I think the headline says it all: Saddam's European and Canadian Allies Furious They Can't Profit From War They Opposed

I don't understand these people. I guess they really don't understand us. We act decisively in favor of our own security, and all they had to do was stay out of the way. They decided to do a Jane Fonda instead, and now they are uncomprehendingly upset about why we are still not playing with them. Their own short memory does not recall our own long memories. Americans as a people remember who are friends are. This past year has shown us that we had some fair-weather friends, and some friends we didn't know about.

These people back the wrong team, then want a piece of the pennant when they lose.

The funny thing is the rules only go so far. It only prohibits these companies from being primary contractors on US money. They have $13 billion from other sources to bid on as primary contractor, and they can be a subcontractor on the US money.

But of course "We are all friends." Yeah, right.

UPDATE: It is clear to the world that American friendship is valuable; it must be equally clear that American enmity is expensive. That way we encourage other nations to cooperate with us. - Steven Den Beste

The SCOTUS has upheld restrictions on the First Amendment. The details are unimportant, all you need to know is there are now restrictions on your right to free speech.

This is not the first time the Constitution has been directly violated.

Back about 1997, Clinton signed into law the "Domestic Violence Act," another bad law. For years, you had your right to bear arms taken away from you only when you committed a felony (served more than one year in jail). Misdemeanors were okay. Not anymore. This law made this particular misdemeanor grounds to take away your Second Amendment rights.

That's not the bad news.What violated the Constitution was the "retroactive" part, meaning if you were convicted of domestic violence 20 years ago, you lost your SA rights today instead of being "grandfathered" in. This caused a number of police officers to lose their jobs, because they could no longer carry firearms.It says very clearly in Section 9 paragraph 3 of the Constitution, "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto [after the fact; retroactive] Law shall be passed."

We have taken the second step of violating the Constitution. There will be a third step soon, then a fourth. Soon it will become a walk, then a trot, then a run.

We must stop this, and now. Urge your Congressman and Senators to repeal the Campaign Finance law, to take away this stain on the First Amendment.This ruling makes me scared that they will strike down the "Under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance. Please don't let that happen.

...for the wrong reasons. The Cost of Doing the Right Thing points out something that will come back to bite the GOP in a couple of years.

"One more such victory and I am lost." -- Pyrrhus

Conservatives once cheered at the idea of controlling both houses of Congress and the White House. But unless we base our reform on true conservative principles, we're going to fail. If all we do is expand the size and influence of government in our lives we, like Pyrrhus, will eventually find that our legislative "victories" have destroyed everything we've worked so hard to accomplish. The GOP sacrificed a major principle to make a minor tactical victory. Pyrrhus' words ring true more than ever. They could lose control of Congress over this as soon as '06, but I think it will be more like '08 when the next president is elected. If Hillary takes the White House, she could take both houses with her, and I am sure she will hammer the GOP over this very same Medicare bill.

Alpha Patriot has a good blog entry on The Steely Truth

A lot of people decried the president's actions when he placed import tariffs on steel in 2001. So why did he do it?

Read the whole thing, it's important.

I watched Meet the Press yesterday, but missed Face the Nation (I didn't know it was on at the same time). I don't care for George, so I watched Fox News Sunday instead.

But what I did see made Hillary sound almost reasonable. She admitted that the intelligence of the UN and Bill Clinton was wrong. Of course we still should not have gone in, but at least we were wrong the right way.

I'm sorry, but when someone uses chemical weapons, that's proof positive they have them. When tens of thousands of American lives are at stake, 97% sure he doesn't have any more doesn't cut the mustard. He had them, he's willing to use them and just because you haven't found any doesn't mean they aren't there. To assume that there aren't any can kill a city.

She also pushed the "We need to be multilateral" saw again.

I quote from USS Clueless:

A lot of those nations, both Gang-of-8 and Vilnius-group, are in Iraq, helping us: Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain have boots on the ground. I was particularly surprised by how large the Netherlands contingent was (and I offer my thanks).

Of course, the UK has the second biggest presence after our own. Australia's not listed, but they were there for the invasion. But I'm surprised and pleased to see that New Zealand's there. (Maybe there's hope for the anglosphere yet. Hello, Ottawa? Care to get back into the game and make it five of five?)

Also Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua (!) are in, collectively providing some 1140 troops who are operating with the Spanish.

You also got Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Macedonia, Ukraine.

The largest contingents come from Italy (3000), Poland (2400), Ukraine (1640), Spain (1300) and the Netherlands (1106). All told it's more than 15,000 troops, in addition to those sent by the US and UK.That's 30 countries by my count, a full brigade of troops, how could that possibly be unilateral?

She also poo-pooed her running in '04, and I believe her. She would rather run when she doesn't have an incumbent to fight, so she's got her eyes on '08 and is doing everything she can (including showing up on three Sunday news programs) to steal the oxygen from any Democrat hopeful to make sure they lose. Hillary is smarter than she looks. She has a long term plan and it's a good one. She scares me and the Republicans better have a plan and a candidate that can outdo her.

Senator Frist isn't one of them. He is seen as too timid right now and Hillary will eat him alive. Unless he gets a total makeover starting now, he won't survive. Hillary is running for '08 now, somebody on the GOP side better start now as well.

This article, Cincinnati Mayor Wants Stun Guns is going to get a police officer killed.

Non-lethal options sound good on paper, but there are real-world circumstances that make NLO's dangerous to the police.

First of all, tasers can be defeated by clothing. In Cincinnati right now, it's colder than the devil's heart. People are wearing heavy jackets. You would have to get a successful hit in the legs to subdue a perp, but there's a high chance that at least one of the darts will miss the legs. Besides, police are trained to go after the center of mass.

Tasers work by overloading the nervous system. Talking with someone 15 feet away in a quiet room is easy. That's the normal operation of your nervous system. Trying to talk with the same friend the same distance away in the middle of a rock concert is impossible. That's what the Taser does. But if your nervous system is already at rock concert level due to drugs like meth or PCP, then the Taser isn't as effective. It may hurt the perp, but it won't disable him. Remember, people hopped up on PCP can lift cars. They will cause massive damage to themselves doing it, but they can do it and feel no pain.

I hope the police regarding NLO's are first option only with multiple officers on the scene. Because the lone officer who tries a Taser first against someone in this situation will be killed. He won't have time to use his firearm after he realizes that the NLO is ineffective.

When I carried my weapon, I had a 25 foot zone around me at all times. If someone with a weapon would have entered that zone, I trained myself to shoot first and tell them to drop it later. Why? Because if they were in that zone, they were in under my reaction time and could get me before I could get them. Even though I could draw and shoot twice in less than 3/4 of a second, someone with a drawn weapon could cross that 25 feet in the same amount of time and get me first. Even if I had my weapon drawn, normal response time to assess the situation, decide on the action and carry it out is still about 1/2 a second. Still plenty of time to get me.

I brought this up because I wanted to illustrate the kind of distance you need for safety. Police often work in contact with the perps, so they are way under response time. They have to read intentions over a second in advance so they can break contact and get far enough away to draw their weapon.

NLO's are a wonderful Liberal thing. It looks good on paper, nobody gets hurt, sometimes it works and when it doesn't the defecation really hits the rotary oscillator.

Hat tip to American Realpolitik for this quote:

"No one is more victimized by the failures of America's government-run school system than the children of the urban poor, and those children are usually black. Stuck disproportionately in schools that don't work, blocked from the escape hatch of private or parochial school, black children routinely perform far below average in every subject. Sixty-three percent of black 4th-graders, for example, cannot read. The average black high school senior is about as well educated as the average white middle school student. There are many ways to ruin someone's life, but few are as effective as ignorance. And ignorance, by and large, is what public schooling guarantees for children from America's poorest and blackest neighborhoods." --Deroy Murdock

I see the results of such a system every day I drive through the worst parts of Memphis. Please make them stop.

I've already written about the rabid environmentalists, who fully ascribe to the religion of environmentalism, here's another breed of rabid people: P E T A. The website is the obvious one. I'm sorry, but I don't want to provide a backtrack to my blog. I may be crazy but I ain't stupid. These people blow up who they don't agree with.

I bring this to your attention because I found an article, Consumer Group Takes on Animal 'Rights' Activists. Here's the 7 things you didn't know about P E T A.

Just like their tree-hugging cousins, these people have no limits on their consciences and actions and will do anything to 'liberate' animals, including property damage via bombs. To my knowledge they have not killed any humans in any of their 'liberations,' but I wouldn't put anything past them.

Environmentalists don't care about loggers, because they purposefully drive spikes into trees, which will kick a chainsaw back into the operators face. I don't think P E T A's 'activists' care about staff when they place their bombs.

Of course, the official position of the organizations are to disavow these radicals, but they do so with a wink and a nod.

These guys do a good job of tugging at your heart strings, including mine. Yes there is animal suffering. Yes we should do our best to do something about it. But don't fall for their claptrap. While their cause is noble, the limit of their goals is extreme and the execution of their agenda is violent.

Just as a side note, I remember the Thanksgiving episode of the Rush Limbaugh TV show. They had a nice banquet spread out on the set. Rush went over and filled a pita pocket with turkey and went into the audience with it. He gave it to a young man wearing a "P E T A" shirt. You could tell he was burning over the insult and was itching to do something. I suppose a combination of off-camera security and a camera in his face talked him out of trying to disrupt the show.

I made a comment on William Burton's blog. He commented on the old saw about taxation and the rich.I commented, Businesses don't pay taxes. They pass it along as they would any other cost to the consumer.

Mr. Burton took a whole post to explain why I was wrong.

While I can't necessarily disagree with his points, all I can say is he hit the wrong target.

I could have said, "Businesses don't pay the employee payroll. They pass it along as they would any other cost to the consumer" and have been just as right.

Business taxes are just like rent, payroll and equipment depreciation, they are all costs of doing business. To the businessperson, it doesn't matter if his taxes or his rent went up $1000 a month, his expenses went up $1000 a month that must be paid for out of his gross profit. Hopefully he has some net profit left.The customer, by paying for the product, indirectly pays for all of the costs of doing business, taxes is but one part of it. If any part of the cost goes up, of course some of it will be absorbed by profit, but there comes a point where you can't squeeze any more blood out of that rock so new costs (nee taxes) must be passed, dollar for dollar, to the consumer.

Actually, he got one point wrong:

The important thing to remember is Businesses already charge as much as they can get away with in their particular market. A corporate tax increase would change the formula somewhat, as would any increase in costs, but it would not be passed along to consumers dollar for dollar. Some would be absorbed through lower profits, and some through attempts to lower other costs. (emphasis in original)

Companies like Wal-Mart see things differently. They would rather sell 2,000,000 units with a $1.50 profit than sell 1,000,000 units at $2 profit. That 50 cent price difference cuts them under K-Mart and Target, so it steals sales away from the competition.

Which is exactly how tax cuts work. By putting more money into the hands of those people with money, the people with money can expand current businesses or open new ones, which generates more tax revenue than if the government had kept the original amount. Poor people don't create jobs, rich people do.

One notion that must be disabused is the "greedy capitalist pig businessman." If your boss offered you a 50% raise, would you take it? If so, aren't you a "greedy capitalist pig worker"? Everybody wants to make money. That's what businesses are in business for. Why abuse those who were smart enough to accrue it through legal work? The reason France has a 30% unemployment rate is because business owners are considered evil for wanting to make money. The business owner is so severely hamstrung there is no incentive to go into business or to expand it at all. In fact, there is a penalty for expanding, you can't lay off workers when business goes down.

Like I said. Businesses do not pay taxes.

Victor Davis Hanson has turned out another great piece, A Real War.

We are not in a war with a crook in Haiti. This is no Grenada or Panama - or even a Kosovo or Bosnia. No, we are in a worldwide struggle the likes of which we have not seen since World War II. The quicker we understand that awful truth, and take measures to defeat rather than ignore or appease our enemies, the quicker we will win. In a war such as this, the alternative to victory is not a brokered peace, but abject Western suicide and all that it entails - a revelation of which we saw on September 11.

Read it all.

Fox News carries this piece, Eco-Imperialism's Deadly Consequences, and it just reinforces what I said just below in "Environmentalism as a religion."

These eco-nuts are more concerned about a nature that doesn't exist over real-world realities. To them, they would rather let people die in large numbers rather than exert some control over Nature.

Here's the money paragraph:

Desowitz reports a U.S. Agency for International Development official named Edwin Cohn as saying, "The third world didn't require a healthy labor force because there was a surplus of workers; better some people should be sick with malaria and spread the job opportunities around." Even more bluntly, Cohn reportedly said people in the third world were "better [off] dead than alive and riotously reproducing."

Earlier in the article, they tried to put in perspective:

The Ugandan woman is only one of more than 300 million annual victims of malaria in the third world. Between 2-3 million die every year. "Over half the victims are children, who die at a rate of two per minute or 3,000 per day -- the equivalent of 80 fully loaded school buses plunging over a cliff every day of the year," explains Driessen.

That is abominable. We're talking about filling a pro football stadium every ten days, of just children who die because eco-nuts think that DDT is evil, when it has been proved effective and safe as any other pesticide.

But how do you change these people? Who have such strong beliefs despite scientifically proven,independently reproducible results? You can't. You can only drop the clear evidence in front of them and then ignore them. And that is what we must do. For the children.

Hat tip to American Realpolitik.

Michael Crichton gave this speech to The Commonwealth Club about environmentalism.

He writes that they are a fundamentalist religion. I believe that. They are as rabid about their beliefs as Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden.

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

While I do believe that there was an Eden, it was destroyed by Adam and Eve. Their punishment was a world like the above.

Just like we must convert the Islamic fundamentalists, we must convert the rabid environmentalists. There is no other choice.

Well, Mr. Spike (Steve according to the byline) wrote about me and commented on my Hate Bush Meeting, here.

He brought up Chomsky. I don’t know too much about Chomsky, but what I do know isn’t very flattering. First, his act of not answering questions imbibes a certain amount of sage in him, which is not warranted. Scott Adams has Chomsky’s number here:

Also, facts are like the cubes in a Rubiks Cube. You have to get them in the right position and the right orientation to solve the puzzle. Chomsky likes to tell you the facts, but not the context so you can make sense of the facts. Let me illustrate:

I have here on my desk a magazine that talks about two murderers who are not being prosecuted for killing a total of three people. Justin Doyle killed one man, while Wesley Steven killed two. Based on these facts alone, you would think that these are two despicable guys and the police are failing to do their job. But when I tell you both of these men were acting in self-defense and murdered home invaders, well that puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? Of course, Steve is in the UK and isn’t allowed the right of self-defense, so he might have a different take on things.

He also asks the following question:

I wonder what he makes of Chomsky’s claim that “No president [since 1945], judged on the principles of Nuremberg, would have escaped hanging”? That includes even the most liberal, that nice Jimmy Carter for example.

I would answer that the winners write the history. The Nazis understood that, they were surprised that they got a trial at all, let alone an actually fair trial.

Has America done some despicable things? Yep. Are we proud of them? Nope. Do we try to get it right the next time? You betcha. America is not perfect, and it is wrong to try and hold us to that standard. We do the best we can, and that is all anybody should be expected to do. Sometimes all we can choose between are two bad choices. It’s like when kids get together to play baseball/football/rugby etc., and sometimes one team is left picking the dorky, uncoordinated kid because that’s who’s left. America had to make some choices like that. We didn’t like who we picked, but we really had no choice in the matter.

Sometimes we have been forced to make a choice, and no matter what we chose, somebody was going to die in large numbers. The only differences was who and how many. Sometimes there is no “good” choice.

Do I actually try to equate any US President to either Stalin or Hitler? Nope. My reference to them was pure hyperbole. Hitler was directly responsible for over 6 million Jewish deaths. Stalin ruthlessly murdered by various means well over 20 million of his own people. You do not see those things happening in the US. You could try to lay Korean deaths at Trumans feet, as well as Vietnamese dead at the feet of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. But it won’t wash. I’m talking non-war civilians dead persecuted by their own government, you’re talking about war dead. No US president since 1917 has ever systematically, brutally, and near totally exterminated any group of people for their political beliefs, ethnicity or religion. I know we have in the past when certain paradigms were in place, but when the paradigms were changed, so did the behavior.

Getting back to Chomsky: There is one paragraph where I did agree with him:

‘Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege,’ he begins. ‘People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police, we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving 70 hours a week to put food on the table – a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.’

Myself, living off of $850 a month, in a clean apartment with a TV, laptop with cable broadband internet, cell phone, refrigerator, et. al., I live better than 60% of the worlds population. I know this and am grateful for it. I try to use my power as an American citizen the best way I can. When I communicate my position on any subject to my elected officials, I expect a courteous response and that they consider my view. Sometimes my elected officials have to go against my wishes, but there are times that they know more about it than I do. That’s what I pay them for.

I would like to thank Steve for giving *both* of my brain cells a good workout tonight. I promised him a piece on the difference between a Liberal and a Socialist. That will take a few days, I want to get it right.

NewsMax has come out with an article reviving Vince Foster’s death. Vince Foster: What the Media Won’t Tell You again points out that there are enough holes in this story to make it look like swiss cheese.

…But despite 10 years of denial by the major media, the Foster case has not “closed” – as the Supreme Court hearing Wednesday demonstrated.

The case won’t close because of the failure of authorities to make full disclosure – and to conduct a full investigation into the case, including a complete autopsy.

There are too many quick decisions, too many quick investigations, too many unexplained facts, too much cover-up to make this go away as “just a suicide.” Coupled with all of the other shady incidents that surrounded the Clintons, there has to be more to it and someday I hope to see it all come out. There is no statute of limitations on murder.

I have no doubt that Vince Foster was murdered. I have no doubt Bill and Hillary were involved. While I don’t think one of them pulled the trigger, I do believe that one of them said, “Do it.” They ran that White House pretty tightly and nothing significant happened that they didn’t approve first.

Remember the Hate Bush email sent out that got reported on by Drudge?

Well, some new information has come out, Politics of hate won’t beat Bush and sadly, it is nothing new.

The people whose votes Democrats will need to defeat George Bush don’t hate him. On a personal level, they like him. They need to be convinced not to vote for him, for reasons that have to do with the war, or special interests or the economy. “Hate Bush” headlines do just the opposite.

I was told several years ago that American politics are divided 40/20/40. The 40% on the left would vote for any Democrat candidate, even if it was Stalin. The 40% on the right would vote for any Republican candidate, even Hitler. It’s the 20% of voters in the middle that decide elections. While I can’t agree on the extremeness of the candidates, I do agree on the mix.

While the Right is moving towards the center to actively work for that Center vote, the 9 dwarves are moving farther and farther left, courting the very people who believe Bush=Hitler. The extremism that they show now will severely haunt them when the winner tries to move toward the center during the general election. Short of a national catastrophe, Bush will win.

That’s the way Hillary wants it. She sees 2008 as her one shot back to the White House. It is better to do it when there is no incumbent rather than have to fight someone of “her” party. Here’s the tricky part. Hillary is the most polarizing person in politics today. She has a good shot at ’08 unless the Republicans counter with a move of their own.

Run Condi Rice.

I think Ms. Rice should get the nod for VP on the second term. This will groom her for a shot as well for 2008. Even if she only gets the VP slot again in ’08, it will show the nation who truly is the party of diversity and equality. I think she is getting groomed even today. She’s in charge of the Iraq situation on this side of the ocean and if this can be pulled off, she will be in prime position to move up in the world, possibly to the top spot.

I think this says it all:

Hat tip to Pamibe for creating it.

I found this on NewsMax, Bush Signs Law to Curb Forest Fires. I especially liked the caption of the picture on the front page. You see President Bush with two firefighters in a burned out section of forest. The caption reads, President and firemen viewed eco-nuts’ damage in Oregon.

Like I’ve said before, wildlands and wildlife must be managed by man. When we do so, there is a benefit to all.

Of course the logging companies will make a profit. That’s the purpose of their business, to make a profit. If they can cut down on the number and severity of forest fires while not clear cutting patches of forest, I say go for it.

At least California has done some common sense things for houses in wildlife areas. Things like stucco exteriors, tile roofs and clearcutting the forest back from the house. A majority of houses that did this survived the recent fires.

As long as rabid environmentalists have their say in how the forests are managed, we will continue to have massive deadly fires. Nature cannot control such things by herself, man is needed.

I found this article, School Voucher Law Unconstitutional, Colorado Judge Decides and I worry about this.

“I see no way to interpret the voucher program statute in a way that does not run afoul of the principle of local control,” he wrote.

Of course it will run afoul, that’s the purpose of vouchers in the first place. To shake up the status quo.

Public education is a massive public bureaucracy. I know because one job I had was working as a Memphis City Schools contractor. The amount of people in non-teaching positions makes bloated look anorexic. They had so many administrative positions they used several former schools as offices.

Any business without meaningful competition becomes stagnant. That is what the public education system is, stagnant. The inner-city schools where the drop-out and illiteracy rates are sky-high are the worst. There are other reasons behind these rates besides ineffective school systems, but this is one we can work on.

In Memphis, those who can afford it send their kids to private schools. Those who can’t are stuck with the public system and that is just wrong.

Before the liberalization of the public school system, schools were authorized to use corporal punishment when necessary. I myself was “cracked” on several occasions. Students who were incorrigible were separated from the regular students and sent to disciplinary schools in the system. They did not sacrifice the future of 29 students to avoid wounding the self-esteem of one student.

Nowadays, feelings are more important than facts. This must stop. Get your kids out of such an environment NOW.

The best way to reform the public school system is through market forces. That means competition. If the public school system wants to attract students, it must clean up the campuses and the curriculum.

The bad news is the public school system will only get worse. The students who don’t want to learn, the ones who are on drugs or part of gangs will soon be the only students at public schools. They will be left to the public schools because the private schools will not put up with things like that.

Unless the public system shapes up. If the public system wants to attract the good students, they must do several things. Have a curriculum worth teaching. Make the campuses safe. Warehouse the ones who don’t want to learn in their own schools. You need to separate the wheat from the chaff and be damned about self-esteem. That comes when the kid successfully completes a project or passes a hard test.

You can never eliminate the bell curve, but you can do things like move the curve to the left.

Vouchers will be fought tooth-and-nail by the public school system because they know how bad they are doing. If vouchers were to take hold, you would see student performance skyrocket.

Fight for this if your kids are in bad public schools. You owe it to them.

The final step of this journey is here. Supreme Court Allows Newdow To Argue Pledge Of Allegiance Case will settle this issue one way or the other.

I have already spoken on this issue, and have been clearly against this man and his position since the start. The United States was founded upon the principle of God granting powers to the people and then the people giving some of that to the government. God is an integral part of this country and to deny recognition of that fact is wrong.

If this man were to win, his next admitted his agenda, which is to ban any mention of God in any governmental system. I can’t come up with a link because Blogspot is down at the moment.

I think SCOTUS is hearing this to put the issue to bed permanently. In favor of “under God.”

I hope.

Here is my previous post.

I found this article via Drudge, RP students protest ‘liberal bias,’ push conservative agenda.

I am heartened by these young adults, and I just wish my Conservatism was as well developed at that age. I was Conservative, but I was not as clear and articulate as I am now in my views. I know I was a conservative because I would have discussions with a flaming Liberal at my lunch table. Todd was always uptight about the political situation in Bolivia or some such and just about lived off of Rolaids. Like I said, my views on the world was not as well developed as they could have been, but this was back when the only news sources were the paper and TV. No Limbaugh, no Fox News, no internet.

In the article, it talks about a newsletter being started by the students. I have an email into the reporter that wrote the article for a contact for the club. Depending on ad rates, I might take out an ad for the blog. Whatever I can do to help the cause.

Tim Robbins, who screamed “Censorship!” when he was criticized for his anti-war views, has produced a play about the war. Robbins’ ‘Embedded’ Play Not So Realistic chronicles his view of the part embedded journalists played in the war.

It goes without saying that there is an obvious slant toward the left in the views expressed in this play.

Robbins portrays journalists as Pentagon puppets, U.S. soldiers as thieves and killers of innocent women and children, and the Bush cabinet as war mongers willing to start a war to escape the negative publicity of the Enron scandal.

I don’t know what planet Tim is from, but I truly wish he would go back there and leave the rest of us alone.

Here’s another money quote:

When Laura Israel, another audience member, was asked if she thought the play was accurate, she replied: “Yes, not only on what is going on there, but it also showed how we are being lied to by all the networks.”

We are being lied to by the media, we don’t see enough of the good things that are happening over there. We see some, but not enough.

I think this woman means we aren’t being lied to enough by the media. I think Ms. Israel would like to see about all of the war atrocities American troops have been committing. You know, the rape squads, the torture chambers, Iraqis at random being fed feet first into wood chippers and all that. She believes we are doing that, but Saddam didn’t. Or even if he did, then not as much as we are.

It simply boggles my mind how someone can walk around in the same world as I, see the same things and have such a distorted view. Anti-war beliefs that are reasonable I can work with. At least I can agree to disagree with reasonable folk. But people like Mr. Robbins truly are viewing a world that does not exist. He believes (or professes to) in facts clearly not in evidence. When everybody is telling you the same thing, it’s either a) the truth, or b) there is a massive conspiracy. Mr. Robbins is clearly in the “B” category.

I think that this will be like Bowling for Columbine, in that only people who already believe this kind of tripe will be the only audience members. But the cast should still be ready to take incoming fire from the audience. I can imagine a platoon of Marines who have been in Iraq coming armed with eggs.

While going through my blog list, I found an interesting article on Say Uncle I quickly went to the source and found, Gun Banner Wishes My Family to Be Murdered and Die Slowly.

Someone please point to this person and what they have written and tell me it is not hate speech. Mr. Bellamy is downright apoplectic over this. Tell me this person is reasonable and you can hold an intelligent conversation with him over firearms. If you do, you’re guilty of trying to blow smoke up my butt.

I refuse to reprint this letter because of the foul language. I’m not shy when it comes to such language, I can get R. Lee Ermey to blush with my command of the language. I just don’t use it except under extreme circumstances.

I think Mr. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is agitated and upset. He should seek immediate help for this condition.

Ever since I joined the Rocky Top Brigade, the blogs I have been perusing have dramatically increased.

I backtracked a visitor to another Memphis blog, Musings of a Philosophical Scrivener… and happened across this Thought for the Day. I thought this would be a perfect chance to fine tune the broad brush I use to paint liberals.

He quotes:

My tribe is better than your tribe! It’s the oldest, dumbest pre-human instinct, hard-wired into our weak little brains by millions of years of natural selection. And to this day, dumb-asses believe what Prager said-they believe that “thinking people” agree with their views, and that people who disagree with their views are automatically irrational or devious. It’s tribalism at its dumbest-and it rules the world of the talk-show right, where the Limbaughs serve their credulous listeners frightening tales about “The Liberals.” Is my tribe good, and your tribe evil? Intelligent people know better.
–Bob Somerby

If anybody thinks anybody is evil, I think the Liberals fill the bill. You hear all the time “Bush=Hitler.” Even during the height of the Impeachment, I don’t remember anything like that being said about Clinton. Liberals are the elitists, seeing themselves as better than everyone else.

I do not see Liberals as evil, merely misguided children. The Liberal that I go after sees the world in an infinite spectrum of grey. Everybody’s idea (except conservatives) on how to solve problems is viable. They like to solve problems with the same thought process that they use to compare the writing style of Hemingway to James Mitchner (Don’t put too much thought into it, the answer boils down to personal preference). While there is more than one way to solve a problem, there are a finite number of solutions and they are similar.

When solving a problem, a Liberal looks at the intentions that were used to develop the solution. Results don’t matter, it’s how much he cares in solving the problem. If the solution didn’t work, expand the scope, increase the amount of money involved and try the same thing again. Which is the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Liberals also have a rather large set of blinders when it concerns solutions to problems. Any idea or solution that doesn’t fit their paradigm is instantly rejected, even if it has worked before. They are unwilling to try such solutions, even when they have no solutions of their own. Just take a look at the 9 dwarfs. They are all against the tax cut. They all want to get rid of it (which means RAISE YOUR TAXES). They all refuse to believe that increased economic activity and lowered unemployment brings in more tax revenues than higher taxes on a lower level of activity and higher unemployment. I can’t see why they think so. Kennedy cut taxes and doubled tax revenues. Reagan cut tax rates and had a similar return. Every indication of current activity indicates that tax cuts are 3-for-3 in bringing in more tax revenue than by raising taxes. So the only answer that I can see is they are against cutting taxes is President Bush is for it. This doesn’t mean that every one of the Presidents solutions are spot-on the first time, but at least he is looking to see what has worked in the past.

Conservatives like to look at the results of a solution to determine if it was successful or not. If it wasn’t successful, you see where you went wrong, change that part of the solution and try again. It’s known as a positive feedback loop. You continue to use what works and you stop using what doesn’t work.

Liberals do not see a person defined by what he is or what he has done, but rather by his skin color. Looking at two black people, he sees two black people. Me? I see a successful person and a poor person, who both happen to be black. See the difference in views? Liberals also believe that minorities cannot survive by themselves. The Government must step in to help them. Liberals believe that it is good for a business to hire or promote an unqualified minority over a qualified person. Jayson Blair (from the NY Times scandal) is a prime and visible result of such mindsets.

The same hold true for college admissions. If you want more minority participation, you need to turn out more minority high school grads that have the basic knowledge and training to survive in college. That is not happening today. To force an issue like this puts an unfair burden on the marginal minority student and denies an appropriate education to the student who has earned that spot.

Conservatives believe in incentives. If you meet a persons basic needs without them having to work, then they won’t work, no matter how successful they could be if they do so. If you tie rewards to their level of work, they will rise to their best level because they have an incentive. No work, no food and all that. Every person needs to rise to their highest level of potential. It’s just that the best some people can do is a job at Wal-Mart. It is these people who deserve our help. When they work as hard and as best as they can but still can’t make it, then they deserve generosity. Those who won’t work deserve nothing.

So let’s recap. If you believe:

• Bush=Hitler;
• There are infinite levels of grey instead of black/grey/white;
• In problem solving, intentions are more important than results;
• Any solution presented by a Conservative is automatically wrong;
• It is proper to put an unqualified minority over someone who is qualified;
• It is okay to judge someone by just the color of their skin;
• Minorities cannot survive on their own without government help;
• It is okay to give assistance to someone who doesn’t want to work;

If you agreed with any of the above statements, then you are in for a wild ride on this blog.

I am not really concerned with the who or what, but rather the why. I believe in doing the right thing for the right reasons. If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, you will end up ruining the work you did and get bit in the butt over it. It make take years, but I promise you it will happen.

You have been warned.

This article, Upholding the law talks about getting the professional criminals off the streets.

I read in Reader’s Digest some years back that 7 percent of the criminal population commits over 70 percent of the crimes in this country. It is also proven that if you enforce the “small laws” such as loitering, vandalism, etc., then neighborhoods become safer because the people likely to commit these (and worse) crimes move on to somewhere else.

Several years ago, Virginia started “Project Exile” which was a hard stance on felons. A felon caught with a gun or even a single bullet was sent to federal prison for 10 years. And the federal system has no parole. If you get 10 years, you serve 10 years. Coupled with an aggressive ad campaign targeting criminals, crimes dramatically dropped. This idea has spread to other areas of the country. Even Memphis has something like this, but I don’t think federal time is involved.

The only factual error of the article is in the quote below:

But while the Patriot Act has allowed us to crack down on terrorists, it has proven to be no threat to the civil liberties the rest of us enjoy. Last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, told a congressional hearing: “I have never had a single abuse of the Patriot Act reported to me.” Mrs. Feinstein also contacted the American Civil Liberties Union – a frequent critic of the act – to see if they had any examples of violations. “They had none,” she said.

While the author might have used uninformed sources, there is contradictory facts, I wrote about it here.

It is a good thing to keep criminals off our streets for as long as possible. We will never ‘solve’ the crime problem, but we can make them think twice before committing a crime.

This is a classic example of overreaction. Zero Patience for Zero Tolerance just shows how much of a prison camp our schools have become.

And so, an 11-year-old is taken away in handcuffs for drawing a picture of a gun; an 8-year-old faces expulsion for a keychain that contained a cheap nail clipper; a fifth-grader is suspended for drawing the World Trade Center being hit by an airplane … The stories go on and on.

These are not extreme examples, this is regular, everyday behavior of kids. Well, these are extreme examples of adult overreaction to kids normal actions.

But here’s the payoff paragraph:

In commenting on the study in the journal “National Association of Elementary School Principals,” Roger W. Ashford wrote, “The study concludes, however, that even though there is little data to prove the effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies, such initiatives serve to reassure the public that something is being done to ensure safety. Therefore, the popularity of zero-tolerance policies may have less to do with their actual effect than the image they portray of schools taking harsh measures to prevent violence. Whether the message actually changes student behavior may be less important than the reassurance it provides to administrators, teachers and parents.”

Oh. So Zero Tolerance doesn’t work, but it makes everybody feel safer. That makes it okay. No it doesn’t. When you institute a policy, when you perform any act, you need to have a positive result. If you don’t, you need to reevaluate the process, make changes and try again. You don’t fail when you don’t get the expected result, you fail when you give up trying. Not changing the process after not getting the expected result is counted as giving up trying.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I can attest to this method personally. It doesn’t work. There needs to be a positive feedback loop to continually improve the process. That’s the way you make change and that’s the way you succeed. To do something and not expect success is stupid. And Zero Tolerance is far down that road already.