FernBlog

2008-01-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

Geraldo Rivera Republican
Americans should remember John McCain's open-borders demagoguery.

By Michelle Malkin

After spearheading a disastrous, security-undermining, illegal-alien amnesty bill last year with Teddy Kennedy, “straight-talking” GOP Sen. John McCain claims he has seen the light. In TV appearances, he vows to put immigration enforcement first. On the campaign trail, he offers a perfunctory promise to strengthen border security and emphasizes the need to restore Americans’ trust in their government’s ability to defend the homeland.

“I got the message,” he told voters in South Carolina. “We will secure the borders first.”

But how can McCain cure citizens’ distrust when his own credibility on the issue remains fatally damaged? He doesn’t believe his own election-year spin. And he knows we know it. This is cynicism on steroids with a speedball chaser.

Not all of us have forgotten how the short-fused Arizona senator cursed good-faith opponents in his own party (“F**k you!” and “Chickensh*t” were the choice words he had for Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn during a spat over enforcement provisions). Not all of us have forgotten that he voted against barring felons from receiving amnesty benefits under his plan. Not all of us have forgotten the underhanded, debate-sabotaging manner in which McCain, Kennedy, Lindsey Graham, and Harry Reid conspired to ram their package down voters’ throats.

His admission of the shamnesty failure is grudging and bitter. While he now tells conservative voters what they want to hear about the need to build the southern border fence, he takes a contemptuous tone toward physical barriers when talking to businessmen. “By the way, I think the fence is least effective,” he told executives in Milwaukee, according to a recent Vanity Fair profile. “But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.” Straight talk? Try hate talk.

For all his supposed new-found enlightenment about what most Americans want — protection against invasion, commitment to the rule of law, meaningful employer sanctions, an end to sanctuary cities, enforcement-by-attrition plus deportation reform, and an end to special illegal-alien benefits that invite more law-breaking — the Maverick remains a Geraldo Rivera Republican. Like the ethnocentric cable TV host who can’t string a sentence about immigration together without drowning in demagoguery, McCain naturally resorts to open-borders platitudes when pressed for enforcement specifics.

Instead of emphasizing the need for local and state cooperation with federal immigration authorities to prevent the release of illegal-alien criminals, or discussing wholly preventable crimes by illegal-alien thugs who should never have been on American soil in the first place, McCain harps on open-borders sob stories. Several times over the past year, in response to citizen questioners who have expressed frustration with the lack of accountability for immigration law-breakers, McCain has responded: “I am not going to call up a soldier and tell him I am deporting his mother. . . . I’m not going to do it. You can do it.”

But what if that mother had stolen an American citizen’s Social Security number to work here illegally? What if she had been previously deported, re-entered illegally, and had been convicted of previous crimes? What if she were part of a human-smuggling ring? What if she had been working in a sensitive area — airport security, a military base, a port? Would he still refuse to abide by his constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty for law-abiding Americans?

If McCain refuses to enforce immigration law against illegal-alien parents of soldiers, what about illegal-alien soldiers who used stolen or fake identification to get into the military? And why only illegal-alien parents of soldiers? Why not illegal-alien parents of police officers, teachers, doctors, and store owners? McCain’s selective enforcement policy is the exact recipe for the immigration anarchy that we have today.

The hothead has succeeded in intimidating voters and eluding tough questions from the press by playing his rhetorical violin. There is a reason so many liberals in the media and the Democratic party want John McCain to be the GOP presidential nominee. He gives them cover to continue smearing grassroots conservatives.

In Michigan, the illegal-alien parent-of-a-soldier story was met with boos. McCain’s cheerleaders at the New York Times and other press outlets attempted to depict the detractors as insensitive and racist boors — just as they did during last year’s ill-fated shamnesty campaign.

McCain has learned nothing. What about us?

—Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

2008-01-16T23:05:00.000-05:00

How is Hillary like Jimmy?

The two major Democratic presidential candidates plus John Edwards debated in Nevada last night, and the San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli says they managed to lose "the Berkeley vote" (even though Berkeley technically is in California, not Nevada):

Interesting question: Would you enforce a law that requires colleges to have an ROTC program and allow military recruiters on campus? This is a BIG deal in the Bay Area--at least in the Berkeley/San Francisco/Oakland/Santa Cruz parts of it--where "counter-recruiting" efforts goes on campus and high school students and families regularly elect to NOT be contacted by recruiters.

Start painting the picket signs: All three of them said they will enforce the law. Edwards gets points for expanding the question to talk about homeless vets, and helping returning Iraqi service personnel. [Mrs.] Clinton joins in and talks about PTSD.

The Washington Times, meanwhile, goes a bit overboard in interpreting one of Mrs. Clinton's comments:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton last night compared her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, to President Bush on executive abilities--just minutes after calling the current president "pathetic." . . .

Mrs. Clinton of New York shot back that setting vision and bringing people together is important, but "you have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy."

"We've seen the results of a president who frankly failed at that," she said. "He went in to office saying he was going to have the kind of Harvard Business School CEO model, where he'd set the tone, he'd set the goals, and then everybody else would have to implement it. And we saw the failures."

But Mrs. Clinton didn't exactly call Bush pathetic. What she said was:

You know, President Bush is over in Gulf now begging the Saudis and others to drop the price of oil. How pathetic! We should have an energy policy right now putting people to work in green-collar jobs as a way to stave off the recession, moving us toward energy independence. All of that and more is waiting for our next president.

Then again, the picture Mrs. Clinton paints of what her presidency would look like isn't exactly thrilling: She wants to be a micromanager and an "energy independence" busybody. Isn't one Jimmy Carter enough?

2007-08-09T20:52:00.000-05:00

USA WINNING THE WAR ON AL-QUEIDA IN IRAQ (PART 2)
How the Dems are crying in their beds at night...

Our already good mood brightened further this morning when we read this Associated Press dispatch from Washington:

One senator said U.S. troops are routing out al-Qaida in parts of Iraq. Another insisted President Bush's plan to increase troops has caused tactical momentum.

One even went so far on Wednesday as to say the argument could be made that U.S. troops are winning.

These are not Bush-backing GOP die-hards, but Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Bob Casey and Jack Reed. Even Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, said progress was being made by soldiers.

