.

Chester says to Earl, “I’ll send my dog Out to see if there are any ducks out in the pond. If there aren’t any Ducks out there, I’m not going hunting.”

So he sends the dog out to the pond. The dog comes back and barks twice.

Chester says, “Well I’m not going to go out. He saw only two ducks out There.”

Earl says, “You’re going to take the dog’s barks for the truth?”

Earl doesn’t believe it, so he goes to look for himself. When he gets back he says, “I don’t believe it! Where did you get that dog? There really are only two ducks out there!”

Chester says, “Well, I got him from the breeder up the road. If you want, You can get one from him, too.”

So Earl goes to the breeder and says he wants a dog like the one his friend Chester has.

The breeder obliges, and Earl brings the dog home, and tells it to go out And look for ducks.

Minutes later the dog returns with a stick in its mouth, shakes its head, and starts humping Earl’s leg.

Outraged, Earl takes the dog back to the breeder and says, “This dog is a fraud. I want my money back!”

The breeder asks Earl what the dog did. Earl tells him that when he sent the Dog out to look for ducks, it came back with a stick in its mouth and started humping his leg.

The breeder says, “Earl, he was trying to tell you that there are more F_ _ _ _ _ _ ducks out there than you can shake a stick at!”

H/T BJS

After President Ronald Reagan won the Cold War for us and the Soviet Union went Chapter 11, rather than let them fester in their resulting economic ruin (and these were people who for decades had been aiming nuclear missiles at us while spreading the antithesis of democracy around the world), we poured gazillions in U.S. taxpayers’ money into helping them get back on their feet, sans the communist bit.

Years later, along came Vladimir Putin’s regime. I say regime rather than administration because the man is cut more in the mold of a Soviet strongman than any kind of democratic leader.

Despite all the diplomatic triple speak and related drama, he is not any sort of friend of the U.S. Russia has gotten back on its feet, and obviously Putin figures he doesn’t need us anymore. He certainly hasn’t proven to be any kind of ally of America, and has opposed us on a number of issues at the U.N. He is a better friend of the Iranian government, an enemy of the U.S. and indeed an enemy of freedom, than he is of ours.

President Vladimir Putin cautioned Tuesday that Russia would increase the combat-readiness of its strategic nuclear forces to ensure a “swift and adequate response to any aggressor.”

Putin also said that Russia’s will be pulling out of a key arms control treaty, which he calls a necessary response to NATO “muscle-flexing” near its frontiers.

The statements, which come amid simmering tensions between Moscow and the West, reflect the Kremlin’s assertive posture less than two weeks before Russia’s Dec. 2 parliamentary elections.

So first he pretty much threatens us with nukes lest we attack his country, which makes little if any sense since he should know that we entertain no malevolence toward Russia, then he withdraws his country from the CFE Treaty.

His reason?

The missile defense plan we wish to implement in proximity to his sovereign bailiwick, the one that would have been a perpetual tragedy had it not been for our largesse (that means me & you — I don’t know if the dog named Boo has paid any taxes, so I’ll exclude him — and our hard-earned tax liability).

The 1990 CFE treaty, which originally set limits on weapons of NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, was revised in 1999. Russia says the old version has lost relevance since former Soviet satellites have joined NATO.

Russia ratified the updated treaty in 2004, but the United States and other NATO members have refused to follow suit, saying Moscow first must fulfill obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova’s separatist Trans-Dniester region.

As a counterproposal to the U.S. missile defense plans, Putin earlier this year offered the United States joint use of a Soviet-built, Russian-operated radar in Azerbaijan. Washington said it was studying the proposal, but U.S. officials said the radar couldn’t be considered as a replacement for the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Regrettably, Russian proposals about the creation of a joint missile defense system with equal access for all its participants have remained unanswered,” Putin said Tuesday.

Right, Vlad proposes that we intertwine our defense venues with aparatus owned and operated by his government and on his turf. That sounds like something Bill Clinton might have agreed to, as long as he had a permission slip from China.

