This just in

From The Jerusalem Post:

Syrian air defenses opened fire on Israeli aircraft that violated Syrian airspace overnight Thursday, a Syrian military spokesman said.

The Israelis broke the sound barrier and "dropped ammunition" over deserted areas of northern Syria overnight, the spokesman was quoted by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

"We warn the Israeli enemy government against this flagrant aggressive act, and retain the right to respond in an appropriate way," the Syrian spokesman said.

It was not clear if Syria was accusing the Israelis of using warplanes or some type of other aircraft like drones.

"The Israeli enemy aircraft infiltrated into the Arab Syrian territory through the northern border, coming from the Mediterranean heading toward the eastern region, breaking the sound barrier," the spokesman said.

"Air defense units confronted them and forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage."

The IDF said that it was "not accustomed to responding to such reports."

Israel acknowledges flying over Lebanon routinely, but it is unclear how often its aircraft fly over Syria, if at all.

At the beginning of last summer's war against Lebanon, Israeli warplanes buzzed the palace of Syrian President Bashar Assad in what analysts called a warning to Damascus.

In June of the same year, they also flew over Assad's summer home in the coastal city of Latakia, after Syrian-backed Palestinian militants in Gaza kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit.

The question is this, how badly do the Syrians want their asses kicked?

Here is the current GOP Straw Poll

Fred makes it official

DURHAM, N.H., Sept. 5 -- After months of testing the waters, former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) jumped into the race for the Republican presidential nomination on late-night television Wednesday, as his eight rivals clashed here in a debate that featured sharp exchanges over Iraq and immigration.

Thompson used an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" to kick off his campaign. "I'm running for president of the United States," Thompson told Leno during the show's taping early Wednesday evening.

He followed that up at midnight with a longer video on his campaign Web site outlining his reasons for running, citing threats to national security and the economy and the need to change Washington. "I know that reform is possible in Washington because I have seen it done," he said. "I do not accept it as a fact of life beyond our power to change that the federal government must go on expanding more, taxing more, and spending more forever."

Thompson's Republican rivals appeared unbowed by his entry and used their forum to take potshots at him for skipping the debate. "Maybe we're up past his bedtime," Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) quipped. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani joked: "I think Fred is a really, really good man. I think he's done a pretty good job of playing my part on 'Law & Order.' "

Asked by Leno why he wasn't in New Hampshire, Thompson said, "I'll do my share, but I don't think it's a very enlightening forum, to tell you the truth."

Thompson's long-awaited announcement brings a potentially formidable candidate into the Republican race. His Southern roots, conservative message and celebrity appeal from movies and television have already pushed him into second place in most national polls, behind Giuliani.

Fred announced months later than the other candidates because they knew that they were going to run for at least a year longer than he did (Hillary's campaign began before Bill even left the White House nearly eight years ago). Mr. Thompson has had to do in a few months what Julie Annie and the others have had at least three times as long to do, put together a national campaign organization.

As for Fred's decision not to participate in last night's debate let me ask you a question:

Rudolph Giuliani is the leading candidate on the Republican side. If the primaries were all held today he would gain the nomination and if the general election were held tomorrow he would beat Hillary Clinton and become the next president.

What does really gain for himself by standing on a stage with third tier candidates like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo (both fine men who would make good presidents, but this just isn't their year and by now they should know it)? Does Giuliani add to or subtract from his stature by sharing a stage with ass-clown Ron Paul and being treated in exactly the same manner as that wackjob?

Newt Gingrich was right about the debates serving no useful purpose the way they are currently formatted. Of course Fred will have to attend all upcoming debates, but he does himself no harm by holding himself aloof from this one. There is still plenty of time for him to risk eye damage from the stage lights reflecting off of Ron Paul's tinfoil hat.

Here is Fred on Leno making his announcement:



There is also the fact that on Leno he was seen by tens of millions while the debate was watched by tens of thousands.

Here is Fred's first campaign commercial:



Here is a link to his website with a longer announcement.

Italian Tenor Pavarotti Is Dead

ROME -- Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C's and ebullient showmanship made him one the most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.

Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August 2007.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that you are listening!

If you've just returned from your Labor Day vacation and are scanning the headlines from last week's newspapers -- don't panic! America is not threatened by a category 5 hurricane named "Larry Craig."

Despite the 9/11-level coverage, Larry Craig is merely accused of "cruising while Republican." There is nothing liberals love more than gay-baiting, which they disguise as an attack on "hypocrisy."

Chris Matthews opened his "Hardball" program on Aug. 28 by saying Larry Craig had been "exposed as both a sexual deviant and a world-class hypocrite."

Normally, using the word "deviant" in reference to any form of sodomy would be a linguistic crime worse than calling someone a "nappy headed ho." Luckily, Craig is a Republican.

As a backup precaution, Matthews has worked to ensure that there is virtually no audience for "Hardball." I shudder to think of the damage such a remark might have done if uttered about a non-Republican on a TV show with actual viewers.

The New York Times ran 15 articles on Craig's guilty plea to "disorderly conduct" in a bathroom. The Washington Post ran 20 articles on Craig. MSNBC covered it like it was the first moon landing -- Three small taps for a man, one giant leap for public gay sex!

In other news last week, two Egyptian engineering students, Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed and Youssef Samir Megahed, were indicted in Tampa on charges of carrying pipe bombs across states lines. They were caught with the bombs in their car near a Navy base.

But back to the real news of the week: CNN's Dana Bash reported that the Larry Craig story was "everywhere and it is not going to let up."

If liberals were any happier, they'd be gay.

Just as liberals were reaching a fever-pitch of pretend shock and dismay at Larry Craig, it was announced that Craig was resigning. And there went MSNBC's fall program schedule.

Indignant that Craig had short-circuited their gleeful gay-baiting, liberals quickly switched to a new set of talking points. In the blink of an eye, they went from calling Craig a "deviant" to attacking Republicans for not insisting that Craig stay.

Liberals said the only reason Republicans were not blanketing the airwaves defending Craig -- maybe running him for president -- was because of Republican "homophobia." After howling with rage all week about gay Republicans, to turn around and call Republicans homophobes on Friday was nothing if not audacious.

