Darleen's Place

« September 2004 | Main | November 2004 »

October 31, 2004

Sunday morning ... do you know what time it is?

Happy Halloween! Let me get the bi-annual complaint out of the way ... I never truly realize how many electronic time thingies I have around my house until I have to go reset them.

Last night was party night; and happily, this year we did not host a house full of kidlets ... of any age! My girls gathered with friends elsewhere and hubby and I headed off to my friend's, Lisa, home. My husband considers me a Halloween nut as it is, but I'm a greenbelt next to the 3rd degree blackbelt Lisa holds in Halloween deco/fun. She scours every store on Nov 1 for Halloween stuff for the next year and has quite a diverse and perverse collection. There's fog machines and cackling skeletons, mummies and burbling-smoking cauldrons. She's got sound activated creatures in the bathrooms to keep you company, spiders and webs all over. This year as you enter her home there is an animated zombie horror...well, HALF an animated zombie horror ... groaning and dragging itself across the floor in a bloody shirt cut at the waist.

Lisa, I love you!

Michele has her own tale of horror to tell. Nothing will turn a parent's hair grey faster than a gaggle of 14 y/o girls. They are a giant mass of obnoxious condescension, haughtiness and just enough bravado to think they can get away with sneering openly at any adult within range. If you own one of them, you start seriously thinking convent or military school. But I tip my hat that Michele got a nice bit of revenge on the gaggle.

On a much more serious note, one that should up your "Caution: Danger Ahead" factor, is this piece of indecency from Camp Kerry (like I should be shocked?) via Bill at INDC Journal

October 31, 2004 -- THIS campaign is ending just in time before someone gets hurt. John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, 31, displayed his mother Teresa's famous lack of rhetorical restraint at a recent campaign event with a group of Wharton students. Philadelphia magazine reports: "Heinz accused Kerry's opponents - 'our enemies' - of making the race dirty. 'We didn't start out with negative ads calling George Bush a cokehead,' he said, before adding, 'I'll do it now.' Asked later about it, Heinz said, 'I have no evidence. He never sold me anything.'" Heinz also reminded writer Sasha Issenberg of Pat Buchanan by saying, "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby - the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state." Buchanan was blasted as an anti-Semite years ago when he cited Israel's "amen corner" in Congress.

Bill does a great job in a few short lines to eviserate the bigotry that underlies Heinz's Zionist Conspiracy mongering.

I believe one of the most shocking things for me of the last few years has been the growing and casual anti-Semitism of the Left. Michael Moore's throw away line about the Iraq war -- It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton. -- certainly didn't keep Camp Kerry from sitting Mr. al-Moore next to another "great friend" of Israel, Jhimmi Carter, at the DemCon.

The US's steadfast support for Israel, regardless of "world popularity," has clearly enhanced America's moral position. Kerry avoids even uttering the word "Israel." This should definitely give pause and underline the concern that Kerry is ready to use Israel as currency to buy American popularity with EU and Arabs.

The time is now, to vote GW back into office and fumigate the Democratic Party of the Michael Moore faction that has taken it over.

UPDATE Jeff Goldstein weighs in with a pithy comment:

On November 2, roughly 8 of every 10 American Jews will cast a vote for John F Kerry and his sophosticated continental wife, Teresa. Enjoy, putzes.

UPDATE I highly recommend you read this column from Dennis Prager who has returned "from a week of speaking to Jews in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio." --

There are overwhelmingly powerful Jewish reasons to vote for President Bush and equally powerful Jewish reasons not to vote for John Kerry.

To understand this, I need to explain the word "Jewish." It means two things: that which concerns Judaism and its values, and that which concerns Jews as a distinct ethnic people. Whichever definition one chooses, the case for the re-election of President Bush and the rejection of John Kerry -- and of the left, which along with radical Islam is the Jews' great enemy in our time -- is overwhelming.

Regarding the second definition, the one issue that overwhelms all others is the security of Israel. ...

In a nutshell, John Kerry's primary foreign policy goal is to get America into the good graces of the European Union (specifically France and Germany) and the United Nations. He regards America going it alone in the world as an American calamity.

On the other hand, George W. Bush believes that becoming popular in the EU and in the United Nations would morally compromise America's values and ultimately endanger America.

Only an American president who does not place great importance on American popularity and who has a realistic view of the immorality inherent in international institutions such as the world court and the United Nations will stand behind Israel.

Posted by Darleen at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2004

Saturday reading -- can you say 'hudna?'

What does the purported "Osama" tape really say? Well, a good place to read about it is this roundup at Zombietime. He lists the various translations (my, they are all different!) and also points out that the clip from Al-Jazeera is but a five minute edited piece of a 18 minute video. Read through to the end and he has located an article that discusses some of the unbroadcast video.

Questions to keep in mind in the reading is that Osama seems to be channeling Michael Moore. There's the "blood for oil" meme, the mocking schtick over "my pet goat", the usual finger pointing at Israel, even a weird reference to the Patriot Act (WTF?). Strange, too, is the claim of "nation" from Osama... a man whose poisonous ideology rejects nationhood. In addition is the implicit suggestion that all American has to do to be "at peace" with Osama is to go home and "not threaten Muslims" anymore. Evidently, Walter Cronkite on Larry King claims that this may mean Osama wants to "negotiate."

This situation actually calls for us not to retreat, but to double down our efforts to crush Islamism and the extremist moslems that support the ideology. Osama may indeed be angling for a "hudna" ... a moslem "cease fire" that is only proposed when moslems are weak. It is offered to their own advantage to give them time to rearm and reorganize to carry on their fight another day. This plays directly to Kerry and his calls for "summits" as *THE* way to "peace."

Oh, BTW, I don't necessarily buy that the visual part of the tape is contemporary even if the audio is. I still lay odds that Osama is taking a dirt nap somewhere and this is a psych-ops tape to influence the US election into Camp Kerry. The Islamo-fascists were able to influence Spain with a subway bombing; however, they may have taken the clue from our general rage and resolve after 9/11 that they had to appeal to the soft appeasement underbelly of American culture instead. And our country is full of cowardly appeasers right now. IE "writer" Susan Sevareid who just about fawns over the "dignified" Osama and his "concilatory tone."

Feh.

Another braindead appeaser here

Just read what the man said. He makes sense. I trust him more than Bush or Kerry. You may say that he murdered 3000 at WTC, but it strikes me that he was at war. Was his war more bogus than our own in Iraq. We have killed 15 THOUSAND innocent civilians in Iraq. Seems like we are the murderous sociopaths, not OBL.

These are the kind of folks who stood by and cheered as Hitler loaded boxcars of Jews to the ovens. F**king moral morons.

No wonder Jeff Harrell is so disgusted he's taking a break, maybe an indefinite one. (Note to Jeff: please don't!)

But you know, gentle reader, after the glowing comments about how a bloodthirsty Islamo-fascist is more trustworthy than either GW or Kerry, I need to go take a shower.

Posted by Darleen at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2004

Translation: submit, convert or die

From the talented and insightful pens of Cox and Forkum.

Any questions?

Posted by Darleen at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

Steak or tofu?

O.mi.gawd! Most.hilarious.video.Ever.

The Choice

Thanks again, to Michele for such fun.

Posted by Darleen at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2004

When 380 becomes 3

Hmmm... and the unraveling continues as Kedwards desperately lie

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S. military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing — presumably stolen due to a lack of security — was based on "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

You can just hear Camp Kerry..their coordination with NYTimes and CBS on the ropes... calling for a WHAAAA-mbulance.

Poor babies.

IMPORTANT UPDATE Pentagon News Conference

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday to say a team from his 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munitions and other material from the Al-Qaqaa (search) arms-storage facility soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003.

Explosives were part of the load taken by the team, but Major Austin Pearson was unable to say what percentage they accounted for. The material was then destroyed, he said.

Kerry is dangerous for this country.

Posted by Darleen at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)

Kerry never misses an opportunity

to piss on the American military. No matter that the NYTimes trumpeting in a sheer partisan manner (any one that thinks they haven't been shilling for Kerry this season is either one of those famous dead Democrat voters or just full of BDS) the so-called "Bush missing 380 tons of weapons", which immediately started unravelling upon publication, John Kerry launched into attacks which boiled down to the taking the word of the UN and condemning American soldiers on the ground during the war. As Hugh Hewitt says:

This week he embraced an already discredited account of missing munitions to attack the reputation of the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne. Make no mistake, that is exactly what Kerry is doing when he asserts that deadly weapons went unsecured and unreported as these two divisions rushed to liberate Baghdad. And not just these divisions, but every officer and soldier who had a hand in drawing up the war plan. If the negligence that Kerry charges the military with was real, additional troops would not have made a difference. The initial search would still have been conducted by the 3rd I.D. and the site pronounced clear. The 101st would still have spent 24 hours in the munitions complex before moving on. Kerry cannot avoid owning the latest of many slanders he has launched at the military as a means of wounding the president.

Will Kerry backup and apologize? Will he quit his knee-jerk reaction to blame America first for any error charged by others with their own axes to grind?

Bill at INDC Journal explores the Russian angle

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation

Do read Bill's entry. It is rich with information and links.