Putin bears watching very closely, he might well be the originator of another Cold War, this one infinitely more dangerous than the last as there is now an Islamofascist third party in the equation of global political and security concerns, and there are elements of same in a few former Soviet republics.

If I were the DCI in the E. Howard Hunt era, I’d probably instruct my Deputy Director, Operations to “take him out, make it look like Chechen separatists did it.”

…but I just can’t help but post it.

FINALLY, SOMEONE HAS CLEARED THIS UP FOR ME

For centuries, Hindu women have worn a spot on their foreheads. We have always naively thought that it had something to do with their religion.

The true story has been revealed by the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC.

When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the Union.

On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the spot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a doughnut shop or a motel in the United States.

If no prize is revealed, he must take a job in India answering telephones to give technical support or other customer service for an American corporation.

H/T Brenda

…not to raise taxes, why won’t they sign the pledge?

Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative taxpayer group, regularly asks Republican politicians to sign a pledge not to raise taxes. Three Republican presidential candidates have not signed the pledge, which one strategist said might hurt them during the primaries.

“I worked on Bob Dole’s campaign in 1988 and he didn’t sign and it killed his campaign in the final week,” David Johnson, a Republican strategist and president of Strategic Vision. “That’s how the first President Bush was able to turn around and win the New Hampshire primary.”

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have not signed the pledge.

Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and RINO McCain all have excuses for not signing, but to me, the bottom line is that if their hearts are pure on the matter of not raising taxes, they will sign the pledge.

The fact that they won’t sign on indicates that they have doubts, that they are leaving their options open rather than committing themselves to hard-copy promises that might come back to haunt them if they do agree to tax increases on their watch.

A track record is one thing, a stated intention still another, but signing an agreement with The American People, legally binding or not, is a much stronger declaration of intent than a few words spoken in a campaign speech or a debate, wherein a politician will more often than not promise whatever is necessary to get elected, the operative theory being that once they’re in office they can worry about any verbal obligations acquired on the campaign trail: Especially when the office in question is the most powerful political position on earth.

“They are kind of caught in a Catch-22,” Johnson said. “They know that this is a way to win the New Hampshire primary, but they don’t want to go on record saying they will never raise taxes and then, if they’re nominated and elected, have to go back on that pledge and have it used against them like the first President Bush did with his famous ‘no new taxes.’”

“I think it’s going to hurt these candidates in New Hampshire,” said Johnson. “New Hampshire is a very anti-tax state.”

“Voters, traditionally when the economy is bad, go for candidates who promise not to raise taxes and who promise to lower taxes,” he said, noting that by refusing to sign the pledge, the three candidates are creating a situation that could play well for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

I suppose that we shall see what we shall see….

…I was kind of tied up yesterday and so, since key aspects of the below described affair have been sources of outrage to me, both as an advocate of justice and an American, since two dedicated Border Patrol agents were railroaded into prison by a scumbag in Federal Prosecutor’s clothing.

The allegasd {Seth’s note: Obvious misprint, mispelling or typo of “alleged” — disgraceful editing} Mexican drug smuggler shot by Border Patrol agents as he tried to dodge arrest in 2005 will appear in federal court in El Paso, Texas, on Friday afternoon.

Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, 27, was arrested Thursday on a drug smuggling offense at a U.S. port of entry. A federal grand jury handed down a sealed indictment on Oct. 17.

Aldrete was granted immunity in 2005 in exchange for testifying against ex-border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

The two Border Patrol agents were sentenced to 11 and 12 years, respectively, for shooting Aldrete as he tried to sneak about million dollars’ worth of marijuana into the country. He was shot in the buttocks while running toward the Mexican border.

Right, the mutt was granted immunity by a legal representative of the United States Government, whom, unless he was on the payroll of a Mexican drug cartel, profoundly stupid or peaking on pure L.S.D. (actually, to be fair, I believe Sutton was kissing up to The Boss, who is paradoxically pro-homeland security and pro-an open border with Mexico at the same time), knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was calling to the witness stand a career criminal whose resume included felonies in at least two countries, including the U.S., to testify against and decimate the careers and futures of these two agents, Ramos and Compean, destroying their families at the same time.