But last Friday -- or, for short, "the day the two bomb-carrying Egyptian students were indicted and the mainstream media was too busy jeering at Larry Craig to notice" -- The New York Times editorialized:

"Underlying the (Republicans') hurry to disown the senator, of course, is the party's brutal agenda of trumpeting the gay-marriage issue. To the extent Sen. Craig, a stalwart in the family values caucus, might morph into a blatant hypocrite before the voters' eyes, he reflects on the party's record in demonizing homosexuality. The rush to cast him out betrays the party's intolerance, which is on display for the public in all of its ugliness."

Liberals don't even know what they mean by "hypocrite" anymore. It's just a word they throw out in a moment of womanly pique, like "extremist" -- or, come to think of it, "gay." How is Craig a "hypocrite," much less a "blatant hypocrite"?

Assuming the worst about Craig, the Senate has not held a vote on outlawing homosexual impulses. It voted on gay marriage. Craig not only opposes gay marriage, he's in a heterosexual marriage with kids. Talk about walking the walk!

Did Craig propose marriage to the undercover cop? If not, I'm not seeing the "hypocrisy."

And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

Liberals have no idea what they think about homosexuality, which is why their arguments are completely contradictory. They gay-bait Republicans with abandon -- and then turn around and complain about homophobia.

They call Larry Craig a "deviant" based on accusations that he attempted to solicit sex in a public bathroom -– and then ferociously attack efforts to prevent people from having sex in public bathrooms.

They say people are born gay -- and then they say it's the celibacy requirement that turns Catholic priests gay.

They tell us gays want nothing more than to get married -- and then say it's homophobic to oppose homosexual sex in public bathrooms.

Unlike liberals, the "family values caucus" that the Times loathes has only one position on homosexuality: Whatever your impulses are, don't engage in homosexual sex. In fact, don't have any sex at all unless it is between a husband and wife.

The Idaho Statesman spent eight months investigating a rumor that Craig was gay. They interviewed 300 people, going back to his college days. They walked around Union Station in Washington, D.C., with a picture of Craig, asking people if they had seen him loitering around the men's bathrooms.

And they produced nothing.

All they had was the original anonymous charge of sodomy in a bathroom at Union Station that started the eight-month investigation in the first place -- and his plea to "disorderly conduct" after an ambiguous encounter in a bathroom in Minneapolis. Even his enemies said they had never seen any inappropriate conduct by Craig.

If the charges against Craig are true -- and that is certainly in doubt -- he's a sinner (and barely that, according to The Idaho Statesman), but he is among the least hypocritical people in America.

I've been mulling over this Craig situation for a bit and have figured out my take on it. This will be posted this weekend, if anyone cares.

Tonight's Music

In keeping with my September's partial departure from the Celtic/Medieval theme for music videos here is a video from Fatboy Slim (not to be confused with Fatboy Dim, the maker of fradulent left-wing "documentaries")called Right Here, Right Now.

A new "Dead" movie is coming!!!

I have a confession to make. I love zombies. My favorite episode of my favorite TV series Angel was when "The Beast" killed everyone at the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart and the company's "fail safe security system" brought all the dead employees back as zombies.

I loved the movie The Serpent And The Rainbow which was about how zombies are really created.

And I love anything by George A. Romero, the absolute and undisputed master of the zombie genre. Mr. Romero has given us zombie classics like Land of the Dead and Day of the Dead and the absolute zombie classic Night of the Living Dead.


Romero's movies have inspired many other artists, like the great Pete Abrams:





Now the master has gifted us with another masterpiece called Diary of the Dead. This latest contribution to the "Dead" universe simultaneously takes Mr. Romero back to his roots as an independent film maker and takes the zombie saga back to its very beginning. Details in Mr. Romero's own words are available here on MySpaceTV:

The Roots

Add to My Profile More Videos

This film is set to premier at this year’s Toronto Film Festival and is already getting great reviews from the critics. USA Today has this to say:

It sure looked as if the zombie revival was on the brink of expiring. Especially after the flesh-eaters were reduced to a livestock joke in the ill-fated comedy Black Sheep. Tagline: "Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs."

But if anyone could keep the genre on life support, it's the filmmaker who more or less invented it nearly 40 years ago with Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero.

With Diary of the Dead, which premieres Saturday as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program, the 67-year-old guru of gobbling ghouls has done a radical rewind, imagining what a 21st-century zombie outbreak would be like.

The film already is creating a stir: A Toronto Star poll of in-the-know festivalgoers picked Diary of the Dead as one of the most-anticipated titles.

Whereas Night used strangers barricaded in a farmhouse to reflect the nightmares of the Vietnam era, Diary downloads a post-9/11 and Hurricane Katrina image of widespread chaos for the YouTube/MySpace generation.

"I had a version of the story in mind when I was doing Land of the Dead," he says, referring to his return to his zombie roots in 2005. "I thought it would be cool to go back to Day 1, when it all starts, and lay media stuff on top."

The action centers on a group of students filming an old-fashioned horror movie for school. The scares turn real when they see shocking TV footage of corpses feasting on the living. The class assignment evolves into a documentary, obsessively shot by Jason (Joshua Close), who is driven to record every terrifying moment of their frantic escape in a Winnebago.

Go read the rest here.


I'll keep you updated as far as the general release date goes.

What did he know about the Clintons?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ohio Rep. Paul Gillmor, a Republican whose political career covered four decades, has died, party officials said.
"Born, raised and educated in our home state of Ohio, Paul never lost sight of the reason he came to Congress—to serve this great institution and his constituents with dedication and distinction," House Republican Leader John Boehner, also of Ohio, said in a statement.

"With the passing of Paul Gillmor, the people of northwest Ohio have lost a favorite son," said House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, R-Fla.

The body of the 68-year-old congressman was found by staff members who went to his apartment Wednesday after he failed to show up for work, according to a Republican aide who spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement.There was no immediate word on the cause of his death.

He must have stumbled across something that could have been detrimental to Blowjob Billy and/or the Hildabeast.

D.C. gun ban heads to the high court

From The Washington Post:

The District asked the Supreme Court yesterday to save the city's ban on handgun ownership, saying an appeals court's decision overturning the prohibition "drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence."