Now if the Democrats are admitting that we are winning in Iraq how long will it be until the Main Stream media will demand an apology from the Dems. Well, when will the New York Times apologize for their constant barrage of lies and hate speech toward the president and the Republicans that stood shoulder to shoulder with our troops in Iraq? The press and Democrats lied and our troops died... where is the remorse and apologies from these two no-nothing groups?

2007-08-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

USA WINNING THE WAR ON AL-QUEIDA IN IRAQ
... take that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, NY Times and Dems Defeatests

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece on how the U.S. Marines have made progress in Iraq's Anbar province (link for subscribers, but here's an excerpt to whet your appetite):

On a recent morning, a 25-year-old Marine Corps lieutenant from Ohio stacked $97,259 in cash in neat piles on Sheik Heiss's gilded tea table. The money paid for food for the sheik's tribe and for two school renovation projects on which the sheik himself is the lead contractor. Even the marble-floored meeting hall where the cash was handed over reflects recent U.S. largesse: The Marines paid Sheik Heiss and his family $127,175 to build it on his private compound.
Such payments have encouraged local leaders in this vast desert expanse to help the U.S. oust al Qaeda extremists and restore a large measure of stability and security. Today, Anbar is averaging about 100 attacks a week, down from 425 a week last year. On the main street in Ramadi, Anbar's main city, Iraqi laborers are removing three years of accumulated rubble that couldn't be carted off previously because of the threat of sniper fire. They're fixing sewer lines shredded by years of roadside bombs. The work is taking place on the same thoroughfare where al Qaeda in Iraq late last year staged a parade of fighters that was posted on Jihadi Web sites.
"For three years we fought our asses off out here and made very little progress," says Lt. Col. Michael Silverman, who oversees an 800-soldier battalion in Ramadi. "Now we are working with the sheiks, and Ramadi has gone from the most dangerous city in the world to a place where I can sit on Sheik Heiss's front porch without my body armor and not have to worry about getting shot."

The success in Anbar Province, which lies west of Baghdad, hasn't come easily. The key to the U.S. campaign has been recruiting, cultivating, and rewarding tribal leaders. At points, the effort even involved a Marine general making several trips abroad to woo an important exiled tribal sheik to return home. The progress here, which has unfolded as violence elsewhere in Iraq has climbed, has become central to American hopes of success in the deeply divided country. President Bush has repeatedly touted it and U.S. commanders throughout Iraq are looking to export the Marine model.

An intriguing report (translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute) from Akhbar Al-Sharq, a Syrian opposition Web site, suggests that the model may be spreading even beyond Iraq:

Representatives from 55 Syrian Arab tribes have declared the establishment of a joint association called the "Party of the Nation." A communiqué released by the party stated that it "will function democratically, together with the other opposition forces, to change Assad's criminal dictatorial regime."

Who says democracy in the Middle East is dead?

2007-07-26T22:09:00.000-05:00

An Open Letter to the Cut and Run Defeatist Democrats

Two weeks ago, as I was starting my sixth month of
duty in Iraq, I was forced to return to the USA
for surgery for an injury I sustained prior to my
deployment. With luck, I'll return to Iraq to
finish my tour.

I left Baghdad and a war that has every indication
that we are winning, to return to a demoralized
country much like the one I returned to in 1971
after my tour in Vietnam. Maybe it's because I'll
turn 60 years old in just four months, but I'm
tired.

I'm tired of spineless politicians, both Democrat
and Republican who lack the courage, fortitude, and
character to see these difficult tasks through.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of politicians who want
to rewrite history when the going gets tough.

I'm tired of the disingenuous clamor from those
that claim they 'Support the Troops' by wanting them
to 'Cut and Run' before victory is achieved.

I'm tired of a mainstream media that can only
focus on car bombs and casualty reports because they
are too afraid to leave the safety of their hotels
to report on the courage and success our brave men
and women are having on the battlefield.

I'm tired that so many Americans think you can
rebuild a dictatorship into a democracy over night.

I'm tired that so many ignore the bravery of the
Iraqi people to go to the voting booth and freely
elect a Constitution and soon a permanent
Parliament.

I'm tired of the so called 'Elite Left' that
prolongs this war by giving aid and comfort to our
enemy, just as they did during the Vietnam War.

I'm tired of antiwar protesters showing up at the
funerals of our fallen soldiers. A family who's
loved ones gave their life in a just and noble
cause, only to be cruelly tormented on the f uneral
day by cowardly protesters is beyond shameful.

I'm tired that my generation, the Baby Boom --
Vietnam generation, who have such a weak backbone
that they can't stomach seeing the difficult tasks
through to victory.

I'm tired that some are more concerned about the
treatment of captives than they are the slaughter
and beheading of our citizens and allies.

I'm tired that when we find mass graves it is
seldom reported by the press, but mistreat a
prisoner and it is front page news.

Mostly, I'm tired that the people of this great
nation didn't learn from history that there is no
substitute for Victory.

Sincerely,
Joe Repya,
Lieutenant Colonel , U. S. Army
101st Airborne Division

2007-04-30T22:03:00.000-05:00

LA TIMES... A Poor Excuse For A Newspaper

If any newspaper continuously hire deeply incompetent editors and writers one is going to end up losing readership. Oh wait, ... they lost upwards of 5% readership in the last six months... uh I wonder why? Allow me to reveal their stupidity as follows:

The Los Angeles Times, on Friday printed an exceptionally idiotic column by Rosa Brooks titled "9/11 Was Bad, but . . ." Brooks suggests that people who worry about terrorist attacks are "irrational wimps":

The 9/11 attacks were appalling and tragic, but they did not threaten the survival of the nation. . . .

Of course, 3,000 dead is 3,000 too many. But keep it in perspective. As a nation, we have survived far worse. We lost more than 100,000 Americans in World War I, more than 400,000 in World War II, 37,000 in Korea, 58,000 in Vietnam--all without allowing our national character to turn into quivering jelly.

Every year, we also lose millions of Americans to preventable accidents and disease. We're more likely to die on the road than as a result of Al Qaeda's machinations. Annually, we lose some 43,000 people to auto accidents. For the grieving families, that's 43,000 deaths too many. But, although we surely could reduce auto fatalities if we chose to make it our top national priority, the Bush administration has yet to announce a "War on Highway Deaths."

This is unoriginal as well as fatuous. It's not even original in the L.A. Times, which published essentially the same piece three months ago. But in the hope that our new friends at the Times won't make the same mistake a third time, let's repeat our analogy that shows why this is such a ridiculous argument.