Bottom line time here, friends. The US military has secured approximately 400,000 tons of weapons. The preponderance of evidence is that this alleged 380 tons was already gone by the time the facility was visited by the 3rd Infantry and the 101st Airborne. However, what was Kerry's first instinct (regardless of his training as a prosecutor, which should have immediately given him pause)? Attack the American military.

Deja vu April 1971 and charges of rape, torture, murder and "the heirs of 'Jengis' Khan."

Some people want this man to be CinC? Makes me wonder about their attitude towards the troops.

Posted by Darleen at 06:32 AM | Comments (2)

October 27, 2004

Dealing with the bastard

I apologize if the postings have been a bit thin today (and yesterday). I spent the morning, into afternoon, yet again in court due to deadbeat ex-husband. I'll be happy ... giddy even ... to share the sordid details with you all a bit later (if you like that sort of thing... god, how I want to rant!). Right now I'm a bit buzzed (two rather strong white russians as desert to a rich, yummy roast pork with steamed fresh broccoli and mashed potatoes with homemade pork gravey... you know, I can cook like a demon) ... so let me collect my thoughts on the drunkard Irishman I used to be married to (as not to overwhelm you) and I'll post later. However, happily, I can report that this appearance today in court (if ever an exercise in hurry-up and wait) is the last time I have to ever deal in less than a voluntary way with the bastard.

I know that seems pretty harsh on his mom ... but sh*t, she raised him and he didn't fall far from the mother tree. She's no great shakes herself!

Posted by Darleen at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)

Seems fitting that I'm serving pork tonight

for dinner. A succulent boneless roast, embedded with slivers of fresh garlic and sprinkled with fresh chopped rosemary from my garden. What a fitting dinner to celebrate

RAMALLAH, West Bank - An ailing Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) collapsed Wednesday night, was unconscious for about 10 minutes and remained in a serious condition. A team of Jordanian doctors was urgently summoned to treat the ailing Palestinian leader, whose wife headed to her husband's side from Paris.

When I finally hear of the descent to hell of this old evil Egyptian terrorist, I shall hand out sweets in further celebration.

Faster, please.

Posted by Darleen at 08:18 PM | Comments (1)

Aggravated assault = freedom of speech

Dems go lower, keep digging

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida motorist was arrested Wednesday on charges of trying to run down U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record) at an intersection where the controversial former state elections chief was campaigning for re-election to Congress.

The Republican lawmaker and several supporters were campaigning alongside a street corner in her hometown of Sarasota Tuesday evening. A silver Cadillac sped toward them, drove up onto the sidewalk where Harris stood, and then swerved away at the last minute, the Sarasota police report said.

No one was hurt. Witnesses noted the car's license tag number and police tracked the owner, Barry Seltzer, 46, of Sarasota, who was jailed early Wednesday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He said he was annoyed because some of Harris' supporters were blocking traffic, the arrest report said.

"I was exercising my political expression," it quoted him as saying. "I did not run them down, I scared them a little."

Unreal. And to think, some people believe the ugliness of this campaign is evenly divided between the sides.

Posted by Darleen at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2004

Kerry trusts the UN more than 101st Airborne

Hugh Hewitt nails it:

John Kerry trusts the U.N. bureaucrats at the I.A.E.A. more than the 101rst Airborne's Screaming Eagles. Some would-be Commander-in-Chief.

Former New York City Police Commission Bernard Kerik --Police Commissioner on 9/11-- spent four months in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad. I interviewed him on the myth of the missing munitions today:

HH: "Have you been following this story?"

BK: "I have."

HH: "What's your reaction to this?"

BK: "I think it is a lot of the same that's been going on over the last month or so, some of the scare tactics, you know --social security, the draft, the personal attacks on Mary Cheney, on Laura Bush. I think this is a campaign where John Kerry is desperate. I think he is looking to say anything that will get him a vote, and he jumped right on these headlines yesterday by the New York Times, that there were 380 tons of weapons, of explosives missing, without realizing the facts You know...Keep in mind, and I know this broke last night, and it really hasn't got as much play as the Times' article yesterday, NBC had embedded reporters in with the 101rst airborne when they went into that camp the day after the fall of Baghdad. The weapons were not there. John Kerry has been saying for the last year --depending on what day you talk to him-- he's been saying there were no weapons, Saddam was not a threat. OK, well, yesterday he's screaming and yelling that Saddam was a threat with the weapons that are missing. Bottom line: There aren't any weapons or munitions missing that we didn't secure.

What John Kerry doesn't know or doesn't understand is that we seized more than 280,000 tons that were detonated already. We seized another 160,000 tons that are pending detonation. You know, Hugh, every day that I was in Iraq, every single day, for the four months I was there, every aftrenoon at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, there were massive explosions out by the international airport. It was the U.S. military blowing this stuff up. People have to realize that all of Iraq was a weapons cache. The whole country was saturated with explosives. And this is what President Bush meant when he talked about the threat. This was a part of that threat. We have been addressing the issue since we got there. The problem is that John Kerry just doesn't have a clue."

Posted by Darleen at 08:41 PM | Comments (1)

No on 66 -- new website

I posted earlier about the effort on the part of Arizona rich-guy Jerry Keenan, in an effort to spare his son a few years in California State prison after killing two people in a DUI, bankrolling Proposition 66 which guts California's three strikes law. Doesn't seem to phase the proponents of 66 that thousands of career criminals, including murderers, rapists and child molesters will walk free into their neighborhoods within weeks if it passes. Doesn't seem to matter to them that felonies committed by gangs are removed from the "serious" or "violent" strike category.

I'm pleased to see Association of Deputy District Attorneys President Steven J. Ipsen has launched his own website on this issue with the provocative name Why am I dead. Check it out for some hard hitting facts about this bogus proposition.

cross posted at redstate.org

Posted by Darleen at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

Buy this book

I read the Bleat everyday and missed where James Lileks ever mentions he had a new book coming out. Interior Desecrations : Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s is now on sale.

Well, I just covered a few Christmas gifts! Heh.

Posted by Darleen at 06:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2004

Color me shocked ...

...that Jo_Ke has been lying on the stump [obviously I'm NOT]. This time it is about meeting UN Security Council members.

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
-----
At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.
"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.
Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."
But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

Is this how he builds new alliances? By pretending he has 'em? Phantom foreign leaders?

Is there nothing Kerry won't say to get elected, or is this just some deep-seated psychological problem he has? Obviously, the Christmas in Cambodia delusion has been around a long-long time.

Where is his 180 form? Where are his medical records? WTF are pro-Kerry voters thinking?

UPDATE You know the blogsphere would be abuzz about this. Bill at INDC posts some important quotes and promises more commentary tomorrow "somewhere between 'the world revolves around this' and 'yawn.'" Heh!

Don't miss an excellent, straight forward analysis by Captain Ed

Roger Simon asks:

Is John Kerry a sociopath? ... We all remember the Senator's bizarre (and to date unsubstantiated) claim that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Well, he appears to have gilded the lily once again, this time, incredibly, before our very eyes during the second presidential debate.

Lordy, Roger, that's some gilding! Is there any lily left underneath it?

Michele Malkin wonders if Lawrence O'Donnell will "lose it" again over this story and up his "LIAR LIAR" shout count to 46.

And let's not forget the pointman of the moonbattiness, dKos. Kudos to Rick Brady for his bravery in covering that angle.

Posted by Darleen at 08:53 PM | Comments (3)

Leftist Indecency watch -- Escalation

Hindrocket of Powerline posts the latest and scariest report of voter intimidation in Colorado. Although, after reading the reports, that description is too mundane. These are terrorist threats (in the legal sense of California's Penal Code § 422*). Here's just a sample from a rather lengthy article:

[Eagle County Bush-Cheney co-chair] Henri Stone got a powerful message that her views could be hazardous to her health when the couple returned home from a short trip to find the French doors to their bedroom shattered. Nothing was taken, indicating to the Stones that more menacing motives than larceny were at work.

“I wonder if this was a statement that we can come into your house and get you anytime,” she says. “We were only gone 24 hours, so somebody had to be watching the house.” Stone reported the break-in to the sheriff’s department, and says the incident won’t deter her from speaking out. ...

The reality that you can intimidate some of the people some of the time was driven home to Marty Lich, a Gypsum resident known for her outspoken views on illegal immigration. Her strong voice was quieted last spring by threats against her daughter at school, and by an email message sent from California by LaRaza, an activist Hispanic group.

“LaRaza’s email contained personal information about me and said they were going to come to my door and pay me a visit,” Lich recalls.

Shaken, she called the FBI.

For a year prior, Hispanic students at a local high school had been heckling Lich’s freshman daughter about her mom’s views.

“They told her they didn’t like what I was writing, and that they know where we live and will come and beat her up,” Lich says. “They said they could do whatever they wanted in this country and could cross the border whenever they felt like it.”

When her daughter begged her not to write any more letters, Lich gave in. The multiple threats, she admits, “silenced me very effectively because of my concern for my family.”

Me thinks Al Gore was doing a bit of projecting when he accused the non-Leftist elements of the internet of being "digital brownshirts."

*Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person, with the specific intent that the statement, made verbally, in writing, or by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out, which, on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made, is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety, shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.

Posted by Darleen at 05:08 PM | Comments (1)

Wow, this should make us all warm and fuzzy

From the category of "did Kerry really say that?" comes this

"With the same energy ... I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country, I pledge to you I will hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists before they harm us."

