Qana

The tragic loss of civilian lives at Qana apparently has nothing to do with Hezbollah using human shields. It obviously has nothing to do with Hezbollah ignoring the Geneva Conventions or "international law" that leftist bedwetters expect the good guys to observe. (Sidebar: For those of you on the left, the "good guys" to whom I refer include the U.S., Israel, England, etc. You know, the non-Islamofascist contingency).

Nope...the Qana tragedy can only be the concluded thusly: it's George Bush's fault. I swear, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. From CNS News:

The Arab American Institute (AAI) is blaming President Bush as well as Israel for what it calls the Qana massacre. "Not only is the Israeli government at fault, but blame also must be laid at the foot of the Bush administration for its failure over the past two and half weeks to demand any serious restraint of Israel," said AAI President James Zogby.

James Zogby is the brother of pollster John Zogby, whose polls were once considered very reliable but have been widly inaccurate since the 2000 election. What a coinkidink...all of Zogby's polls were slanted to show favorable Democrat outcomes in various House, Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential races. Those wishful thinking results have been about as accurate as a Michael Moore documentary.

This AAI statement would have likely made its way onto one of my favorite parody sites that make fun of the "It's ALL Bush's fault" crowd out there...but Blame Bush is composed of satire, and AAI apparently isn't kidding.

Well that helps explain a lot!

Just why does Kofi reflexively believe that Israel is the great Satan of the world? Perhaps it's the company he keeps?

It seems that Hezbollah head weirdbeard Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah was given an aura of legitimacy when he had a little Kofi talk last week. Most galling is this:

The highlight of Annan's visit to Beirut, however, was his meeting on Tuesday with Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah held at Annan's request. During the meeting, at Hizbullah's headquarters in Beirut's southern district, Nasrallah told the UN chief that his group would continue its struggle until the liberation of all Lebanese territory. Annan reportedly thanked the Hizbullah leaders for maintaining law and order in the south since Israel's pullout. The meeting was unlikely to have gone down well with the United States and Israel who consider Hizbullah an "enemy of peace."

"The meeting was unlikely to have gone down well with the United States and Israel"? Someone has apparently perfected the fine and underappreciated art of understatement!

No wonder Kofi can't condemn Hezbollah!

Quote of the day

The quote of the day comes from CL's own Kanaka Girl, commenting on allegations that the Tour de France wants to remove American winner Floyd Landis' victory due to "high testosterone" levels in his bloodwork. Quoth KG:

"ONLY in France could a man having too much testosterone be a crime!"

American Lance Armstrong, who humiliated the French seven straight years by winning "their" tournament, was also accused of cheating. Hmmm...two consecutive Americans winning "their" tournament, and BOTH of them are accused of cheating? It seems as though the French are like our Democrats: they couldn't possibly lose fairly! It must be a result of cheating!

A$$hole Senator blasts firefighters

Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) is running for re-election this year in a state where Democrats normally fare poorly. However, his opponent is leading in many polls because Burns, among other things, was pretty cozy with disgraced ex-lobbyist convict Jack Abramoff.

So what does Burns think will help him in his dogfight bid for re-election? Apparently, he thinks criticizing Virginia firefighters who come into his state to battle a wildfire will resonate with the folks back in Big Sky country. From FNC:

Sen. Conrad Burns confronted members of a Virginia firefighting team at an airport and told them they had done a "poor job" battling a southern Montana wildfire, according to a state official's report obtained Thursday.

A spokesman for the Montana senator confirmed that Burns talked to the firefighters but said he couldn't comment on the conversation because he didn't witness it.

"Senator Burns takes the responsibility of representing Montanans very seriously, so when he hears from landowners about the tens of thousands of acres lost to wild fires, his heart breaks," Matt Mackowiak said.

Members of the "hotshot" wildfire crew said Burns confronted them in the Billings airport on Sunday while they were awaiting a flight home, according to the report by Paula Rosenthal, a state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation employee who was serving as the fire information officer in the area.

The firefighters said Burns told them they had done a "poor job" on the fire and should have listened to the concerns of ranchers, the report said.

The hotshot crew was battling a 143-square-mile wildfire near Pompeys Pillar National Monument, east of Billings. The blaze started July 12 and was contained last week.

Rosenthal, who prepared her report at the direction of agency supervisors, said she was sent to the airport to meet with Burns after reports of an "altercation."

"The toughest part of the conversation was the point where the senator was critical of a firefighter sitting across from us in the gate area," Rosenthal wrote. "I offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8 to $12 an hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a bit surprised that it wasn't higher."

One can infer that by his poor attitude towards the firefighters, the ingrate Senator probably thinks the out-of-state firefighters are overpaid.

With the bloated spending, infighting from stem cell funding and minimum wage raising and illegal immigration, the last thing that the GOP needed to do was have their politicians doing anything else stupid. Obviously, Burns didn't get the memo.

House to raise minimum wage?

Market realities be damned...this is an election year! From the AP:

House Republican leaders, giving in to political reality, plan a vote to raise the $5.15 minimum wage before leaving Washington this weekend for a five-week recess.

"Whether people like it or not, we need to go ahead with it," said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supports the idea. "There's a general agreement among Republicans (opposing the raise) that `maybe we don't like it much, but we need to move forward with it just for political reasons.'"

You just have to admire the core convictions of our elected officials, huh? "We think it sucks, but we can just see our Democrat opponents running campaign commercials right now! (Shudders)." Continuing:

The chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee said the GOP would embrace the increase to $7.25 per hour and probably attach a proposal passed last year that would make it easier for small business to band together and buy health insurance plans for employees at a lower cost. Rep. Howard McKeon (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., said the minimum wage bill probably will not include tax cuts such as a repeal of the estate tax.
...
House Democrats cried foul on Thursday, saying Republicans planned to add "poison pills" for their business allies. Many Democrats oppose the small business health insurance legislation because it would overrule state laws requiring coverage for procedures such as diabetes care and cancer screenings.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California demanded a vote on a bill that would just increase the minimum wage. She spoke out against "the usual Republican poison pills of attaching tax cuts for the wealthy or other so-called sweeteners for the Republican special interests."

Oh, bovine feces! Dems oppose the small business health insurance legislation for completely different reasons:

1. They want government-run socialized medicine! How in the hell are they supposed to get that if the GOP allows businesses to use the (gasp) market place to get the most bang for their buck with health care?

2. They want to keep beating the drum of "not enough health care", and such a proposal would blunt that criticism. As we all know, Dems care nothing about solving problems...only bitching about them. You can always spot a leftist that way: bitching is caring, but solutions are for the people who want to work hard...and that constituency is clearly not made up of Democrats!

3. Anything that makes businesses unhappy makes Democrats happy, and vice versa. This bill does both. It makes businesses unhappy because their labor costs increase with the minimum wage increase, thus making Democrats giddier than pre-pubescent girls at a Justin Timberlake concert. However, the businesses are happy by being able to buy better and less expensive health insurance, and this makes Democrats angrier than Ted Kennedy with an empty bottle of Chivas Regal.

This part ticks me off:

"It is time for Congress to take responsible action to raise the minimum wage and ensure our hardworking constituents can provide for their families," said the letter, drafted by Reps. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, and Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J.

Let's get one thing straight, people. Only a small handful of people in this country are trying to support a family off of minimum wage. For those handful of people, allow me to offer some advice (free of charge):

Get a better paying job! Brilliant, huh? That's what a college education will get you, folks: a deep, nuanced, economically sharp mind like mine! :-D

Seriously, why are you downloading kids and getting married if you have no marketable skills? Why should I, as a business owner, be forced to pay you more than your skills are worth to me? By God (insert politically correct deity name here), you are doing a grave disservice to yourself and your family if all you're doing is a minimum wage job. Don't get me wrong: if I got laid off today, I'd be slinging burgers tonight while looking for a better job!