According to this table, 4,742 people were lynched in America between 1882 and 1964. That's an average of but 57 people a year, and the number of annual lynchings peaked in 1892, at 230. By the standards Brooks applies to 9/11, lynching was not a big problem. It killed far fewer people than war, disease, accidents, etc.

Yet if someone were lynched tomorrow, would we shrug it off because the number of deaths is only 1/43,000th of the annual car-crash toll? Of course not. It takes a stunning degree of moral obtuseness to treat a murder in the furtherance of a hateful ideology--be it white supremacy or Islamic fundamentalism--as the equivalent of an accidental death.

A similar bit of foolishness comes from Ian Buruma, who won an award at the LA Times book festival. In yesterday's Times, he opines:

Just as Jews, during some traditional Passover feasts, ask God to bring down his wrath on the Gentiles who "don't know him," and many Christians believe that hell awaits those who don't subscribe to their faith, Muslims are led to believe that killing the enemies of Islam can be justified.

"Just as"? Surely there is a difference between believing or hoping that God will punish unbelievers and taking it upon oneself to do it. It doesn't speak well of the editors of the L.A. Times that they not only publish such nonsense but do so habitually.

2007-03-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

What would Al Gore do if his baby had a fever?

Al Gore announces that Mother Earth has a fever…

There are a bunch of clever folks out there in the internet. Al Gore made the following statement when testifying to congressmen (and women) on Capitol Hill recently:

"The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.' "

A perceptive Internet Reader called Martin Shimp shows us the practical side of taking care of feverish children (and by extension our own Mother Earth) notes:

“Clearly Gore never cared for his children while they had a fever. Fevers can be a symptom of either a bacterial or viral issue. A doctor can attempt a solution to a bacterial issue, but not a viral one. A virus has to run its course while the body fights it--and a fever is a sign of the struggle to eliminate the virus. Let's see a scientific consensus that the Earth's fever is bacteria-related.”

Another Internet Reader Scott Jacobson questions Gore's premise:

“Some great news for Daddy Gore: Little baby Earth does not have a fever. It's been awhile since Daddy Gore had a little bundle at home so maybe he has just forgotten that an infant is not considered to have a fever until her body temperature is at or above 100.4 degrees, or 1.8 degrees above normal. In the last century, little baby Earth's temperature has only gone up "almost one degree.”

I can speak for myself as I have two children of my own that overreacting is common among parents. I remember one morning when my first child was still an infant. Imagine my horror when I discovered that her temperature had risen to 99.5 degrees, almost a whole degree in just under 12 hours. Naturally, I immediately sat down and built a computer model, which clearly projected that by age 30, her temperature was going to be a staggering 19,710 degrees!

Thankfully, with the help of a patient wife and an impatient pediatrician, I came to realize that these fluctuations were normal, and that my baby daughter would not be going supernova by the time she reached her golden years.”

And yet another Internet writer named Kelly Murphy puts things in perspective very nicely:

“So let me see if I have this right. According to Al Gore, I would have to be an idiot to decide, after reading "a science-fiction novel" (he must be referring to "State of Fear") that it's OK to go about living my life in a normal fashion. Instead, I should see one science-fiction movie (his) and run screaming out of the theater prepared to change every aspect of my life to avoid certain destruction.”

2007-02-09T21:52:00.000-05:00

Further Proof that Liberals are a SORRY Bunch...

What follows is a true story that happened in the cradle of Liberal "uncivilization"... that's right in the heart of Pelosiville -- (San Francisco. SFSU to be more exact). I must warn the reader that what follows involves flag desecration and it is not for those faint of heart. Notice I did not say fag burning which of course is something totally different.

This story starts with an "anti-terrorism rally" held last October on campus by the College Republicans. To emphasize their point, students stomped on Hezbollah and Hamas flags. According to the college paper, the Golden Gate (X)Press, members of Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization showed up to call the Republicans "racists," while the president of the General Union of Palestinian Students accused the Repubs of spreading false information about Muslims.

In November, the Associated Students board passed a unanimous resolution, which the (X)Press reported, denounced the California Republicans for "hateful religious intolerance" and criticized those who "pre-meditated the stomping of the flags knowing it would offend some people and possibly incite violence."

Now you know that there are students who are opposed to desecrating flags on campus -- that is, if the flags represent terrorist organizations.

But wait -- there's more. A student filed a complaint with the Office of Student Programs and Leadership Development. OSPLD Director Joey Greenwell wrote to the College Republicans informing them that his office had completed an investigation of the complaint and forwarded the report to the Student Organization Hearing Panel, which will adjudicate the charge. At issue is the charge that College Republicans had walked on "a banner with the world 'Allah' written in Arabic script" -- it turns out Allah's name is incorporated into Hamas and Hezbollah flags -- and "allegations of attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment," as well as "actions of incivility."

If these protestations involved the free exercise of liberties such as stomping on or burning the American flag, scores of Liberal Democrat lawyers would be coming out of the woodwork to protect these freedoms. Liberals would be the only ones on the face of the earth to not see the hypocrisy of hating and attacking these students for doing exactly the same thing they would have them praised if done on the American flag. Burning the American flag incite "...violence and create a hostile environment" and are " actions of incivility."

Based on much reaction these terrorists flags have elicited makes me think that the Liberals "... doth protest too much, methinks."

--From Hamlet (III, ii, 239)

2007-02-07T21:56:00.000-05:00

Using Left Hate Mongers Comes to Bite Edwards in the Behind... OUCH!!!

There is some trouble for the Edwards campaign: His hiring of a duo of Angry Left blogresses has drawn the attention of the New York Times for "expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language":

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots." . . .

Amanda Marcotte wrote in December that the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to the use of contraception forced women "to bear more tithing Catholics." In another posting last year, she used vulgar language to describe the church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. . . .

Melissa McEwan referred in her blog to President Bush's "wingnut Christofascist base" and repeatedly used profanity in demanding that religious conservatives stop meddling with women's reproductive and sexual rights. Multiple postings use explicit and inflammatory language on a variety of issues.

Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri "said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers." And you know when the left leaning socialist paper such as the New York Times calls outs these two Angry Leftist Ladies as those people using "crude language" you know they got to be pretty nasty. In fact it does not take long into many of their blogs to find out that they like many unhinged Leftist wackos, use emotionally charged language instead of facts and then manage to spew hate speech. I just need to use one run-on sentence by one of these clowns (Amanda Marcotte) to prove my point:

"For instance, the sudden surge of leglislative attempts to strip women of their reproductive rights--most people tend to think it's a sop to the religious right, but viewed from another angle, it could be the first baby steps towards redefining women as bodies to produce more soliders, an attitude that's common to completely militarized societies.