I seem to recall, however, that while the testimony of felons (other than those willing to convict themselves — often with immunity to prosecution though more often a reduced sentence) as an incentive to testify against their own organizations or comrades is considered admissible, the same does not apply to those of questionable background in other circumstances.

I mean, giving official creedence to a drug smuggler who is testifying against a couple of people whose job is to catch and arrest them is beyond the absurd.

Aldrete now faces two counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, one count of conspiracy to import a controlled substance and one count of conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

The alleged offenses happened between June 1, 2005 and Nov. 30, 2005, which is when the government gave Aldrete a pass to enter and exit the country unsupervised, primarily to get medical treatment for his bullet wound.

Aldrete and his co-defendant, Cipriano Ortiz Hernandez, conspired to import and distribute more than 100 kilograms of marijuana on Sept. 24, 2005, and again on Oct. 22 and 23 that same year, according to the charges. (The second alleged offense happened after Aldrete was granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony against the agents.)

I don’t know how anybody else feels about this (though I have a good idea where the sane are concerned), but this whole Aldrete immunity thing, to my way of thinking, makes the DOJ look pretty foolish. They grant immunity to a Mexican drug trafficker in exchange for his testimony crucifying American law enforcement agents and he uses the immunity as an opportunity to smuggle more drugs.

Sutton also is prosecuting the Aldrete case. He has been blasted by advocates of the border agents for not bringing charges against Aldrete sooner.

“I have repeatedly said that if we obtained sufficient competent and admissible evidence against Aldrete, we could prosecute him,” Sutton said in a statement. “Members of my office have worked closely with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration for many months to investigate Aldrete’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking.”

At a Senate hearing this summer on the border agents case, Sutton was non-committal in answering questions about the October drug offense by Aldrete. Some senators pressed Sutton to explain why Aldrete was allowed to enter and leave the country in the run-up to the border agents’ trial.

Advocates of the border agents also have complained that the Aldrete’s alleged October drug smuggling did not come up at the trial of Ramos and Compean.

So Sutton is reneging on his deal with Aldrete, if not in a letter-of-the-law manner, in a “sorry, pal, but you’re cooked… My career is more important than honoring any agreements I make with criminals.”

What a sleazeball this guy is! He sells out both sides in order to further his own career. This is as contemptible an excuse for a…

At any rate, the entire article is here.

There has been no excuse for GWB not pardoning Ramos and Compean without reservation.

Truth to tell and actually a repetition of what I expressed among my earlier posts on this situation, I actually believe that a mere pardon wouldn’t be anywhere near enough.

1. The two agents should be pardoned and reinstated, with all accumulated and earned seniority, to their jobs, and receive all retroactive pay.

2. They should be compensated by the gov’t for all their legal fees and,

3. They and their families should be restored, via full taxpayer expense, to the exact same situation (homeowners with X mortgage debts, etc) that they were in prior to the screwing they received from their own government, the one they served.

What these two guys are being screwed for, coming right down to it, is thinking on their feet.

When a bunch of bureaucrats who’ve never been in danger are empowered to make the rules for those who work in danger, this is what we get.

Fun example: Over 30 years ago, in the early stages of my security career, I worked undercover on the wharves in New Orleans (not that it’s applicable, but my CW was a Colt Python). This was not the same kind of post as the lobby of an office building or whatever, it was a perpetually violent situation. Whenever the job got exciting, both the New Orleans Harbor Police and U.S. Customs were also involved.

As a UC, I held supervisory authority over our uniforms on the wharves, and as such had to deal with management contact.

At one such meeting, I was actually told by a company founder/owner, concerned about liability, that the new policy was that should anyone pull a weapon on me, I should “shoot it out of his hand”.

After I was done laughing, I said, “I have a better idea. How ’bout if I call time out, call you and have you come down and shoot the gun out of the guy’s hand!?”

My point here is that when you hire and train people to protect you, you need to allow them to handle situations as they see fit…you know, think for themselves, as they’re there and you’re not, and you have to back them up.

