Sunday, March 09, 2008

Obama adviser: he is "not ready for the 3AM phone call"

 
A startling admission by Obama senior foreign policy adviser Susan Rice:

As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares for an afternoon news conference... her campaign has put up a YouTube moment that you can bet will be replayed over and over... In it, Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Barack Obama, discusses the foreign policy credentials of both Democrats against the tableau of Mrs. Clinton’s 3 a.m. phone call advertisement about who would be best prepared for an international crisis...

“Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at three o’clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready,'’ Ms. Rice said. “They’re both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call.”

Well, I'm glad someone on Obama's staff is honest.

Larwyn's Link Explosion: The Mummy Returns

 
The Apostate Factory: Faith Freedom: ""O ye who believe! Ask not questions about things which if made plain to you, may cause you trouble. Some people before you did ask such questions, and on that account lost their faith."

The Mummy Returns: so says Mark Steyn... "Well, we will have Hillary Clinton to kick around some more, at least for another few weeks. The Mummy (as my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls her) kicked open the sarcophagus door and, despite the rotting bandages dating back to Iowa, began staggering around terrorizing folks all over again. “She is a monster,” Obama adviser Samantha Power told a reporter from the Scotsman — and not a monster in a cute Loch Ness blurry long-distance kind of way but something far more repulsive and in your face. “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh,’” continued Ms. Power, warming to her theme perhaps more than is advisable even in an interview with an overseas newspaper..."

The nuanced, evolving policy positions of Barack Obama: "In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an 'absolute obligation' to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success."

Setting the stage for a Civil War in the Democrat Party: Hillary Clinton sets her sights on three ways to win the nomination.

Disney steers clear of "Path to 9/11" DVD: "Top brass at Disney were called on Thursday to defend their decision not to release the controversial miniseries 'The Path to 9/11' on DVD and to justify CEO Robert Iger's $27.7 million pay package... [the movie was] a 2006 ABC miniseries critical of President Bill Clinton's handling of terrorist threats, was so controversial that leading Democrats asked Disney not to air the program... At Disney's annual shareholders' meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., one mutual fund portfolio manager said it was high time Disney turned "Path" into a DVD and recouped some of the $40 million it spent on the project... The fund manager, Tom Borelli, accused Iger of protecting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign at the expense of shareholders, and pointed out that Iger has been a steady Clinton donor since before the former first lady was elected to the Senate... He claimed to have a letter from a representative at indie studio Lionsgate proving that Disney has no intention of even selling the DVD rights to another company... "

Israel's Siege Continues: Richard Baehr on the survival of Israel and Judaism itself.

Captured terrorist hard-drive states Obama's policy positions

 
At Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball asks "Why is John McCain's non affair front-page news while the appearance of Obama's name on the hard drive of a dead Colombia warlord isn't?"

That's an excellent question.

Image idea: Reliapundit

"I loved that jet"

 
Major Brian Shul, writing at Maggie's Farm, describes his experiences flying the SR-71 Blackbird.

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111's had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a 'line of death,' a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.

I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world's fastest jet, accompanied by Maj Walter Watson, the aircraft's reconnaissance systems officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance.

After several agonizingly long seconds, we made the turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean. 'You might want to pull it back,' Walter suggested. It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6 seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. It was the fastest we would ever fly. I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily, but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar.

Scores of significant aircraft have been produced in the 100 years of flight, following the achievements of the Wright brothers, which we celebrate in December. Aircraft such as the Boeing 707, the F-86 Sabre Jet, and the P-51 Mustang are among the important machines that have flown our skies. But the SR-71, also known as the Blackbird, stands alone as a significant contributor to Cold War victory and as the fastest plane ever-and only 93 Air Force pilots ever steered the 'sled,' as we called our aircraft...

Read it all.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Mother and daughter discuss the mainstream media

 

Update: GM Roper found some other vintage photos....

Can the rift between Hillary and Obama be mended?

 
eHarmoney may be the one service that can heal the burgeoning split between the two equally sized camps of the Democrat Party.

Mainstream media "purposely downplayed role of armed student in Jerusalem massacre"

 
A pro-Second Amendment group offers an interesting insight into the mainstream media's coverage of the massacre in Jerusalem.

An armed student at Jerusalem's Mercaz Haray seminary played a crucial role in stopping a gun-wielding terrorist Thursday, but the American press is downplaying his heroism because it proves that armed students can stop campus gunmen..

Yitzhak Dadon, 40, was described as "a private citizen who had a gun license and was able to shoot the gunman with his pistol" by reporter Etgar Lefkovitz with the Jerusalem Post. However, many news agencies in the United States are downplaying Dadon's decisive role in the incident.

"Yitzhak Dadon is a hero," said... Alan Gottlieb, "and he is living proof that armed students have a place on college campuses... ...Internationally published reports say Dadon studies at the yeshiva, and had his pistol when the shooting erupted. When the gunman emerged from a library, Dadon reportedly shot him twice in the head. The gunman was subsequently shot by the off-duty soldier.

