Brutally Honest

Put me on the jury

Please:

A double-amputee Iraq-war vet is suing Michael Moore for $85 million, claiming the portly peacenik recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America's invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie, which trashes President Bush.

In the 2003 interview, which he did at Walter Reed Army Hospital for NBC News, he discussed only a new painkiller the military was using on wounded vets.

"They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Damon said yesterday. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition."

...

"I just want everybody to know what kind of a guy Michael Moore is, and what kind of film this is," said Damon.

Mr. Damon, rest assured, many of us are keenly aware of what kind of guy Michael Moore is. 

Here's hoping you win your lawsuit sir.

Moral Decay

Any questions?

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!"

The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

"A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.

"We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium.

"We want to get into parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals," Van den Berg told Reuters.

The Netherlands, which already has liberal policies on soft drugs, prostitution and gay marriage, was shocked by the plan.

I'd call this evidence for the slippery slope...  you?

H/T Joe Carter

Here we go again...

It's deja vu all over again:

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

In an interview with the Guardian today, the former vice-president calls himself a "recovering politician", but launches into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming.

Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election [actually Guardian Unlimited, he lost the damned election.  *Ed] , Mr Gore says: "If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right."

...

Mr Gore, who appeared at the Guardian Hay literary festival over the bank holiday weekend, is promoting An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary and book detailing the climate change crisis that he warns "could literally end civilisation".

This should, of course, endear him even more to people like Mike who see the man as an evangelist for truth.

Damned sad if you ask me.  Damned sad.

Ticking off the Union Thug Bosses

The above video a gift from the folks over at UnionFacts.Com who also bring us these juicy factoids:

• CNN exit polls showed that 38 percent of union members voted for President Bush in the 2004 election, but more than 95 percent of union funds went to support Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.
• A 1999 Zogby poll found a majority of union members—nearly 55 percent—thought people should be given a choice of investing their Social Security taxes in some form of personal retirement accounts. But union officials spent millions of dollars to oppose private accounts in the Social Security system.
• The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "California unions spent $88,000 (public employee unions' share was $68,000) in opposing Proposition 22, a 2000 ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman"; a Los Angeles Times exit poll found that 58 percent of union households had voted yes on the measure. The Chronicle added: "California unions spent $32.7 million (public employee unions' share was $25.7 million) to oppose the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, yet exit polls found half of union members voted for the recall and 56 percent voted for a Republican candidate to replace him—43 percent for Schwarzenegger and 13 percent for Tom McClintock."
• In 1992, the Teamsters reportedly gave a massive amount of political money to the presidential candidate it knew its membership did not support. According to author Duke Zeller, "As for the actual amount of Teamster money poured into the Clinton-Gore campaign, Gene Giacumbo, a former elected member of [former Teamsters president Ron] Carey's board, believes the total figure to be even higher. 'Carey himself bragged to me that the union gave $56 million to Clinton,' he confirmed, 'and this was after an independent, outside poll the union paid for showed the membership responses preferred Perot, then Bush, with Clinton in third place.'"

and these:

• Between 1990 and 2004, 94 percent of donations made by National Education Association political action committees and individual officers went to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.org. According to the NEA's own "Status of the American Public School Teacher 2000-2001," only 45 percent of public school teachers are Democrats.
• A Wall Street Journal editorial revealed that the National Education Association -- the nation's largest teachers union -- "is spending the mandatory dues paid by members who are told their money will be used to gain better wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the latest filing, member dues accounted for $295 million of the NEA's $341 million in total receipts last year. But the union spent $25 million of that on 'political activities and lobbying' and another $65.5 million on 'contributions, gifts and grants' that seemed designed to further those hyper-liberal political goals."
• The Journal added that the NEA's financial disclosure forms "expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students."

Interesting stuff brought to your attention by an e-mail tip from the good folks over at TownHall.Com.

Now pay them dues union folks... pay them dues...

Der Spiegel Interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

... is interesting on a number of fronts, to include Ahmadinejad's continued denial of the Holocaust but especially Spiegel's repeated claims that the U.S. has lost the war in Iraq:

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, doesn't there come a time when one should accept that the world is the way it is and that we must accept the status quo? The war against Iraq has put Iran in a favorable position. The United States has suffered a de facto defeat in Iraq. Isn't it now time for Iran to become a constructive power of peace in the Middle East? Which would mean giving up its nuclear plans and inflammatory talk?

