Tonight's Music

Tonight we have some Halloween inspired music videos. The first is Mannheim Steamroller's Creatures of the Night. This is available on their CD Halloween, Vol. 2: Creatures Collection :




Next is Tim Curry singing Sweet Transvestite from The Rocky Horror Picture Show .




Next is Lita Ford with Ozzy Osborne performing Close My Eyes Forever:




This is from the CD The Best of Lita Ford.

And Jim Steinman's Love, Death and an American Guitar:




That's no way to treat an expensive musical instrument.

This can be found on the CD Bad for Good


Finally we have the legendary black metal act Burzum with Varg Vikernes. Vikernes, you might remember took the whole satanic metal thing to its logical conclusion by burning down several historical churches in Norway and committing at least one murder (you got to hand it to the Norwegians for keeping it real). This is Dunkelheit from the CD Filosofem .

Share your Halloween spook stories

I've noticed that some blogs are doing a "post your encounters with the ghostly, supernatural or paranormal" thing for Halloween. If anyone has such an experience they wish to share feel free to leave it in the comments.

As for me, I got nothing.

I live in a haunted house. It is so haunted that families that have rented the place have fled not only with the rent paid but have abandoned their possessions. They report hearing a baby crying, music playing and footsteps walking about the house. They also report the apparition of a woman, sometimes nude, walking around the house.

My parents reported hearing the footsteps which walked around the house for over an hour before walking "up the chimney and off into space". They also saw a globe of light floating around one of the bedrooms.

My mother also says that early one morning (around 3:00 AM) she woke up to see a transparent woman standing at the foot of her bed pointing at her. This was right before she gave birth to one of my older brothers, the one who died shortly after birth.

My grandmother said that she frequently heard the music and the crying baby and often saw something that looked like a large black lion or panther walk around the outside of the house and then leap across the road only to vanish in midair.

But as for me, I got nothing. Never seen or heard anything weird and frankly I'm happy to keep it that way.

Shooting at the wrong target

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - In the City of Brotherly Love, there wasn't much for a sister.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's rivals ganged up on her during a two-hour Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night, putting the front-runner on defense on issues ranging from Iraq and Iran to Social Security and whether she would be electable in the general election.

Gone was the Clinton who laughed off their answers and joked about how she's lucky to be getting so much attention from all these men at her age. Clinton clearly had decided she must defend herself from rivals who are right on her heels in the leadoff voting state of Iowa and who pose a real threat to her winning the Democratic nomination.

Still, she continued her strategy of avoiding direct answers to questions: She wouldn't say how she would address Social Security; she declined to pledge whether she would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, or say whether she supports giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Instead she tried to tried to turn every issue into an argument against President Bush. She said Bush's name 25 times, more than all six of her rivals combined.

"I think we were making progress in the 1990s and I am very proud of the progress we were making until, unfortunately, the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George Bush, and we have been living with the consequences ever since," Clinton said.

Costas Panagopoulos, a Fordham University political science professor, said Clinton ran against Bush while her rivals ran against her.

"This may be a useful strategy for a front-runner, but it only reinforces her status as the Democratic front-runner," he said. "And her Democratic opponents may also be helping to solidify her leading position in the minds of voters by going full-throttle on the attack against her."

Problem is that Bush isn't running this time. what are the Democrat moonbats (otherwise knows as the Democrat base) going to do when they go into the voting booth and can't fine Bush's name on the ballot?

Will they figure that he's already been beaten and go home without bothering to vote?

The year they canceled Halloween

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - City officials want the hundreds of thousands of people who usually flock to an annual Halloween street party here to stay home or go elsewhere after several episodes of violence in recent years.

Officials have advised would-be revelers through fliers, public service announcements and juvenile probation officers that they won't find many treats in the Castro District, home in past years to the largest Halloween happening in the San Francisco Bay area.

What they will find are hundreds of extra police officers, shuttered restaurants, stepped up sobriety checks and no bus or train service after 8:30 p.m.

"This is really a public safety decision," said Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents the Castro and spent the better part of a year trying to arrange an alternative city-sanctioned gathering. "I'm disappointed my message is one of, 'Please don't come.'"

The festivities started decades ago as a homegrown celebration for San Francisco's gay and lesbian community, but has drawn a scarier element in recent years. In 2002, five people were stabbed. Three years ago, someone wandered the crowds wielding a chain saw.

Last year, nine revelers were shot when a confrontation between two groups of young people erupted into gunfire, despite ramped-up security. No one has been arrested in the shooting.

Those darn "young people", always causing trouble!

"It's absolutely eerie when you are looking around seeing people, most of them not in costume, looking each other in the eye with suspicion," said Castro resident Betty Sullivan, who narrowly missed getting caught in last year's gunfire.

Sullivan said she is anxious enough about what will transpire this year that she doesn't even plan to watch from her front stoop. On Tuesday, she could hear loudspeakers and sirens, part of the city's emergency notification system, being tested from her home.

I thought the gays, lesbians and aging hippies were creating a left-wing paradise of peace, love and universal brotherhood in the City by the Bay.

What went wrong?

Happy Halloween!

Don't party too hard.

Tonight's Music

By request this is Dropkick Murphys Tessie. This is in honor of what I gather is a sporting society called the "Red Socks" which recently won some sort of athletic competition.

Congratulations gentlemen. I'm sure that when you went to work the next day that everyone couldn't wait until the first break to hear all about your exploits on the court, or links or whatever you call it.

Hillary's Crime

Richard Lawrence Poe tells us:

LAST WEEK this column unveiled Bloggergate, a massive effort by Hillary Clinton to tilt the blogosphere in her favor, by subsidizing leftwing bloggers. Hillary’s ambition to control the Internet did not form overnight. She was already pondering how to do it in 1995.

Of course, no one used the word “blogger” in 1995. In those days, online forums called "newsgroups” provided the medium of choice for anti-Clinton writers.

Hillary formed a special task force within the White House Counsel’s office to fight the New Media. As noted in my 2004 book Hillary’s Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists, the task force compiled a secret report titled, The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce, written by White House aides Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane.

The report blamed talk radio, online newsgroups and other New Media outlets for spreading “conspiracy theories” about the 1993 death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster. Hillary viewed these “conspiracy theories” as the number one threat to the Clinton White House at the time.

Her Conspiracy Commerce report accused Pittsburgh newspaper mogul Richard Mellon Scaife of fabricating rumors about Foster’s death, then feeding these stories to conservative publications, whence they filtered into mainstream media.

According to the report, the Internet fueled Scaife’s success. The report complained that the Internet “allows an extraordinary amount of unregulated data and information to be located in one area and available to all. The right wing has siezed upon the internet [sic] as a means of communicating its ideas to people”.

After its completion around July 1995, White House operatives began circulating the report among like-minded journalists, to help them smear anti-Clinton researchers as Scaife stooges.

One of their targets was British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, then Washington bureau chief for the London Sunday Telegraph, one of England’s most respected newspapers. Hillary’s report inaccurately called the Sunday Telegraph a “tabloid”, though it is actually printed on broadsheet.

