One might be tempted, in this campaign season, to think that honest Democrats were few and far between*, if they exist at all. The shrillness and vitriol of their talking points are far more extreme than ever before. Their mouthpieces in the press make virtually no pretense of being fair-minded deliverers of news.
You need only to look at any "talking heads" news program to see the spinners of the Left interrupting, shouting down and talking over their political opponents, manners be damned. Lawrence O'Donnell's shameful (and shameless) performance on the air with John O'Neill just a week ago is an extreme and noteworthy example.
It would be one thing if they were using actual truth as the weapon against their opponents, but frankly, the Left would neither know nor care about the truth if it stood in front of them with a flaming sword, threatening cauterization (with the attendant need for such) if they were not to mend their ways.
It is not merely in debate that their extremism is evident. Theft and vandalism have been reported nearly every day for the last month. GOP offices have been burgled, ransacked, and even shot at. If sanity does not pull the extremists' choke-chains, eventually someone is going to get hurt, perhaps even killed. The left-wing extremists had better think twice — or even just once — before they go down that road; it leads through dangers from which they will not emerge victorious... if they emerge at all.
The hard-core Left are losing their minds. I'm already convinced they've lost any love of country they ever had. Scoop Jackson, oh, how we miss you. Zell Miller, where can we get more Democrats like you?
Orson Scott Card, whom I have cited before, is one such honest man. He examines the current state of mind of the Democrat party — the scamming, the lying, the pseudo-intellectualism, the mockery of faith in God, and the unswerving notion that they are entitled to rule — in The Death of Shame. A brief excerpt:
The falsehoods are thick on the ground, and contrary to the impression some might try to give you, they are not conducted equally by both sides.When they trumpet examples of Republican "lies," they usually turn out to be in the following categories:
1. Statements that turn out to be wrong, though they were believed to be right at the time they were spoken. (In the rational world, we call these "mistakes.")
2. Statements that interpret legitimate data in ways that support the Republican view. (In the rational world, we call these "differences of opinion.")
3. Statements that point out obvious contradictions between what the Democratic candidates say and what they have said and done in the past. These are called "negative campaigning" and "mudslinging" and "distortions" and, of course, "lies," but these countercharges are offered instead of coherent explanations.
[Italics and parenthetical comments in the original.]
I don't need to tell you to read the whole thing, do I?
* I refer, of course, to the leadership and public face of the Democrat party, not to the millions of decent folk who remain members thereof. Those folks should, however, be dismayed that their party has been taken over by the extreme Left. Maybe after a thorough trouncing, they'll do something about it.
"Wake up, America" sounds an awful lot like "What, are you people too stupid to vote for me?"
A Kerry cousin was a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Make of it what you will... preferably nothing.
[Though if it were a Bush cousin, you know precisely what the moonbats would be howling, don't you?]
[OK, OK, now I'm leaving.]
The real world is interfering with my blogging today.
Plenty of good reading material in the links over to the left, though. Click the buttons to expand the blogrolls, and read some of the great blogs I read.
[If you're new to this business, the little asterisk in front of a link in the blogrolls means that the blog in question has been recently updated.]
For most of the past year, it's been my privilege to be a babysitter for a blog-friend of mine.
No, not babysitter... catsitter.
Meet Xaxu and Mycah:
Xaxu is Mr. Personality — energetic (when he's not sleeping), inquisitive, highly entertaining, and a real joy to have around. He's the one I mentioned here.
He will be going back home shortly. I'll miss the little scamp, but at least I know he's going to be taken care of by the one person on Earth who likes him more than I do.
Mycah is laid back and very well-mannered. I've never seen a more calm and polite cat... except at feeding time, when she puts me in a half-nelson, wrestles me into the kitchen, and forces me to feed her. I'm glad she doesn't have opposable thumbs — if she got to my guns, I could be in real trouble. Otherwise, she's a complete, total and utter sweetheart.
I'll be keeping my eye on Mycah for the foreseeable future. She'll do well here (that's a promise, Ser!), and I'm glad to have her.
I've never been a "cat guy"... until now. After all, what is the first thing that pops into your head when someone is described as a "single 40-something man, living alone, with cats"?
Well, think again.
[At least it's not birds.]
[Sorry, Steve.]
I've been blog-interviewed.
I feel so much more important than I did yesterday.
... or at least, postless.
Busy day today. Probably busy tomorrow and Friday, too — but if anything particularly interesting happens, I'll endeavor to think up something to post.
I was fresh out of the shower; my shirt, pants shoes and socks were all upstairs with freshly-towelled-off me. Skivvies, on the other hand, were all in the dirty clothes hamper or downstairs in the laundry room, stacked on the dryer, leading to something of an epiphany.
There is something deeply and fundamentally liberating about "going commando."
[Jeff Goldstein's Levi's might disagree.]
Compared to TA:WP, the cuss-fest South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was a Disney-esque stroll through flowery fields.
I still laughed myself silly at both of them.
Yes, that makes me a bad, bad man.
For those of you who may still be on the fence with regard to your selection of a candidate in this presidential election, I'm going to elucidate a few of the reasons I support the re-election of President George W. Bush. You may disagree, and that's OK. It's still a free country, after all. But I think that if Kerry is elected, we as a nation will have made a mistake that will have repercussions for years to come, for decades to come.
And possibly forever.
First, I support President Bush for his stands on domestic matters. There are places I disagree with him — the budget, and his failure to use his veto power when necessary — but in most areas, I support him unreservedly. I'll cite just one example: Social Security.
The Social Security system — a Ponzi scheme if ever there was one — is broken. It will inevitably fail; the only question is when.
It has been 70 years (or thereabouts) that the system has been in place. In that time, the overall life expectancy of Americans has risen; the number of people living to age 65 and beyond has risen, and they are living farther past age 65. In other words, more people than ever before are receiving Social Security benefits, and are receiving them for more years.
The age at which people can begin collecting benefits has not increased to match these demographic trends. Nor, due to political cowardice on all sides, is it ever likely to do so.
Meanwhile, fewer workers than ever are paying into the system for each recipient. Few people age 40 or below believe that Social Security will be in place for them 25 or more years down the road. I'm 42, and I certainly don't believe Social Security will be there for me, should I happen to defy all expectations and live to a ripe old age.
How then does the problem get fixed? Who has the best ideas?
There's no stopping it — the ship will sink. Kerry would prefer that we form a bucket brigade and bail as fast as we can.
President Bush, on the other hand, would rather let us man the lifeboats and get off the sinking ship. He'd rather make sure there are enough lifeboats for everyone, and if it means pulling planks off the sinking ship's deck to build them, so be it.
Privatization — the term being used to scare senior citizens — is the right thing to do, but it doesn't mean what Kerry says it means. (Of course, anything Kerry says is usually unrelated to the truth, except perhaps by accident.) Allowing people to build their own retirement savings and to have ownership of even a small portion of what they pay into the mandated system is a major improvement over the status quo.
President Bush has a plan for the future, a plan that has a chance of working. Kerry doesn't. It's as simple as that.
While there is a great deal of import in what a president does domestically, his role in foreign affairs is equally, if not more, important.
Kerry has already told us how he would approach the international community: on bended knee.
Kyoto? Back on the table, despite the shoddy pseudo-science upon which it is based, despite the irreparable harm it would do to the American economy and consequently to all Americans. Why? Because it would make the rest of the world respect us? Not hardly. The rest of the world, China in particular, would like nothing more than to see our economic hands tied.
The United Nations? "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…" except perhaps at the Elysee Palace. The UN has become nothing more than a debating society for tinpot dictators and kleptocrats, but Kerry would have us submit to their judgement of what's best. Should we really care about the opinions of those who stole billions of dollars which should have gone to feed the people of Iraq? No thank you.
The Middle East? The rest of the world would like to try to make the problems of the Middle East go away, and so would Kerry — by throwing an ally to the wolves.
President Bush, on the other hand, knows that a President is supposed to look out for America's interests — first, last and always. He knows that the de facto leader of the free world cannot actually lead if he is busy following others. And if the international community doesn't like it, that's just too bad for them.
And that's good enough for me.
All the above notwithstanding, the single most important duty of a president is to protect the nation. I am utterly unconvinced that John Kerry is ready, either by inclination or experience, to carry out that duty effectively.
I am convinced that President Bush is thus prepared. We have, after all, nearly four years of evidence.
By withdrawing from the Anti-Ballitic Missile treaty — a suicide pact with a defeated enemy — he showed that he is determined to protect America from future foes armed with the deadliest of weapons… weapons for which our adversaries can thank the Clinton administration.
I believe that Kerry would have adhered to the ABM treaty. He would place a higher value on looking statesmanlike to the rest of the world than he would on protecting the American people.
Kerry has said and done nothing whatsoever to convince me that he believes we are at war with something bigger than Al-Qaeda. His "law enforcement" approach to the war against Islamofascism is bereft of any pretense of seriousness about defending America. His "wait to be hit then prosecute the offenders" stance did not work for Clinton after the first attack on the World Trade Center, and it would continue to be a failure in the future. His view of radical Islamic terrorism as something that can be comfortably reduced to a nuisance betrays a complete lack of understanding of the essential nature of this war in which we are now engaged.
Sure, Kerry talks a big game on the campaign trail. Well, you can either believe what he says, or you can look at his record. The simple fact that his words do not match his actions make him less than credible, and unsuitable for the highest office in the land.
And lest it go unsaid, his personal history of self-aggrandizement at the expense of his former comrades-in-arms, while aiding and abetting our enemies, is something I will not forgive. Not now, not ever.
By way of contrast, in little more than three years President Bush has seen our country viciously attacked, and in response set us on a course which has thus far destroyed two enemy regimes and brought freedom from tyranny to 50 million people on the far side of the world, while at the same time doing his best to make us safer here at home.
There will almost certainly be terrorist attacks against us on our own soil again in the future — perhaps even between now and the election a few days hence. I am convinced that President Bush is the better man to handle such crises.
There is one immutable, undeniable truth about the candidates: President Bush is better on national security than Kerry and will do a more effective job of protecting this country (and a few others — call it "collateral improvement") and taking the fight to the enemy.
I take that back. There are people who routinely deny President Bush's superiority, who will say with a straight face that Kerry will be a better leader in the war against Islamofascism.
They are liars.
They are either lying to you, or to themselves, or both. The candidates' records clearly tell the tale.
If Kerry is elected (or steals the election, as his followers and surrogates will attempt to do for him), we as a nation will have made a mistake that will have repercussions for years to come, for decades to come.
And possibly forever.
Yes, forever. To paraphrase Lincoln, America is the last best hope of freedom on the Earth. But if the slide into European-style socialism is not checked, if we surrender to the will of other nations, and if our enemies can strike us at will, then the guarantor of our God-given freedoms, our constitutional republic, will be doomed — and there will be no peaceful way to recover it. John Kerry would not only fail to protect us from these threats, but would actively embrace two of them, and the republic will be that much closer to collapse.
President Bush offers the hope that these all-too-real threats can be staved off. No, he is not the perfect candidate — no one ever has been or ever will be — and I think it's safe to suggest that he'd be the first to say as much. We all know that no one is perfect. But President Bush is unquestionably the best candidate in the race this year, and that's what matters.
And so, on November 2nd, I will cast my vote to re-elect President George W. Bush.
Via INDC Journal, a bit from the UK Guardian newspaper:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
[Emphasis mine.]
[The Guardian has evidently pulled the item from their website.]
[OK, now it's back.]
Really. This must be an example of that stereotypical British habit of understatement.
So, where is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh you now that we need him? And can we get him to wherever Charlie Brooker hangs his hat?
Outrageous? Damn right it is.
Is it possible that misbehavior by hardcore Democrat voters might lose them support from "softcore" voters?
I read this at Powerline and I have to wonder if any "squishy" Democrat voters — those not of the extreme Left — might be turned off by these sorts of behaviors? Might reports like this from early voting tend to suppress the "rational Democrat" vote, or fire up the Republican vote?
Left or Right, Republican or Democrat.... most people don't like to be associated with a**holes.
Except other a**holes, of course.
I swear, sometimes I think we're not going to get through this election season without seeing trial lawyers hanged from lamp posts and overpasses.
Yes, yes. I'm ronery too. But you don't see me dealing with terrorist scumbags.
On the other hand, if I had a nuke or two, I might "deal with them" in my own particular way.
If Tivo'ing Special Report with Brit Hume just to watch and re-watch Brit verbally pimp-slap the increasingly shrill Juan Williams is wrong, I don't want to be right.
If it's Friday and I'm quoting someone, the odds are very good it's Victor Davis Hanson:
When this is all over, and George Bush is reelected — Republicans then controlling all branches of federal government, and most of the state legislatures and governorships — then, and only then, will Democrats grasp the march of folly in 2004, and either return to their roots or perish from increasing irrelevance. Meanwhile, George Bush, oblivious to the hysteria, will finish and win this war.
This country benefits from having two competetive and rational parties; the Democrats try to be competetive, but they are increasingly irrational. As things stand, they will have to "destroy their party in order to save it" — a formulation with which their current candidate may be passingly familiar.
The self-destruction is well under way. But will they save it?
When creating their special effects, Parker & Stone should have experimented on the non-puppet Michael Moore before shooting that particular scene.
Is there anything so sad as a missed opportunity?
All right, knock it off.
Yeah, you! Shut up and listen up.
You people make me sick. Go on, look at yourselves. You call yourselves Americans? You're a bunch of goof-ups!
I said, listen up!
OK, now look... we have a dangerous mission ahead of us. Yes, us again. I know there are other outfits that might be able to handle this operation, but they wanted the best, and that's us. We've had our share of danger, you bet. But when the hard job has to be done, there's no one better qualified to handle it.
We've lost a lot of good people in this war — a lot of 'em were just minding their own business when the world fell on them — and we'll lose more before this war is over. No one said it would be an easy fight. But it's up to us. Yep, the Brits and Aussies are with us in this fight, and the Poles are on our side, and plenty of others too. Glad to have 'em. They've come to help us, just like we'd go to help them if they needed....
What's that, Caje? The French? They're mostly collaborators. Can't trust 'em in this war. Now shut up until I'm done talking.
So anyway, we have this fight we're hip-deep in, and some people think it's time to trade our commander-in-chief for a new one. I've heard some crazy knuckle-headed ideas before, but that one really takes the cake.
We've got a fine C-in-C now, doing a pretty good job, and it sure isn't General Eisenhower running against him. Nope, it's a swabbie, a Lieutenant of all people. Oh... sorry, Lieutenant Hanley.... As I was about to say, I know some sailors, and I know some Lieutenants — most of 'em are OK by me. But this one abandoned ship as soon as he could. A four-month tour in a combat zone. How long have we been here? Heck, some of us have been in harm's way for over three years now.
That Lieutenant didn't just leave his buddies behind, though. As soon as he got home, he started bad-mouthing them and everything they were doing. He lied about them. That doesn't sit too well with me.
Now he wants the top job, the Oval Office, and so far the one thing we know is he'll say anything to get it. Heck, he'll even make nice with those French collaborators. I don't like the sound of that. I'll bet you don't either.
So now it's time to go vote for our C-in-C for the next four years. You can choose — but there's only one choice if you want us to win this war. When you hit that voting booth, I want you to pull the lever for George W. Bush.
Any questions? OK, we've got a job to do.
Saddle up.
[This message brought to you by the Heroes for Bush project.]
[Also see Ambassador Kosh's endorsement.]
[Update: And don't miss the Heroes for Bush roundup.]
Someone in the past two weeks hit my tipjar — anonymously, of course, since that's how Amazon works. Also due to the way Amazon works, I just found out about it.
(No, I do not check it daily. Why bother?)
Whoever you are, thanks very much.
Freedom isn't free. I know that.
But I'm pretty sure that $1.05 is a lowball price, too.
[Click image for full size.]
John Kerry claims to have foreign leaders on his side. Ha! Who needs France and the U.N. when you can have a Vorlon?
[This message brought to you by the Heroes for Bush project.]
[Also see Sergeant Saunders' endorsement.]
[Update: And don't miss the Heroes for Bush roundup.]
NZ Bear has a pretty darn good idea.
If this is to be done on Friday, right now would be a good time to get my Photoshop mojo working.
I am not old enough to see this movie.
People ask me why I use and recommend the Mozilla browsers, rather than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (or, as I am wont to call it, Internet Exploder.)
I'm a network and internetwork geek. It's been my living for the past 8 years or so. I've been working on the infrastructure of the internet since before 90% of Americans ever even heard of the "information superhighway."
As a professional network geek, I have long despised any Microsoft product that touches the network. They are unreliable, and in most cases are actually dangerous to the stability and security of the network.
All those viruses circulating out there? Zombies, trojan horses, browser hijackers...? Virtually all of them target specific problems in Windows, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, or any combination thereof.
Part of this is simply because the evil SOBs who create the virii know that 90+% of people on the 'net are using Windows; it's what you might call a target-rich environment.
I think the main reason that Windows is exploited is because it's so damned easy. The fact that MS is slow to acknowledge problems and provide fixes doesn't help matters any.
I regularly receive advisories in my e-mail from CERT — the Computer Emergency Readiness Team. Advisories like Technical Cyber Security Alert TA04-293A, the headers of which I reproduce here:
Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer
Original release date: October 19, 2004
Last revised: --
Source: US-CERT
Systems Affected
Microsoft Windows systems running
- Internet Explorer versions 5.01 and later; previous, unsupported versions of Internet Explorer may also be affected
- Programs that use the WebBrowser ActiveX control (WebOC) or MSHTML rendering engine
OverviewMicrosoft Internet Explorer (IE) contains multiple vulnerabilities, the most severe of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running IE.
And so on.
That is why I run (and recommend) Mozilla on my PCs, and why I use Linux, except for one Windows machine.
Hey — a guy has to have his IL 2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles.
You can stop terrorist marionettes by using a bunch of fancy armament.
But it'd be simpler to cut their strings.
Cheaper, too.
America? Yes. Yes, indeed.
You betcha.
On various blogs, such as INDC Journal, I've recently seen AP photos of a theatre marquee in the "Little Kabul" section of Fremont, CA.
The Associated Press must be a bit slow these days. I blogged a picture (taken by a correspondent of mine) of the same theatre, with a slightly different message on the marquee, back in June.
Why do we need the AP at all, when there are thousands of "reporters" out there with digital cameras and IP addresses? For an air of respectability? Heck, I lost my respect for the MSM long ago.
Maybe we need them as a "distribution channel" — an index, of sorts — for the news. Well, heck, I read Instapundit (for example) every day.
Alan at the Command Post had a few thoughts on the matter, delivered in person to the AP managing editors, but worth a read by anyone interested in news.
Yes, I'm experimenting with my stylesheets. The "pull quotes" method in the previous post has been stolen shamelessly from Spoons.
[I spent the weekend rebuilding templates and stylesheets for Blogs For Bush — I figure I can take a little time for myself.]
I live in a pretty decent neighborhood. Solidly "upper middle-class," maybe "lower upper-class"... lots of professionals live in my neighborhood. If we all banded together, we could start a high-tech company all our own.
We're somewhat out in the sticks, too — our little subdivision in the woods west of Raleigh is the last one you get to before you're in genuinely rural territory. Cows, horses, ostriches, that sort of thing. Livestock. Crime here is virtually non-existent, if not actually non-existent.
A couple nights ago, while I was lying in bed reading prior to turning out the light, I heard a noise downstairs.
It was not the usual cat-generated noise — the cat was lying on my chest getting a one-handed chin-scratch while I held my book in the other hand. Nor was it the common "wind-blown twig hitting the side of the house" noise.
This sounded like someone trying to get in the sliding glass door off my back deck. I've never actually had anyone get into my house before, but that's what it sounded like to me.
There's a phone next to my bed. A police visit would have been a mere 911 call away.
What first crossed my mind was get a firearm.
The thought of calling the police never crossed my mind.
What first crossed my mind was get a firearm.
Not call a cop, but get a gun.
Five minutes of investigation determined that it was no mere twig that had blown up against the house, but rather a length of branch about 1" in diameter knocking up against the sliding glass door. No big deal after all.
I delight in imagining, however, the look of utter surprise a burglar might wear on his face when confronted by a giant (me: 6'8", 300+ lbs.) in jockey shorts wielding a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun. The sound of that slide racking is probably enough to cause severe and immediate bowel hyperactivity.
Epilogue: I returned upstairs to my room, to be greeted by a slightly miffed feline. He looked at me from the foot of my bed, no doubt indignant that his chin-scratch had been so rudely interrupted. I'm sure he thought I was an idiot cowboy. That's OK — I think he's French. I know which I'd rather be.
On likability:
"I've always had two theories of this election. The first was the conventional wisdom: If Iraq and the economy were going well by Labor Day, Bush would be a shoo-in.". . . .
"My second theory involved an even more elemental fact. John Kerry is a sphincter."
Due to difficulty spending long periods of time staring at [anything] this week, I have decided that I will have to meta-liveblog the liveblogging, rather than liveblog the liveblogging.
How?
Easy: I give you the links; you check them for yourselves.
- Hugh Hewitt
- The Commissar
- The Corner at NRO
- Blogs For Bush
- LaShawn Barber (or her commenters)
- Stephen Green (with a separate post for readers to comment.)
- Spoons
A tabbed browser works best for this exercise, and has the added benefit of not being as huge a security risk for your system as Micro$oft's Internet Exploder is.
like sand under my eyelid;
eye-boogers galore.
I have six Gmail invitations to pass out. If, like me, you like to use separate e-mail accounts for separate duties, you might like to have one of these.
If you want one, leave a comment. First come, first served.
I'm sidelined with some kind of eye infection. It's not painful or anything, but let's just say that I can think of better things to do with my eye than look at a computer monitor today.
Folks, THIS is what it's all about — an Afghan woman votes for the first time:
(Picture shamelessly stolen from Bill @ INDC Journal, who also comments on the tremendous victory of a key ally in the War on Terrorism.)
NOTE: this post is for debate #2. My debate #3 post is here.
"Liveblogging the liveblogging"
I took a different approach to liveblogging the debate.
9:00pm EDT - loaded the following sites in my browser:
I then proceeded with the main event.
9:05 - reloaded & read Instapundit
9:06 - reloaded & read The Corner
9:07 - reloaded & read Powerline
9:08 - reloaded & read Spoons
9:09 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
9:10 - reloaded & read the Commisar
9:11 - reloaded & read Instapundit
9:12 - loaded Hugh Hewitt
9:13 - reloaded & read The Corner
9:14 - reloaded & read Powerline
9:15 - reloaded & read Spoons
9:16 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
9:17 - reloaded & read the Commisar
9:18-9:27 - bathroom. Cracked open the latest issue of the Cabela's catalog. I need more fiber.
9:28-9:41 - strolled downstairs to refill my beer stein with ice and grab a fresh bottle of Diet Coke. You didn't think I'd actually drink beer? Halfway up the stairs, realized I forgot to move this evening's load of laundry into the dryer. Schlepped back down, loaded the dryer, schlepped up the stairs.
9:42 - reloaded & read Instapundit
9:43 - reloaded & read Hugh Hewitt
9:44 - reloaded & read The Corner
9:45 - reloaded & read Powerline
9:46 - reloaded & read Spoons
9:47 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
9:48 - reloaded & read the Commisar
9:49-9:55 - checked e-mail. I regularly use three separate accounts, so this can sometimes take a while.
9:56-10:17 - typing this post. I'm a crappy typist.
10:18 - reloaded & read Instapundit
10:19 - reloaded & read Hugh Hewitt
10:20 - reloaded & read The Corner
10:21 - reloaded & read Powerline
10:22 - reloaded & read Spoons
10:23 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
10:24 - reloaded & read the Commisar
10:25 - reloaded & read Instapundit
10:26 - reloaded & read Hugh Hewitt
10:27 - reloaded & read The Corner
10:28 - reloaded & read Powerline
10:29 - reloaded & read Spoons
10:30 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
10:31 - reloaded & read the Commisar
10:32 - reloaded & read Instapundit
10:33 - reloaded & read Hugh Hewitt
10:34 - reloaded & read The Corner
10:35 - reloaded & read Powerline
10:36 - reloaded & read Spoons
10:37 - reloaded & read NZ Bear
10:38 - reloaded & read the Commisar
[End of debate]
Conclusions & Observations:
- Thanks goodness for Mozilla's tabbed browsing.
- I need more fiber in my diet
- All the sites linked above are much better at commentary than I would be, particularly given my pathetic typing skills.
Disclaimer: The "live" in "liveblogging" refers to the fact that I had a pulse while I mentally composed this post. I cannot type fast enough to do this stuff in realtime. And, c'mon — copy/paste would be cheating.
Update: is "liveblogging" hyphenated or not? I suspect it ought to be, despite my mixed usage.
Orson Scott Card — author & life-long Democrat — delivers a right proper (and well-deserved) bitchslapping to Kerry & Edwards:
It's actually possible to conduct a political campaign in which you don't encourage enemies of the United States to kill Americans. It's actually possible to look at a war and not blame our own leaders for the crimes of our enemies.But you'd never know it from watching the fanatical Bush-hating Left in this election.
[Insert obligatory Read The Whole Thing command here.]
Link via Ian S.
Doc Russia describes the path to chaos. He's not leading or directing, but warning.
It's not a long trip, and it's definitely a road best left untravelled.
Bill Whittle has a new essay. It's pure Whittle, and it's a winner.
It would be nice to live in a world full of liberals. I say that as a staunch conservative. It would be nice to live in a world that behaved like a Hollywood party or a university campus, filled with kind, educated people with lots to lose, who cherish reason and responsibility and are incapable of brutal, violent acts. If all the world were filled with decent, compassionate, rational people, life would be a bouquet.But it’s not. There are bad people who do bad things, and there are bad countries run by bad people who do bad things who eat the kind and gentle people for breakfast. There is no denying this. Therefore, liberals are insane.
It’s a damn shame, it really is.
You are required to read The whole thing: DETERRENCE, Part 1 and Part 2. (Or just go here and start reading from the top down.)
Having watched the debate last night, and having had time to soak up as much punditry as I can tolerate, I have come to one firm conclusion:
I, your humble host, am more qualified to be Vice President than Señor Lightweight John Edwards is.
But I don't want it, thanks very much.
I was born the day Scott Carpenter went aloft and into orbit in Aurora 7. Space flight has always been an interest, no, a fascination of mine. Astronauts have always been heroes to me.
It's a dangerous thing, going into space. Many have died, and yet the ranks of those eager to follow the path into space never seem to shrink. We hope our astronauts will fare well, but we know some will die.
But we somehow never expect them to be old men, dying of the things old men die of.
Daniel J. Flynn, discussing his book Intellectual Morons : How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas:
The Left's reflexive hatred for America and its allies overrides its genuflections to human rights. That's why they don't cheer human rights advances in Afghanistan, or Israel's tolerance of Arab homosexuals who would be severely punished for their behavior in their homelands.The Left used to get their marching orders from the Soviet Union. They're gone now. But their enemy remains, and some leftists simply define their positions by what opposes the United States. If there has been a cohesive idea uniting the Left since the fall of the Iron Curtain, it is anti-Americanism.
In an interview with Jaime Glazov at FrontPageMag
All previous snarkiness notwithstanding, I enjoyed the movie. It is unquestionably the best movie I've gone to see this year.
OK, OK, so it's the only movie I've gone out to see this year. I don't get out much.
Separated at birth?
Thanks to Zombie, via Bill at INDC Journal for the "Weirdo" picture. Which one that is, I'll leave to you to decide.
(Apologies for the crappy photoshop job.)
Update: Welcome, Instapundit visitors. My very first 'lanche, and it had to be on a cheesy photoshop job.
Late update, 1/30/2007: At Hot Air, suggestions that Kerry's photo op was a violation of campaign law. It was a great picture, though.
And the winner is.... Kerry on style, Bush on substance.
But the real winner will be determined by who makes best use of all the soundbites from the debate. In that regard Bush will win, and win big.
Kerry provided such a huge and seemingly never-ending stream of fodder for pro-Bush advertisements that the hard part for the Bush campaign will be figuring out which specific Kerry utterances will be best to use.
I'd go with the "global test" business.
And now I'm off to bed.
Imperial Department of Hegemony By Force