If the court agrees to take the case, as most legal experts believe is likely, it could lead to a historic decision sometime next year on whether the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual's right to own a gun or simply imparts a collective, civic right related to maintaining state militias.

It is a question that has been hotly debated in the nation's courts and legislatures for years, and a decision by the Supreme Court to settle the issue could carry broad implications for local governments and thrust gun control as an issue into the 2008 elections.

The District argues in its petition that its law -- one of the strictest in the nation -- should be upheld regardless of whether the court sides with the individualist or collective legal theory.

"It is eminently reasonable to permit private ownership of other types of weapons, including shotguns and rifles, but ban the easily concealed and uniquely dangerous modern handgun," states the petition, filed by D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer. It adds: "Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die."

It is interesting that the D.C. lawyers are hedging their bets on the issue of whether the Second Amendment guarantees (even to the point of using the correct term, "guarantees" rather than "grants") an individual right or a collective right. I think they realize that the "collective right" argument has been so thoroughly discredited that even some of the liberal Supreme Court Justices might be unwilling to look like idiots by buying into it.

I wonder if the government of the District and the residents of the District really want to go before the Supreme Court with this set of arguments:

Most petitions for review focus on why the court should take the case, but the District's filing serves as more of a preview of its defense of the law, filled with statistics about gun violence and the harm caused to children, women and police officers.

"No other provision of the Bill of Rights even arguably requires a government to tolerate serious physical harm on anything like the scale of the devastation worked by handguns," the petition states.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said at a news conference outside D.C. police headquarters that the law has strong support among District residents. "The only possible outcome of more handguns in the home is more violence," he said. "Our appeal will help the District of Columbia be able to continue to reduce gun violence."

I remember being in a small gun store in a small town here in North Carolina one day when a black man came in to buy a handgun. The gentleman was well dressed and spoke like an educated man and the firearms he was interested in were not cheap. The man behind the counter kept coming up with reasons why the fellow shouldn't buy this gun or that gun until the man finally left. The gunstore clerk then turned to me and said, "Niggers just shouldn't have guns".

Stripped down to its essence that seems to be the whole of Mayor Fenty's case against overturning the D.C. handgun ban.

Is this really the image of himself, his city and his race that Mr. Fenty wants to project to the world? Does Mayor Fenty really believe that his people are too savage and animalistic to be trusted with weapons? If this is the case (and I don't believe it for a second) then the Confederacy was right and Negros are better off being owned by benevolent white masters who will control their base urges and put them to productive work while exposing them to the Gospel (in case they really do have human souls).

So what will it me Mr. Mayor, you want to reconsider your position or you want to report to the nearest cotton patch and start picking?

Progress in Iraq

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — With the Democratic-led Congress poised to measure progress in Iraq by focusing on the central government’s failure to perform, President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart.

That shift in emphasis was implicit in Mr. Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency. By meeting with tribal leaders who just a year ago were considered the enemy, and who now are fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a president who has unveiled four or five strategies for winning over Iraqis — depending on how one counts — may now be on the cusp of yet another.

The reason that the tribal leaders are now allies instead of enemies is twofold. One part is that the new counterinsurgency strategy (the surge) is working and the other is that al Qaeda has made itself loathsome to the Iraqi people. By both their thuggish brutality and the grim and joyless brand of Islam they practice.

The US is now seen as the more attractive side and, far more importantly, the side most likely to win. This makes the decision to bet on America almost automatic.

The truth is that the original benchmarks which depended upon the Iraqi central government getting its house in order and the effect of that "trickling down" to the rest of the society was never realistic. In the overall culture of the Middle East you join the side that looks like it is going to win. Iraqi politicians needed to have some clear indication of which side, America or al Qaeda, was going to come out on top before they committed themselves.

The only thing now that can stop further progress in Iraq is the American left working through their elected representatives in congress and their propaganda organs in the mainstream media.

The vision of the Left

You might think that my comparing the American Left to communists or Nazis is just hyperbole, but it isn't. They are totalitarians. For proof just look at their socialized medicine schemes. Their goal is a society where all that isn't forbidden is compelled.

Cartoon from Cox & Forkum

Tonight's Music

This is the group Buille (for pronunciation imagine someone throwing up) performing the tune August First. The man playing concertina is Niall Vallely, probably the best concertina player in the world. He is also the husband of the lovely Karan Casey.

Notice his extreme focus when playing and then how he sort of "comes out of himself" when acknowledging the crowd's applause.

Torchwood starts this Saturday

Next Saturday at 9:00 PM the BBC Wales series Torchwood permiers on BBC America. Here is a parody of the series from a British comedy series called Dead Ringers:



I'll be blogging about each Torchwood episode.

Here is another humor video called Brokeback Torchwood:



Now here is the real Torchwood opening:

Britney uses foul language!!!!!

I am home for the evening and I was going to blog about something like the Craig scandal and what it implies for the future of conservative homosexuals in the Republican Party. Or perhaps Fred Thompson's impending announcement of his presidential candidacy. Or the fact that Mattel is announcing yet another recall of toys made in China. Or I could have mocked Al Gore for his whining and whinging about how he lost the 2000 election because the media was unfair to him.

But I'm not going to do any of that, at least not right now, because some really important news has come along.

You might want to sit down. If you have a heart condition you might want to have your pills at hand, or even skip this post altogether.

OK, here is is:

Britney Spears has used the F-word on one of her new songs!

Read all the horrible details here.

The British "get it"

From The Daily Mail:

. . . [A] poll by YouGov for the group showed that nearly two-thirds of people think politicians are using the green issue as an excuse to pull in more cash.

Cleaning house

From The Washington Post:

ZENICA, Bosnia -- They met in 1985 as Syrian immigrants in Croatia, two students in their 20s grappling with a language and a culture they didn't understand.

Seven years later, when word spread of a nearby war being waged by fellow Muslims, Ayman Awad and Imad Al Husayn boarded a bus for Bosnia and joined the fight, they recounted. After peace came in 1995, they married local women, became Bosnian citizens and started families. They settled in ravaged rural villages and fostered a strict religious code that contrasted sharply with the more relaxed Islam endemic to this country's native Muslims.

