It's such a gas

Remember at the start of the Bush presidency, gas prices shot up? It was the Bush-Cheney Cabal with their secret conspiracy to use the presidency to enrich their oil buddies. Then, about six months later, gas prices were pretty low again.

Not a word from the left. What, the conspiracy failed?

Then, just a few months ago, prices were back up. World demand is increasing, and we have not built a new refinery in thrity years or more. The immediate cause was uncertainty over the Middle East, of course. All we heard from the left, again, was the oil cabal conspiracy theory. No hue and cry to build refineries, drill domestically or develop nuclear plants.

Just the other day, I filled my tank and paid less than $1.80 a gallon. More than twenty cents down from the recent high.

No word yet from the left.

Hillary's nobless oblige

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

So sayeth Queen Hillary, as reported by sfgate.com today.

Isn't it great to know we have such a benevolent regent-in-waiting working on behalf of "the common good"?

Now all we need is some cornbread to go with it

Remember the "sixteen words" fiasco from that State of the Union address in 2003? About British intelligence having learned about Iraq trying to get uranium from west Africa? Of course, Joe Wilson sought and got his fifteen minutes of fame for having visited Niger at the behest of the CIA to investigate the matter. Wilson sipped tea with local officials and asked them if they had been approached about such a deal. No, they had not. Okay, matter closed.

The Bush administration sticks by their story, but so what? We all know Bush lies, right? And the CIA disagreed with the Niger intelligence, and why would we not believe the CIA over British intelligence?

Of course, CIA human intelligence resources in Africa were pretty much gutted during the Clinton years. The United Kingdom did no such foolish thing, so maybe believing them was not so unreasonable. But, the loony left chooses to find the CIA credible in this one case.

So, it turned out some Italian document connecting Iraq with a uranim smuggling plot was forged. The Left howled and shouted, how Bush had tried to put one over on the public. In fact, this controversy became the basis of the supposed "sexed up" intelligence allegation of the anti-war movement.

And this quickly evolved into the very foundation of that anti-war, anti-America movement. Faked intelligence, hyped and oversold to a naïve American public. "He betrayed this country. He played on our fears!" Blah blah...

I did some checking on Niger myself. I few Google clicks turned up the interesting fact that Niger has four main exports: beef, black-eyed peas, onions and... yes, uranium.

So, that Iraqi official― who apparently was fairly high-level― was buying cattle? Onions? What, Saddam just had to have hoppin' John that day?

Well, it turns out there was a uranium plot after all. The Financial Times, of London, reports:

But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

Oh, and it turns out there were other countries involved: Iran, North Korea, Libya and China. Check the financial connections between North Korea and International ANSWER, which organized all those anti-war marches the beautiful people found so irresistably fashionable.

I'm sure all those patriotic left-wingers will do an immediate about-face and not only apologize, but lead the charge to fight terrorism.

Right.

Gimme the bodycounts!

Every time an american soldier is killed— for that matter, every time an Iraqi civilian is killed by a terrorist, we get instant news of the death. What about the insurgents/terrorists/bad guys we grease along the way? Our bodies get counted, theirs are virtually ingored.

I was just reading a blurb on the Belmont Club about the fighting in between our First Armored Division and those creeps belonging to al Sadr. 5,000 of our guys fought and 19 died. We heard all about that. What was pretty much ignored by the press was that 1,500 of their guys bit the dust in the process. That's a kill ratio of about 78:1.

This war is so often compared to Vietnam, yet today's war coverage falls short of the mark. The left-wing press certainly wants to focus on violence, but they fail to tell the whole story.

Back in the sixties we saw graphic images every day. But, at least we got an idea of how much damage we were doing. For every one of our guys lost, we took out a bunch of bad guys. 20:1 felt pretty good. Now we are hitting 78:1. Damn!

Good numbers, by my reckoning. We need body counts and kill ratios. Daily news, live coverage.

Another stroke of genius from the Left

Drudge links an article from the San Jose Mercury News, reporting a San Francisco movement to let non-citizens vote. I read this and nearly went numb. My spine was tingling, fingers trembling. I hardy know where to begin with this.

Let’s set the scene: post-911. Amazingly, we still have borders that are virtually unattended. Terrorists can pretty much walk into the United States without challenge. If arrested illegally entering the country, you are released on your own recognizance with no legal consequences at all. Soon, newly arriving terrorists can go straight to the voting booth and change local laws to suit their divine purpose.

