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Open Trackback Wednesday

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Blogroll Roundup

Here's a few recent posts from some of my favorite blogs...

Do you remember the phrase "Al Qaeda in Iraq which has nothing to do with Al Qaeda"?  Well, Right Truth found The Shiite Army In Iraq.

What about all that violence in Iraq anyway? Gateway Pundit reports Casualties Down 21% in Iraqi Quagmire/Civil War.

According to Hillbilly White Trash The "Imam Incident" was a terrorist probe.

ArrMatey at CourtZero is offended by a plywood covered cross.

PrivatePigg at Public Figures Beware remarks on French two-bit condoms.

Cerberus at The Gates of Hell is annoyed by the MPAA.

Orrin Johnson at the University of Washington Chapter of the Federalist Society laughed at "Quiet Revolution".

Lemuel at Deleted By Tomorrow has apparently discovered where Sauron went.

Bullwinkle blames global warming for the near-record cold snap in Calgary.

Karl at Leaning Straight up says Rep. Rangel insulted his son.

Finally Butch at 123beta wants everyone to stop talking about Michael Richards.

Pelosi shows some intelligence

From the Associated Press via the Seattle P.I.

WASHINGTON -- In a decision that could roil Democratic unity in the new House, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi passed over Rep. Alcee Hastings Tuesday for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee.

Hastings, currently the No. 2 Democrat on the panel, had been aggressively making a case for the top position, supported by members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Critics pointed out that he had been impeached when he was a federal judge and said naming him to such a sensitive post would be a mistake just as the Democrats take over House control pledging reforms.

Kudos to Nancy Pelosi for showing some intelligence about this position.

In a sign of the bitterness that has surrounded the debate, Hastings closed his statement by saying: "Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

Maybe not. It's a shame the voters haven't either. But corruption is a plus on a Democrat resume. At least it didn't get him a chairmanship.

Linked at Renaissance Blogger, Rightwing Guy.

Osama Mamma can't wait for January

In the Seattle Times today, Alicia Mundy reports on Senator Patty Murray's newfound power: 

Murray has just been named secretary of the Democratic caucus, a nebulous title that makes her part of the Senate Democrats' leadership quartet.

More important, Murray is poised to become chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee for transportation and other areas.

God help us all. Putting this woman in charge of appropriations can only mean more pork-barrel spending. While I live in the state of Washington, that doesn't mean I look forward to still more pork. Especially when it's transportation money that the state will only abuse by forcing more mass-transit solutions that won't do much to help most of the people that travel over our roadways onto us.

Even Republican lobbyist Tony Williams, who just ran Mike McGavick's failed campaign for the U.S. Senate, said, "This is only good news for the state."

How is more pork good for the state? More pork can only be funded in a few ways: borrowing (aka raising the deficit), cutting other needed programs (like national security), or raising taxes. None of these is a good solution. Cutting spending on pork is the only way to get a handle on the deficit or the confiscatory tax schemes congress and the Democrats are so fond of.

In any case, pork-barrel spending is just plain wrong. We're talking about taking tax money from people that won't benefit from it in any way to support a legislators pet projects in their home state. Nowhere in the constitution is that even suggested, let alone authorized.

Republicans, she said, now ignore her "at their peril."

Murray is dismissive of criticism of her and other lawmakers' attitude about spending.

Particularly under fire is the use of so-called earmarks, narrowly tailored appropriations that allow senators to skip the normal budget process for some of their favorite projects.

Narrowly tailored? What is Alicia Mundy smoking? Earmarks are an outrage, especially when they fund anything that isn't of pressing national interest.

Earmarks are often quietly slipped into legislation as favors among politicians. Murray has been a player in the earmark process and was dubbed "the Queen of Pork" last year by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group sharply critical of congressional spending.

Asked if she favors reforming the earmark system, as some fellow senators have proposed, Murray paused before answering.

Of course she had to pause. She had to come up with a way to sound like she wants reform even though she wants no such thing.

"I think all of us believe that earmarks have to be transparent," she said of the need to identify which senator is behind each funding request.