In an incoherent detestable rant she manages to offend soldiers and Christians. If being stupid pays they would have been rich a long time ago...

2007-01-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

A Reasonable Man

A nascent Islamist regime in Somalia was crushed recently by the legitimate government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia. Now the New York Times is urging the U.S. to "try to broker a political compromise between responsible leaders" of the Islamists and the Somali government:

If the transitional government is to survive, it will have to strike a deal with moderate Islamists. The person it needs to talk with is Sheik Sharif Ahmed, who is No. 2 in the movement and by most accounts a reasonable man.

Which accounts would those be? As Daniel Freedman of the New York Sun notes, the New York Times itself, on June 6, 2006, quoted the sheikh as follows: "Until we get the Islamic state, we will continue with the Islamic struggle in Somalia." Then there is this Agence France-Presse story, also from June 7:

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the chairperson of the Islamic courts that have battled warlords for four months, said the US would face a disaster similar to a botched 1993 intervention that left 18 US army officers and 300 Somalis dead.

"If US forces intervene directly against us in Mogadishu, then we are ready to teach them a lesson they will never forget and repeat their defeat in 1993," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed [sic] told Saudi-owned daily Asharq al-Awsat.

He rebuffed US accusations that his group, which are militias affiliated with the country's 11 Islamic courts, may be linked to the al-Qaeda terror network. . . .

"We have no link to those being pursued by America, which is the biggest terrorist nation in the world despite its calls for democracy and respect for noble human values."

If the great LIBERAL newspaper like the New York Times call an Islamic terrorist who calls our country "..the biggest terrorist nation in the world"a reasonable man, I would not use this newspaper to line a bird cage.

2006-12-28T17:45:00.000-05:00

Liberal Diversity Drivel:

The Boston Globe reports on a silly new study that purports to reveal something about race relations in Massachusetts:

Despite the increasing diversity of the population here, the state's black, white, Asian, and Latino residents are living largely separate lives and take a dim view of race relations, according to a poll released today.

At work, in their neighborhoods, and socially, an overwhelming majority of white residents, for example, still interact predominantly with other whites. The survey showed that 61 percent of white respondents said they see "only a few" or no African-Americans in daily life, and 71 percent said they see only a few or no Latinos.

"We have made a great symbolic statement about Massachusetts as a home to diverse people," said Steve Crosby, dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, which commissioned the survey along with three think tanks at the University of Massachusetts. "But this data tells us there is still serious work to be done in terms of race relations and conditions for all ethnicities in our community." . . .

According to the survey, African-Americans and Latinos also associate mostly with people of their own race and ethnicity, though they are not as segregated as the white residents. A large majority of Asians also said they interact with few or no African-Americans and Latinos, but they reported seeing more white residents in their daily lives than they do people of their own race.

After reading this Boston Globe senile report, one must stop and think. Thinking involves a few minutes of reflection and then coming to your own conclusion. OK let's start... According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Massachusetts is 83.4% white, 5.9% black, 4.7% Asian and 7.9% Latino (that last category overlaps with the racial ones). What this means is that if you came in contact with a representative sample of Massachusetts folks each day, the vast majority of them (5 out of 6) would be white, while only a few would be black (about 1 in 17), Asian (1 in 21) or Hispanic (1 in 13). Even if a green Martian landed in the hallowed commonwealth today, it would still see exactly what we see not based on the Globe's study but because of sheer statistics... anything different would be an anomaly.

The only finding the Globe describes that departs from this is that "African-Americans and Latinos . . . associate mostly with people of their own race and ethnicity." What sort of "serious work" would Steve Crosby do to prevent them from doing so?

2006-12-22T10:54:00.000-05:00

Who Are You, Little Boy?

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
http://www.joyfulheart.com/christmas/who-are-you.htm
Who are you, little boy,
Who fills my womb with promise,
That an angel announced your coming?
Who are you whom the Spirit conceived in me?

Who are you, little boy,
Who grows within my betrothed
That in a dream God should call me?
Who are you for whom I am taking Mary as wife?

Who are you, little boy,
That angels chant your praise to mere shepherds?
Who are you for whom I rush down hills to town?
Who are you whom I seek in a manger?

Who are you, little boy?
Are you the promised one
For whom we've hoped and prayed and longed?
Have you come at last?

Who are you, little boy
Who fills my stable with groans of birth,
Then cries of joy and fresh-filled lungs?
Who are you that shepherds should kneel in my barn?

Who are you, little boy
That a star illuminates your birth?
Who are you to beckon old men with eastern lore
To travel far and fall at your feet?

Who are you, little boy,
Whom wise men seek in court as king?
Who are you to usurp my claim to rule my world?
Who are you, fearsome, fragile Messiah-boy?

Who are you, little boy,
Whose glory I have seen,
Who uncurls woodshavings near my bench?
Who sweeps and sands, and loves a stand-in father?

Who are you, little boy,
Who challenges scribes beyond our knowing?
Who weighs our answers, probes our doubts?
Who are you to call these golden halls, "My Father's House"?

Who are you, little boy,
Who heals and teaches and loves?
Who breaks time-honored rules without shame?
Who generates such wonder within?

Who are you, little boy,
Who wounds your mother's heart?
For whom do you suffer, if innocent?
What do you mean, "It is finished!" when you die?

Who are you, little boy,
Who comes into my world?
Do I know? Perhaps, but let me ask again:
Who you are, little boy?

2006-12-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas, Y’all!!

Missed sending last year’s card but thankfully things have settled down quite a bit. L had right hip replaced (Mar. ‘05), moved L’s parents out to Georgia near us (Aug. ’05) to help particularly with her Mom, who later passed away due to another stroke (Feb. ‘06). So thankful her Dad is near and able to spend lots of time together.

We are all still involved with Community Bible Church and children’s ministry, and I am still with Coca-Cola, still traveling (now mainly in the Southeast… SEC country).

We look forward in 2006 to:

Fernando finishing his MBA (yeah! :)),

Left hip replacement (yeah! Believe it or not :)),

Orchestra trip to Savannah

The move from Middle School to High School (yikes, :-o) )

Possible cruise to celebrate my parents 50th anniversary

Another UCLA win over the Trojans.