So, if al Qaeda wants to attack us, they have only to walk across the border in sufficient numbers and elect a new mayor. No need to set off bombs to influence elections, as they did in Spain. Just send in the Electoral Fedayeen to change the outcome of any given election. And no need for actual terrorists to run for office— incumbent officials are standing by to implement any anti-American agenda you care to offer.

The paper quotes local voting-rights experts, “…it's only a matter of time before the state comes to grips with its new demographic reality: Almost one-fifth of all voting-age Californians are non-citizens.” A bit further down, “You can't have a growing number of residents in your jurisdictions that are not part of the body politic. You want to have everyone inside the tent”. With this mentality, I suspect the camel’s nose is already well ensconced.

I thought the idea was to get the unwanted people outside the tent. Outside the country, in fact. If twenty percent of voting-age people in California are non-citizens, then maybe it is time to start checking IDs and arresting and finally deporting a few folks.

“The idea here is not so radical,'' said Matt Gonzalez, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and author of the proposal. Not so radical? By San Francisco standards, perfectly reasonable.

Actually, the idea is covertly brilliant. We can at last resolve some of the controversial social issues of our time, with new-found allies among the islamo-fascist community.

Think of the possibilities. Once the mullas have their death-grip firmly around the necks of the mayor’s office and the school board, we can finally expect school vouchers to become possible. After all, what jihadist would not want to send his kid to a publicly-funded madras? Somebody has to teach kids the proper way to strap on those bomb vests. And the word “primer” takes on a whole new meaning.

And forget about the school prayer issue. Five times a day, like clockwork. Mecca is thataway, kids.

No more fuss over bi-lingual education either. Only one language needed to read the Quran.

And we thought the left had run out of ideas.

Some things really aren't funny

Recently, Adrianna Huffington was on Hannity's radio show and he was challenging her about her support for television ads connecting SUV drivers and terrorism. You may recall the spot, in the manner of the anti-drug ads that connect drug money to terrorism. Obvious left wing nonsense.

So, Hannity called her on it. She scrambled, and said something about "satire". Pretended the whole thing was just a joke. She was being funny, couldn't he tell? Then she tried to pass the project off as a work in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift proposed the selling of Irish baby meat to solve social problems in the troubled Emerald Isles.

Now Swift's piece was a hard-boiled, genuine, in-your-face piece of satire, assuring us of the culinary and nutritional benefits of a well-nursed infant. Best enjoyed over a plate of Buffalo Wings with your favourite brew. The essay, that is.

Sorry, Arianna, no sale. Thunk! Even we naïve Americans are not foolish enough to mistake your loony-left drivel for satire, and your defense is as dumb as the ads.

We live in a day where satire― the genuine article, not the pretense of Arianna Huffington― hardly exists. Have we become a nation of... what? What is the name for a group of people who seem to have lost their collective sense of humour? French? We cling so tenaciously to our established position, we forget to consider the logic of that position. If the Earth were to move, we might fail to notice. In our bacchanal of political bifurcation, we seem to dig our heels into ideological the dirt like drunken frat boys in a tug o' war.

We need more writers like Ann Coulter. Now there is a lady who can spit out barbed witticisms faster and more finely than Bill Clinton ever conjugated the verb "to be". Most important, she pulls no punches. Her critics attack her personally, not on issues of fact. The personal invective of her critics on the left signifies not only the truth of what she says, but the effect she is having.

In any case, good satire has become scarce.

Satire is a good thing. Satire makes us laugh and think. Good satire just begs to be read, even by those who don't agree with the writer's viewpoint. Since readership is what writing is all about, you would really think more writers would use satire to make their points. Getting people to laugh while slugging them in the gut is a skill that can only be admired.

Did satire die because we lost our funny bones? Or did we lose our sense of humour because we no longer have enough satire to read? Whether the chicken or the egg, satire is inevitably taken as literal meaning by the left and the writers' words thrown back at them as though the public is too stupid to realize the true intent of the words.

Well, people are not so stupid. Like political correctness, left-wing reaction to satire is a conditioning force intended to discourage its use. But as with political correctness, left wing scorn is to be mocked or ignored, never heeded. Write on!

Think about it, does anyone seriously believe Ann Coulter means for us to "...invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? I crack up every time a leftist writer expresses indignant outrage at such a sweet sentiment.

Let's invade their newsrooms, kill their editors...

One Question

One question keeps bugging me about John Kerry. I tried asking at his blog site, but the very question was considered hostile, so was deleted.

Why did he quit the Vietname Veteran's Against the War?

Nothing complicated. Not "when" or "where", but why.

Anyone have an official answer?