So when the going gets a bit tough after four months in office, he'll just tuck-tail and run.

Yeah, that'll show 'em, Jo_Ke. That's really going gangsta on their azz.

Posted by Darleen at 04:20 PM | Comments (7)

More clarity

The invaluable Mark Steyn:

There are legitimate differences of opinion about the war, but they don't include Kerry's silly debater's points. On the one hand, the Tora borer drones that Bush "outsourced" the search for Osama bin Laden to the Afghans, though at the time he supported it ("It is the best way to protect our troops," he said in December 2001. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively."). But, on the other, he claims he's going to outsource Iraq to the French and the Germans, though neither of them wants anything to do with it.

As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.

But, even if he weren't, that's a frivolous reductive way of looking at this war. He's not a general or head of state; he can't sign an instrument of surrender, and make all the unpleasantness go away. The enemy is an ideology that appeals to various loose groupings from the Balkans to Indonesia, as well as to entrepreneurial free-lancers like the shooter who killed two people at LAX on July 4, 2002. If Kerry's oft-repeated "outsourcing Osama" crack is genuinely felt, it shows he doesn't get this war. And, if it's just cheapo point scoring, it's pathetic.

Posted by Darleen at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Morality Morons on Parade

:::sigh::: Michele has an excellent post in response to the usual Left refusal to make any moral distinction beyond "America bad/anti-America good." This time is a blatantly gin-soaked raisin-brained piece of moral idiocy from Abu Aardvark. He merely puts up a pic of Abu Ghraib and says:

Vote for this or against it.

It really isn't that complicated.

Let's see now AA, how many other moral issues are you unclear on? Do you see any moral distinction between Auschwitz and Hiroshima? Is rape the same as love-making because they both involve sexual intercourse?

Of course, this is not that surprising. The Left and its acolytes are religiously devoted to their own dogma that eschews debate on moral issues. As Dennis Prager writes here

To understand the worldwide ideological battle -- especially the one between America and Western Europe and within America itself -- one must understand the vast differences between leftist and rightist worldviews and between secular and religious (specifically Judeo-Christian) values.

One of the most important of these differences is their attitudes toward law. Generally speaking, the Left and the secularists venerate, if not worship, law. They put their faith in law -- both national and international. Law is the supreme good. For most on the Left, "Is it legal?" is usually the question that determines whether an action is right or wrong.

To the Left, legality matters most, while to the Right, legality matters far less than morality. To the Right and to the religious, the law, when it is doing its job, is only a vehicle to morality, never a moral end in itself. Even the Left has to acknowledge this. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, she violated the law. Therefore, anyone who thinks she did the right thing is acknowledging that law must be subservient to morality. Why, then, must the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein be subject to international law as determined by Communist China, neo-KGB Russia, amoral France and the thugs who rule Syria?

It does look like AA's moral bankruptcy is being cheered by other's that are just as clueless. No matter that the military was investigating this months before L.A.M.E. ran with it. No matter that military personnel directly involved and responsible are getting their day in court and being held accountable. No, according to the usual idiots, that picture is proof that America is eeeeeevvvviilllll (and the sooner the anointed Leftists take over, the better). Like Michele I could write pages upon pages on this subject and the morality morons still would refuse to "get it." Since they seem so enamored of visuals, I will repost something I created for my old weblog back when Abu Ghraib was first in the news.

[click for larger image]

Of course, the morality morons refuse to address this. They have little in the way of cajones and are more than half-way to being good dhimmis.

Posted by Darleen at 09:01 AM | Comments (7)

October 23, 2004

Saturday reading -- mixed bag

This windup to the election is promising to be as intense as anything I remember outside of 2000. So I'm going to do a few links on the most egregious things, then a few on non-election stuff for fun and giggles.

Leftist Indecency Watch:

Michele points to another low from the Guardian (who knew they could sink even lower then their blatant attempt to influence the vote in Ohio?) with columinist Charlie Brooker pleading for the assassination of GW.

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?

Loverly. However, just more confirmation that the Left is not about liberty. No wonder they are so enamored of jihadists -- disagreement is worthy of death.

Shape of Days is reviewing Stolen Honor which is now available to view online here.

Here's a must read for anyone tempted to believe the people who contend that reports of spitting or harassing our men and women in the military is nothing but an "urban legend." Smash not only links to this story

On Thursday night, an antiwar protestor in Milwaukee spit on a returned Iraqi war veteran, Marine Major Jerry Boyle

but don't miss the letter from Smash's Dad. excerpt:

Smash is correct, some of us who served in the military during the Viet Nam War were spat on or at. And yes, that happened to me despite the fact that I was a healer, not a warrior.

And of course, [sigh] more Democratic thuggery as a Republican HQ in Flagstaff is vandalized.

Something different:

Charles Austin lists the most memorable movie quotes. Do you know them all? Did he leave any out? I will say, it certainly looks like the movie "Surviving Christmas" will not be providing any quotes to future "memorable" lists. Suggestion to non-actor Ben Afleck, time to land one of the Kerry daughters if a future of European travel and hot-n-cold running servants is your goal in life.

What is it that trashing Christmas has gotten to be *the* thing? [Note to self -- do an essay on the dissing of Christmas and the disappearance of Thanksgiving.] Any emails or comments from you, dear reader, are most welcome on this subject.

File this under "Whaa....?"

"I'll be back" Weekend chores abound!

Posted by Darleen at 08:28 AM | Comments (6)

October 22, 2004

Islamist supports bombing Los Angeles

If Kerry wins, on Nov 3 the pressure to abandon Israel will start. The ideology of Islamism has been especially clear after we dropped out blinders on 9/11. But before Kerry starts in ernest turning back the clock to 9/10/02, shoving terrorism into the 'nuisance' column and then channeling the dhimmitude mindset of Jimmy Carter, let's again see just see what these Islamists say themselves

As for Taba, as I've said, the entire Egyptian nation demands that tourists be banned from entering Egypt. It is inconceivable that Egypt has become a resort for the Israeli army.

"The Israeli army kills in Palestine in the morning and then comes to relax and gamble in Taba. Abominations that are forbidden in Israel, such as gambling, are allowed in Egypt. But the main issue is that Egypt has become a resort for the Zionist army." ...

As for the hostages you spoke of, they are not hostages, sir, but prisoners. According to Islamic law, hostages can be redeemed, set free, or killed. When you are weak - you kill. The prisoners in Iraq, sir – 99% of the cases are proper, according to Islamic law. All those who were killed were agents and partners of the occupation. 75% of the hostages were released in exchange for political gains. ...

We are witnessing a stroke of genius. Because they are weak and cannot defeat the occupation right away, they have used this weapon of prisoners - not 'hostages.' The Italian women were released and we demand the release of the French journalists. No one demands they be killed. But as for those who work for American companies and those who came to exploit Iraqi resources, they are part of the American plan and aren't innocent civilians.

"50 years ago, even before the American army arrived in Iraq, Sheik Shaltout said, 'Anyone working in the enemies' military camps and factories is one of them. He's an enemy and he may be killed.' This is what Sheik Shaltout, the great imam and Sheik of Al-Azhar in the mid-20th century, said. Whoever allies himself with the infidels and polytheists becomes one of them. ...

We are the weak ones. They make demands on us that don't exist in international law. There must be reciprocity. If your city is being bombed… Those who bomb Fallujah cannot prevent me from bombing Los Angeles. Why Fallujah? Why do we always feel inferior to them? What is the meaning of this inferiority complex? If we had missiles we should have bombed Los Angeles or any other city until they stopped bombing Fallujah, Samarra, and Ramadi.

How innocent is Kedwards and the Left who deliberately ignore this evil ideology?

Posted by Darleen at 06:47 AM | Comments (2)

John Kerry's currency

Charles Krauthammer gives full voice to what most of us voting for GW already suspected:

The centerpiece of John Kerry's foreign policy is to rebuild our alliances so the world will come to our aid, especially in Iraq. He repeats this endlessly because it is the only foreign policy idea he has to offer. The problem for Kerry is that he cannot explain just how he proposes to do this. ...

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

How can anyone who believes in the sovereignty of Israel even contemplate a vote for Kerry?

Posted by Darleen at 06:38 AM | Comments (5)

October 21, 2004

Comprehensive Mom Package v5.2

The first major storm of the season blew in from the Pacific yesterday and for a lot of So. Californians, it was the first confrontation with Rain-Alzheimer's that we develop during the months of dry weather. We get into our cars; pull out on the road and stare, slack jawed, at the windshield and sky. "What is that wet stuff? Somebody's lawn sprinkler system broke?"

No nevermind, just keep driving like you always do - crazy-fast. Push those yellows, roll through those stop signs. And if you're in a SUV, hell, even better! Have fun driving faster than the cars around you AND fly through flooded streets swamping those losers in Rio's and Escorts.

Sheesh.

It really was a mess. Morning commute times tripled, major freeways were closed at points dumping commuters onto surrounding (and flooded) streets. Cars and trucks ended up in flood control channels and firefighters and other emergency personnel who had held their collective breath just the week or so earlier due to red-flag fire conditions now shifted to water-rescue operations.

