janet jackson's hospital visit

'twas just a "health malfunction" ;)

oh bama

All Hail Kommunity Organiznik! Koming to a Krisis near you! Details at 6 and 11!

Related quote overheard: "America is ready for a black president, just not one whose initials are B.O. and whose name rhymes with "yo mama"."

Related pic, my caption: "Friends, Romans, bitter religious gun nuts, lend me your ears - and 15 bucks for some arugula."

;)

comparison chart

"Earth is the center of the universe"
- ancient belief

"The Sun is the center of the universe"
- Copernicus

"Nothing is the center of the universe"
- Einstein

"You are the center of the universe"
- Hubbard, LaVey, Manson, Narcissus, Nietzche, Oprah, Rand, Robbins, Harris and Klebold, et.al, ad.infinitum, ad.nauseam

"None of the above" - Genesis 1

pseudo-psoetic 2

(this probably wouldn't make much sense even if you read the original first)


well crud. i
thought
he was gone
for good


hadn't seen him
for a year
or more

he used to
rummage around
my backyard
(and front)
about as long
as i can
remember



weird
there was plenty
of food around
last summer. i
guess he got
hurt
or
sick
or
something scared
him away

(?)


after a
while i stopped
feeding him

well no, not really
feeding him

just leaving out
table scraps
and stuff


anyway
must have
been monday

(oh, and he
dug through the
trashcans, too. i
should'a found
a lid

or something

)

or tuesday

remember


no
monday

he was sniffing
around
again
like he had never
left


no, he hadn't grown
actually. i
just forgot
how big
he was

and

mangy


looks hungry too. i
gotta be
careful going out

he's growling

hasn't learned any
new tricks

or really
changed much


but his face
is still
as friendly
as ever

yeah, me too

kristi in idaho needs a bailout:

Top Ten Reasons I Demand the American Taxpayer to Pay My Student Loans On My Behalf Even Though I Don’t Have A Real Job and Spend My Days Drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and Writing Top Ten Lists on the Internet

1. It’s not my fault I went to college. Everyone made me go. No one told me it would be expensive. I thought I was signing the paperwork on my cafeteria lunch plan, not loan papers.


2. It’s not my fault I didn’t get a really great executive type job straight out of college, or that I choose not to work now, and that I am therefore incapable or unwilling to pay my loans. How was I to know that a degree in history would not lend itself to great riches? Or that a minor in English is not a veritable goldmine? Nobody told me. I am guiltless.


3. I’ve got potential to be awesome. 'Potential to be awesome' is the new criteria for 'sound investment decision.' SO PAY MY LOANS ALREADY!!!


4. I shouldn’t be made to sing like Annie. Here’s the scenario: My husband gets tired of my oreo-eating, internet-watching days. He quote wises up end quote. He leaves me and my sad little ragamuffin children. My kids become Dickensian waifs who have to beg on the streets and I go to debtor’s prison where I am heartily befriended by all the other lady debtors on account of my short stature and cute freckles. They call me ‘Wendy,’ like the hamburger girl and make me sing ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie. Everyday. I hate you for not paying my student loans for me.



5. WHAT’S THAT THING OVER THERE????? (swipes wallet)


6. And then there’s Africa. I know that in a perfectly just and reasonable world, a person like me would be responsible for my own semi-retarded financial decisions. But since there are children starving in Africa things aren’t fair, are they? Pay my loans!!!


7. There are two kinds of people in the universe: a. people who are exempt from all the laws of the federal and state governments, and also from the stupid laws perpetrated by the SEC, as well as unspoken laws of decency and good taste and b. everyone else. I’m in category a. on account of my track record of breaking laws of federal and state governments, as well as my track record of embezzling and insider trading and massive fraud-doing. Me being in category a. and you being in category b. defines our relationship in a way that includes you sending me your credit card numbers so that I may pay off my student loans.


8. Speaking with this obnoxiously aggressive tone really just reiterates the desperation of the situation, not how wrong I am. I am absolutely *indignant* that you are questioning my moral authority and need for your loan payments. How dare you. People are going to LOSE THEIR HOUSES AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT!!! HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT????????