And who knows what else??

Definitely God’s continued grace and mercy through and in all things.

The Four Caballeros ( Fernando, Linda, Sarah, Samuel and Hobbes, too)

2006-12-06T22:26:00.000-05:00

How 'Integration' Became Discrimination

This came from James Taranto but was too good to pass up. It demonstrates how pathetically small minded and devoid of any intellectual merit much of liberal thinking can be... judge for yourself: (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes herself appear to be a mental midget in the questions she asks???)

The New York Times reports on an important case the Supreme Court heard yesterday:

By the time the Supreme Court finished hearing arguments on Monday on the student-assignment plans that two urban school systems use to maintain racial integration, the only question was how far the court would go in ruling such plans unconstitutional.

There seemed little prospect that either the Louisville, Ky., or Seattle plans would survive the hostile scrutiny of the court's new majority. In each system, students are offered a choice of schools but can be denied admission based on their race if enrolling at a particular school would upset the racial balance.

At its most profound, the debate among the justices was over whether measures designed to maintain or achieve integration should be subjected to the same harsh scrutiny to which Brown v. Board of Education subjected the regime of official segregation. In the view of the conservative majority, the answer was yes.

But liberal justices disagreed:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tried unsuccessfully to turn the chief justice's colloquy with [Seattle lawyer Michael] Madden in a different direction. The question of whether "using racial integration is the same as segregation," she said, was "pretty far from the kind of headlines that attended the Brown decision."

Bringing "white and black children together on the same school bench," Justice Ginsburg continued, "seems to be worlds apart from saying we'll separate them."

The fundamental dispute is whether antidiscrimination laws--the 14th Amendment and, by implication, the Civil Rights Act of 1964--ban discrimination altogether, or only in the pursuit of invidious ends. Broadly stated, the "conservative" position is that these laws protect individuals from discrimination, whereas the "liberal" position is that discrimination is fine in the pursuit of "diversity" or integration but not of white supremacy.

Liberals, in other words, are much more apt to say that the ends justify the means. As Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in University of California v. Bakke, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. . . . And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently."

That was in 1978. Twenty-five years later, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in Grutter v. Bollinger, upheld some racial discrimination in higher education, but wrote that she expects the need for them to have passed in another 25 years. Justice Ginsburg made a point of disagreeing, saying that one may only "hope" that it will be "safe to sunset affirmative action."

There is a curious disconnect here. "Affirmative action" is politically unpopular, having been banned by initiative in three liberal states (California, Michigan and Washington). With Justice Samuel Alito having replaced O'Connor, its legal status is shaky.

In any case, it has always been presented as only a temporary measure--a way, as Justice Blackmun put it, "to get beyond racism." Yet affirmative action's advocates act as if it is here to stay. For them, discrimination is no longer a means to an end but an end in itself. The Seattle Public Schools Web site has a statement on its Web site that expressly disavows the goal of getting beyond racism:

The intended purpose of our work in the area of race and social justice is to bring communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism and the impact is has on our society, and more specifically, our students. Our intention is not to put up additional barriers or develop an "us against them" mindset; nor is it to continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.

As George Will notes, this statement replaced one that was much worse:

Until June, the school district's Web site declared that "cultural racism'' includes "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,'' "having a future time orientation'' (planning ahead) and "defining one form of English as standard.'' The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the "giving up'' of one's culture.

This is in fact baldly racist. In concept it is distinguishable from white supremacy only in its refusal to condone value judgments. But the real world imposes its own "value judgments," and in practice it seems obviously pernicious to inculcate black children with the idea that because of the color of their skin, they cannot learn to plan ahead or to speak standard English.

Advocates of affirmative action, thus, have abandoned the goal of "getting beyond racism," upon which it was originally imposed on the public. Affirmative action has become a way of perpetuating discrimination rather than overcoming it. It is, at best, an experiment that has failed.

2006-12-03T22:39:00.000-05:00

Bush a Nazi??!! Here we go again...

Historian Fredric Smoler blogs at AmericanHeritage.com:

With respect to historical analogies, strange doings over at Slate.com: On Tuesday, Diane McWhorter published a piece sneering at the tendency to avoid comparing the Bush administration to the Nazis. She wonders why "nobody seems eager to delve too deeply into what exactly it was about George W. Bush that the voters so roundly rejected . . . polite discussion of that question does not contain any derivative of the words fascism, propaganda, or dictatorship. God forbid Nazi or Hitler." Early on, Ms. McWhorter points out that the Bush administration, like the Nazis, engages in propaganda. I do not think this successfully isolates the more distinctive qualities of National Socialism.

Ms. McWhorter handsomely acknowledges that the Bush people have avoided exterminating the Jews, but insists that this does not get them off the hook. She concludes by assuming the point at issue: The United States is like Nazi Germany because ordinary Americans went along with Bush for a number of years. Before that dazzling display of circular reasoning, she makes a number of other comparisons, and one core of her argument focuses on the brief threat to change the Senate's rules on the filibuster, which, had it happened, "struck me as a functional analog of the Enabling Act of 1933, which consolidated the German government under Chancellor Hitler and effectively dissolved the Reichstag as a parliamentary body." For this analogy to hold, you have to assume, at a minimum, that in the event the Republicans had changed the filibuster rules on confirming Federal judges, there would never again have been an election in the United States. And to assume this, you have to be an idiot.

OpinionJournal brought Mr. Smoler's article to my attention. It is amazing the level of ignorance coming out of the pens (or computers) of Slate.com. To compare our nation to Nazi Germany is beyond the pale. And then to make their ignorance more apparent, the Slate.com author equates the president to Chancellor Hitler. Reading an inane article like the one above only makes me proud of the fact that I do not subscribe to such trash.

2006-12-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

Bypassing Internet censors

Researchers at University of Toronto plan to introduce a software tool on Friday that aims to help people in countries that censor the World Wide Web.

Psiphon (pronounced sigh-fawn), a web-based utility, lets individuals in a country that censors the internet sign on to a server that gives them secure access to web pages anywhere, bypassing government restrictions.

This is especially good news for readers in China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East trying to access blogs and websites critical of their governments or critical of Islam.

If you have friends and family in locations where there is no freedom of speech and thought and you want to send the truth of the Gospel to unbelievers behind the firewall of hate and ignorance (i.e China, India, Pakistan, et. al) please consider using this small program so that they can receive information from Christian sites without being monitored, harassed or even imprisoned.

