ME TOO: John McCain would like to see humans on Mars. Of course, somehow the Obama backers manage to make everything about Iraq: "So, to review: John McCain hates war, yet he wants to send a man to Mars, a planet which is named after... war." Heh.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2008 10:49 ||
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MARV, hows the Modulator doing these days!
ELMER > MY GOOWDNESS = OH MY = MY GWACIOUSNESS!
* On a serious note, you just knew something ominious was coming to America when the MSM-Hollywood stopped showing BUGS BUNNY and other stalwart WEEKEND SHOWS back in the 1990's.
James Taranto, "Best of the Web" @ Wall Street Journal
Congratulations to Barack Obama for clinching the nomination, making history, etc. Sorry to be so grudging about it, but we just can't work up any enthusiasm--not when we see how ridiculous people look when they do work up enthusiasm. This is from a dispatch by Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press:
To understand how Barack Obama won the presidential primary, you have to look at what he learned when he lost.
Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton solidly in the Iowa caucuses in January, but five days later she beat him, painfully and unexpectedly, in New Hampshire. That loss showed him that toppling the royal family of Democratic politics would not come easily.
"I think this was meant to be," Obama said privately the next day, recalls adviser David Axelrod. "I think we were flying too close to the sun, like Icarus. When you're fighting for change, it's not supposed to be easy."
In Greek mythology, Icarus' father gives him wax wings that empower him to fly, but warns of the danger in soaring too high. Obama got similar warnings. When he arrived in Washington, Senate dean Robert Byrd cautioned him not to be in too much of a rush to leave for the White House.
But like Icarus, Obama wouldn't heed his elder's advice. Icarus would crash into the sea. Obama would learn from his own crash in New Hampshire and make history.
Uh-oh, are we going to start hearing about how Obama would be the "first Greek president"? Agence France-Presse has more hard-hitting reporting:
George Lucas has created legendary film heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, but the US director says that in real life, his hero is Barack Obama.
Lucas was in Japan on Wednesday to promote his latest film, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," as Obama clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for president.
"We have a hero in the making back in the United States today because we have a new candidate for president of the United States, Barack Obama," Lucas said when asked who his childhood heroes were.
Obama, "for all of us that have dreams and hope, is a hero," Lucas said.
The headline--we're not making this up--reads, "The Force Is With Obama, 'Star Wars' Creator Says." We liked Lucas better when he was working on missile defense.
And Politico quotes Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat:
"I cried all night. I'm going to be crying for the next four years," he said. "What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation's political history. . . . The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance."
Reporting on the international reaction to Obama, however, the AP's Jill Lawless quotes someone who seems to damn Obama with faint praise:
The excitement was less about Obama's foreign policy--which remains vague--than a sense that his victory marks a historic moment.
Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, said Obama's win "has sent out a lot of positive signals around the world."
"He has a very appealing persona--elegant, fluent, strings lots of sentences together into paragraphs," Cox said. "But in terms of (his) actual policies towards the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, China, Europe--actually, we don't know."
Of course, taking sentences and stringing them together in paragraphs is nothing to sneeze at. That's how the existing books of the Bible got written.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2008 06:47 ||
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I'm curious what, exactly, they think this guy is going to do when he gets into the white house. They don't have any idea, they havent asked him what he will do, they havent even got wishlist, but they know he's their man. Nobody could live up to the expectations that this rube is building for himself.
#2
The fact that you can no longer run your flag in parts of Britain and the Netherlands, Sweden, France, etc. shows that the country is de facto under occupation, not just by Muslims, but by Multiculturalists and Globalists of all kinds.
Flag lapel pin, pledge of allegiance, pride in country.....? Is it just me, or is there a pattern developing.
#1
Thanks, 3dc. We here have realized this for quite some time. Why haven't the British public. Are they too old and ossified to care ? What about the young, few that they are ? Are they simply too drunk ? He should be hung from the Tower and left to have the buzzards pick his bones clean.
#2
It is long past time when the court stranglers should have paid Chas a visit. If her highness were to become sickly, some SAS types should have a vat of Malmsey waiting.
#3
Charles is a funny guy. He stands up in defence of new age medicines and other nonsense. I mean if you disrespect science you might as well defend Islam.