9. Your own student loan debts are irrelevant to the situation. This is not about you. Stop being selfish.


10. It is not a problem that you don’t have the money to pay off my loans. Is that all you’re worried about? That you don’t have the money? Don’t be an awfully ridiculous person with pithy and ridiculous concerns. You have a couple of options.
1. Option one: You get some green construction paper and a marker. You draw a head with a wig, a pyramid, a ‘ONE DOLLAR,’ and some other mystical squiggles on it. You do this several thousand times. Then you give me all of your ‘dollars’ and I take care of the student loan debt.
2. Option two: You don’t actually make the dollars, but tell me that you did and promise that they are on the way. I’ll let my lenders know that the dollars will be there eventually, and in the meantime I borrow some more dollars because I would really love a vacation and also a sailboat. This new debt is also your responsibility, by the way.
3. Option three: My personal favorite. You tell me you don’t have the money. I say, “That’s ok. I’m going to provide funding that will create jobs out of thin air, like magic. You will be able to get one of these magical jobs, then you will be able to use the money to pay off my debt.” Problem solved.

It’s all so easy and understandable, isn’t it? Of course it is. Now is the time where you send me your money and I comfort you with meaningless promises that will not actually provide comfort, or logic, for that matter. It is also the time when you might want to consider investing in precious metals, a foreign currency or whatever it is people invest in during economic depressions. I heard bow-tie and suspender manufacturers did great the last time around.

(slightly edited)

early halloween

there's protestors against everything these days ;)

yes and no

amnesty: no

isolationism: yes, no, and yes

freedom: yes and yes

bazooka, i guess

since we're apparently forbidden from "shooting the actual criminals"

move along 3

and please try to make some right turns occasionally

move along 2

...and take your scandals with you

move along 1

nothing to see here

mortgage crisis news

i doubt you'll hear a peep about this on the evening news:

Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg

...the story is now clear... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.

In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.

The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.

Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.

It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.

Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were... enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even "on the page" of allowable interpretations.

Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a "world-class regulator" that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks... The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie "continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road," he said. "We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing."

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

...fertilizer too, probably

there's a lot of worms near these "grass roots"

it's!

...been a longer weekend than usual. will post something before too long...

the cult of darwin

this onion article is to darwinism as that new yorker cover is to obama - reality masquerading as sarcasm.

p.s. i think the first image looks more like che guevara ;)

pop quiz

who is it?

I am under 45 years old, I love the outdoors, I hunt, I am a Republican reformer, I have taken on the Republican Party establishment, I have a number of children, I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office.

answer at viewpoint

on msm elitism

Lileks rips them in his inimitable style:

Where was I? Ah, ye: I hate Elites. Which is why, whenever I am having brain surgery, or eye surgery, which is sometimes necessary due to all my non-blinking, I always hire some random Regular guy, with shaking hands if possible, who is also a drunk, scared of the sight of blood, and harbors a secret dislike for me.

Sigh. Well, let’s turn that around. I need a plumber, so naturally I call up a professor who specializes in Roman aqueducts, because what I really need when the faucet is broken is someone who can place it in the context of the ancients’ understanding of fluid dynamics and potable-water storage systems.

The term “elitist” does not mean a smart person with an area of expertise. It means a person who occupies a narrow stratum of society, usually academic – although people in think-tanks who view the world through steepled fingers qualify as well – whose Olympian perspective is usually predicated on a set of assumptions about people tinged with equal parts indulgent condescension and faint amusement, as an anthropologist might bring to the study of a Cargo Cult. It also confuses proximity to the Washington Monument with access to truth.

A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise -- lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world -- are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what's left of our precious freedoms.

All that is loveliest about this earth? They actually have the power to destroy flowers, Mozart, sunsets, children’s laughter, dog’s smiles, the sound of crickets, and Megan Fox? They have this power?...

Once home, she phones Brother Strawman:

When I got home from church, I... called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, "Don't you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?"

I am unwilling to say what God can and cannot do, but I think “hot flame” is low on the lists of things from which He instinctively recoils. Naturally, the man of God heartily concurs:

And he said, "Absolutely. They are everything He or She** hates in a Christian."

It would be instructive to know why, and illustrative to find which points of Rev. Wright’s theology God loves more than McCain’s, but I suppose when you’ve taken a vow to lead a simple life everything is above your pay grade.

I have been in a better mood ever since.

No doubt; nothing gives the soul peace like knowing God hates the same people you do.