Really, there are only a couple of groups that benefit from an increase in the minimum wage: high school / college kids working part-time jobs, and unions! The latter group is the one that is fighting like hell for a wage increase, and thusly explains why Democrats are screaming louder than Florida condo commandos after the 2000 election. Why do unions care about an increase in the minimum wage? In a word, "indexing."

See, unions have contracts with companies they've shaken down employers that state the union "workers" must be paid no less than X times the national minimum wage. After all, no unions allow their workers to be paid minimum wage, right? However, if the contracts say that employees have to be paid three times the wage, then an increase in the minimum wage from $5.25 to $7.25 means that the floor for the union workers' pay goes from $15.75 to $21.75. That's a $6/hr de facto raise for the union "workers", which also means that the union gets to collect more dues money, too! Now do you see why unions want minimum wage increases?

Some Republicans seem to understand the ramifications:

"Quickly increased labor costs unrelated to business conditions will encourage or force employers to fire employees, reduce working hours for existing employees, and/or postpone plans to hire additional employees," they wrote.

I can tell you that I, as a business owner, will look to reduce my costs as much as I can, especially in the face of unchanging revenue. Think about it: if I have ten people working for me, and my average profit is $5,000 per month, and my labor costs just increased by $3,200 per month (that's the $2 increase per hour, times 40 hours per week, times four weeks in a month, times 10 employees), my profit just dropped from $5,000 down to $1,800! I can tell you right now that somebody is getting laid off unless/until my profit margin climbs back up! So tell me again how this minimum wage increase is helping me and the poor Joes/Janes whom I had to release?

My friends, this isn't about helping poor people support their families. This is about helping unions continue their support for Democrats, and about helping to immunize the GOP from accusations of screwing the poor. Economic reality gets thrown out the window whenever a campaign rolls around. This is political pandering, and nothing more.

Hezbollah using human shields, mosques for attacks

What?!? I thought Hezbollah was a kind and caring "political" organization, since they build hospitals and schools and stuff! Boy, wait until the U.N. finds out about this! (pausing...) Are you done laughing yet? Me, too. Anywho, from Arutz Sheva:

Hizbullah refused to allow civilians to leave their village and used mosques in their ambush on IDF soldiers at Bint Jbeil Wednesday. Names of the nine fallen soldiers were released. Morale is high.

Hizbullah stored ammunition and weapons in mosques, knowing that the IDF does not attack religious sites. Civilians were not allowed to leave so that Hizbullah could use them as cover. IDF officers said they ordered pilots not to strafe Bint Jbeil in order to spare civilian casualties.

A United Nations peace keeping officer from Canada told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that Hizbullah used the same tactic to draw fire on the UNIFIL post which resulted in the death of four U.N. observers. "This is their favorite trick," he said. "They use the U.N. as shields."

So much for those brave "freedom fighters" that Shehag and her ilk like to reference.

How terrorists fight vs. how the good guys fight

"It's a gnat! It's a fly! It's...U.N. Man!"

Via Michelle Malkin. Observe the following political cartoon:

Now, here's the kicker: this cartoon was clipped from the December 1, 1972, issue of Stars and Stripes! Thirty-four years may have elapsed, but the cartoon's message is just as true today as it was back then.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Andrea Yates: Not guilty by reason of insanity

Van Helsing at Moonbattery has a great post on the Yates acquittal. For those of you who don't recall, Andrea Yates drowned her five kids in a bathtub, and was convicted of her crime. Her conviction was overturned, she was retried, and she was found to be "not guilty by reason of insanity." I left a comment at Moonbattery, but I will copy-and-paste it here.

Please allow me to submit that Yates was not insane, but psychotic. You see, "insane" is not a clinical term...it is a legal term. One can be psychotic, yet legally sane. See Ted Bundy, Jeff Dahmer, etc.

The legal definition of "insane" basically means the following:

* the accused must lack the ability to understand his/her actions;

* the accused must lack the ability to appreciate the wrongfulness, or illegality, of his/her actions.

* some locales require that the accused must not have remorse for their actions, because remorse indicates an ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of the actions.

If ANY of those conditions are not met, then the insanity test fails. For example, Bundy and Dahmer were both psychotic, and no one disputes that. However, because they actively hid the evidence of their crimes by various means (lying, hiding bodies, ingesting them, etc.), those acts show that they clearly understood that their acts were wrong (morally, legally, etc.).

Scenario #1: A cop goes into a house and sees a man killing a woman. The cop tells the man to stop and drop the weapon, and the man says "Why? I'm killing Satan!" If clinical tests show that the killer genuinely believed he was killing Satan and thus benefitting mankind, chances are that the killer would be found "Not guilty by reason of insanity." Why? Because he would not have been able to appreciate the reality of his crime, nor would he have determined that his crime was actually a crime.

Scenario #2: A woman waits for her husband to go to work, and then proceeds to drown her five kids in a bathtub, one by one. She then calls 911 to admit what she's done. That very phone call, plus the initial waiting of the hubby to leave, illustrated that she knew her actions were wrong, thus obliterating her insanity defense.

The jury got it wrong, pure and simple. Yates is psychotic, NOT insane!

Dean: Stalin comparison not "divisive"

Stones and glass houses and whatnot. From the gift that keeps on giving, Howard "The Scream" Dean (h/t NewsMax):

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

Dean called President Bush "the most divisive president probably in our history."

"He's always talking about those people. It's always somebody else's fault. It's the gays' fault. It's the immigrants' fault. It's the liberals' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's Hollywood people," Dean said. "Americans are sick of that. (Really? That's not what elections indicate! Then again, Democrats know as much about winning elections as I do about quantum physics. - Ed.) Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country."

Yeah..."divisive":

Democrat leader Howard Dean called the Iraqi prime minister an "anti-Semite" during an address before party loyalists on Wednesday, drawing a swift rebuke from Republicans. The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a "crook" and compared her to Stalin.

There's just not much else that I can add to illustrate ol' Howie's idiocy, is there?

Kofi's reflexive anti-Semitic accusations betrayed by facts

Oh, those pesky facts! They'll get in the way of a good leftist anti-Semitic accusation every time, won't they?

Kofi accused Israel of intentionally targeting U.N. "peacekeepers" in a recent attack against Hezbollah terrorists. Oops:

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan's initial accusation that Israel "deliberately" targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were "all over" the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel's target, the deceased observer wrote.

"The deceased observer wrote"? I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the observer wrote the e-mail before being "deceased", but if the e-mail was verified by Mary Mapes, then that assumption may be incorrect. But I digress.

According to Little Green Footballs...:

Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie was interviewed on CBC radio, and had some very interesting news about the UN observer post hit by Israeli shells; the Canadian peacekeeper killed there had previously emailed Mackenzie telling him that Hizballah was using their post as cover. (Hat tip: Isadore.)

We received emails from him a few days ago, and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted. Now that’s veiled speech in the military. What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.

As Opinion Journal notes:

The U.N.'s years-long record on the Israel-Lebanon border makes mockery of the term "peacekeeping." On page 155 of my book, "Inside the Asylum," is a picture of a U.N. outpost on that border. The U.N. flag and the Hezbollah flag fly side by side. Observers told me the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists.

Useful idiots? You decide.

Rules of engagement

Thanks to Lee for passing this on:

GOP ploy to keep the House and Senate

Our snoopers investigative journalists here at the Crush Liberalism Objective World News Service (CLOWNS) have uncovered the latest diabolical plot from Karl Rove. Our investigators, code-named "Neil and Bob", intercepted a memo that has since been authenticated by Dan Rather. The contents of the memo are as follows:

TO: Big Dubya
FROM: Karl
RE: November elections strategy

Dub,

In case Cheney hasn't read the paper to you this morning, Saddam is asking to be shot in the event of his conviction. Apparently, the thought of being cornholed by a big burly Shiite cellmate named al-Bubba is more than he can bear. That got the wheels of my evil mind turning...