In his 1997 book The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, Evans-Pritchard writes, “I kept getting calls from reporters asking the same questions: `Did I know Scaife? Had I ever accepted money from Scaife? So who owned the tabloid I worked for? You mean it’s not a tabloid? Oh.’”

The Wall Street Journal finally exposed Hillary’s report on January 6, 1997. The revelation brought mostly yawns from mainstream journalists on the Clinton beat, most of whom already had a copy.

One journalist took special note, however. In a New York Times piece of January 25, 1997, David Sol Bennahum offered the Clintons some fateful advice. Agreeing with the report’s essential claim, Bennahum wrote, “[T]he GOP has made clever use of the Internet, astutely building informal networks of like-minded, interconnected Web sites…” Bennahum then added, “Democrats should learn to build such networks of their own.”

A technology journalist, a contributing editor to Wired magazine, an author of futurist books and a venture capitalist, Bennahum today has become a powerful operative in Hillary’s Bloggergate network.

The Bloggergate scandal erupted when an anonymous video appeared on YouTube on October 2. It showed Hillary speaking at a conference of leftwing bloggers on August 4, 2007.

In it, Hillary declared, “We are… putting together a network in the blogosphere”. She attributed its success to the efforts of “institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress…”

With these words, Hillary confessed to a federal crime. Both groups are supposedly “non-partisan”, 501(c)3 tax-free organizations, strictly prohibited from coordinating efforts with a national political candidate such as Hillary.

More importantly, the two groups Hillary mentioned are deeply implicated in Bloggergate. Democrat billionaire George Soros launched the Center for American Progress in 2003 with a $3 million donation. The Center subsequently launched Media Matters for America in May 2004, which in turn launched the Center for Independent Media (CIM) in April 2006.

CIM tax filings bear the same address as Media Matters in Washington, DC.

The Center for Independent Media awards “fellowships” to leftwing bloggers, including cash subsidies, free legal service, free access to LexisNexis database searches and more. Its founder, President and CEO is none other than David Bennahum.

Bennahum helped found Media Matters, where he served as one of its original senior fellows.
On January 27, 1998 — ten days after Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story — Hillary Clinton told reporters at a White House press conference that the Internet needed an “editing function or gatekeeping function”.

With the help of David Bennahum and others, Hillary may finally achieve her goal.

I especially like the part about Hillary confessing to a federal crime. Unfortunately nothing will be done about it. Not that this will make any difference. Everyone, even her most ardent supporters, know that Mrs. Bill Clinton is a criminal. They just think that she should be above the law.

Non Sequitur

I found this on Kevin McCullough's blog on TownHall:

Because adults refuse to grow up - our children are becoming streetwalkers - at least for Halloween. Kathy Grannis of the National Retail Federation blames Halloween's loss of innocence on baby boomers who can't let the holiday go, with their adult parties and costume contests at bars. "Halloween is no longer a child's holiday," she said. When I was a kid, the last Halloween outfit I had was one of those dime-priced plastic masks that made your face sweat and I was speed racer. Halloween has turned into an excuse for the baby-boomers to excercise a Mardi Gras orgy all across America and its forcing our eleven year old daughters down the exact same path.

Sorry but I don't get it. Why does it necessarily follow that adults wishing to enjoy Halloween means little girls sent out to trick or treat dressed like streetwalkers?

Seriously, just because I choose to go to the local pub's Halloween party dressed like Capt. Jack Sparrow, or Capt. Jack Harkness for that matter, am I then required to dress my 12 or 13 year-old daughter like a crack-whore?

There were adult costume parties when I was a child and the most popular kid's costumes were Casper the Friendly Ghost and Major Mat Mason. If you want to find the reason for the deterioration of the culture you're going to have to try harder than that.

Take that ass-clown, pod-people and moonbats

A majority of likely voters - 52 percent - would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53 percent believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election, a new Zogby America telephone poll shows.

Best case yet to support Giuliani, but still not good enough

Moonbat newspaper columnist Linda S Heard makes the best case for voting for Rudolph Giuliani that I've seen to date:

But here's the problem. Whereas post 9-11 Giuliani was generally considered a competent, nice-guy keen to roll up his sleeves in order to put his city to rights, in recent months the mask has come off. In short, Giuliani is no benign patriotic do-gooder. He's a hawkish, sabre-rattling, pro-Israel, nationalistic neocon.

A clue to Giuliani's leanings emerged during the visit of Prince Al Walid Bin Talal to Ground Zero in October 2001. Bearing a $10 million donation for disaster relief, the Saudi prince suggested the US reexamine its Middle East policies and adopt a balanced stance towards Palestinian aspirations. Giuliani's response was to hand back the cheque.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has joked President Giuliani would be like President Bush on steroids. Unfortunately, this is no joke.

Giuliani makes no bones about the fact he would use military force to set-back Iran's nuclear programme. In September, he promised to use America's military might to prevent Iran pursuing its nuclear ambitions should he be elected president.

His senior foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz has spelled out this message, advising that Iran be bombed with cruise missiles and bunker busters. "None of the alternatives to military action - negotiations, sanctions, provoking an internal insurrection - can possibly work," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Giuliani is talking tough when it comes to Pakistan, too. He recently urged the president to be more aggressive in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden within Pakistan even if such a move would result in alienating the Pakistani government.

On Iraq, Giuliani has been consistently gung ho. He supported the war from the outset, backed the so-called surge and believes American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

And if my worst fears are realised and Giuliani moves into the White House there will be no Palestinian state for the foreseeable future either. He has declared in no uncertain terms his antipathy towards a two-state solution because a Palestinian entity would "support terrorism" and threaten US security.

Worth recalling

It's also worth recalling that in 1995, he banned the former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat from attending events held in New York to celebrate the UN's 50th anniversary and ordered his removal from a concert held at the Lincoln Centre. It's not surprising that a panel of eight Israeli experts assembled by the daily Ha'aretz determined Giuliani is the best presidential candidate for Israel.

A recent article on the front page of the New York Times titled "Mid-east hawks help to develop Giuliani's policy" enlightens us as to the former mayor's new best friends. "Mr Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers," the article reads.

His team, says the article, includes "Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran as soon as it is logically possible; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinising American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin who has written in favour of revoking the United States' ban on assassination".

Giuliani recently took the Democrats to task for avoiding use of the term "Islamic terrorism" during four debates; an omission he describes as taking political correctness to extremes.

A Giuliani presidential tenure would also be extremely bad news for Americans who value the few civil liberties they have left. He strongly backs the controversial Patriot Act; is an advocate for wire-tapping and domestic spying, and isn't sure whether "water-boarding" or sleep deprivation should be considered as "torture".

He has also promised to appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court to allay the fears of conservative Republicans and the religious right that he is pro-abortion.

In the first place I wouldn't let Giuliani's promise to appoint "strict constructionist" judges worry me if I were a worshiper at the abortion death-cult's blood soaked alter. Giuliani has gone out of his way to make clear that he considers support for Roe v Wade to be fully in line with what he considers to be a "strict constructionist".