I'll only add one comment about one line the rip-ee wrote:

"Fill up a box with really cool clothes that you haven't worn in a year, and take it to a thrift shop."

Funny, the most charitable people I know vote predominately (R)*, and most of the "smug egomaniacs" I know vote straight-ticket (D) without thinking.

*with the exception of relatives of my grandparents' generation who voted democrat before that party went insane in '68 .

** p.s. one more thought: i would not put too much stock in what that 'jesuit friend' says about God if that friend hasn't read His Book closely enough to know whether He refers to Himself as a "he" or as a "she".

on race and name-calling

warning: some of you may be offended by certain words in the following article, but that's entirely relevant to the point.

local malcontent clarifies issues about the usage of racially-specific terms:

Let's get this ugly matrix of language out into the open OK?

Overall, it seems to me that to be called a 'racial-specific' name like "Chief" or "Nigger" or "Homeboy" very deeply depends upon the level of friendship between the two or more persons involved. If a stranger were to call me "Chief", I'd become alert for any other language he/she used, and whether that other language was friendly or not. While my close friends of any race do not call me 'Chief', if they were to do so, I'd not let it go as a racial insult, unless that type of stuff continued, and became annoying to me. In rap music, some rappers use the other term mentioned above regularly to unknown fans, and I have heard that term used without insult among black friends, all who know each other well. However, that other term is generally used as a self-identifier, to say "I'm cool, I'm down widya", for acceptance within that racial group. The very same way that the terms "Heyyah" and "Yahhay", within Indian circles are used - one of those is friendly, I'll just say.

That is the personal, the intimate viewpoint I have: On the personal, friendly, wannabe level.
On a somewhat larger scale, but still one which remains within one's own racial identity, some terms of racial identification are intended as direct terms of derision, merely to single out someone who is considered to be anti-social or unliked by the speaker, to influence others within that race to feel the same way: "The drunk Indian, the ho, that spic, just a Pollack, the damn Jew, etc." These identifiers are never heard by the person being referenced; they are a racial slur then, SIMPLY BY DRAWING A RACIAL EPITHETS with these words, in describing another person.

On a grander, but still a general level, there are terms which are undeniably insulting to members of each race. Need I list some of them?

How about "Cracker"? How about "Whitebread"? How about "Blanketass"? How about "Sambo"? How about "Chink"? How about "Wetback"? How about "Tarbaby"? How about "Papoose"? How about "Towelhead"? How about "Camel jockey"? Ever been called any of those terms, yourself?

All offensive, and all wrong to be said by anyone who claims to have a shred of decency about themselves.

On that same level of the matrix of racism / identifiers, and as a Conservative American, I would add this - It Is Wrong, It Is Divisive to categorize any group or any individual living here in our American Stew, as a HYPHENATED-AMERICAN. It is nothing more than another attempt to divide our people, and It Is Wrong.

I am friends with African-Americans who have never ever been to Africa, Jews who've never been to Israel, a German-American woman who has never even wanted to visit Germany~! - Not to mention all the Italian-Americans, the Brazilian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans,,,, who themselves DO NOT SELF IDENTIFY AS THAT, yet must endure being categorized as that, by others. Or be catagorized as worse-.

This too, is wrong, is an attempt by someone somewhere to try and divide ALL OF US AMERICANS.

**I told Don in my email to him, that I hate the term "Native American"; and I do. What can be more separating, more divisive among real, red-blooded Americans than some group being better than other equals by being termed "Native"?!! Where were you born - in any American state or territory? Well, welcome to the world of being a "Native American". That is all that term should mean.

And again speaking personally, on the subject of all the uproar and the offense on sports teams being named after Indians, like the Cleveland Indians, the Florida State Univ. Seminoles, the Fighting Illini, the Chicago Blackhawks, (my gosh~!) the Atlanta Braves or the Kansas City Chiefs - Why don't you people get a life, and cease being so easily offended? None of those teams represent YOU - otherwise, they'd be called the Pathetic Washington Crybabies of the NFL. Instead, they represent the warrior, the aggressive, the fighting winner and strong spirit of us INDIANS, and essentially of Us All Americans, fools.

If you are a friend of mine, call me "Chief", and we will both smile, and have a good laugh... Together.

don't go green

it'll shrink your brain:

Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.

Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system.

noticed by vodkapundit, who somehow failed to mention the part that:

Brain scans of more than 1,800 people found that people who downed 14 drinks or more a week had 1.6% more brain shrinkage than teetotallers.

harsh language warning

and deservedly so:

...Democrats today present as sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling its country down the drain, to get it back.

Regardless of the race of the Democrats' selected nominee, Martin Luther King's dream of judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin has been transformed into a tawdry thing; a dried husk in which they wrap their skeletal remains, a hollow phrase spewed by the ascendent race hustlers of the party and lapped up by their acolytes...

The gangrene that has rotted the body of the party has transformed it into some transnational Dorian Gray. Strutting and noble and handsome when preening before the cameras and the crowds, but putrid and pestilential when you see it as it is in the dull light of its polluted "new morning."...

Instead of inspiration the Democrat Party delivers shopworn socialist solution, numbing boredom, sheer despair, intellectual and spiritual poverty, sexism, and the worst sort of racism seen since it gave birth to the Klu Klux Klan. Classical racism loathes "the other." The new racism of the Democrat requires one loathe oneself first and last, and to accuse those that do not of racism...

Like they say in the National Parks, "Once a bear is hooked on garbage, there's no cure."

all this and more from someone who voted stright-ticket democrat until 2004.

---

update - currently the last comment at that thread, a ray of hope:

All I can say is it does my heart good to know there are people in the Democrat party who still retain a sense of fair play and goodness towards people who disagree - sometimes vehemently - on politics. It was said by someone, "we can disagree without being disagreeable." How true, and how easily the current incarnation of the Democrat leadership has disregarded that concept.

I refuse to believe their are Democrats who march in lockstep with the extremism of todays Dem party. I refuse to believe there are Democrats who believe killing babies is no big deal. I refuse to believe there are Democrats who believe cutting and running is the way to support our military and national interests. I refuse to believe there are Democrats who think it's perfectly okay to make up the most vicious lies (spread via a like-thinking media) about an opposing candidate, while on the other hand accusing the people they are smearing with lying about them!

This thread has given me hope that there are people who can see above all this garbage.

coincidence?

monday evening noticed a big one:

1. ‘Big Bang’ experiment starts well - So they fired up the Large Hadron Collider,
2. North Korea denies Kim is unwell - which is North Korean for “The Dear Leader has lapsed into a coma,”
3. And Southern Iran was hit by earthquake,

All on the same day. Coincidence?

Yes.

comment approval

for the convenience of loyal readers, i've turned off comment approval here for posts less than a month old. that should remain in effect unless i decide there's a need to turn it back on.

Vote for Obama

Not for U.S. President - for U.N. Secretary:

Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

Fine. Should Mr Obama inexplicably fail to win the Presidency, I’d support him for Secretary-General of the United Nations, once Ban Ki-moon’s term ends in 2011. It’s a job to which he’s probably better suited, anyway: more oratory, less scut work.

Then ask yourself:

"What has the world done better than the U.S.A. to make their advice be given any credence whatsoever? Economy? Science? Invention? Liberty? General prosperity? Military and political power? Culture (that normal citizens actually like - as opposed to the tripe their alleged “betters” think they should appreciate)? Our absolute dominance in any sport any thinking person could possibly find interesting (i.e., not scoccer or cricket)? The loudmouths living in rest of this world really should stop embarrassing themselves and, instead of presuming to lecture Americans about how inferior and stupid and provincial they are, should buy a clue."

(paraphrased)

full of vitamins and irony

Viewpoint:

"The party which has been portrayed by the media for years as a collection of chauvinists, misogynists and miscellaneous neanderthals has a woman on the ticket, only the second time in history a national party has done this, and all those redneck wife-beaters are wild about her. Meanwhile, organizations like the National Organization for Women which demonstrated the depth of its concern for women by remaining almost completely silent during the sexual depredations of Bill Clinton, including allegations of assault, don't even try to conceal their dismay with Sarah Palin. Oprah Winfrey, who has championed the advance of women throughout her career, refuses to allow Palin on her show."

radical rightwinger

Palin’s Radical Pastor Calls on God to ‘Bless’ USA - in extreme contrast to the "reverends" of the "compassionate" left.

radical roundup

our long national nightmare is nearly over:

"Boomer Weirdness" is the great eruption of irrationality that seized the West three decades ago, when the Boomer Left rose to positions of power.