"Yitzhak Dadon's apparently well-placed bullets interrupted a rampage," Gottlieb said. "What a pity that someone like Mr. Dadon was not in class last April at Virginia Tech. What a tragedy that anti-gun extremism would keep him from attending class at Northern Illinois University. He would never be allowed to teach at Columbine High School, hold a job at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, or go shopping at Omaha's Westroads Mall.

"America's acquiescence to anti-gun hysteria has led to one tragedy after another," Gottlieb stated. "This disastrous policy has given us nothing but broken hearts and body counts, and it's got to end. The heroism of an armed Israeli seminary student halfway across the world sends a message that we needn't submit to murder in victim disarmament zones. That's why his actions are getting such short shrift from America's press. It's a story they are loathe to report because it affirms a philosophy of self-reliance that they despise."

Hat tips: Atlas and Larwyn

Exclusive photo: Hillary introduces her latest position paper

 
Oops. Bill must have gotten into the files again.

DAMMIT, BILL!!!

Friday, March 07, 2008

The colon who came in from the cold

 
Seen an enormous colon lately?

"Coco the Colossal Colon" is touring America.

"Coco,” as the Colossal Colon® is affectionately known, is a 40-foot long, 4-foot tall oversized model of the human colon that is designed to educate about colorectal cancer and other diseases of the colon. Visitors who crawl through the Colossal Colon will see Crohn's disease, diverticulosis, ulcerative colitis, hemorrhoids, cancerous and non-cancerous polyps, and various stages of colon cancer.

Legendary humorist Dave Barry paid a visit to the touring colon.

...the Colossal Colon... was on a nationwide tour to promote awareness of colo-rectal cancer. The idea is, you crawl through the Colossal Colon, and you encounter various educational items in there, such as polyps, cancer and hemorrhoids the size of regulation volleyballs, and you go, ''Whoa, I better find out if I contain any of these things,'' and you get a colonoscopy.

If you are as a professional humor writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are legally obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami Beach and crawled through the Colossal Colon...

The night before his own colonoscopy, he drank the requisite "cleansing" drink called "MoviPrep".

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ''a loose watery bowel movement may result.'' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

Visitors praised Senator Ted Kennedy, who played a prominent role in the colon's tour.

Reached for comment, Kennedy said:

It's been an adventure. I'll admit: it's very, very painful having all of those folks crawling around my intestines, but if I save even one person by convincing them to get a colonoscopy, it will all have been worth it!

Obama's king-maker: "Some call it pork; I call it steak"

 
Todd Spivak, writing in the Houston Press, relates his personal experiences with Barack Obama as a cub reporter in Chicago.

...in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers.

The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor... Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's. He became Obama's ­kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio ­program... [Jones said] 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"

...Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

...During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

And Jones was instrumental in making Obama a viable candidate. And just how did Obama repay Jones?

Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.

Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending... I'll never forget what he said: "Some call it pork; I call it steak."

You may ask: Doug, what's with the picture? Jeri Ryan, a former Star Trek: Voyager actress, played a prominent role in one of Obama's ladder-climbing exercises.

Hat tips: Hugh Hewitt and Larwyn

Larwyn's Link Explosion: ''Hillary's not a monster. As far as I know."

 
Hillary wants to run on her "experience", so why is she hiding as much of her experience as possible? This time, the Clintons decided to lock up the "Pardongate" papers, which describe how Bill Clinton issued hundreds of controversial pardons at the end of his second term. Ed Morrissey calls this internal conflict "curious". I call it a run-of-the-mill Clintonian coverup, along with the redacted pages in the Barrett Report, the still unreleased portions of the Cox Report, the millions of "classified" HillaryCare documents, her undisclosed tax returns and the financial backers of the Clinton Foundation Library and Gentlemen's Lounge. Hell, we could save the world's rain-forests simply by recycling some of these stashed archives.

Will Puerto Rico decide the Democratic nomination? Fausta notes that Puerto Rico has 8 superdelegates and 55 conventional delegates. If the race comes down to the wire those relative few may hold the keys to the nomination.

Conflict-of-interest: On July 27, 2007, Nancy Pelosi received more than $20,000 is contributions from drug-maker Amgen. On August 2, Pelosi introduced a bill that would benefit Amgen by permitting expanded Medicaid coverage for some HIV-positive patients. In addition, to the $20K Pelosi received in July, another $20K was received by Pelosi's re-election campaign from Amgen executives and the corporate political action committee. Ethical!

Rick Pearson has a funny: commenting on Obama's Samantha Powers debacle (she who called Hillary a "monster"): "Obama might have said, 'Hillary's not a monster. As far as I know.'"

Another unexplained windfall for Bill Clinton: Eagle-eyed PrairiePundit spots a WaTimes mention of another odd "contribution" to the Clintons

The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government...

