Hillary dissembles

I just caught a clip on TV of Hillary Clinton addressing a crowd of supporters in which she was taking questions from the crowd. A woman asks her how she squares her assertion that if she was President in 2002 she wouldn't have invaded Iraq with her senate vote in favor of the invasion.

Her response (paraphrased from memory): "We would never have granted the President that authority if we knew how badly the President would abuse that authority".

Excuse me, but WTF?? Congress grants the President the authority to invade Iraq, and Hillary says exercising that authority constitutes abuse of that authority?

Keep digging, lady.

Update 11:11 on 12 Feb. 2007: I can't find an online version of it yet, but our local paper today has an article covering some of the comments from Hillary's appearance, which by the way was in New Hampshire. According to the article, she says she voted to (get this) give Bush authority to send weapons inspectors to Iraq.

Well, I guess in a way you could call 180,000 troops the ultimate weapons inspectors.

Venezuelans voting with their feet

If you can't stand the dictator, get out of the country

On the heels of Venezuela's so-called "enabling law" which effectively turned president Hugo Chavez into Absolute Supreme Dictator For Life, Venezuelan citizens are bailing in droves.

Middle-class Venezuelans are queuing to leave the country amid fears that its president, Hugo Chavez, is laying the ground for a dictatorship.

Opponents of his "20th century socialism" are so desperate to escape that they have resorted to learning new languages and tracking down long lost European relatives in the hope of securing a visa.

At the US Embassy, visa enquiries have almost doubled in recent weeks, from 400 to about 800 a day. "There are normal spikes toward Christmas or another major holiday, but this increase doesn't fall into that category," said embassy spokesman Brian Penn.

The British embassy has seen a similar rise in numbers. "It has been increasing for some time, but what's different now is the tone of desperation," said a British spokesman.

Watch for Chavez to establish restrictions on emigration in the coming weeks.

Mmmm...beer

A hobby of mine that I've been neglecting for a while is home beer brewing. I recently started again, and one of the necessary parts of brewing is good record keeping of each batch...ingredients, brewing, fermentation observations, final results, etc.

I decided a great way of doing this was to blog all my batches, which I've done at my new blog called, appropriately, Brewer's Log.

If you're a beer brewer, or just a beer lover, stop by and feel free to comment.

Edwards sabotages own campaign

If you've been at all following the John Edwards campaign blogger saga, you already know that Edwards has decided not to fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan over blog posts written at their own respective blogs prior to joining Edwards' campaign.

Both Marcotte and McEwan profess remorse, not over what they've published, but that their previous writing wasn't taken in the vein it was intended, namely satire, lampoon, etc. Just so you can judge for yourself, here's one sample of Marcotte's writing following the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist (content warning-unedited):

Rehnquist died. He was no crusader for decency or anything, but nor was he a person whose ideology overruled his decisions. Those days for the Supreme Court are over. BushCo has a new appointment and can also choose the new Chief Justice.

Summary: We are fucked.

Choice is gone. And as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, states will start outlawing contraception, and eventually the ideologically run court will find that there’s no right to privacy, period, and contraception protection will be gone.

The only thing I can say now is that people who have enough children or don’t want any at all–get sterilized while you still can. As for those who want children, just not now….well, I don’t know. If you use condoms, stock up on EC now. If you use the pill, start exploring Canadian options.

One thing I vow here and now–you motherfuckers who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will fuck without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won’t be able to stop it. Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherfuckers. I’m not going to be “punished” with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You’ll never catch all of us. Give up now.

As if that wasn't bad enough, here's a response she posted to a commenter on the article:

I’m not an idiot. I’m a twat. Get it straight.

I’m a hot, moist, inviting twat. Warm, wet, inviting. But not to you or your friends. Even if I were single, these nubile thighs do not wrap around the hips of Republicans. You can fuck yourselves or the dry twats of the self-hating misogynists who will allow you tiny penis to penetrate them. Have fun! Um, the wounds you get from rubbing you un-lubricated dick repeatedly into your heartless, soulless woman–iodine is your best friend, my be-scarred friend.

Marcotte takes issue with the Catholic Church for one of the same reasons I do, namely their persistent, irrational opposition not just to abortion but to any means of birth control besides the rhythm method. But this sort of deranged, psychotic frothing at the mouth doesn't exactly bring credit to her cause. On the other hand, it's an effective argument that Marcotte's mother should have considered abortion as an option.

John Edwards has made his first serious campaign mistake. If he thinks his opponents won't be trotting out gems like these as well as the many others posted by Marcotte and McEwan, he's sorely misjudged his opposition.

Even after being presented with his chosen bloggers' true colors, he's made a conscious decision to stick with them. After reading the poison they spew, what do you think that says about John Edwards?

Global warming?

Brrrrrr

It's small wonder that the enviro-nazis have moved the goal posts by dropping the use of the term "global warming" in favor of "global climate change".

When I shot this picture this morning, I didn't notice the little minus sign to the left of the outdoor temperature...I thought it was 3.8F, not -3.8F.

I'd like to say I'm a responsible citizen and keep my thermostat way down, but it's not really 66F in my house...the thermometer is near an outside wall and probably registers a good 4 or 5 degrees cooler than room temperature.

And let's not forget...this is just an hour north of Richmond, not in the mountains. As if it's not cold enough here, I've got to fly up to New Jersey today. I suppose it can't be too much colder there.

Fabrications of the PC movement

On my recent visit to Asia, I was having drinks one night with a few colleagues, one of them a Singaporean of Chinese descent. Singaporeans are mainly ethnic Chinese, Malay or Indian.