Long piece at the Guardian. I note it here for two reasons: first, it shows you how the Brits perceive McCain. It's a reasonable piece in several ways, and it shows what McCain has to do to beat Obama. And second, it makes utterly clear that at least one Brit newspaper understands something most American newspapers do not -- McCain could win, and the Guardian wants its readers up to speed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2008 00:00 ||
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Senator McCain announced his run on the Letterman Show. And he has used Saturday Night Live to send a couple of messages. Of course, President Ford did as well - even allowing his Press Secretary to host one week - with less success. He appears to be a down to earth type. A straight shooter should be an easier sell that Obama's pie in the sky promise circus. The drawback is that US voters want substantial change. Harsh regulation of financial institutions is an essential campaign platform, and it would distance McCain from the current GOP administration, with its ties to Enron and other sleight-of-hand artists. And, McCain could at long last end the downplay of the 1400 year civil war that revived itself in Iraq. Hopefully, we hear support for the opposition in Iran, and for an agreement with Russia, et al on both Arctic resources and Euro-ABMs. And absolute preconditions must be dumped on Paleos, should they demand a state. McCain has a lot to work with.
Campaign '08: Obama's shady real estate partner and benefactor has been found guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, aiding and abetting bribery, and money-laundering. Obama called a deal he made with him a "boneheaded move." So would be electing Obama president.
Tony Rezko was the classic influence-peddler and the patron saint of the old politics that Barack Obama claims he wants to change. The 16 of 24 counts of which Rezko was convicted Wednesday accused him of corrupting two state boards and using his influence in the administration of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to squeeze cash from firms seeking state business. Yet Obama chose to do business with him.
Sen. Obama has described Rezko as just a "guy in the neighborhood." But like so many of Obama's associations, they run long and deep and indicate a disturbing lack of judgment. Rezko was a player in the shady world of Cook County politics that the Ivy League and Hawaiian prep-school graduate needed to advance in.
Like his association with that bastion of bigotry, Trinity United church, this was another politically expedient move. Obama knew of Rezko's troubles long before the real estate deal and has admitted as much. But Rezko was a mover and shaker in Chicago politics, and Obama wanted to move and shake things. It was the cliche of going along to get along.
Rezko was among Obama's earliest supporters. In 1995, when Obama ran for a seat in the Illinois Senate, Rezko, through two of his companies, gave Obama $2,000. Obama won election in 1996 in a district that coincidentally contained 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects.
In 2003, when Obama said he'd run for the U.S. Senate, Rezko held a lavish fundraiser at Rezko's Wilmette, Ill., mansion. In 2005, at a time Rezko was under federal investigation of influence peddling in Blagojevich's administration, Sen. Obama and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a Chicago doctor.
Rezko helped Obama acquire his $1.65 million home by buying that adjacent lot and then selling the Obamas a strip of the land on which to build a fence. By participating in the joint deal, Rezko helped Obama get the type of big house he recently advised college graduates not to pursue.
In a March 15 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama said: "During the time that I was purchasing the house, there were some noises about Tony having potential problems."
Obama added: "For me to enter into a business transaction with him was a bad idea. I've said repeatedly it was a boneheaded move, and a mistake that I regret." One of many, it seems.
Some noises? At the time of the house deal, Chicago papers had run no fewer than 100 stories about Rezko's legal troubles. More often than not, the investigations into his activities were Page One news. If you were anyone in Illinois politics, you knew about Tony Rezko.
National Review Online's Stephen Spruiell tells of one of the counts against Rezko. It involved funneling the proceeds of an illegal kickback scheme into Obama's 2004 Senate campaign. Obama has since donated the $10,000 to charity, but not the same $10,000. That money helped put him on the road to the White House.
In February, Rezko told Chicago magazine "Hell, no" when asked if he would testify against others to save his own neck. Now facing long prison time, he may consider changing his stance. Stay tuned. Another shoe from the Obama centipede may be about to drop.