What if you announce a couple of days before the November elections that you will, via an executive order, implement a lottery for Americans whereby the winning ticket will get to be the person who personally pulls the trigger on Saddam? Now here's the kicker: the lottery is contigent upon both houses of Congress being retained by the Republicans!

Think about it, Dub. Right now, most Americans hate the GOP and you...but with the exception of the Kos kooks, the MSM, and public education personnel, they hate Saddam even more! I would bet you a dollar to a Texas brisket sandwich that they would even keep us in power for just a crack at capping the Butcher of Baghdad. No GOP majority, no chance to pop a pellet in Saddam. I'm telling you, Dub, the idea is foolproof!

Anyway, kick around the idea for a bit. Speaking of "kicking around", I need to go kick around some puppies. Get back to me on my plan, willya?

Karl...

This is the kind of reporting that you've come to expect from CLOWNS! We aim to please...even if our aim is a little off.

"STOP THE PEACE EFFORTS"

While I'm referencing Neal Boortz, the following was eloquently stated by Boortz yesterday:

Do I like the idea of peace? Absolutely! But I like the idea of freedom and economic liberty more. Many of the so-called "peace activists" you hear from today will accept any existence, as long as it is an existence without fighting. Living under a despot with no freedom of thought, speech or worship, and certainly no economic liberty, is preferable to some of these people than fighting -- and dying -- to be free.

The Communists had a rather interesting definition of peace back when the Soviet Union was in full bloom. They said that peace would exist when there was an absence of opposition to communism. Nice twist.

You want peace? Let me tell you of one of the most peaceful places in the world. A solitary confinement cell in a prison. There you will find no conflict. You can sleep at night without any fear of someone coming in through the window to harm you or steal your stuff. You can spend every day secure in the knowledge that there will be no rockets raining down on you, no fights, no threats, no violence.

Oh .. .there's no freedom, to be sure. But these peace "activists" don't seem to be concerned about freedom. It's just peace -- an end to the violence -- that drives them. The want to make sure that women and children don't die. Fine! Rob them of all freedom, of all human dignity, of all liberty -- and move them into concentration camps where they're guarded day and night by armed soldiers ready to turn away any threat. Peace will reign! Women and children won't die! Freedom will.

I'm also sick to death of the attempts by the peace-at-any-price crowd to draw a moral equivalence between Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel.

Hezbollah and Hamas Islamic murderers hide among their own civilian civilizations and lob rockets into the civilian areas of Israel. The goal? To kill civilians and spread terror. The Israelis fire back to kill those who are attacking them. Civilians die. Why? Because the Islamic cowards are hiding behind their women and children. Yeah ... tell me about your moral equivalence.

Hezbollah has fired more than 2000 rockets into the civilian areas of Israel. The goal is not to kill Israeli soldiers. The goal is to kill women and children --- innocent civilians. This is the nature of radical Islam. How could you expect anything else from the Islamic monsters who shot school children in the back in Beslan?

You know, of course, that Hezbollah wants Israel to release some Islamic prisoners. But did you know that one of the prisoners Hezbollah wants released killed a four-year-old girl by slamming a rifle butt into her skull? This Islamic goon crushed the skull of a small Israeli girl with a rifle butt, and the radical Muslims want him released. I suppose there is a grand celebration awaiting him in his hometown if, and when he returns.

Radical Islamists have watched the left in America and in Europe condemn the removal of Saddam Hussein. They have reveled in the criticism leveled against Bush for his efforts to bring a democratically elected government to Iraq. The vilification of Bush has encouraged the Islamic radicals and made them stronger. They now feel that their jihadist goal of bringing the entire world under Islamic rule can be realized. If those who fight them are condemned, and those who appease them are praised, how can you blame them for feeling emboldened?

Israel understands what so many Americans do not. There is a war going on. Islamic terrorists and militants are feeding on the weakness of the West. They're feeding on the weakness shown by the American left that has condemned our president for daring to strike back at Islamofascism.

We gain nothing by asking Israel to hold back.

We had peace with Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1945 only after we had militarily vanquished them. You have peace when your enemy knows that conflict is not feasible for them. The school bully leaves you alone after you pop him in the nose one good time. That is why that in order for peace to exist in the Middle East, Islamic terrorism (and its government sponsors) must be thoroughly and completely decimated. Free goat milk and a collective jihadist group hug isn't going to produce peace, nor will dhimmitude.

Let Israel finish the job that we apparently don't have the stones to finish.

Quote of the day

An excerpt from "Somebody's Gotta Say It" by Neal Boortz, slated for a release in Spring, 2007:

"It is completely absurd that the vote of someone who has squandered every educational opportunity placed in front of them, who has failed to develop a work ethic, who downloaded a litter of skateboard riders and graffiti artists they can't afford to raise, and who now depends on legalized plunder for their very existence, should count as much as the vote of someone who works hard, agonizes over choices and makes the right decisions, provides for their own family and plans for the future without having to dive into someone else's pocket."

Gorby wants to drink recycled sewage

Another bit of news from our friends Down Under. For those of you on the left, the term "Down Under" refers to Australia, not "beneath Bill Clinton's office desk." Anywho, observe:

THE former most powerful man in the world is so committed to the environment he would drink recycled sewage. (Exactly WHEN was Gorby the most powerful man in the world? As far as I can remember, he was always Reagan's bitch! - Ed.)

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said yesterday the world's atmosphere and waterways were so polluted that an environmental crisis clock would be showing "five minutes to midnight".

When told that the Queensland city of Toowoomba was holding a referendum next week on whether to recycle sewage water for drinking, Mr Gorbachev drew on it as an example of acting locally but thinking globally.

While the vote was a matter for the people of Toowoomba, Mr Gorbachev - in Brisbane for Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006 - said he would have no problem drinking recycled water.

Drink up, comrade. Call me a victim of that "winner's complex" thingie that Gorby diagnosed America with, but I think I'd rather go for a ride with Ted Kennedrunk than drink sewage. After all, I do know how to swim, so I might have a fighting chance with ol' TK behind the wheel.

Nobel "Peace" Prizes?

Thanks to Kanaka Girl for passing this on. Just what exactly does it take to win a Nobel "Peace" Prize these days? Apparently, a "peaceful" disposition is not a prerequisite. From our buds, the Aussies:

NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.

"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."

"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize"? Allow me to enlighten you, Betty. All one has to do is look at past recipients, such as Yassar Arafat and Jimmy Carter and Amnesty International, to properly conclude that in absence of a peaceful or non-violent disposition, a simple anti-American sentiment will suffice.

I am touched that Betty here is commited to her "duty" to be a "protector of human life"...so long as that life isn't George Bush's life. Why, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear that the "peace" advocates aren't being very genuine about their true feelings! Anywho, continuing:

"My job is to tell you their stories," Ms Williams said of a recent trip to Iraq.

"We went to a hospital where there were 200 children; they were beautiful, all of them, but they had cancers that the doctors couldn't even recognise. From the first Gulf War, the mothers' wombs were infected.

"As I was leaving the hospital, I said to the doctor, 'How many of these babies do you think are going to live?'

"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'None, not one'. They needed five different kinds of medication to treat the cancers that the children had, and the embargoes laid on by the United States and the United Nations only allowed them three."

Once again, we have another illustration that the left never properly differentiates between good and evil, nor do they ever properly assign the culpability. See, the blockade was the fault of the U.S. and the U.N., and not the fault of Saddam Hussein.

Possessing that kind of perversion of reality and logic, Ms. Williams, is how you were able to win a Nobel "Peace" Prize.

Jacoby: the "chickenhawk" slur

I've posted on this before (link here), and usually have to dredge up that link whenever a leftist trots in here and, once out of logical ammo, tries to stifle discussion with the intellectual non-sequitir slur of "chickenhawk." Well, Jeff Jacoby does a fantastic job of burying that devoid and vacuous argument once and for all. From Jacoby:

"It's touching that you're so concerned about the military in Iraq," a reader in Wyoming e-mails in response to one of my columns on the war. "But I have a suspicion you're a phony. So tell me, what's your combat record? Ever serve?"