I don't think the Boom Generation as a whole is any madder than other generations; but the Boomer Left - ah, now we're talkin' several curlicues short of a plumbline.

When the Boomer Left "Marched Through the Institutions" (as they called it) in the 1970s and 80s, you could actually see a sudden wild swerve in our news media, our universities and politics. The Democratic Party was seized by the Far Left after the 1968 Chicago convention. The New York Times went PC in the 70s, and you could actually see the new, Far Left orthodoxy lock down in a matter of months. It hasn't recovered yet.

But it wasn't just the US. Today the old, high-brow Times of London reads like a tabloid, with girlie pics and all. Britain is now a shadow of its former self; nobody knows if it will ever recover. Europe has become a defense parasite on the United States, and we tolerate it. The Western world went from rational thinking to the Planet of the Weird. It's been slip-slidin' away ever since. Normal people watch it happening everywhere, and they feel utterly helpless to stem this epidemic weirdness, often rising to the level of criminality.

Our Leftist politicians are all kind of weird. From Howard Dean's Scream to Obama's uncontrollable God Complex, from Hillary Who Must be Queen to Bill's sly seductions, all the way to John Kerry's delusions of Swiftboat heroics, and Algore's weird idea that NASA should launch a hundred-million dollar satellite specifically to beam TV pictures of a rotating Planet Earth back to all of us - these people are not planted on terra firma. They have little planetoids going around their heads.

Nancy Pelosi's bubblehead response to questions about oil drilling is "I'm trying to Save the Planet." Don't tell me that's normal. It's not even normal in the hare-brained precincts of San Francisco. This is the woman who took it upon herself to negotiate with Bashir Assad as soon as she was elected Speaker, while her sidekick Steney Hoyer went to the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, to the distress of the Egyptian government. Barack Obama even sent Zbig Brzezinski over to Damascus - to do what? Negotiate with Bashir Assad? Tell him that help was on the way?

This is madness. But running a separate foreign policy has been a Democrat routine ever since Ted Kennedy tried to undermine Reagan and House Democrats tried to aid the burgeoning Communist Sandinistas. But Cold War liberals like Jack and Bobby Kennedy would have called it treason.

The Boomer Left even gave its weirdness a pretentious name: Post-Modernism. Old-fashioned Modernism, according to this tale, is the height of rationality. The ideal of Modernism is good sense, objectivity, reason, logic, and tolerance for competing ideas. Its symbol is the Empire State Building, square, tall, and built to minimize real estate costs on Manhattan.

The US Constitution was built as a bulwark against untrammeled lust for power. The Founders didn't know Nancy and Harry in person, but they were pretty sure that power-mad demagogues would show up some time. They had studied history and understood human nature. As we can plainly see, they were right.

Post-Modernism leaves all that rational thinking far behind, like Alice tumbling through the looking-glass. The weirdness of the Left is not an accident; our hebephrenic media folk were taught flashy Po-Mo nonsense in their Ivy League classrooms, and they were dumb enough to fall for it. That is why they deliberately abandoned all those old-fashioned newspaper ideals of truth, objectivity and fairness. (And that's why the Old Media are finally going bankrupt today. Hooray!)

don't question their patriotism!

...or their eco-friendliness either! the dnc now trashes the flag literally as well as figuratively.

do i detect a pattern?

nuke did:

Trying to keep up with the on-going character assassination attempt by the MSM has been tough.

Have I left any out?

1) Trig not Palin’s son - LIE
2) SP was hiding Bristol’s pregnancy - LIE
3) SP endorsed Pat Buchanan - LIE
4) SP hates Jews - LIE
5) SP was never discussed as a possible veep candidate - LIE
6) SP was a member of an Alaskan secessionist party - LIE
7) SP was not vetted by the McCain campaign - LIE
8. SP said the Iraq was was a mission from God - LIE
9) SP lied about opposing Bridge to Nowhere - LIE and most recently debunked by the Smoking Gun
10) SP had an affair with her husband’s business partner - LIE
11) SP is a book burner - LIE

Sarah has been on the scene for a week now.

The behavior of the media is disgusting.

Here is the latest attempted smear, brought to you courtesy of the AP:

12) SP’s church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer. ((( Prayer? …… G A S P !!! )))

And of course, the M.O.A.S., The October Surprise, the so-called Troopergate scandal. Pshaww.