Which brings me to daughter #2, Erin, mother to the twins. She and the boys had an appointment within a couple of blocks of my work. She calls me yesterday morning to check on the road conditions, wondering if she should reschedule. Yes, dear, it's pretty nasty here, better call and make a new date.

Among my many jobs, I'm Weather Mom. As my husband later said, "Ah yes, Weather Mom, part of the Comprehensive Mom Package. Including Finder of All Things, Homework Consultant, Preparer of Food, Taxi Driver ..."

Since I've been a mom since 1979, I'm v5.2 with all the enhancements listed above, plus added extras like Maker of Halloween Costumes and Prom Dresses, School Volunteer, and Small Bank & Loan Officer. I've now been upgraded to include the Grandma plug-in, which reloads and upgrades my Dealing with Small Children module.

Erin is v1.2 and still learning. She periodically links to me to download files and procedures dealing with subjects like Tricking Toddlers into Eating Vegetables, Potty Training and Small Toys & Toilets Don't Mix.

I love being a mom and grandma. It's got to be one of the hardest, most frustrating jobs that exist yet offers moments of such great reward that, heck, many of us just keep doing it!

Which is why, I suppose, I found Teresa Heinz Kerry's dismissal of Laura Bush as not ever having a "real" job so jolting and so, well, retro-feminist.

Yes, I know that the classless and clueless Tay-RAY-zhah is known for opening her mouth and having some of the most amazing things tumble out, but I truly thought we had moved beyond this dismissal of women who make the choice to be moms as some sort of traitors to The Feminist Cause. That's just so ... so ... 60's!

Ok, the attitude did last through the 70's and much of the 80's where one could go to any cocktail party and watch a woman arch a nicely plucked eyebrow over her white-wine spritzer when you tell her you are a mother and homemaker and she says through ironically pursed lips, "Is that all you do?"

"Why, yes. See when you get pregnant and decide to stay home, it is mandatory that you relinquish your college degree and your brains before you leave the hospital. Oh, and you must cancel all the newspapers and periodicals you may subscribe to, also. No mom is allowed to read about issues and current events, let alone comment on them."

Having small children sharpens the sarcasm gene.

Color me wishful, but I had thought that the gender-feminists who look upon love, marriage and kids as a Running-Dog Capitalist Plot to Suppress the Glorious Talents and Superior Aspirations of Womyn, had gone the way of the dodo -- save for those few in protected sanctuaries where they are insulated from the realities of the majority culture. We usually refer to those sanctuaries by their more common name, American Universities.

They are still out there! Seems I caught the same show as James Lileks

I heard a fascinating interview on the Medved show this week with a droning professor who lamented the failure of feminism to drive more women out of the house. She’d done a study of high-achieving women whose marriage notices were printed in the New York Times, and found that several years out, almost half had quit their jobs to stay home with the kids. Apparently they hadn’t internalized the New Truths, the Blazing Facts, the Glorious Realization that the highest calling in life is to sit in a veal pen on the 34th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper and type up depositions while Consuela teaches your children how to write their ABCs.

Actually, James was rather kind to the professor. She was exceedingly rude, condescending and dismissive. Now, I can understand that attitude towards Michael Medved, seeing as his being the dreaded male he didn't deserve any better from the professor, but she was even more hostile to Medved's wife, a professional psychologist and mother who questioned the professor's rantings against women who "choose" to stay home with their children.

"Wasn't that what the feminist movement was about? Allowing women a whole range of choices and supporting them in their choice?" Mrs. Medved asked.

"Well [huff, snort] you can choose to eat creme puffs all day, and only creme puffs, but that choice is not healthy."

For the professor, it was/is an invalid choice. Women should be only free to choose the "correct" choice ... the one the professor has defined as "correct."

And that, dear reader, is the Left in a nutshell.

Posted by Darleen at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2004

California Prop 66 - gutting the 3 Strikes Law

California has had one of the strictest Three Stikes laws in the nation. This has earned it a certain amount of animosity and hostility from the usual apologists for convicted criminals. 60 Minutes II did a story highlighting a particular 3 strikes case in July 2003. (I remember this one because Dan Rather was at our courthouse filming some of this story). Of course the story was presented as this poor guy who is serving a 50 year sentence for stealing $150 worth of video tapes from a KMart. However, the story rarely delved into what this career criminal had been doing most of his life -- victimizing others. Think of Al Capone who's final downfall was being convicted of tax evasion, even as all the thuggery and murders he had committed were near impossible to prosecute. The three strikes law is a way for society to address career criminals.

The impetus behind the 3 Strikes Law was the infamous kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas by career criminal Richard Allen Davis. It became unacceptable for someone to serve a few years here and a few years there, a long rolling list of crime and victims and continue to be let loose on an unsuspecting community to prey, yet again.

That is one trait all three-strikers share. They are predators.

What is it that the anti-strikers say? That it is "not fair" that some schlub be sentenced 25 years to life just because he "stole a piece of pizza?"

The "pizza" story has grown apocryphal in its numerous retellings. It seems "everyone" has heard of the poor guy serving a life's sentence for merely stealing a slice pizza. Mon dieu, Jacques! Have you ever hear of such a thing? In California you could be sent up le fleuve for getting caught stealing a piece of bread! How...how... Les Miserables!

Well, the actual case of Jerry Williams is just a tad different. And so is the reality of 3 Strikes Law compared to the perception.

Quite simply, the first two strikes must be felonies defined as "serious" or "violent." Murder, rape, robbery, gang crimes, felonies involving great bodily injury are all included in the state's designation of "serious" or "violent." The third strike, the felony that triggers the third strike prosecution, can be any felony. And while this still may seem "harsh" to some, what must be kept in mind is that prosecutors and judges have great leeway in looking over a defendant's record with the discretion to "strike a strike." When this happens, the defendant may be sentenced under a two-striker provision that doubles the normative sentence rather than triggering the 25 to life sentencing. Strikes also affect time served credits. For a non-strike felony, good-time credits can amount to 50% of time served. Under a strike conviction, 85% of time must be served.

What, in essence, the state of California is saying is that after two serious or violent felonies, you have either learned your lesson and will start being a productive member in society, or you will be designated a predator on your community and be removed from it -- maybe for the rest of your life. With the option to "strike a strike," there remains a great deal of discretion for those who may decide, after review, that the furtherance of justice demands forgoing the third strike.

Of course there are those that would say, even knowing this, they don't want a non-serious felony as the triggering event. They want all three strikes to be "serious" or "violent." I can understand and even respect such a position. However, that's not what Prop. 66 is promising. An insidious part of the proposition is the removal of six crimes from "serious" or "violent" felonies list.

• Residential burglary (unless someone other than an accomplice is in the residence at the time of the burglary)


• Attempted residential burglary


• Arson of a structure, forestland or property


• Criminal threats


• Felony gang crimes


• Felonies in which great bodily injury is inflicted, including drunk driving (unless the defendant specifically intends to and personally inflicts great bodily injury)

Now, look at the list again and see the crimes that will no longer be consider "strikes", no longer considered "serious" or "violent" crimes.

Set fire to brush that burns down homes? No strike. If the fire harms anyone or kills them? No strike (unless the prosecution can prove there was an intent to harm the people through the setting of the fire).

A little more than a year ago, fires raged through Southern California. Many of them were set. My co-worker's father, a fireman, was out fighting fires, while his own home burned to the ground. My children's friends north of us had to evacuate from huge seething walls of fire that marched down the hills and into neighborhoods. My family readied to evacuate (we were lucky we did not get the call). The streets were thick with white ash, giving an eerie sense of snow falling from a sky burnt orange and angry from the smoke.

Under 66, causing such conflagration would no longer be considered "serious" or "violent." No strike here! People killed, burned alive in their car trying to flee this arson fire? People burned severely enough to spend months in the hospital? Sorry, GBI (great bodily injury) is no longer serious or violent, either. All in the interest of making sure no pizza-stealing Jean Valjeans are sentenced to Folsom by mustache-twirling prosecutors.

Now, take a look again at the last bullet. The GBI and how it applies to injury, even death, committed during a DUI. After all the years we have spent of moving the law and society's mindset to the place that driving under the influence is very serious and will be treated as the serious crime it is. Doesn't it seem just a little strange that suddenly causing death and injury while DUI is to be shuttled out of the "serious" or "violent" category?

Not really too strange when one considers just who is financing Prop. 66:

Jerry Keenan, who owns a Sacramento insurance company, has contributed more than $1.5 million to pay for the signature gatherers who helped qualify Proposition 66 for the November ballot. ...

In 1999, while intoxicated, Richard Keenan drove a Lexus about 20 miles over the speed limit with three passengers on a winding road in the Sierra foothills near Sacramento. His car crashed, killing two passengers and injuring the third. ...

"No one should be faced with the prospect of a doubled or 25-years-to-life sentence because of nonviolent acts, let alone accidental acts," he [Jerry Keenan] said.[emphasis added]

Isn't this fun? Daddy thinks son is serving too much in prison. A whole eight years and a strike on his record. Just too harsh for killing two other people. Perfectly understandable that daddy would bankroll a Proposition that will gut much of the 3 Strikes Law so sonny boy won't be so inconvenienced.

Did you know that this Proposition is retroactive to 1994? That's right. Ten years of cases,both second and third strikes that are going to suddenly be up for review and resentencing. Resentencings that will have to take place between 30 and 180 days if Prop 66 passes.