You hear a fair amount of that from the antiwar crowd if, like me, you support a war but have never seen combat yourself. That makes you a "chicken hawk" -- one of those, as Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, defending John Kerry from his critics, put it during the 2004 presidential campaign, who "shriek like a hawk, but have the backbone of a chicken." Kerry himself often played that card. "I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did," he would sniff, casting himself as the victim of unmanly hypocrites who never wore the uniform, yet had the gall to criticize him, a decorated veteran, for his stance on the war.

"Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur -- a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply -- that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq -- stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? -- I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

The cry of "chicken hawk" is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of "chicken hawks" ought to be just as dismissive of "chicken doves."

Jacoby just expressed what I've noticed and pointed out before: those who accuse people like me of being a "chickenhawk" conveniently (and thus exposing their intellectual dishonesty) overlook the fact that the overwhelming majority of anti-war protestors also have no military service! That's why I always ask this: do you think the soldiers would rather be loathed or loved by Americans, or better yet, do you think they better appreciate the opinions of the people who oppose their mission or the people who support their mission? Continuing:

In any case, the whole premise of the "chicken hawk" attack -- that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy -- is illogical and ahistorical.

"There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policymakers than civilians," notes Eliot A. Cohen, a leading scholar of military and strategic affairs at Johns Hopkins University. "George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier-statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise. Whose judgment looks better?"

Some combat veterans display great sagacity when it comes to matters of state and strategy. Some display none at all. General George B. McLellan had a distinguished military career, eventually rising to general in chief of the Union armies; Abraham Lincoln served but a few weeks in a militia unit that saw no action. Whose wisdom better served the nation -- the military man who was hypercautious about sending men into battle, or the "chicken hawk" president who pressed aggressively for military action?

Yeah, that FDR and Lincoln sure f'ed up WW II and the Civil War, didn't they? Also, other notable "chickenhawks" include Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Samuel Adams...all of whom advocated American independence yet did not serve in uniform. This country owes a great deal of gratitude to those "chickenhawks", don't we? Continuing:

The founders of the American republic were unambiguous in rejecting any hint of military supremacy. Under the Constitution, military leaders take their orders from civilian leaders, who are subject in turn to the judgment of ordinary voters. Those who wear the uniform in wartime are entitled to their countrymen's esteem and lasting gratitude. But for well over two centuries, Americans have insisted that when it comes to security and defense policy, soldiers and veterans get no more of a say than anyone else.

You don't need medical training to express an opinion on healthcare. You don't have to be on the police force to comment on matters of law and order. You don't have to be a parent or a teacher or a graduate to be heard on the educational controversies of the day. You don't have to be a journalist to comment on this or any other column. (Actually, this sounds like politicians, doesn't it? They routinely weigh in on healthcare or law enforcement or education, despite their lack of credentials in those areas. Maybe we should break out the "chickendoctor" or "chickencop" or "chickenteacher" monikers...whattaya say? - Ed.)

And whether you have fought for your country or never had that honor, you have every right to weigh in on questions of war and peace. Those who cackle "Chicken hawk!" are not making an argument. They are merely trying to stifle one, and deserve to be ignored.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I never played for the Jacksonville Jaguars, so I guess I can't cheer for them, right? Absurd, isn't it?

Therefore, from now on, when some nitwit slithers in here and tries the infinitely discredited "chickenhawk" line, I'll simply link to this post...then show the moron the exit.

Kerry flip-flops on Israel, tells Rush to stop eating doughnuts

One amusing facet of the left is this insistence that Rush Limbaugh is still fat. Not that it makes any difference, but he's not. Oddly enough, the left seems to ignore the "poundfully challenged" Michael Moore, who by everyone's estimation is about twice the size of Rush.

Okay, enough about "Who's fatter, and therefore not as smart?" John Kerry, who incidentally served in Vietnam (who knew?) before throwing someone else's medals over the White House fence, is fixated on Rush's perceived culinary preferences. From Jean-Francois Querrie's own web site:

“Rush Limbaugh’s ignorance and willingness to divide Americans knows no bounds. His latest statement about Israel is beyond offensive to all of us who have fought to protect Israel in the face of enemies committed to its destruction.

Rush Limbaugh needs to pick up a history book instead of a donut. It was a Democratic president who first recognized the State of Israel. It was a Democratic President who first sold Israel defensive weapons. And it was a Democratic President who first sold Israel offensive weapons.

The people of Israel and the Jewish community don’t need Rush Limbaugh to tell them who stands with them, and no one has time for the right wing trying to score cheap political points while Israel fights to defend its very existence.”

Wow! Monsieur Heinz sure is defensive about his (and his party's) love for Israel, n'est-ce pas? You wouldn't know that the guy was all but endorsed by the late terrorist Nobel "Peace" Prize winner, Yassar Arafat!

I don't know how anyone could doubt his commitment to Israel's security! Before:

In October 2003, he told the Arab American Institute in Michigan: "I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli government's decision to build the barrier off of the Green Line – cutting deep into Palestinian areas. We don't need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israelis' security over the long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder."

After:

But a week before the New York state primary, he told a Jewish group: "Israel's security fence is a legitimate act of self defense. No nation can stand by while its children are blown up at pizza parlors and on buses. While President Bush is rightly discussing with Israel the exact route of the fence to minimize the hardship it causes innocent Palestinians, Israel has a right and a duty to defend its citizens. The fence only exists in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israel."

Senator John F'ing Kerry: he actually did oppose Israel's right to self-defense...before he didn't.

I also don't know how anyone could doubt his party's commitment to Israel's security: From Chris "Waitress Sandwich" Dodd (D-CT) on CNN with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: Do I hear you correctly, Senator Dodd, when you say the Israelis have overreacted to the threat that they feel?

DODD: I think going as far as they have in this case here is going further than they should have, in my view. I think going after Hezbollah in the south, clearly warranted without any question whatsoever. But it seems to me here, just going beyond that here is doing exactly what the Iranians want here. You're now radicalizing Lebanon, a population that I think was far more moderate prior to all of this. You're radicalizing elements in Jordan and Egypt. That is dangerous for Israel in my view, and the United States.

Yesiree, those Dems are friends to Israel, alright. With friends like that...

Second Amendment stops further bloodshed in Memphis

While watching the national news Friday night, I saw a story from my hometown of Memphis that was pretty disturbing. From the Memphis fishwrap, the Commercial Appeal:

Justin Murchison had a matter-of-fact answer Friday when asked what would have happened had a Good Samaritan with a gun not put a stop to a stabbing rampage at a Cordova Schnucks:
"I'd be dead."

A knife-wielding employee of the grocery store at 9025 U.S. 64 stabbed seven co-workers Friday morning before the armed civilian apprehended him in the parking lot. Another person was accosted with a knife, and yet another was stricken with heat-related symptoms.

Late Friday, all the victims were alive.

The attacker, identified as 21-year-old Elartrice 'Marcell' Ingram, is in police custody. He is charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder -- seven stabbings, the threatening and the heat-related hospitalization.

Two victims -- Vincent Patterson, 36, and Murchison, 27 -- were treated and released from Saint Francis-Bartlett hospital. Barbara Marshall, 41, was admitted there in fair condition.

Anitra Flowers, 31, was in serious condition at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. Victims Victoria Herbert and Theresa Howard were also at The Med, but their conditions were unknown. The conditions and identities of the other victims were unknown as well.

"I'm very lucky to be alive. If it wasn't for that guy with the gun, I think I'd be dead," said Murchison, who needed 25 staples to stitch up his head. "I'm just in a recovery stage. Tomorrow, it might really hit home."

Luckily for the knife-wielding attacker, he complied with Mr. Cope's request to cease attacking anyone else and to immediately disarm, lest he be rendered DRT (Dead Right There). Toes-up. Pushing up daisies. Taking a dirt nap. Worm food. You get the drift.