Not to mention the illegal release of her social security number, the rumors, innuendo, and the untold number of truly mean-spirited references to her sex, her small town background, her Christian beliefs, etc., etc., etc. Nothing is out of bounds to these sleazy vermin.

compare and contrast:

The high and mighty Greek God Obama doesn't want anyone talking about his close relationship with the terrorist Bill Ayres. So much so that they threaten legal action against anyone bringing this ugly truth to light. He's even taking to having reporters arrested for trespassing on a public sidewalk. This is the kind of hope and change he wants to bring to America. This is what America can expect to be a daily occurrence if he becomes President.

Well I'm bringing it up Barack Hussein Obama. Millions of other Americans will too. You have a lot of questions to answer about your relationship with unrepentant Bill Ayers. Threats and intimidations won't silence us. You have a lot to answer for Mr. Obama. Guilt by association? Well, considering the job you're applying for, **** yes.

You Libs always talk big on free speech, until someone says something you don't agree with. Then you're always quick for harassment or even legal action.

Oh, and congratulations on having a ticket that's even more liberal than the last two! I didn't think that was possible! And having two Senators on the ticket! Neither with any executive experience, let alone experience at all in the case of Obama! And Biden? Are you kidding me? He's been on the wrong side of history his entire career! The depth of sound bites and video feeds from this windbag will be a goldmine for McCain.

So read the links. See for yourself. This the the change Obama wants to bring to America.

NYT endorses Palin!!!

then again, they probably didn't intend this article to be an endorsement:

In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will

By KIRK JOHNSON and KIM SEVERSON
Published: September 5, 2008

WASILLA, Alaska — Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.

“She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership,” Mr. Riley said.

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king’s ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

“God has given her the opportunity to serve,” he said. “And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals.”

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.

“Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube.

“Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.”

Janet Kincaid, who has known Ms. Palin for about 15 years and worked with her on some Wasilla town boards and commissions when Ms. Palin was mayor here, said Ms. Palin’s spiritual path, from the Assembly of God to Wasilla Bible, has had a consistent theme.

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. “Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer — let’s put it that way,” she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said.

In the address at the Assembly of God Church here, Ms. Palin’s ease in talking about the intersection of faith and public life was clear. Among other things, she encouraged the group of young church leaders to pray that “God’s will” be done in bringing about the construction of a big pipeline in the state, and suggested her work as governor would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.”

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”...

...the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme,” Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, “If you lift your hands when we’re singing, we’re not going to shoot you down.”

Mr. Kroon (pronounced krone), a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native, said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning — including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.

It is that analysis, he believes, not anything he preaches, that makes most people in his church socially conservative, he said.

“I trust my people can go out with that and they can deal with an issue such as abortion — any issue out there — whether it’s in the public arena, or in the hospital room with their relative dying of cancer, because they will be equipped with a biblical perspective that will enable them to react in that situation,” said Mr. Kroon, who described himself as “pro-life.”

“Our congregation would tend to be conservative, and it’s not because I’ve told them to be,” he said.

Some Jewish groups have raised concerns since the announcement of Ms. Palin’s selection to the Republican ticket that discussions in the Wasilla Bible Church might go beyond conservatism. Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity — but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism — spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the “miracle” of conversions in Israel by the group’s missionaries.

The church has also come under fire among some gay advocacy groups for promoting an upcoming Focus on the Family conference in Anchorage dealing with the so-called curing of homosexuality. (wow, another big endorsement! ;)

The Wasilla Bible Church, which draws 800 to 1,000 people for Sunday service, itself is discreet to the point of self-effacement. Only a single small sign on the gravel road leading up to the property declares the name. On the three-year-old building itself, which looks more like a warehouse than a cathedral, a large cross over the rear entrance is the only declaration of purpose.

People who know the church and its parishioners say that the mix of simplicity and quirkiness is common in Alaska, where many people have moved over the years and left their pasts and old church lives behind.

Homegrown churches like Wasilla — started in the early 1970s by a handful of families, including Ms. Morgan’s, during the construction boom in building the Trans-Alaska pipeline — have become singularly Alaskan. Mr. Kroon still remembers the days of a single room with a wood-burning stove that he would have to fire up before services.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-immersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here, and they still say, ‘Don’t put me on the membership roll,’ ” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”

Quotes about Sarah Palin

Whaddya know, McCain actually "energized the electorate".