Ahmadinejad: I'm wondering why you're adopting and fanatically defending the stance of the European politicians. You're a magazine, not a government. Saying that we should accept the world as it is would mean that the winners of World War II would remain the victorious powers for another 1,000 years and that the German people would be humiliated for another 1,000 years. Do you think that is the correct logic?

SPIEGEL: No, that's not the right logic, nor is it true. The Germans have played a modest, but important role in post-war developments. They do not feel as though they have been humiliated and dishonored since 1945. We are too self-confident for that. But today we want to talk about Iran's current mission.

Ahmadinejad: Then we would accept that Palestinians are killed every day, that they die in terrorist attacks, and that houses are being destroyed. But let me say something about Iraq. We have always favored peace and security in the region. For eight years, the Western countries provided arms to Saddam in the war against us, including chemical weapons, and gave him political support. We were against Saddam and suffered severely because of him, so we're happy that he has been toppled. But we don't accept a whole country being swallowed under the pretext of wanting to topple Saddam. More than 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives under the rule of the occupying forces. Fortunately, the Germans haven't been involved in this. We want security in Iraq.

SPIEGEL: But, Mr. President, who is swallowing Iraq? The United States has practically lost this war. By cooperating constructively, Iran might help the Americans consider their retreat from the country.

The whole interview is worthy of your attention but I stand stunned at the claim made that the war in Iraq is lost. 

It's one thing to say that things are not going as well as we'd like but to state unequivocally that the war has been lost, more than once, is a tad over the top wouldn't you say?  And doesn't that type of defeatism feed the fanatacism represented by the President of Iran?

Incredible.

But hey, this is Europe, and by all intents and purposes, the Islamists have defeated Europe (and Ahmadinejad seems to know it).

Owen West: The Troops Have Moved On

I'm not one who would agree with all that reserve Marine major West writes today in the New York Times but I agree with much of it and think there to be no better way to close out this Memorial Day than to point us to his words:

Somehow Operation Iraqi Freedom, not a large war by America's historical standards, has blossomed into a crisis of expectations that threatens our ability to react to future threats with a fist instead of five fingers. Instead of rallying we are squabbling, even as the slow fuse burns.

One party is overly sanguine, unwilling to acknowledge its errors. The other is overly maudlin, unable to forgive the same. The Bush administration seeks to insulate the public from the reality of war, placing its burden on the few. The press has tried to fill that gap by exposing the raw brutality of the insurgency; but it has often done so without context, leaving a clear implication that we can never win.

In the past, the American public could turn to its sons for martial perspective. Soldiers have historically been perhaps the country's truest reflection, a socio-economic cross-section borne from common ideals. The problem is, this war is not being fought by World War II's citizen-soldiers. Nor is it fought by Vietnam's draftees. Its wages are paid by a small cadre of volunteers that composes about one-tenth of 1 percent of the population — America's warrior class.

The insular nature of this group — and a war that has spiraled into politicization — has left the Americans disconnected and confused. It's as if they have been invited into the owner's box to settle a first-quarter disagreement on the coach's play-calling. Not only are they unprepared to talk play selection, most have never even seen a football game.

This confusion, in turn, affects our warriors, who are frustrated by the country's lack of cohesion and the depiction of their war. Iraq hasn't been easy on the military, either. But the strength of our warriors is their ability to adapt.

Read it all, especially his ending.

May we all learn something here.

What this Holiday weekend is all about

It's not about picnics.

It's not about cookouts.

It's not about days off from work or fun in the sun or car races.

It's about people like Bobby Warns.  Go and see this video tribute in his name. 

And remember.

H/T BlackFive.

Convenient Fear-Mongering

Mike has apparently bought into the fear and is becoming quite evangelistic about spreading the "bad news":

There's been a lot floating around the net about Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. (If you feel like digging through my del.icio.us folder I've got some stuff saved here.) I'm looking forward to seeing this one.

...