As The Truth Hurts points out, the boobs at the financially troubled looting network known as Airhead America were discussing how life would be so much better here in the States if only that pesky Second Amendment thingee were non-existent. I would venture to guess that in addition to Mr. Murchison, the other good folks around the Schnuck's supermarket do not share that opinion.

Olbermann yaps, nips at O'Reilly's ankles

Normally, I don't give Keith Blabbermouth or his show too much attention. After all, he says and does outrageous things to attract viewers to his little-watched MSNBC show. So what?

Well, I found this entertaining. From the AP:

Keith Olbermann was eagerly anticipating his first meeting with Bill O'Reilly. It didn't happen.

The feuding cable TV personalities both attended a charity fundraiser thrown by New York Yankees manager Joe Torre last November. Olbermann picked up his name tag and spotted O'Reilly's tag on the table.

"He never got within 20 feet of me," Olbermann told the Television Critics Association's summer meeting Saturday. "I swear to God, every time I looked up, he would suddenly look down. He was staring over at me. But we're about the same height, so I really don't think he's going to come talk to me. If I were about a foot shorter, I'm sure there would be a confrontation of some sort."

During his "Countdown" show on MSNBC, Olbermann regularly tweaks O'Reilly, whose "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox is No. 1 in the cable TV news ratings. Olbermann generally runs third in the same time slot.

O'Reilly has referred to Olbermann - although not by name - as a "notorious smear merchant" and pointed out his low ratings.

Olbermann said his phone number has been distributed at Fox and his e-mail hacked into.

"They're annoying things, and that's about it. That's the price you pay," he said. "Nothing that you do in putting yourself in the public eye is for free. I can live with it."

Olbermann opened his session by whipping out a mask of O'Reilly - a poke at Fox asking journalists to accept handout photos of TCA news conferences from photographers the network had hired.

"We thought we'd help you out, those of you who needed a good photograph of," Olbermann said, pausing to hold up O'Reilly's photo glued to a stick as reporters laughed.

Olbermann has named O'Reilly his "Worst Person in the World" at least 15 times. The nightly "award" is Olbermann's way of criticizing bad behavior.

"It's just so much fun," Olbermann said. "I've always liked playing in traffic (I guess THAT explains a lot! - Ed.). I was told in 1977 that I had no future in the business and wouldn't last if I didn't change my style, so I don't really worry about it."

The advice you ignored in 1977 was damned good advice, Boogerman.

Interestingly, the AP article leaves out this part:

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann used a Saturday morning breakfast session at the Television Critics Association press tour to fire yet another shot at Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, holding up an O’Reilly mask while raising his right arm in a Nazi salute to mock his on-air rival.

Hmmm. The AP article mentions the other details: the place, the setting, the mask, etc. They just so happened to omit the reference to the Nazi salute. Nope...no liberal media bias!

Anyone want to guess what the MSM reaction would be were the person & cut-out reversed?

Is anyone at DOJ awake?

The Western mouthpiece of terrorists, aka the New York Times, are at it again. From Michelle:

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah.

As one of Michelle's readers opines, what is the difference between this...:



...and this?



The Slimes will continue to act with impunity until the DOJ begins cracking down on the illegal leaking of classified information, and by "cracking down", I mean criminal prosecutions against the Slimes and especially against the leakers who are entrusted by the public to keep their cakeholes shut when it comes to classified information.

Point to ponder

I wonder...

If the military of Lebanon sides with Hezbollah, will the unified army be called Lezbos?

I've got your "proportionality" right here

From The American Enterprise:

As Israel defends itself from terrorists intent on the country’s destruction, many foreign leaders have had the audacity to criticize Israel for using disproportionate force. The United States had to veto a United Nations draft resolution sponsored by Qatar, which, among other things, restated the proportionality test that seems to apply only to Israel.

Specifically, the resolution “[c]alls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to halt its military operations and its disproportionate use of force that endanger the Palestinian civilian population and to withdraw its forces to their original positions outside the Gaza Strip.”

President Chirac echoed this same concern. “I find honestly—as all Europeans do—that the current reactions are totally disproportionate.”

The notion of proportionality sounds reasonable on its face, but after a second’s worth of thought, it crumbles quickly. The “disproportional” critics imply that Israel should act in a manner that is equal to, but doesn’t exceed the Hezbollah attack in its degree of force.

These critics also imply that Israel’s actions should be at the level necessary to punish Hezbollah—a criminal justice type of reaction, such as an eye for an eye.

You know, that whole Clinton-Kerry "terrorism is a nuisance, a law enforcement problem" mentality that makes the American electorate distrust their ability to properly understand the true nature of our enemy. Continuing:

When the United States was attacked on 9/11, the appropriate response was not to define what an equivalent act would be or to think of a just punishment. The response was to do whatever it took to defend the country and ensure that future attacks didn’t occur.

Israel isn’t reacting, nor should it, based on a one-to-one response to Hezbollah’s actions. Instead, it is identifying the means by which future—not past—attacks will cease. It is hard to imagine any other country being so roundly criticized for such reasonable self-defense.

If “disproportional force” were used in its proper context, there wouldn’t be any criticism of Israel. Certainly, a country can fairly be criticized for acting disproportional to a provocation if it is going beyond what is necessary to defend itself. For Israel, it must meet a much tougher standard—a standard that has nothing to do with self-defense.

Even France, if it had rockets pointed at it directly across from its northern border, likely would take immediate action to diffuse the threat. This was an action that Israel chose not to do, even though it certainly would’ve been well within its rights.

If some of those same rockets were fired into France and two French soldiers kidnapped, the French would take immediate action. Proportionality never would enter into their discussions.

Yes, France indeed would take immediate action to diffuse the threat. She would frantically find the person/nation/group to whom she should surrender. Continuing:

The current fighting will not desist unless Israel can feel comfortable that border security is stabilized—so rockets aren’t pointing at innocent Israelis. The destruction of Hezbollah certainly remains the goal, but as has been recently indicated by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel is seeking more obtainable short-term solutions.

As reported, if the two soldiers are freed, rocket attacks stopped, and the Lebanese secure the border, Israel will stop using force within Lebanon. This is a major concession by Israel. For many countries, the attacks wouldn’t stop until Hezbollah were completely squashed within Lebanon.

There should be no illusion that Israel’s solutions can be quickly achieved. Even if the soldiers are returned and rocket attacks stopped, it seems unlikely that Lebanon’s military could secure the border without Hezbollah “voluntarily” choosing to give up the border (likely from external pressures). At best, border security would be short-lived, until Hezbollah repositioned itself there again to attack Israel.

If there is a cessation of violence but attacks from the North ultimately resume, let’s be clear that a proportional reaction would be for Israel to act like any other sovereign nation. It should do what is necessary to protect itself and its citizens. Instead of being caught by surprise, the United States and its allies should get on the same page now and acknowledge that self-defense is never a disproportional use of force.

What would a "proportionate" response have been to Pearl Harbor? Bombing Okinawa, then telling Japan "Now don't do that again, or we may have to attack another one of your same-sized targets"? I'm sure that would have shaken Hirohito to his core!

What does Scripture say about terrorism?

Thanks to Steve for passing this on to me. This column is interesting, and it is written by a rabbi. From MSNBC.com:

On both sides of any war debate, both pacifists and provocateurs can use the Bible's authority. The same is true for the Qur'an and for the Vedas. God's will and God's ways, we must always remember if we are to be true to the message of faith, are not our own. As Abraham Lincoln cautioned, the important question is not whether God is on our side but whether we are on God's side. However, we ought not conclude from this humble caution that the Bible is utterly recondite and irrelevant to the wars we fight. I believe that the key to the Bible's message to us in this moment is remembering Amalek.

In Deut. 25:17-19 we read: “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.”

What made Amalek so dastardly was that unlike any other enemy who attacked the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt from the front, Amalek attacked the rear. This meant that his soldiers could kill women and children, the elderly and the infirm and in so doing avoid engagement with the soldiers at the front. In this way he could produce maximum carnage and maximum terror. The moral problem the Bible addresses is that this is not warfare, it is the slaughter of innocents—it is terrorism.