Other than that she makes a good, in unintentional, case for supporting Giuliani. Notice especially how, in her mind at least, any sign of support for Israel is seen as disqualifying. Why is it that the left has become so antisemitic when the majority of Jews in the US are left liberals?

In the end she does not persuade me to support Giuliani for two reasons. One is that any of the other Republican candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul, who has zero chance of winning the nomination and so is a non-factor) would be just as supportive of Israel and just as willing to use any and all means to keep Iran from going nuclear.

The second reason I will never support Giuliani comes toward the end of Ms. Heard's screed:

Giuliani is also grabbing a large chunk of the evangelical vote despite his penchant for divorcing his wives for girlfriends.

Of course there are more reasons for Christians to oppose Giuliani besides his personal immorality. But in the end its like the old joke about the man and woman who strike up a conversation in a bar:

Man: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?
Woman: [Thinks it over for a moment] Yes, I would sleep with you for a million dollars.
Man: Would you sleep with me for fifty dollars?
Woman: No! What do you think I am anyway?
Man: We have already established what you are. Now we are just haggling over the price.

Compromising, playing the give a little to get a little game, is essential to politics. However if someone or some group proves willing to trade away their most sacred beliefs and principles then how will that person or group ever again merit respect or be taken seriously?

When feminists continued to support Bill Clinton even after it became undeniable that he was a serial sexual predator, even being credibly accused of rape, they demonstrated just how cheaply their support could be bought by the Democrat Party and guaranteed that other than the attempt to appoint pro-abortion Supreme Court judges and a few token cabinet appointments that they can expect nothing from the Democrats in return for that support.

If Evangelical Christians sell out their principles to support Rudolph Giuliani the movement will prove once and for all that it is nothing but the Republican Pary's bitch and it will be treated that way.

I wonder if he has a Ron Paul bumper sticker

Ace of Spades found this on the dailyKos:

Bush has also damaged my mental health.

After I actually took the trouble to inform myself about politics a couple years ago, and learned the true extent of the damage Bush has done to this country, I have a constant boiling rage inside me. Absolutely constant. Never ceases, though sometimes I can get it down to a simmer so I can go out in public and hang out with friends without doing something stupid. On top of the anger is a generous dose of fear and anxiety, coming directly from the Bush administration's march to fascism.

Frequently, I'm so intensely angry that I hit things. I just broke my bookshelf today because I hit it. My knuckles have decent callouses on them from hitting things, and various pieces of my property show signs of my rage. Thankfully, I've never turned violent against people since I was in high school, though I was sorely tempted to deviate the septum of a wingnut who called me a traitor and faggot to my face at the anti-war march last Saturday.

Of course, it's unhealthy to harbor this much anger, especially if I'm stuffing it down all the time so people around me don't see me acting borderline psychotic. These emotions leak out, turn into other emotions, like depression, which I've fought with since college. I've also developed a venomous hatred of Bush and his cronies and the 23-percenters that support him. Hatred's never a good emotion to hold, but there it is. I literally hate those motherf*ckers who are destroying our country.

By all rights, I should be getting help, but I'm not going to. I was soured on the psychiatry business by my experience with anti-depressants - I ended up nearly emotionless, apathetic, and lost my motivation and creative drive, and as a result, I was unemployed for three years and had to move back in with my parents....

On top of that, if I told a counselor about my feelings, or that I'm so afraid of my government that I literally spent several hundred dollars on a shotgun, a deadly weapon, to defend myself against my government, I'm afraid I could get thrown into the psych ward. And I value my freedom enough that I will not allow that to happen under any circumstances. So, no shrinks.

Come to think of it, being as how he is posting on Kos he is almost certainly a Hillary supporter.

I would ask how he would feel if Hillary was elected and they came to take his new shotgun away from him, but with her in the White House he would probably feel safe enough to turn it in. In fact that is a great idea.

Dude, if you read this on the day Hillary is sworn in as president take your shotgun to the inauguration. When she finishes saying the oath and is officially president hand your shotgun over to her. Run toward the reviewing stand where she is standing as fast as you can with the shotgun in your hands while shouting "Take this Hillary" as loudly as you can.

P.S. What do you want to bet he loads it with birdshot?

H/T: KisP

It's nice to know I'm not the only one

Our friend Patrick who bloggs at Born Again Redneck was delinked today by a pod-person in response to this post where he was critical of the ass-clown, Ron Paul.

Now I read that Rick Moran, who yesterday posted at American Thinker about Ron Paul's strange political bedfellows, has been receiving the same kind of hate mail that I get from the pod-people. He also issues a partial retraction and clarification of his previous post. It seems that the money that was paid by the Paul campaign to wackjob Alex Jones was the refund of a portion of a campaign contribution which Jones had given to the Paul campaign.

Here is Moran's post:

My Ron Paul post yesterday generated the usual coordinated, vicious attacks that we have come to expect from the unhinged, ignorant supporters of the candidate. They were upset last week when I posted on the contribution to the Paul campaign from a neo Nazi and white supremacist, making the totally illogical and hysterical leap that by doing so, I was smearing all Paul supporters. I was doing nothing of the sort, of course. I was making the perfectly legitimate argument that Paul himself could be accused of supporting that agenda because he had neither disavowed nor returned the contribution. And as far as we know, he still has done neither.

This is how they operate. They seek to intimidate those who publish negative information on their candidate either through direct threats or innuendo. And the effort is so obviously coordinated, with many emailers using the exact same arguments, that the fake outrage, name calling, and harrassment becomes reminiscent of the tactics used by thugs.

Don't believe me? Here are a couple of samples from the email file:

jack ass americans are not beleiving your jew bulls**t anymore america is wakeing up and we are going to do away with the scum and isreal once and for all after mr paul term is done we are going to vote in his son. then hopefully his son after that. so basicaly stick your head back up your A-- and shut up..

We've withheld the name of the emailer above out of pity. And then there was this emailer:

To say Ron Paul is marginalized by the media because he's crazy is to buy intocircular logic, since the basis by which you think he's crazy is from the media. It's in the paid media's interest to "control" the election process by disseminating information with selection-bias and adjectives like "long-shot" and "crazy." They have clearly chosen a subset of candidates to marginalize and another subset to put in the spotlight, to serve this interest. The overwhelming majority of people who care about this process want Ron Paul to be put in the spotlight so that others who care not-as much get the untainted facts.

Part and parcel of the Paul campaign is generating media "conspiracies" that don't exist. Mr. Paul has said much the same thing in his appearances - which, in most rational people's minds makes him unfit to be president.

As far as the specific charge in my piece yesterday that the Paul campaign paid 9/11 truther and New World Order conspiracist Alex Jones $1300 in "services," the facts of the matter are different. The "disbursement" that was paid to Mr. Jones was a partial refund of a campaign contribution made by Jones, who originally donated the maximum amount of $2300.

I regret the confusion caused by the difference between "services" rendered by Mr. Jones and the partial refund of his contribution.

What I don't regret and will continue to do despite the intimidation is highlight the nature of Mr. Paul's supporters. There is a reason neo-Nazis and the paranoid fringe of American politics support the Paul campaign; he appeals to the basest of instincts in our political culture. He may not believe in the neo Nazi agenda but is willing to take money from them as he does the truthers, the black helicopter crowd, and the New World Order conspiracy nuts. He has not returned these contributions nor has he disavowed their support. He has appeared several times on Alex Jones radio show - something that no serious candidate for president should do.

Why? Here's a blurb from Jones' latest film, Endgame:

Estulin explains that the Bilderberg Group control the world by means of a process called systemic methodology, where they carve up the globe into numerous different pieces and then place their designated frontmen in charge of the major institutions that govern each part of the world.

By this method, Bilderberg were able to merge the nations of Europe into the EU under the guise of trade deals, and the same process is now unfolding with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico being conglomerated to form the North American Union - but not without committed resistance on behalf of the American people.

That resistance is being countered by the beefing of a brutal police state nationwide and the increasing use of U.S. troops in domestic law enforcement. Endgame exposes how the elite are trying to overcome opposition to their agenda by instituting the framework of martial law with executive orders that are designed to combat "domestic insurrection," as President George Bush officially announces a fiat dictatorship.

For those not aware how truly "out there" Alex Jones ideas are, let the above instruct you. And Ron Paul gladly gives credence and credibility to this idiocy by accepting campaign contributions from him as well as appearing on his show.

Is this a man fit to be president?

Paul's supporters will continue their campaign of intimidation against us, of that I am sure. But I for one will not be deterred from reporting on the decidedly unbalanced and frightening nature of both his supporters and the direction his campaign would take America.

Don't sweat it Rick. If you put all the pod-people in the nation into one room there might be one set of balls between them. All they'll do is threaten you from behind their keybords.

Like I told some chicken head who bitched at me eariler today about my "dissing" Paul the pod-people themselves do a far better job that I ever could at telling the world just what kind of person supports Ron Paul.

Tonight's Music

For those who've been asking here is another video from The Corrs. This is Paddy McCarthy. This performance was recorded in London in 2000 and is from the DVD The Corrs - Live at the Royal Albert Hall .

Michael Medved writes an open letter to the ass-clown

Dear Congressman Paul:

Your Presidential campaign has drawn the enthusiastic support of an imposing collection of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 “Truthers” and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists.

Do you welcome- or repudiate – the support of such factions?

More specifically, your columns have been featured for several years in the American Free Press –a publication of the nation’s leading Holocaust Denier and anti-Semitic agitator, Willis Carto. His book club even recommends works that glorify the Nazi SS, and glowingly describe the “comforts and amenities” provided for inmates of Auschwitz.

Have your columns appeared in the American Free Press with your knowledge and approval?

As a Presidential candidate, will you now disassociate yourself, clearly and publicly, from the poisonous propaganda promoted in such publications?

As a guest on my syndicated radio show, you answered my questions directly and fearlessly.

Will you now answer these pressing questions, and eliminate all associations between your campaign and some of the most loathsome fringe groups in American society?

Along with my listeners (and many of your own supporters), I eagerly await your response.

Respectfully, Michael Medved

If the ass-clown repudiates the truthers he won't have much of a movement left, however his embrace of neo-Nazi and white supremacists genuinely puzzles me.

H/T: Born Again Redneck

Thank you Third World Immigration!

May we have another?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.

Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point.

"It is somehow chilling to know it was probably circulating for so long under our noses," Worobey said in a telephone interview.

The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of stored blood samples from early AIDS patients to determine when the human immunodeficiency virus first entered the United States.

They found that HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa in about 1966, which matches earlier estimates, and then came to the United States in about 1969.

The researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years -- first in the U.S. population and then to other nations.

It can take several years after infection for a person to develop AIDS, a disease that ravages the immune system.

DISEASE MULTIPLIES

"That one infection would have become two, and then it doubles again and the two becomes four," Worobey said. "So you have a period -- probably a fair number of years -- where you're dealing with probably fewer than a hundred people who are infected.

"And then, as with epidemic expansion, at some point the hundred becomes 200, you start getting into thousands, tens of thousands. And then quite rapidly you can be up into the hundreds of thousands of infections that were probably already there before AIDS was recognized in the early 1980s."

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The path the virus traveled as it jumped from nation to nation has long been debated by scientists.

The University of Miami's Dr. Arthur Pitchenik, a co-author of the study, had seen Haitian immigrants in Miami as early as 1979 with a mystery illness that turned out to be AIDS. He knew the government long had stored some of their blood samples.

The researchers analyzed samples from five of these Haitian immigrants dating from 1982 and 1983. They also looked at genetic data from 117 more early AIDS patients from around the world.

This genetic analysis allowed the scientists to calibrate the molecular clock of the strain of HIV that has spread most widely, and calculated when it arrived first in Haiti from Africa and then in the United States.

The researchers virtually ruled out the possibility that HIV had come directly to the United States from Africa, setting a 99.8 percent probability that Haiti was the steppingstone.

"I think that it gives us more clear insight into the history of it (the AIDS epidemic) and what path the virus took -- and hard objective evidence, not just armchair thinking," Pitchenik said in a telephone interview.

Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people and about 40 million others are infected with HIV.

Just makes you want to run right out and vote for open borders.

The Club for Growth gives the ass-clown a mixed review

The Club for Growth issues white papers on each of the presidential candidates detailing the candidates position on the issues dealing with economic growth such as tax policy, free trade and government spending. They have just issued their report on Ron Paul, the ass-clown.

The report contains (entire report here) much praise for Paul:

Ron Paul’s record on taxes is excellent, epitomized by his rallying cry for phasing out the
IRS.1 A strong believer in the economic benefits of tax cuts, he declared in a 2006 article, “I reject the notion that tax cuts harm the economy. The economy suffers when government takes money from your paycheck that you otherwise spend, save, or invest. Taxes never create prosperity.”2 Over his career, he has backed up his speeches and articles with many pro-growth votes.

[. . .]

Rep. Paul’s strong belief in limited government translated into an impressive list of votes
against increased federal spending.

[. . .]

Rep. Paul’s limited-government philosophy found a particularly useful victim in the country’s entitlement programs. Long in favor of reducing individual dependence on government, Rep. Paul was a vociferous opponent of Medicare Part D, calling it “firmly in keeping with the failed New Deal and Great Society programs of the utopian left.”

[. . .]

. . . Paul’s record on regulation demonstrates a consistent aversion to government intervention in the private sector and an appreciation for the role limited government plays in furthering economic growth.

However Club for Growth also notes that Paul also has serious flaws which, in my opinion, largely negate his positive qualities. They range from some hypocritical votes:

Despite this impressive record, Ron Paul’s history contains some curious indiscretions, including a vote for $232 million for federally mandated election reform (only 1 of 21 Republicans to vote for it)26 and a vote against the line-item veto27—even after it was modified to pass constitutional muster. Paul’s record on pork was outstanding in 2006, voting for all 19 of Jeff Flake’s anti-pork amendments in 2006,28 but his record took a stark turn for the worse in 2007, in which Paul received an embarrassing 29% on the Club for Growth’s RePORK Card, voting for only 12 of the 50 anti-pork amendments.