I walked into our file room at work and gazed, depressed, at the 25 plus boxes of three strike cases. I don't even want to think of the more recent years of three strike cases on the shelves or all the second striker cases or that our computer system only goes back to about mid-1997, every thing else being on a legacy system or card file. And if we can not get them all done in a timely manner, just who is going to be released upon the community we serve?

Even more important is the very frightening thought of the people who are going to be released either immediately or very shortly after the passage.

Be very afraid and take a look at these murderers, rapists and child molesters who have been so "unjustly convicted" under California's 3 strikes law.

Mr. Keenan, I'm sure you'll have no problem with them moving into your neighborhood?

cross-posted at redstate.org

Posted by Darleen at 12:01 AM | Comments (27)

October 19, 2004

A must read -- Tommy Franks

Today in the New York Times

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

Read the whole thing -- money quote:

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts. [emphasis added]

Posted by Darleen at 12:52 PM | Comments (1)

Halloween -- a question

Without a doubt, Halloween is my favorite holiday next to Christmas. I've loved it as a kid, I love it as an adult. It is one of those holidays America has made it's own.

Now for some, such as parochial schools and some fundamentalist Christians, Halloween is to be shunned or replaced by "Harvest Festivals." My oldest three girls attended a religious private school from K-3 (they offered far superior academics than my local public school) and I recall the fliers regarding the Harvest Festival. It was run almost like Halloween, but no "scary" costumes were allowed.

Didn't bother us much, because I still decked out my home with the objective of scaring the deewadiddle out of the trick-or-treaters.

Now these "Halloween" alternatives have been around for as long as I remember. I can certainly recall my own trick-or-treat days and the pinched-faced lady with the beady eyes who dropped religious tracts into our bags about the evils of playing around on Devil's Day.

Pffffft. I had an Oujia Board, too, and I'm here to tell you of all the times I stepped foot into a church or temple my hair didn't spontaneously burst into flame.

This year it seems I've seen a few more than usual articles about the anti-Halloween religiously inclined. Is it because of it falling on a Sunday? Or because it is an election year and one of the candidates gets snickered at because of his faith?

I mean, who cares that a few over-clothed, pinched faced-ladies are wringing their hands over the "offense" of Halloween on Sunday?

Posted by Darleen at 12:33 PM | Comments (3)

Jacques Kerry

Slate's Chris Suellentrop asks:

ORLANDO—Let's see: Your opponent is characterizing you as an effete internationalist willing to "turn America's national security decisions over to international bodies or leaders of other countries." In particular, he suggests, in all seriousness, that you want to call up Jacques Chirac for permission before deploying the military. At the Republican National Convention, you were portrayed as a beret-wearing poodle named "Fifi Kerry." How should you defend yourself against these slanders?

By speaking French on the stump, of course.

Posted by Darleen at 06:24 AM | Comments (3)

October 18, 2004

Symposium - Why GW and not Kerry

I have certainly not hidden or been coy about my partisanship (which, by the way, is not a bad word in the context of opinion pieces). Not only am I voting for GW, but my position has become more solidified and my enthusiasm for GW has grown throughout the campaign season. For all the third-party voters (and I, too, was one for three election cycles) who dismiss this vote between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, never before (in my lifetime) has the chasm between the parties and the candidates have been more clear.

The Democratic Party is dominated by, and it almost indistinguishable from, the Left. So let me make this clear. The Left is not interested in liberty, they are interested in "equality." Keep that in mind as I list the reasons why I will vote for GW.

• GW believes more in America than in the UN
• GW believes in an ownership society where people are to be trusted to spend their own money.
• GW is not ashamed of saying his values are based on a religiously inspired moral code
• GW is less interested in being popular than in being right
• GW is on the correct moral side when he rejects dealing with Arafat in any manner
• GW believes in "teaching to fish" rather than "providing the fish."
• GW has no interest in emulating Old Europe or fawning over them

Kerry has demonstrated, through the debates, through his 20 year record in the Senate, that he is not included on even one point of the above list.

GW believes the Iraq war was morally correct. Kerry believes it was a mistake. GW believes Islamist terrorism is the most important challenge facing us this century, Kerry wants to "get back" to a place where it was a "nuisance."

Kerry's muddled, empty and basically amoral stance on foreign policy is no more elegantly dissected than by someone far from being a "Republican shill" as done by Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic, in Los Angeles Times

Save for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, Israel loses every struggle at the U.N. against lopsided majorities. In the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission, Muslim states trade their votes to protect aggressors and tyrannies from censure in exchange for libels against the Jewish state. The body's bloated and dishonest bureaucracies are no better, as evidenced most recently by the head of the U.N. Palestine refugee organization, who defended having Hamas militants on his staff.

I've searched to find one time when Kerry — even candidate Kerry — criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I've come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union's continuous hectoring. Another thing that bothers me about Kerry is the deus ex machina he has up his sleeve: the appointment of a presidential envoy. It's hard to count how many special emissaries have been dispatched from Washington to the Middle East to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's easy to see is that none of them has gotten to "yes."

Kerry has no moral clarity on Israel. He sends his sister to Australia to attempt to undercut the election of an American ally in Iraq. He viciously attacks Iraqi interim PM Allawi when he comes to the US to thank America for liberating his country. John Edwards publically discounts the recent voting in Afghanistan as a foreign policy win for Bush.

Domestically, who is Kerry surrounding himself with? Who will come in into a Kerry White House to blow on Kerry's weathervane? Michael Moore. Jesse Jackson. Jimmy Carter. These are people who believe in "equality" in lieu of liberty. There are "gaps" between rich and poor? Make laws that "redistribute" money from earners to needers. Not everyone at any one time is covered by health insurance? Have the government take over delivery of health care. Bean counting at jobs/universities/graduate schools show some groups are lesser/more represented? Pass more laws based on cosmetics not content.

And do remember to demogogue anyone who opposes such laws and policies as evil, children-hating, minority-hating, elderly-hating boogeymen.

Not only can we not afford a Kerry Presidency, nor can we even afford a close race. The thuggery of the Democrats, from shooting up Republican HQ's to the DNC election manual advising lying about voter intimidation to ACORN's registration fraud, every person who is at all worried about a Kerry win must vote, even in blue states. The win, even in the popular vote, for GW must be large. I'm in a blue state, California, and my biggest hope is that Bush/Cheney supporters will go to the polls and push this state purple.

The best thing for the Democratic Party would be a decisive spanking on Nov 2. It would force them to actually look in the mirror for who is at fault for their loss. And just maybe, they would shake themselves of the anti-American Left and get back into being a strong, moral, liberal, loyal opposition to the Republican party. Good ideas come from valid competition. Bring back the valid alternative to the Republican Party.

Hugh Hewitt is running an online symposium here on this question.

Posted by Darleen at 09:42 AM | Comments (8)

GW v Kerry -- summation

Michael Ramirez says it all (click for larger image):

Posted by Darleen at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2004

Misuse of the English language

aka "lying"

via Glenn Reynolds comes this fun, little exercise in election incivility.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - A fund-raising e-mail from a Democratic congressional candidate contained a hidden expletive directed at his opponent, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The expletive aimed at Republican Greg Walcher could be seen when recipients dragged their cursor over an image of John Salazar, who sent the e-mail to supporters Thursday seeking donations, The Denver Post reported.

Salazar and Walcher are competing to replace retiring GOP incumbent Scott McInnis in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District.

Salazar campaign manager Jim Merlino said the expletive was inadvertently inserted by a campaign staff member upset by negative attacks on Salazar by the Walcher campaign. Merlino said Salazar did not know about the insertion beforehand and was "extremely upset" to learn about it.[emphasis added]

Inadvertently? One cannot [accidently, unintentionally] insert an alt tag on an image via html.* That is a purposeful, intentional action.

Maybe the campaign staffer thought only Dems were getting the email and would get a chuckle, or a "right on!", from the cleverness. That this get notice outside of the circle of supporters was surely inadvertent, but not the creation of the tag.

Good Godfrey, man. Apologize for your staffer's stupidity and get on with it! If evil FoxNews can do it when one of their writer's parodies gets out where it shouldn't, what's up with you?

*Emails with embedded pics are created like most web pages with the markup language "HTML" (you can view this coding by going to your browser's view menu and clicking "source"). Once an image is embedded, through a tool or by handcoding, within the code that calls that picture one creates the tag that will display when a cursor is hovered over the picture by typing alt="your message here". Obviously, inserting such a tag cannot be "inadvertent."

Posted by Darleen at 09:41 AM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2004

Very interesting

Look at this graph and be sure to read the commentary offered by Steven Den Beste (yes! He posted something new today!)

Posted by Darleen at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

Saturday reading - including Leftist Indecency Watch

Hi all! It's grey and cloudy here, and I've been running about this morning. Siobhan has yet another Field Show competition today (football game last night), so it was "buddy snack" run time, help with hair and get her to school by call time. Then it was time for ME. I went and had my hair cut and the grey beaten back with some excellent color wizardary by Heather's school chum, now cosmetologist, Robyn. Talented young lady who also loves to chat.

So let me offer up some links that have gotten my attention (and raised my dander).