Why, I wondered, would God command us to remember the terrorist Amalek? There are other villains in the Bible, but there is no biblical command to remember Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus. We are commanded only to remember Amalek. I believe this is because the planned and plotted slaughter of innocents even during wartime cannot be condoned and must be remembered as a bright moral line which can never be crossed. Indeed our remembrance of Amalek is combined with a chilling pledge from God that is also unique in the Bible: “The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exod. 17:16). Our enemies are just our enemies except if our enemy is Amalek. In that case our enemy is also the enemy of God. Amalek thus becomes the symbol of terrorism in every generation. He is the symbol not of evil but of radical evil.

I'm kind of anal retenetive when it comes to semantics, so I somewhat chuckle when I see "evil vs. radical evil." Is there a "moderate evil" or "evil lite"? No, I don't disagree with the rabbi's analysis, but I am amused at the "radical evil" line. I know what he's trying to say, though.

Anywho, continuing:

In our generation Amalek is alive and well and killing the weak ones at the rear of the march. Amalek has attacked the rear of our line of march in Madrid and Bombay, in Jakarta and London, in Haifa and Tel Aviv, in New York and Washington, in a quiet field in Pennsylvania and in a hundred other homes and families—leaving them covered with blood and tears. Yes, one can disagree and debate how Amalek must be fought, but not that Amalek must be fought. One must report and mourn the innocents who are inadvertently killed by our soldiers in our battle against Amalek, but that remembrance must always make the spiritual moral and political distinction that our victims were killed by mistake and Amalek's victims were killed by design.

I have no new or fresh or insightful take on the latest battle in the worldwide war on Islamic fascism except the message of our president: victory is the only way. In my heart and prayers, I thank President Bush for remembering Amalek. And to all the world leaders who are used to thinking about war as just a struggle for land or oil or power, remember that this war is different and this enemy is different. If you can, come to realize that this is a war against a lover of slaughter. If you join us, then we shall not have to fight Amalek alone and he cannot again attack the weak ones at the rear of the line.

There are those who condemn Israel for blowing up places where terrorists are hiding among the innocents, yet those same condemners are sickeningly silent when the terrorists do the same thing. I guess said condemners' tolerance for dead Jews is a lot higher than their tolerance for dead terrorists. At any rate, whether one believes in God or the Bible, the "weak ones at the rear of the line" analogy is a valid one, and one that we must keep in mind as we fight the Amaleks of the world.

Lebanese to assist Hezbollah?

Headline: "Lebanese Army may join forces with Hizbullah"

I guess the old axiom is true: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Hell freezes over: Bush vetoes a bill!

Did Bush veto a budget-busting bloated spending bill? A horrible and unconstitutional "campaign finance reform" bill? A poorly conceived and written education bill (done by Teddy K, so by default, the bill sucks)? A massive entitlement drug program?

Nope. No sir, the first bill to earn Bush's veto was...federal funding for stem cell research. In an election year, the GOP decided to create a rift with their base by bringing this up now! Just freakin' brilliant, Elephants.

I addressed this issue last year (post here). Basically, my take was and is still as follows:

Regardless of the benefits (real OR imagined) from stem cell research, it is NOT the federal government's responsibility to fund the research. There are TONS of things that are not supposed to be funded by the feds that end up getting funded anyway. The more we can keep Congress from spending in an unconstitutional manner, the better off we'll be.

Also, ignore the MSM hype that Bush is banning stem cell research. He is doing no such thing. He is only banning further federal funding of it. To argue that Bush is banning stem cell research is either done out of willful deception or unadulterated ignorance.

So while Bush's reasons for vetoing the bill may be only slightly similar to reasons I wanted him to do it, the fact is he did the right thing...even if for a less-than-completely-right reason.

I'm still pissed that this is what he decides to use his first veto on, though.

Quote of the day

Tony Snow, responding to America's crazy "aunt in the attic" Helen Thomas while she was heckling him about Israeli "aggression":

"Thank You For The Hezbollah View!"

Damn...why were we burdened with Scott McClellan for so long?

CNN at it again

Here is what was on CNN's home page earlier. They've since changed the picture, but not the title:


The picture reflects the tragedy of the current conflict. However, I am about to wonder aloud an intemperate and politically incorrect thought:

Does CNN not have any photos of Israeli children who have been victims of Hezbollah's missiles?

No one in Haifa to show? Aside from stoking anti-Israeli sentiment with their leftist bias, does CNN have any other reason for showing weeping Lebanese children but nary a singed hair from any Jews? Nothing about the Jewish children killed in Nazareth?

Nah...didn't think so.

Federal judge throws out MD's "Screw Wal-Mart" law

A follow-up on the story where Maryland Democrats wanted to do the heavy lifting for the unions' crusade against Wal-Mart is found on the AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a Maryland law that would have required Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend more on employee health care, arguing the retail giant "faces threatened injury" from the law's spending requirement.

The state law would have required large employers to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health care or pay the difference in taxes. Only Wal-Mart would have been affected by the law.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz concluded that the law would have hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees in a different way from how it keeps track of employee benefits in other states. Motz wrote that the law "imposes legally cognizable injury upon Wal-Mart."

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, of which Wal-Mart is a member, filed the lawsuit contesting the legislation. The group contended the law unfairly targeted the world's largest retailer.

Without the court's intervention, the law would have taken effect in January.

Lawyers for the state argued before Motz that the so-called Wal-Mart law wasn't an illegal mandate. They said Wal-Mart was free to pay the penalty - estimated at $6 million a year - instead of providing better benefits. As another alternative, the retailer could also have set up health clinics for its employees.

Other states have considered bills similar to Maryland's law, although no other state has adopted one.

In Maryland, where state budget writers were looking for ways to rein in a $4.6 billion annual Medicaid tab, the Wal-Mart law was seen as a way to encourage companies to keep employees off public rolls. It became law last winter when the Democratic legislature overrode a 2005 veto by Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich.

Wal-Mart shares rose 96 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $44.13 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Condolences to the Maryland Marxists. Care ye to try again?

Jihad Cyndi faces runoff in GA Dem primary

Rep. Cynthia "Jihad Cyndi" McKinney, running on her impressive record of moonbattery and assaulting police officers, is in a run-off. Details:

Saying "you can't keep a good woman down," incumbent Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney kicked off her three-week campaign to beat former two-term DeKalb County commissioner Hank Johnson early Wednesday morning.

Johnson forced McKinney into a runoff with results that put them neck-and-neck in the 4th District race. With 98 percent of the precincts reporting, McKinney had 46.9 percent of the vote to Johnson's 44.5 percent.

"It's an exciting night. We've gone out and touched voters wherever they are in this district," Johnson said late Tuesday night.

Just after 11 p.m., McKinney had regained her lead over Johnson with 47 percent of the votes to Johnson's 44.6 percent. It was not the type of lead McKinney and her supporters had planned for as they prepared during the day for a victory party at a Decatur hotel.

Guess that party will have to wait.

McKinney lost four years ago to a political newcomer in Denise Majette. McKinney had floated the "Bush knew 9/11 was coming but did nothing to stop it so his oil buddies could get rich" paranoia, and the predominantly Democratic district punished her by voting her out. However, Majette got a big head and gave up her seat after ONE two-year term in order to run for the Senate, where she was defeated. McKinney got the seat back in 2004, where she's been an embarrassment ever since.

Now that the third opponent in the primary, architect John Coyne, is not going to be a part of the run-off, it will be interesting to see where his votes will go. I do wonder, though, if McKinney loses again...will her father go off on another one of his self-destructive anti-Semitic tirades? Now that would be pure entertainment...again.

Both Jihad Cyndis are enjoying pizza. Shehag no longer fasting? (h/t Michelle Malkin)

Bush should swear more often?

If you have delicate eyes and ears, please stop reading this post.