Some of the outrageous pork projects Paul voted to keep include $231,000 for the San
Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s Urban Center; $129,000 for the
“perfect Christmas tree project;” $300,000 for the On Location Entertainment Industry
Craft Technician Training Project in California; $150,000 for the South Carolina
Aquarium; and $500,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in California.30
This year, Ron Paul requested more than sixty earmarks “worth tens of millions of dollars
for causes as diverse as rebuilding a Texas theater, funding a local trolley, and helping his
state’s shrimp industry.”

To much more serious issues:

Ron Paul’s opposition to school choice stems from his opposition to the government’s role in education, arguing that federal voucher programs are “little more than another tax funded welfare program establishing an entitlement to a private school education.”69 He consistently voted against voucher programs, including a 1998 school voucher program for D.C. public school students70 and a 2003 bill for a DC voucher program.

[. . .]

But Ron Paul is a purist, too often at the cost of real accomplishments on free trade, school choice, entitlement reform, and tort reform. It is perfectly legitimate, and in fact vital, that think tanks, free-market groups, and individual members of congress develop and propose idealized solutions. But presidents have the responsibility of making progress, and often, Ron Paul opposes progress because, in his mind, the progress is not perfect. In these cases, although for very different reasons, Ron Paul is practically often aligned with the most left-wing Democrats, voting against important, albeit imperfect, pro-growth legislation.

Ron Paul is, undoubtedly, ideologically committed to pro-growth limited government policies. But his insistence on opposing all but the perfect means that under a Ron Paul presidency we might never get a chance to pursue the good too.

The last sums it up. Libertarians are Utopian fantasists who take a "my way or the highway" approach to politics. If an idea moves the country in a good direction, such as toward lower taxes, but does so in a way which is not simon-pure enough for libertarian's rarefied sensibilities they will oppose it as vigorously as they would a tax increase or a regulatory power grab.

In this they are like the Second Amendment purists who oppose state "shall issue" laws because citizens shouldn't need any kind of government permission to carry a firearm, openly or concealed. They would rather be disarmed in the face of criminal violence, or go to jail for carrying illegally, than make a compromise.

The fact is that the American people are not ready for the radical reduction in the size and scope of the federal government which the libertarians support. If they are presented with a choice of the Libertarian Party's view of the nation or the Democrat Party's view of the nation they will side with the Democrats. It took decades of slow growth of government power to get us where we are today and it will take more decades of slow reform to fix the current problems.

And neither the process nor the end result will be what the Libertarian purists hope for.

Of course the Club for Growth is focused on economic issues with defense and foreign policy (other than trade issues) being outside the scope of their interest. So they do not critique Paul's most serious failing The one fault that actually disqualifies him from serious consideration as a presidential candidate. That would be his determination to surrender unconditionally to the enemy in the multi-generational war against Islamofascism which the West is currently engaged in.

This along with his Clintonian tendency to crawl into bed with unsavory characters such as neo-Nazis and 9/11 truthers, as long as they pony up the campaign cash, also argue strongly against taking him seriously as a presidential candidate.

Hillary, choice of murderers everywhere

From Front Page Magazine:

Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is gaining fans, even on the West Bank.

“I hope Hillary is elected in order to have the occasion to carry out all the promises she is giving regarding Iraq,” said Ala Senakreh, West Bank chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian terror group. “President Clinton wanted to give the Palestinians 98 percent of the West Bank territories. I hope Hillary will move a step forward and will give the Palestinians all their rights.”

[. . .]

“We see Hillary and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq,” said Abu Jihad of Al Aqsa’s Nablus unit. “This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world…”

Al Aqsa’s Nasser Abu Aziz, considered it “very good” that there are “voices like Hillary and others who are now attacking the Iraq invasion.”

Islamic Jihad’s Abu Ayman felt “emboldened” by Clinton’s demands that America retreat from Iraq. He said: “It is clear that it is the resistance operations of the mujahideen that have brought about these calls for withdrawal.”

“All Americans must vote Democrat,” insisted Jihad Jaara, an exiled Al Aqsa agent who commanded 2002’s siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

[. . .]

Why do these hardened butchers have a soft spot for Hillary Clinton? Perhaps because the New York Democrat is soft on terrorism.

*Clinton rejects robustly interrogating terrorists even in “ticking time bomb” scenarios. In a September 26 Democratic debate, she said: “It cannot be American policy, period.”

*Clinton opposes the U.S. Terrorist Surveillance Program, calling it “a secret program that spies on Americans.”

*Clinton voted against military tribunals for terror suspects, including al-Qaeda detainees.

*Clinton has zigzagged on Iraq. In autumn 2002, she voted for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Last January 18, she told PBS: “I think the timetable still remains problematic” for leaving Iraq. But on February 17, she stated: “It’s time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days…”

[. . .]

“I don’t believe Americans should base their votes entirely on what the terrorists think,” Aaron Klein says from Jerusalem, “but it’s certainly telling that our enemies are rooting for the Democrats, particularly Hillary.”

As the War on Terror continues, Americans should study our foes’ political preferences -- and then pull the lever the other way.

Good advice. As Claire Berlinsky says in her book Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too , "When in doubt about which direction to point your moral compass orient it away from the people who want you cut off your head".

Why wouldn't the terrorist want Hillary to win? She has promised to surrender to them practically the minute she is sworn in as president.

Despite the fact that he's a global warming believer

And at least a soft socialist - and French - I still like this guy:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy showed flashes of temper and abruptly terminated a television interview aimed at introducing him to US audiences.

In the 60 Minutes interview, broadcast in the US on Sunday, the French president sparred with the reporter, called his press secretary an imbecile, said he was too busy to make time for a "stupid" interview and ended the whole conversation abruptly when asked about the state of his marriage to Cecilia.

The Sarkozys' divorce was announced about two weeks later.

"If I had something to say about Cecilia, I would not do so here," he said before cutting off further questions.

In two interviews, a brief one aboard a plane and a more formal one several weeks ago, he expressed his admiration for both the US work ethic and its pop music.

Asked about his father's fears years ago that anyone with a Hungarian last name like Sarkozy could not succeed in France, he said one thing he admires about the US democracy is its openness and opportunities to all kinds of people.

The above from The Sydney Morning Herald

A history lesson

Courtesy of The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Albert Speer (1905-1981), Nazi Germany’s Minister for Armaments 1942 -45, Inside the Third Reich, chapter 6

Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs. When the Mohammedans had attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. The Germanic peoples would have become heirs to that religion. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.

Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japansese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

Hitler despised Christianity. He hated it because of its emphasis on love and forgiveness and because it put God above the state. He also hated it because of its Jewish origins. He much preferred the old paganism, or at least his conception of what the old paganism was like.

At the time of the rise of Hitler Germany was a nominally Christian nation. However the people there had largely lost their faith. German seminaries had given birth to forms of biblical interpretation which sought to strip the Bible of its supernatural elements and reduce it to a collection of human fables. The resulting civil religion had no power to resist a large movement of true believing fanatics willing to bear any burden and make any sacrifice to achieve their goals.

To the ordinary German people they seemed to be caught between communism on one side and Nazism on the other. It can't be much of a surprise that a plurality of the German people chose to reject atheistic Communism which would have effectively placed Germany under the control of a foreign power (The Stalinist USSR) and chose instead to trust Hitler. Hitler, after all, wanted to take Germany back to an idealized past. Hitler at least pretended to embrace the forms of Christianity, which the people still clung to even if they had rejected its substance.

However had Hitler won the war the practice of the Christian religion would have been suppressed as surely as the practice of the Jewish religion. Even before the end of the war German children were being taught prayers in which "Hitler" or "my Fuhrer" was substituted for "God" or "Christ".

Hitler was not a Christian and the Nazi movement was in no way and artifact of Christianity.

But they all hate us. . .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELEASE No. 20071026-01
October 26, 2007

Iraqi Army at Besmaya Installation Support San Diego Fire Victims
By U.S. Army Sgt 1st Class Charlene Sipperly
Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq Public Affairs

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Members of the Iraqi Army in Besmaya collected a donation for the San Diego, Calif., fire victims Thursday night at the Besmaya Range Complex in a moving ceremony to support Besmaya's San Diego residents.

Iraqi Army Col. Abbass, the commander of the complex, presented a gift of $1,000 to U.S. Army Col. Darel Maxfield, Besmaya Range Complex officer in charge, Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq, to send to the fire victims in California.

The money was collected from Iraqi officers and enlisted soldiers in Besmaya. In a speech given during the presentation, Col. Abbass stated that he and the Iraqi soldiers were connected with the American people in many ways, and they will not forget the help that the American government has given the Iraqi people. Abbass was honored to participate by sending a simple fund of $1,000 to the American people in San Diego, to lower the suffering felt by the tragedy.

Remember, $1000 from Iraq to America is like $100,000 from America to Iraq.

But we need to get out now because its a quagmire and they all hate us and it doesn't matter what happens after we're gone because it will all be Bush's fault. Oh, and the surge has failed.

H/T: Something. . . and Half of Something

Mexican terrorists claim responsibility for CA wildfires

ORANGE COUNTY, California (CNN) -- Radical Hispanic separatist organization MEChA ("Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan") is taking responsibility for setting the wildfires in California, confimed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

California officials received a letter earlier today containing photographs of individuals holding Molotov cocktails, then throwing them into dry brush. The faces of the individuals appeared to have been digitally distorted.

Also included was a rambling manifesto, stating that the reason for the act of arson was that "Aztlán belongs to indigenous people, the Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán. We are sovereign and not subject to a foreign culture."

Orange County Fire Battalion Chief Kris Concepcion told CNN that the pattern of wildfires definitely indicates arson.

"The reason we think it is [arson] is because we found multiple points of origin," Concepcion said. "... Our investigators have confirmed that this is, in fact, arson."

Concepcion said evidence indicated the arsonists wanted the fire to grow rapidly.

A $70,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to the arrest of those responsible for setting the fire. No suspects have been identified, though they are probably brown.

The state established a toll-free arson tip line at 800-540-7085. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said anyone convicted of arson would be dealt with harshly.

Well this is interesting. It will be difficult for the MSM to suppress this with the governor's office confirming it and all.

Here's my prediction. California law enforcement along with all the federal alphabet soup agencies involved in the arson investigation will quickly conclude that the tape is a hoax and that there is no terrorist connection to the fires (foreign or domestic).

Because otherwise they would have to admit that open borders are at least indirectly responsible for the fires.

P.S. Do I get any points for not titling this post, "Beaners build big blaze"?


UPDATE:

It appears that the website linked to here is a fake and the story is a hoax.

Tonight's Music

From the BBC's Transatlantic Sessions 3:

Darrell Scott -- vocals & guitar
Paul Brady -- vocals
Jerry Douglas - dobro
Ronan Browne - uilleann pipes
Donald Shaw -- piano accordion
Aly Bain - fiddle
Russ Barenberg - mandolin
James Mackintosh -- percussion
Todd Parks - bass

Perform the song Shattered Cross. This song was written by the late Stuart Adamson, vocalist and guitarist with "Big Country".

Another prissy "me too" conservative spouts off

Most denizens of the blogosphere know Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. Charles is one of the prissy "me too" conservatives* who become frightened when they stray too far off the politically correct reservation on any except a select few matters. Johnson, for example, will condemn Islamofascism, but show him a picture of a firearm and he has the vapors and merest hint of an allegation of racism will have him soiling his diaper as he dives for the tall grass.

Thus warned I draw to your attention this post from LGF in which Mr. Johnson (who the fine people at The Brussels Journal remind us knows absolutely nothing about Europe) believes that he has discovered incontrovertible proof that Filip DeWinter of the Belgian Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) is a Nazi.

The proof? A YouTube video of an interview of Mr. DeWinter in his home shows one of these on a shelf in his house:

This is a Celtic cross. Images like this can be found all over Scotland and Ireland. They were placed there by my ancestors as a sign of their devotion to God. The Celtic cross has been co-opted by racist groups who use it as a symbol for white pride, however as the Anti Defamation League notes in their Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos:

It is important to note that the Celtic Cross is used widely today in many mainstream and cultural contexts. No one should assume that a Celtic Cross, divorced from other trappings of extremism, automatically denotes use as a hate symbol.

Either Mr. Johnson is ignorant of this or he doesn't care or he believes that membership in a political party which does not wish to see Europe become an Islamic colony of the Middle East is all the context one needs to prove that the symbol is being used to denote race hatred rather than God's love.

In closing I would like to dedicate this photograph to Mr. Charles Johnson:

H/T for the photo to Sharp as a Marble

*Me Too Conservatives can be found running after leftists shouting "me too, me too" when the leftists get themselves worked up into paroxysms of foaming madness over something like the latest true statement uttered by Ann Coulter.

The unsexiest women in the world

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba and Halle Berry are regularly named the world's sexiest women. But who are the unsexiest women alive? A men's magazine decided to find out.

The list, published in the latest edition of Maxim Magazine, named Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker as the No. 1 Unsexiest Woman Alive.

The magazine said Parker was the "least sexy woman in a group of very unsexy women" that ironically starred in a show with the word "sex" in the title.

Troubled soul singer Amy Winehouse was voted No. 2 because of her "hemorrhaging translucent skin, rat's nest mane and lashes that look more like surgically attached bats".

The mag listed Grey's Anatomy Sandra Oh at No. 3 for her "cold bedside manner and boyish figure".

Pop star Madonna took out the No. 4 spot for her "self-righteous bellyaching and rapid postnuptial deterioration".

"Combine a Paris Hilton-like pet accessorising fetish only for dirt-poor foreign babies with a mug that looks Euro-sealed to her skull, and you've got Willem Dafoe with hot flashes," Maxim Magazine said.

Britney Spears came in at No. 5 for "losing the ability to perform".

The mag also said two children, two ex-husbands and a slight weight gain also helped Britney nab the No. 5 spot.

Maxim Magazine's list of the world's unsexiest women:

1. Sarah Jessica Parker
2. Amy Winehouse
3. Sandra Oh
4. Madonna
5. Britney Spears

I can't argue that any of those women don't belong on a list of unsexy women however there are so many more who belong even more. What about Paris Hilton? Even teenage boys are tired of looking at her vagina. And Rosie O'Donnell! The only reason to keep her off a list of unsexy women would be doubt that she really is a woman. We can't forget Woopie Goldberg either. Woopie is to sexiness as a black hole is to light. She actually sucks beauty out of other women and annihilates it when it crosses her event horizon. Word is that Kathy Bates and Charlize Theron are identical twin sisters, but Kathy took a transatlantic flight in a seat next to Woopie.

How you narrow it down to just five women is beyond me.

Fred ahead by more than 2:1 in GA

From The Savannah Morning News:

Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson has soared to a nearly 2-to-1 lead over his closest Republican rival in the latest statewide poll.

In survey results announced Wednesday by Strategic Vision, the former U.S. senator from Tennessee led Rudy Giuliani, 39 percent to 20 percent.

Thompson added 4 percentage points to the advantage he enjoyed over the former New York mayor in a Strategic Vision poll taken last month.

All the other Republican candidates are in single digits.

Not bad for a lazy old coot who doesn't really want it.

Worth every dime we pay for it

Unsolicited advice, that is.

Get this, the guy who got pwned by JIMMY Frakin' CARTER wanted to counsel us on how to win an election:

WASHINGTON - Jerry Ford wasn't sure Hillary Clinton could be elected President, but he was absolutely certain which Republican had the strongest shot at stopping her: Rudy Giuliani.

"That would be a great contest between Hillary and Rudy," the 92-year-old former President told a reporter in May 2006.

"I think Giuliani is an electrifying guy," he added. "He's a great speaker. He's had a good record of winning in New York City, and he can be tough."

Ford had gotten to know the former mayor at various political and corporate events over the years - both were members of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, for example - and often spoke admiringly of Giuliani's performance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

He thought so highly of Giuliani, in fact, that when speculating in 2004 about potential replacements for Vice President Cheney in the unlikely event President Bush decided to make a change, Ford put Giuliani at the top of his list.

Officially, he remained scrupulously neutral in the 2008 GOP primary contest. A few months before his death in December 2006, however, Ford was asked by an old friend to predict who the Republican nominee would be.

He smiled and replied: "Well, if they want to win, Giuliani. He's really good, he's articulate - he's just a leader."

Last I checked Mr. Ford was still dead so I won't beat him up over this. But please, if someone can channel Ronald Reagan I'll actually listen to what he has to say.

Royal blackmail

From The Times Online:

A MEMBER of the royal family has been targeted in an alleged “sex and drugs” blackmail plot being investigated by Scotland Yard.

The royal - who cannot be named for legal reasons - called in the police after being approached by two alleged blackmailers in August.

The men demanded £50,000 not to publicise a video, which they suggested showed the royal engaged in a sex act. The case is understood to be the first time in more than 100 years that a member of the royal family has been the victim of blackmail.

During telephone calls to the royal’s office, the suspected blackmailers also claimed to have evidence suggesting that the royal had supplied an aide with an envelope containing cocaine. They claimed that they had a video tape showing the aide snorting the drug.

After the approach from the two men in August, the royal tipped off Scotland Yard. Detectives then set up an undercover operation to trap the suspects. On September 11, two men were arrested in a police sting at a London hotel. They were seized as they played what they claimed was the sex video in a suite at the Hilton hotel on Park Lane in Mayfair.

The men thought they were showing the film to a member of the royal’s staff. In fact, the man they met was an undercover detective from Scotland Yard’s kidnap and blackmail unit.

The Yard issued a statement yesterday saying: “Two men, a 30-year-old man and a 40-year-old man, appeared at City of Westminster magistrates’ court on September 13, each charged with one count of blackmail.”

Neither the royal nor any of the witnesses in the case can be identified after a judge issued a gagging order.

I give Prince Harry credit for calling the cops rather than paying or having his security people "take care of" the blackmailers.

Seeing this story so soon after writing a post about the ass-clown, Ron Paul reminded me of something about the Libertarians. They think that blackmail should be legal. As far as they are concerned if you have a piece of information about someone it is your information, that is your property. It is up to you to decide what to do with it. If you want to publicize it or keep it secret that it your business and if you want to give someone the chance to pay you to influence your decision that is just between you and them.

Another problem for Ron Paul, the ass-clown

Rick Moran doesn't have to dig too deep to find yet another unsavory character marching in lockstep with the other Ron Paul (the ass-clown) pod-people:

Following the revelation that the Ron Paul campaign refused to acknowledge and return a donation from a white supremacist, it has been revealed that the Paul campaign paid notorious conspiracy nut and 9/11 truther radio host Alex Jones $1300 in "services."

Jones, whose rants about black helicopters and the loony conspiracies surrounding "The New World Order" have been an internet staple for the unbalanced among us for years, has become something of a cult hero for his pushing 9/11 conspiracy theories about the US government's purported involvement in the tragedy.

Ed Morrissey notes the significance:

This goes much closer to the heart of Paul's direction. While anyone can contribute to a political campaign, the choice of where the money goes is directly and completely relevant to an analysis of the candidate. If Paul chooses to help fund a 9/11 Truther, voters can reasonably conclude that Paul has sympathy for the paranoid conspiracy theorists.

The Paul campaign really has to explain their support of Alex Jones, more so than they need to explain the David Black contribution. So far, they haven't explained either one.

Paul's paranoid followers probably see nothing wrong with using the "services" of this nut who has been dismissed as a crank by both liberals and conservatives. But the rest of America should take note and judge the candidate accordingly.

Of course the pod-people will just take another sip of kool-aid and denounce this as just another attempt to smear their god. However sane people will understand that Paul has once again shown himself to be willing to crawl into bed with a detestable lowlife.

Someone at this point will wish to point out that Hillary Clinton's bed would have to be the size of a supercarrier's flight deck to accommodate all the lowlifes with whom she is in league. However the fact that both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are nothing but a couple of buckets of sewage dipped up from the septic tank of the Arkansas state penitentiary has already been established beyond any possible refutation. What we are talking about here is the character of the supposedly "principled" libertarian Republican Ron Paul, the ass-clown.

First Paul responds in a generally positive way to a "truther" who wants him to join nutjob Dennis Kucinich's efforts to prove that 9/11 was an "inside job". Next he is found to have accepted a donation from a white supremacist, which he refused to return. Then it is found that the white supremacist Holocaust denying website Stormfront.org is supporting him and helping him raise money, a fact that he will neither acknowledge nor do anything to discourage. Finally he is found to be employing the services of one of the Internet's most odious conspiracy theorists.

Of course we must not forget to mention the dishonest manipulation of online polls by Paul's pod-people followers. A practice which got Paul's name banned from the GOP Straw Poll and which is apparently being directed out of the office of Paul's campaign manager (details here).

