The Working Man, the Little Guy, Minority Rights, Tolerance.
I don’t know which political party you think I was talking about, but it wasn’t the Democrats.
Can’t beat the guy with the weight of your arguments, so you try to get him fired.
Coming right up!
It seems that the major Euro newspapers aren’t the only ones figuring out that the Bush Doctrine might just be working.
Paris, France, Mar. 28 (UPI) — Pascal Bruckner still remembers what happened in 2003, after he publicly backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Anonymous callers threatened him by phone. Strangers insulted him on the street. Friends and colleagues told Bruckner, a prominent French novelist and intellectual, that he had taken a gutsy but mistaken stance against the mighty antiwar tide in France.
Two years later, 56-year-old Bruckner is hearing very different reactions.
“People are saying that even if Americans are making a lot of mistakes, they are changing things,” said Bruckner, who supported ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but is sharply critical of the Bush administration and its handling of the conflict, “while Europe — and especially France — remains terribly conservative. We’re the world champions of the status quo.”
More like “Status Doh!�
Indiana is preparing to enact some new thought intensive legislation that would incorporate photo ID requirements of their voter ID cards.
And as is expected, the “African American� legislators are pulling the race card out of the deck.
“Black legislators compared the requirement to poll taxes that were once used for racial discrimination. They believe the change will mainly affect urban communities likely to vote Democratic, and election statistics support their argument that provisional ballots don’t provide a safety net.”
Of course, they fail to explain exactly how the two things are the same.
And if I was as talented as Rodger, I could have explained this all with a picture, like he did.
Aaron at the FreeWillBlog thinks he has already found the worst UPI article of the year.
There may be more liberal blogs than conservative ones on the Internet, but the conservatives appear to be much more adept at employing the technology of the medium to market their message and influence public opinion, experts told UPI’s The Web.
Take last year’s presidential election. Research shows conservatives used the blogs — a contraction for the term, Web logs — to talk down Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on the Internet, perhaps making themselves one of the decisive factors in the November election’s outcome.
Talking about what’s wrong with the other party? Wow, that was downright Machiavellian. We’re brilliant to come up with such an unconventional tactic.
Liberal blogs, on the other hand, despite some finding themselves in the employ of George Soros’ front organizations, hardly spent any time at all criticizing George Bush, right? Right?
I don’t know, Aaron, I think the next nine months gives the UPI too much time to beat even Koproski’s pile of dung. But not by much.
So some Islamic jackass who has never read anything more exciting than the Koran is predicting that America will cease to exist in 2007.
Well Ziad, depending on how much hands on help you plan on giving to bring to fruition your attempt to predict the future, I guess I’ll just have say we’ll see who is alive in 08.
But if I were you, I’d sell your goats now, if you get my drift.
You’d have thought that forced marriages would have been made illegal long ago, you’d be wrong.
London, UK –
Families who force young women into marriage against their will are to face prosecution under plans for a new law to be published later this year.
The proposals would create a specific criminal offence of conspiracy to cause a forced marriage. At present prosecutors have to rely on proving offences such as kidnap, assault and false imprisonment against parents and relatives of victims.
Senior officers believe that nearly 500 forced marriages have taken place in London in the past two years while the national figure is believed to be much higher. Police lobbied the Government earlier in the year for precisely such a change.
Oddly enough, some of the women’s groups on that side of the pond are worried that if this legislation passes, women forced into marriage would be even less likely to press charges.
I’m not so sure. I’m thinking that it is multi-culti speak for “But its their culture!�
Sometime in the next decade the UK government will take on the topic of Honor Killings.
Found at Tinkerty Tonk
There is a huge brouhaha going on right now on the right side of the blogosphere over Bush calling the Minuteman Militia “Vigilantes�.
I didn’t really care about Bush’s statement because he has failed us so badly on the issue of illegal immigration in his first four-plus years that I often wonder if he cares. In fact, whenever I see that specific topic posted or this new one about the word “vigilantes”, I usually go right over it without reading it so that I didn’t get infuriated.
But after reading this post at Cold Fury I realized something; BUSH WAS RIGHT.
Not only was he right, but if you look at the situation and his statement logically, he gave himself and the federal government a big backhand to the face with what he said.
Think about it, what is a vigilante?
My Webster’s Dictionary defines the word as a noun that describes someone who is of an unauthorized group organized professedly to keep order and/or punish crime.
Isn’t that what the Minuteman Militia is doing there?
John at Cold Fury makes the issue even simpler,
In all cases, the rise of vigilantes and vigilantism was because they (and the bulk of the people who supported them) considered the government unable or unwilling to enforce basic rules of order.