Varifrank 1:

My reaction? Yeah, She's ready. You say you want change? Well, I got change for you right here and its Big John McCain who brought it to you. McCain picking Palin is the single best example of US Naval strategy at work since Nimitz was at Midway...

( oh, and someone tell Brit Hume that the reason she was so solid on stage and not rattled by the situation isnt because she is a polished politician, its because shes the mother of five kids. After five kids, that woman could probably withstand a 24 mortar barrage and not get rattled. A public speaking opportunity is nothing by comparison to a 2:00am feeding. )

Varifrank 2:

1. I think the choice for Sarah Palin is simple genius. This choice irritates and annoys all the right people for all the right reasons. All the reasons that have animated the press into levels not seen since Bush was elected are all reasons that I see as positives. Not from Washington? Great. Hunter, fisher, mother of 5? Perfect. Small town mayor? excellent. Not "vetted" by the liberal press? Well, sign right here Mrs. Vice President.

2. I think the most conservative of values is the phrase "None of your **** business", so yeah you could quickly guess from that I dont care that her daughter is pregnant. If the press didn't care that John Edwards cheated on his cancer ridden wife with a woman who during the affair actually had a baby, then they shouldnt dont care if Sarah Palins daughter is pregnant.

3. I am pretty tired of hearing her child referred to by the press as "A Down Syndrome Child". Last I checked, "Down Syndrome" is a condition and not a designation of human subspecies.

4. The left can't understand why anyone would have a baby unless you had nothing else to do in your life there was government sponsored day care available 6 weeks after the birth of the baby and the baby was guaranteed to be error-free. The right understands that life is a blessing and we are all enriched by its presence. This is why Sarah Palin drives the left absolutely insane. The left is all about choice but only if that choice is self-serving. To the left, choosing self-sacrifice over self-indulgence is considered a character flaw.

5. Thanks to the Sarah Palin candidacy, the Republican brand has a very human face. Monday at the Convention, you saw Laura Bush and Cindy McCain on stage, while on everyone's mind was Sarah Palin in the background. It is into this atmosphere that the anti-american left chose to riot in the street, attacking boy scouts and old ladies. Instead of attacking "the man", the left can now be seen to be out in the streets attacking women and children. Nice work boys, that should help you out in your quest to take on "the man". Oh ****, the man is now a woman...

Pajamas Media - What about that "woman's right to privacy" the left is always yelling about?:

"Privacy? Don’t bet on it. This is a whole fresh pile of mud for the left to start slinging. They’ll attack Palin’s family values stance, talk about how Palin teaches abstinence, and start trotting out the hypocrisy meme. Except this is not Palin who is the unmarried, pregnant teen. It’s her daughter. It’s not particularly shocking when a teenager does something against the parents’ teachings, is it? If we were to call out every parent who taught abstinence from sex, smoking, drugs, or drinking then had a kid indulge in any (or all) of those, we’d be here all day.

The fact is, the left is all about privacy in the matters of the womb. Were they to stay true to their colors, this mantra of theirs would seem to preclude them from judging Bristol’s pregnancy and her choice to keep her child, right? It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The Kos kids and their blog followers have already made one attempt to ruin this girl’s life. Now that they have a story with actual truth behind it, we’ll have to sit back and see how far they run with a teenager’s identity."

No Oil for Pacifists:

But it was the Eagleton canard that spoke volumes. First, just as a matter of reportorial fact, as opposed to Keith Olbermann clicking his ruby-red slippers and wishing it were so, the idea that the rank and file of the GOP wanted her gone before her speech was distilled nonsense. Now, it’s plain hilarious.

In the wake of Palin’s performance Wednesday night, there’s vastly more support among conservatives for flipping the McCain-Palin ticket to the Palin-McCain ticket. Send McCain to attend the funerals and cut the ribbons! Put the lipsticked pit bull at the lead of the Alaskanized GOP sled!

For good or ill, going forward, Palin is easily the most popular Republican in the country, at least among people inclined to vote for the GOP. That may not last, of course (she has many trials ahead), but the instant decision of Beltway blowhards to push the Palin-as-liability fable says a lot about how little they understand much of the American electorate.