Check out Michele's post about the reaction of some who are cheering the report of 17 American soldiers in Iraq disobeying orders. Especially take a gander at the comments. This is just plain moral indecency.

Also on the "moral indency" watch list are two stories featured by Charles Johnson today. First is group of people I'm ashamed to say are Americans who feel such self-loathing they are apologizing to the Iraqi people for liberating their country from the inhuman Saddam and his devil-spawned sons. These are people who probably saw the stories on Saddam's mass graves of women and children and merely shrugged.

Second, is a jaw-dropping story of a British ambassador offering up a non-apology apology for Britian's bombing of Nazi Germany.

Just as Kedwards will say anything in this campaign, including channeling the cheesiest of faith healers by promising a Kerry win will have the paralyzed rising from their wheelchairs Healed! Healed, praise JAYSUS!, so does the so-called Main Stream Media continue to in the same vein to religiously back Kerry, even if it means distorting the news. Don't miss this post from Outside the Beltway and click through the link to the groundwork post.

MEMRI latest is This report out of Egypt in regards to the Taba bombings. Guess who they blame? Americans? Yes! Israelis? Yes, again!

Someone remind me, how much foreign aid do we give to Egypt? And why do we still continue to?

Posted by Darleen at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2004

It's a Bobby Ewing moment

How many of you remember that deliciously trashy night-time soap opera "Dallas"? Season 9 started out with the death of a main character, Bobby Ewing. Over 25 episodes later of twists, betrayls, love, loss...and Season 10 starts with Bobby alive, stepping out of the shower and the whole of Season 9 was "but a dream."

Well, guess what, dear reader? I'm happy to wake you up.

9/11 never happened. The World Trade Center still stands. The Pentagon did not have a plane flown into it. No bodies smashed into the pavement surrounding the WTC, firemen were not crushed to death in the collapse. You can still go to the observation deck and view one of the greatest cities on earth.

Be assured, it was all a dream, a fantasty. Terrorism is just a myth.

During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
-----------
The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

Doesn't that make you feel better? No terrorists, no Beslan school children being raped and murdered. No bus bombings in Israel.

Fantasy! Nuisance! We have Peace in Our Time!

Posted by Darleen at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

'A loathsome display of demagoguery'

Charles Krauthammer focuses on an issue that Camp Kerry has been shamelessly lying about, even to using dead celebrities as totems:

After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

Do read the whole thing and keep in mind that Dr. Krauthammer is a both a medical doctor and he, himself, is in a wheelchair.

Posted by Darleen at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2004

Belly up to the bar, boys!

No more single thing can illustrate how the Left has come to dominate the Democratic Party than the DNC's own Election Manual calling for "pre-emptive strikes." While I've pointed out how democraticunderground, dKos, Indymedia and other Lefty sites have been open in their refusal to accept any GW win in the election, it pales when seeing in black and white that the DNC concurs with such rank and (yes, I'll say it)un-American moonbattiness. Will L.A.M.E. pick this up? Odds, no. For obvious reasons. But it's going through the blogsphere and the reactions are not pretty. Stephen Green of Vodka Pundit perfectly captured the frustration at the abject contempt the Leftist Democrats have for those who have the temerity not to pledge fealty to John Kerry.

If Drudge has it right, then the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to do its damnedest to turn our fine nation into a banana republic.

To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.

I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrats' successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?

The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.

I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.

Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.

Read the whole thing. Thank you, Stephen.

Posted by Darleen at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

The debate through fresh eyes

Daughter #3, Heather (the one that gave me more grey hair when she announced she was going skydiving) has never been much interested in politics. While she listens to issues and follows current events, the mechanics of government, campaigns and debates have left her cold.

This semester she's taking a poly-sci course. Suddenly, politics is something she has to pay attention to, not just because of a Presidential election but because her professor says "thou shalt."

Last night she watched most of the debate with me. She's not so much the demographic of the Great Sought-after Undecided Voter [an aside here: do not miss Michele's hilarious stream-of-consciousness take on Undecided Voter], than she is just a new voter.

"Mom, I'm hearing both of them state what they say are facts, statistics, but the numbers don't agree. Who is right? How do I know?"

Following politics and issues long enough, I realized I took it for granted that I would hear all the facts offered and I either would know much of those stats upfront, or I'd go look them up afterwards.

"Sweety, remember that quote from Mark Twain? About 'lies, damned lies and statistics?'"

Heather laughs.

"Well, don't take any stat offered up at face value. Try and remember the ones that impress you most, make note, then do some research afterwards. And that goes for both sides."

Are you surprised I'd say that? That I wouldn't be telling her to take GW's side no questions asked? I respect my daughter enough to give her not only my opinions and why, but to try and give her the tools to go out and learn for herself. I want her to respect how I got to my opinions and I want her to form her own based on rationality and reflection.

This was perfectly illustrated when it went to the same-sex marriage question. She was annoyed at both Kerry and GW for being "against gay marriage." She sees nothing wrong with it.

"I think they should be allowed to get married."

"Why?"

Heather looks at me, because she knows I support same-sex marriage, wondering where that came from.

"Because it's mean not to allow them to be together."

"Heather, this is not about meanness, and no one has said gay people can't live together, set up housekeeping, make contracts to cover medical or inheritance. And you just heard the President say that all people must be treated respectfully and be free, as adults, to live how they want. We are talking about changing the law of the land. Give me reasons to change it."

"Uh, well ... I don't know."

"Well, do you believe in polygamy?"

"No. Not at all."

"Why not? If you're going to change the law for gays, why not for groups of people who want to marry?"

I explained to her this was something she needed to learn in regards to issues, to really reflect upon the reasoning that leads to whatever conclusion she has on an issue. It could be same-sex marriage or it could be abortion. Which brings up ...

She hadn't heard it before, but she was shocked and horrified that Kerry supported partial-birth abortion. She had listened to his "altar boy" comments and she just couldn't square it with his then refusal to outlaw (in her words) "that really sick stuff."

And that was what it came down to. Heather was impressed by GW's clear answers and sincerity. She thinks Kerry was a "phoney" because even she, as a neophyte political observer, saw how Kerry kept contradicting himself. She also felt he was so "down" on everything, how "awful" life was in America and that annoyed her. She like GW's upbeat enthusiasm and what he said he wanted for the future.

And she absolutely melted when GW talked about Laura.

"Oh mom! He loves her! That's just so cool."

She gave her patented "Heather" look when Kerry attempted to answer the same question ... she pulls her head back, one eyebrow is raised, her lip curls and you know she's thinking "Who the f**k are you trying to fool, fool?" She then looked at me and just shook her head.

"That was just ... just ... pathetic."

So, for me this debate was not only interesting from the debate itself, but because I got to experience with a young adult who is just getting her feet wet in the political sphere.

UPDATE cross posted at redstate.org.

Posted by Darleen at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Debate III - first impression -- GW wins

This was almost the mirror image of the first debate, but this time Kerry was tired, his face drawn, blinking to distraction. GW was fast right out of the gate, smiling, open, great marshalling of facts and on point in the rebuttals.

And what struck me most was Kerry spent the vast majority of his answering time saying things he has already said. Nothing new at all. Domestic issues were supposed to be GW's weak point, but he clearly relishes talking about domestic issues.

GW's sincerity clearly showed. He was especially impressive on the thorny question of his faith. He handled very well the same-sex marriage issue (and Kerry really reached new lows with the non-sequitur of waving Cheney's daughter in front of the electorate. Beyond the pale, JoKe, beyond the pale).

GW was optimism, Kerry was doom and gloom. GW showed leadership, Kerry was a prissy cynic, in the Oscar Wilde definition:

knows the price of everything, the value of nothing

UPDATES: Bill at INDC has a great keypoint list.

Hugh Hewitt's scorecard is up.

II gotta absolutely love Jeff Goldstein.

In another moment of pomo-inspired dementia, some of the lefty sites are urging their readers to spam the online polls—and then are reporting breathlessly on those very spammed poll results to “prove” a sizeable Kerry victory. Which is a lot like calling yourself the greatest lover in the world when all you ever do is masturbate. I think.

Posted by Darleen at 07:32 PM | Comments (12)

This Democrat can't be serious?

Good lord, this is Silly Season stuff raised (lowered?) to new levels:

DALLAS -- The gloves have come off in a tight election race between two Texas congressmen -- and every other article of clothing appears to be fair game as well.

Democrats are circulating old newspaper clippings of a 1974 college streaking stunt staged by hundreds of students at what was then called Southwest Texas State University.

One of the participants was an 18-year-old freshman named Pete Sessions -- who grew up to become a conservative Republican congressman.

A Sessions spokesman said the congressman's "old school days are long gone" and that he recognizes the streaking stunt was "an immature action."

But the campaign of Democrat Representative Martin Frost is holding his rival's bare body to the fire, saying he "exposed himself to children and strangers." [emphasis added]

The two incumbents are battling each other in a new Republican-leaning district in the Dallas area. Frost, Texas' senior congressman, had his district redrawn by Republicans last year.

Bizzare. Three hundred male and female college students streak in 1974 (which was quite ubiquitous at the time) and Democrats are trying to charge Sessions with committing a sex crime? Poor Sessions, I guess we'll just have to call him Trenchcoat Pete now, eh?