Now, Awad, 42, and Husayn (who goes by the nickname Abu Hamza), 43, may again be on the move, this time not by choice. Earlier this year, the Bosnian government revoked the two men's citizenship as part of a broad review of foreign-born residents that was urged by the United States. It has led to the denationalization of at least 500 people, about 70 percent of whom arrived here from throughout the Muslim world during the three-year ethnic civil war.

Awad and Husayn have been given 60 days to appeal the decisions against them. If unsuccessful, they and a few dozen others who remain in the country and are embroiled in similar proceedings could be deported.

Bosnian and international officials say the presence of the former fighters -- who, like predecessors in the war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, are known as mujaheddin, Arabic for "strugglers" -- is illegal. The officials say some of them maintain links to terrorist groups, creating a security threat for Bosnia.

The second paragraph tells you what you really need to know. The pair came to Bosnia because they wanted to participate in bloodshed and they are spreading the form of Islam which is most likely to produce terrorists.

The same thing happened to the SA after Hitler took power. They were fine for breaking heads in street riots against communists but when trying to administer a working government they were more of a hindrance than a help and had to be dealt with.

One of the characteristics of fundamentalist Muslims is that they regard any other Muslim who doesn't believe exactly the same things they believe as an apostate deserving of death. How long do you suppose it would be before these guys and others like them put together a civil war to restore "true Islam" to Bosnia.

I don't have a great deal of sympathy for the Bosnian government, but I do give them credit for having enough sense to take out the trash.

I got them all right

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

H/T: Fits

HWT's Hero of the Week

From The Brussels Journal:

Geert Wilders doubts whether a tolerant and liberal Islam exists. Last month he advocated a ban of the Quran, which he called a “fascist book inciting hatred and killing.” He said he wants the use of the book outlawed, even in Dutch mosques. The Dutch authorities are considering prosecuting Wilders for his remark, which according to some is an incitement to racial hatred.

Racial hatred? Islam is a race now?

Tonight's Music

Tonight we have a holiday double shot of some New Wave music from the 1980's. The first is The Cure's video for Just Like Heaven.




The next is The Cure's video for Fascination Street.

I do have a way of kicking over hornet's nests

I was looking at my sitemeter yesterday and I noticed that I was getting a few hits from a website that I had never heard of. So, being the curious sort I went over and saw that it was something called The Gun Zone Forum of the American Backyard Forum.

The Gun Zone is apparently moderated by gunwriter Charles Petty. The reason I was getting hits is that there was an ongoing discussion (read it here) about the vile internal locks which Smith and Wesson has chosen to defile their otherwise excellent revolvers (and their not so excellent automatics) with.

It seems that one of the forum participants had come across the blog post I wrote a little more than a year ago on that very topic, which you can read here.

In that post I discussed the article in the The July/August, 2006 issue of American Handgunner by Charles E Petty in which Mr. Petty attempted to debunk the idea of lock failures being a realistic problem with the S&W handguns. While one person tried to imply that I was factually wrong about the gun locks (without offering any actual evidence - because I am right and he knows it) most of the comment centered on this statement from my blog post:

Now the first thing you need to understand is this. If you look up "gunwriter” in a thesaurus you will find synonyms like “whore”, “liar”, “paid advertising flack” and so on. In other words gun magazines exist to sell advertising to companies that make firearms, firearms accessories, and other products that gun owners are likely to buy. The articles which take up space between the ads serve the function of promoting the products which are advertised in the magazine.

Even Dean Speir chimed in, leaving this comment on my original post:

Interesting entry… could've written much of it m'self… except for the invidious comments about Charlie Petty.

I know him, you don't. It's very easy to sit back and play the cynic about that sort of thing but if you've honed your critical thinking skills, meaningful information can be garnered from virtually any gunzine article.

The difference between me 'n' Charlie is that for the most part he has learned to say things "safely." I never have… which is why what I used to write for the gunzines I now do, completely unfettered, on the Internet.

Lotta ho's in the gunzine game; Charlie ain't one of'em.

It is natural to want to defend your friends when they are attacked and I give Mr. Speir credit for stepping up. I also agree with him when he says this, "if you've honed your critical thinking skills, meaningful information can be garnered from virtually any gunzine article."

I remember an article in one of the gun magazines about the new S&W 1911 in which the author noted that the gold insert in the front sight fell out and all the screws started backing out and all the pins began drifting out after just a small amount of firing. The writer's conclusion was the usual "this is a great gun, I'll be adding this one to my collection" drivel but anyone who cared to read between the lines got the message that the S&W 1911 was a piece of crap.

I leave it to my readers to decide if this sort of playing peekaboo with the truth is honorable and ethical or if it comes closer to "whore", "liar" and "paid advertising flack". Perhaps it is one of those "you say tomato; I say tomahto" things.

But looking back on Charles Petty's American Handgunner article I'll say this. There could have been an attempt on his part to convey a warning about lock failures on the S&W revolvers embedded in his ostensible debunking of the lock failure issue. I base that conclusion on this reasoning.

Mr. Petty based his conclusion that the lock failure issue was a non-problem on a conversation with a Smith and Wesson employee, someone who could be fired for publicly disclosing a potentially serious problem with a Smith and Wesson product, and a trip to the range with a few handguns in which he shot a few cylinders of ammunition per gun.

Based on Dean Speir's vouching for Charles Petty's character and honesty I'll now admit that the American Handgunner article could have been an attempt to actually lend credence to the lock failure issue by denying it with "evidence" so outrageous and over-the-top stupid that only a John Edwards voter (or a chimpanzee) would have believed it.

I want to close by stating that I don't feel any ill will toward Mr. Petty. He has his bills to pay and he does it, at least in part, by writing for publication in gun magazines and the price of writing in gun magazines is keeping the advertisers happy. I'm sure that he doesn't really enjoy some of the things he is required to do to stay employed (just like I'm sure that most of the authors who are under contract to Bane Publishing don't like having to ghostwrite John Ringo's novels for him, but that's a post for another day), but as the maggot said to the king of France, "we live not as we wish to, but as we can". [That last sounds more profound when you say it in French]

The tenacious cult of global warming

AWOL Civilization has some thoughts on the death-cult of global warming:

An exchange of opinions with a commenter on a previous post regarding Global Warming has moved me to examine the roots of this tenacious cult. Where did it come from? Did it actually appear several years ago out of nowhere? I believe the answer is much more complex. Like most collectivist ideology, Global Warming has a distinguished pedigree reaching deep into the 19th century, if not earlier.