If I were a U.S. Border Patrol agent, knowing that the Bush Administration condones prosecuting agents for doing their jobs, I would quit. There are too many other ways to serve our country without being punished for doing what we were told we were hired for.

…”catching up” posts.

First, there’s an excellent column by Caroline Glick on the ongoing western policy of appeasement in the face of what I personally prefer to term aggressive Islam.

MUSLIM MINORITIES throughout the world are being financed and ideologically trained in Saudi and UAE funded mosques and Islamic centers. These minorities act in strikingly similar manners in the countries where they are situated throughout the world. On the one hand, their local political leaders demand extraordinary communal rights, rights accorded neither to the national majority nor to other minority populations. On the other hand, Muslim neighborhoods, particularly in Europe, but also in Israel, the Philippines and Australia, are rendered increasingly ungovernable as arms of the state like the police and tax authorities come under attack when they attempt to assert state power in these Muslim communities.

Logic would have it that targeted states would respond to the threat to their authority through a dual strategy. On the one hand, they would firmly assert their authority by enforcing their laws against both individual lawbreakers and against subversive, foreign financed institutions that incite the overthrow of their governments and their replacement with Islamic governments. On the other hand, they would seek out and empower local Muslims who accept the authority and legitimacy of their states and their rule of law.

Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Howard government in Australia, in country after country, governments respond to this challenge by attempting to appease Muslim irredentists and their state sponsors. The British responded to the July 7, 2005 bombings by giving representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood an official role in crafting and carrying out counter-terror policies.

In 2003, then French president Jacques Chirac sent then interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy to Egypt to seek the permission of Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi of the Islamist al-Azhar mosque for the French parliament’s plan to outlaw hijabs in French schools.

In the US, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI asked the terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations to conduct sensitivity training for FBI agents.

In Holland last year, the Dutch government effectively expelled anti-Islamist politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the interest of currying favor with Holland’s restive Muslim minority.

At the minimum, I would say that sanity does not seem to prevail here; They are in the minority in all these countries, yet their demands are complied with post-haste, even to the point of exceeding accommodations accorded the majority in a respective host population.

This acquiescence is not restricted to laws of a social nature, on the contrary it has found its way into global politics.

THE FOREIGN policy aspect of the rush to appease is twofold. First, targeted states refuse to support one another when individual governments attempt to use the tools of law enforcement to handle their domestic jihad threat. For instance, European states have harshly criticized the US Patriot Act while the US criticized the French decision to prohibit the hijab in public schools.

More acutely, targeted states lead the charge in calling for the establishment of Muslim-only states. Today the US and the EU are leading the charge towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and the creation of an independent state of Kosovo.

In two weeks, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the Annapolis conference where together with her European and Arab counterparts, she will exert enormous pressure on the Olmert government to agree to the establishment of a jihadist Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland with its capital in Jerusalem and its sovereignty extending over Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount.

The establishment of the sought-for Palestinian state presupposes the ethnic cleansing of at a minimum 80,000 Israelis from their homes and communities simply because they are Jews. Jews of course will be prohibited from living in Palestine.

To continue,

FOR ITS part, the Palestinian leadership to which Israel will be expected to communicate its acceptance of the establishment of Palestine, is one part criminal, and two parts jihadist. As Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues have made clear, while they are willing to accept Israel’s concessions, they are not willing to accept Israel. This is why they refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

A rare consensus exists today in Israel. From the far-left to the far-right, from IDF Military Intelligence to the Mossad, all agree that the Annapolis conference will fail to bring a peace accord. Since Rice’s approach to reaching just such an accord has been to apply unrelenting pressure on Israel, it is fairly clear that she will blame Israel for the conference’s preordained failure and cause a further deterioration in US-Israeli relations.

While Israel is supposed to accept a Jew-free Palestine, it goes without saying that its own 20 percent Arab minority will continue to enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizenship. Yet one of the direct consequences of the establishment of a Jew-free, pro-jihadist State of Palestine will be the further radicalization of Israeli Arabs. They will intensify their current rejection of Israel’s national identity.