Sweet deal, Willie!

What's missing from the AP article on the murders in Jerusalem?

 
Read the entire article and see if you can figure out what's missing.

A gunman entered the library of a rabbinical seminary and opened fire on a crowded nighttime study session Thursday, killing eight people and wounding nine before he was slain, police and rescue workers said. It was the first major militant attack in Jerusalem in more than four years.

Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip praised the operation in a statement, and thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza to celebrate...

...the attacker walked through the seminary's main gate and entered the library, where witnesses said some 80 people were gathered. He carried an assault rifle and pistol, and used both weapons in the attack. Rosenfeld said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor.

What's missing?

The murdered victims were children - mostly ages 15 and 16, but to read the AP article you'd never know it.

Let's run a little thought experiment: say an Israeli missile targeting a Hamas bigwig veered off-course and smashed into a Palestinian orphange. Let's say it killed and wounded an equal number of children of the same ages. Would the AP hesitate to blare out an article such as '8 Palestinian children killed in Israeli offensive'?

Thursday, March 06, 2008

The Slaughterhouse vs. the Leaflet

 
There's this:

"It was a slaughterhouse"... "When we got in... we saw young, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands - all dead on the floor..."

Eight people have been killed and nine wounded by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem, Israeli officials say...

Witnesses said the gunman went into a crowded hall during dinner at the Mercaz Harav seminary in the city's Kiryat Moshe quarter and opened fire...

In Gaza, thousands celebrated the attacks in Jerusalem.

Palestinians distribute[d] sweets in celebration of Jerusalem terror attack as Hamas promises 'this is only the beginning'... Gaza's streets filled with joyous crowds of thousands on Thursday evening following the terror attack at a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary in which eight people were killed.

In mosques in Gaza City and northern Gaza, many residents went to perform the prayers of thanksgiving... Armed men fired in the air in celebration and others passed out sweets to passersby...

And then there's this:

During the 2006 summer war with Hezbollah, Israel dropped leaflets in Lebanon to alert civilians of forthcoming military actions.

Due to the terrorist activities carried out by Hizbullah, the Israeli Army will continue its work within Lebanese territories for as long as it deems fit to protect Israeli citizens. For your own safety and because we do not wish to cause any more civilian deaths, you are advised to avoid all places frequented by Hizbullah.

You should know that the continuation of terrorist activities against Israel will be considered a double-edged sword for you and Lebanon.

(signed) The State of Israel.

Someday soon, I hope that Vanderleun's letter will be addressed, stamped and dropped in a mailbox.

The endorsements keep rolling in for Obama...

 
...but I don't think they're helping.

Atlas is maintaining the official Obama endorsement checklist.

Update: pity the mainstream media isn't asking how Obama raised a record $55 million last month.

Hat tip: Larwyn

The ethical country of China

 
China has a troubling history of using any means necessary to acquire its critical intellectual property.
The Raw Feed reports:

Prosecutors in Seoul, Korea, indicted an ex-LG employee for spying for a Chinese company in a case they say cost the South Korean economy more than $1 billion. The Chinese company, Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong, reportedly paid the LG manager $300,000 per year, an apartment and a car (he was still collecting his LG salary) in exchange for copying 1,182 files from the LG network and giving it to the Chinese company...

The company then used that stolen data to copy LG's plasma display panel production technology. Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong plans to start making plasma panels with the stolen technology starting in December.

Hat tip: LGF quick links

Hillary peeved with unauthorized biography

 
"The chapter on Bill's affair with Monica did not have to have a 'pop-up' section!"

You just won a Toyota!

 
She doesn't look very amused by the "joke".

Hat tip: Chris

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The inevitable result of the Democrat pre-9/11 mindset

 
The Council on Foreign Relations has more.

Original image found on Accelerating Future by Vanderleun

Someone get the stunt double on the set

 
The National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez:

An e-mail, from a male reader:

Notice how no one is referring to Hillary Clinton as the "Come Back Kid" like they did when McCain was down and out and then started winning.

That's because Hillary doesn't remind anyone of a "come back kid." She reminds most of us of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction — particularly the scene at the end of the movie where she rises up out of the bathtub and tries one last time to kill Michael Douglas.

I've got your movie poster right here. You can thank Reliapundit for the idea.

I feel shriveled.

Catching pigs

 
There was a chemistry professor in a large college who had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new Communist regime.

While telling his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question: "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?" The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

"You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.

"When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

"Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are trapped. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity."

The young man then told the professor that this is exactly what he sees happening in America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, subsidized housing, school programs, medicine, drugs, etc. We continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

We should always remember two truths: There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. If you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of freedom in America, you might want to send this on to your friends.

If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably ignore this post. Heaven help us when the gate slams shut!

Hat tips: Story sent by Steven G. and "pig ready for the spit" photo from Dragon Lady's Den