After examining the intellectual bases of Global Warming, I can point to some uncanny similarity to classic Hegelian totalitarian thought. Consider these four shared fundamental traits:
1. God has no power. Global Warming transcends the simpler atheism of Hegel and Marx. Weather and macro-level shifts in the earth’s behavior are seen as primarily caused by humans, some of whom are invested with unprecedented, demonic powers. Not even “nature” is allowed into the calculation, let alone God.

2. Society can be perfected. Once upon a time, it was the New Soviet Man. Today, it’s the New Ecological Person, living in the New Sustainable Society. The new person is perfect because he consumes nothing.

3. Man is just an animal. Global Warming adds a new twist to the classic totalitarian reduction of the individual to an amorphous member of a herd. In the old collectivist scheme, we belonged to a herd, but it was a superior herd. Now, the human being is ranked even lower than the animals, and he has no special rights vis-à-vis the earth. Man must be harnessed to the needs of nature.

4. Everything is inevitable. Reminiscent of the Hegelian “inexorable march of history,” Global Warming is upon us and there is nothing we can do to stop it—short of the most drastic measures. No unforeseen event can alter its path. The inevitability can be expressed as a double condition: If we undertake the drastic measures, the world will pass into a new, golden era; if we do not undertake the drastic measures, the world will end.

The totalitarian impulse is with us in full force. Lowly man, allowed for too long to wildly express his egotistical impulses, must be controlled and repackaged under a planned ecological solution that will bring about the reign of perfection.

Go read the rest.

More Hillbilly Ecosystem houskeeping

Hillbilly Ecosystem member I was trailer trash when trailer trash wasn't cool has moved up in the world. Her blog has been picked up by the Tallahassee Democrat, leading her to change the name to Miss Trashahassee. It can be read there at the newspaper's website or on her mirror site.

A new blog in the Hillbilly Ecosystem

Our friend Panhandle Poet has created a new blog called Common Sense Agriculture, Conservation and Energy, a blog about "Agriculture, Conservation and Energy topics from a common sense [that is, non-moonbat - LC] view of the world."

Go over and give it a look.

At least they have their priorities straight

From The Scotsman:

THE Scottish Parliament resumes today, with an ambitious programme of work including reforming the law on rape, abolishing bridge tolls and outlawing airguns.

It's just so sad.

If there's one thing Slimy dick knows it's Hillary

Hillary Clinton’s handlers like to promote her image as an embattled warrior — a relentless foot soldier dedicated to the dual crusades of fighting for the exalted principles of goodness and light while simultaneously defeating the ever-present forces of darkness and evil. A modern-day Celtic warrior queen or Joan of Arc — that’s the spin on Hillary.

But in reality, Hillary’s favorite wars are much less lofty and much more self-centered and mean-spirited. Hillary emphatically comes from the “us versus them” school of American politics. Like Richard Nixon, the politician she so closely resembles, she sees the world in extraordinarily simple terms: there are those who agree with her and support her and then there’s the rest of the world. Those who don’t agree with her are bunched together and known collectively as “the enemy” — that vast right wing conspiracy that must be vilified, beaten, and destroyed ... whatever it takes.

To Hillary, this easily quantifiable adversary is unquestionably the source of all evil. Therefore, any means of obliterating them is acceptable. She thrives on identifying, assailing, and defeating them. Her hatred for this ubiquitous enemy is actually a source of enormous strength — it motivates her, energizes her, keeps her going and reminds her of her superiority.

Now she even claims that it is actually her experience in beating the right wing that makes her the most qualified democrat to be president. At the last debate, she touted her success:

“And I will say that for 15 years I have stood up against the right-wing machine, and I've come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I'm your girl."

Interestingly, she doesn’t exhibit the same passion for the real enemies of the U.S. — like Al Qaeda. You don’t hear her promising to take on, defeat, or destroy them. No, it’s the Republicans and the right wing that incite her wrath, sarcasm and rage.

And, she’s taken it even one step further. Her concerns about another terror attack on the U.S. are apparently rooted in fear. Not fear for American lives, but fear that the Republicans would benefit from an attack. According to Hillary:

“If certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."

Everything, even the threat of losing innocent American lives, is secondary to her obsession with crushing the right wing and Republicans.

I don’t think a victory for her in November of ’08 will satiate her hunger for destroying her evil enemies. To the contrary, it will embolden her.

If she becomes president, look for a permanent “War Room” in the White House. Hillary loves War Rooms. She started using them in the 1992 campaign in Arkansas to seek and destroy the women — like Gennifer Flowers — who had been involved with Bill and might embarrass him by telling the truth. That bunker used almost $100,000 of federal campaign funds to hire private detectives to intimidate Bill’s women. Then, she created her Health Care War Room in the White House — operating in secret to advance her virtuous cause and overpower her adversaries. After she resoundingly lost the health care reform issue, she closed down the War Room.

But in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky story broke, Hillary created the biggest War Room ever. Its purpose was to destroy those who dared to support impeaching her husband. Describing the unfolding of the scandal, Hillary described it as a "battle” on The Today Show. After the private peccadilloes of the speaker and other members of the House Judiciary Committee were publicized in favored liberal organs and Monica Lewinsky was depicted as a stalker and a loser, Hillary was vindicated. Now she knows just how to deal with those who get in her way.

She’s not a warrior, she’s a bully.

Slimy dick may think that Mrs. Bill Clinton is "most like Nixon" but the truth is that the world leader Mrs. Clinton most resembles is none other than Joseph Stalin.

Like Stalin, Hillary:

• Is a Marxist.
• Is deeply paranoid, seeing conspiracies under every rock and behind every lamppost.
• Takes sadistic joy in tormenting her enemies (defined as anyone who might now or in the future pose any conceivable threat to her power).
• Surronds herself with syncophants who tell her only what she wants to hear.
• Insists on operating in complete secracy.
• Is devoid of anything resembling a human soul and is utterly evil.
• Attmpts to give her actions the veneer of legality by accusing those she wished to get rid of with crimes and putting them on trial (White House Travel Office).