Steyn:

Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

...real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong... Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol.

and to compare and contrast, Charles Krauthammer:

Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd. The air of unease at the Democratic convention this week was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments -- bearing even fewer witnesses.

Eerily missing at the Democratic convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in Obama's life standing up to say: "I know Barack Obama. I've been with Barack Obama. We've toiled/endured together. You can trust him. I do."

Hillary Clinton could have said something like that. (she didn't even have) one line of testimony: "I have come to know this man, to admire this man, to see his character, his courage, his wisdom, his judgment. Whatever. Anything."

Instead, nothing. She of course endorsed him. But the endorsement was entirely programmatic: We're all Democrats. He's a Democrat. He believes what you believe. So we must elect him... to get Democratic things done...

Clinton's withholding the "I've come to know this man" was vindictive and supremely self-serving -- but jarring, too, because you realize that if she didn't do it, no one else would. Not because of any inherent deficiency in Obama's character. But simply as a reflection of a young life with a biography remarkably thin by the standard of presidential candidates.

Who was there to speak about the real Barack Obama? His wife. She could tell you about Barack the father, the husband, the family man in a winning and perfectly sincere way. But that takes you only so far. It doesn't take you to the public man, the national leader.

Who is to testify to that?... where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others?

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

not hurricane damage

, the aftermath of a community organizer.

just asking

Viewpoint's talking about Sarah Palin's outstanding speech:

"...talking heads can't help but remind us every third minute that she, of course, didn't write it. It was written by Matthew Scully, a speech writer for George Bush, among others. Well, so what? No politician has written his or her own speech in its entirety since Abe Lincoln scrawled the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope en route to Gettysburg.

So, we're led to wonder: How often were we told last week that Barack Obama and Joe Biden didn't write their speeches? The answer, I suspect is pretty close to zero, which, if true, raises yet another question: Why does the MSM feel compelled to tell us that Palin didn't write this one? Is it because they just don't think that a woman could have done such a fine job unless a man helped her?

Or is it because they realize that her speech is a real threat to the Obama candidacy, and they feel constrained to deflect its power by suggesting that she herself is not really capable of such rhetorical excellence?

Either way, wouldn't the repeated reminders that Governor Palin didn't write the speech, were they made by Republicans about a Hillary speech, for instance, be seen as examples of sexism?"

the abuse of power

If you look closely, you'll notice that Sarah Palin is not the one abusing power in the Mike Wooten / Walter Monegan case:

Palin's political enemies have a stink bomb set to go off late in October, just before the election. That's when voters will see fruits of a legislative investigation into the charge that the governor fired Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan because he wouldn't get rid of Mike Wooten, a state trooper and Palin's ex-brother-in-law.

We can see where this is headed. Palin will be found to have done nothing illegal in firing Monegan, since public safety commissioners serve at the governor's pleasure. But the media will frame this case in vague but sinister terms: Think "abuse of power." It will also bury the back story that explains why Palin was so concerned.

So here are some key facts to keep on file... You may not be seeing much of them from here on:

• Mike Wooten, 35, has been a trooper since 2001. He has been married and divorced four times. One of his marriages was to Palin's sister, Molly McCann, with whom he had two children. That marriage ended in 2006. His behavior leading up to the divorce led Palin's and McCann's father, Chuck Heath, to file a formal complaint about him to the state police.

• Heath and Sarah Palin, who was not yet governor, said that Wooten had threatened to kill Heath — telling McCann that Heath "would eat a f***ing lead bullet" if he hired a lawyer for her. They also charged that he had used a Taser on his own 11-year-old stepson, had drunk beer in his patrol car and had shot a cow moose without a license (the latter a crime in Alaska, where such licenses are not easy to come by).

• The state police investigated these charges and substantiated all of them. Col. Julia Grimes, then head of the Alaska State Troopers, suspended Wooten for 10 days and wrote, "The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession." She warned him he would be fired if he didn't shape up. The troopers' union got the suspension cut to five days.

Now ask yourself this: If you were Sarah Palin and had such a revealing look at Mike Wooten, would you have wanted him on the force? Palin was acting as any concerned citizen should after a close encounter with an unfit cop. If there's abuse of power in this story, it lies on the side of bureaucrats and unions protecting officers whose behavior makes them a danger to the public.