November 30, 2003
...stolen from Bush in Baghdad
This is too good not to blog-
bq. WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2003 - About 600 troops gathered for Thanksgiving Day dinner in Baghdad had a surprise guest: their commander in chief, President Bush.
bq. Under the security of darkness and tight-lipped staff secrecy, the president arrived in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day at Baghdad International Airport for a reported 2½-hour visit.
bq. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Combined Joint Task Force 7 commander, and coalition administrator L. Paul Bremer were just finishing remarks to soldiers of the 2 Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 1st Armored and 82nd Airborne divisions and other guests at the start of what was supposed to be a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
bq. "It says here that I'm supposed to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation," Bremer said. "But I thought the deal was for the most senior person to read it. Is that you, sir?" Bremer asked, turning to Sanchez. "Let's see if we've got anybody more senior here who can read the president's Thanksgiving speech. Is there anybody back there more senior than us?"
bq. On cue, Bush walked into the area and up to the podium before a stunned crowd of soldiers. They immediately jumped to their feet and hailed him with sustained, thunderous applause and shouts of "hooah." The president's watery eyes showed his reaction.
bq. "I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere. Thanks for inviting me," Bush said.
I saw this Thanksgiving morning thanks to WifeChitlin, and I was moved to tears. It continued-
bq. "They hope we will run. We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins," he said to raucous, sustained whoops of approval from the service members.
bq. "We will prevail," Bush promised. "We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you're part of the finest military ever assembled. And we will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom."
bq. Bush, in a first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Iraq, also brought a message to the Iraqi people. "You have an opportunity to seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever," he declared.
RTWT here and thanks to BlackFive for the link. Man it is so cool to have a President who is a Real Man.
Just because I'm a troublemaker...
Just The Truth
Orson Scott Card has a post that is so right on point I have to quote it hugely- bq. A friend sent me a link to a website that takes apart Michael Moore's misleading Oscar-winning "documentary" Bowling for Columbine. bq. Since this website does a thorough job of showing Moore's pattern of deception, and since it always takes longer to answer a lie than to tell one, suffice it to say that it is obvious that Moore knew he was being deceptive, that it could not have happened accidentally, and that he persists in trying to sustain his misrepresentations while accusing his accusers of the very kinds of manipulation that he is guilty of. bq. In fact, this is a constant pattern in contemporary American politics. The Democratic Party, which made an obvious attempt to steal the 2000 presidential election by manipulating the vote count in selected solidly-Democratic voting districts, has spent the last three years accusing the Republicans of trying to steal the election in Florida -- even though there has been no serious accusation of a deliberate attempt by Republicans to manipulate the outcome. bq. Likewise, it was the leftist, activist Florida state supreme court that attempted, by overturning settled law and making up new election rules after the fact, to massage the recount until the desired outcome was achieved. This activist court was prevented from throwing a presidential election through blatant disregard for law only by the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which blocked the Florida Court's manipulative actions. But those who almost got away with using the courts to steal a presidential election are incessant in their charge that it was the U.S. Supreme Court that stole the election. bq. This is like the burglar accusing the homeowner of theft for having snatched the sack into which the burglar had stuffed the homeowner's valuables. This is certainly not the whole article, but you get the drift. RTWT here and thanks to Chief Wiggles for the pointer. BTW, if you've never read anything by Card, do yourself a favor- start with Enders' Game.November 25, 2003
More Paleo Toys
It just gets better and better. Andrew Sullivan points to a story in Yahoo News-
bq. Toy hand grenades sit at a street vendor as people shop in preparation for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the main market in Gaza City, Monday, Nov. 24, 2003. The holiday comes at the end of the the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
Murdering bastards raising more murdering bastards. It makes me want to puke.
The one French word is-
Stephen Green posts a letter he received here that, I think, speaks for itself- bq. I can’t find the link to today’s Good Weekend (the colour supplement to the Sydney Morning Herald) , but there’s a feature by Melvyn Bragg about the persistence and penetration of English. Opening Para: “Like Henry V and Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill, at a time of great peril to England, addressed the moment in the country’s ancestral tongue. In 1940 he told apprehensive Britons “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets, shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender”. Every word is Old English save one: ‘surrender’ is French.” This needs to be everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Yes it does.November 20, 2003
Palestinian Toys
Picture is from LGF. Yep, these people need their own country. Uh-huh. Right. How about one at the bottom of the Mediterranean?
Bastards.
Lest we forget...
John Fund writes in today's OpinionJournal.com- bq. Momentous historical events have a way of putting political spats in perspective. The bitter debate over whether George W. Bush actually won Florida largely ended after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. By the time media recounts, which found that Mr. Bush's victory was indeed legitimate, were released, they seemed like an afterthought. bq. A similar argument about the photo-finish 1960 election effectively ended with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Until his death, some had plausibly argued that Richard Nixon actually should have had a plurality of the popular vote, even if JFK was legitimately chosen by the Electoral College. bq. A half dozen historical retrospectives are airing this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination. Several of them mention the contested nature of the 1960 election, which Kennedy won, 303 electoral votes to 219. That margin is deceptively large; the race was so close that the election would have been thrown into the House if Kennedy hadn't won Illinois and Texas by excruciatingly narrow margins. If Nixon had won both states, he would have been elected president. RTWT of course, and remember history the next time you hear Dubya was "selected not elected".November 19, 2003
Make mine Whiskey
Blackfive has a nice post about my favorite beverage, scotch- bq. IAN URQUHART, a gently spoken, 55-year-old Scotch whiskey man who heads the firm of Gordon & MacPhail, led the way through his firm's 6,000-barrel warehouses here in northeastern Scotland, identifying some of the choicest lots for an overseas visitor. bq. "That's 60-year-old Mortlach," he said fondly. "We bottled some of it in 2000 and more in 2001. There's still a little left. That cask was filled for my grandfather. It slept right through my father's generation." bq. He walked past a cask of 1949 Benromach with the comment, "Haven't decided when to bottle that," past 10 casks of 1951 Glen Grant in an aisle with barrels piled eight or nine high, past 1957 Glenlivet and 1988 Highland Park – the best all-round malt, many say - and on to the "graveyard." Whiskeys from defunct distilleries rest there, quietly eking out a kind of afterlife. bq. "Hillside," Mr. Urquhart said, in the tone of a man mourning a lost friend. "Demolished for a housing scheme. Seventy-eight Millburn. Millburn's gone, too. It's a Beefeater Steak House these days, outside of Inverness." Scots take their whiskey seriously, and not just because they fancy a wee dram themselves. (Or not so wee a dram; Lord Dundee, who drank his whiskey by the tumblerful, once said, "A single Scotch is nothing more than a dirty glass.") RTWT here, and find yourself getting thirsty. Or not. Cheers!
A soldier tells a cameraman how he REALLY feels about him...
Heh.
November 18, 2003
Iraqi and Iranian Blogs
It's come to my attention that some of my readers aren't aware of the real news coming out of the Middle East. For the real scoop, the news that WON'T leave you in despair about our mission there, try the following- American take: Little Green Footballs, Chief Wiggles, LT Smash, Blackfive, Just Another Soldier... Iraqi blogs: Healing Iraq, IraqNet, Salem Pax, The Mesopotamian, Hammorabi... Iran blogs: Editor: Myself, and check out Blog Iran!. These should get you started. Read and learn- the American big media are doing the country a tremendous disservice.November 13, 2003
Starship Trooper
Robert Heinlein wrote you - you stranger in a
strange land, you.
Which Author's Fiction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla Somehow, this doesn't surprise me...
November 07, 2003
White Trash Like Me
Chales Krauthammer has outdone himself. First, he lays out the landscape of the last Democrat presidential wannabe debate- bq. Howard Dean wants the white trash vote. That's not exactly what he said, but that's clearly what he meant when he said he wanted the votes of "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." It was a beautiful moment. It produced at the very next Democratic debate the perfect liberal storm: a comedy of class snobbery, regional condescension and political correctness, with a touch of race-baiting thrown in for good measure. It began with a student at the CNN debate on Tuesday declaring himself offended by Dean's remark. It included the ever-reliable Al Sharpton charging Dean with cuddling up to Stonewall Jackson. It was highlighted by Dean saying, in essence, that he is not a Confederate -- indeed, it seemed that every candidate was ready to declare undying allegiance to Lincoln and the Union -- but that if the Democratic Party wanted to compete it would have to go after poor southern whites. Yup, we poor Southern white folks don' know nuthin'; it takes a mighty New England Yankee to reach out to us and lead us from the errors of our ways. Krauthammer the lets them be hoist on their own petards- bq. Edwards is too politic to say it, but it's not hard to read the subtext of his rejoinder -- that this snob from New England thinks we Southerners are the kind of trash James Carville once said (of Paula Jones) you find by dragging a $100 bill through a trailer park. You could almost hear Edwards saying: Vote for me, another Southerner like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- winners both -- rather than another effete Northerner, this one from the mean streets of Montpelier. bq. It was quite a show. As always, the Democratic candidates were trying to play Everyman. Edwards, like Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman, can carry it off because his humble roots are genuine. Dean has succeeded in playing Everyman by being Angry Man. But anger is a sometime thing, hard to sustain day in and day out, while Dean's Yalie, moneyed blueblood roots (remarkably similar to those of the man he would like to run against) are forever. These guys don't have a clue. They would make me angry if I thought they mattered, but as it is, they just make me sick. As always, RTWT here.November 05, 2003
More IDF Creativity
From this post on Samizdata we learn-
In this handout picture made available Tuesday Oct. 28, 2003 by the Israel-based Cornershot Co. in Tel Aviv, Israel, a rifle is seen composed of two parts; the front, that can swivel from side to side, containing a pistol with a color camera mounted on top, and the back section which consists of the stock, trigger and a monitor. According to a report by the Israeli daily 'Maariv' newspaper, the pistol, produced by the Florida-based Cornershot Holdings, is being tested by the Israeli military and has already been bought by a number of special forces around the world. The unique weapon allows a soldier to remain behind cover, with only the barrel of the rifle exposed in the direction of the hostile fire. (AP Photo/HO, Cornershot)
Woohoo!