Bush said "shit." Stop the freakin' press...he said "shit"! Specifically, he said "See the irony is what they [presumably the UN] need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

John Dickerson thinks Bush needs to swear more often. From Slate:

Damn, I wish the president would swear more. When his private conversation with Tony Blair was picked up yesterday on an open microphone, I was heartened, not shocked. "See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over," Bush said. Lebanon is in flames. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is enriching. Isn't this a time for swearing?

Shouldn't we hope that when he's in private, Bush is throwing around the barnyard epithets? I don't think anyone would have been comforted if his aside to Tony Blair had been about weight lifting or the soufflé they had for lunch. Tony, did you see what Jacques was wearing?
...
Instead, the president said to his closest ally, in front of whom he was presumably being his most authentic self: "I feel like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen." Cover your ears! George Bush is expressing his feelings, and his feelings are that he wants the United Nations to engage in more diplomacy. Why, he sounds like a Democrat!

In the history of presidential potty mouths, Bush is a piker. The office of the presidency has a long and storied history of coarse talk. Clinton seemed to make it three-dimensional. Presidents Johnson and Nixon were expletive virtuosos. President Bush would have to stop riding the mountain bike and devote his time to competitive swearing to match their proficiency.
...
By contrast, Bush has only been caught swearing twice in the last six years, an amazing drought given that his presidency is essentially live-blogged. He can't even ask about a bathroom break without it going all over the world. When he's captured offering a true thing sharply stated, we should applaud. His candor yesterday isn't the problem—the lack of candor every other day is.

Bush said "shit"...and I, for one, don't give a shit!

Iran: "Kick our asses...please!"

From al-Reuters:

Iran's Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.

"We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year," said Iranian Hizbollah's spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

"They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America's interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader's green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three ... we welcome it," he said.

Let's get one thing straight, you couscous-eating camel jockeys: WE didn't start this fire, m'kay?

WE weren't the ones with an unquenchable anti-Semitic anti-Western thirst who kicked off the U.N.'s fledgling existence with an immediate threat of action against the newly created nation of Israel in 1948. WE weren't the ones who exacerbated the problems by holding hostages in order to establish an intolerant and terrorist-supporting Islamic theocracy in 1979. WE weren't the ones who refused an offer in 2000 to establish the so-called "Palestinian" state that was supposed to be damned near everything that the homicidal anti-Semites wanted. WE weren't the ones who thought it would be cool to blow up sidewalk cafés with Jewish women and kids in order to kill...well, women and kids.

In short, WE aren't the evil scum-sucking parasites stuck in the Dark Ages who refuse to rest unless the whole world converts to our religion, becomes subjugated (dhimmitude), or dies brutally in defiance.

Keep flapping those gums, Hez-bologna. If your country won't rein you in, then either Israel or America will. With nearly half of your Lebanese brethren's infrastructure destroyed, you're pretty much seen as a yapping chihuahua right now: nothing that a swift kick to the gut won't shut up!

Public service announcement

Today's Crush Liberalism Objective World News Service (CLOWNS) apolitical public service announcement is brought to you by Pittsburgh:

Do not keep wolves as pets. They just might not make the most docile of companions.

"Bite me"? Well, if you insist...

Bubba: "I'd die for Israel"

Interesting:

Bill Clinton – who avoided serving in Vietnam – says he would take up arms and "fight and die" for Israel if Iraq attacks the Jewish state.

"If Iraq came across the Jordan River, I would grab a rifle and get in the trench and fight and die," the ex-president said to wild applause at a Jewish fund-raiser in Toronto.

Clinton made his bombshell remarks to 350 people who paid $1,000 to break bread with him on Monday night at a dinner for the Toronto Hadassah-WIZO children's charity.

Ah, yes...the "internationalist" in Bubba is shining through, isn't it? He didn't think too much of his own country during his anti-war days, and he didn't think that this country was worth dying for. However, he'd die for another country?

If you're not going to enlist in the defense of your own country, fine. But why would you be willing to die for someone else's country (yet not for your own), unless you just really hated your own country? Or, perhaps Bubba wouldn't even be willing to die for Israel but wanted some cheap applause from the Jewish fundraiser's attendees.

What?!? Bubba lying? Bubba disingeuous? Why, that's just crazy talk! For those of you on the left, this paragraph is sarcasm.

U.N. Begins Lebanese Evacuation

Our crack investigative team here at the Crush Liberalism Objective World News Service (CLOWNS) has learned that DNC chief Howard Dean was preparing to address the Lesbian And Bisexuals In Action (or LABIA) in Berkeley about the situation, until his advisors asked begged him not to include the Lebanese evacuation segment.

Naturally, our dumpster divers investigative journalists found the discarded notes from Dr. Dean. The deleted comments are as follows:

We see that the UN phallocracy is caving in to the Boltonites by infringing on the rights of Lebanese everywhere to live as they see fit. I mean, asking them to evacuate their homes? That's just heartless. These are the places where they stroke their cats, enjoy a refreshing Busch, strap on their work ethic, clean their carpets, and handle their boxes on a daily basis...just like everyone else!

When is the persecution of the Lebanese going to stop? Can't we all just "live and let live"? What two grown, consenting Lebanese adults do behind closed doors is no one else's business, and the UN needs to respect that.

Fortunately for Dr. Dean, his new proofreader (an intern from the University of San Francisco) may have ignored the rest of the speech's moonbattery but did catch the "Lebanese" faux pas.

Would you expect this news to come from anyone else but CLOWNS?

U.S. going bankrupt?

What? With "conservatives" running the Congress and presidency? Why, how can that be? (pausing...) OK, you can stop laughing/crying now. On to the column by the libertarian blog The Hammer of Truth:

Well, now that oil is going for $78 a barrel, this report isn’t really surprising (via Robot Wisdom):

A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.

Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. “To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors,” he asked.

According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds".

It seems not all is lost, if people start voting for someone other than the current crop of fiscally irresponsible bobble-heads:

Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine [...] "This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."

Sure, the problem can be contained "if the political will is there"! And Bill Clinton's desire for portly knee-padded interns can be contained if his will is there!

Gingrich: We are in World War III

Neal Boortz has often said that the war on terror is World War IV, because the Cold War was really World War III. I can accept that. However, semantics aside, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) says that WW III has already begun:

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.

Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.

Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional campaigns. He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we do not explain it very well."

But some of it is due to Republicans' congressional agenda. He said House and Senate Republicans "forgot the core principle" of the party and embraced Congressional pork. "Some of the guys," he said, have come down with a case of "incumbentitis."

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.

He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans.

He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is hurting America's interests. He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realizing this is a war."

"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away:

"Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."

There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

We know what our friends on the fringe left think about which side should win, don't we? Hint: it's not our side...and by "our", I mean "America", OK? One would think that during war for survival, American interests would trump party or ideological interests.

One would think.

AP/Ipsos poll: Americans want Dems to win

From the AP:

Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

Further complicating the GOP outlook to turn things around is a solid percentage of liberals, moderates and even conservatives who say they’ll vote Democratic. The party out of power also holds the edge among persuadable voters, a prospect that doesn’t bode well for the Republicans…

The AP-Ipsos survey asked 789 registered voters if the election for the House were held today, would they vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate in their district. Democrats were favored 51 percent to 40 percent…

Wow...that's bad news, huh? There's just one problem with that result: it's highly flawed. Sweetness & Light breaks it down:

That’s a 12% advantage to the Democrats.

So a group of people comprised of 12% more Democrats than Republicans was asked who should run Congress. And they answered Democrats by a 11% advantage.

That actually sounds like a 1% win for the GOP.

As we have noted before, the Associated Press always polls more Democrats than Republicans at the 12% clip. The AP then uses their bogus results to drive the news.

S&L has an archives section with other AP/Ipsos "polls", and as luck would have it, there's a leftwards tilt in 100% of the "poll" results. As S&L says:

Bias? What bias?

The Associated Press is just reporting what 12% more Democrats randomly selected people tell them.