That is EXACTLY what is going on along the Arizona border with Mexico.
The right wing blogs need to stop whining about Bush calling the Minutemen “vigilantes� and take it right back him by basically saying “Yes they are, Mr. President. Now, are you going to do something about this problem or are citizens going to have to stand where you will not?�
I want to hear Bush respond to that question.
Get me in the pressroom and I will stand there in my pajamas, laptop in hand, and ask that question.
UPDATE: To any and all who might be confused as to where I stand on the Minuteman Project, just let me say that I do support them and their stated task. I would be joining them if not for my current fiscal obligations and that through past excursions I have learned that I have a deep seated dislike of desert environs.
I would also like to add that one of the potential buyers of my inventory of AR15 clone rifles, parts and accessories is the brother of a coworker who IS currently patrolling as a Minuteman. He has been offered them at a distinct discount for that exact reason.
Joe Huffman, blogger and organizer of the Boomershoot, spotted an article that contained some inaccuracies on the topic of “assault weapons� and crime. The article was written by Michelle Malsbury in response to the school shooting in Red Lake, Minnesota and was posted online at UselessKnowledge.Com.
The inaccuracy starts when Ms. Malsbury takes some already skewed numbers from the Brady Bunch:
The Brady Center report had found a 66% decline in assault weapons’ share of total crime gun traces from the pre-ban period to the post-ban period.
And turns their information into this line:
As a matter of fact, according to the Brady Center there was a 66% decline under the ban for crimes that could be traced back to the use of assault weapons.
Now, Joe is very much a gentleman and he sends Ms. Malsbury a polite email with the correction. You can read his email here.
Hi Joe. Thanks for your thoughts on this subject. I guess that any percentage of decline would not make a difference for those bent on carrying guns that get in the hands of babes and then kill other children…so let’s begin to issue guns to children in grade school so they can protect themselves from each other. NOT!
If I may be so bold as to comment on Ms. Malsbury’s attitudinal problems with Joe’s correction of her misstatement of fact (which she has not yet seen fit to correct, BTW)…….
The use of emotionally charged hyperbole by the gun bigots is a tell tale sign of their inability to grasp the fundamentals of the topic.
First off, I’d like to point out the fact that there was even ONE crime committed with an ‘assault weapon’ during the decade long duration of the ‘assault weapons ban’ proves that banning certain types of firearms does not save a single life and that criminals do not follow laws.
Secondly, I would challenge Ms. Malsbury to describe to me an ‘assault weapon’ in one sentence without resorting to the text of the expired legislation.
And lastly, the “Chicken Little� theory used by the gun bigots to describe what will happen to our society if we don’t ban certain types or all firearms holds as much water as the argument that climate change would stop if people would just stop driving cars powered by fossil fuels.
There is no actual scientific evidence of truth in either of these ideas and the gun bigots and the envirofascists realize that they cannot win on the merits of their arguments so they instead decide to use scaremongering tactics.
I think we can all agree that most mayors are barely worth their weight in pigslop, but Portland’s Mayor Potter shows that he is worth even less than that.
Mayor Tom Potter’s push to pry open the files of federal investigations and effectively yank Portland officers from a controversial anti-terrorism task force sparked swift — and largely polarized — responses Wednesday.
Potter and all four city commissioners plan to approve new rules next week that would allow two Portland officers to stick with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and other federal teams if investigators agree to open their files to city leaders.
“We are doing what we think is in the best interest of our community,” Potter said.
No, your honorable Potterness, I think you are being a jackass and trying to prove a point by putting the safety of your citizens behind your ego in the hopes that the feds will buckle under.
Potter wants to be handed the top secret clearance needed to see all parts of the terror reports that pertain to his city, but federal and Oregon State Right to Privacy rules preclude him from getting that information.
His solution? To pull his designated task force officers off the assignment and back out of dealing with the federalis on anything pertaining to domestic or foreign terrorism.
This tactic is also known as taking his ball and going home.
Way to act like a leader Potter!
Found at DANEgerus who has even less kind words than I do on the subject.
A while back, our goodman Chad at Dogtulosba was asking for help in locating a couple particular Catholic Saints medallions.
He posted yesterday that he need not have turned to the internet for help as it was closer than he expected.
Not too long ago, I asked my mom to find me some medals. She did send me a St. Barbara medal that was better than what I wanted. But it seems like all I needed to do was to ask the Chaplain. The Chaplain had customized St. Michael the Archangel medals with the battalion seal on the reverse side. For free.
You should go and read the rest of his post. But before you do, ask yourself “Am I Superstitious?�
