MuzzMusings

It's Been A Long Time

2007-03-31T23:41:00.000-04:00

Wow, hard to believe it has been several months since my last post. I don't know why I got out of the blogging habit -- God know there's always plenty to write/vent about, especially now with the Dhimmicrats running Congress (Heaven help us all)--
but for whatever reason, I got out of the posting habit. But, I am back now and hopefully better than ever!

Politics aside for a moment (and as I write this I am praying for the Brits to grow a backbone in the wake of the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors), it has been an interesting few months, full of awesome highlights, the biggest of which being the surprise arrival of Carolyn, Mark, Maris and Al for my big 4-0 Party. Wow, 4-0. 40. FORTY. Now that takes some adjustment! But, hey, I am grateful to be healthy and alive...and it doesn't hurt that people tell me all the time I look at least ten years younger than my age!

Seriously, I am deeply grateful for all of the incredibly supportive and loving people that populate my life. I have been abundantly blessed in that area, and having some of my favorite loved ones fly to South Florida to celebrate my milestone birthday was....well, icing on the cake.

I wasn't planning to host a spirited, Philly-themed "Forty Favorites" celebration at first. Although I loved turning 30, this new number seemed to loom large and oppressive, fraught with regret for things done and undone, and concern for what is inevitably around the corner. After all, if I am aging, the same holds true for my parents (despite their overall good health and younger-than-their age looks). And, quite naturally, negative thoughts sometimes randomly float through my mind, in spite of everything I've learned and applied from Unity Church and the 4T Class.

Mainly they revolve around a fear of not finding and marrying the right person for me while Mom and Dad are still here to share in my joy. At times I wonder if my beloved groom exists at all. And even with positive prayer and affirmations, I frequently wrestle with the ominous fear of being alone forever and missing out on one of life's most exhilarating (some would add, infuriating) experiences. I want to shop for the perfect gown with Mom, walk down the aisle on Dad's arm and exchange vows with my perfect soulmate in the presence of family, friends and God. I want the day to day responsibility of looking after someone else and growing with that person through triumph, tragedy and everything in between.

Most often when these and other dark thoughts materialize, optimism and gratitude overcome them, and I go on with work, writing projects and life in general. But after all of the anticipation of planning my 40th birthday party, hosting unexpected and ecstatically-welcomed family, and reveling in the joy of close friendships (did I mention a fabulous cake and wonderful presents?), the realization of forty hit surprisingly hard. Combined with a recent bout of bronchitis (which made the rounds 'round here and in Philly), it (temporarily) stole my typical fighting spirit and dogged determination.

Then I remembered a devastating, life-altering day this past December, 2006 (To Be Continued).

Dubya and the Democrats

2006-11-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

It didn't take long for President Bush to embrace his new friends in the majority. Now that the Open-Borders/Amnesty Democrats have defeated those pesky Republicans in the House and Senate, Dubya appears elated. If we needed any further proof that this President is a squishy moderate in (formerly) conservative clothing, yesterday's press conference should put those doubts to rest:

"The Democrats won the election yesterday, and that means they get some of what they want, if not a lot of what they want, if not all of what they want." Specifically, here's what you can look for: You can look for there to be a minimum wage bill. The president was passionate about one thing in this press conference. He came alive when he was asked a question about: What does this mean for your immigration policy? "Yes, I think we have a better chance of getting immigration reform now with a Democrat-controlled Congress."

Fabulous. Don't get too comfortable with the current thriving economy, because come January, the Demo's, with the blessing of the President, are going to wreak havoc. A minimum wage increase will kill small business owners and open borders/amnesty will create even more entitlement programs, not to mention undermine our already vulnerable national security. Our porous borders are not unnoticed by our enemies, and I'm surprised AQ hasn't yet orchestrated an attack from south of the Rio Grande. It sends chills down the spine to imagine how they must be salivating at the prospect of unleashing bloodshed again on the "paper tiger" now that politicians who view terror as law-enforcement and not a War, are back in power.

Rush spoke for many true conservatives yesterday, in his "liberation" monologue:

I believe my side is worthy of victory, and I believe it's much easier to reform things that are going wrong on my side from a position of strength. Now I'm liberated from having to constantly come in here every day and try to buck up a bunch of people who don't deserve it, to try to carry the water and make excuses for people who don't deserve it. I did not want to sit here and participate, willingly, in the victory of the libs, in the victory of the Democrat Party by sabotaging my own. But now with what has happened yesterday and today, it is an entirely liberating thing. If those in our party who are going to carry the day in the future -- both in Congress and the administration -- are going to choose a different path than what most of us believe, then that's liberating. I don't say this with any animosity about anybody, and I don't mean to make this too personal.

For many of us who are frustrated with pork-barrel spending, political correctness in the prosecution of the War and the antics of the "Gang of 14" (led by John McCain to oppose the President's judicial nominations) the 2006 midterm election was a process of voting for the lesser of two evils, knowing that at least Republicans held strong on national security and terror -- the most crucial issue of our time. We'd vote them back into office, then demand reform. Instead, thanks to the abandonment of conservative principles, we're left with Speaker Pelosi and her San Francisco values. For the 50% of the population who didn't know who she was, that means anti-military, pro-gay marriage, anti-war and big-spending. Feel better?

Many are calling the election debacle a "victory for conservatism and a defeat for Republicanism." Indeed, the far-left of the Democratic party, knowing they'd never win an election based on their true ideals of big-government, big-spending, unrestricted abortion on demand and sympathy for dictators, ran so-called "blue-dog" Democrats, who in some ways are more conservative than their Republican counterparts. In today's Washington Post, George Will observes:

This year Democrats tacitly accepted much of the country's rightward movement over the past quarter-century. They did not call for restoring the 70 percent marginal tax rates that Ronald Reagan repealed. And although Pelosi and 15 of the 21 likely chairmen of committees in the coming Congress voted against the 1996 welfare reform, which has helped reduce welfare rolls by roughly 60 percent, Democrats this year did not talk about repealing it.

The property rights movement gained ground Tuesday as voters in nine states passed measures to restrict governments from exercising eminent domain in order to enlarge their tax revenue. In Michigan, opponents of racial preferences in public hiring, education and contracting easily passed their referendum, 58 to 42 percent, in spite of being outspent more than three to one. In Minnesota -- the only state Democrats have carried in each of the past eight presidential elections, but one that is becoming a swing state -- Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was reelected. And, come January, the number of Republicans in the House (at least 200) will still be larger than the largest number during the Reagan years (192 in 1981-83).

The country remains receptive to conservatism. That doctrine -- were it to become constraining on, rather than merely avowed by, congressional Republicans -- can be their bridge back from the wilderness.

georgewill@washpost.com

Unfortunately, with a moderate President "reaching across the aisle" (just as he did with Ted Kennedy on "No-Child Left Behind" and the massive Medicare entitlement) to a woman who's called him the "Emperor with no clothes" among other distasteful things, look for even more illegals to drain the country's taxpayers.

I don't blame the electorate; though they will suffer, as will the rest of us, as a result of taking Republicans to the woodshed. I just pray it won't entail another horrific attack on American soil by an enemy, that, while barbaric in many ways, is wise to both our political system and modern technology.

Now for Some Good News

2006-11-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

I hope Mike Pence gets it.

Morning After Hangover

2006-11-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

Sigh! We knew all along it was coming; the sad thing is, it was completely avoidable. In this age of Jihad and radical Islamic fascism, last night's election results are frightening, indeed. One would think the electorate would be wise enough to see through the Democrats' "centrist" smoke and mirrors routine, but in all fairness, Republican lack of leadership and blatant dismissal of conservative values is ultimately responsible for this debacle.

Let's begin with President Bush. Hard to believe how precipitously he's squandered his 2004 "capital." Having no possession of psychic powers or the ability to read minds, I can only guess at his motivations for abandoning moral clarity and caving in to political correctness. Instead of aligning with President Reagan -- who worked everyday to promote conservative ideals -- W. followed in his father's footsteps, caving into the farcical platitudes of "reaching across the aisle" to Democrats who are now salivating over the opportunity for impeachment hearings, and abandoning so-called "Cowboy Diplomacy," which called an evil-doer an evil-doer.

Many are calling this a "referendum" on Iraq. But polls indicate the dissatisfaction with Iraq is largely based on the War's prosecution and not the War itself. Contrary to what the Democrats preach, most Americans want to win. Problem is, with President Bush's politically-correct military strategy of restraint, crossing the finish line has become an increasingly impossible task.

But it was doomed to failure from the start for several reasons:

1. Basing the entire motivation on weapons of mass destruction. After 9/11, President Bush declared that we would "make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them." Saddam Hussein was harboring, financing and motivating terror cells all over Iraq, not to mention raping, torturing, shredding, dismembering and committing other horrid atrocities against his own people. President Bush could have made the case that it was only a matter of time until this genocidal madman wreaked havoc in the United States and the free world. Instead, he set himself -- and our troops -- up for failure.

2. Wasting 14 Months with Even More Ineffective UN Resolutions: While Bush did the "obligatory" dance with the UN, Saddam got busy smuggling WMD's into Syria, some of which could possibly have ended up in North Korea. This man had violated, what, like 17 UN resolutions prior, with zero consequences? Why did the President acquiese to a corrupt, anti-American, Israel-hating organization incapable of enforcing its own demands?

3. Refusal to Quote Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, among others, who repeatedly spoke of the grave threat posed to the world by Saddam Hussein back in 1998. Was Saddam suddenly less of a threat after the 2000 Election? The President's reluctance to call out liberal hypocrisy as it pertains to Iraq was a display of weakness that has come back to haunt him.

4. Cave-In to Drive-By Media -- Suddenly, rightfully black and white phrases like "good vs. evil," and "Wanted: Dead or Alive," were jettisoned for a "kinder, gentler" approach that has led to electoral, and quite possibly, national, tragedy. The President should have ignored the demands of a biased, liberal media that was never going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He had a brief moment of enlightenment, when, in the wake of the foiled London airliner attacks, he correctly referred to America's enemy as "Islamo-fascists." Too bad it didn't last.

5. Lack of Communication with the American Public - Everyday, he should have been sounding the alarm, reminding Americans of the threats we face and explaining why a victory in Iraq was crucial to American interests and security. Again and again, he should have referred back to the 90's when liberals like John Kerry bemoaned Saddam's threat to the world.

While Iran foments insurgency and Civil War in Iraq, American leadership insists on following the same UN recipe for failure. Iran's August 31st deadline came and went, with no significant ramifications. Thus, the emboldened "Aman-jihad" (my name for Iran's manicial leader) continues his uranium enrichment program and sends terrorists into Iraq to literally kill any shot of stabilizing the country. And the President and the State Department do --- NOTHING.

Let's see...then there was the doomed Dubai Ports deal which belied the White House's lack of political savvy. Even if it was above-board, its negative perception by the public should have been anticipated. By the time the President got around to addressing the issue, it had already inflicted irreparable damage. The Harriet Miers nomination was another fiasco. And finally, his lack of will in securing America's porous borders (which looks like blatant pandering to the Hispanic vote), alienated not only conservatives, but the majority of Americans who favor border-enforcement.

I like President Bush personally, and in many cases, he has been unfairly maligned and insulted. But instead of solidifying the base that put him in office, he insisted on "winning hearts and minds," not just in Iraq, but among the minority (now majority) representatives in Congress. I am not excusing bad decisions on the part of crossover conservatives and independents who may have voted for Dems this time around; I'm simply stating the obvious that it was all so avoidable.

Yes, people should have voted "American," as Glenn Beck put it. National security should have trumped all else. But with a difficult war dragging on, thanks in part to political correctness, and a restless electorate, this was no time for the President and other Republicans to assume victory simply because the other side was a far-worse alternative. The biggest losers are our brave Military men and women. Just wait until purse-strings Pelosi cuts the war spending; the results will be cataclysmic.

With terrorists rejuvenated by a Democratic win, we can only hope that the donkeys will wake up and do the right things for the country. But I'm not betting on it.

God bless America. We need it more now than ever.

Arbonne Mania

2006-10-29T16:21:00.000-05:00

Color me reinvigorated, after my team's third straight loss, but I am back with a vengeance, marketing my Arbonne business. Is there any better way for a free-market loving girl to go??? Not only are these phenomenal products, but they are a vehicle to a dramatic lifestyle change. With Arbonne, financial freedom and prosperity is in reach, as long as you commit to working the system. Where else but network marketing can an ordinary man or woman start their own enterprise with a $29 registration? Capitalism at its finest!