It’s scientific.

Anyway, I noticed a couple of glaring discrepancies with the poll, aside from the usual oversampling of Democrats:

1. Liberal math at its finest! Look at their Republican breakdown: 17% strong, 25% moderate...for a total of 41% Republican? I DID go to FSU, but I could have sworn we were taught that 17 + 25 = 42!

2. They didn't poll likely voters, but registered voters. They do the same thing every election year, and the registered voters "ironically" show a propensity to vote Democrat. Interestingly, these folks don't show up at the polls (especially during midterm elections), further confounding the "pollsters" (though obviously not enough to change their polling approach).

3. The sample was smaller than Dick Durbin's regard for the troops. Then again, when you have your sample of Democrats, why sample anymore? As the old cliché says, "Once you strike oil, stop drilling!"

4. Finally, do the pollsters plan on taking a district-by-district poll for House races, or a state-by-state poll for Senate races? THAT would be more accurate, especially since many Americans hate Congress, but like their OWN Congressman/Congresswoman/Senator.

The GOP is definitely in trouble this November, and could very well lose. However, would it behoove the pollsters to be a little scientific and honest for once?

Dems bicker over campaign video

Democrats plan on running a campaign video showing, among other things, flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers. Surprisingly, the flags were not set ablaze by the Dems' core, but I digress.

Anywho, incumbent Democrat Congressman John Spratt has asked his cohorts to pull the ad. I don't know if he finds it offensive or distasteful, or if he just feels that it could backfire on his party this November. Plus, he has a big battle on his hands this November against a popular Republican state legislator.

Anyway, the Republicans are predictably howling mad over the ad. From Breitbart/AP:

Republicans are howling over a Democratic political Web site ad that displays flag-draped coffins and a fake police mug shot of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, arguing that the ad politicizes war casualties and is an insult to the families of the troops killed in Iraq.
...
"For the Democrats, everything is about politics," said Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the Republican campaign committee. "This crosses the line."

Reynolds noted that Emanuel has on occasion appeared on the House floor to remember fallen soldiers by reading their names into the Congressional Record. "It takes a galling level of smug self- righteousness for Rahm Emanuel to invoke our honored dead one day and put their coffins in an ad the next."

The outrage is reminiscent of Democratic complaints in 2004 when President Bush's campaign launched an ad that included an image of firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

"It was despicable when the Republicans used the photos of 9/11 for political purposes. Was that despicable?" House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said to reporters Thursday. "I think it is despicable that young peoples' lives are being lost more than 2,500. Republicans are in denial about that. Yet they talk about politicizing war."
...
It ends with a still shot of Bill Clinton beaming with his arms outstretched, a curious counterpoint to the ad's title: "America needs a new direction."

I have a few observations:

1. I have to concede something that Pe-loser said: Republicans used 9/11 in political ads in 2004, and I had no problems with that. After all, we're not in a 9/10 world anymore, even if the left doesn't see that. So if the GOP wants to (rightfully) reference 9/11, then let the Dems pimp the corpses of the war on terror's fallen. Personally, I think that voters would be offended, but I could easily be wrong about that.

2. One thing I will whack Pe-loser on, though, is this statement: "It was despicable when the Republicans used the photos of 9/11 for political purposes. Was that despicable?" She asks the question secondly, then answers it firstly. She's saying that the GOP's use of 9/11 photos were despicable, right?

Then she must believe that HER party's use of flag-draped coffins are equally despicable, in which case one wonders why Dems would try to "out-despicable" the GOP: "Hey, we Dems can be despicable, too, you know!" Or, she believes that using 9/11 photos is wrong, but using dead soldiers' coffins is right, in which case I would LOVE to hear that explanation!

3. "It ends with a still shot of Bill Clinton beaming with his arms outstretched, a curious counterpoint to the ad's title: 'America needs a new direction.'" A "new direction", being touted by an old president? What's next, a commercial with Jimmy Carter in his sweater saying that "America needs a successful energy policy"?

Ultimately, I think Tom Bevan at RCP has the proper logical conclusion:

Let me see if I have this right. If you were against Bush using images of 9/11 in 2004 but aren't opposed to using images of flag-draped coffins in 2006, you're a hypocrite. So far so good. But if you weren't opposed to Bush using images of 9/11 in 2004 but are now up in arms over the use of an image of a flag-draped coffin, doesn't that also make you guilty of hypocrisy?

I certainly find the coffins ad to be very distasteful, but isn't it true that "What's good for the goose is good for the gander"? I think the Dems will be punished for their horrible anti-defense stances coupled with this exploitation of the soldiers (which is fake sympathy). But let 'em do it.

"Israel unleashes fury"

Neal Boortz explains the situation in plain terms, terms so easy that even an anti-Semitic moonbat (or U.N. worker/diplomat...but I repeat myself) can understand it:

Some time back, the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories, itself a terrorist group, decided to kidnap an Israeli soldier. They want some prisoners released in exchange for the prisoner. No dice, says Israel...who rolls into Hamas territory with guns and bombs blazing. That war is ongoing.

Now, up North in Lebanon, that area is controlled by another Islamic terrorist group called Hezbollah. They decided it would be cute if they snuck across the border and grabbed two more Israeli soldiers. So they did...taking them both hostage. Israel decided that was an act of war, and they have responded with full firepower...just recently bombing the airport in Beirut. They have decided to clean house...and it's about time.

Now watch carefully the coverage in the mainstream media, the reaction at the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department. Because you see, those are all anti-Israel groups that want to appease the Islamic terrorists. Surely they had a reason for taking those Israeli soldiers hostage! It's Israel's fault...a response to the "occupation" of "Palestinian" territories. Nonsense.

All of this talk about the Middle East Peace process is a complete waste of time. A true, lasting peace will only be achieved through a decisive military victory. It's time for Israel to finish the job once and for all...and exterminate Hezbollah and Hamas from the face of the Earth...permanently.

I hope Israel tells the handwringing do-gooders of the world who can barely raise a whimper when it comes to condemning Islamofascist terrorism: "Bite my matzo balls!"

Senate bill would guarantee illegal aliens "guest workers" get more than minimum wage

The Senate just doesn't freakin' get it, do they? From the Washington Times:

The Senate immigration bill would require that foreign construction laborers here under the guest-worker program be paid well above the minimum wage, even as American workers at the same work site could earn less.

The bill "would guarantee wages to some foreign workers that could be higher than those paid to American workers at the same work site," says a policy paper released this week by the Senate's Republican Policy Committee. "This is unfair to U.S. workers, inappropriate, and unnecessary."

The 11-page, harshly critical analysis of the Senate immigration bill on this one point reveals how torn Senate Republicans are over the larger issue of immigration.

Though the bill was supported by Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, it was opposed by the rest of the Senate Republican leadership and a majority of Republicans in the chamber. And despite the support of Mr. Frist and Mr. McConnell, this week's policy paper critical of the wage guarantees for foreign workers marks the official stance of the Republican Policy Committee, which formulates and implements the policies of the caucus.

This underscores the stupidity of the GOP "leadership" (and I use that word loosely): paying illegal aliens "guest workers" more than Americans to do these jobs! I mean, if Americans truly "won't do these jobs", as the president and his sycophants shamelessly and falsely claim, then one way to get them to do the job is to pay them more. You know, that whole "supply and demand" and "marketplace" thingee on which Republicans fancy themselves as being experts? If you're going to force employers to pay more money for the work, then the Americans you assume wouldn't want the jobs will then be more likely to want them, thus alleviating the need for the "guest workers", right?

I don't know that it would make a BIG difference in construction work, since that kind of work tends to pay well beyond minimum wage anyway. So why don't we just be honest about the motivation behind idiotic legislation like this? It's "Hispandering", pure and simple. And it's damned shameful! Fortunately, if the Senate GOP has a relapse in poor judgment, the House will undoubtedly smack them harder than Barney Frank on a cabana boy's backside.