With Palestinian and outside support, they will intensify their irredentist activities and so exert an even more devastating attack on Israel’s sovereignty and right to national self-determination.

“Ma zeh?” {Hebrew for “what’s this?”} you may ask. Well, one answer is that it’s lackluster diplomacy — you know, just like what an employer might expect from a lazy employee of the “sweep under a rug” persuasion. The politicians and diplomats on the western side of the equation want only to put the Israeli-”Palestinian” affair to bed once and for all, the consequences of any expediency be damned, and as a bonus, giving Israel the fid will also fulfill the requisites of The New Dhimmitude©.

SHORTLY AFTER the Annapolis conference fails, and no doubt in a bid to buck up its standing with the Arab world, the US may well stand by its stated intention to recognize the independence of Kosovo.

Yeah, well,

As Julia Gorin

(Julia is profoundly well informed on affairs in the Balkans, and the bulk of her columns specialize therein)

documented in a recent article here, in Jewish World Review, Kosovo’s connections with Albanian criminal syndicates and global jihadists are legion. Moreover, Kosovar independence would likely spur irredentist movements among the Muslim minorities in all Balkan states. In Macedonia for instance, a quarter of the population is Muslim. These irredentist movements in turn would increase Muslim irredentism throughout Europe just as Palestinian statehood will foment an intensification of the Islamization of Israel’s Arab minority.

The Kosovo government announced last month that given the diplomatic impasse, it plans to declare its independence next month. Currently, the Bush administration is signaling its willingness to recognize an independent Kosovo even though doing so will threaten US-Russian relations.

In a bid both to prevent the Bush administration from turning on Israel in the aftermath of the failure of the Annapolis conference and to make clear Israel’s own rejection of the notion that a “solution” to the Palestinian conflict with Israel can be imposed by foreign powers, the Olmert government should immediately and loudly restate its opposition to the imposition of Kosovar independence on Serbia.

In the interest of defending the nation-state system, on which American sovereignty and foreign policy is based, the US should reassess the logic of its support for the establishment of Muslim-only states. It should similarly revisit its refusal to openly support the right of non-Islamic states like Israel, Serbia and even France, to assert their rights to defend their sovereignty, national security and national character from outside-sponsored domestic Islamic subversion.

There’s a lot more happening in Ms. Glick’s column, which can be read in its entirety here.

In my mind’s ear (if there can be a mind’s eye, there must surely also exist a mind’s ear) I keep hearing the phrase, “The creep of Islam”.

“Moving right along”…

This is really funny. Put down your coffee cup before you listen.

A car accident happened in the Dallas-Ft.Worth area.

This is a recorded phone call from a man who witnessed the accident involving four elderly women. It was so popular when they played it on the local radio station the station decided to put it on their website.

Next up, and while the following articles are several days old they are by no means historical,

Nearly two dozen illegal immigrants were arrested Wednesday, accused of using fake security badges to work in critical areas of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, including the tarmac, authorities said.

The 23 illegal workers were employed by Ideal Staffing Solutions Inc., whose corporate secretary and office manager also were arrested after an eight-month investigation that involved federal, state and Chicago authorities.

The company contracted work for carriers including UAL Corp.’s (UAUA) United Airlines, KLM and Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN.AU), said Elissa A. Brown, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

“The investigation identifies a vulnerability that could compromise national security, while bringing criminal charges against individuals who built an illegal work force into their business practice,” Brown said.

Read the entire article here.

As if that weren’t enough,

The Transportation Security Administration touts its programs to ensure security by using undercover operatives to test its airport screeners. In one instance, however, the agency thwarted such a test by alerting screeners across the country that it was under way, even providing descriptions of the undercover agents.

The government routinely runs covert tests at airports to ensure that security measures in place are sufficient to stop a terrorist from bringing something dangerous onto an airplane.
Alerting screeners when the undercover officer is coming through and what the person looks like would defeat the purpose.

But that’s exactly what happened April 28, 2006, according to an e-mail from a top TSA official who oversees security operations.