More info: You can download the program here:

2006-11-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

This is funny... Dumb and Dumber come to town!!!!

2006-11-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

Jon Carry STEPS IN IT And Offends ALL TROOPS Serving In IRAK and their Families!!!!

If you took the time to read the heading above you must be thinking to your self... "This blogger must have never gone to college..." Actually it is the Senator from Massachusetts is the one who appears to have forgotten his lessons from Yale.

The picture taken of troops in Iraq really crystallizes how the men and women of the Armed Forces understood what Kerry said to some college aged kids in California.

This stuff writes itself!!!!

INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Commander of The American Legion called on Sen. John Kerry to apologize for suggesting that American troops in Iraq are uneducated.

"As a constituent of Senator Kerry's I am disappointed. As leader of The American Legion, I am outraged," said National Commander Paul A. Morin. "A generation ago, Sen. Kerry slandered his comrades in Vietnam by saying that they were rapists and murderers. It wasn't true then and his warped view of today's heroes isn't true now."

While addressing a group of college students at a campaign rally in Pasadena, CA., Monday, Kerry suggested that they receive an education or "if you don't, you'll get stuck in Iraq."

"While The American Legion shares the senator's appreciation for education, the troops in Iraq represent the most sophisticated, technologically superior military that the world has ever seen," Morin said. "I think there is a thing or two that they could teach most college professors and campus elitists about the way the world works.

"And while we are on the topic of education, why doesn't the senator and his comrades in Congress improve the GI Bill so all of today's military members - reserves and guard included - can achieve the educational aspirations that the senator so highly values?" Morin said. "The senator's false and outrageous attack was over-the-top and he should apologize now."

2006-09-18T08:21:00.000-05:00

Debunking 9/11 Naysayers

Ran across a good succinct article... it really gets to the heart of the "naysayers".
I reviewed what the 9/11 conspiracy theorists call "TRUTH" only to be sorely disappointed at the shallowness of what they call undeniable "facts".
The so called 75 experts used to move forward the 911truth site sure do not know what they are talking about.
Some 75 experts on the "other side" can produce forensic evidence, scientific analysis, photos, simulations, and expert testimony and yet will not be able to disproved the myths that underlie many conspiracy theories because they only hold to their belief based on feelings and emotions and that feeling is that they all hate Bush.

Read Article Here

The 9/11 denial movement has enjoyed a measure of success in recent months in gaining national attention. We have seen them on CNN, heard them on radio shows, and their books and websites abound. These conspiracy theorists are eager to confront and deny any truth about the 9/11 tragedies. All except for one. No 9/11 denier is willing to face or admit this truth: They want 9/11 to have been a government conspiracy rather than a terrorist attack.

I do not make such a statement casually. It is based extensive interactions with many 9/11 deniers over several months. I have participated in several Internet forums that discuss 9/11 conspiracy theories. I have even posed as a 9/11 denier to trade theories and rumors. Conspiracists don't arrive at their conclusions based on a skeptical and dispassionate evaluation of forensic evidence or expert analysis. Instead, they avidly embrace and utilize any circumstantial evidence that appears to support their favorite theory. They ignore logic. They employ logical fallacies in their arguments. It is this lack of objectivity and reasoning that betrays the fact that the 9/11 denier is motivated, not by truth, but by the desire to defend and validate their desired theory, namely that 9/11 was "an inside job".

During these interactions, I offered forensic evidence, scientific analysis, photos, simulations, and expert testimony that disproved the myths that underlie many conspiracy theories. For my temerity, I was rewarded with insults and name-calling, and I was frequently labeled as a "government shill" or a "paid disinformation agent". According to the 9/11 deniers, this information had been manufactured or influenced by "the conspiracy cabal." Thus, rather than evaluating the offered information, 9/11 deniers attacked both the messenger and the source.

For example, during an exchange on the theory that the Twin Towers collapsed due to demolition explosives, I questioned the lack of support of this theory by any demolitions expert or structural engineer. I noted that NIST, as part of its extensive investigation, had enlisted the services of hundreds of professionals including engineers, scientists, architects, and demolitions experts. Wouldn't the findings of these professionals be considered valid expert analysis? The answer according to the conspiracy theorist was "no". Why? Because, to the 9/11 denier, NIST is a government agency controlled by the conspiracy. And, no engineers have come forward because they are being suborned with "lucrative" government contracts.

In Stephen Covey's seminal work, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", one habit is "begin with the end in mind". That habit is excellent for organizing projects. However, it is utterly out of place in the search for truth and answers. Scientific rigor and methodical evaluation of possibilities are keys to finding answers and truth. The conspiracy theorists, however, have fully internalized the "begin with the end in mind" habit in regards to 9/11. In their case, the "end" is that our government, in some shape or manner, perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or knowingly allowed them to occur. They start with that goal in mind and work backwards to find any circumstantial evidence that might support that goal.

Recent polls have suggested that this 9/11 denial viewpoint might encompass up to one-third of Americans. For example, an August poll by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that "More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East." Of course, the same poll also found that 38% believe that the government assassinated President Kennedy and 40% believe that the government is hiding the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Perhaps paranoid conspiracism is simply a mindset of our times.

In investigating the details of this poll, several interesting findings came to light. The detailed results that prompted the conclusion noted in the preceding paragraph show that 16% thought that government involvement was "very likely", 20% thought it "somewhat likely" and 59% thought it "not likely" while 5% didn't care to answer. However, when asked very specific questions on likely conspiracy theories, rather than a general question, the results dropped. Only 6% thought it "very likely" that a missile hit the Pentagon or that the Twin Towers were collapsed by demolition explosives compared to 80% who found those scenarios "not likely".

This poll also identified a rising level of anger against the federal government and concluded that "Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories". The poll also noted that those most likely to accept conspiracy theories included young adults, frequent Internet users, Democrats, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with only a high school education.

Why do I mention this poll and note these results? Because they again demonstrate that 9/11 deniers are motivated, not by a desire to find an objective and scientifically demonstrable truth, but rather because they want 9/11 to have been a conspiracy rather than a terrorist attack. A government conspiracy validates their anger at the federal government, it helps their political and/or societal agenda. An "inside job" suits the goals of these people far more than the reality of the worldwide terrorist threat.