At one point during the evening, he referred to himself as an "Oriental". When I started laughing, he just looked at me and said "What?". I explained that in the US at some point, someone decided that calling a person of Asian descent "Oriental" was insulting, and that they should instead be referred to as "Asian".

After he stopped laughing, he said that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. He went on to say "Here in the Orient, us Orientals refer to ourselves as Oriental all the time!"

This got me to wondering just how the word "Oriental" became politically incorrect. I couldn't find anything stating definitively how, when and why the term became unacceptable, but I did find this usage note in the online American Heritage Dictionary:

Usage Note: Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning "eastern"—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.

In other words, even the folks who compile dictionaries can't say exactly why the word has now become offensive, it just is. Unless, of course, you're an actual Oriental.

'This is rage without a programme'

Today's Sunday Times (London) has a great interview with Nick Cohen, author of What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way. Times writer Martin Ivens describes Cohen as a "journalist with impeccable left-wing credentials", and indeed, Cohen writes the most leftist of left-wing rags, al-Guardian.

The whole thing is a great read, but some of the best quotes are found on page 2:

“There is a delegation of Iraqi trade unionists coming to my launch party. They (their families and friends) have been slaughtered by fascists. The idea that liberals would want Iraq to fail to give Bush and Blair bloody noses appals me. They just don’t care about the consequences for the people.”

Cohen’s diagnosis of the left-wing pathology is brutal. “This is rage without a programme. Also, don’t forget the element of fear — one response when confronted by psychopaths is that you hope they can be appeased.” Aha, now for the link to Munich and Chamberlain’s sell-out of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938. He chides the “parochialism” of the liberal left. “It is difficult to defend your country against foreign threats if you are a critic of the status quo. What that led people to say is that ‘Britain is as bad as fascist Germany’ or ‘Al-Qaeda is bad, but look at the Christian right in America’.”

And how is he getting the message across? “I went to the George Orwell society in Eton, where he was a King’s scholar. They looked at me as if I was spouting ancient Greek when I talked about helping the Iraqi people. Orwell would have said ‘little brutes’.” I rather hope Cohen did too.

I think I know what book to read next.

What's at stake

I got my hands on an unclassified Joint Staff Powerpoint briefing that included this map showing what an Islamic Caliphate might look like should the Islamists be allowed to continue their pursuit of that goal.

The briefing itself is pretty good, and in fact should be delivered to the public. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same politically correct nonsense that continues to hinder our efforts, for example a line in the speaker's notes that incorrectly states Islam literally means "peace". Whether that's an example of ignorance or political correctness, it's enough to make me wonder about the quality of the people briefing the Joint Staff.

Back to the map of the Caliphate. It's pretty sobering to take in, and doesn't even include the large chunks of Eurabia that would quickly follow. Nor does it include, inexplicably, the island shared between Malaysia and Indonesia which would certainly be a part of the Caliphate right at the start.

Cavorting with the enemy

Over the past couple of months, a slew of Democrats and a few Republican political figures have advocated "dialog" and "engagement" with Iran and Syria. Some of them have gone so far as to visit Syrian president Bashar Assad in Damascus, ignoring the fact that Assad and his government are state terrorism sponsors.

These esteemed members of Congress and their defenders, of course, will say that Syria and Iran have been demonized and their roles as sponsors of terror greatly exaggerated. Well, on that point, at least, I'm glad Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has cleared things up:

Moving to the issue of Iran and Syria, Nasrallah emphasized the integral role which both states have played in strengthening and assisting the guerilla organization.

"Iran assists the organization with money, weapons, and training, motivated by a religious fraternity and ethnic solidarity," Nasrallah said. "And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it."

Right, then. Any more questions over whether Iran and Syria are bad guys?

Where's Dr. Seuss when you need him?

You learn something new every day. Northern Virginiastan has a link to a catalog of political cartoons from World War II by none other than Dr. Seuss.

I particularly liked this one from April, 1941. Makes one wonder what Dr. Seuss would have made of today's events.

The fine print at the bottom of the sign says "Lindy Ostrich Service, Inc.", a swipe at Charles Lindbergh who counseled against US entry into a war he saw as strictly a European problem.

Hillary mania

It's funny. On the same day a buddy sends me the above video poking fun of Hillary's commie tendencies, Ian over at Hot Air posts this clip proving that in this little bit of parody is a nugget boulder of truth.

Chinese army harvests prisoners' organs; world yawns

It's safe to say that America is held to higher moral standards than China, and rightly so, but shouldn't there be some limit to what the world is willing to overlook?

While left-wing groups disguised as human rights organizations criticize us for being so brutal as to imprison without trial unlawful combatants captured in battle, China's army is harvesting organs from their prisoners for profit.

China's military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falun Gong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale — including to foreign recipients — according to a study.

[ ... ]

"The involvement of the People's Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread,'' Kilgour said at a press conference.

Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s, the report said.

But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it said.

"Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military personnel,'' the report said.

Hospitals in Canada's biggest cities — Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto — confirmed "a substantial number'' of Canadians had travelled to China for dubious organ transplants, Kilgour said.

I'll lay off the easy target of Canada's nationalized health care for the time being.

Nobel Peace Prize further diluted

Isn't the Nobel Peace Prize supposed to have something to do with, well, peace? With Jimmy Carter having won it and now Al Gore being nominated for it, maybe it's time the award was renamed to "The Nobel Prize for Left Wing Activism".