Shameless Plug

2006-10-29T15:32:00.000-05:00

With so little to cheer about where the Eagles are concerned, at least at the moment, I've turned my attention to promoting my Arbonne business.

With Christmas and Hannukah approaching, there is no better gift than Arbonne's pure, safe and beneficial products. Spanning 6 industries: Anti-Aging skincare and suncare, Personal Care, Weight Loss, Cosmetics, Nutrition and Aromatherapy, Arbonne's Swiss formulas are devoid of animal by-products and harmful ingredients like lanolin, collagen, mineral oil and SD 40 alcohol. Instead, they are botanically-based and formulated in the USA, where Arbonne has had a presence for over 25 years.

For a simple $29 registration, anyone can purchase these products at a 35% discount, with savings of up to 80% depending on the order. With the convenience of online shopping and delivery to your front door, as long as you live in either the USA or Canada, I can help you become a wholesale buyer. Enjoy superior products for yourself and your loved ones at a reduced cost.

If you buy gifts for clients and live in South Florida, I am also offering to gift wrap and/or basket, for added convenience. Contact me via this blog for more information.

Sunday Again!!!

2006-10-29T10:36:00.000-05:00

*****IMPLOSION!!!***** It's not quite official yet, but it looks like the heartbreak Eagles are about to lose their third in a row. The good news is I've created several marketing pieces for my Arbonne business and set up a tasting for my Mona Vie business. Just because the Eagles are determined to lose, doesn't mean I am not determined to win. TWO MINUTE WARNING!!! Can they tie it up???*****

For better or for worse, once a Philly fan, always a Philly fan, no matter how frustrating! Though I've lived in South Florida for 12 years, I've retained my fervent, devoted and sometimes -- harrowing -- loyalty for the guys in green, black and silver. The only difference is that now when they let me down, I can comfort myself by heading to a beautiful beach or taking a breathtaking ride down A1A, where magnificent homes line each side of the ocean and intracoastal.

Not so for my family, who cannot get away from the equally outraged local press, sports talk radio and cold temperatures (today they are dealing with 40 mile per hour winds, though it's only the end of October). I remember all too clearly what it was like to wallow in defeat after a losing game, especially when it was a critical division loss with the potential to come back to bite the Eagles, come play-off qualification time.

Conversely, there's nothing quite as exhilarating as watching your team overcome the odds, surrounded by fellow Philly-area dwellers. One of my very best memories is a brutally cold day at the Vet -- January 11, 1981 -- where along with Paul and Carolyn, I witnessed my team's blissful defeat of longtime nemesis, the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game. The Eags (as I sometimes call them affectionately) dominated the Cowboys and in sub-zero temperatures, prevailed 20-7. That euphoric victory almost rendered their heartbreaking performance in the Super Bowl, where they succumbed to the Raiders 27-10, irrelevant.

I say "almost" because obviously, a Super Bowl win would have lifted Championship-starved Philly fans to new heights, and would've at least provided some sort of comfort for the lack of a Super Bowl victory after 4 straight NFC Championship Games in a row, under Coach Andy Reid. Not that that's anything to sneeze at mind you, but to be so close, for so many years and still miss the prize is kind of like being nominated for a Daytime Emmy 19 years in a row and coming away empty, all the while having to smile and graciously congratulate the less experienced winner, and deal with an intrusive media. At least Susan Lucci finally got her just reward (though I haven't watched "All My Children" since adolescence). I believe it's about time for Philly fans to reap theirs, too.

Today the Eagles face the Jaguars on their home turf. My sister's 8 year-old won two tickets to today's match-up at the Linc, on the 100-level, no less, so perhaps Carolyn and Greg's presence will bring them luck. Given the $500 value of the tickets, the least the Eagles could do is put on a good show.

It makes me wonder how many of the Birds' blue-collar faithful can even afford to cheer on their team in person. Back in the day when our three season tickets at the Vet were valued at $33 bucks apiece, we surmised that countless Eagles fans were forking over their entire weekly paychecks for the chance to see Ron Jaworski, Wilbert Montgomery, Harold Carmichael, Bill Bergey and the rest of the gang on the field. Our goalpost seats in the 200-level were among the priciest in the 70's and 80's, yet today, $33 barely covers the cost of a parking place and a Game Day Program. Sadly, professional sports has become an elite luxury, instead of a vehicle for bringing residents of all socio-economic backgrounds together in one shared experience. And many of today's players have lost touch with the city they represent, thanks to excessive salaries and contract loopholes.

My brother Mark wrote an excellent post on Quad Squad, celebrating the life of one of his childhood heroes, former Philadelphia Phillie, Johnny Callison. In it he draws a striking contrast between professional sports players of yesteryear and today:

Now I have my own son who has his own baseball hero, who also happens to wear number 6. While today's # 6 ,Ryan Howard is a great young player as is Chase Utley, my son's boyhood baseball experience will sadly be different from mine due to today's changing times. The players today make so much money that they're mini - corporations, each with their own posse and entourage. They live in million dollar mansions and are cut off from the average fan.

Not so with Johnny. While born in Oklahoma and raised in Bakersfield, CA he was a true Philadelphian. Since 1960, he and his family lived in the modest suburb of Glenside. While Johnny undoubtedly made more than our dads, it wasn't that much more. He was a regular guy who lived in a regular neighborhood. He knew his neighbors and they knew him. For years he sold used cars in the off season. Can you imagine an MVP caliber player doing that today? Not a chance. It's kind of reminiscent of those old film clips of Willie Mays playing stickball with kids in the streets of Harlem, before heading off to the Polo Grounds to star for the old NY Giants. Sweet memories from a bygone era.

Bygone, but not forgotten.

Early Voting in Boca

2006-10-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, after making my presentation to the Delray Business Partners (which required my rising out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:45 a.m.), I headed over to Boca Raton City Hall to cast my early vote.

It was a typically gorgeous day in South Florida, with plenty of sunshine, balmy breezes and bright blue skies. The beautiful weather, coupled with the recent news of the resurgence of Republican candidates, gave me renewed hope and optimism that Americans will choose candidates this fall who will put the security of the United States above all other considerations.

Surprisingly, City Hall was bustling with voters eager to partake of their democratic right to cast a ballot, or, to put it more specifically, touch a computer screen to elect their favored candidates. Thank God, "hanging chads" are a horrendous thing of the past -- a distant nightmare, never to be revisited. Florida citizens now have no excuse (though I never had any problems with the "butterfly ballot" developed by former-Democrat-turned-Independent Theresa LePore) when it comes to election results.

Whether they favor the outcome or not, the simple, computerized process is just about idiot-proof; if you can't insert a card into a slot and press down on the screen next to the largely printed name of your preferred politician, it is probably best to stay home. And if the poll-workers at Boca Raton City Hall are an accurate representation, there's plenty of friendly, helpful assistance available, just in case.

As I stood at my computer station and indicated my choices on the screen, an indescribable feeling, reminiscent of my 2004 experience, came over me. It was some sort of eclectic mixture of defiance, hopefulness, optimism and appreciation -- in spite of my grave disappointment with many Republicans, including President Bush, and my abject fear of a Democratic take-over of the House.

Though not entirely thrilled with Charlie Crist, his campaign has aggressively courted the critical conservative base lately. Just the other day I received an impressive placard in the mail, touting Crist's pro-life position, among other Red State issues. I'm not completely convinced of his sincerity, but when the choice is between a Republican giving lip-service to my beliefs and a tax-and-spend liberal, I'll take the Republican every time. Until the Democrats offer up a viable candidate who understands the stakes of a post 9/11 world, there's no good justification for voting for a Donkey.

Which brings me to Katherine Harris. Congressman Clay Shaw and State Representative Adam Hasner notwithstanding, putting an electronic check mark next to Harris' name gave me the most satisfaction, especially given the GOP's deplorable treatment of the woman who was brave enough to uphold the State Constitution in 2000, in spite of death threats and relentless media condemnation. Had Harris abandoned her principles to fear, George W. Bush would not be occupying the Oval Office today, which renders his and Jeb's betrayal of her all the more disturbing. Katherine Harris is an intelligent, stalwart conservative, and though her defeat of Democrat Bill Nelson may be too much to hope for, I'm pulling for her to achieve the impossible. If nothing else, at least she's demonstrated courage and remained constant in her beliefs -- alien concepts to far too many US Senators.

Michelle Takes on Angelina

2006-10-18T11:14:00.000-04:00

In her Townhall.com column today, Michelle Malkin lays out the cold, hard facts for pouty-lipped, America-bashing, multi-millionaire celebrity Angelina Jolie:

Jolie excoriates the West for rethinking lax asylum and refugee policies in a post-Sept. 11 world (even as the U.S. has just announced it will take in some 13,000 refugees from Burundi who have spent 30 years in Tanzania). But porous borders have aided jihadists from Bali to London to Berlin to Copenhagen to Melbourne to Boston. Unlike jet-setting celebrities, the rest of us can't fret about feeding every last one of the world's refugees when the survival of our own children's homeland is at stake.

No amount of ignorant Hollywood guilt-tripping can whitewash the United Nations' abject humanitarian failures. And no sovereign country should apologize for taking steps to look after its own first.

Angelina would do best to tuck her sanctimonious finger away and return to fantasyland.

Maybe she could take Madonna along with her.

North Korean "Nirvana"

2006-10-18T10:41:00.000-04:00

Read this chilling account of life in North Korea by Hyok Kang printed this past Sunday in the London Times. If you don't believe Lil' Kim is a psychotic dictator who starves his own people and manipulates the hopelessly ineffective U.N., this survivor's harrowing story should change your mind. Here's an excerpt:

International food aid began to arrive in Onsong, our city, near the border with China. For a while the children started to get their strength back. But then the cadres reduced the rations. First the children had to make do with soup, then with nothing. Their faces were terribly thin, their cheeks were hollow and their eyes bulged with hunger.

The United Nations must have heard that the aid was not being distributed, because an inspection was organised. The party cadres, who had been alerted in advance, had rice delivered to the schools from state storehouses, which were apparently far from empty. The children were told to tell the UN inspectors that this diet was perfectly normal. On the day of the visit there were all kinds of dishes on the menu: noodles, maize soufflé. Once the UN team set off again, the cadres took back everything, including all the uneaten food from the tables where the children were still sitting.

Hunger engulfed my little universe. The poorest children lived on nothing but grass, and during class their stomachs rumbled. After a few weeks their faces began to swell, making them look well nourished. Then their faces went on growing until they looked as though they had been inflated. Their cheeks were so puffy that they couldn’t see the blackboard. Some of them were covered with impetigo and flaking skin.

I'm sure the people of North Korea are eternally grateful to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for their active roles in helping Lil' Kim develop nukes. I just hope the Bush Administration stands strong in cleaning up yet another inherited mess from Bubba and Company.

Dow Passes 12,000

2006-10-18T10:12:00.000-04:00

Could it be an "evil" Rovian plot to affect the outcome of the election? I'm not expecting much coverage from the usual MSM suspects.

Useful Idiots Continue to Thwart US War against Global Jihad

2006-10-17T12:58:00.000-04:00

Treason sure ain't what it used to be. At least if you've got a vile anti-American trial lawyer (whose name, as Mary Katherine Ham notes, says it all) by your side. For her role in disseminating messages from imprisoned World Trade Center bomber Omar Abdel-Rahman, bleeding-heart Leftie Lynne Stewart received the underwhelming sentence of 28 months. 28 MONTHS!!!!

Terror cells worldwide and captive Global Jihadists in Gitmo must be popping champagne corks (oh, excuse me, I'd forgotten that alcohol is "evil"), and laughing their Muslim behinds off at this latest example of sheer American idiocy. Or, more specifically, at the transparent lunacy of terrorist-sympathizing liberals who seem determined to do everything in their power to contribute to the demise of their own country.

As Rush so aptly pointed out his show today, Stewart's attorney, Elizabeth Fink, utilized the typical liberal method of mitigating current crimes by touting past good deeds (in this case "on behalf of the poor") and painting the criminal as a victim. Apparently, if a traitor is suffering from breast cancer, all else should be discarded. So what if her actions led to the death of 100 tourists at an Egyptian Resort, as Michelle notes? Who cares that Stewart was conspiring and aiding America's enemies in a time of War?

As Captain Ed opines, this epitimizes the abject failure of the law-enforcement mindset as it pertains to terrorism:

The government took this case to the appropriate venue; Stewart is an American citizen and committed a grievous crime. However, Judge Koeltl showed why the law-enforcement model will never defeat terrorism. Here we have an important part of a communication chain meant to instigate murder on a global scale, and the judge sentences her to 1/15th of the possible sentence. Koeltl waxed on about Stewart's previous good works, all of which would have amounted to zero comfort to anyone lost in a terrorist attack she enabled. In fact, we still don't know that there hasn't been an attack based on that communication.

Koeltl sent a message today that certain people can commit or enable acts of terror, as long as they have the correct political background. Stewart will do a few months at a minimum security work camp, and with her illness will probably avoid the work part of it. When she gets released, she will once again become the toast of the hate-America circuit, where she will once again claim she did nothing wrong and that the real terrorists are the people who have tried -- and succeeded -- to keep this country safe for the last five years.

It's a pathetic display, and Koeltl should be ashamed of himself.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

People Who Hate America

2006-10-16T09:42:00.000-04:00

Lynne Stewart, American traitor and Leftist darling, will be sentenced today. Michelle has the low-down on the Jihad-loving, terrorist-sympathizing defender and abetter of evil. Let's hope the punishment fits the crime, and that Stewart spends the rest of her life imprisoned and unable to play "useful idiot" to fanatical Islamic barbarians.

After the Vent, stay tuned for a paid advertisement for the book American Mourning, featuring a coffee date between a conservative girl and a liberal guy. I love the look on her face when the guy tells her he really digs the Dixie Chicks!

This spot kind of reminds me of a recent e-harmony match who finally admitted over anonymous email that he believed 9/11 was an "inside job" and that the USA was "controlled" by pharmaceutical companies. Oh, and of course, he also subscribed to the lame liberal "War for Oil" fallacy. Needless to say, I moved him to my "closed matches" section faster than you can say "Vote (conservative) Republican." Life's too short to waste time with morons.

Heartbreak Eagles

2006-10-16T09:07:00.000-04:00

Without visual access to the game (they broadcast the Giants-Falcons instead here in Boca), it is hard to analyze, but it seemed as I listened to Merrill Reese on NFL Field Pass, that everyone was marchin' for the Saints, including the Eagles.

While the Saints proved they are indeed a contender, the Eagles were unable to capitalize on things like Lito Sheppard's interception in the first half, which halted a Saints scoring drive. Against a great football team, missed opportunities will come back to haunt you, and that was definitely the case yesterday.

Thank goodness the weather in Boca was incredibly beautiful, and conducive to a restorative bike ride, followed by a refreshing swim in the pool (though I'm looking forward to November 1, when the heater will be turned on once again).

God knows, the geo-political scene is depressing enough, as is news like this. With the Eagles losing to the Saints, outdoor exercise on a balmy South Florida evening was truly the best medicine.

Funniest Political Ad Ever

2006-10-11T18:23:00.000-04:00

Brilliant Hollywood producer and director David Zucker, the brains behind The Club for Growth's hilarious 2004 election campaign ads, has outdone himself this time.

The RNC hired Zucker to create a television ad spoofing the Clinton adminstration's failures pertaining to North Korea, but has since declared it over the top, and unsuitable to air on television. Fortunately, it has been linked by Drudge and Hot Air, among others, who are not hamstrung by oversensitivity and political correctness.

I say it's time to come out swinging. There's nothing obscene or inaccurate about the spot, though for Clinton apologists, the emerging truth behind the humor -- that coddling terrorists only emboldens them -- is no doubt a tough pill to swallow. The North Korean crisis is just another perilous by-product of a weak-willed, corrupt and self-obsessed Clinton presidency.

Zucker's effective use of humor (featuring Madeleine Albright painting Osama's cave and cheering on Kim Jong-Il as he attempts to shoot a basket)reminds voters just how much is at stake in the forthcoming elections. Vote for Democrats and sing "Kumbaya" while suicide bombers take to the streets, or vote for Republicans who understand America will only defeat the enemy from a postion of strength, power and resolve -- not submissiveness.

I'm disappointed in the RNC. If the election outlook is as dire for Republicans as pundits and news outlets would have us believe, all the more reason to run with it. What do we have to lose by telling the truth and giving voters a good laugh?

Can We Just Keep Talkin' Football?

2006-10-09T22:27:00.000-04:00

It sure beats this. Or this. And let's not forget the most depressing/frightening news of the day. Yeah, U.N. sanctions against North Korea. That'll teach 'em! Gee, it worked so well with Saddam Hussein, let's by all means utilize the same lame strategy with another psychotic dictator, Kim Jong-Il. Then he can thumb his nose at countless resolutions he never intends to keep (and knows the inept U.N. won't enforce), and pursue his goals of world destruction.

As Michael Savage pointed out today on his radio show, which I heard for a few brief moments in the car, we should be pressuring China in this matter. That also means breaking our "addiction" to all the cheap merchandise shipped here from that Communist country. Savage also notes a better use for the United States Navy, as a blockade. And along with Rush Limbaugh, who coined it, "The Path to 10/8," Savage lays the blame where it rightfully belongs. Surprise, surprise. But we all knew Clinton's presidency would come with a very high price tag. Apparently, 9/11 was just a downpayment to the fiddler. Outrageous!

Yet where are conservatives to turn? President Bush seems intent on continuing his Oval Office tradition of kicking his base to the curb: If he wants to commit political suicide for the Republican Party, by all means, use a "pocket veto" to obstruct the border fence and mollify his Mexican friends. GOP candidates will lose big, and maybe that's exactly what this country needs to usher in another Reagan Revolution. When is the RNC going to understand that when they abandon conservative principles, they lose. With terrorism threats looming large, Nancy Pelosi as Speaker is a frightening proposition. But big-spending, border-ignoring Republicans offer no viable alternative, with a few notable exceptions. Maybe they deserve to suffer at the ballot box. Problem is, the alternative is still worse.

Oh, and to cap off today's positive news, this opened to breathless reviews in London. Yes, London Lefties are absolutely delirious with delight over this appalling piece of cinematic trash.

No wonder I just want to bask in football victory today.

Woo-Hoo!!! EAGLES WIN 38-24!

2006-10-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

With seconds to go, it looked as if we could be heading for a dreaded Sudden Death OT, then Lito Sheppard put the final nail in the coffin with a key interception and a 102-yard touchdown run with 30 seconds to go to put the Eagles over the top at 38-24....WHEW! I'm not sure my heart could've taken another quarter of this slugfest.

Trash-talkin' T.O. as I suspected all week, was a near non-entity in the game with only 3 catches for 45 yards and no TD's (bwahahahahahaha!!!!). But he had plenty of choice words for his coaches and teammates on the sidelines as evidenced by his vocal temper tantrums captured on-camera. I almost felt sorry for the Dallas organization, then I remembered that Jerry Jones is the owner. I'm convinced the Cowboys are going to pay an even dearer price than the Eagles did last year for this unhinged Wide Receiver. Well, can't say they weren't warned; everyone in the league knew this guy was trouble. If Dallas was haughty enough to believe that playing for them would turn T.O. into something resembling Jerry Rice, complete with the former 49er Receiver's "team-player" attitude, they have only themselves to blame.

As for the Birds, McNabb's flea-flicker touchdown pass to Reggie Brown with 9:13 left was a thing of beauty, and one of the best plays of the game, next to Sheppard's long run into the end-zone after a well-timed pick of beleaguered Drew Bledsoe. But the turning point was McNabb's connection with Hank Baskett (who also performed awesomely) for an 87 yard touchdown, which put the Eagles back on top, 24-21, shifting the momentum of the contest, and not a moment too soon!

After a torturous, ping pong-like first half, with the lead changing four times and both teams committing crucial turnovers, this girl was ready for the Birds to get serious. Dallas was a tough opponent, T.O.'s lack of involvement notwithstanding (though he delighted the 70,000-plus crowd at the Linc when he dropped a critical pass from Bledsoe).

The Eagles defense pressured and harassed Bledsoe all day, sacking him 7 times and forcing him to throw 3 interceptions (the sweetest one at the very end, when it looked like we could've been headed into the dreaded OT).

And, to the consternation of Philly-fan bashers around the country and broadcasting on ESPN, T.O. emerged physically unscathed in the end, though his pride took a drubbing. So much for the extra security. Fans were rowdy, but well-behaved. I wonder if Berman and the gang will take note of that on Sports Center.

Ah, who cares! The Eagles are at the top of the NFC East with a 4-1 record, and life is good. E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!

Mark's Take on Foley

2006-10-08T14:21:00.000-04:00

From Quad-Squad:

The Democrats are reveling in the lurid homosexual email sex scandal involving former Republican Congressman Mark Foley. They could care less about the interns or the "children" that they now posture about. They simply smell blood and they see this as their chance to finally win back Congress for the first time in twelve years. What is ironic is how wrong they are, and how amusing it is that they cannot see the forrest from the trees.

Let me be the first to say that Mr. Foley's actions are both sleazy and disgusting and he should hang his head in shame. He does not deserve to be in Congress as he is not worthy of the public trust. I don't care what political party he belongs to. What is so striking about this incident is the gross hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats. In unison, they bang the drum beat that this behavior is outrageous and that we must protect the children.

Do I detect a scent of homophobia among our Liberal friends. While their criticism of Foley and the so - called culture of Republican corruption has been scathing, let's examine why they really express this outrage. We all know they could care less about Foley's behavior in the abstract. The fact is, they both embrace it and champion it.

After all it is the Liberals who constantly tell Conservatives and Republicans that we are intolerant and that we must embrace this "alternative life style." They also tell us that homosexuals must be allowed to marry and that we must have abortion on demand. Did I hear them say, they want to protect children? They are already responsible for the deaths of 40 million innocent American children and now they tell us we must have embryonic stem cell research so that we can kill more innocents.

The liberal attempt to take the high moral ground on this story is hilarious. In 1983 Democrat Congressman Gerry Studds (isn't that name ironic) raped a male page. He not only didn't resign, but stayed on to the standing ovation of his fellow Congressional Democrats. A few years later Nancy Pelosi, who espouses the radical San Francisco homosexual agenda, voted for Studs for a committee chairmanship. There were no calls from Democrats for Studs to resign, and clearly sodomy is a lot more vile than sending someone an email or an instant message. This is the same Ms. Pelosi who marched in a gay pride parade a few years ago, all the while knowing that the Grand Marshall of the parade was a member of NAMBLA.

Moreover, there were no Republican calls for then House Speaker Tip O'Neill to resign. What did O'Neill have to do with what this guy did in his bedroom, and how he could he have known about it. How about President Clinton having sex with an intern in the oval office, albeit a female. Once caught, he lied about it, was impeached, and lost his law license in Arkansas. Not only did he not resign, but he claimed it was a vast right wing conspiracy and he dragged the entire country through the mud for two years. Certainly, lurid incident involving phsyical acts by the Commander -in - Chief is a lot more serious than the emails of an obscure congressman.

If you recall, there were no Republican calls for Minority Leader Dick Gephart to resign. Again, what did he have to do with the behavior of a man who the evidence shows likely raped Juanita Brodderick. How ironic that President Reagan wouldn't even remove his suit jacket in the Oval Office out of respect, and this guy dropped his pants.

Let's now contrast how the Republicans handled the Foley scandal. As soon as Majority Leader Hastert found out about it, he confronted Foley and demanded that he resign or be forced out. Foley to his credit resigned and is now undergoing treatment. He didn't claim it was a vast left wing conspiracy and then lie about his accusers. What is ironic is that unlike Clinton, it looks like he could have made a case for himself. According to Drudge, it was the Dems who knew about this and sat on it. They think they're so clever, another October surprise !

These genuises on the Left don't get it. They tried mightily with the President Bush drunk driving story in October, 2000, and the "pep rally" at the funeral of Senator Wellstone in October 2002. Then in October, 2004 came the lies of Rathergate, only to be topped off by the early election day reporting that it was over and that Kerry had won. The better to stop conservatives from going to the polls later in the day, my dear.

Also,let us not forget the Presidential debates that year. Remember John Kerry's(who by the way served in Viet Nam) response to a question about why people are gay. He responded by mentioning Mary Cheney, the Vice President's daughter.

The entire purpose of that response was to "out" Mary Cheney to Conservatives since we obviously didn't know, and never heard of gays before. We all just ride in our pick ups with gun racks, to hay seed churches with weeds in our mouth. When we get there, we read the evil Bible and then proceed to exclaim the Gospel of "intolerance."

Why did none of these dirty ploys do the Liberals any good? Here's the dirty little secret. They continue to confuse we in the grass roots Conservative majority with the weak-kneed leadership that's supposed to represent us in Washington. Unlike our elected representatives when the Liberals push us, we in fly-over country push right back even harder.

What Liberals and the Democratic Party fail to understand is that unlike thier socialist operation where the elitist ruling class dictates everthing and the Kool-Aid drinkers follow, the Republican Party works in the opposite manner. The Conservative grass roots independent-thinking majority runs the Party from the botom up, and not the top down like the Democrats/Liberals. It is the classic difference between a free, democratic form of government and socialism/totalitarianism.

Grass roots consevatives won't be fooled like our wobbly leaders. We'll put them back in power this time and demand that they address the Conservative agenda beginning in January,2007. If not, we will properly deal with them in the 2008 primary season. We don't need the Democrats to do our bidding. As for the Liberals/Democrats, we'll banish them like we did Foley.

Sunday Showdown: Eagles vs. Cowboys

2006-10-08T12:29:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or is the T.O. hype exhausting??? The same can be said for ESPN's lop-sided coverage, which focused less on Owen's deplorable, egomaniacal behavior, which was at least partially responsible for the destruction of an NFC powerhouse last season, and more on denouncing Philly fans as deranged, evil, Santa Claus-hating animals. I'm not sure why I even watch ESPN's pregame madness anymore, save for the fact I cannot access the Eagles Network from sunny Boca Raton.

Having grown up attending Sunday games at the Vet, I know firsthand the crudeness and rudeness of many Philly fans. They are mostly an embarrassment to the rest of us, who also suffer and triumph with our beloved Eagles. This vocal minority can be brutal. But they are a minority, unrepresentative of the whole. To listen to Chris Berman and the gang call it (with the exception of poor, beleaguered "Jaws"), Philly has the market cornered when it comes to fans behaving badly. I for one, am sick of it. And from what I've read about ABC's weekday morning hagfest, outnumbered Philly defender and former QB Ron Jaworski is to "NFL Countdown," what lone conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck is to "The View." To their credit, both express their oft-maligned opinions with a smile and a shrug.

Football coverage --like so many other things today -- is characterized by its shock value, and over-exaggeration and hyperbole rule the playbook. Instead of emphasizing the match-ups based solely on athletic ability and coaching, most reporting extends into over-analysis of players personalities, behind-the-scenes conflicts and other dramas. I suppose this is the inevitable result and unintended consequence when inflated salaries and exorbitant contracts are awarded to men who simultaneously possess a surplus of talent and a glaring lack of character.

Irey Closing in on Murtha

2006-10-04T09:55:00.000-04:00

According to RedState.com, Diana Irey is closing in on John Murtha in PA's 12th District Congressional Race. In light of the Mark Foley scandal and its inevitable fallout, this is definitely welcome news:

Ms. Irey rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She has gained some recognition on her own as a staunch supporter of the armed forces, the mission in Iraq, an advocate for rigorous immigration policies and a fiscal conservative. She has also been drawing attention to Mr. Murtha's many failings. And she's producing results. The campaign has just commissioned another poll by Public Opinion Strategies and Ms. Irey has closed the gap to ten points as the race now stands at 55%-45%. She gained ten points and brought Mr. Murtha down ten--and the momentum is all in her favor.

Commissioner Irey's mission over the next five weeks is to keep shining a bright light on Mr. Murtha's disgraceful record while articulating her own platform. The POS poll included some interesting numbers on eleven issues that make voters less likely to vote for Mr. Murtha by as much as 57% (a list is appended below)--and when voters read about these issues, Mr. Murtha's numbers drop into the low 40s. It's incumbant on all of us who want to see Ms. Irey in Mr. Murtha's chair come January to help her spread the word that Mr. Murtha is self-interested and venal, and willingly steps on the backs of his former fellow service members to hoist his substantial bulk up the political ladder. And fortunately, the Irey campaign is no longer a lone voice in the media wilderness. She's getting some assistance from a rather unlikely source--no less than the New York Times, which has in the past held Mr. Murtha up as a moral authority on Iraq, yesterday headlined his political "horsetrading" motivated by the desire to increase his personal prestige and bring more pork (from whatever source) to his district rather than by principle or fiscal responsibility. Major television outlets, such as Fox's Hannity and Colmes show, have picked up the story.

If you can, visit the site and make a donation to Diana's campaign to keep her momentum going. We need more principled conservatives like her in D.C. And I shudder to think of the consequences for the US Military and our fight against radicalized Muslim extremists if Democrats win the House and/or Senate. As deplorably as some Republicans have performed, they're still a better alternative, at least until Democrats find their inner "Zell Miller" when it comes to matters of national security. With extremist gazillionaires like George Soros holding the purse strings, it's highly unlikely.

Go Diana!

A Long Way from Little House

2006-10-03T10:13:00.000-04:00

Brent Bozell's column today details the depressing path to depravity recently taken by none other than Melissa Gilbert, former "Half Pint" of Walnut Grove, and the subject of a recent post on Muzz Musings.

Seems it's a long way from the prairie for the former child star, who recently appeared on the sexually-explicit FX show, "Nip and Tuck:"

Melissa Gilbert just guest-starred on the FX cable network's grotesque show "Nip/Tuck." Are you ready for this? As a woman needing to have a nipple replaced ... because her dog bit it off ... during sex.

Gilbert's husband returns home from Iraq to discover his wife is enraptured with a whole new definition of "puppy love." He screams at her in disgust that he failed to expect she would turn into a "faithless, demented whore," a special breed of floozy to be sure, given she used peanut butter to seduce the family pooch into the sack.

To complete the circle of sleaze, the husband vengefully dumps the dog, now a lifeless heap, out of a duffel bag in front of her. This being a graphic show about surgery, we see -- we have to see -- Gilbert's bare breast (albeit covered by a plastic wound) as they prepare her for a new nipple.

Pa and Ma Ingalls would be so proud.

How is it that a beloved child star and successful adult television actress (Gilbert has starred in countless movies for the Lifetime Television Network) could have sunk this low? Obviously, the Little House values she portrayed so convincingly on the small screen had very little influence on Gilbert's personal development. She's still a product of Hollywood, after all:

Why did she do this? Is the "wholesome" tag such a scarlet letter in today's Tinseltown that it requires this level of penance? Perhaps there's even more to it. Until recently, Gilbert was president of the Screen Actors Guild, which has fought proposals to strengthen protections against televised indecency. Gilbert couldn't have taken a more public stand (in this case, in the prone position) than this disgusting stunt.

And I have to wonder why Nip Tuck's writers chose to make her character's husband an Iraq veteran. Ostensibly, it creates a void in the woman's life and a convenient way to somehow justify her bestiality with the family dog. And perhaps the intention was to keep the show as timely as possible by incorporating a real-time world event.

It just seems like an understated way to add insult and injury to conservative values. But I'm probably reading way too much into it.

Whatever.

As a mother to four boys, you'd think Melissa Gilbert would favor strengthening protections against televised indecency. Then again, unlike Laura Ingalls, Gilbert lives an elitist coastal land where wholesomeness equals "repression" and "pushing the (sexual) envelope" is lauded as the ultimate expression of courage.

A very long way from the prairie, indeed.

Countdown to Kick-Off!

2006-10-02T19:34:00.000-04:00

****UPDATE: EAGLES WIN 31-9!!!******

Whew! After a sluggish start, they came back with a vengeance in the 2nd half. Was anyone else annoyed by the endless Brett Favre "lovefest" put on by the game's announcers??? Don't get me wrong, Farve is a great player and a quality human being, but sheesh! I was beginning to wonder if Mike Tirico or Joe Theismann was going to pop the question to the Green Bay QB after the game. And there was more than just a hint of "pulling" for Favre to lead his team to a comeback.

While I'm critiquing ESPN's broadcast, may I ask what purpose it served to interview Ravens QB Steve McNair during the live game? It's just one glaring example of the overhyping of Monday Night. Sure, ESPN is milkin' its national audience for all its worth, but for this Eagles fan, the overkill of noisy audio with overdone graphics, female color commentators regaling us with tales of players' psyches in the wake of a botched play and other non-essential "color" completely diminishes the enjoyment of the game. I was tempted to fire up Merrill on NFL Field Pass online, and tune out the chatty Cathys on ESPN.

Thank goodness the Eagles prevailed tonight or I'd really be down on ESPN's overdone coverage.

Anyway, the Birds are 3-1, and life is good. Bring on TO and the 'Boys!

I'm excited, but nervous about this unwelcome news. Without all-purpose Westie, who knows what kind of offense the Eagles will display tonight? And the loss of cornerback Lito Sheppard could hurt as well.

Still, with McNabb "as comfortable as soft leather" in the pocket, I'm confident the "EAGS" will soar to an impressive victory. E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!

Grillin' by Flashlight

2006-10-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

Took a break today from political blogging to complete some articles for a business organization's newsletter and the Martini Lounge, where I am a featured columnist writing under the heading of --surprise! -- Muzz Musings. Overall, I spent a productive Sunday completing 4 new pieces, before finally taking a break to enjoy a bike ride in the beautiful South Florida weather.

Speaking of which, I am thrilled to note the absence of hurricanes this past month -- the first September in 2 years that I didn't have to hunker down with flashlights, battery-operated radios and a mattress over my head, just in case (my newly-constructed condo is a fortress, but why take unnecessary risks?).

But my roommate and good friend, Karen, and I can still put a flashlight to good use. As I worked at the keyboard all afternoon, my thoughts turned to dinnertime and a nice piece of grilled salmon over a bed of greens. By the time she arrived home from work the sun was already on its way down, even as my whetted appetite for grilled fish had reached its peak.

Ever the resourceful girl, Karen answered my request with a chipper, "Sure, we can grill by flashlight!"

Actually, we're old pros at nighttime grilling, having done it several times over the course of our two-plus year friendship. I'm not sure why it takes us so long to pile some protein on a plate and head out to one of the property's wonderful grills, accessible to all Boca Bayou residents, but one advantage is never having to wait in line.

So tonight, after picking up salmon filets on sale at Publix, we ventured out with our grilling utensils, a plate of fish and, last but not least, our trusty flashlight. While one of us shines a spotlight on the controls, the other fires up the apparatus that will cook our food to perfection.

The best part of our evening grilling escapades -- delicious meals aside -- is reconnecting while sitting on a nearby bench watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, and savoring the aroma of our forthcoming dinner. And now that the evenings have transitioned from muggy to balmy, flashlight grillin' is even more enjoyable.

Good company, lively conversation and yummy food. Who could ask for anything more?

Depressing News Day

2006-09-30T10:41:00.000-04:00

Having met Mark Foley on a number of occasions, my first reaction to this was to hope against hope that somehow it was a set-up, or at least not as serious as the media would lead us to believe. Alas, the evidence turned out to be accurately damning(and stomach churning). Take a look at some of the milder Instant Messages sent by Foley to a 16 year-old male Page:

Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.

Another message:

Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.

And this one:

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

As repulsive as these IM's are, others are even more graphic and explicit. Since Foley promptly resigned in the wake of these charges, I'll take ABC's word without actually reading the rest of the smut.

What a depressing turn of events for Foley's family and constituents, not to mention the Republican Party. Now instead of being remembered for his efforts to protect children from sexual predators and his leadership in the House, Mark Foley will go down in history as a shamed Florida Congressman ironically guilty of the same types of crimes he so vehemently opposed as Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Sick, outrageous, repulsive....and just plain dumb. Did he think he'd get away with it???

And with midterms right around the corner, he's done a grave disservice to his District and Party. An easy re-election bid has now become a gift for his Democratic challenger. Way to go, Mark!

I am gratified that Republicans did the right thing and distanced themselves, though not soon enough it appears. Majority Leader John Boehner failed to do anything about Foley's "inappropriate" behavior when he became aware of it this past Spring. Cognizant of the hypocrisy of Democrats, as noted by Captain Ed, I'm with Bill O'Reilly: You don't justify bad behavior with more bad behavior. The Party will have to take its lumps on this one.

As a South Florida resident, the news is depressing indeed.

7-11 Drops Citgo as Gas Supplier

2006-09-27T15:54:00.000-04:00

I'll toast a Slurpee to this welcome news:

DALLAS -- Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel.

The retailer said Wednesday it will purchase fuel from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group of Torrance, California, Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City, and Houston-based Frontier Oil Corp.

A spokeswoman for Dallas-based 7-Eleven said its 20-year contract with Citgo Petroleum Corp. ends next week. About 2,100 of 7-Eleven's 5,300 U.S. stores sell gasoline.

Citgo is a Houston-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, and the foreign parent became a public-relations issue for 7-Eleven because of comments by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez has called President George W. Bush "the devil" and an alcoholic. The U.S. government has warned that Chavez is a destabilizing force in Latin America.

7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris said that, "Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez."

Nice to know some American corporations still have a backbone, and a sense of patriotism.