This one’s a real winner, read on…

On the one hand, we have airports hiring HR contractors who make a practice of endangering the lives of scores, hundreds or thousands of people and on the other, the government agency responsible for U.S. airport security is rigging security inspections to make it appear that they are doing their job.

No matter how much effort I put into it, I can’t find even the slightest hint of justification for the above two situations. Does this make me a bad person?

Some people definitely need to be punished to the fullest extent that the law allows, some people need to be replaced and some people need to be majorly retrained….

…to legislate surrender in Iraq?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that she will bring another troops-out-of-Iraq bill to the House floor on Friday.

It will be the 58th “politically motivated” bill on the Iraq war by the House and Senate this year, Republicans complained.

The Fifty Eighth!

Now, I may sound a bit partisan here, but repeated failure seems to be a recurring theme among the folks over there on the left side of the aisle. I mean, they embrace socialism… despite its extreme lack of success in every government that has adopted it over the years… and they want to force it on the rest of us, here in America, marketing it as “freebies” for all.

So this 58 business, while lending new meaning to the old adage “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”, is also somewhat embarrassing to me, as an American, despite the fact that it comes from the left, which is as indictable as El Nino once was in its own milieu, for all sorts of problems.

Foreign media report on our Congressional activities, simply because the United States is what it is in the world, and a Congress that spends most of its time trying to disrupt the CIC during a time when American troops are in harm’s way demeans the image of America and our political system (think all us voters, who put these people in office).

Fifty Eight failed attempts by the majority on the Hill to surrender to terrorism must make us look pretty lame.

“We are restating the differentiation between us and the president of the United States,” Pelosi said at a press conference. “This gives voice to the desires of the American people,” she said of the bill, which ties war funding ($50 billion for four months) to an immediate troop withdrawal.

Right, they are “re-stating” the differentiation, etc, etc…

Liberals will be liberals.

These are people who will sink in quicksand to protest an anti-quicksand policy and wonder, as they begin to smother (ooops! too late!), if it was a worthwhile cause.

However, I digress…

The 58 surrender attempts have all had one thing in common: They all happened on the taxpayer’s dime. What Pelosi blatantly admitted in that single short paragraph was that the Democrats have no problem with flogging a dead horse on our time and money to press a political agenda.

Try being as unproductive in a salaried private sector job and see how soon you encounter the need to edit your resume.

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) criticized Democrats for refusing to recognize the important of the U.S. military mission as well as the “tremendous progress we’ve made against all odds in capturing and killing agents of terror, and providing a level of security for political reconciliation to take place.

“This bill is deja-vu all over again,” Blunt said. “The last time Democrats tried to tie funding for our troops to a date for surrender, they failed - and that was before the marked turn-around we’ve witnessed on the ground over the past several months.”

Truncating…

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Iraq from every neighborhood of Baghdad, according to a top American general - “allowing American troops involved in the ’surge’ to depart as planned.”

Which brings us to this:

The upbeat assessment from the New York Times and other major newspapers had some Republicans questioning the Democrats’ timing:

Blunt said the House on Friday would be taking up a bill “that has far less to do with building on our continued progress, and far more to do with pandering to their (Democrats’) base.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a statement on Thursday questioning the continuing Democratic push for a troop withdrawal.

“What unfortunate timing for Democrats, announcing yet another attempt at a withdrawal date on a day when the papers are filled with encouraging news from Iraq,” McConnell said.

President Bush vetoed a bill tying war funding to a troop withdrawal in May, and he undoubtedly would do so again, given the chance. Some troops withdrawal bills, facing the prospect of a presidential veto, have not mustered enough support to pass the Senate.

So what it all boils down to is that the Democrats have so little regard for our tax dollars or for the Will Of The People that they’ve got absolutely no problem with wasting the time and the resources of the American People by squandering two years of a Congressional majority performing the Kiss of Shame on the far left.

Fifty Eight (count ‘em, 58!) attempts to surrender to the anti-thesis of our very civilization, “Paid for by the Democratic Party”.