Ali Ettefagh
I am still trying to figure out the nature of the conflict or war and the basic fight or argument of al-Qaeda versus the United States. I wonder whether it all can be framed in the common perspectives of the rest of the world. It seems convenient that the apparent rise and defeat of al-Qaeda, a group with no pre-invasion presence in Iraq, is so timely with the American election season! What about the war on terror? Is that one over too, or will be put on the same backburner where the war on drugs (for example) sits? Are these comments just telegraphic codes for election slogans for the next five months?
Al-Qaeda was, and is, a mere loose affiliation of criminal gangs with a violent cause, a hodgepodge of hate, and a drive for spectacular and showy crimes. This gang started its existence with a goal of overthrowing the Saudi regime. They could have not imagined a better publicist than the American government to elevate their criminal enterprise to a larger-than-life monster, supposedly capable of ending the ways of life in democracies and the end of the world as we know it. The leader of the gang was on television at all hours as the riddle occupied the airwaves. The trees stopped everything to see the jungle. It soon became an overblown enigma as politicians found the urgent need to attack a sovereign Iraq, if only to set up a ruse and an arena to throw down the gauntlet against The Gang. An asymmetric fight ensued for several years and a modern, powerful army with the latest technologies spent more than $2 billion a week to fend off the challenge of an ill-trained gang of criminals. A madman and a handful of cronies were promoted to the living version of all fictional villains in James Bond films and Batman cartoons. A few trillion dollars were spent to chase villains in Afghan or Pakistani caves; alas, the elusive targets still remain at large. (So, at the end of several years, should the stakeholders know how many caves are in that mountain range and the rough budget on a per cave basis?)
In the real world, however, al-Qaeda has gone down an unmistakable, self-defeating path. The subscriber base of this criminal gang simply did not grow with the scale of publicity afforded to it. Out of more than a billion Muslims, only a few thousand and mostly disenchanted, marginalised and unemployed youth ever bought the story of raw, aimless violence. The absurd Jihad recruiting slogan was a bust for al-Qaeda; alas, it proved to be a political bonanza for another lot of extremists and an opportunity to hijack mindset. It proved as a windfall chance to paint a simplistic, surreal picture of all Muslims around the world. News leaks were a-plenty about the big bust of al-Qaeda when a few confused and marginalised Pakistani immigrants were caught with some radical readings in, say, a suburb of a British town. Amateur criminals were mistaken for master politicians and a faction that was purportedly, if not laughably, a more potent band than the sum of evil communism, nasty fascism and The Crusades. In turn, the fight warranted the suspension of laws, respect for privacy and ban of investment by Arab sovereign funds. All were ordered to recall Ceausescus Romania and to report suspicious activity if only for the cause! Panic now, think much later!
Given the end of the political cycle in America and the inflation-laced anti-war sentiments, it is not surprising to see early declarations of a deceptive victory over a misunderstood hoax mislabeled as a political movement. Al-Qaeda was, and remains, a criminal enterprise, largely funded with drug money from Afghanistan. It is likely to resurface with a new name and illicit deeds. But a sharp focus must lead logic from mistaking crime with political deeds. Otherwise it will prove to be self-defeating indeed and a lavish waste of credibility beyond repair.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Compare wid NEW REPUBLIC MAGZ > THE JIHADIST REVOLUTION AGZ BIN LADEN; + COUNTERRORISM BLOG > HOW TO MEASURE AL QAEDA'S "DEFEAT"?
OTOH, also from TOPIX > TERRORISM AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: THE GREATEST THREAT TO US NATIONAL SECURITY {Mil Radicalists-Terrorists wid Nukes-WMDS], + AMERICAN CHRONICLE > THE [coming/looming]COLLAPSE OF US CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.
My friend Ali Ettefagh, an Iranian businessman, sends me outrageous jokes and parodies he finds on the Internet. In recent weeks, as the U.S.-Iranian nuclear showdown escalated, he was sending pictures of luxury apartments and shopping centers in Iran, and investment plans for developing the Iranian economy -- so that I wouldn't think Iran's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was the country's only voice. I asked him this week what Iranians thought about meeting with the Great Satan. It was "the talk of the town," he said. Iranians were tired of the "war of nerves," he explained, "and the uncertainty of whether they will bombed by this weekend!" Americans would probably express similar sentiments.