T.O. Attempts Suicide

2006-09-27T10:22:00.000-04:00

From FOX News:

DALLAS — Dallas Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens attempted suicide Tuesday night by overdosing on pain medication, according to a police report.

The report says Owens even put two more pills into his mouth after fire rescue personnel arrived, according to local media.

The Dallas police report released Wednesday morning said Owens told rescue workers "that he was depressed." The report was first released by WFAA-TV.

It's hard to believe that someone who's been blessed with such amazing talent and athleticism, and playing in a professional league that most of his peers can only fantasize about, would actually want to snuff out his own life. Talk about ingratitude.

Looks like T.O.'s self-centered, egomaniacal appetite for destruction -- normally directed at undeserving teammates, has now turned itself inward, with near-fatal results. And if he'd succeeded, this final act of selfishness would've only caused unspeakable pain and grief for close family and friends left behind.

If -- and this is a big if -- but, if he's justifiably ashamed of his past inglorious misdeeds and conduct, a courageous course of action would involve serious soul-searching, hearfelt apologies to those he's harmed and a resolve to live an honorable life. Rather than take the coward's way out, T.O. could find redemption in God and learn to fulfill his commitments like a man of integrity.

This includes -- dare I say it? -- giving his all on the field for the Dallas Cowboys, an organization that willingly took him on, in spite of the well-publicized damage he inflicted upon the Philadelphia Eagles last year. After that fiasco, T.O. should have been thanking his lucky stars any NFL team would sign him, talent notwithstanding.

There's simply no excuse for suicide, especially when one has been as abundantly blessed as T.O. For all of his athletic prowess, Owens has consistently demonstrated an abject lack of character and anything resembling consideration for anyone other than himself. If he's smart, he'll use this botched suicide attempt as a starting point for spiritual, emotional and mental transformation.

Condi Rice Fights Back

2006-09-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

Condi disputed Clinton's claims that he did more than his conservative detractors to hunt down Bin Laden and left an aggressive, "comprehensive" plan for his predecessors in the Bush Administration to fight terrorism:

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said Monday during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

As for the "comprehensive strategy" I wonder if Clinton left that in place before or after pardoning several criminals like Mark Rich as his final act as President, then,lingering in the area during President Bush's Inauguration, simply to keep his adoring media's attention on him, rather than the incoming Commander-in-Chief. But back to Condi:

Rice took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox News Channel.

While not an elaborate rebuttal, it's gratifying that someone in the Bush Administration is finally taking the slick one to task. He's been given a free pass for far too long, mainly because his predecessor in the White House is a man of integrity, class and honor, qualities sorely lacking in the egomaniacal, narcissistic Bubba.

"Play It As It Lies" -- More Thoughts on the Clinton Meltdown on FOX

2006-09-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Ronald A. Cass lays out the facts and exposes Clinton's many lies during his defensive, heated interview (meltdown) with Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday. After a week of softball interviews, during which -- unbelievably -- not one question was posed regarding Clinton's weak approach to terrorism and failure (refusal) to capture Bin Laden during his eight-year presidential term, having to admit even partial responsibility for the atrocities of 9/11 proved too much for the usually cool-headed, press-savvy narcissist.

Apparently, answering questions for a truly fair, balanced and objective male host as opposed to a sickeningly gushing, blushing and fawning female was too much of an indignity to bear for Bubba. After all, he has a "legacy" to rewrite and preserve, and to that end, inconvenient facts like his obstructionism regarding Bin Laden are a glaring hindrance.

Cass rebuts Clinton's "anti-factual" remarks one by one:

Clinton made a bevy of startlingly anti-factual remarks. He announced, for instance, that conservatives had criticized him for obsessing about bin Laden during his presidency - rather than the truth that he was roundly condemned for doing next to nothing about this serious threat to American security. Clinton blamed the Bush Administration for failing to stop the al-Qaeda terrorists before 9/11, saying that the Administration had eight months to get bin Laden and didn't. That conveniently overlooks that Clinton's Administration had eight years to do that job, with al-Qaeda using the last two of those years to plan 9/11.

I would also inject that, unlike his self-absorbed predecessor, President Bush, who would've have been justified in making a case against the many terror failures of the Clinton Administration, has always refrained (to the consternation of some in his base) from doing so, though he's never been granted the same courtesy. Perhaps Dubya could have done more during his eight months in office leading up to 9/11, but the incontravertible fact is that Clinton had eight YEARS to do something about Bin Laden and refused. While President Bush has been willing to accept responsibility for his mistakes, and wasted no time in putting the country on offense after September 11, Clinton, like a defiant adolescent, continuously digs in his heels and misappropriates blame on "right-wingers."

Consistently echoing his Party's lack of conviction as it pertains to America's evil enemy, Clinton appears more concerned with what liberals view as the most ominous threat to the planet-- Global Warming -- (in spite of disagreement in the scientific community as to its validity), than he is with Global Jihad. Perhaps if Chris Wallace had leaned over and handed him a big, fat check -- a la Keith Olbermann -- Bubba might've answered a question directly.

Cass continues:

One of Clinton's bigger whoppers was this declaration about the fight against bin Laden: "I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have 20,000 more troops [in Afghanistan] trying to kill him."

The man who was in the Soviet Union demonstrating against the American military during Vietnam, who as President left our armed forces short on so many fronts, now is - in his own 20/20 hindsight - The Defense President. Now he criticizes the Bush Administration for not doing enough, proclaims himself the champion of effective military action, and implies none too subtly that the fight against terrorism would go better if we had a Clinton in the White House instead of a Bush. This isn't mere spin. It's full-scale invention.

And it also demonstrates the myopic outlook of Democrats, who think the War on Terror would cease, if only we'd get Bin Laden. Ironically, thanks in part to Clinton's negligence, Bin Laden made the transformation from man to mythical movement of worldwide proportions, spawning Jihadi cells all over the globe. As Cass notes:

Before anyone starts taking our most recent ex-President too seriously, let's review the bidding. Clinton wasn't the President who ordered the armed forces to go after bin Laden without reservation, to get him "dead or alive." He wasn't the one who sent thousands of troops after al-Qaeda and nations that harbor and support terrorists.

Instead, President Clinton responded to attacks on our troops in Somalia by withdrawing, and responded to attacks by al-Qaeda on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya by bombing the aspirin factory of an innocent pharmaceutical firm in Sudan. He reacted to al-Qaeda's bombing of the USS Cole by lobbing a few cruise missiles at empty tents in the desert. He turned down Sudanese offers to cooperate in tracking down and capturing bin Laden.

No wonder Bin Laden declared America a "paper tiger:"

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission concluded that - far from doing more than anyone to kill the brutal murderer who now is the international face of terrorism - President Clinton had flatly refused to allow the military or CIA to kill Osama bin Laden. Clinton's instructions were that bin Laden should be taken, if at all, alive not dead. CIA officials reported that this instruction cut the chance of success in half.

That is not to say that the Clinton Administration wasn't in a better position to eliminate bin Laden. Evidence before the Commission showed that the Clinton Administration had live footage of Osama bin Laden at a camp in Afghanistan in the Fall of 2000, a year before the 9/11 attacks, but didn't act. NBC's Tom Brokaw, playing the tape on-air in 2004, noted rightly that this was an enormous opportunity lost. Having gotten bin Laden in your sights isn't something to brag about if you weren't willing to pull the trigger.

But when you're more concerned with polls and prestige with world leaders than with upholding your oath to protect your country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, "pulling the trigger" and risking a messy outcome is beyond the scope of reasonable action:

He (Clinton)is quintessentially a temporizer, one who always has had difficulty reaching a conclusion and sticking to it, and not someone who was terribly interested in either preserving our military power or using it effectively in world affairs. He'd much rather talk one on one with world leaders, persuaded he could convince them to do what he wanted by the concerted application of charm.

Talk and compromise - not clear moral principles and the will to do whatever is needed to support them - were the hallmarks of the Clinton Administration, reflecting the person at the top. Nothing Clinton says now can change that, though he still evinces conviction that he can talk us into anything - just as he thought he could when he denied point blank having had anything to do with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton always has been the one who, caught in a compromising position, would disarmingly ask, as the parody has it, "what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" His instinct for lying, even under oath, earned him the second presidential impeachment in American history.

A dubious distinction, which, in hindsight, is second only to his abject failure to get Bin Laden before he became the larger than life patriarch of the savage, suicidal, death-cult known as the Jihadist movement.

The last portion of Cass' article highlights the Clintons' "cozy" relationship with terrorist Yassar Arafat, a repulsive fact that -- inexplicably -- many American Jews never seem to begrudge them:

The Clintons cozy relationship with the Arafats was symbolized by Mrs. Clinton's embrace of Mrs. Arafat - on stage immediately after a speech by Mrs. Arafat condemning Israel. President Clinton's relationship, though less picturesque, was no less close. Arafat was the world leader Clinton met with most often. Clinton was certain he could talk Arafat into making peace in the Middle East - and secure Clinton's legacy. Clinton invited Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak to the now infamous Camp David summit meeting of 2000. He pressured Barak to offer heroic compromises, only to have Arafat at the last minute turn to Intifada to try to get more. In the end, Clinton's charm wasn't enough.

Contrast this with Dubya:

President Bush, in sharp distinction, saw Arafat as a terrorist and refused to meet with him unless he renounced the destruction of Israel as a goal and terror against civilians as a means. Bush, not Clinton, assured Israel of our full support against terrorism - and meant it.

In the end, no amount of spin can save Bill Clinton from the truth. Chris Wallace, to his credit, asked relevant, pointed questions and maintained his composure in the face of a very unbecoming ex-Presidential temper tantrum. As it turns out, Wallace also possesses a keen sense of humor, thanking Clinton at the end "for one of the most unusual interviews."

There's an old adage that states, "Facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored." Somehow I doubt the wisdom of this statement will ever resonate with Bill Clinton and his adoring supporters in the mainstream media and elsewhere. But hopefully, reasonable Americans will take them to heart after watching his pathetic interview.

Arizona's America-Bashing 9/11 Memorial

2006-09-25T00:13:00.000-04:00

I'm too tired to write extensively on this right now, except to say that it is yet another example of liberal treachery. Mary Katherine Ham's excellent post provides some interesting insight into the political mindset of several members of the Commission, as evidenced by their monetary donations to left-leaning causes and candidates (as if we couldn't guess).

It's beyond outrageous that five years after the worst attack on American soil, we cannot erect an honorable Memorial for the victims without liberals injecting their unhinged, unsolicited PC views into it. And they have the gall to constantly harangue President Bush about "politicizing" 9/11???

It's pure, unadulterated hypocrisy, something liberals seem to have in spades. Too bad we can't say the same about patriotism, a quality most of them have been lacking for decades.

Game Day

2006-09-24T11:44:00.000-04:00

***UPDATE: EAGLES WIN 38-24!!!!***** ADDED BONUS: GIANTS fall to SEAHAWKS 42-30!!!! Kind of makes up for last week's heartbreaking loss...sort of. If the Giants continue to lose games the way they did today, while the Eagles keep on soaring, last week's defeat won't matter much, anyway. For now, I'm just happy to bask in a sweet Philly win, accompanied by an almost equally sweet New York loss.

I just pray the Eagles don't break my heart again this week. Bad enough to blow a substantial lead and take a loss in a crucial game against a division rival. Time will tell if that will come back to haunt them (I suspect there's a huge chance it will); but if they can't beat the 49ers today, there's not much hope for the rest of the season.

Still, hope springs eternal in the heart of this devoted Eagles' fan, so I say E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!

Back for 4:15 p.m. kick-off, after a much-needed manicure and pedicure!

Amen to the New York Post's Editorial, "The Absent Apology"

2006-09-24T11:29:00.000-04:00

The New York Post has some excellent observations regarding the Pope's misunderstood speech (which fanatical Muslim reaction has been quick to validate with murder and violence), the relentless calls for Papal apologies, which only feed the demand for more of the same, and the MIA apologies of moderate Muslims (Hello???? Anybody out there?) for acts of savagery committed by their brethren:

We have yet to hear an apology from anyone in the Muslim world for:

* The horrific murder of Sister Leonella Sgorbatti, a 65-year-old Italian nun gunned down with her bodyguard outside her pediatric hospital in Somalia. The killing is believed to have been a reaction to Benedict's remarks.

* The violent desecration of seven Catholic churches in the West Bank and Gaza by Palestinian Muslims.

* Overheated responses that have seen Benedict compared to Hitler and Stalin, burned in effigy and targeted for arrest by the religious affairs ministry in Turkey, where he is set to visit.

Dialogue is a two-way street: Pope Benedict has more than demonstrated his willingness to address his critics' concerns.

If further apologies are called for, they need to be made to the pontiff.

Not by him.

Amen.

Does This Constitute Torture, Senator McCain?

2006-09-24T09:50:00.000-04:00

Jawa Report has more on GI's Tucker and Menchaca, whose bodies were burned and dragged by Jihadis. Yet another example of the brutal, repulsive, sadistic savagery of the enemy --- you know, the same one that Senators McCain, Graham and Warner, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell want to confer Geneva Convention Protections upon, claiming it would give the USA the "moral high ground" and protect our troops? I feel so much better, knowing a compromise was reached and that these bloodthirstry animals will not have to endure the "indignity" of waterboarding.

I wonder if being trapped on the 80th floor of an enflamed building, with one's only gruesome options death by jumping or death by burning, counts as torture in McCain's book. How about the barbarity of beheading someone with a blunt instrument just to make their slow, painful death as excruciating as possible? Is that torture in your book, Senators?

If you need reminding about the pervasive evil America is up against, by all means, watch the videos. I couldn't bring myself to do it; I scrolled down to the first picture, which was more than I could stomach. And in light of recent happenings on Capital Hill, I'm more than a little angry.

As someone who endured torture at the hands of another amoral enemy, John McCain's obstructionism is absolutely incomprehensible. Does he really believe the Global Jihadis will cease and desist their sick, twisted killing practices, simply because the United States condemns the "torture" of prisoners? It's ludicrous. If anything, they're laughing themselves silly right now at our sheer stupidity and hypersensitivity. McCain, Graham, Warner, and Powell et al. are to AQ and the rest of the terrorits thugs what American communists were to Stalin -- "useful idiots."

Remember the rejoicing and dancing in the Palestinian streets on 9/11, Senators??? This is probably the same reaction your recent antics in Washington D.C. have elicited. You've done a grave disservice to our troops and all Americans. Taking the "moral high ground" only emboldens our enemies, who are smart enough to exploit western sensitivities and political-correctness to their advantage.

Mark Weighs in on Hugo Chavez -- "Devil Incarnate"

2006-09-23T17:41:00.000-04:00

From big bro Mark, who is still posting over at Quad-Squad:

Hugo Chavez' horrific speech at the U.N.was typical of the diabolical creep he is. They say that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. His second greatest trick was to call everyone else a devil to take the spotlight off of himself and to trick the gullible, like liberals. Chavez understands this second principal, and I suppose you have to give him some credit for that. What is sad and pathetic is that Chavez knew he could get away with such a speech in New York, because he knew he would get cover from liberals(who think the same thing but are afraid to use such strong language close to an election); as well as the liberals' pathetic waterboys, the dinosaur media. Liberals don't call the President the devil only because they have fallen prey to the devil's first trick, and believe he doesn't exist. As Rush would say,liberalism is their religion and abortion is their holy sacrament. I would also add that moral equivalency is their god.

What is clear is that evil attracts evil in the pursuit of destroying good, even if the conniving evildoers hate each other. Witness what Nazi Germany and Communist Russia did to Christian Poland on September 1,1939. The fact that Hitler and Stalin later fought each other did not make one of them good. Nor did the decison of the West to accept Stalin as an "ally" in their pursuit of destroying Nazi Germany.

Similarly, today we see the joinder of Communist dictators and Islamo -Fascists who both seek to destroy the USA, the West and the Free World. The fact thay they will turn on each other after they destroy us is of no solace to this father of four. What is even more maddening is that today's major evildoers have the support of Liberals and the dinosaur media. Mona Charon aptly calls them "useful idiots."

I say it's time to take action before it's too late. Now we know why Pat Robertson was mocked and criticized so roundly for his statements about Chavez. The answer is because the dinosaur media knew he was right about their pal. Reverend Robertson knows that a President who is elected by people casting ballots while staring down the barrel of a gun, is not freely elected. Nor is a President freely elected if there is only one party in the entire country and one candidate on the ballot.

Let's cut the crap about this policy against assasination of foreign leaders and put a silver bullet in this werewolf President's brain. After, all isn't this what we pay the CIA to do? After that, let's take out old man Castro and not let him get away with dying a natural death. Venezuela and Cuba along with North Korea and China are all fronts in the war on terror. Let's face it, they are all in bed with the Islamo - Fascists.

If the Liberals/Roosevelt Administration had properly won WWII and let Patton take out the Soviets, we wouldn't now be fighting WWIII. As the great general himself said, the politicians always leave us with one more war to fight. We can't afford such a mistake today. The future of our children depends upon it.

posted by Mark at 4:39 PM | 0 comments

Good News from Iraq...Even if OBL is Just Gravely Ill and Not Dead (Yet)

2006-09-23T17:17:00.000-04:00

From the Jawa Report, an crucial capture has been made, even if rumors regarding Osama Bin Laden's death turn out to be false:

We should be shouting for joy that the leader of Ansar al Sunnah, Muntasir al-Jibouri, has been captured. This is big news! And, unlike the Bin Laden "news," this one seems likely to be true.

We should be shouting for joy that the leader of Ansar al Sunnah has been captured. This should be just as big as when we got Zarqawi. It is that important.

Ansar al Sunnah's organizational structure is not as well known as al Qaeda's. It appears, though, that al-Jibouri's voice can be heard on at least two hostage murder videos and probably many, many more (thanks to Mike for the reminder). Like Zarqawi, al-Jibouri is said to have personally murdered many of Ansar al Sunnah's victims.

Dr. Rusty provides plenty of links confirming al Jibouri's gruesome record of brutality and murder, with beheading the method of choice for disposing of infidels. Thank God he is now in custody. I only hope the Interrogators will be allowed to use "coercive measures" on this vile piece of human trash.

In God We Still Trust

2006-09-23T12:51:00.000-04:00

My Dad sent me the link to this beautiful Diamond Rio song today. Enjoy, and pass it on!

Clinton Meltdown Over Osama

2006-09-23T10:59:00.000-04:00

Bill's motto could be "If the shoe fits, lie about it, while pointing fingers and blaming "right-wingers." I mean really, is it too much to ask that Clinton take some responsibility for his gross ineptitude with regard to terror threats during his EIGHT YEARS in office, instead of chastising President Bush, who had a scant EIGHT MONTHS to deal with a vile, emboldened enemy???

It never ceases to amaze me that this narcissistic, poll-watching, legacy-obsessed former hippie ever occupied the Oval Office. And, thanks to an ego the size of Texas, he just won't go away. Now that his limp record on terrorism is coming back to haunt him, he's all about blaming Republicans (well, that's his M.O. even without an Islamo-fascist terror threat) with bulging eyes and wagging fingers. Seems to me, he doth protest too much.

Ace lays out the facts:

The man simply lies. It is a breathtakingly stupid and mendacious claim that rightwingers, as he calls us, actually opposed his weak single effort to get bin Ladin. Throughout the late nineties, I was apopleptic we weren't doing anything at all about bin Ladin. We wanted more action. Not less.

The pretext for this lie is that rightwingers, myself included, did in fact "question the timing" of his one attempt to kill bin Ladin. It occurred, coindentally enough, during the Lewinsky furor. On the eve of some testimony; can't remember which, and it really doesn't matter.

Conservatives did not object to this attack. We were enraged, however, that the man refused to attack bin Ladin at all until he was motivated to action by a threat to his own political safety. We were not angry he'd attacked bin Ladin; we were angry he hadn't attacked bin Ladin before (or after, actually; anyone remember a subsequent attack?).

We were angry that the man had let bin Ladin attack us with impunity for years until he saw it as a good move politically to finally launch a poorly-timed cruise missile at bin Ladin. He was animated to action not to save American lives, but to save his own *****ing political life.

In true self-centered, Baby Boomer fashion, it was all about him --- any defense of the United States was carefully considered and calculated against Clinton's political ambitions. A patriot and statesman, he's not. And yet, his status as the darling of the MSM has never wavered.

One can only hope that he suffers from overexposure, and as more is revealed about his woefully incompetent eight-year White House tenure, Americans will finally wake up and realize the high price tag of his treacherous Presidency, paid for in blood on September 11, 2001.

An Army of Courage

2006-09-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

Great news, the Army is reporting its best recruiting year since 1997:

WASHINGTON - The Army is ending its best recruiting year since 1997 and expecting similar success in 2007, despite the weight of grim war news from Iraq, Army Secretary Francis Harvey said Thursday.

In an Associated Press interview, Harvey said the Army will enlist its 80,000th soldier on Friday, reaching its goal for the year with eight days to spare. That is a considerable turnaround from last year when the Army missed its target for the first time since 1999 and by the widest margin in more than two decades.

Not that I expect this awesome development to be featured anywhere in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, or Washington Post, let alone in the mainstream broadcast media, but it is gratifying to know there are men and women of conviction who've not allowed the antics of John Murtha and the difficulties of the War in Iraq to stop them from fighting for their country. God bless them!

Of course, had the numbers gone in the opposite direction, and this had been the most dismal recruiting year since 1997, the MSM would have made hay with the story, probably with the angle of how it did not bode well for Republicans in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Oh well! I'm just thankful that the country is blessed with young adults who are willing to fight for their country's freedom and democracy, no matter how dangerous the task and in spite of treacherous politicians and a complicit media.

Advice from Peggy Noonan for both Democrats and the Bush Administration

2006-09-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal today notes a lost opportunity and offers some good advice for Democrats and the Bush Administration in response to the vile Venezuelan Dictator:

There is an opportunity for the Democratic Party. Some Democrats responded with spirited indignation the day after Chavez spoke. It was rousing. But Chavez's charges were grave, and he claimed America's abuses could be tracked back a century. If the Democrats seek to speak for America, why not start with a serious and textured response, one that isn't a political blast-back but a high-minded putting forward of facts? This would take guts, and farsightedness. Rebutting a wild-eyed man who says you can find redemption reading Noam Chomsky is a little too much like rebutting a part of your base.

As for the administration, it is so in the habit of asserting, defending and repeating, it barely remembers how to persuade and appeal. It speaks starkly and carries a big stick. It feels so beleaguered on a daily basis, and so snakebit, that even its mildest players have taken refuge in gritting their teeth and tunneling on. They take comfort in this: They think Chavez helps them. See what we're up against? But that's not a response, it's a way not to respond. It doesn't help, because it doesn't even try to cool things down. Which is no good, because the temperature of the world is very high.

Regarding the Democratic Party, she's right on in her observation that its spineless members are incapable of formulating and publicly refuting Chavez' outrageous claims because the author he so esteems -- Noam Chomsky -- is one of the darlings of its money-wielding Leftist base, and offending them risks electoral suicide. And one has to wonder if deep down, many of them actually agree with Chavez when he rants about so-called "American Imperialism." Charlie Rangel seemed more offended by the fact that a foreigner dared to steal his thunder when it comes to attacking our President, a right he reserves only for America-haters within the USA. How dare Hugo "take a page" from the Democratic leadership's playbook and use his own inflammatory hate-speech against Bush?

Then there's the matter of Jimmy Carter, who declared Venzuela's Election in 2004, "legitimate," despite valid claims to the contrary, thus aiding and abetting Chavez in his lust for power and anti-American tirades. As reported in the New York Sun:
President Carter will no doubt be on Hugo Chavez's Christmas card list this December. It was certainly a gift for the Venezuelan leader this year when Mr. Carter certified without reservation an election that opposition newspapers were quick to denounce as a fraud. No sooner had the former American president handed this gift to the Venezuelan Marxist than, as our Eli Lake reported last Thursday, the coalition of labor unions, business groups, and political parties brought forward a list of serious complaints about the process leading up to the elections and how the votes were counted by new electronic machines purchased by the state's election commission.

Just one more dubious distinction in the treacherous life of a former President, whose deplorable record as Commander-in-Chief should have relegated him back to a peanut farm in Georgia, instead of a prominent place on the world stage where he continues to inflict more damage upon his country.

As for President Bush, I agree with Peggy Noonan: Relentless media malice aside, taking the "high road" and declaring hateful Hugo's comments "unworthy" of a response only emboldens our enemies for whom such an impotent response smacks of weakness and submission. Where's that Cowboy Diplomacy when we need it?

And why was this "thug" granted Secret Service protection and access to New York neighborhoods, where he continued to spew vile against the USA and our President, to the delight of his gracious host, Hollywood leftist Danny Glover?

If there's any justice, the appalling events of the last few days will serve as a wake-up call to Americans to come out in droves in November to cast votes for true statesmen and leaders with the guts to stand up for this country and protect it from those who would destroy it.

Sobering Reminders About the History of the War on Terror

2006-09-22T13:27:00.000-04:00

Progress for America has produced an excellent and timely ad hosted by 37-year Marine Veteran, General Bedard. In it, he chronicles the history of terrorism and challenges with cold, hard facts the argument that The War on Terror began in 2001 (hint: It goes back a very looong way, though this ad only traces its origins to 1972 and the Munich Olympics).

It is a stark and powerful reminder of the urgency of the War Against Global Jihad (a much more relevant and truthful name for the conflict than "War on Terror", though I suspect PFA is obligated to call it as such just to keep the ad running), thrust upon the United States by evil people who want to kill us simply because we are Americans. In essence, the video reminds us that this is a War between Good and Evil, no "nuance" required.

If you'd like to make a donation to keep this ad running on television, you can do so here.

Boycott CITGO

2006-09-21T16:18:00.000-04:00

Join GOP in the City, the American Family Association , the Jawa Report and Hyscience in the only appropriate response to the fat little Dictator Hugo Chavez' hate-filled, anti-American and anti-Bush rantings at the UN yesterday.

All Americans should make a conscious effort to fill their tanks anywhere but CITGO, even if it's a little more inconvenient or expensive to go elsewhere. While Hugo's inflammatory comments basically echoed Democratic talking points of the last several years, it is outrageous that a vile South American Dictator who routinely oppresses his own people, should receive such a warm welcome, not only by UN Elitisists and Third-World Thugs, but from -- of all places -- a Baptist Church in Harlem. America-hating actor, Danny Glover, introduced Chavez to the assembled church crowd today. Surprise, surprise.

And don't be fooled by hypocrites like Charlie Rangel, whose own diatribes against President Bush are as repulsive as anything spewed by the vicious Venezuelan Dictator yesterday and today. My guess is Rangel is more concerned for his own party in light of the upcoming mid-term elections, and Hugo's unscripted verbal assault only highlights the similarities between unhinged Democrats and Third-World nutcases in the eyes of American voters.

UN -Welcome: Let's Kick the United Nations Out of America

2006-09-20T18:43:00.000-04:00

As if we needed another reason to expel the European elites and Third-World thugs who comprise the corrupt, good-for-nothing organization known as the United Nations out of the USA, along comes the vile Venezuelan Dictator, Hugo Chavez, who today in his speech at the UN, called President Bush "the devil." I'm sure his compatriot-in-crime, Cindy Sheehan and the rest of the Leftist Bush-haters squealed with delight as they watched this repulsive spectacle over their Starbucks lattes.

While I didn't actually watch the speech live, I heard the replay while listening to the Savage Nation in the car this afternoon, and later, caught Hot Air's video replay, which was enough to bring me to the brink of tears, contemplating the future of this great country.

As contemptible as Chavez's rantings was the agreeable response they elicited from the UN Assembly. After Chavez' "George Bush is the devil" comment, the audience erupted into laughter; upon completion he was rewarded with a robust round of prolonged applause. And these are the people the USA continues to confer with over Iran's Nuclear Program and the broader War with Global Jihad? Why haven't we kicked this useless and dangerous organization to the curb, instead of insisting on creating innumerable inane resolutions as a method of dealing with fanatical terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda? It's maddening to citizens like me, who love their country and are actually paying attention.

Therein lies another problem: Unbelievably, in a post 9/11 world, there is still a significant portion of the population that is either apathetic to, or ignorant about the grave threats posed not only to our democracy, but to our very existence. The 5th Anniversary of the most horrific day in America came and went without much reflection. Yes, there was plenty of media coverage marking the event, and yes, ABC stood strong against virulent opposition from the Clintonistas and aired "The Path to 9/11," while Discovery Channel broadcast such retrospectives as "The Flight That Fought Back," and "Inside the Twin Towers."

But as with 9/11 itself, once the anniversary passed, it was right back to business as usual. Perhaps most upsetting is the politics-as-usual sentiment on display in the form of Senators McCain, Graham and Warner, who don't seem to understand that terrorists not only are unworthy of Miranda rights and Geneva Convention Protections, they are also quite deserving of "coercive interrogation" in the form of very loud music and cold rooms, when deemed appropriate by the CIA to get information that could save American lives. By bucking the President Bush on this critical issue, they are endangering the USA and our troops, while harming the President's credibility, thus providing plenty of aid and comfort to the enemy that wishes to destroy us.

With politicians like these, it's even more frightening that the average American cares more about Tom Cruise's baby than the possibility that the maniacal President of Iran could be close to obtaining a nuclear weapon while the hapless UN fiddles. It's a scary thought that such uninformed individuals might actually summon the interest to cast a ballot on Election Day.

Then there are the America-haters in our midst, the group Michael Savage correctly termed, "The Enemy Within." These are the blame-America-firsters, who ingest every lie and distortion ever printed by the New York Times and the Washington Post and immortalized on film by "crock-u-mentary" producer Michael Moore. They balk at the notion that the USA is actually engaged in a very real War with a determined and brutal enemy, and insist on misplacing blame for every evil committed in the name of Allah onto President Bush, instead of fanatical Islamic savages.

It defies logic that the most avid subscribers to this dangerously misguided notion inhabit the halls of Congress: From Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy to Hillary Clinton, the US government is replete with individuals who willfully place their political aspirations ahead of the cause of national security by fighting the President tooth-and-nail on every measure designed to protect the United States from terrorists, invoking civil rights hysteria as their method of choice.

Therefore, the very effective Terrorist-Surveillance Program, which was monitoring calls from known AQ terrorists into the United States = a domestic spying program! And the useful SWIFT Program, which tracked the financial transactions of terrorists = "Bushitler" overstepping his bounds!

I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for any of these so-called public servants to express public outrage over Hugo Chavez'hateful anti-Bush rhetoric and the UN Assembly's shameful -- gleeful -- acceptance of it. But I will continue to boycott CITGO gas and encourage everyone I know to do the same.

As for the UN, I hope they'll take Chavez' offer to move to Venezuela to heart and start packing their bags. I can think of much more worthy uses for the building than as a haven for treacherous Third World Dictators and America-bashing elitists.

Australian PM John Howard Exemplifies the Definition of a True Ally

2006-09-19T13:54:00.000-04:00

If only our President would join him in excoriating the "unbalanced," and "disproportionate" response of many in the Muslim world to a few words taken out of context from Pope Benedict's speech. Howard believes it is high time for Muslims to get over it:

MUSLIMS are "perfectly entitled" to criticise the Pope for linking Islam with evil and violence, but John Howard wants them to "move on".
The Prime Minister said last night he was "disappointed" and "exasperated" that "whenever the Pope says something (it) provokes demonstrations".

In defence of comments yesterday by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, Mr Howard said Cardinal Pell "has a point" in criticising Muslims for reacting to the Pope's comments with "demonstrations and threats of violence".

I ask again, where are all of the moderate Muslims? Why aren't they publicly condemning the perpetual acts of violence committed all over the world in the name of Allah?

As Bill O'Reilly correctly pointed out last night on The Factor, if Catholics were unleashing a worldwide reign of terror in the name of their religion, they would also face the wrath of law-abiding, upstanding Catholics, who would not allow such horrific atrocities to be carried out in the name of Jesus Christ and their Church. I suspect the Pope would lead the charge against such vile crimes against humanity and the "hijacking" of Catholicism by fanatical members of the faith. So where are all of the so-called "peaceful" Muslim leaders?

These despicable acts are wrought upon the world by zealots who justify their grotesque actions by pointing to the Koran and claiming to uphold the commands set forth therein by the Prophet Mohammad. If these murderous thugs are indeed distorting the message of "true" Islam, wouldn't it behoove the religion's leaders to set the record straight and seek the support of other religious and world leaders by publicly denouncing the pepetrators, and the rogue governments that support them?

It's more than a little ironic that reaction by many in the Muslim world only serves to prove the Pope's point that spreading any religious faith through violence is contrary to the nature of God. His invitation to robust dialogue and debate was promptly dismissed by fanatics who are now calling for his death. But where is the response by Muslim leaders? If they're so secure in the knowledge that theirs is a religion of peace and brotherhood, why aren't they willing to answer the Pope's call for real discussion, and condemn the violent minority in their midst?

It's nice to know that western leaders like Angela Merkel and John Howard are asking these same questions and challenging the hypersensitivity of poor, put-upon Muslims. Howard also took a strong stand in support of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell:

Mr Howard sought to make a distinction between the Christian and Islamic faiths. A "common thread" in modern terror attacks was that their perpetrators "claim the authority of Allah".

"I don't at the moment note groups killing people and invoking the authority of the Catholic Church. That's the difference," he said. "If Catholics rioted every time people attacked the Catholic Church, you would have riots on a very regular basis.

"He's expressed his regrets and I think we should all move on."

Thank you, Mr. Howard for your brilliant insights and unwavering courage. I only wish all western leaders would follow your example.

Why Can't We Emulate Australia?

2006-09-17T18:28:00.000-04:00

If they keep this up, I'll be tempted to move Down Under:

AUSTRALIA'S Muslim leaders have been "read the riot act" over the need to denounce any links between Islam and terrorism.

The Howard Government's multicultural spokesman, Andrew Robb, yesterday told an audience of 100 imams who address Australia's mosques that these were tough times requiring great personal resolve.
Mr Robb also called on them to shun a victim mentality that branded any criticism as discrimination.

"We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.

"And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.

Still waiting for the moderate Muslim leaders to condemn the Church bombings and the shooting of a nun, her bodyguard, and another innocent person at the hands of rabid jihadists as punishment for a Papal speech, simply because Islamic-psychos are incapable of reason or anything resembling dialogue. Indeed, these barbarians don't even need a motive to commit mass murder (it's all about Global Jihad, after all); the Pope's talk just provides a convenient excuse. And now the Pontiff himself is a target of Islamic rage and brutality.

Kudos to the Australians for getting it. If only the American and European governments would join them.

Al-Qaeda Warns Muslims to Leave US

2006-09-17T17:07:00.000-04:00

This sickening post from World Net Daily kind of puts today's heart-breaking loss to the Giants into perspective. And if this part is true, what excuse will President Bush and feckless politicians pandering for Hispanic votes have to say for themselves for their refusal to crack down on the Mexican-American border?

Abu Dawood told Hamid Mir, a reporter who has covered al-Qaida and met with Osama bin Laden, the attack is being coordinated by Adnan el-Shukrijumah and suggests it may involve some form of weapon of mass destruction smuggled across the Mexican border.

It was only a matter of time until America's enemies exploited our border madness. Of course, if they are successful in producing another gruesome day of carnage on United States soil, the MSM will probably blame it on the Pope, instead of Muslim murderers and opportunistic cowards in Washington D.C. who either want illegal votes or cheap labor.

God help us.

Religion of Peace Responds to Pope's Request for Reasoned Debate by Slaughtering Innocents

2006-09-17T12:01:00.000-04:00

In their perpetual state of outrage and offense, fanatical Muslims, armed with their latest excuse to unleash a new wave of violence and destruction in the form of Pope Benedict's speech, have responded to the call for reasoned debate in their inimitable, murderous fashion. The latest casualties of Muslim rage are a Catholic nun serving in a children's hospital in Mogadishu -- shot in the back four times -- and her bodyguard.

And they dare to accuse the Pontiff of living in the "darkness" of the Middle Ages??? What are sane people supposed to deduce from the endless barbarity of Muslims in response to every perceived "slight" and criticism against their religion? It seems their despicable actions only serve to prove the validity of the Pope's statement concerning the Christian concept of God as being intertwined with reason, and the Muslim conccept of Allah as transcendent, and therefore, outside of the realm of rationality:

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

The Islamic-thugs just keep proving the Pope's point as evidenced by this latest atrocity. Missing in action once again, is any hint of outrage or condemnation of these barbarians from so-called Muslim leaders. They'll just keep playing the victim card and exploiting the west's PC-madness and hyper-sensitivity.

The Pope, for his part, issued a sort of "non-apology," saying he's "deeply sorry for Muslim reaction." Good. It appears the only thing he regrets is the inability of Muslims to respond to the call for reasoned debate with anything other than violence, murder and mayhem. May he continue to stand strong. I only hope President Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and other western leaders will join Angela Merkel in defending him. But I won't hold my breath.

Sunday Showdown: Eagles vs. Giants

2006-09-16T14:03:00.000-04:00

And according to the Eagles, "taming Tiki" will be the key to victory. He's a formidable opponent and an outstanding player, so the Birds' defense definitely has their work cut out for them. If they can defeat this division rival at home, setting them up for a grueling must-win on the road against Seattle in the third week of the season, victory will indeed be sweet.