But she is unabashed about her willingness to use earmarks for her home state.

...

"We would get lost in the process, and I'm not going to lose," she added. "Washington state will be feet first at the table."

...

"I can't wait for January," she said.

I just bet she can't. Get ready to open your wallets. Osama Mamma's getting ready to reach into them, whether you like it or not.

Cross Posted at NWBloggers.com

High Court Rules Against New York Times

Last week the New York Times asked Ruth Bader Ginsberg to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two of its reporters, apparently hoping the liberal justice would see things their way. Yesterday the Supreme court refused to do so.

Naturally the Associated Press calls that a growing problem. After all, if a reporter can't write a story damaging the government's anti-terror activity based on confidential sources then their anti-American agenda can't be furthered.

(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe.

The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.

This isn't the first time the New York Times has tried to hide its sources behind the first amendment. One of these days they'll get the message that Freedom of the Press does not mean freedom to hamper a legitimate investigation into national security violations or criminal activity.

Monday's rejection "is just further indication that we're getting absolutely nowhere with the court when it comes to protecting confidential sources," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

...

Dalglish said protection of phone record confidentiality is among the issues that should be addressed in federal shield law legislation she and other media advocates are urging Congress to consider.

If that legislation ever makes it to the presidents desk he should bring out the veto pen. The New York Times has decided that leaking sensitive national security information is its job. It's really just treason, and they shouldn't be allowed to hide behind the first amendment when they violate our national security.

New York Times refuses to admit Iraq not in a civil war

In an article in the New York Times today Sheryl Gay Stolberg and John O'Neil immediately jump on statements by President Bush. The very first sentence of the article notes that he refuses to call the sectarian violence in Iraq a civil war. 

TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today said Al Qaeda was to blame for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, which he refused to label a civil war. Mr. Bush said he would press Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during meetings in Jordan later this week to lay out a strategy for restoring order.

It's not a civil war, no matter how much the New York Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press want to portray it as one. It's a couple of nests of terrorists fighting one another. Sunni terrorists have been attacking Shiite terrorists, and the Shiite terrorists have been attacking Sunni terrorists.

There isn't open rebellion against the Iraqi government. In fact, most of the sectarian violence is isolated to a few small areas. Sunnis and Shiites appear to be able to live peacefully in Basra.

The Associated Press has been using terrorist sources to prop up the lie that Iraq is in a civil war. Their reporting has been proven to be false. We know this because two of their primary sources that they've been using for months have turned out to be fraudulent.

The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the country is at the brink of civil war.

This is wishful thinking. Kofi Annan lost his credibility a long time ago. The man simply cannot see things the way they are. He has opposed the war on terror almost since its beginning. He certainly opposed the invasion of Iraq, quite possibly because his son was heavily involved in corruption with the oil for food scandal.

What we are really experiencing is the growing media cycle more than a growing cycle of violence. Iraq has been a violent place for quite some time. According to CENTCOM violence in Iraq has actually dropped since the end of Ramadan. 

This summer we heard the first talk of civil war in Iraq from media talking heads and pundits. Soon that became the story line. "Is Iraq in a civil war?", "The civil war in Iraq." blah-blah-blah-civil war-blah-blah.

Last year it was comparisons of the so-called insurgents to the American founding fathers and Iraqi militiamen (al Qaeda and other terrorists, including Iranians and Syrians actually) were "revolutionary heros". And of course all through the war there have been the constant comparisons to Vietnam.

The president acknowledged that there were high levels of sectarian violence in Iraq, but he put the blame for the disorder squarely on Al Qaeda.

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by Al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal,” Mr. Bush said, adding that he planned to work with Mr. Maliki “to defeat these elements.”

Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, “The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence.”

Of course the New York Times glosses over this fairly quickly because it doesn't fit the story line. They immediately return to the theme that it's a civil war.

Mr. Bush’s remarks are at odds with statements made in recent weeks both by American military commanders and by Mr. Maliki.

While American military and intelligence officials credit Al Qaeda’s attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February with having sparked waves of sectarian violence, more recently the officials have consistently described a more complicated picture. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation before Congress as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power.”