If I know nothing else about Frost, his own words expose him as indecent and he needs to lose on this point alone.

cross-posted at redstate.org

Posted by Darleen at 09:39 AM | Comments (2)

Good News

Hamas' military commander in Hebron surrenders to troops

IDF troops on Wednesday arrested Imad Kawasmeh, commander of Hamas' military wing in Hebron, and the man responsible for sending two suicide bombers to Beersheba two months ago. The bombers blew up on two buses almost simultaneously and killed 17 Israelis.

The more Israel keeps the pressure on the terrorists, the less terror is visited upon them. We should keep that in mind when listening to Kerry's babbling about terrorism as a criminal nuisance or summits as the proper way to handle terrorism.

Posted by Darleen at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004

One last for tonight -- and a blogroll addition

As most bloggers do, I occassionally pull on the hipwaders and delve the depths of the opposition...sometimes it's the loyal opposition, but with the Democrats becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the Left, that's a more difficult thing to find. Others do more than mere delve, but drag a rotting stinking piece of trash onto the shore to poke at it and see what made it tick.

In the noble tradition of fisking, may I recommend you read Jeff Harrell's The Shape of Days point-by-point dissection of Mark Zuniga's ("Screw 'em" Kos) lastest column for The Guardian. 'Tis a thing of beauty.

Thanks, Jeff, for the excellent read. I'll be visiting often.

Posted by Darleen at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)

Indecency Watch -- Using Reeve's death

Well, speculation about when members of the ABB crowd would start cheerfully using the tragic death of Christopher Reeve as a political event is over. Patti Davis, whom we all know is a research scientist of international reknown, weighs in

I wonder if President Bush could look into the eyes of Christopher Reeve’s family and tell them that it’s because he values life so deeply that he is preserving clusters of cells in freezers—cells that resulted from in-vitro fertilization and could be used for embryonic stem cell treatment—despite the fact that more people will die as a result of his decision. I wonder if he could stare into their grief and defend the fact that he has released only a few lines of stem cells—lines that are basically useless because they have been contaminated. Or brazenly point out that he has authorized funding for adult stem cells—which do not hold the same miraculous potential as embryonic stem cells.

Hmmm...must check with other members of the VRWZC and see who had today's date in the Ghoul Exploitation Pool.

Posted by Darleen at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

A Jewish liberal New Yorker on why she is voting for Bush

This essay from Command Post is a must read.

When I pull the lever on November 2nd for George Bush, I will be voting with more passionate conviction than I have ever mustered in a lifetime of voting Democratic.

My motive is simple: I believe the moral imperative of our time is to fully prosecute the War on Terror. As a Jew, I believe this sacred fight embodies the deepest Jewish values, so eloquently expressed by the ancient sage Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Let me explain.

Do read the whole thing.

Posted by Darleen at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

Revisiting the analogy -- don't ignore the ideology

As I said yesterday John Kerry's analogy of terrorism to prostitution was wrong primarily because it demonstrated a refusal to deal with the ideology motivating the terrorists.

Eugene Volokh, Glenn Reynolds, even Power Line while making excellent points criticizing Kerry's use of the analogy from the seriousness of behaviorial comparison(prostitution vs murder), they, too, are not addressing the issue of ideology.

Here Eugene Volokh says:

I see Kerry's point: Terrorists, unlike Nazi Germany or the USSR, can't be entirely defeated, because there'll always be the possibility that some more springing up. We can end the war on some particular terrorists by killing them all or getting them to stop, but we can't end the war on terrorism generally that way. The best we can hope for is that there'll be a lot fewer terrorist attacks. That's certainly an important point, and it's worth keeping in mind.

I respectfully disagree. While it is true we defeated Nazi Germany through WWII, the ideology of the Nazis is still with us, albeit in fringe groups. It was through the occupation and the determination to beat down the ideology to almost irrelevant status that we live in a world where small groups like Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi Lowriders, and "Christian" Identity movement are both monitored by state and federal law enforcement and rejected by the majority culture. In many places in Europe, Nazi paraphernalia and collectables are banned.

While GW hasn't baldly stated that this is a war on ideology, he still addresses it far clearer than Kerry. Indeed, Kerry's criminal nuisance analogy is one that deliberately ignores the ideological component of Islamist terrorism. And if our goal is merely "fewer terrorist acts" that is exactly what we'll have ... terrorists acts.

I don't think that is a legitimate goal. Our priorities should be to defeat the terrorists, both in acts and in ideology. Move militarily against terrorists and their state sponsors. Move ideologically against them by undermining and/or toppling jihadist regimes and move those countries toward democracy. And keeping the pressure on "moderate" Islam to reject the jihadists and reform. That doesn't include Kerry's call to engage "more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans." Neville Chamberlain tried to "respectfully" engage with Hitler and we saw what that got the Western World.

Posted by Darleen at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Band Mom update

Yeehaw. It was the first show of the season. My daughter's band had a huge influx of freshmen and her band teacher has decided on a musically intricate show -- a medley of Leonard Bernstein songs (lots of time changes). Siobhan has worked very hard with her band and with herself on the conducting.

It paid off. The band and drumline came in first in their division on Saturday.

I'm still beaming.

Posted by Darleen at 04:59 PM | Comments (3)

Another nuisance beheading

via Yahoo

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Islamist Web site on Monday showed the beheading of two hostages — one a Kurdish translator and the other a Turkish contractor wearing a badge of the Titan security company.

A statement said the two were captured in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army.

An Arabic language television station also broadcast a video Monday showing three hooded gunmen threatening to behead another Turkish hostage within three days unless the Americans release all Iraqi prisoners and all Turks leave Iraq.

Posted by Darleen at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

Kerry's nuances of nuisances

I posted yesterday the Kerry quote from the New York Times. I didn't comment much beyond that it was unbelievable at that time because, well, frankly it stunned me beyond words.

The Bush campaign has rightly seized on this incredible statement and turned it into a new campaign ad. Michele provides a list of dates of events and wonders just which one is the one Kerry wants to get "back to," which one represents that magical moment when terrorism was just a nuisance like "prostitution and gambling."

James Lileks certainly finds the words I couldn't:

Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn't a nuisance. It's war.

But that's not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.

But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.

Now, many of the left-leaning blogs (and pro-Kerry media like ABC) are complaining that the "terrorism is like prostitution" is being taken out of context. Certainly, if the Bush Campaign, or anyone else were doing a Dowdification of Kerry's statement (where elipses change the quote to mean the opposite of what it did in context, a specialty of Queen Screed, Maureen Dowd), the complaints would be legitimate.

However, the complaints are not. Kerry is the one that chooses the analogy to prostitution and gambling. He's the one that frames terrorism as law enforcement issue. He could have easily met the issue of the ideology of Islamism head on. He could have easily made the analogy that it is the modern day equivalent of Nazism and fascism, which live on in tiny pockets -- isolated, tracked and prosecuted when necessary. He could have easily said he wanted to move forward to that place where Islamism was as thoroughly defeated as Nazism was.

Kerry did not make that more appropriate analogy.

Last I looked, the Mafia wasn't issuing fatwas that non-mafia types were to be converted or killed. Last I looked, when the IRS took over the Mustang ranch, it wasn't because the girls where videotaping the murder of their customers with demands to make Nevada a prostitute-only nation. Last I looked, backroom poker-players and bookies weren't invading schools and shooting school children in the back.

Kerry downplays Islamist terrorism. He makes the deliberate analogy to criminal nuisances rather than to historical anti-Western ideologies. Certainly, John Kerry is not a stupid man. Why does he reveal such a lack of understanding? Well, from the same NYTimes article comes this quote:

“We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days,” Kerry told me during a rare break from campaigning, in Seattle at the end of August. “And that’s all about your diplomacy.”

Only John Kerry knows why he wants to return to failed strategy. Only John Kerry knows if the reason he pushes the talk-talk while terrorists kill-kill is because he is pandering to the Leftists poised to take over his own party or is still trying to show the elite of European salons he is one of them.

Whatever the reason, John Neville Kerry's "Peace through Nuisance" strategy is wrong now, wrong then and wrong for the future.

Posted by Darleen at 07:08 AM | Comments (2)

October 10, 2004

Kerry: ' terrorism is a nuisance'

New York Times page six:

''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance,'' Kerry said. ''As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

Unbelievable.

Posted by Darleen at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

The 'not necessarily' candidate

Mark Steyn writes a scathing column about Jo_Ke, making many of the points I made immediately after the debate.

At Friday's debate, the Senator pledged that he wouldn't raise taxes on families earning over $200,000. Then he gazed out over the audience and said: "And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the President, me, and Charlie, I'm sorry, you too," he added, chuckling clubbily with the debate moderator, big-time ABC News anchor Charles Gibson.

Well, he has a point. Bush is a millionaire, Gibson's a zillionaire, and Kerry's a multi-gazillionaire. But how can you tell by looking at people that they earn under 200 grand? And, even if you can, is it such a great idea to let 'em know they look like working stiffs and chain-store schlubs? But, when you've married two heiresses, it's kinda hard to tell where the losers with mere six-figure incomes begin: it's like the 97-year-old who calls the guys in late-middle age "sonny". In America, quite a few fairly regular families earn 200 grand and an awful lot more families hope to be in that bracket one day. And, more importantly, the sheer condescension of assuming that the room divides into the colossi of the politico-media ruling class and everyone else sums up everything that's wrong with the modern Democratic Party. ...