Add to the list if you can think of any more.

President Bush visits Iraq

From The Washington Post:

AL ASAD AIRBASE, Anbar Province, Iraq, Sept. 3 -- On the eve of major administration decisions on U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top U.S. military leaders including the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petreaus, arrived here Monday on a surprise visit for a series of unprecedented meetings with top Iraqi leaders and Sunni tribal sheiks in Anbar Province, where progress has dramatically lowered attacks in what a year ago was Iraq's most violent region.

Bush -- along with Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace and U.S. Middle East commander Adm. William Fallon -- will meet first with Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and then with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other senior Iraqi leaders and Anbar tribal sheiks.

"This will be the last big gathering of the president's advisors and Iraqi leaders before the president makes his decisions on the way forward," said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon spokesperson. "He's assembled his war council, and they are all convening with Iraqi leaders to discuss the way forward."

Bush visits Iraq in order to meet personaly with Iraqi leaders and see with his own eyes what the situation is on the ground over there.

How long do you suppose it will be before outraged congressional Democrats hold hearings and demand investigations?

Say it ain't so!

From The Washington Post:

Karl Rove told George W. Bush before the 2000 election that it was a bad idea to name Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, and Rove later raised objections to the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, according to a new book on the Bush presidency.

In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy." But Bush did not care -- he was comfortable with Cheney and "saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place."

When Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, expressed concerns about the Miers selection, he was "shouted down" and subsequently muted his objections, Draper writes, while other advisers did not realize the outcry the nomination would cause within the president's conservative political base.

No hold on just a dang minute! We've been told ever since 2000 that Bush was borderline retarded and nothing more than Karl Rove's sock puppet. Now we are supposed to believe that Bush was in charge all along making all the final decisions and overruling Rove when it suited him?

But that means that all those times when the Democrats have been out maneuvered and outsmarted that it was BUSH that was doing it!

I thought he was just a tobacco-chewing dunce with a Playboy in his back pocket.

Oh the humanity!

Sorry, no war with Iran any time soon

From WorldNetDaily:

The Pentagon has formulated a "three-day blitz" plan to annihilate Iran's military that targets 1,200 sites, including Tehran's nuclear facilities, in order to render its military incapable of conducting offensive, defensive or retaliatory missions.

According to the London Sunday Times, citing Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, the Pentagon has rejected a strategy of "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities.

"They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," Debat said. [. . .]

President Bush increased his rhetoric against Iran's nuclear program last week, saying Tehran had put the Mideast "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust" and indicated action would be taken against the program "before it is too late."

According to a Times source close to the Bush administration, the president's recent statements were meant as "a message to a number of audiences" – Iran and the U.N. Security Council. [. . .]

Revelation of a plan for a three-day blitz to destroy Iran's fighting ability indicates the administration leans toward the use of rapid, overwhelming force if the military option is used.

"Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same," Debat said. Massive use of force was, he said, a "very legitimate strategic calculus."

Rick Moran at American Thinker calls this (the original London Times article) stroy The Left's Bullwinkle Gambit:

Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war..." Except that President Bush has been talking that way about Iran for the past 5 years. And yes, we have received similar warnings from a variety of sources in that time that we were on the brink of war with Iran - at least according to the left.

But like Bullwinkle in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle skit where the talking moose tries to pull a rabbit out of his hat time and time again ("Nothin' up my sleeve...PRESTO! Ooops...wrong hat") the left laughably keeps coming up empty in their dire predictions about going to war with Iran. I have lost track of the number of times that I've read at Daily Kos that we are on the eve of Armageddon: [. . .]

A few months ago we had 3 aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf and the left went ballistic, believing war with Iran was hours away. It wasn't, of course, and it probably isn't now. But the fact that every rational leader in Europe and the developed world have said to one degree or another that the idea of Iran having a nuclear capability is unacceptable (including most recently, the President of France) should give our clueless friends on the left the idea that not taking an attack on Iran off the table - despite the enormous potential downside - is part of the language of diplomacy that we are carrying on with the mullahs in Tehran. We may eventually feel forced to attack the Iranians. We may not. But planning for the eventuality is only prudent and is also part of the diplomatic language we are exchanging with the Iranians.

I have been hearing that war with Iran is immanent from people on the right as well as those on the left. I agree with my friends on the right that taking out the lunatic regime in Tehran is the right thing to do. It is the morally and strategically correct thing to do, but it is not the politically correct thing to do.

The Republican and Democrat primaries are happening now and next year is a presidential general election. To begin a new war in the Middle East would cause the Left in America and Europe to explode. It would drag the Democrat Party much further to the left than it already is (yes, Virginia they aren't as far to the left as they could be) as congressmen and presidential candidates raced each other to the microphone to announce that Bush has gone over the edge and that America must completely withdraw from the Middle East before we start WWIII.

A large number of Republican legislators seem to be emotionally constructed to do only one thing well - cringe. Republican resistance to surrender in Iraq would collapse and all the tragic scenario of an American defeat in Iraq, from genocide to more 9/11 scale attacks on US soil, would begin to play out.

The president knows this. He is walking as fine a line as he can on the Iran issue. The only way we will attack Iran is after the election and only if the new president-elect signs off on the plan and we have Old Europe on board (which might happen given what the French are saying).

Today's new word

Hezbollization

(noun) A process whereby evil murderous thugs are turned into everyday heroes by an overzealous mainstream media. Hezbollize (verb) Assign great social importance to gangsters, treat them as celebrities (Hez-boll-ized, Hez-boll-iz-ing, Hez-boll-iz-es)

Example 1: "Cross burnings bring warmth and comfort to homes without central heating, as caring KKK activists distribute clean white clothing among impoverished kids."

Example 2: "Crips, Bloods, MS 13 organize daily after school programs, engage minority children in pharmacological economics and ballistics training"

Tonight's Music

In keeping with this September's theme of reposting my favorites from the past year here is Corvus Corax perfroming Dulcissima live in Berlin. This performance is from their DVD Cantus Buranus.