That assessment was more in line with Mr. Maliki’s declaration after the recent bombings that such attacks are “the reflection of political backgrounds” and that “the crisis is political.”

Of course it's political. Al Qaeda's goal in fomenting the sectarian violence is to destabilize the region. That doesn't make it a civil war. The so-called insurgents want to destabilize Iraq. The sectarian violence is occurring between Sunnis and Shiites. It's terrorists fighting terrorists and terrorists killing the Iraqi people.

When a Sunni terrorist kills a Shiite terrorist in Sadr city the Shiites use that as an excuse to rail against the Americans because we're not providing enough security. When Shiites direct reprisals at Sunni mosques, the Associated Press calls on a terrorist source to lay false claims of barbaric violence at the Shiite's feet and to say that the Iraqi military just stood by and watched.

General Caldwell described Al Qaeda as having been “severely disorganized” by American and Iraqi efforts this year, but said it is still “the most well-funded of any group and can produce the most sensational attacks of any element out there.”

He summarized the continuing violence in Baghdad this way: Shiite militias conducting murders and assassinations in the city’s Sunni western section, and Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda staging “high visibility casualty events” in the city’s predominantly Shiite east.

General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war, saying that Iraq’s government continues to function and that the conflict did not involve “another viable entity that’s vying to take control.”

"General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war". In other words, General Caldwell was pressed by the reporter to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war and didn't give the reporter the satisfaction.

That's what this is really about. The major news media and the Democrat party want the world to have the perception that Iraq is in a civil war. They want the perception to spread that what's happening there is the result of a failure of western ideas in a muslim region. After all, wasn't that what they said before we went in? That the Iraqi people and in fact all Arabic people weren't suited for democracy?

They are actively seeking the defeat of the United States in the War on Terror. They're doing it through a campaign of misinformation and propaganda under the guise of "objective news reporting." But they're still doing it.

Linked at Gateway Pundit, Rightwing Guy, Right Pundits.

Snow day!

So after the snow last night the office is closed and so are the schools. There's about an inch and a half of snow on the ground here. Apparently some of the people that went to the Seahawks game last night were stranded by our transit systems as the busses stopped running.

A couple of inches of snow and the Seattle area comes to a stand-still.

Technology is a wonderful thing though. I will still be able to get some work done thanks to the magic of telecommuting.

Lucas is happy though. He's not in school.

Three Good Things 11-27-2006

I was listening to the radio on my way to work this morning. There's nothing unusual about that, but what I heard interested me. I didn't hear the entire topic of conversation because I had to stop and buy gas, but I heard about someone that thought about three good things that happened to them and why they were good. The more they did this before retiring for the evening, the happier they found themselves.

It sounded like a good exercise. Anyway, I thought about it a little and decided it might not be such a bad idea. I'm pretty happy with my life already, so I don't think I need the therapy. Still the recent Thanksgiving holiday served as a reminder that I have a lot of things to be thankful for in my life.

One of my friends and former co-workers keeps a live journal site. Every now and then she puts up a "thankful Thursday" post. Generally it's just a list of things she's thankful for, but it's another reminder that we have things to be thankful for all of the time, and not just on some officially sanctioned holiday.

On that note, here are three good things that happened in my life on 11-27-2006:

My mother is visiting from Tennessee. She flew into town the Friday after Thanksgiving and she'll be here until the 5th of December. I'm not a particularly dutiful son, but for some strange reason my mother still loves me and wants me to know it.

Earlier this summer I had an infection in my gums. At first I thought it was a sinus condition, but upon a visit to a dentist, root canal therapy was indicated. When I had the root canal work done the dentist was concerned about a dark mass in my x-rays and recommended that I see an oral/maxilofacial surgeon. One thing led to another, and after several different surgeons examined x-rays and CT scans I finally ended up scheduled for surgery at the University of Washington.

When my mother found out about all of this, she insisted on coming out to visit to provide support while I recovered from the surgery. We talked about it, and not knowing when the surgery would actually be performed, agreed that she should come out after the surgery was done.

As it turns out, I had the surgery on October 19th and had a bone cyst removed. Everything went well, although I still haven't regained feeling in the gum and teeth immediately below where the cyst had been growing.

Anyway, my mother came out as soon as she could after dealing with her fairly hectic schedule and now she's here for a vist. So there, in one package, I have two things to be tremendously thankful for. The surgery went well, and the cyst appears to have been benign. A tremendous source of fear and trepidation is over with and I can't tell you how relieved I am. And to top it off, my mother still cares for me. And that's pretty darned good.

On another note, I made it home safely tonight. I stayed at work a little longer than I should have, and got caught on the roads during the beginning of tonights "snow storm". I'm aware that what we here in the Puget Sound region call a snow storm isn't much to people used to such things, but when everyone on the roads is equally inexperienced with driving in the snow and on ice, scary things can happen.

I tried to leave work at around 5:30 PM. On most nights I leave between 6:30 and 7:00 PM and it takes me about an hour to drive home. Tonight, it took me two hours. And at that, I was lucky. The first 45 minutes or so was just driving the six or seven blocks from where I work to the freeway. In that short time the roadway went from being bare and wet to slushy, to coated in ice.

Once I got to the freeway things were a little better, but not by much. All of the southbound lanes were full of cars crawling along at 25 mile per hour. People were stopping and trying to change lanes every couple of hundred feet. Someone would stop and traffic behind them would back up until they cleared enough of the lane for people to go around. And then someone else would do it.

After about two miles of this the roads suddenly opened up. And then, just as quickly the congestion was back. With the blowing snow, people were aware of stopping distances and I didn't see anybody sliding, at least not yet. The congestion hung on for a while and then I thought I saw a possible reason for it. Ten minutes later, I drove past an articulated bus that appeared to have jackknived while travelling down the HOV lane. It wasn't going anywhere, and it was blocking two lanes.

As I was noticing that, I also was noticing tire tracks in the snow. Right in that same area, at least three or four cars had spun out on the road. I didn't see any evidence of collisions, but there were a few cars moving very slowly. I passed one car, a small one with bad tires. I was going about 20 miles an hour, but this poor soul was going about two or three miles an hour. His front tires were spinning maddly though. I bet his speedometer was reading something like 25 or 30 miles per hour.

Traffic didn't improve much for the next couple of miles. Then the snow slackened, and amazingly I found myself on bare and wet pavement again. For the next five or six miles it was smooth sailing. And then the sky opened up. The snow came down in a white blanket, and in the space of a hundred yards or so I was riding on compact snow and ice. The next several miles were like that.

On a couple of occasions I lost traction myself, but I was going slowly enough, and had enough distance between me and the nearest vehicle that I was able to recover without any mishaps. Other people weren't so lucky. I saw one car facing the wrong way not too far ahead of me.

I saw more cars that looked as if they had just spun out. Finally and as suddenly as it had resumed the snow just quit. I was able to drive out of it in moments and then the rest of my trip was on bare and wet pavement, until I got into town. The snow just started again as I was driving the last two miles toward home, but it never got hard enough to be a worry.

I was lucky. It only took me two hours to get home. The people that went to Qwest Field to watch the Seahawks and the Packers play football had a five hour congestion nightmare. There were numerous accidents.

As I write this, I'm sitting in my dining room, watching a warm cozy fire burn in the fireplace. I'm warm, I'm dry, and I'm safe. And that's another thing I'm thankful for. My family was worried for me. I was a bit worried too, watching what was going on around me on the freeways.

Everything's not as good as it could be though. Tonight my stepson is in Federal Way instead of at home because his car doesn't have good traction tires and it would be suicidal for him to try to drive it home tonight. Even so, I'm thankful he's got the sense to stay with friends instead of risking his life and someone elses driving in conditions he's neither prepared for nor experienced enough to handle.

So there you have it. Three, maybe even four things I'm really thankful for tonight: My health, the love of my family, my safety and comfort, and a son that's smart enough to know his limitations. I have them all through the grace of God. Others in the world are not so fortunate.

The world is not a friendly place, but with God's help we have a great deal to be thankful for. I guess it's all in how you look at it.