The 9/11 deniers refer to themselves as "truth activists". That is a half-truth. They are certainly activists. But they are not pursuing truth.

2006-09-15T12:59:00.000-05:00

SNAKES ON A TREE????

World Magazine had a very interesting article discussing the symbology of snakes (or serpents) in cultures all over the world. In the Judeo-Christian world-view the serpent shows up in the creation story. The true story starts as follows:

Genesis 3:1-3
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
The woman said to the serpent, " From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

I do believe we know how the story ends (or rather continues), but I wanted to focus folks on the serpent image.

Other cultures have the serpent and tree symbology as well (but the details vary some):

Early Sumerian artificats: Show pictures of a tree at the center of the world guarded by a snake or a pair of intertwined snakes. A Chaldean poem that is perhaps 4,500 years old tells of how Gilgamesh recovered from the bottom of the ocean a plant that would give eternal life, but while he rested briefly a snake ate it: The serpent became immortal, and Gilgamesh went home to die.

Chinese lore: at that time told of a wonderful garden with a tree, guarded by a dragon or winged serpent, that bears fruit of immortality and wisdom. The winged serpent here is a force for good, protecting also a mother-goddess.

Hindu scripture: tells of good and evil celestial beings fighting until Vishnu grabbed a divine serpent, wound him around the holy mountain, and had the celestial beings pull on both ends for 1,000 years so that the great snake served as a stick that churned the milky ocean into the butter of immortality.

The Toltecs, Mayans, and Aztecs worshipped a "feathered serpent," and residents of the Solomon Islands offered the first coconut from each tree to a great serpent god. Inhabitants of Fiji spoke of a serpent god that nurtured two tiny human beings who emerged from a hawk's egg, and taught them how to cultivate bananas and root crops.

Bassari people of west Africa: speaking of a great god, Unumbotte, who made Man and made Snake; when Snake proposed the eating of fruit, "Man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it. Unumbotte came down from the sky and asked, 'Who ate the fruit?' The first couple admitted eating the fruit and said Snake had told them to do so."

It would be impossible to to have similar stories around a serpent from such disparate cultures around the world without them all having a common family and origin (or dare I say... a common GENESIS)... now where did Adam go??

2006-08-20T19:49:00.000-05:00

Obadiah is relevant TODAY....

One can hardly read the short prophecy from a prophet born 540 years BC (Before Christ) that predicts Israel's victory over Edom. I prophetically read Edom as the land that Esau (Esau is the one who obviously lost his birth right thereby losing his right to become part of the Jewish inheritance) first settled in. And Esau also became beholden to the offspring of Ishmael which was not and will never be the first born of Abraham (read Genesis 28:9), since history tells us that the first born of Abraham was Isaac. Furthermore the reason Edom (present day Jordan area) is going to suffer loss is because they stood by while Babylonians attacked Israel and carried off her people. They suffer loss because according to Obadiah, "...For you deserted Israel in his time of need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help him when invaders carried off his wealth and divided Jerusalem among them by lot; you were as one of his enemies."

This small prophet speaks of Israel’s victory over her enemies all around here, that despite the lies coming from that Iranian dingbat or any other Syrian, Jordanian or Arab terrorist today. The Bible has never been proven wrong so I am not about betting against it now…

Obadiah
1:1 In a vision the Lord God showed Obadiah the future of the land of Edom. "A report has come from the Lord," he said, "that God has sent an ambassador to the nations with this message: 'Attention! You are to send your armies against Edom and destroy her!'"

2 "I will cut you down to size among the nations, Edom, making you small and despised.

3 "You are proud because you live in those high, inaccessible cliffs. 'Who can ever reach us way up here!' you boast. Don't fool yourselves!

4 Though you soar as high as eagles, and build your nest among the stars, I will bring you plummeting down," says the Lord.

5 "Far better it would be for you if thieves had come at night to plunder you-for they would not take everything! Or if your vineyards were robbed of all their fruit-for at least the gleanings would be left!

6 Every nook and cranny will be searched and robbed, and every treasure found and taken.

7 "All your allies will turn against you and help to push you out of your land. They will promise peace while plotting your destruction. Your trusted friends will set traps for you, and all your counterstrategy will fail.

8 In that day not one wise man will be left in all of Edom!" says the Lord. "For I will fill the wise men of Edom with stupidity.

9 The mightiest soldiers of Teman will be confused, and helpless to prevent the slaughter.

10 "And why? Because of what you did to your brother Israel. Now your sins will be exposed for all to see; ashamed and defenseless, you will be cut off forever.

11 For you deserted Israel in his time of need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help him when invaders carried off his wealth and divided Jerusalem among them by lot; you were as one of his enemies.

12 "You should not have done it. You should not have gloated when they took him far away to foreign lands; you should not have rejoiced in the day of his misfortune; you should not have mocked in his time of need.

13 You yourselves went into the land of Israel in the day of his calamity and looted him. You made yourselves rich at his expense.

14 You stood at the crossroads and killed those trying to escape; you captured the survivors and returned them to their enemies in that terrible time of his distress.

15 The Lord's vengeance will soon fall upon all Gentile nations. As you have done to Israel, so will it be done to you. Your acts will boomerang upon your heads.

16 You drank my cup of punishment upon my holy mountain, and the nations round about will drink it too; yes, they will drink and stagger back and disappear from history, no longer nations any more.

17 "But Jerusalem will become a refuge, a way of escape. Israel will reoccupy the land.

18 Israel will be a fire that sets the dry fields of Edom aflame. There will be no survivors," for the Lord has spoken.

19 Then my people who live in the Negeb shall occupy the hill country of Edom; those living in Judean lowlands shall possess the Philistine plains and repossess the fields of Ephraim and Samaria. And the people of Benjamin shall possess Gilead.

20 The Israeli exiles shall return and occupy the Phoenician coastal strip as far north as Zarephath. Those exiled in Asia Minor shall return to their homeland and conquer the Negeb's outlying villages.

21 For deliverers will come to Jerusalem and rule all Edom. And the Lord shall be King!

2006-08-02T18:23:00.000-05:00

Support For Israel...

How can any Christian read Psalm 83 and not realize that the true believer (whether they be Protestant, Catholic or Episcopalian, et. al.) not support Israel. Take a minute to read the short Psalm below and don't tell me that the Old Testament doesn't apply to your life. If the Old Testament doesn't apply to you as a Christian, God will have nothing to say to you in the New Testament... think about it.