Cantus Buranus was based upon the Carmina Burana manuscript discovered at the abbey of Benediktbeuern in 1847. The manuscript is a collection of 13th century songs and poems (Carmina Burana means "songs of Beuerm").

No one knows exactly what medival music sounded like, but the historical record suggests that it was energetic.

The moon must be full cause the moonbats are barking

TIPTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem." Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

"The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death," he said.

It can be fun watching them try to out-moonbat one another.

At this point the Breck Girl has to know that she doesn't stand a chance in hell of getting the nomination. This is either a bid to be Hillary's running mate or a pure vanity run.

I'm betting on a vanity run because Edwards is simply too stupid to know how stupid he is making himself look.

The Only Ones antisemitic enough

From Christy Li's blog on TownHall:

Columbus, Ohio Division of Police have launched an investigation after YouTube Video's surfaced where a 15 year veteran Police Officer Susan Purtee is seen in videos along with another woman calling themselves The Patriot Dames making anti-Semitic comments.

One of the women says, "we are going to investigate to see if the Jews are the problem in the United States." On one portion of the video, the women discuss Adolf Hitler and say, "...when Hitler tried to get rid of them no other country wanted them."

During another segment, Purtee's co-host is seen holding up a sign that reads, "The Jews are the problem."

Jim Gilbert, President of the Columbus Fraternal Order of Police defended Purtee saying, "...she is entitled to her opinion."

Here are all three videos where Officer Purtee and friend talk about the Jooos:







Two housemothers in the League of German Maidens?

Humor must be built upon a foundation of truth

From The People's Cube:

(BAGHDAD) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cautioned yesterday that the United States could face civil war if disunity continues among differing factions in the United States Congress. "If we can trust CNN and the Arabic edition of The New York Times, it's only a matter of time before a civil war breaks out between the red states and the blue states," Maliki said to a hushed audience of Iraqi veterans and their families, suggesting that the fanatical leaders of Congress "be ousted as swiftly as a convicted thief's left hand is separated from his arm in Saudi Arabia."

"I believe the tenor of rhetoric in Congress grows so extreme that it will likely lead to a brutal civil war among rival political factions," Maliki said. He singled out Senators Harry Reid, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, and Charles Schumer as well as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, calling them "haboobs," an Arabic slang term which, loosely translated, means "castrated camel jockey."

"We here in Iraq know a show trial when we see one," Maliki said, referring specifically to the Senate's repeated attempts to take down Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for the purpose of having the Democratically controlled Senate appoint a new attorney general so that impeachment proceedings against President Bush could begin. "Civil wars have started for lesser reasons," he added.

In what Maliki termed a polite and well-meaning push, he has put the US Congress to a timetable, saying that he expects resolution to several important domestic issues before the first Presidential primary in 2008.

"It is Harry Reid's and Nancy Pelosi's 'last chance'," Maliki stated, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "For if the divisive rhetoric doesn't stop, these extremists should voluntarily step down, or members of their party should oust them in the interest of unity."

Maliki urged Congress to come back immediately from its vacation to deal with many unresolved issues. "Permanent tax cuts are a must," he said, "but the issues of immigration and social security, as well as domestic oil extraction and building new refineries are also crucial in preventing the otherwise inevitable slip into anarchy."

Maliki apologized in advance for comments that might appear "discourteous," but added, "It's about time someone said them."

About time indeed.

Chupacabra discovered in Texas?

CUERO, Texas (Sept. 1) - Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She's been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it.

But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.

"It is one ugly creature," Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.

Do you know what would be justice?

If all the leftists who bitch about "war for oil" were sentenced to live the rest of their lives without any of the things which oil give us. Things like (but not limited to):

Any form of personal motor transport.

Anything that must be shipped by truck, ship, train or airplane.

Modern medicine.

Anything which is manufactured using any kind of petrochemical such as plastic.

Anything manufactured with electric power.

Any kind of food or beverage grown or otherwise produced further away than a man can walk or that a horse drawn wagon can travel.

Modern telecommunications including computers and the Internet.

Any scientific knowledge or technology whose discovery depended upon any kind of advanced scientific instrumentation.

Marijuana grown anywhere other than locally.

Air conditioning in the Summer.

Heating in the winter from any source other than wood, dried dung or coal if they live in an area where coal can be mined without anything but muscle power.

All forms of contraception other than the rhythm method.

All music which cannot be played on acoustic instruments by local musicians or wandering (on foot) minstrels.

In fact anything at all not available before the invention of the steam engine.

Send them back to an era where the average human lifespan was in the neighborhood of 48 years, most women died from complications of childbirth and most children died before the age of five. To an era where doctors thought that mercury was a sovereign cure for almost everything that bleeding wasn't effective for.

Let's see how long they would last.

Tonight's Music

This is Zoot Suit Riot from The Cherry Poppin' Daddies. This is available on their CD Zoot Suit Riot.

Back from town

The good people were out shopping.

Having lunch.

And enjoying one of the last warm days of the year when you can walk around in shorts and bare feet.

This stuff is three times as good as ice cream. It's so addictive that some people call it frozen heroin.

I stayed mostly around the Grove Arcade.

Inside the Arcade looking north.

All in all a lazy day in the city.

I just might attend and take some pictures. It looks like a place where free condoms could be had.

Going to town

The weather outside is perfect. It is about 74 degrees with a breeze and overcast. I'm going to downtown Asheville and take some pictures. I'll post some later this evening if I get anything interesting.

See you then.

Saturday morning cartoon with a commercial

This is another wartime cartoon which has been banned because it thought to be insulting to Germans.



Here is another commercial from the 1960's advertising a toy gun. Imagine an ad like this on TV today. It would send the moonbats into orbit.

Of course today the gun would be made in China and would blow the kid's hand off.

More Democrat worry over Mrs. Bill Clinton's electability

Bob Novak tells us something that we could well have figured our for ourselves:

Many of the Democratic congressmen who ousted Republicans in marginal House districts last year privately express concern about the impact on their re-election prospects if Hillary Clinton is nominated for president.

Because of the strong possibility that Sen. Clinton indeed will be the party's candidate, these congressmen will not openly express their fears. But they dread her impact from the top of the ticket.