Kerry is a remarkable candidate: after a 20-year career of consistently opposing the projection of American power, he's chosen to run as a cipher. No wonder the media bigfeet love him: like them, he's a Leftie posing as an empty vessel. ...

And, if you want to know the real difference, after 90 minutes of debate it came in the final exchange of the night: "The truth of that matter," said Bush, "is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he [Kerry] were the President of the United States."

Kerry replied: "Not necessarily."

That's John Kerry: the "not necessarily" candidate. Saddam might not necessarily be in power. He might have been hit by the Number 37 bus while crossing the street at the intersection of Saddam Hussein Boulevard and Saddam Hussein Parkway in downtown Tikrit. He might have put his back out with one of his more vigorous concubines and been forced to hand over to Uday or Qusay. He might have stiffed Chirac in some backdoor deal and been taken out by some anthrax-laced Quality Street planted by an elite French commando unit.

But, on the other hand, not necessarily. That's the difference: Bush believes America needs to shape events in the world; Kerry doesn't and, even if he did, because he doesn't know how he'd want to shape them the events would end up shaping him. There would be lots of discussion. Frenchmen would be involved.

Do read the whole thing.

Posted by Darleen at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

'Everything happens on Halloween'

Something a little different to start today. Michele's continuing October theme of Halloween posts has inspired me to post in kind. This morning she is covering urband legends and ghost stories and has a challenge if anyone can tell her a story she hasn't heard yet. I haven't yet come up with one I've heard or read yet that I don't think she's heard, but I do write some of my own. Today I'll start with a story I wrote some Halloweens back. I'm working on a new story called "Last Chance" that I hope to have ready next week. Hope you enjoy this:

Julie looked with irritation at the lone customer wandering through the store. It was such a drag to have to work on Halloween and she had planned on closing up the store early to meet up with her friends.

Screw old lady Harrison, Julie thought as she glanced out the window, narrowing her eyes against the setting sun, I didn't want this job anyway. Let her stand here every evening with the smelly crap and the whacked out customers.

Julie's parents had been at wit's end trying to figure out where the sweet preteen of shining blonde hair and puppy-like eagerness had gone, to be replaced by a bored adolescent with dyed black hair, blood red lipstick and a nose-ring. Two high-powered criminal attorneys, her parents gave only fleeting consideration that their lifestyle of beach house, BMW's, hot and cold running maids, closets of barely worn clothes from Saks and Neiman Marcus and dinner conversations revolving around how most of their clients were guilty and how best to get them off, had anything to do with Julie's jaded outlook. No, they decided, she had to get serious and learn responsibility. Julie, who never in her life had even made her own bed, had to get a job.

Julie already was running with the Goth crowd at her high school when the parental edict came down. Many of her new friends, dressed in thrift store clothes paired with Doc Martens and twelve hundred dollar leather jackets were scandalized. Work? Meaningful looks were exchanged.

Ya gotta be kidding!

Julie promptly got a job at an occult store. And her nose pierced.

Julie sighed. Loudly. She hoped the woman fingering the crystals would take the hint. Tonight was supposed to be her night. Her friends were planning something special. Whisperings of a new Rave in town had passed with lightening speed through school and Julie was bound and determined to be there.

Julie had first liked working at the store. The primary reason was because her parents hated it. That thought always brought a smile to her face. But she had become intrigued with shop. There were books on spells, bins of dried flowers and herbs, exotic oils, crystals, magic sands and hand-dipped candles. Harrison had a reputation as an honest-to-god astrologer and many people came in just to have their horoscopes drawn up. But on Halloween the customers were downright weird. It was Julie's first Halloween working and she had started at the costumed freaks that came in requesting spell books and Tarot cards. By the end of the day, they only bored her and she was anxious just to close up and get away.

"Lady, is there anything I can help you with?" Julie didn't care that she was less than solicitous.

The lady moved from the crystals, a slight shaking of her head in acknowledgment of Julie's call. Julie noted she was dressed as a ghost, a flowing gown of layered white gauze, skin painted white, fingernails almost blue, long blonde hair that paled towards white. If Julie wasn't so agitated, she could almost admire the way the lady almost seemed to float across the room. Julie's mind automatically tagged her White Lady.

Man, she's really staying in character, Julie thought, realizing she couldn't even hear the lady's steps as she moved to the candles.

Julie watched as White Lady reached out and almost caressed the candles but didn't pick up a one.

"Uh, Lady, I don't want to be rude," shit, I sure wanna be if it will get you out of here! "I've got to close up soon."

"I thought you were open until eight?"

Julie groaned, "Look, have a heart. I do have plans tonight. After all, it is Halloween." She put what she hoped was a winning smile on her face.

"Halloween? Oh, yes, I now understand."

The voice was whisper soft and the words, spoken slowly, hung in the air. Julie was confused.

Who's b.s.ing who? She thought, You dress like that everyday?

Julie drummed her fingers impatiently on the counter, then moved behind it toward the cash register. She rang it open and lifted the cash tray to get the door key.

Screw it! I'm closing up , Julie wondered how fast she could push her car along the canyon road to get home and change. I'll be damned if White Lady is going to make me late.

A blast of cold brought her head up with a start, Oh, God, not another customer!

Julie glanced quickly around, spotting no one new, even as she realized she hadn't heard the sharp tinkling of the bell that bounced on a spring over the door. White Lady had left the candles and was moving toward her. Julie watched as she skirted a pool of sunlight.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! She's barefoot! Julie could feel her mouth fall open.

"Yes, I remember Halloween. Everything happens on Halloween."

A smell like rotting leaves and grass clippings made Julie catch her breath. All thoughts about how she had first admired White Lady fled. As she got closer Julie could see the white dress was filthy. The shredded hem was caked with dirt and patches of gray and green crept up the skirt and sleeves.

"I was enjoying the day. I always end it here. Silly me. I always think it's going to last."

Julie barely heard her. She was focused on White Lady's feet. They were as filthy as the dress, the skin pale and cracked, toenails black. White Lady stopped just on the other side of the counter across from Julie. Julie's eyes traveled up to her face and Julie suddenly felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her head.

Oh, God, oh, Lord, what was I thinking? Julie could feel her breath freeze in her throat.

The blonde hair was a mat, dry as summer desiccated weeds. There was no make-up, just white skin, dry and pulled taut as a drumhead. White Lady brought her hands up to rest on the counter, chalk claws, fingernails caked black with grime. Well, those fingers that actually had fingernails.

Julie was dimly aware of a high, discordant note. It was herself, crouched and keening in the childhood corner of her mind.

"It always happens, you see, my sweet," White Lady tried to smile, cracked lips pulling back over teeth the color of old ivory. Teeth abnormally long due to the shrinking, black gums. Something wet dropped from White Lady's mouth and landed on the counter. The same overwhelming compulsion that makes one look directly at a mangled car wreck pulled Julie's eyes down. Not really believing, she hoped it was only saliva.

But the mass was yellow, segmented and it squirmed.

Julie backed up against the shelves behind her and the sound of a bottle of oil toppling and shattering at her feet seemed far away.

"I get to come down from the canyon. But when the sun is gone, so shall I be. Back."

Julie noted that a patch of skin had come loose and hung from the side of White Lady's face exposing the jawbone, dull and gray. A liquid oozed black from the edges of that hole and dripped onto White Lady's shoulder. Something, some things, moved black and leggy just under the sheer top layer of her dress.

The keening in Julie's mind increased in volume, now a bleak winter wind howling under the eaves. The scent of the oil pooled at her feet rose as a wave to fill her nose, the heavy floral smell triggering thoughts of funeral sprays and mortuaries. Julie wanted to faint. Oh, God, she prayed to faint. To be enveloped in comforting blackness. But like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing truck, fear paralyzed her, staked her to the floor, unwilling witness of the inconceivable.

White Lady raised a hand and moved as if to stroke Julie's cheek, "Maybe this time you'll slow down. Maybe this time you'll stay until closing."

The truck hit Julie, realization sheering the last moorings of sanity. Her mind skittered and slid toward the precipice. Her mouth dropped open, giving full voice to the screams in her mind, the sound tearing at her throat. The noise unfreezing her, Julie scrambled for her keys.

Gotta get out. Gotta get out. Gotta get out. A mantra Julie desperately chanted, glancing about for escape routes, frantically trying to avoid White Lady.

"Stay, please!" the pleading tone made Julie look one last time.

What looked like tears coursed blood red down White Lady's face. The eyes were solid, dull silver. No expression in a dead face.

Julie edged around the counter and, skirting the nightmare apparition, pelted toward the door. She raced to the parking lot, toward her car, away from what was behind her. Away from the screeching, pleading tones. No thought but escape. Escape from White Lady. From that face.

The face that was her own.

Posted by Darleen at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2004

Worth a thousand words

Via Power Line "A movie theater next to an Afghan restaurant in the Little Kabul area of Fremont, Calif."

Posted by Darleen at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Saturday morning reading

I've updated a couple of entries below, so don't miss that. Let's look at some other things in addition to the debates.

In another loss to Camp Kerry who had sent sister Diana downunder to try and influence the election against our allie,