Psalms 83

O God, don't sit idly by, silent and inactive!

2 Don't you hear the tumult of your enemies? Don't you see what your arrogant enemies are doing?

3 They devise crafty schemes against your people, laying plans against your precious ones.

4 "Come," they say, "let us wipe out Israel as a nation. We will destroy the very memory of its existence."

5 This was their unanimous decision. They signed a treaty as allies against you —

6 these Edomites and Ishmaelites, Moabites and Hagrites,

7 Gebalites, Ammonites, and Amalekites, and people from Philistia and Tyre.

8 Assyria has joined them, too, and is allied with the descendants of Lot.

13 O my God, blow them away like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind!

14 As a fire roars through a forest and as a flame sets mountains ablaze,

15 chase them with your fierce storms; terrify them with your tempests.

16 Utterly disgrace them until they submit to your name, O LORD.

17 Let them be ashamed and terrified forever. Make them failures in everything they do,

18 until they learn that you alone are called the LORD, that you alone are the Most High, supreme over all the earth.

2006-07-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

Dig at the BIG DIG

Much has been said and continues to be blogged about the Mideast and Hezbollah's terrorist attacks on Israel. Needless to say, Israel is in the correct side of the war in that it has the right to defend itself, using all the force necessary to get the job done to eliminate a terrorist group. Some small minded whiners will say that Israel is attacking Lebanon and CNN agrees with this small mind interpretation by continuously showing Israel's flag and Lebanon flags next to each other as if Israel is fighting Lebanon. The truth is Lebanon chose to live with a known cancer (Hezbollah) amidst them and now the cancer is destroying their host carrier. The only hope Lebanon has is that Israel can systematically cut out and eliminate the cancer before Hezbollah kills its host.

If CNN wants to be truly "unbiased" their news would show the Israel flag clashing not with the Lebanese flag but a terrorist flag. That would truer to what's actually going on the Mideast.

This blog is not actually to talk about the Mideast, but to take a dig on boondoggle that is THE BIG DIG in Boston. As Kennedy's pride and joy, nothing brings me more joy then to expose this federal nightmare project for what it is. TO quote the nasty liberal Associated Press:

Although it's been considered an engineering marvel, the project also has also been plagued by leaks, falling debris, cost overruns, delays and problems linked to faulty construction.

So that according to AP, the liberal Democrats and Senator Kennedy believes so that other than then the leaks, the falling debris, the cost overruns, the delays, the faulty construction and the problems linked to the faulty construction, it is an engineering marvel!

I am so glad that THE BIG DIG can provide comedy relief!!!!

2006-07-07T16:14:00.000-05:00

Well, Well What do We Have Here...

I am not a reporter of any kind but it took me less than a few minutes of "elbow grease" to find the dreaded WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). I seemed to have "out-scooped" the entire Democratic Party, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and several other liberal biased reporting outlets out there. Of course I had help, Powerline Blog pointed me to a website operated by the DoD (Department of Defense) by called "Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center" (http://70.168.46.200/default.aspx). This location contains a treasure trove of document summaries of translatet Iraqi documents created during the Saddam reign of terror era. The website has the following paragragh as it's purpose for existence:

At the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office has created this portal to provide the general public with access to unclassified documents and media captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Of the many documents present I would want to direct the gentle reader to one in particular released recently. This pdf document labeled with the cryptic number of CMPC-2003-00011084-HT-DHM2A.pdf

This document was written in 1999 and it outlines the process by which the "Director of the Criminal Department, Na`man `Ali Muhammad" would hide "non-conventional
weapons and other chemical agents" from "the International Inspection Committee" and thereby following not only the United Nations but 100 % of the Democrats in this country. Please read the letter:

He added that the following procedures were implemented on the fifth month of this year [TC: May 1999] in order to prevent disclosure of the locations:

1- Relocate all IIS documents
2- Relocate all IIS chemical materials and equipment
3- Designate a group of employees from the Ministry of Health to replace the IIS employees
4- Relocate some of the officers and employees, whose job descriptions are not compatible with the Ministry of Health to Al-Rashidiah, and implement other appropriate concealment procedures. [TC: no further information].

He continues to state that present situation of the Directorate could be extended for an unspecified period of time. This situation could frequently reoccur, which has a direct negative impact on the performance and duties of the Directorate, with regards to providing essential levels of security. Consequently, the location of the site could be discovered. In addition the Ministry of Health may not be able to afford releasing its employees for a long period of time. Also, the presence of the Ministry of Health employees, and their integration with our employees, is a security breach. The close location of the directorate to other public locations, such as Al-Thaurah and Hay Al- Sinak, makes it a non-secure location. He added that the location is within the range of the enemy’s coordinates, and that special attention should be given to the collaborators who are present within these areas. The following alternate locations were suggested:

1- The Technical Research Center located on Palestine Street (previous Olympic
Committee), since part of its Criminology Research Department was transferred to the Criminology Department.

2- Scientific Research Center, since it contains some laboratories that can be used for the work of the Criminology Department.

Now if I could look up Palestine Street (previous OLympic Committe) in Mapquest...

2006-07-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

A BIGGOT CALLING OTHERS biggots...

It amazing how quickly many Democrats and their Leaders yell at the top of their lungs how others are biggots when Supreme Court decisions don't go their way. I did not hear anyone in the administration call the judges biggots when the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld did not go their way. Or I did not hear conservatives call the judges rascists when Kelo decision went down. If only the Democrats can talk about the issues instead of name calling we might have a chance at dialogue in this country.

Statement by Howard Dean on the New York Court of Appeals Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage

To: National Desk

Contact: Damien LaVera of the Democratic National Committee, 202-863-8148

WASHINGTON, July 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today issued the following statement in response to the decision by the New York Court of Appeals that the state constitution does not guarantee the right to marriage for same-sex couples, but that the state legislature could provide this:

"As Democrats, we believe that every American has a right to equal protection under the law and to live in dignity. And we must respect the right of every family to live in dignity with equal rights, responsibilities and protections under the law. Today's decision by the New York Court of Appeals, which relies on outdated and bigoted notions about families, is deeply disappointing, but it does not end the effort to achieve this goal.

"As that essential process moves forward, it is up to the State legislature to act to protect the equal rights of every New Yorker and for the debate on how to ensure those rights to proceed without the rancor and divisiveness that too often surrounds this issue."

----

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee