Hard Astarboard: January 2006 Archives

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January 31, 2006

Out Of "Left" Field

Now me, I'm not a big TV or movie fanatic, I'm completely disgusted with what the Big 3 are broadcasting these days and have little use for Hollywood's incumbent output. I must admit that I'm not the type to sit through something like Wuthering Heights, if I'm going to suspend my personal productivity, I'd rather watch action flicks or films whose plots possess the hint of danger or violence as they go, or are really funny comedies, the mindless sort of stuff that requires no deep thought, are just pure entertainment.

So here I am, watching a movie called Murder At 1600

I'm a Wesley Snipes fan, which sucks where this film's concerned because it's another lefty propaganda effort.

Ronny Cox is the President.

U.S. airmen are prisoners of North Korea, and are being beaten and otherwise abused by the commies therein on international television. While all his advisers believe we should rescue our military personnel from the bad guys, the President is a peace-at-any-cost kind of guy with a Carteresque attitude towards the situation.

Definitely a Democrat with strong liberal leanings.

A twenty five year old woman is found murdered in the White House, and all the evidence points to the First Son. DC homicide detectives Wesley Snipes, Dennis Miller and Secret Service Agent Diane Lane investigate, despite aggressive pursuit by Lane's own agency, and in the end discover that there is a plot by SecDef and associates to destroy the President via blackmail based on the concept of POTUS' son, a spoiled, lecherous brat, being responsible for the murder in question(a frame-up).

So of course, SecDef and his ilk(read that as the GOP and its minions) are the evil murderers, blackmailers and general scoundrels who mastermind the plot.

Coincidentally, however, the cast includes an assassin named John Kerry and, though the film was made in the 1990s, the First Lady is more reminiscent of Theresa Heinz-Kerry than anyone else.

Heh heh.

Bottom line: The bad guys are war-mongering Republicans whose plan is to blackmail the President into sending troops into North Korea snd rescuing the U.S. military people from the clutches of the commies, then resign.

And this movie came out in the late 1990s, prime Clinton years during which the Presidential attitude was "let our citizens and military personnel be butchered, wherever on the earth they happen to be, we'll take no positive action. We are Democrats, we could care less." Remember Mogadishu?

Clinton's policies as President were not unlike those of Jimmuh Cahtuh, the other recent-decades-Democrat President who allowed U.S. citizens to be held as hostages for months without addressing the situation.

Murder At 1600 was, in short, while being an action film, also another pitiful political jab at conservatives by the amoral, anti-patriotic Hollywood crowd.

The saboteurs of freedom attempting to demean those who protect the United States.

Hmmmmmm.

Sounds like today's liberals...

Posted by Seth at 09:55 PM |

Alito Sworn In

Judge Sam Alito was sworn in today as the justice replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

I bet a whole lot of liberals are whining about this development.

Whine, liberals, whine!

Posted by Seth at 12:31 PM | Comments (2) |

January 29, 2006

Some Bigots Got Themselves A Bit Fooled, Heh

Leonard Pitts, Jr. has a column running at Jewish World Review this weekend that's kind of an amusing look at the stupidity of the average racist, such as the kind belonging to the Ku Klux Klan, that hate organization created by southern Democrats.

Check it out.

Posted by Seth at 03:42 AM |

Shut Up, They Explained

I had meant to link to this great Op-Ed column by author and City Journal Senior Editor Brian C. Anderson a few days ago when it was first published in WSJ's Opinion Journal, but for the last several days I've been swamped with issues involving my new house and a few other things I seem to be getting out of the way --finally!

Mr. Anderson discusses campaign finance reform and how it targets free speech, particularly that of conservatives.

The rise of alternative media--political talk radio in the 1980s, cable news in the '90s, and the blogosphere in the new millennium--has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party's current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media's vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today's liberals quietly, relentlessly and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations. Their campaign represents the most sustained attack on free political speech in the United States since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. Though Republicans have the most to lose in the short run, all Americans who care about our most fundamental rights and the civic health of our democracy need to understand what's going on--and resist it.

It came as no surprise when Senator John McCain was behind one of the most offensive "campaign finance" acts in modern history. That ~~aisle straddling, self seeking, in-name-only Republican~~ distinguished gentleman is... No, this time I will avoid my usual flair for digression...

The most imminent danger comes from campaign-finance rules, especially those spawned by the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act. Republican maverick John McCain's co-sponsorship aside, the bill passed only because of overwhelming Democratic support. It's easy to see why liberals have spearheaded the nation's three-decade experiment with campaign-finance regulation. Seeking to rid politics of "big-money corruption," election-law reforms obstruct the kinds of political speech--political ads and perhaps now the feisty editorializing of the new media--that escape the filter of the mainstream press and the academy, left-wing fiefdoms still regulation-free. Campaign-finance reform, notes columnist George Will, by steadily expanding "government's control of the political campaigns that decide who controls government," advances "liberalism's program of extending government supervision of life."

Ah, yes, there is that, indeed. George Will hit the nail right on the head with the last, "liberalism's program of extending government supervision of life." It beats me how a bunch of folks whose political handle stems from the word "liberty" can be so set on taking away our liberty, that concept-cum-reality earned for us by patriots who fought, died, sacrificed nearly two hundred thirty years ago so that theirs and future generations might live free.

Liberty to go about our lives without the very government control the liberals are attempting to force feed us through Congress and the courts, and are largely succeeding.

McCain-Feingold, the latest and scariest step down that slope, makes it a felony for corporations, nonprofit advocacy groups and labor unions to run ads that criticize--or even name or show--members of Congress within 60 days of a federal election, when such quintessentially political speech might actually persuade voters. It forbids political parties from soliciting or spending "soft money" contributions to publicize the principles and ideas they stand for. Amending the already baffling campaign-finance rules from the 1970s, McCain-Feingold's dizzying do's and don'ts, its detailed and onerous reporting requirements of funding sources--which require a dense 300-page book to lay out--have made running for office, contributing to a candidate or cause, or advocating without an attorney at hand unwise and potentially ruinous.
Not for nothing has Justice Clarence Thomas denounced McCain-Feingold's "unprecedented restrictions" as an "assault on the free exchange of ideas."

Because political blogs are mostly conservative, reporting and commenting on important news issues that the liberal mainstream media either downplays, spins or ignores and have become a formidable "new media" power all their own, these "reformers" have now cast their jaundiced eye on the blogosphere.

Campaign-finance reform now has the blogosphere in its crosshairs. When the Federal Election Commission wrote specific rules in 2002 to implement McCain-Feingold, it voted 4-2 to exempt the Web. After all, observed the majority of three Republicans and one Democrat (the agency divides its seats evenly between the two parties), Congress didn't list the Internet among the "public communications"--everything from television to roadside billboards--that the FEC should regulate. Further, "the Internet is virtually a limitless resource, where the speech of one person does not interfere with the speech of anyone else," reasoned Republican commissioner Michael Toner. "Whereas campaign finance regulation is meant to ensure that money in politics does not corrupt candidates or officeholders, or create the appearance thereof, such rationales cannot plausibly be applied to the Internet, where on-line activists can communicate about politics with millions of people at little or no cost."

You can't blame the left for seeing the right thinking bloggers on the Internet as a threat to their previously enjoyed media monopoly...

The FEC thus has plunged into what Smith calls a "bizarre" rule-making process that could shackle the political blogosphere. This would be a particular disaster for the right, which has maintained its early advantage over the left in the blogosphere, despite the emergence of big liberal sites like Daily Kos. Some 157 of the top 250 political blogs express right-leaning views, a recent liberal survey found. Reaching a growing and influential audience--hundreds of thousands of readers weekly (including most journalists) for the top conservative sites--the blogosphere has enabled the right to counter the biases of the liberal media mainstream. Without the blogosphere, Howell Raines would still be the New York Times' editor, Dan Rather would only now be retiring, garlanded with praise--and John Kerry might be president of the U.S., assuming that CBS News had gotten away with its falsehood about President Bush's military service that the diligent bloggers at PowerLine, LittleGreenFootballs and other sites swiftly debunked.

...but they can be blamed for trying to replace our American right to freedom of speech with intrusive government regulation.

Read Brian Anderson'e entire commentary here.

Posted by Seth at 02:35 AM |

January 28, 2006

Hamas Rules, Indeed

Here is a very well laid out analysis of the significance of the Hamas victory over Fatah in Wednesday's elections, and where this result of terrorist organization over long established, corrupt governance might lead.

The sweeping victory of the Islamist Hamas party in Wednesday's Palestinian legislative elections can hardly be considered good news. But neither is it surprising, and it may even have the long-run benefit of educating Palestinians about the terrible cost of their political choices.

Absolutely, but that long-run benefit will come the hard way. The Hamas charter's still all about murdering as many Jews(not considering the collateral deaths of fellow Palestinians to be of consequence)as it takes to make instant history of Israel. Having been voted into power makes them no less terrorists than they were prior to the elections.

The ruling Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governed corruptly, ineffectually and, until the death in 2004 of founder Yasser Arafat, dictatorially. So it is understandable that Palestinians wanted an alternative. That they went for the only other major choice on offer is not necessarily an indication that they share Hamas's goal of destroying Israel and all its citizens. The vote might even turn out to be clarifying--in the sense of showing the world that no Israeli-Palestinian peace is possible until the Palestinians have leaders who really want to live in peace with Israel.

Right, sometime soon. No doubt.

Rabin was right that Arafat would have scant regard for the rights of Palestinians. But he was wrong that Arafat would crack down on Hamas. Like every other strongman, Arafat didn't crack down on extremists but used them to his advantage where he could. Palestinians could see that the U.S. was coddling a man who oppressed them, breeding cynicism about U.S. motives and making it hard for democratic movements to flourish. The Bush Administration is working hard to change those perceptions and build a Palestinian civil society, but this will take years.

Just one of many cases of the Bush Administration's having to sidetrack assets from ongoing proactive projects to clean up a mess generated by the Clinton Administration years before, but I'll digress no further.

The White House will have to resist the temptation, no doubt encouraged by Europe, to pressure Israel to deal with Hamas as it once was pressed to deal with Arafat. But given Hamas's history and declared goals, the onus is on its leaders to show that they have an agenda beyond terror. If Hamas begins to use Gaza as a base to import weapons and attack Israel, the Jewish state will have every right to strike back in self-defense. And the U.S. should support it in doing so.

Future terrorism by Hamas, which is a certainty, will bring misery to the Palestinians via Israel's completely justified retaliatory and self defense measures, and the Palestinian leadership will blame Israel for any collateral damage, somehow managing to make the part about the original terrorist attack go away and accusing Israel of violating territorial agreements it had made with the Palestinians.

True story: When I lived in San Francisco, I found that there are a lot of small, family run retail stores owned by Palestinians, and got to know the owners of a few in my neighborhood.

"Arafat no good." Was a consensus among these people. "He steal. He make violence. Arafat gone, violence stop, I go home."

About two and a half years ago, there was a Palestinian terrorist attack of particular severity that drew a smash for smite response from the Israelis more than twelve hours later.

Two of the Palestinian merchants told me that according to Al Jazeera and a couple of other Arabic news agencies, the Arab terrorist attack had been retaliation for the Israelis' action. According to the time-line involved, this would have meant that the terrorists had been retaliating in advance.

That being the nature of Hamas and the rest of the terrorist groups purporting to speak for the Palestinians, in my own unhumble opinion I see nothing changing for the better for a long time to come, unless my own long-standing prediction comes true:

Israel exercises an extreme military option in which a lot of Palestinians die, good(collaterally, or simply too moderate for Hamas' use and therefore executed) and evil alike, the terrorists are hammered into oblivion, destroyed root and branch, and any support among the Palestinians for any kind of militancy suffers a broken back.

Posted by Seth at 09:20 AM |

January 27, 2006

You Are What You Read

My Illustrious Aunt Brenda, who is definitely on a roll, has sent me this one, which I personally think is really funny.

You are what you read . . .
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los AngelesTimes is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern Californiato do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

Posted by Seth at 02:32 AM |

Like I Was Saying

A few days ago, I posted on the impotency of those diplomatically responsible for addressing the threat, very possibly in its Eleventh Hour status, of Iran's producing nuclear weapons and using them forthwith.

Well, columnist Jeff Jacoby is apparently thinking along the same lines as I am,

''It is not on the table. It is not on the agenda. I happen to think it is inconceivable."
That was British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in September, telling the BBC what he thinks about the use of military force to prevent Iran's homicidal theocrats from acquiring nuclear weapons. Last week Straw went further, declaring that even economic sanctions would be an overreaction. ''I don't think we should rush our fences here," he told a conference in London. Much better to turn the whole thing over to the UN Security Council, so long as any action it might take ''is followed without sanction." What he recommends, in other words, is a Security Council resolution with no teeth. That'll fix the mullahs' wagon.

To be sure, not every British politician has been so weak-kneed. Tory MP Michael Ancram has called for Iran to be — brace yourself — expelled from the World Cup tournament in June. Barring the planet's foremost sponsor of terrorism from soccer matches — now there's Churchillian grit. Ancram says it will send ''a very, very clear signal to Iran that the international community will not accept what they are doing." Sure it will. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's rabid president, must break into a sweat thinking about it.

Not to be outdone by Great Britain in the going-wobbly department, Germany's foreign minister assured a television audience Sunday that Berlin ''will refrain from anything that brings us a step closer" to military action against Iran. Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against ''a militarization of thinking" on how to keep one of the world's worst regimes from acquiring the bomb. ''Rather, we should see that we use and exhaust to the best of our powers the diplomatic solutions that remain available."

In short, we're placing the prevention of a profoundly premature Armageddon in the hands of a bunch of people who would rather not offend the protagonists than take any assertive steps to prevent what we are dependent upon them to prevent.

Fortunately, not everyone is off in Cloud Cuckoo Land when it comes to dealing with Tehran. The acting prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, put his government's position bluntly: ''Under no circumstances, and at no point," he said on Jan. 17, ''can Israel allow anyone with these kinds of malicious designs against us [to] have control of weapons of destruction that can threaten our existence." As the Jewish state has good reason to know, dictators who publicly vow to commit mass murder generally mean what they say — and are generally not deterred by threats of ''diplomatic solutions."

What comes next is anybody's guess, but my own would be that, absenting a preemptive move by the Israelis, the U.S.A. will deal conclusively with the problem.

Jeff Jacoby's column pretty well spells out the situation, and can be read in its entirety here.

Posted by Seth at 02:04 AM |

January 26, 2006

Clinton Vs Titanic

Another goody from my beloved Aunt Brenda, conservative Democrat at large.

Students were assigned to read 2 books, "Titanic" & "My Life" by Bill Clinton. One smart ass student turned in the following book report, with the proposition that they were nearly identical stories!
His cool professor gave him an A+ for this report:

Titanic: $29.99
Clinton: $29.99

Titanic: Over 3 hours to read
Clinton: Over 3 hours to read

Titanic: The story of Jack and Rose, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.
Clinton: The story of Bill and Monica, their forbidden love, and subsequent catastrophe.

Titanic: Jack is a starving artist.
Clinton: Bill is a bullshit artist.

Titanic: In one scene, Jack enjoys a good cigar.
Clinton: Ditto for Bill.

Titanic: During ordeal, Rose's dress gets ruined.
Clinton: Ditto for Monica.

Titanic: Jack teaches Rose to spit.
Clinton: Let's not go there.

Titanic: Rose gets to keep her jewelry.
Clinton: Monica's forced to return her gifts.

Titanic: Rose remembers Jack for the rest of her life.
Clinton: Clinton doesn't remember Jack.

Titanic: Rose goes down on a vessel full of seamen.
Clinton: Monica...ooh, let's not go there, either.

Titanic: Jack surrenders to an icy death.
Clinton: Bill goes home to Hilary...basically the same thing.

Posted by Seth at 04:39 PM |

January 24, 2006

U.N. Corruption? What's New?

Something's shaking here.

Corruption at the United Nations?

Shocking!

Not!

Posted by Seth at 10:42 AM |

Bad Medicine

Rabbi Avi Shafran has a column in today's Jewish World Review that, while directed primarily toward a Jewish readership, discusses a topic that should be of concern to all.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law was really about whether a federal drug-control law provided a U.S. Attorney General the authority to punish a state's doctors for acting in accordance with a state statute. But by contending that physician-assisted suicide is a "legitimate medical purpose" for the prescription of a drug, there can be little doubt that the ruling helped bring the idea of abetting suicide a bit closer to mainstream thinking. That's a deeply unfortunate thing.
As it happened, the decision came exactly seven days after a New Jersey nurse who has confessed to killing 29 people decided to stop cooperating with investigators. Charles Cullen maintains that he has killed up to 40 people, many of them old and ailing hospital patients whom he injected with lethal doses of drugs — like those that Oregon doctors have used to end the lives of more than 200 people.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Seth at 06:05 AM |

January 22, 2006

No Chips Off Old Liberal Blocks Need Apply

The last thing the United States or the State of Nevada need is another Carter in Washington. Luckily, it doesn't look like there's much chance of that happening.

One member of that household in government was more than enough!

Posted by Seth at 11:05 AM |

Good!

It's good to learn that Ford hasn't any intention of selling a quality auto manufacturer like Jaguar to one of America's enemies-by-proxy!

Posted by Seth at 10:51 AM |

One Rewarding Career Path For Serious IT People

Over the last decade or so, the Protection(safety and security) Industry has proven itself as, and as such begun to achieve status as a "business enabler" rather than its outdated reference as "necessary overhead".

IT security has become one of the principal winners in the field, many of its best and brightest moving up to management positions.

Information security professionals, already experiencing a surge in demand for their badly needed technical skills, may also get a chance this year to flex their business acumen.
IT security professionals are being invited into corporate board rooms around the globe, wielding more influence and finding increased opportunities.

This is an industry sector hungry for talented people, and definitely worth looking into for those with the right skills.

Posted by Seth at 07:38 AM |

No Girlie Men Here!

On this issue, I am in complete agreement with columnist Greg Crosby.

Posted by Seth at 06:28 AM |

One For The Gipper

In yesterday's Opinion Journal's Review & Outlook is a look at the mega-positive effect of Reaganomics on the economy over the last quarter century.

Twenty-five years ago today, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States promising less intrusive government, lower tax rates and victory over communism. On that same day, the American hostages in Iran were freed after 444 days of captivity. If the story of history is one long and arduous march toward freedom, this was a momentous day well worth commemorating.
All the more so because over this 25-year period prosperity has been the rule, not the exception, for America--in stark contrast to the stagflationary 1970s. Perhaps the greatest tribute to the success of Reaganomics is that, over the course of the past 276 months, the U.S. economy has been in recession for only 15. That is to say, 94% of the time the U.S. economy has been creating jobs (43 million in all) and wealth ($30 trillion). More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s.

Good read, the column is here.

Posted by Seth at 06:04 AM |

They're Still At It...

...at least columnist Bruce Britt is, with this article at Bet.com, where he blames global warming on human activities, blames Katrina and future powerful hurricanes on his man-made global warming and then turns it into a racial issue.

If you thought Hurricane Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, think again. Concerned environmentalists say that unless the United States gets real about the threat of global warming, African Americans and other people of color can expect a repeat of disasters like Katrina.
“When you look at the trends and put them all together, it’s undisputable that the sea levels are rising,” says Ansje Miller, director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC). “Warmer seas mean more intense hurricanes…. You’re going to have intense flooding like we have never seen before. Katrina is really the hurricane of the future.”

So blacks and "other people of color" can expect a repeat of disasters like Katrina. Thank G-d the rest of us have nothing to worry about -- as the mainstream media established in New Orleans four months ago, severe hurricanes like Katrina blow right by us white folks because they're somehow our creation, white folks causing the racism spawning global warming. Yeah, blame Bush and Cheney, who are, if so many left-thinking pundits are to be believed, the producers of all that is evil or disasterous in the world.

Environmentalists blame the fierce new storms on global warming – the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Scientists attribute the phenomenon to gases produced by fossil fuels like gasoline, petroleum and coal. Though critics dismiss global warming as junk science, reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have continually found a discernable human influence on world temperatures.
That’s bad news, especially for African Americans. Citing Katrina as a case-in-point, some environmentalists say global warming impacts minorities and the disadvantaged harder than other groups. If global warming gets worse, many African-American communities will be more vulnerable to breathing ailments, insect-carried diseases and heat-related illness and death. But asking Black folks to give up gas-guzzling SUV’s and other bling is a tough sell.

I'm not insensitive to the disaster that befell New Orleans, by no means -- the Crescent City, where I once lived for many years, has remained close to my heart, and I contributed what I could to the Red Cross and a couple of religious organizations in the aftermath to help obtain relief for some of those poor souls who lost their homes and possessions -- but I am also completely aware that as many white people, by population ratio(there were a lot more blacks living in Nawlins than whites), lost their homes as well, but this fact was played down by the left leaning media so as not to detract from the playing of the infamous "race card".

There are a whole lot of poor white families in the Crescent City, many I have known well whose adult members are/were totally illiterate and who scraped to get by. We saw little coverage of their post Katrina plight, simply because the media, in their complicity with the rest of the left in their War On Bush, preferred to make the disaster homogeneously racial, all assignable fault somehow leading to the Bush Administration.

This entire debacle is utterly shameful -- disinformation coming from the folks trusted to report the entire story, delivering all the facts, in order to attack the Bush government to preserve a political agenda.

Now we have a "journalist" at Bet.com who is essentially telling us that by not supporting the Kyoto Accords, the Bush Administration will be singularly responsible for the future hurricane deaths of black Americans, putting a racist spin on the global warming issue.

Further,

Relatively, Blacks are environmental Good Samaritans. Per capita, we emit approximately 20 percent less carbon dioxide than Whites – well below 2020 targets set by the U.S. Climate Stewardship Act. Not only do we use more energy-conserving public transportation, we spend considerably less per capita on energy-intensive material goods.
Yet Blacks are exposed to worse air pollution than Whites in every major metropolitan area. Some charge that the Bush administration has made matters worse by creating new policies, like the Clear Skies Act and the Healthy Forest Initiative, that allow utilities and industries to pollute more. President Bush enraged environmentalists when he opted out of the Kyoto protocol global warming treaty, saying it would harm the U.S. economy.

Where, we have to ask ourselves, does Mr. Britt obtain his "evidential" statistical data?

And when, we must also wonder, will black America wake up to the fact that the party they trust and the party they vote for is not only the party that keeps racism alive just to keep on enjoying the majority of their votes, but also the party from whence sprang the Ku Klux Klan?

Perhaps after another few wasted years of being lied to by the Democrats and shysters like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, this powerful voting bloc will realize how propaganda and empty promises from the left are hindering their community more than helping it, and that this is by design -- as long as the Democrats are able to maintain a wall of distrust between blacks and whites, continuing to blame everything on racism and being believed by the black community, they'll continue to keep their votes.

Hat Tip; James Taranto.

Posted by Seth at 04:51 AM | Comments (2) |

January 21, 2006

Obstacle Course

...is about the most accurate term for what the left presents George W. Bush as their contribution to homeland security.

The administration is prosecuting a war against terrorists who mean to ~~harm~~ murder all Americans who are not Muslims. Men, women, children, old folks, all the same to them... and Dubya's having to spend an inordinate amount of time defending policies that have proven themselves to have saved a whole lotta lives -- American ones -- here in the continental United States.

All this aggressive energy the Democrats and their liberal masters, for purely political reasons, have been investing in attacking and obstructing Bush's efforts to protect our country, ourselves, our families and our fellow Americans from an ambitious, remorseless, implacable enemy would be better invested in supporting the Global War On Terror and the Patriot Act.

Instead, we get a thinly concealed declaration from the left that they want to see Bush fail, meaning, among other things, that terrorists would be successful in mounting attacks here in the United States. Despite these peoples' Utopian fantasies, we really can't have one without the other, which pretty well tells us where their priorities lie.

Those leftists are, indeed, some sick puppies...

Posted by Seth at 05:50 AM |

January 18, 2006

Earth Shattering Diplomacy

This in from yesterday...

Apparently in an effort to win international support and avoid censure by the United Nations Security Council, Iran on Tuesday proposed a resumption of nuclear talks with the Europeans, a move that was immediately rejected by Britain as "vacuous."

Indeed.

The proposal came eight days after Iran resumed nuclear work at three sites in violation of an agreement 16 months ago with France, Germany and Britain that froze most of Iran's nuclear activities. The resumption prompted the European trio to declare the talks dead and call for the Security Council to pass judgment on Iran.

This should be very frightening for Iran. The U.N. "passing judgement" can only mean one of two things:

a) They might be {gulp!} censured, or

b) There might be {shudder} sanctions.

Seriously, what will they do?

Impose a Megatons For Food Program?

Kofi & Son would be strongly supportive, as they would undoubtedly see some lucrative financial opportunities in the offing, as would most French U.N. diplomats and a few others of their ilk, such as ~~a certain corrupt, left wing scumbag, terrorism supporting British traitor named~~ George Galloway (spit).

In a letter on Tuesday, Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of the Supreme National Security Council, emphasized Iran's determination to "continue its full cooperation" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, adding that Iran "spares no effort in removing any ambiguity on its peaceful nuclear activities through dialogue and negotiation," according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.
Expressing appreciation for the Europeans, it added that Iran "considers dialogue and negotiation as the best course of action" and "is prepared to make the process a success."

But the letter, addressed to the three foreign ministries and sent through their missions in Vienna, gave no indication that Iran would resume the freeze on its conversion, enrichment and reprocessing of uranium as required by the agreement.

Of course not! It's amazing how after dealing with Islamofascist governments for so many years, these dynamic diplocrats would still like us to believe that they'll bring anything reasonable to the bargaining table.

And camels might fly...

It's always the same deal: The Muslim country offers nothing except doubletalk, promises they can break, according to their religious beliefs, because they're made to infidels, or simply stands firm while insisting that all concessions come from the western governments involved in "negotiations". And somehow they manage to word their diplomatic dictum in such a way as to give the impression that they're proferring offers of great sacrifice to themselves and great benefit to all mankind.

Sure they are.

"It is unacceptable," said a German official, who described the letter as "a lot of nice words without any concrete offer."

Good for you! You tell 'em!

And tell 'em again, and again. Western diplomacy with Iran as regards their nuclear programs is reminiscent of something I saw in a cartoon as a kid where one character draws a line on the ground and says, "I dare you to cross this line."

The other character crosses it.

The first character draws a second line on the ground.

"I dare you to cross this one." He challenges.

What follows is: "And this one." "And this one." etc...

The U.N. and its Old Europe members have already proven themselves a toothless, unapplicable, cowardly, corrupt and overly expensive attempted remedy to the world's more dangerous problems.

So,

Indeed, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, Iran's representative to the international nuclear agency in Vienna, said in a telephone interview from Vienna that Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel research was "legal and irreversible."
He added: "We are ready to negotiate with the Europeans and the Russians. It is now their turn to understand us."

He called it unfair that Iran's scientists had not been able to conduct their nuclear research under the freeze, saying, "The philosophy of telling scientists not to think and research is contrary to human rights principles and the United Nations Charter."

Which means exactly what it reads like.

Iranian diplomats will talk day and night for as long as possible, buying time for their continued nuclear research and the development of their first atomic weapons.

Given the spinally challenged diplomacy of the folks in western Europe, "as long as possible" can mean forever, or at least right up until there is a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv and a score or so additional suitcase nuclear devices fall into the hands of terrorists. One suitcase nuke goes a long, long way.

Then again, perhaps Israel will do unto Iran's nuclear reactor program what they once did unto Iraq's.

Or for the entire issue coming down to the Eleventh Hour option of the U.S.(it always comes down to our country) allowing Iran to produce and deploy a nuclear weapon while the U.N. talks to a wall, or executing a military operation, up to and including invasion, to prevent a probable nuclear holocaust by removing the extremist government and replacing it with the same kind of democratic government we have helped install in Iraq.

Jeezzzz!!!! I can already hear the howling, booing, hissing, weeping and gnashing of teeth coming from the port side over that one!

They'll just have to get it through their ~~pointed, tinfoil covered little Utopian liberal~~ heads that our entire operational profile in the Middle East and Southwest Asia is ultimately an act of self defense against people who don't think like we do but would sure love to kill us, man, woman and child, because we don't worship as they do, either.

All that said, I do not for a minute believe that this situation we now face as regards Iran's nuclear ~~weapons development~~ energy program is going to be resolved peacefully.

All the Europeans and ~~that useless fucking idiot~~ U.N. nuke agency czar Mohamed ElBaradei are doing is blowing smoke, lots and lots of smoke.

Posted by Seth at 07:40 AM | Comments (4) |

January 17, 2006

One Year For A 180?

Here is a must-read post featuring a great letter to the Dishonorable John Kerry from my friend GM, at GM's Corner.

Posted by Seth at 03:09 AM | Comments (2) |

More Of The Same

Recently I posted on the corruption of the nation's core educators' union. An organization that began as a protective association for teachers and metamorphosized into something entirely different, not at all representative of its dues paying constituency.

Well, this is not an isolated incident, as they say; Evidently this kind of thing has spread like a cancer into the infrastructures of other unions, not least among which is the United Farm Workers(UFW).

According to Columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr.,

Discussing the Jack Abramoff congressional lobbying scandal, some have invoked the colorful saying — often attributed to Eric Hoffer, a longshoreman-turned-philosopher of the 20th century — that every great cause begins as a movement, degenerates into a business and winds up a racket.
I can't help but think how beautifully, and how tragically, that phrase sums up the moral trajectory of the United Farm Workers union over the last 40 years. What began as a worthwhile cause — to bring dignity to farm workers — eventually became a national movement, then a family business. And now, the evidence suggests, it has become a racket.

Read the entire column.

Posted by Seth at 12:48 AM | Comments (2) |

Genocide, By Any Other Name...

And this is what those ~~contemptible, soulless, murder endorsing, liberal scum~~ "progressives" who, outspokenly so, do not support Judge Sam Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court, do support.

For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in 2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the abortion capital of the country. And abortions for out-of-town women performed in the city increased from 57 to 70 out of every 1,000 between 1996 and 2004, a subtle yet noticeable trend that experts say may reflect growing hurdles against the procedure in more conservative parts of the country.
The new Vital Statistics report released by the city Department of Health this month shows there were 124,100 live births, 11,700 spontaneous abortions and 91,700 induced abortions in the city in 2004.

Hat Tip; James Taranto

Posted by Seth at 12:22 AM | Comments (2) |

January 16, 2006

ACLU Sues NSA

Jay, over at Stop The ACLU, reports that the American Civil Liberties Union(spit) is now suing the National Security Agency over their electronic intelligence gathering programs made public by the New York Times in recent weeks.

ACLU Sues NSA
by Jay on 01-17-06 @ 12:53 am Filed under ACLU, War On Terror, News
Another Big Hat tip to AJ Strata

Is the ACLU in contact with terrorists overseas? Well, of course they are! Now it seems they are paranoid of getting caught!

Saying that the Bush administration’s illegal spying on Americans must end, the American Civil Liberties Union today filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the National Security Agency seeking to stop a secret electronic surveillance program that has been in place since shortly after September 11, 2001.
“President Bush may believe he can authorize spying on Americans without judicial or Congressional approval, but this program is illegal and we intend to put a stop to it,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “The current surveillance of Americans is a chilling assertion of presidential power that has not been seen since the days of Richard Nixon.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys, and national nonprofit organizations (including the ACLU) who frequently communicate by phone and e-mail with people in the Middle East. Because of the nature of their calls and e-mails, they believe their communications are being intercepted by the NSA under the spying program. The program is disrupting their ability to talk with sources, locate witnesses, conduct scholarship, and engage in advocacy. The program, which was first disclosed by The New York Times on December 16, has sparked national and international furor and has been condemned by lawmakers across the political spectrum.

In addition to the ACLU, the plaintiffs in today’s case are:

Authors and journalists James Bamford, Christopher Hitchens and Tara
McKelvey

Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin of New York University’s Center on
International Cooperation and democracy scholar Larry Diamond, a fellow
at the Hoover Institution

Nonprofit advocacy groups NACDL, Greenpeace, and Council on American
Islamic Relations, who joined the lawsuit on behalf of their staff and
membership

“The prohibition against government eavesdropping on American citizens is well-established and crystal clear,” said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, who is lead counsel in ACLU v. NSA. “President Bush’s claim that he is not bound by the law is simply astounding. Our democratic system depends on the rule of law, and not even the president can issue illegal orders that violate Constitutional principles.”

Note special emphasis on this line:

“Because of the nature of their calls and e-mails, they believe their communications are being intercepted by the NSA under the spying program.”

So, while our military fights the good fight, the ACLU are sueing over an inconvenience in its ability to talk to the very people who want to kill us all. Like I said before, the ACLU’s slogan of “Keep America Safe and Free” is an absolute lie. They care more about the imaginary rights of our enemies than any kind of safety for America. They have done absolutely nothing for America’s safety, and everything in their power to fight the efforts to protect America!

The American Civil Liberties Union undoubtedly speaks for someone, but not for the American people nor for the American way of life.

Nor, evidently, for the preservation of American life.

Posted by Seth at 11:34 PM | Comments (1) |

Screwed By Racism

Now this is a crying shame.

Howard Baugh grew up next door to Martin Luther King Jr. and joined the Atlanta Police Department in 1953 as its 12th black recruit. He is a veteran of the civil-rights demonstrations that roiled this city -- and of a long struggle against bigotry within the police force itself.
Mr. Baugh, now 81 years old, is still fighting that battle. Together with a group of fellow officers who crossed the color line decades ago, Mr. Baugh is pressing the state of Georgia to grant him the same pension benefits as his white counterparts from that era.

Mr. Baugh and the other African-American retirees say that early in their police careers, they were blocked from participating in a state-backed supplemental retirement fund because of their color. As a result, Mr. Baugh says, he receives about $700 less each month than white officers who signed up. As many as 200 other retired black officers, many in their 70s and 80s, are in the same boat.

There shouldn't be any kind of an argument here, these guys laid their lives on the line to protect the public, excelled at their jobs and the "powers that be" should find the money to pay them pensions and retirement benefits equal to those of retired white cops.

Posted by Seth at 11:57 AM | Comments (2) |

Who'da' Thunk It?

Of all the liberals to come down against a filibuster to disrupt Judge Alito's confirmation hearings,

Prospects for a filibuster to try to derail Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court all but died yesterday when a key swing Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, came out against it.

I'll bet that a lot of sighs of relief were audible on the left side of the aisle when Dianne made that statement -- the last thing most of that crowd wanted was a filibuster - nuke option showdown they would have lost, further damaging their already feeble chance of winning any more seats in November.

Posted by Seth at 10:03 AM | Comments (6) |

Double Standard Law For Atlantic City

New Jersey has banned smoking in all indoor public places, including bars, but has exempted casino gaming areas from the ban.

Personally, I don't believe that any government, city, state or federal, should have the right to tell a bar, restaurant or office-based business owner whether he can or cannot allow smoking in his establishment or office complex.

It is, after all, the owner's business. He or she owns or leases the property and as such has the right to determine such issues. People who do not like cigarette smoke are not forced to hang around or seek employment on the premises. They can frequent or work at places where non-smoking or anti-smoking proprieters do not allow tobacco use on the property.

The self righteous proponents of government imposed smoking bans claim that they have the health interests of non-smoking employees at heart. Balderdash! They are merely grinding an axe and using state governments as their conduits. The vast majority of the bars and restaurants I've frequented over the last few decades have had one thing in common: all, or nearly all of the employees were smokers. This means that in most cases, these smoking nazis are getting legislation enacted that "protects" these employees without their consent.

That said, I especially take umbrage with the government passing double standard laws that tilt the proverbial playing field rather than keeping it level.

Having worked in the gaming industry in Nevada, I've seen a few examples of what happens when people aren't permitted to smoke, drink and gamble at the same time -- it costs a casino some serious money.

The Jersey casinos pay a lot of taxes and their owners contribute big bucks to political campaign funds.

So the casinos are exempt from the same no-smoking law that will be enforced against smaller businesses like bars and restaurants.

For Angeloni, owner of Angeloni's II, an Italian restaurant two blocks off the casino strip, the casino exemption is a matter of dollars and cents. Customers won't be able to smoke at his tables or bar, but they will be at the city's dozen casinos.
"It's going to kill me, I know it is," Angeloni said Wednesday. "Do you know how many conventioneers eat here and come out to the bar to smoke afterward? You can kiss them goodbye, now. They won't even leave the casino."

Seeing many mom & pop businesses disappearing as giant chains emerge, concerns that can afford to charge less for products while providing more selection has always depressed me. No one can replace the local family-run butcher shop, for example. However, that's the marketplace, it's capitalism at work, and it occurs on a legal, level private sector playing field.

By exempting the casinos, which serve food and beverages in vast quantities at all hours, cheaper than the smaller bars and restaurants can afford to charge and often comped, the Jersey gubmint is in fact stacking the deck against these little guys and therefore interfering with the local marketplace.

In short, they've both infringed on the rights of business owners like so many other states have, and sabotaged the food and beverage competition for casinos whose actual specialty product is gambling.

If you're going to pass a law, it needs to apply to everybody, not just those who generate less tax revenue, employ less people and make smaller campaign contributions.

While I'm a hard core advocate of states' rights, I think this one should rightly be taken to a higher court by the small business owners who stand to lose a lot of money, if not their very businesses, by this inequity in the new New Jersey state law.

Posted by Seth at 07:27 AM |

Some More Right-On Steyn

Mark Steyn has offered up another of his on-point analyses, this one titled Ham handed Dems didn't lay a glove on Alito. It doesn't bide well for the immediate future of the Democratic party in terms of "looking good for the next elections."

I find it, as grave somber Senate Democrats like to say, "troubling." Indeed, I find it not just "troubling" but sad that a party once so good at "the politics of personal destruction" has got so bad at it. The last time they had a Supreme Court nominee to hang upside down in the Democrat bondage dungeon was the John Roberts hearings. And at least, when hatchet man Chuck Schumer professed himself "troubled" by the "fullness" of John Roberts' "heart," the crack oppo-research guys had uncovered an "inappropriate" use of the word "amigo" by Roberts back in the early '80s.
But, with Sam Alito the worst they come could up with was that he might have been around some other guy who might have used the word "amigo." Not back in the early '80s, but in the early '70s.

Mr. Steyn writes of the dog-and-pony show in which the older Democrats dance, looking extremely foolish, to the idiotic tunes of far left organizations like MoveOn.org in order to continue to enjoy the ~~filthy lucre~~ campaign backing these concerns cough up.

He calls it "dancing for dollars," LOL.

...In the Democratic Party, the old lions are now led by the grassroots donkeys, and, like some moth-eaten circus act, Ted and Pat Leahy and Dianne Feinstein are obliged to jump through ever more ludicrous hoops for the gratification of the base.

Read on.

Posted by Seth at 05:41 AM |

January 15, 2006

Refreshingly Remembered Roasts

I've been keeping really busy for the last several days working on the house I closed on exactly ten days ago and moved into four days later. I mean, I'm transforming this wonderful red brick ranch style house into my permanent home and, being only a semi-patient man, I am doing so at what some might call an accellerated pace.

Jeff has the living and dining room floors about 1/3 done, laying new oak floors in their stead, then he'll be doing the den. In less than twelve hours, carpeting people will be here to lay 122 square yards of exactly what I want and the next day, DirecTV will be doing a lot of installation work here. Furniture will begin flowing in on Tuesday. So a lot's going down on my modest 1/3 acre of the planet.

Modest, sure, but at least I have six big trees on my property, and coming from a city/apartment kind of background, that's a major detail!

But that's not what I'm posting about, it's partially a valid excuse as to why I'm still in this scarce posting period but mostly about still another reason I miss the 1960s and 1970s so much.

Early last week I ordered the entire DVD collection of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. They arrived two days ago, and I've been watching them almost whenever I'm not doing things to the house.

They are male tuxedoed and formal womened groups of top stars of every ilk sitting along a daiz, taking turns giving good natured, super-funny insults to whoever the man or woman of the week happened to be. They were televised.

What I love about them is that most of the toasters and toastees were friends and acquaintances from that era's Hollywood and 'Vegas crowds and they were completely confident that they could go as low, as funny or as irreverent as they wished, political correctness{the dreaded "PC"} not an issue.

No one entertained any fear of being sued for their comments at the roasts, which believe you me could be rather extreme, they knew it was all in fun.

We're talking the likes of Dean Martin(of course), Milton Berle, Ruth Buzzi, Nipsy Russell, Don Rickles, George Burns, Rich Little, Flip Wilson, Foster Brooks, Lucille Ball, LaWanda Page, Jimmy Walker, Phyllis Diller, Jack Benny and so many other comedians of yore who, without using a single profanity, could get as adult as you dare while uttering nothing that a child could be "enlightened" by and be~~hysterically funny~~ utterly hilarious to where your most recent sip of coffee or other beverage spews across the room before you have the opportunity to swallow it and your sides ache from your hard, uncontrollable laughter.

The atmosphere was patriotic, none of the leftist entertainment industry output we encounter today. When those people went wrong, they did so big time.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts really bring me back to a time when things were much more clean and honest in the entertainment industry, before they brought on the Marxism and PC many of their number had once privately embraced, to today's extremes.

Today's comedy isn't nearly as original and is, in many cases, too PC, but unfortunately too many of today's young people don't even know that, because while it's out there, they need to give it a chance.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts are so completely, awesomely hilarious to watch without all the PC baggage and otherwise lawsuit-motivated sensitivity that they easily bring back a more pleasant era that existed before the liberals in America decided that it was time to separate Americans from one another by emphasizing their differences and controlling their use of the English language and its vocabulary.

Young people who were born within the last quarter century have absolutely no idea how funny those Rat Pack era comics could be, they need to go here ASAP and get a clue.

Posted by Seth at 07:03 PM |

January 14, 2006

'Green Light' for Attack

The recently released video message from al Qaeda's number two leader is part of a pattern that signals a countdown to a major terrorist attack within the next 30 days, warns a Washington D.C.-based analyst.

The theory, based on a pattern observed after previous terrorist attacks had occured, is that...

...it is not the content of the video that is a sign of a possible imminent strike, said terrorism expert Christopher L. Brown. Instead, it is the timing of the video that is consistent with previous patterns. Brown, a researcher with a Washington think tank, has briefed members of Congress and senior administration officials on key threats, and he has prepared testimony and briefing materials for officials at the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, National Security Council and the White House.
The pattern Brown observed is that each Zawahiri video appears to be part of a pair, with the second video followed by a significant attack within 30 days, outside of the major combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The videos released on Sept. 9 and Nov. 9, 2004, were the first "set" and were followed by the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, bombings on Dec. 6, 2004. The second "set" of videos was released Feb. 20 and June 26, 2005, followed by the July 7 London bombings. A third set of videos was released Aug. 4 and Sept 1, 2005, followed by the bombings in Bali, Indonesia, on Oct. 1, 2005.

It's all here.

Posted by Seth at 08:15 AM | Comments (2) |

Open Letter To Merkel

Columnist Diana West has written an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel

...in just about every account of your American trip — biggish news in Europe — it is prominently mentioned that Guantanamo Bay is prominently high on your list of, well, prominent concerns. Trouble spots. Global things you lose sleep over.

This is, with due respect, bizarre. Iran is going nuclear, Europe is going Islamic, Russia is going off the reservation, China is a fearsome thing, and your big concern is sending what is called a "clear message" to Mr. Bush about Guantanamo Bay, the tropical jail where the United States keeps jihadis on ice — and keeps the rest of the world safer as a result. But that's not what you say. "An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term," you told the German news magazine Der Spiegel this week. "Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners."

I have a suggestion: How about if we ship all these guys — unflushed Korans and all — to Germany? Maybe "72 Virgins" Airlines would cut us a deal. Then you — Germany — can parole them to Lebanon.

That, of course, is just what you did just before Christmas with Muhammad Ali Hammadi, the convicted Hezbollah killer of Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem. In case you didn't know, Mr. Stethem is one of our American heroes, a courageous young Navy diver who became an early casualty of the war on Islamic terror. In 1985, at age 23, he was beaten to an unrecognizable pulp by Hammadi and his gang, shot through the head and dumped onto a Beirut runway during the Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

Great article, read on...

So we have Merkel on hand to tell us what to do with the terrorists we have in captivity. It's pretty sad that the western Euros haven't yet gotten the message that they are no longer credible enough to tell the United States what to do or how to do it. Their economies are in bad shape and are only worsening, their honesty and dependability as allies have come up wanting between their dubious collective support in the Global War On Terror and the Oil-For-Food scandal and it now seems as though Germany's been performing the "kiss of shame", big time, on the Islamofascists in an attempt to get the terrorists to leave them alone.

Fat chance. To al-Qaeda and their colleagues, an infidel is an infidel, period.

Posted by Seth at 07:06 AM |

Excerpt From A Forward I Received

"Back off and let men marry men, women marry women, and totally legalize abortion. In three generations, there will be no Democrats!!!"

Posted by Seth at 06:23 AM |

January 11, 2006

Bangalorian "Technical Support"

First, whether or not I believe in outsourcing is irrelevant, because it is the right of any private businessman or company to follow the marketplace in pursuit of cheaper labor, less expensive materials or products that can make him or them more competitive.

That said, one would think that these firms could be just a bit more discerning when it comes to outsourcing technical support.

Most tech support for computer users comes out of Bangalore, though some firms, such as Dell and DirecWay, offer U.S. based tech support for corporate or other business accounts. Of course, it's more expensive -- that is, you pay for the luxury of speaking to a fellow American, and recent experience has taught me that it's worth the money.

I had DirecWay come out on Friday and install a satellite dish for broadband access, and set up the modem. Signal strength was good and things seemed to be working when the two installers left, but shortly thereafter problems began, worse than those I've blogged about at some hotels I've stayed at.

I dealt with at least five different Bangalorians in trying to solve my access problem, all in vain.

See, I knew exactly what the problem was, I just didn't know how to fix it. I attempted to explain it to each of them, and there was always the same result: I got myself walked through menus from one end of the universe to the other and back, keyed in scores of numbers and each time, in the end, the person I was talking to assured me my problem was solved, thanked me for calling in a way that sounded like my call was the high point of his very existence, hung up and went back to his bowl of curry.

And my problem remained.

Calling for about the sixth time, I was told by a woman that since I have a business account, I have "special" U.S. based tech support.

Yay!

I was connected with a fellow gringo in south Florida, where DirecWay keeps 'em, had my problem solved and was off the phone in about ten minutes, as opposed to the fruitless half hour to an hour sessions with the Bangalorians.

What's happening is plain to see: In order to maximize the savings they get from outsourcing, they go for the least qualified, "I need a job, any one will do" people they can find, the only prerequisite apparently being that they can speak somebody's version of "passable English" -- then they give them problem solving guides to a limited number of "most common problems".

So you call up Tech Support and some guy with an Indian accent and an American nic greets you. The problem you need solved isn't included among his computerized flash cards. Even if it was, it might not matter because he has no idea what you're talking about, anyway.

He doesn't tell you this, of course, instead he simply ignores what little he understands of what you're telling him and steers you through a bunch of menus that are totally irrelevant to your problem, but fine for the problems of others that appear on one of the flash cards.

He wastes a whole bunch of your valuable time and solves nothing.

Inflicting such crappy customer service on consumers is not a marketing technique I've ever heard of, and is surely not any way to command a loyal customer base.

Maybe these companies need to try getting less Bangalore for the buck.

Posted by Seth at 06:41 AM | Comments (4) |

January 09, 2006

Posting

Two reasons my posting has been somewhat sporadic the last few days is that I've just bought a house and have been addressing a barrage of moving and logistics issues, and the loss of posts when trying to publish via the less-than-adequate access provider outsourced by the hotel I've been staying in for the last month while finding, buying and equipping the house.

There's a long way to go before all my plans for making it a home reach fruition and today is going to be a busy one as well, but the satellite broadband is up and I'm moving in today, so by tonight or tomorrow I should be back to posting.

In the meantime, I will leave you with an enlightened and encouraging analysis of the year ahead for Iraq by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

Posted by Seth at 07:28 AM | Comments (4) |

January 07, 2006

Criminal Negligence

Identity theft and credit card fraud are criminal issues today that need to be addressed as a priority not only by the very firms that allow these crimes to be perpetrated upon their customers, but by the gubmint -- we're not talking micromanagement here, we're talking protecting the public.

Auto mechanic and father of three Joe Shmoe of Kalamazoo, Michigan shouldn't have to worry that swiping his bank card at an ATM for forty bucks' worth of spending money might provide some sleazeball with enough data to clean out his checking account. He also shouldn't have to fear that the sweet young thing at the local Tasty Freeze may be swiping his card through her own device to steal his financial data.

But it happens.

The reason that the Fed hasn't addressed this issue is that they are tied up with such Democrat issues as the Bush use of the NSA to protect our country against future terrorist attacks and the BS racist recriminations attached to Hurricane Katrina, pure Democrat political bullshit interfering with issues of legitimate concern.

Once a hot-button item, data and identity theft protection has stalled in Congress, a research analyst said Thursday, pushed aside by bigger political fish, ranging from Iraq and Hurricane Katrina to domestic spying and Supreme Court nominees.
Despite a year's worth of highly publicized security breaches and a lot of talk in Congress this summer on ways to protect consumers, there's been too little done to protect U.S. consumers' data, said Gartner research director Avivah Litan.

"It's business as usual," she said, citing two recent breaches -- one involving a lost backup tape with data on two million mortgage holders, another related to credit card fraud at gas pumps -- as evidence. "Not enough has changed. Data protection has moved up the priority list, but not nearly enough."

Meanwhile, Americans are being ripped off in significant numbers, for all their savings.

Chalk one up for the left, their strategies of obstruction are paying off, while they tie Congress up with "racist" hurricanes and their opposition to our having liberated the people of Iraq, identity theft lies in the "unattended" category.

Posted by Seth at 11:18 PM | Comments (2) |

Talks With Insurgents

In an effort to increase the already accellerating violence between Iraqi insurgents and the terrorists from outside Iraq who are fighting the new government, Iraqi and coalition forces, U.S. officials over there are engaging in dialogue with Iraqi guerilla leaders.

U.S. officials have been talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift between homegrown insurgents and radical groups such as Al Qaeda, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Citing a Western diplomat, an Iraqi political leader and an Iraqi insurgent leader, the Times said that the talks were also aimed at drawing the local leaders into the political process.
According to interviews with insurgents and both U.S. and Iraqi officials, clashes between Iraqi groups and al Qaeda have broken out in several cities across the Sunni Triangle and they appear to have intensified in recent months, the Times said.

It seems like al-Qaeda's popularity has waned quite a bit, there, in all likelihood because the Iraqi rebels, Baathists for the most part, are fighting mainly to regain the stature they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, perhaps with a small side order of statesmanly impulses.

As such, they see, as most of their fellow countrymen do, that the new Iraq with all its freedoms is far preferable to the Iraq that the Islamofascists of al-Qaeda would embrace if they had any say in the governing of the land of Scheherazade.

And they want that as badly as they want the pox.

What our folks over there are doing by stirring the pot is a smart move -- with the Iraqi rebels, our own forces and Iraqi troops all ranged against them, we'll get rid of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq that much more quickly and...

Insurgents told the newspaper that there is widespread hatred for al Qaeda among ordinary Iraqis. Abu Amin, an insurgent leader in Yusefiya and a former captain in the Iraqi Army, told the Times the Americans were especially interested in securing help against al Qaeda, about whom they asked many questions: "Do you have a relationship with? Can you help us attack al Qaeda? Can you uproot al Qaeda from Iraq?"

...with any luck, finally convince the insurgents to give the new government a try. What they don't seem to have yet grasped is that the prime reason they have a minority representing them in the government is because they are a minority in Iraq -- their previous power existed at the pleasure of a dictator who is no longer running the country, and now the majority rules, but in a democracy they have the right of dialogue and debate that, approached with reason, can do more to improve their lot than any number of weapons, threats and bombings.

Posted by Seth at 04:15 PM |

The Abramoff "Circus"

The major reason I haven't posted anything about the Abramoff debacle is that I don't view it as a political issue. Pure and simple, it is a criminal justice affair -- the man is a crook, he's going down for it and that's the way of things.

It is no surprise to me, given their desperation to discredit Bush, that the Angry Left has been doing their best to spin this into a Bush-bashing event.

What connections there are to any politicians on either side of the aisle(Harry reid's name has, it seems, been mentioned briefly in connection with an Abramoff associate) will be unlikely to have any significant impact upon their respective political careers or incur any criminal charges, though Representative Robert W. Ney(R, Ohio) would seem to have been a smidgeon more receptive than most of his colleagues to Abramoff's largesse, and may or may not encounter the roosting of his proverbial chickens as a result.

That said, Jack Abramoff is a criminal, a lobbyist gone bad(at least, gone bad and been caught at it), not a politician. His actions are just that: His actions, and can only be laid at the feet of the administration by political opposition for political purposes, without any honorable or even remotely respectable foundation for any accusations levelled. In short, only leftist hacks need apply.

In fact, a well thought out column appeared in Review & Outlook in yesterday's WSJ Opinion Journal with which I tend to agree, and that, friends, is the last I have to say about the reprehensible Mr. Abramoff and his well publicized legal problems.

As for Bush Administration involvement?

...it's worth pointing out that Mr. Abramoff and his coterie aren't getting off easy. His plea deal includes a likely 10-year sentence, which is the same as the one handed to Enron's Andy Fastow. Co-conspirator Michael Scanlon has also copped to a felony, and others are expected to follow. No one can accuse the Bush Justice Department of giving these GOP scoundrels a pass, in contrast to the way Janet Reno's Department went soft on Harold Ickes and others after the 1996 campaign-finance shenanigans.

Note: Emphasis mine.

It's also notable how few Members of Congress so far have truly been implicated, beyond accepting entirely legal campaign contributions. The most culpable is Ohio's Bob Ney, who has been cited in a "criminal information" for receiving trips and other favors in return for statements entered into the Congressional Record. Mr. Ney says that he too was duped, but there's no question he was willing to tap dance on cue for Mr. Scanlon, and that alone is sleaze-by-willing-association. If the House Ethics Committee serves any useful purpose, sanctioning Mr. Ney ought to be it.

Here is the entire column.

Posted by Seth at 05:14 AM |

January 06, 2006

Greenberg Kicks Butt

In a column today in Jewish World Review, Paul Greenberg gets down!

Dana Priest of The Washington Post sounds shocked — shocked! — to discover that George W. Bush ordered a complete remobilization and reinvigoration of the CIA immediately after September 11th:

"The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al-Qaida has grown into the largest CIA covert-action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over clandestine tactics . . . ."

This is news? Isn't this just what W. told the country he would do in the aftermath of September 11th?

Read the entire column here!

Posted by Seth at 05:10 AM |

Treason Is As Treason Does

As I've opined in several posts in the past, being a journalist carries with it certain responsibilities, such as fair, unbiased, accurate reporting, of which, along with any vestige of personal honor among journalists, there is a paucity in today's mainstream media. They are, after all, the people from whom the public expects to receive an accurate picture of current events, not the left-biased, incomplete accounts provided in order to make President Bush and his administration appear incompetent, evil tools of Haliburton and the rest of "Corporate America."

But such is life, the only ethics followed by liberals are those that help them achieve whatever "ends" they want to achieve. What Clinton was able to do with impunity is a heinous crime if Bush does anything like it.

Another responsibility of an American journalist, and indeed of his or her entire organization, is to use common sense when deciding upon whether to print or broadcast a news item whose impartation to the public might engender a threat to the security of the nation and the very lives of its citizens.

The New York Times' decision to inform the world of Bush and the NSAs' monitoring of telephone calls between known or suspected al-Qaida contacts in the U.S. and people outside the country was the result of just such a decision. As the President told the Times a year ago, such action would do significant damage to the fabric of our homeland security structure.

Yet, in the interests of starting a politically partisan fueled brouhaha aimed at Bush, they went ahead and published the story.

I don't care how they spin their "the people have a right to know" BS{that sentiment doesn't seem to appear in the Constitution anyplace, only in the minds of the media), the bottom line is that, along with their as yet undiscovered inside informants, they have committed treason. They are traitors.

The New York Times reporters who broke the Bush "Spygate" story, as well as the paper's top executives who approved its publication, face the very real prospect of criminal indictment by the Bush Justice Department - a lawyer involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers battle is warning.
With a full-blown Justice Department investigation now underway, Harvey Silvergate tells the Boston Phoenix: "A variety of federal statutes, from the Espionage Act on down, give Bush ample means to prosecute the Times reporters who got the scoop, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau."

Only time will tell if this really comes to pass, but I'd be behind it one hundred percent if it did, as it's time some lessons were learned and some memories refreshed about the value of patriotism and the importance of preserving the republic over that of scoring cheap internel political victories.

Posted by Seth at 03:51 AM |

The Primary Source

In her current column at the Washington Times, Suzanne Fields alludes rightly(no pun intended, although...) that there has been a visible resurgence of conservative thought among today's university students, much to the chagrin of the more left wing faculty members.

Tenured professors are hysterical (a good "gendering" word) over the rise of the right on the campus, of students who aren't buying into lesbian literature, identity politics, deconstructionism, feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, Marxism, gay culturalism and all the other -isms that have dominated the curriculum for the generation since the '60s. Assumptions are under siege.

This is extremely refreshing, as it demonstrates that four decades of unchecked leftist idiocy is finally beginning to be counterbalanced by more sane, alternative thinking -- read that as a return, in some quarters, to conservative idealogies which, on the whole, are exponentionally more constructive in terms of the preservation of the United States and our Constitutional background by the next generations of Americans in the marketplace and at the polls than most of their predecessors over the last forty years.

It was therefore a great pleasure to learn that Tufts University's campus newspapers include a conservative publication called The Primary Source, a sample of which, online, is here.

Excerpt:

If there ever was an issue in the current political climate that has been polluted by the pessimism of the mainstream media, it is the economy. The mainstream media employs public opinion polls to vindicate its perception of the national debate. Unfortunately, the facts—most importantly those about the economy—are too often discounted. A November USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll found that approximately 37 percent of Americans approve of President Bush’s handling of the economy, which equals their approval of his overall job performance. The information that really affects Americans day by day is about dollars and cents, and as it stands, they do not get the positive news about the economy they deserve to hear.

Thank you people so much for helping to bring right thinking back to the campus.

In the next few days I will be slightly restructuring the listing format in my blogroll, and The Primary Source will have a permanent link therein.

Posted by Seth at 12:24 AM | Comments (2) |

Another Idiot Launches A (Brief) "Life Of Crime"

This seems to be the week for boneheads-in-training for The World's Dumbest Criminals. On Tuesday, there was this guy, and now we have a real winner who apparently aspired to be a jewel thief.

FARGO, N.D. - Diamond earrings stolen from a college fundraiser were recovered when a Minnesota man tried to have them appraised at the jewelry store that donated them, authorities said. Police said the man was arrested after he brought the $4,600 earrings to Wimmer's Jewelry at the West Acres mall. Store owner Brad Wimmer said the man had the original box along with the description of the jewelry.
"It was all very goofy," Wimmer said. "The value of the earrings was right on the description."

Goofy, right.

The value of the earrings automatically makes the theft a felony, so hasta la bye bye, bonehead.

Posted by Seth at 12:03 AM |

January 05, 2006

RightMarch Alert For Alito Confirmation Hearings

Next week, the Alito confirmation hearings will begin. It's important that all right thinkers do our part to help get Sam Alito confirmed as an associate justice on the Supreme Court in whatever ways we can.

To that end, RightMarch, led by patriotic American Bill Greene, will be right on the front lines as always.

ALERT: Can you come to Washington, D.C. next week to take a stand for confirming Judge Alito to the Supreme Court?
If not -- can you help send activists there to counter the HUGE numbers that the far left is busing in?

Groups like NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, and others are shipping in HUNDREDS of liberal activists to be in the streets and in the hallways of the Senate next week, grabbing media attention and demanding that President Bush's conservative nominee be blocked.

They'll be phone banking, holding press conferences, waving signs, holding demonstrations... generally making a huge nuisance of themselves. BUT -- if there's no one there to COUNTER their antics with strong support of Judge Alito, many of the Senators, along with reporters and countless American television viewers, will assume that there's a groundswell of opposition to Alito -- which is the exact OPPOSITE of the truth!

Remember: our legislators usually "see the light" only when they "feel the heat" -- so we need to make sure they're "feeling the heat" from the RIGHT side!

WE MUST BE THERE to stand up for a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote for Judge Alito!

There's two ways you can help us do that: you can come JOIN us in D.C. as a volunteer during hearings week -- or you can help us SEND volunteers there!

TAKE ACTION: Look, we understand that not everyone can just take off to D.C. on short notice. That's the difference between liberals (who take to the streets for protests at the drop of a hat) and conservatives (who have families and lives and work for a living). So we're working with a number of other conservative organizations to make sure that the massive amount of media covering the event aren't just giving the LEFT's side of this issue.

If you're not able to make it into town for these historic and important hearings, can you help us send volunteers to take your place?

We're raising money to help "TeenPact" send SIXTY young people to D.C. for the entire week of the hearings. "TeenPact" is a grassroots conservative youth organization whose mission is to train young people to be leaders who will impact the nation and the world, and they're committed to sending 60 youth to D.C. to do whatever needs to be done.

Think of that: SIXTY young people, standing strong with dozens of others in our nation's capital for conservative values, conservative beliefs and, of course, conservative judicial nominees!

CAN YOU HELP? We want to help TeenPact raise over $8,000 to cover all of the expenses for these 60 youth volunteers. That's CHEAP for D.C.! Your contribution TODAY would go a LONG way:

$1,330 would pay for ten youth for the week
$665 would cover five youth for a week
$190 would cover ten youth for a day
$133 would pay for one young person for the week
$95 would cover five youth for a day
$19 would cover one young person for the day
PLEASE, whatever amount you can contribute -- $1,330, $665, $190, $133, $95, $19 or another amount -- time is SHORT, so make your best donation NOW:
https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

If you CAN come to D.C., we'd LOVE to see you! We need supporters (in t-shirts & waving signs we provide) at press conferences and in hearing room hallways, as well as volunteers helping with food preparation/distribution, t-shirt distribution, sign assembling & distribution, technology, logistics, runners, prayer warriors/walkers, and more.

If you'd like to volunteer to come to D.C. next week for one to five days, just download the Volunteer Form below, fill it out and fax it to 202-393-2134 right away:

http://www.rightmarch.com/docs/AlitoVolForm.doc

We hope to see you there -- but if you can't come, please help send folks there to TAKE A STAND for JUSTICE!

NOTE: Another member of our coalition, Concerned Women for America, is also helping to organize local events back in key targeted states during the hearings. One or two women are needed in each of the targeted states to lead the efforts to carry out "meet and greets" with reporters outside of the Senators' local offices. If you can participate in these state activities during hearing week, or if you know someone who you can get to participate in these events (men are more than welcome!), call CWA at 202-488-7000.

And don't forget to send a FREE message to both of your Senators at http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=8197216&type=CO in support of Judge Alito!

Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help get a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote in the Senate for the President's conservative pick, Judge Alito. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

Posted by Seth at 01:55 AM |

Cool Science

Concrete wall? A foot thick? No problem!

Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building. The new "Radar Scope" will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room, Edward Baranoski from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Special Projects Office, told the American Forces Press Service.
By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing, he said.

The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring, Baranoski said. The device is likely to be fielded to the squad level, for use by troops going door to door in search of terrorists.

Read the rest. It's fascinating.

Posted by Seth at 01:46 AM | Comments (1) |

Better Late Than Never

The folks up on The Hill have finally come up with some legislation to protect consumers, to some degree, against identity theft.

A bipartisan coalition of Senate Commerce Committee leaders today introduced comprehensive legislation (The Identity Theft Protection Act, S. 1408) that protects consumers from identity theft. The bill sets national standards for notifying consumers of data breaches, requires businesses to improve their safeguards for sensitive consumer information, gives consumers the right to freeze their credit reports to thwart identity theft, and limits the solicitation of Social Security numbers.

Speaking for myself, I always understood that Social Security numbers were intended to exist only as proprietary information shared by those issued the numbers, employers(to confirm work eligibility and report employee earnings to the Government), and the Government itself as a tax identification number or for law enforcement I.D. purposes.

Yet it seems that everybody and their brother require your SSN to run credit checks and open non-financial accounts of various kinds, and we all know they keep them on file. There's a sort of information gluttony afoot in this age of the Internet -- all manner of companies want to compile and retain every last scrap of personal information on everyone they become involved with for one reason or another.

We also know that many of these concerns, for reasons of ~~the cheaps~~ "cost efficiency", don't believe in investing in expensive security measures to adequately protect all this personal data they accumulate.

Hence, we occasionally read about some company's computer files being raped by hackers, the thefts as often as not going undiscovered until a few days after the fact, giving the thieves time to use the information they've gleaned before anybody closes the proverbial barn door.

For example, a law was passed not long ago that after a company uses the 3 or 4 digit confirmation code from the back of your credit or debit card, they are required to delete it from your file. I see this as a requirement whose compliance would be something rather difficult to enforce unless the Government hacked into the computers of every company in the United States that accepts purchases on-line or over the telephone, and you can just imagine the hullabaloo that would cause in a country rife with leftist organizations who don't even believe the Government should be permitted to listen in on the telephone conversations of terrorists who are plotting to murder large quantities of American citizens.

So how can such laws be enforced? The only method that would work with any measure of success would be an aggressive random spot checking system with severe penalties for discovered noncompliance.

This new bill is a tripartison -- that's right, tripartisan effort{3 Democrats, 2 Republicans and John McCain, whom I see as falling under the heading of Name-Only Republican}.

Misgivings about effective implementation aside, I believe the bill is a good one and would like to see it pass. If every company and organization that requires storage of people's personal information acknowledged their responsibility to secure it at any cost, even if it meant upping their prices for goods and services a little bit, such measures would not be necessary, but this is not the case and many of these concerns provide, without any local alternatives, products that are requisite to basic survival, such as gas and electric.

Why in the hell should a gas company have to have my social security number on file, right?

Posted by Seth at 12:09 AM |

January 04, 2006

The Founders Of The ACLU

Over at Stop The ACLU, Gribbit provides some background on founders of the ACLU that should be of interest to those who still believe that organization to be acting in, or ever having acted in, America's best interests.

The ACLU - The Founding Fathers of Degeneracy & American Communism by Gribbit on 01-05-06 @ 1:02 am Filed under ACLU, News
We at the Stop The ACLU blog and BlogBurst have been founded with the goal of bringing public awareness of the Anti-American activities of the American Civil Liberties Union. The fact is, the only thing about the ACLU that is American is the first word in the title of their organization. And this has been true since their founding.

We have been focused on the two prominent co-founders Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman; but the truth is that there were 7 others. People like Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow just to name a couple. But the most notorious of the founding “fathers” of the American Civil Liberals Union (no I didn’t spell that wrong) was Elizabeth “Gurley” Flynn.

Ms. Flynn was the co-founder who ended up being the National Chairman of the Communist Party in the US. A devout Communist who made several trips to the Soviet Union after the denunciation of Communism by Roger Baldwin in 1940. A move which had motives other than those publicized.

The public appearance of the denunciation was to give the illusion of distancing active members of the Communist party from the ACLU. When in fact it was a statement meant to be felt by Josef Stalin. Stalin enjoyed the support of people like Baldwin in the United States before the outbreak of war in Europe. Baldwin and Eastman being the strict pacifists that they were, had a total opposition to the Soviet Union entering the war. But they also saw the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty as a crime against the good Soviet people. So Flynn expulsion from the Executive Committee was a farce.

Flynn was indoctrinated into the Socialist mindset by her parents. At the age of 16 she gave her first speech on socialism entitled “What Socialism Will Do For Women.” A speech which subsequently got her expelled from high school.

At the age of 17 Flynn became an organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW) and her career as a full time Socialist began. In 1920 she joined forces with Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, and John Dewey to form what we now know as the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1936, Flynn joined the Communist Party in the United States. She wrote a feminist column for the Communist propaganda sheet the Daily Worker. Two years later, she was elected to the National Committee.

During World War II, Flynn worked tirelessly to get equal pay for women and establish day care centers for working mothers. Efforts which we here at Stop The ACLU applaud. Because contrary to the popular leftist belief, we here have strong feelings about the true equality of men and women of all races, creeds, and religions.

In 1942, she ran for Congress At-Large in New York and received only 50,000 votes.

After the war in 1948, 12 members of the Communist Party were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government by use of violence. Flynn attempted to gain their release but in 1951 she was arrested in a “second wave” of arrests and charged with violation of the Alien Registration Act and sentenced to 5 years at Alderson Women’s Penitentiary.

During her sentence she wrote a book entitled The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (1955).

Soon after her release from prison in 1961, Flynn was elected National Chairman of the Communist Party in the USA. She made several trips to the Soviet Union where in 1964 during a visit she died. She was given a State Funeral in Red Square then returned to be buried with her subversive friends Eugene Dennis, Bill Haywood and the Haymarket Martyrs.

These are they types of people that we are dealing with. This is the type of beginning that the ACLU was given. This is why they have been focused on ending American traditions and changing the structure of our government as founded in 1789.

Posted by Seth at 11:19 PM |

Trusting Democrats With National Security?

If you have to miss an Ann Coulter column, don't miss this one.

Posted by Seth at 11:16 PM |

The Hungry Burglar

You have to laugh at this numbnuts.

Alleged Burglar Cooks, Makes Fresh Juice
Apparently, you can build up quite an appetite breaking-and-entering. James Michael Fowler, 26, was arrested and charged with burglary Tuesday after a neighbor watching the house found a pan of cocktail franks cooking on the stove and some freshly made orange juice nearby.

Anderson Police Lt. Layton Creamer says when the neighbor went to check on the home, she saw the food cooking and a black stocking cap on the kitchen counter.

Creamer said it looked like Fowler broke into the two-story house through a first-floor window.

LOL!

If I were making a wager here, based on the efficiency of his burglary "operation", my bet would be that Mr. Fowler is a liberal. Or at the very least, a run-of-the-mill Democrat.

The article doesn't say whether or not Fowler ever got a chance to eat the cocktail franks...

Posted by Seth at 10:33 PM |

Mark Steyn Masterpiece

Mark Steyn, one of my favorite all time columnists, has got an awesome Op-Ed at the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal titled It's the Demography, Stupid.

I won't even comment on it, because it speaks completely for itself.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760

Posted by Seth at 01:33 PM |

Where Teachers' Union Dues Go

Now this is a bunch of B.S.

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you'd probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.

Whas, as they say, sup with that?

Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings--the first under the new rules--helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students.

This does indeed bring up an interesting question. The question? WTF!?

Last time I looked, a union's reason for existing was to make sure its members were compensated and otherwise treated fairly. Isn't that what they tell us? Isn't that what their members pay dues for?

We already knew that the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

Hmmmmmmm....

The new disclosure rules mark the first revisions since 1959 and took effect this year. "What wasn't clear before is how much of a part the teachers unions play in the wider liberal movement and the Democratic Party," says Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, a California-based watchdog group. "They're like some philanthropic organization that passes out grant money to interest groups."

Indeed.

There's something really, really seedy and corrupt about this.

Remember, our country is a capitalist republic, the primary reason we are the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, and these political organizations to which the National Education Association donates so much of its members' dues to are socialist organizations.

Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism. One of its tenets is that no matter how hard you work and how successful you become as a result, you are entitled to no more than a nonachiever and therefore, rather than enjoying the fruits of your labors, you must share it with said nonachiever through merciless taxation.

That's not what the United States of America is about, never has been and hopefully never will be, though these internal enemies continue to eat away at the foundations of our way of life and our form of government, using the very freedoms they want to destroy against us.

The fact that the NEA helps to top off their warchests can be construed as a kind of unpunishable treason.

They are backing organizations that threaten our nation from within, yet they cannot be prosecuted because what these organizations do is completely legal according to our supremely benevolent Constitution. Yeah, that's the one, the document that authorizes them to speak freely, lobby freely, spit on or burn the American flag and wipe their backsides with it if they so desire. What they promote would be a country devoid of most of its rights, an Orwellian government that micromanages its citizens, as I said in my early blogging days, establishing a politically correct, assinine excuse for existence akin to that in the Stallone/Snipes film Demolition Man, only run more along the lines of the failed and long-since-gone-Chapter-Eleven Soviet Union.

And that's what the mother ship of U.S. teachers' unions contributes its members' dues to.

It's well understood that the NEA is an arm of the Democratic National Committee. (Or is it the other way around?) But we wonder if the union's rank-and-file stand in unity behind this laundry list of left-to-liberal recipients of money that comes out of their pockets.

Posted by Seth at 11:47 AM | Comments (2) |

A Good Call

David Limbaugh's on-point forecast of the Democrats' political fortunes come 2008 should serve as a warning to the once formidable party that the liberals hijacked and turned into a quagmire of defeat that reads like a 20th Century journal of the French military.

Their own presidential role model, Bill Clinton, and his vice president, Al Gore, were adamant about the looming problems with Social Security. There was much talk of lock boxes and other schemes to "protect" this hallowed institution. And let there be no mistake — both gentlemen, along with their entire political party, considered Social Security to be in "crisis."
Yet, when President Bush dared to take action to reform Social Security, instead of merely talking about the issue, Democrats obstructed at every turn and even denied there was a serious problem, much less a crisis. Let them continue to gloat about their obstruction, but let history reflect their dangerous deferral of a problem that threatens our long-term fiscal solvency, a matter they profess to be close to their hearts.

The Dems' problem, as I see it, is that they've begun believing the liberal point of view, which is apparently that most Americans are stupid, uninformed, and believe without reservation all the malarkey the Democrats' political leaders and the Mainstream Media feed them.

They are dead wrong. As Limbaugh asserts, and rightly, the major issues in 2008 are going to be national security and the war in Iraq.

Voters were already skeptical of the Democratic Party on national security issues. But in the last few years, that skepticism may have ripened into full-blown distrust. And if not, it should have.
At the root of the public's lack of confidence in Democrats over national security is the party's ambivalence about the prosecution of the war and its absence of moral certitude about the nature of our enemy.

To this day, Democrats can't tell you whether it's a good thing we attacked Iraq. They were against the war in Iraq before they were for it only to be against it again, and now they're probably just waiting to see how things turn out to decide, ultimately, whether they should be for or against it.

As an American, I am profoundly ashamed of those on the left side of the aisle for their dangerous substitution of cheap political agendas for the patriotism we once expected from all our senators and representatives.

As a conservative Republican, I'm grimly amused by the way the Dems are helping to assure a continued Republican majority on Capitol Hill and the election of a Republican to succeed George W. Bush.

Grimly, because their War On Bush is and has been compromising American lives both here and in Iraq. Amused, because it's always amusing watching a bunch of idiots sabotage their own chances of success with such tenacity.

Limbaugh's column is spot-on, and is here in its entirety.

Posted by Seth at 10:42 AM |

Sajak On Algebra

Game show host Pat Sajak's got an amusing piece going at JWR today.

The time has long since passed when I could be of any use to my teenage son when it comes to the matter of math homework. I'm fairly useful in the fields of English and History, less so with Science and Latin, but totally superfluous in the bizarre world of Algebra.

That point was driven home again the other night when he introduced me to an imaginary number, or, as those wacky mathematicians like to call it, i. Here is the issue, as I understand it, and I'm not at all sure I do. There is no real way to find the square root of a negative number, because any number multiplied by itself would be positive. So, you might logically assume that, since a number can't exist, there's no point looking for it. Well, you'd be wrong. Apparently the inability of a number to exist isn't a sufficient reason not to find a way to pretend it exists.

I can sympathize with ya', Pat. I'd be more lost than you are.

Posted by Seth at 10:23 AM |

Sorry I Missed It

I'm not what you would call a major fan of David Letterman, in fact on the rare occasions I actually watch TV, I make a point of not watching his show.

However, had I only known, I would definitely have watched this episode.

It didn't take long for fireworks to erupt last night when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly guested on David Letterman's "CBS Late Show," with the late night host finally admitting he wasn't "smart enough" to engage in a debate over the Iraq war.
The verbal fisticuffs began when Letterman asked if O'Reilly had a good holiday.

O'Reilly responded: "I had a nice Winter Solstice," prompting a contentious exchange over whether Christmas traditions were indeed under attack.

But the confrontation really heated up when Letterman suggested, "Let's talk about your friends in the Bush administration. Things seem to be darker now than they might have been heretofore...

Read on, heh heh.

Posted by Seth at 10:13 AM |

January 02, 2006

Explosives Recovered

Back in late December I posted about this, and am profoundly relieved that the perpetrators of the large explosives theft have been caught, the stolen materials recovered.

Three charged with stealing explosives at N.M. bunker The suspects weren't trained in handling the dangerous stolen property, say federal agents who tracked them down. The explosives were specialized, powerful and dangerous in the possession of untrained handlers.
That's exactly the situation federal agents say they came upon when they tracked down a sloppy band of thieves who broke into bunkers belonging to a nationally recognized New Mexico explosives expert.

The ATF, the same folks who unnecessarily brought us Waco and Ruby Ridge, says that there was no connection between the people who stole the explosives and any terrorist organizations, and that the theft was a "crime of opportunity." According to the author of the linked article on the arrests and recovery, Alicia Caldwell, the feds said they don't believe the perps even knew what they had.

Hmmmmmm.

I sincerely hope that the investigation doesn't stop there.

"Duh, yeah, we ripped off all that plastique, ossifer, and coincidentally, outta' sheer dumb luck, we also grabbed all the DetCord we could find, but we didn't know it was C-4 and DetCord, duh..."

If I was somewhat hard on theft victim Chris Cherry for his inexcusably negligent lack of security that facilitated the ease of the theft in my previous post on same, I can only be doubly enraged now.

On Dec. 18, Cherry, who works for the Sandia National Laboratories and trains military and law- enforcement personnel in bomb disarmament, reported the theft. He is the head of Cherry Engineering, and the stolen materials were the property of his firm and not affiliated with his work for the government, according to an arrest affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

{Above emphasis added mine}.

The man is an explosives expert who trains military and law enforcement personnel...

If anybody should know the magnitude of the potential danger to citizens that could result from the theft of such a quantity of explosives, it is Cherry, that stupid son-of-a-bitch, and his failure to implement adequate security procedures to safeguard those materials is way beyond inexcusable.

If he is permitted to store any more explosives, the government officials who allow it should be fired without pensions and charged with criminal negligence, charges that Chris Cherry should even now be facing.

Asshat!

Posted by Seth at 03:04 AM |

Hackers Vs. Video Surveillance Cameras

An Austrian civil liberties group called Quintessenz has been hacking into, downloading imagery from and then sabotaging lawful police surveillance cameras in public places.

When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers.
Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape.

The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices.

It's interesting that these folks don't seem to have anything to say about asshole tourists in various cities who practically shove their videocams in your face as you go about your business, without asking permission, or simply tape streams of passing pedestrians without asking anybody if it's okay, and those are not illegal activities.

The videocams police set up to record activities in public places are not, therefore, infringing on anybody's privacy. Anything you do in a public area is just that, public, including strong armed robbery, drug dealing, unlawful obscenities, hooking, picking pockets or engaging in terrorist acts. Picking out suspicious persons or known suspected criminals on realtime video can prevent everything from felonious assaults on innocent citizens or prevent multiple murders.

And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded.

In my opinion, these people are obstructing legitimate law enforcement tools and protective venues endorsed by the majority of their fellow citizens and in so doing, creating public endangerment.

If interference with any of these cameras results in the monitoring authorities' not being able to identify someone about to commit, or in the process of committing a crime or terrorist act, or to spot one of said situations in time to prevent it, the saboteurs -- yes, that's what these "civil liberties activists" are -- the penalties for this sabotage should be equal to the punishment merited by the perpetrators they have protected.

Posted by Seth at 02:24 AM |

Cat Call

Feline to the rescue!

Police aren't sure how else to explain it. But when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair. Rosheisen said his cat, Tommy, must have hit the right buttons to call 911.
"I know it sounds kind of weird," Officer Patrick Daugherty said, unsuccessfully searching for some other explanation.

I can't say I disbelieve this story, as unlikely as it sounds, as I once had an experience where a couple of friends were away for a week and they asked me to feed their three cats while they were gone.

The food came in envelopes they stored in a very high cabinet above their kitchen sink. One day I was a couple of hours late getting over there, and I found the cabinet open, the box laying on the sink counter and three envelopes ripped open near the cats' three bowls.

Scary.

Even though I'm not a cat person, it just may be that them thar critters're a mite smarter than most folks'd give 'em credit fer, if not downright sayyy-tanic...

Posted by Seth at 02:10 AM |

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Cat Call

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