An "insiders" view of the Iraqi elections

For the real scoop, go here.

Fascinating reads, that sift through the broad-brushed, simplistic approach too often employed by the MSM.

French Military Victories?

Go to Google and type in "French Military Victories" (without quotes) in the search tab. Then click "I'm feeling lucky." Heh.

More bad news ... for democrats.

In a turn of events sure to infuriate many in the democrat leadership who have been banking on U.S. defeat in Iraq, from here:

FALLUJA/RAMADI Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday's polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.

"We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote," said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam's Baath party.

"Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters."

And in another bit of news that should serve to throw Murtha and Dean into a hissy-fit:

But Saddam loyalists have turned against Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant whose fighters travel to Iraq from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in a bid to spark sectarian civil war.

"Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation," said a Baathist insurgent leader who would give his name only as Abu Abdullah.

Yep.. the "democrat suicide watch" for 2006 and 2008 is officially on.

Reason for Hope from China...

Freedom Dogs has a great post regarding the recent riots in China

Granted, this sounds like one of the biggest riots this year, yet, but consider this stat froma story that I noticed back in mid August of this year:

Mr Zhou said the authorities dealt with 74,000 protests and riots nationwide last year, involving more than 3.7m people, compared with 10,000 incidents in 1994.

That stat of nearly 75,000 riots should raise an eyebrow even to naysayers thinking that the massive population makes this a skinny slice. It is a big deal not just by the numbers, but by the principles. The freedom dog in my is pissing on hydrants with joy over the reasons for these riots. They are little fires of independence all over the People's Republic. Most of these riots as I read them arise over property disputes, the government siezing rivers and other sources of prosperity (read Kelo) or their destroying the environment with new works projects.

I'm pissin' there right with ya, Chief! I liken this to the movie, War of the Worlds. Just when all seems lost, and the all-powerful aliens are ready to take over the earth, they are taken down by the least among us. Now I'm not saying that the Chinese people are akin to bacteria, but you get the idea. The Chinese people, having had a taste of capitalism and freedom, are now wanting it all, much like their old Soviet counterparts.

My question is (as is Chief's): how many of our freedoms are we willing to lose before we have the same reaction here? What will be our boiling point?

(Filed under World Affairs)

Greatest music lyrics. Ever.

-The Wall-

Woven in a fantasy, I can't believe the things I see...
The path that I have chosen now, has led me to a wall.
And with each passing day I feel a little more
like something dear was lost.
It rises now before me, the dark and silent barrier between
all I am, and all that I was ever meant to be;
It's just a travesty!
Standing there; and marking off the boundaries
my spirit would erase.

-------
To pass beyond is what I seek; I fear that I may be too weak.
And those are few who've seen it through
to glimpse the other side.
The "Promised Land" is waiting; like a maiden
that is soon to be a bride!
The moment is a masterpiece; the weight of
indecision's in the air..
Standing there; the symbol and the sum of all that's me--
It's just a travesty!
Towering, and blocking out the Light and blinding me--
I want to see!!
-----

Gold and diamonds cast a spell;
they're not for me I know it well.
The Riches that I seek are waiting on the other side.
There's more than I can measure in the treasures
of the Love that I can find!
And though it's always been with me,
I must tear down the wall
And let it be...
All I am, and all that I was ever meant to be
In harmony!
Shining through, and smiling back at all who wait to cross--
THERE IS NO LOSS!!

-Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh- (Kansas)


(Filed under Fun Stuff)

Like oil and water?

Acting like they really give a rip about people of faith, This from the DFL 2nd Congressinal Website:

Demand a Moral Budget: Join In A Candle Light Vigil

Moral BudgetWednesday, December 14
6:00 PM -7:00 PM
at Representative Kline's Office
101 W. Burnsville Pkway
Burnsville


This holiday season, Congress will face a decision about whether or not to cut vital services like food stamps and child care from low income, working familes. We must make sure they do what is right. Here's our vision: we want vigils at every Senator's and Representative's district office on Wednesday, December 14th. Imagine people from diverse faith traditions gathering together to call our leaders to demand a budget that prioritizes the needs of the poorest among us. It will be a collective voice no lawmaker can ignore.

Join others in CD2 for a Candle Light Vigil outside Representative John Kline's Office. Demand a Budget that will be fair and just. Budgets are moral documents! They are about priorities and choices.

An organization that has this organization and these organizations as intellectual bedfellows have a lot of room for invoking faith to shame congressmen into endorsing a socialist agenda. Calling for policies that perpetuate dependence "moral" is stretching it a bit IMO. Face it, Democrats loathe religions, in particular Christianity. But at the same time they play the religion card much in the same way they play the Vietnam war hero card to try to gain credibility where they have none.

But as Rush often states, the democrats can't run as who they really are, because they'd never get elected if they did. So they have to wake up every day, thinking "how can we fool them this time?"

Can anyone say, "perpetual contrivances"?

(Filed under moonbat adventures, secular taliban)

Next on my "toy" list...

From here:

(a snowblower with a 454 V-8 engine)



Well--it is supposed to snow next week.

(Filed under fun stuff)

In another uplifting turn ... of events..

Pomeroy to Howard Dean:Shut up

By MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy is accusing Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean of overstepping his bounds, saying the former presidential candidate should not give up on the war in Iraq.

On Monday, Dean likened the war in Iraq to Vietnam and said, "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong."

"My words to Howard Dean are simple - shut up," Pomeroy told WDAY Radio in North Dakota on Thursday.

Read the rest here.

(Filed under moonbat adventures, The Fifth Column, Iraq)

On Canadian pots ...and American Kettles..

It would seem that the intellectually vacuous practice of tearing others down so as to attempt to enhance one's own image (can you say DNC?) is catching on.. From here

Politicians rip apart U.S. to build up Canada's image

By ROBERT RUSSO

OTTAWA (CP) - U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins said overheated election rhetoric is prompting some Canadian officials to burnish Canada's image by sullying the reputation of the United States.

Wilkins made no official comment on the Bush administration's annoyance with Prime Minister Paul Martin's denigration of U.S. environmental policies during an interview with The Canadian Press. Instead, he expressed regret that the United States was being drawn into a campaign that it was trying to stay out of.

"It appears that oftentimes, some officials, in order to build Canada up, attempt to tear the United States down," Wilkins told CP Friday.

And now, for the "pot meet kettle" portion of my post:

Wilkins was in the audience at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Montreal on Wednesday when Martin suggested the Bush administration was being deaf to the global conscience calling for united action to stem the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Martin was unrepentant.

"The foreign policy of this country - the overall policy of this country - is set by the prime minister," he said in Montreal. "And I'll continue to do that."

The U.S. ambassador said he was taken aback by Martin's position and the vehemence with which it was argued.

"In view of the fact that the United States's performance on climate control over the last few years has been better than Canada's, I was surprised by those comments," Wilkins said.

The United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, which called on countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Since the agreement was signed in 1990, U.S. emissions have increased by 13 per cent (emphases mine). Canada, which did sign Kyoto, has seen its emissions jump by 24 per cent.

Outside of America-bashing by radical socialist elements, which has taken much of the world by storm as of late, I would venture to say that Canada (as well as other Kyoto signatories) has probably kept pretty close with the protocol. The problem with Kyoto is ::::Drumroll please::::

IT WON'T WORK!!!

You can live, breathe and eat the Kyoto protocol til the ever-loving cows come home, and it will not make one iota of a difference in the Earth's climate. The Earth will do what the Earth will do. To think that humans can affect global climate change in one way or another is fool's fodder.

Although I will admit that it makes one attractive straw man to flail about in front of an otherwise uninformed electorate.

(Filed under Enviro-Whackism)

In an uplifting turn of events...

The Republican Party is finally getting around to telling it like it is. Click the link and watch the video. With their disastrous rhetoric that even our enemies themselves are using, I would call it more than fair game to challenge the patriotism of the democrat leadership; and even more than fair game to say that most of the democrat leadership wishes our soldiers and our nation defeat in the face of terrorism and islamo-fascism.

It would appear that today's democrat party would be taking war strategy lessons from the French.

It still isn't safe to vote democrat, is it?

(Filed under The Fifth Column)

It would be funny if it wasn't the truth...

From here:

(Filed under The Fifth Column)

Slick Willie? More like greasy Willie...

From here

Trying to get back in the good graces of the environmental radical socialist left (a crowd in which he no doubt feels comfortable).:

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton told U.N. climate talks in Canada on Friday that the Bush administration was "flat wrong" to reject the Kyoto accord and said cutting greenhouse gases was good for business and the planet.

In an impassioned speech to hundreds of delegates and nongovernmental groups, Clinton rejected a major tenet of the Bush administration's argument for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol emissions pact in 2001.

Wow.... but at the same time Ol Slicko comes up with an excuse for why he rejected the same treaty:

Clinton, whose administration negotiated Kyoto in 1997 but never submitted it to a skeptical Senate for ratification, said the belief that Kyoto would hurt the economies of developed nations was "flat wrong."

"We know from every passing year we get more and more objective data that if we had a serious, disciplined effort to apply on a large scale existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies that we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, our economies," he said.

This slimebucket had nearly four years to submit that treaty for ratification to the Senate. Whydidn't he? Was it because that deep down he knew that it was bad idea based not on environmentalism but on "get-evenism" from the socialist "have nots"? Clinton didn't want to take the fall in being responsible for such an odious treaty; so, much like his nonexistent response to terror, he didn't have the cajones to put his money where his mouth is (or his cigar from where his mouth was?). Just like everything else, he was perfectly willing to leave the hard decisions for the next Prez, and is now perfectly willing to criticize and blame others for his mistakes and ineffectiveness in a lame attempt to fix his legacy.

I believe that it is safe to say that one could travel the world over, and literally scrape every barrel, and still be hard pressed to find slime that is at a lower level than is our ex "perpetrator in chief."

(Filed under The Fifth Column, Enviro-Whackism)

Memo to DNC...Your talking points are catching on!

From here:

IRAQ "CATASTROPHE" FOR AMERICA

Zawahri said the United States had suffered a defeat in Iraq and it was only a matter of time before it pulled out its troops.

"Iraq is a catastrophe for America and Americans will leave, it will only be a matter of time.

"I say to Bush: You entered Iraq with lies, you will lose Iraq and lie about it and you will leave with the pretext that you have completed your mission ... America only has to decide on the number of (troops) it wishes to lose before withdrawing."

Yes, Dems... your talking points are working... with our enemies.

So, Mr. Dean, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Murtha, Ms. Pelosi, et al., if it really sails your boat that much, keep up the dezinformatsia. History does show that lies, spread often and far enough, do eventually work.

But before you continue with your "mission", just a quick question:

Once your dirty work is all said and done, and you're finally in power again, to quote a popular TV show, "Whatcha gonna do when they come for YOU?

(Filed under The Fifth Column)

Hell hath no fury ... like liberals out of power

If you want to see that fury, complete with its complement of ad hominem attacks, check out some of the comment sections of the posts made here.

So much for the adherents of the party of tolerance. Not to mention that one or some of the Tarryl Clark (The "Susan Lucci" of the District 15 Senate seat--to borrow a phrase from a good friend) faithful most likely hacked into and shut down the KNSI website (of which Dan Ochsner, her GOP challenger, happens to be program director).

Yes, dirty tricks are afoot. It's too bad that the DFL finds itself hard pressed to run a campaign based on the merits of their ideas.

Although that's probably for a good reason.

On terrorizing children

As anyone on the American left can tell you, our soldiers in Iraq have been terrorizing children. In the spirit of the "new tone" set for the Ice Palace (well, for this post, anyway) I would wish to buttress Mr. Kerry's assertions with more evidence. Click here (WARNING--GRAPHIC CONTENT).

The Ice Palace joins Mr. Kerry in condemning these atrocious actions by our soldiers. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Now excuse me while I reach for my medication.

(Filed under Heroes, Iraq, The Fifth Column)