The former has money from many sources, including potemkin businesses which work for the security services of Syria and Saudi Arabia among others, blackmail/extortion from individuals and a small percentage of drug money.
#6
Only someone named Ali would try this hard to convince us that Al-Queer is no threat at all the Americans and that the boogey-man of Islamic Extremism doesn't exist.
Nice try shitbag, go back to dearborn and yodel from a minaret if you like, but I think we've killed a couple hundred thousand people who would gladly end their own life to take a few of us with them if they could.
#7
If the defeat coincides with the political season it's because the Surge was designed to kill the insurgency before a new President came into power so that any pull-out would be less frantic. Sometimes things work that way. In this case the surge succeeded giving McCain at least a bit of a chance.
THE history of left-wing politics is a history of unintended - and invariably negative - outcomes.
Glorious workers revolutions lead to tyranny. Welfare causes misery. Government-funded tertiary education ends up subsidising the same proportion of private school and state school students as previously attended universities under full fees. Public broadcasting evolves into elite programming funded by people who never watch or listen to it. Decades of state film funding gives us films nobody pays to see.
I could go on. Hey, I will:
Environmentalism
Thanks to its capture by leftists - degenerates from a positive save-the-critters movement into a freaky death cult. Multicultural tolerance now extends to tolerating intolerant monocultures. Give the Left a shot at anything and theyll wreck it; even something as elemental, safe and proven as nuclear power becomes a molten mess in the hands of commies.
Marxist Hugo Chavez is currently hammering his nations economy into the ground despite Venezuela being an oil-rich OPEC nation. Fertile Zimbabwe is dead beneath socialist Robert Mugabe. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2008 09:24 ||
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Aint it great? Turn left for death and despair. Turn right for happiness and prosperity. Got it?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/06/2008 10:08 Comments ||
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When the government does stuff that's outside of it core competence (i.e. force) it fucks it up.
#3
All of the dictatorships responsible for mass murder and genocide were/are socialist.
Cambodia, USSR under Lenin and Stalin, Germany under Hitler, Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe...everyone a state sponsored mass murder organization.
I thought liberal meant being more tolerant of new ideas and independent thought........
Silly me.
Posted by: James Carville ||
06/06/2008 11:24 Comments ||
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"THE history of left-wing politics is a history of unintended - and invariably negative - outcomes."
Sorry, Tim - I have to disagree with that one.
I think most of the big Lefties did intend the negative consenquences - for everyone else, of course, never themselves and their toadies.
Look at a recent example - AlBore. He lives high on the carbon footprint hog while getting rich demanding the proles voluntarily give up any kind of a decent life and live in caves poverty.
All for his Big Idea of Truthiness,™ of course.
@#$%^&!* them all. And the camels they all rode in on.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/06/2008 11:30 Comments ||
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It'll be different, this time. Just wait until my boy Barack get into the Oval Office! He'll make things right!
Posted by: Dan Rather ||
06/06/2008 12:41 Comments ||
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Boy! This Dan Rather guy...Pretty witty, eh wot?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/06/2008 12:45 Comments ||
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Communism turned Germans, Koreans, and Chinese poor while those identical cultural/ethnic groups prospered in Capitalist states next door. This is the perfect political version of a control group and Communism failed the test, Failed it badly. No further proof is needed that Communism just doesn't work and it's insane to see idiots defend it or attempt again and again to make it work.
#8
Again, methinks the ANTI-US LEFTS, GLOBALISTS, and other AGENDISTS intended for OSAMA + RADICAL ISLAM TO TURN THE ISLAMIST SWORD FROM THE US-WEST AND NOW POINT SOLELY AT RUSSIA-CHINA AND CENTRAL ASIA/ASIA.
ISSUE > DO THOSE COMMIES + LEFTIST RADICAL MILITANT GROUPS PRESENTLY COLLUDING WID RADICAL ISLAMIST ORGS. e.g. COMMIE-MAOISTS in INDIA, SRI LANKA, etc., REALIZE IT YET, that they may de facto lose their heads once ISLAMIST IRAN + MILITANTS = JIHADISM-TERRORISM GOES NUCLEAR 2008-2012???
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Glen "Instapundit" Reynolds
Glorious workers revolutions lead to 