Clinton's opponents don't raise the question in public. But there is such underground talk in Iowa, the state opening the battle for convention delegates, questioning her "electability."

Well, maybe we couldn't figure it out for ourselves. Back in the closing days of Bill Clinton's presidency when the idea of running Hillary for the Senate in order to prepare her for a White House run in 2008 was being floated I said that she would not enter the race unless she was guaranteed victory.

I didn't mean that she wouldn't run unless she was far ahead in the polls. I meant that she would not risk running unless she had some mechanism in place which would end up with her being declared the winner regardless of how anyone actually voted.

That view of the Clintons as invincible, always five steps ahead and willing to pursue their ambitions with utter ruthlessness does have some support in the facts - for one thing the small graveyard of dead bodies that have followed their political career. Another would be the truly large number of Clinton associates who have been investigated, arrested, tried and convicted or fled the country to avoid arrest, trial and conviction.

However Hillary is not invincible. The fact is that she would almost certainly lost her bid for reelection to the Senate if Rudolph Giuliani had not had a nervous breakdown over his colon cancer and stepped back from running. [BTY, what was up with that? The doctors caught the cancer early enough that he was virtually guaranteed a cure and the treatment was not such that it would have kept him from campaigning and the sympathy factor would have given him at least five points in the polls - is this a character issue?]

A look at Hillary's conduct as First Lady and the way she used the unprecedented power that Bill gave her to actively shape policy tells us that Hillary has wretched political instincts. The choices she made to fill cabinet posts all turned out to be disasters (we all do remember the evil Janet Reno and the buffoonish Joycelyn Elders, don't we).

Remember also Hillary's handling of the White House Travel Office situation. The Clintons wanted to replace the director and staff with their own cronies. They had every right to do this because the Travel Office staff are at-will employees who have no civil service protection. However it wasn't enough for Hillary to simply pink-slip them. No she had to try to frame them for federal felonies and send them to jail.

Then let us recall the way that Hillary handled the Paula Jones case. All Bill would have had to do was issue a vague apology for any "misunderstanding" of his entirely "honorable" intentions and write a check and let the mainstream media see that the whole thing went away. But Hillary went into full attack mode and made sure that the scandal was dragged out for as long as possible and got as much publicity as possible [was this an attempt to make Bill appear innocent so that she would not appear to be standing by her cheating husband as the co-dependant enabler in a dysfunctional relationship, or was she just such an arrogant elitist that she wasn't going see one dime of "her" money go to a piece of "trailer trash"?]

And then let us remember the mother of all political blunders. HillaryCare (tm). The attempted hostile takeover of one seventh of the American economy. A socialized health care scheme which was so thoroughly Stalinist that it even included jail terms for anyone who saw a doctor not chosen for them by the state. [The part about labor camps would have been added as an amendment during the House debate]

HillaryCare went down in flames in a wreck which combined the size of the Hindenburg disaster with the violence of a space shuttle burning up on reentry. Hillary couldn't even get Democrats to vote for it. The way the whole trainwreck was put together - in the strictest secrecy - the way she dealt with concerns brought up by lawmakers in her own party - threats that if they didn't shut up and toe the line that they would be demonized by the White House - reveal a woman with a soul far more like Adolph Hitler than Elenore Roosevelt.

I'm really thinking that Hillary isn't all that much to be feared. I do know that there is the "Oprah factor", where Oprah will tell her mindless followers that it is a good thing that a woman is running for president and that they should all go out and vote for her and 5 million women who have never voted before and will never vote again will go out and put Hillary over the the top on election day. That is a real concern.

Yes, I know that Oprah has endorsed Obama, but what about when Obama doesn't get the nomination? Will Oprah then endorse Hillary or will she sit out the general election? [She actually might, if Hillary wins the White House that means that Oprah will have to give up being the most powerful woman in America - she might be unwilling to do that]

But even if the Oprah factor works as feared there is the "I'm scared shitless of Hillary factor" to balance it. Hillary is disliked by a majority of the American people. Even people who will vote for her to keep a Republican out of the White House wish that they could vote for someone other than her. A great many people who don't like the Republicans enough to vote for them will dislike Hillary enough to vote against her.

Will that be enough to balance the never-before-voted women? I don't know, but if Republicans pick a good candidate and run an positive, aggressive and intelligent campaign there is every reason for Democrats to worry about next November.

BTY, in the polls where they do the head-to-head match-ups of all the possible Democrats against all the possible Republicans the Breck Girl does the best. Dims might put that into their bong and smoke on it for a bit.

Craig and Warner both do Republicans a favor and leave

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, under intense pressure from party leaders to step down in the aftermath of an undercover sex sting, plans to resign his seat on Saturday, Republican Party officials said Friday.

Through intermediaries and unusually harsh public statements and actions, party officials made it clear they wanted Mr. Craig to quit before Congress returned from its summer recess next week, hoping quickly to conclude an embarrassing episode that threatened to complicate an already difficult election cycle for Senate Republicans.

Republican Party officials said Friday evening that they had been notified of Mr. Craig’s intention to give up his seat as of Sept. 30 and that Gov. C. L. Otter, a Republican, would name a replacement.

The disclosure of Mr. Craig’s guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge resulting from his arrest in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in early June was not the only political setback for Republicans this week. On Friday, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the former Navy secretary and an influential party voice on military policy, announced in Charlottesville that he would not seek a sixth term in 2008, giving Democrats a better chance at that seat.

Trying to spin this as a setback for Republicans is just too much of a stretch. Craig being pushed out by his own party just proves that the Republicans are the ones with actual morals and standards. And Warner doing the right thing and stepping aside saves the Senate the embarrassment of having another drooling fugitive from the Alzheimer's ward like the late Strom Thurmond or the unfortunately still serving Robert Byrd hanging around making the entire institution look even more silly and ineffectual than it has to.

Warner's retirement also saves the conservatives of Virginia the trouble of having to fight their own Party's state and national leadership in trying to mount a primary challenge to the increasingly RINO Warner. They will now be free to find an actual conservative to run for that Senate seat. Perhaps Oliver North will feel up to another campaign.