Hopefully there will be more Canadian theatres added. We all need to get out and see this one - Canadian, American, British, Martian - whatever.

I'm not sure why anyone should hurry to see this movie although Aljazeerah seems to have an idea:

This movie will make us think. It will make us act. It is stark. There are no holds barred. It is truth. It is real. And it is scary.

Well, if Aljazeerah is saying that the movie is truth, I guess we should all be sitting up and taking notice.  Of course, to be fair, Aljazeerah is simply highlighting a member of the moonbat fringe, one whose bio line reads:

"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!" My goal in life (for now) is to send George Bush to jail and support Dennis Kucinich. I believe that it's time for the human race to stop killing and defiling the planet -- and for the human race to finally evolve! Contact me at jpstillwater@yahoo.com or 510-843-0581.

With any luck, Mike too might find himself being highlighted by Aljazeerah, those purveryors of all things true.  God knows that  he and they think similarly on all things Bush.

But back to Gore and his sky is falling mantra.

The folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (the name alone produces voluminous amounts of spit bubbles in the corners of moonbat mouths all over the globe) have produced some excellent commercials to counter the hucksters of fear.  Timed for the release of Gore's "must see" movie is my personal favorite, "Al Gore's Big Fat Carbon Footprint", showing us all that Gore talks the talk but falters big time at the walk.  (Big freakin' surprise there eh?)

Additionally, the CEI has some noteworthy articles on most things environmental, including one that ought to be read by all called "Global Warming FAQ: What Every Citizen Needs to Know About Global Warming":

Alarm over the prospect of the Earth warming is not warranted by the agreed science or economics of the issue.  Global warming is happening and man is responsible for at least some of it.  Yet this does not mean that global warming will cause enough damage to the Earth and humanity to require drastic cuts in energy use, a policy that would have damaging consequences of its own.  Moreover, science cannot answer questions that are at heart economic or political, such as whether the Kyoto Protocol is worthwhile.

Read the whole thing.  Bookmark it.  And be equipped to counter the chicken littles spreading what I've deemed to be the anti-gospel, something some of them seem to be most experienced in doing.

Go and pray for Jeff at Think Sink

He's not sick.  He's not in any kind of trouble.  He's just in love:

Yes, friends and stray readers (and you know which group you belong to), I have met a very special lady. We are taking things on God's timetable. And the real joy in this relationship comes from the fact that God is at the center of it, God is at the center of her life--and God is finally finding an opening through which He can pry His way in to become the center of my life. It's been a hard fight, but I finally realized I shouldn't be fighting it.

I am being challenged mightily by God to finally become the man He made me to be. I'm on my knees daily, asking for His guidance in our friendship. I am continuously lifting her up in prayer. And I have had more than a few "smack down" sessions with the Lord already in the very short time this friendship has been in existence (about one month).

The lady has also entrusted to me the leadership of our friendship, and we have both pledged to be open to whatever God has in store for us, and are willing to walk side-by-side on this journey to wherever God leads us. That's wherever God leads us, not where we might desire to go.

I ask for your prayers: for her, for us, and for me.

Lord, lead, guide, direct, protect, nurture and bless that which is of You here.  And that which isn't, I pray you'll bring to light and quickly.  In Christ's name.

Our elitist aristocratic and patrician Congress

Cox and Forkum have the uncanny ability of taking my thoughts to pen and ink and in this drawing they've done it once again.

Isn't it telling that the only time Republican and Democrat leaders in the House stand side to side in absolute unity is when they want to publicize the fact that they believe themselves to be completely above the law:

For congressional leaders to react by trying to ban or limit searches of congressional offices will only destroy what little faith and confidence in the institution is left. Make no mistake, the American people will come to one conclusion that congressional leaders are trying to protect their own from valid investigation." U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-LA), May 24, 2006

Hastert has, with this action, confirmed his elitist status and sealed his fate in my view.  He's got to go and those who stand with him ought to follow.

I am more and more of the mindset that if you're up for election in the House of Representatives then it's time to send your butt packing, and you'll have to make one helluva case to make me change my mind.

Freakin' snobs. 

Hastert, Pelosi and those arrogant enough to follow their leadership give voice, breath and sinew to Lord Acton's words.