Of course the pod-people tried to spin this as the Republican establishment's "fear" of Paul. WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day also takes up this theme here. What all the kool-aid besotted pod-brains need to understand is that the only people who come anywhere close to being "scared" of Ron Paul are Smeagol and his followers because Paul gives the kook from Cleveland serious competition for the honor of being the craziest person in the 2008 presidential race.

Some will doubtless say that I'm showing my fear of Paul by writing this. Sorry, it isn't fear. I fear Hillary Clinton because of the damage she would do to the nation if she were elected. I fear Rudolph Giuliani because if he is elected he will destroy the Republican Party. Yes, he may very well keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, but after his two terms in office the Republican Party which has expelled too many of its religious conservatives and has no one with the stature of "America's Mayor" to pull in liberal votes will never win another presidential election (and damn few congressional elections either). With what is left of the Republican Party no longer to able to provide a conservative alternative Democrats every bit as extreme as Hillary Clinton will win an unbroken chain of presidential elections until the nation created by men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson looks more like the nation created by men like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

I do not fear Ron Paul. I am grateful to him for providing a bit of comedy relief in what may very well be the last election that matters in the history of the United States. Every time you peek under the wet rock he calls home some new bit of wackiness comes scurrying out for us to poke fun at. One time it will be a 9/11 conspiracist, another time its a neo-nazi. What will be next a UFO contactee (see what I mean about horning in on Smeagol's territory)?

Sometimes I am tempted to feel guilty about Paul bashing. It's sort of like making fun of the retarded kid who lives down the block, but then I remember that Paul is a medical doctor and an elected member of congress who has been a presidential candidate before. I also remind myself that all of his wounds are self inflicted.

When it was revealed that a white power fanatic was financially supporting his campaign he could have promptly returned the money and publicly denounced Stormfront and everything it stands for. Just like any other Republican would have done. When confronted with a 9/11 conspiracy loon he could have the sense that even Bill Clinton showed and shut the moron down. But no, he treats their ideas as though they didn't originate somewhere out beyond the Oort Cloud and then puts one on the payroll. Paul's campaign manager calls up the guy who runs the GOP Straw Poll and starts pumping him for information on the online poll's security measures. Then the poll starts getting spammed and Paul will not only refuse to fire his campaign manager and tell his supporters to stop shaming him with such juvenile misbehavior he won't even address the issue.

In other words he just isn't someone to take seriously. But he is never boring.

Still clueless after all these years

From The Telegraph:

Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs.

Thousands of "health tourists" are going as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations – such is their despair over the quality of health services.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration with NHS waiting lists are fuelling the increasing trend.

More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year – a figure that is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade. Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting custom. Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment.

Almost all of those who had received treatment abroad said they would do the same again, with patients pointing out that some hospitals in India had screening policies for the superbug MRSA that have yet to be introduced in this country.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the figures were a "terrible indictment" of government policies that were undermining the efforts of NHS staff to provide quality services.

The findings come amid further revelations about the Government's mishandling of NHS policies, and ahead of official statistics that will embarrass ministers:

• On Wednesday, figures are expected to show rising numbers of hospital infections. Cases of the superbug Clostridium difficile, which have risen five-fold in the past decade, are expected to increase beyond the 55,000 cases reported last year.

• On the same day, statistics will show that vast sums have been spent on pay, with GPs' earnings rising by more than 50 per cent in three years to an average of more than £110,000.

• New research shows that growing NHS bureaucracy has left nurses with little time to see patients – most spending long periods dealing with paperwork.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients' Association, said the health tourism figures reflected shrinking public faith in the Government's handling of the NHS.

"The confidence that the public has in NHS hospitals has been shattered by the growth of hospital infections and this Government's failure to make a real commitment to tackling it," she said. "People are simply frightened of going to NHS hospitals, so I am not surprised the numbers going abroad are increasing so rapidly. My fear is that most people can't afford to have private treatment – whether in this country or abroad."

Some foreign hospitals touting for business on the internet offer consultations in hotels in Britain. But other patients are happy to rely on email to discuss their treatment with doctors thousands of miles away. Low prices in India, where flights, hotels and a heart

bypass cost less than half the price charged by British private hospitals, explain its top ranking in the survey by Treatment Abroad, a British website providing information on hospitals overseas.

Hungary's popularity rests on a boom in dentistry, thanks to a shortage of NHS dentists in Britain.

Mr Lansley said: "Healthcare is an area where Britain could be a world beater because we have some of the best research and best clinicians. If people don't trust the health service, then that is a terrible indictment of this Government, which has turned the NHS into a nationalised bureaucracy, instead of something able to focus on what patients want."

The British Medical Association advised people to be careful when considering treatment abroad, highlighting the dangers of flying soon after surgery, which can cause complications.

A spokesman said: "Travelling can place a great deal of stress on the body. Patients travelling abroad for surgery should consider their fitness to fly and get an understanding of an appropriate convalescence period before attempting to return home."

A Department of Health official said the number of patients seeking treatment abroad was a tiny fraction of the 13 million treated on the NHS each year. Waiting times had fallen. Almost half of patients were treated within 18 weeks of seeing a GP. Most people who had hospital care did not contract infections.

They just don't get it. Government central planning is no more able to efficiently manage the allocation of health care resources in the UK or Canada or Cuba or anywhere else than Soviet central planning was able to figure out how many razor blades or size 8 women's shoes were needed and where they should be sent.

There has never been and never will be a better mechanism for assessing need, assigning resources and giving people what they want when they want it than the free market. However once you have drunk the socialist kool-aid it seems that the brain damage is irreversible because the Brits are saying that this government has cocked it up not government has cocked it up.

This means that the solution that everyone is going to be chasing is a "better and more efficient NHS" not an across the board return to the private sector.

There is an opportunity for some entrepreneur here. The first person or company to figure out how to sell private insurance to the British people covering the cost of foreign medical treatment is going to get rich, or richer.

Tonight's Music

Another video from The Corrs. This tune is called Silver Strand and it is from their CD Borrowed Heaven.

Nothing left to lose

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 27 — Senator Barack Obama said he would start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring Friday that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.

Mr. Obama’s vow to go on the offensive comes just over two months before the first votes are cast for the Democratic nomination, and after a long period in which his aides, donors and other supporters have battled — and in some cases shared — the perception that he has not exhibited the aggressiveness demanded by presidential politics.

In an interview that appeared timed by his campaign to signal the change of course, Mr. Obama said “now is the time” for him to distinguish himself from Mrs. Clinton. While he said that he was not out to “kneecap the front-runner, because I don’t think that’s what the country is looking for,” he said she was deliberately obscuring her positions for political gain and was less likely than he was to win back the White House for Democrats.

Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, “No.”

“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama added, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been entirely forthcoming.

B. Hussein knows that he isn't going to get the nomination. I think this indicates that he now realized that he will not be asked to run as Mrs. Bill Clinton's VP.

I wish him luck.

Battlestar Galactica : Razor - Flashback 4

The old-style Centurion looked good. Not exactly the same as the old Glen Larson show. More like what one would have looked like if there wasn't a person inside the suit.