Opening day at the Linc; I'll be watching!

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!

Pope Marked for Death by Adherents to The Religion of "Peace"

2006-09-16T10:26:00.000-04:00

And the NY Times, as usual, is on the wrong side of the issue. Give them credit, I suppose; they are nothing if not consistent. Hard to believe this is the same news organization whose Manhattan office experienced, just five short years ago, the wrath of Muslim extremism and violence in the name of Allah.

And this of course, is the same bastion of liberalism that splashed secrets of a very effective terrorist finance-tracking program all over its front pages, against the repeated requests of government officials to refrain from doing so, including this man, thereby risking national security and American lives, simply because hating and obstructing President Bush is more precious to them than the safety and security of their own countrymen. Ditto for the NSA wire-tapping program, a vital component in fighting the War against Global Jihad, due to its effectiveness in intercepting international communications between people with known ties to Al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations who want to kill Americans.

But none of that mattered to the New York Times, which seems to prefer dhimmitude over freedom, and appeasement of fanatical Muslims for fear of violent retaliation, rather than courage and conviction to condemn their vicious acts of brutality.

Like the shrill Rosie O'Donnell, the Times is incapable of identifying the enemy, preferring instead to condemn a Christian leader -- in this case, the Pontiff -- for daring to reference an historical conversation in which an emperor rightly states Mohammad's command to spread his faith "by the sword," an ultimatum relentlessly obeyed by bloodthirsty fanatical Muslims, whose entire raison d'etre (are you listening Jacques Chirac?) is the destruction of western infidels.

And now, the so-called Religion of "Peace" is responding to the Pope's criticism by marking him for death.
So let me get this straight: Muslims are offended by the perception of their prophet Mohammad as an instigator of violence in the proliferation of Islam, yet their answer to their critics is to burn Christian churches and issue death threats to Pope Benedict? If their hypocrisy wasn't accompanied by such a high murder and destruction rate, it might actually be laughable, as would the shenanigans of clueless celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell and the supposedly "objective journalists" who inhabit the New York Times.

At least one western leader, Angela Merkel, gets it. But, as Michelle asks, where's everybody else? Where's President Bush?

I truly hope that we're not going to see a repeat of the Danish cartoon condemnations, excoriating westerners about "respect for religion," while "moderate" Muslim leaders remain stubbornly silent about the carnage wrought upon the world by members of their faith. I'm sick of this outrageous double standard that preaches tolerance for Islam, yet chastises Christians and Jews for taking offense at countless examples of religious bigotry aimed at their beliefs.

Perhaps safe in the knowledge that Christians and Jews will not blow up airliners or subways in response, their critics cower in the knowledge that any "offense" against Islam will be met with worldwide rioting and bloodshed. So they demonstrate weakness instead of strength in the face of evil, and denounce the enemy as fundamentalist Christians and orthodox Jews, rather than fundamentalist Muslims, in an effort to bury their heads in the sand and make themselves feel better (it's all about "feeling good" isn't it?). And in the liberal cocoon of Manhattan, it is easy lull themselves into complacency, the vicious assault of 9/11 notwithstanding.

What will the New York Times headline read, if (God forbid!) the fanatical Muslim monsters achieve their goal of murdering the Pope? Will they condemn the perpetrators as murderous religious fanatics, or will they chastise the Pope for having the courage to take a stand against the ultimate intolerance of Mohammad's descendants? Sadly, like Rosie O'Donnell they'll always blame the Christians first.

God bless Pope Benedict.

Outraged Muslim Leaders Decry Pope Benedict

2006-09-15T10:18:00.000-04:00

Well that didn't take long. From FOX News:

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's ruling Islamic-rooted party joined a wave of criticism of Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, accusing him of trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades with remarks he made about the Muslim faith.

A deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party, said Benedict's remarks were either "the result of pitiful ignorance" about Islam and its prophet, or a deliberate distortion.

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," Kapusuz was quoted as saying by the state-owned Anatolia news agency. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades."

"Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words," he said. "He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as (Adolf) Hitler and (Benito) Mussolini."

Pitiful ignorance? I'd call it more like "willful indifference" on the part of Islamic apologists who call themselves "leaders." Where was their outrage over this? Or this? How about this? Or this? Sadly, these are but a few outrageous examples of the worldwide slaughter of "infidels" at the hands of Muslim fanatics. If theirs is truly a "Religion of Peace" why don't moderate Muslim leaders show some backbone and condemn these monsters, instead of excoriating the Pope for daring to point out some "inconvenient truths" (to borrow Al Gore's phrase)about their religion?

Oh, the irony and audacity of accusing Pope Benedict of having a "dark mentality!" Is there anything more gruesomely reminiscent of the "darkness" of the Middle Ages than chopping off the heads of innocent people?

And let's not forget the Cartoon Jihad, when Muslims around the globe demonstrated their "tolerance" and respect for freedom of speech by embarking on a killing spree for the mere depiction of their prophet in a Danish newspaper. Never mind that "the forging and wide dissemination by Muslims themselves of three cartoons of Muhammad were far more offensive than the very mild cartoons published in the Danish newspaper," as noted by the website, Jihad Watch. Where was the outcry of Muslim leaders then?

When was the last time a Christian or Jew incited worldwide slaughter over something offensive to their religion? Take the Piss Christ, an egregious example of sacrilege to the vast majority of Christians. Did the offended faithful riot in the streets all over the globe, shouting "Death to those who insult Christianity?" Of course not.

Many voiced their disapproval, some at high levels of government, like Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms, who also expressed outrage that the disgusting display was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal tax-payer financed institution.

So where are all the moderate Muslim leaders? And what makes them think their religion should be immune to criticism and satire when Jews and Christians put up with distasteful, shameful attacks on their faith on an almost daily basis? What are we to conclude when Islamic thugs all around the world continually plot the destruction of the west because it is the will of Allah, with no substantive rebuke from Muslim Imams and other leaders of their faith?

It seems to me they can dish it out ("Death to Israel! Death to America!") but they can't take it. So while a significant portion of their Muslim flock strap suicide bombs on their children, plot to blow up American airliners over the ocean, slam jetliners full of innocent civilians into buildings full of more of the same, and savagely behead their unfortunate captives, Muslim leaders look the other way.

But when the 21st Century head of the Catholic Church dares to publicly reference a 14th Century dialogue between a Christian Emperor and a Persian Scholar, in which the Emperor chastises Mohammad for his "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," a command today's Islamic thugs obey with ruthless brutality, they squeal with righteous indignation.

The only ones still living in the "darkness of the Middle Ages" are Muslims who hate the west, despise freedom and seek the global imposition of Sharia Law. And while many leaders in the civilized world bury their heads in the sand, the Pope has shown tremendous courage and conviction at mortal risk.

God bless Pope Benedict and may he continue to stand strong.

With Republicans Like These, Who Needs Democrats?

2006-09-14T12:13:00.000-04:00

***Update: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defying President George W. Bush, a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday approved legislation setting up trials for foreign terrorism suspects that Bush says could compromise the war on terrorism.

Voting 15-9, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the bill they said would provide suspects more legal rights than Bush wanted and resisted his attempt to more narrowly define the Geneva Conventions' standards for humane treatment of prisoners.

Just fabulous. The RINO's have officially declared their incompetence in prosecuting the War against Global Jihad, proving that not just Democrats are weak on matters of national security. Congratulations, McCain, Graham, Collins and the rest of the gang on this dubious honor. Oh, and John -- Kiss your 2008 presidential ambitions goodbye, not that they ever had any chance of coming to fruition in the first place. I honor your previous Military Service, but seriously question your logic and motives pertaining to this critical issue. I suppose when they inflict another 9/11 style day of carnage, you'll find a way to blame it on President Bush.

And I previously thought only Bush-deranged Democrats were the biggest obstructors to national security and winning the War against Global Jihad. Silly me!

Seriously, are there any statesmen and patriots left in Washington?

Bush's surveillance plan faces a difficult fight in Congress, especially in the House, where GOP leaders favor a different approach.

That measure, sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, and endorsed by the GOP chairmen of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, would require the administration to wait until a terrorist attack to open an electronic surveillance program.

Wait until AFTER a terrorist attack? Kind of defeats the purpose of surveillance, doesn't it? This has to be the most inane, twisted logic I've come across, this side of Howard Dean. What good is a terrorist surveillance program if the prerequisite for its employ is thousands more dead Americans? And the Republicans want us to vote them back into office come November?

And what's up with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham?

Graham said he expects the final legislation will allow a defendant to access all evidence used against them -- a provision staunchly opposed by the White House and House and Senate leadership because it could reveal classified information. Graham said steps can be taken to prevent unnecessary exposure of protected information, but ultimately a fair trial must allow defendants the ability to confront evidence used against them.

"I think we've made a pretty good case that giving something to a jury to convict a defendant (with hidden evidence) is a nonstarter," Graham added.

Hard to believe this man was even elected in such a conservative state as South Carolina. I'm sure voters there are regretting their decision at this very moment.

Once again, as America's enemies plot openly to destroy us, Congress plays politics. It appears as if the 9/10 mentality is not the exclusive domain of Democrats.

God help us all!

Pope Benedict Excoriates Radical Muslim Jihadis

2006-09-14T10:35:00.000-04:00

I came across this welcome story via Hot Air this morning, and as a Catholic who fully supports the War against Radical Islam, I say, "Bravo, Benedict!"

It's about time the leader of the Roman Catholic Church spoke out against the enemy and its ideology of hatred and violence, instead of blasting the United States for invading Iraq and removing one of the most heinous dictators the world has ever known. Pope Benedict rails against Islam at great peril to his own life, which speaks to his courage and conviction.

It does frighten me, though, because as Allahpundit notes, the Pontiff is now marked for death, and it is only a matter of time until the Islamic thugs make a bold attempt on his life.

And when they do, what's Rosie O'Donnell going to say? I don't watch the unabashedly liberal women's show The View, but via Michelle Malkin, heard about Rosie's disgusting rant equivocating fundamentalist Christians with fundamentalist Muslims.

Hmmm, let's see Rosie, can you provide just one example of an incident where fundamentalist Christians declared a global "holy war" against "infidels" (non-Christians), chopped off the heads of their captives, rioted in the streets while displaying placards that read "Behead those who insult Christianity," and actively plotted the demise of American airliners over the ocean, using liquid explosives because "Jesus is great?" I didn't think so.

As for the gay issue, Michelle and Mary Katherine make an excellent argument, using the life of gay author, Bruce Bawer as an example. Bawer left the United States for Europe, in expectation of a better life there as a gay man, only to find that weak-willed Europeans are allowing radical Islam to destroy the continent. This is the same "tolerant" group that punishes homosexuals by executing them for their "sins against Allah." Makes the Christian approach of "loving the sinner and hating the sin" seem pretty benign by comparison, eh Rosie?

And while a stray Christian here or there may pollute the faith by committing an act of violence, i.e. bombing an abortion clinic, they are the exception to the rule, and their vile actions are condemned by the majority of Christendom. Let's remember that it was Christians who denounced slavery as a sin against God, and willingly embarked upon a bloody civil war to end the atrocity in the United States of America. It was also Christians who stood up against the KKK and its gospel of hatred and extremism. But the KKK was a small minority, not indicative of the whole, and they were held in contempt by true Christians.

Contrast that with Islam, which preaches submission and subjugation of women, death to all "infidels," Sharia Law and worldwide jihad, as a matter of God's will.

Sorry, Rosie, but your hypothesis just doesn't stand up to the facts. It's both tragic and unfortunate that you simply cannot grasp that gay men, lesbians and women in general have the most to fear from a (God forbid!) radical Islamic takeover of this proud and free nation. The most horrific thing a "real" Christian, fundamentalist or otherwise, might inflict upon the gay population is fervent prayer for their collective souls. Compared with the despicable actions of fundamental Islamists, I'd say that's pretty benign, indeed.

Your words may play well to your elite Manhattan audience, but those of us in middle America clearly "view" you as the self-centered, clueless bigot you are.

The Path to 9/11

2006-09-13T11:42:00.000-04:00

After all of the hypocritical Clinton belly-aching and intimidation of ABC over this film, and the network’s subsequent edit of one critical scene, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to watch it. I agree with the assessment of some critics that there was plenty of objective truth to fill five-hours of airtime, without resorting to “composite” characters and events, which only served to foment the Left’s hysteria.

Never mind that the outright lies and fabrications presented in Michael Moore’s hit piece, Fahrenheit 9/11, were intended to slander a sitting President and affect the outcome of an election. Never mind that this grossly distorted film is celebrated and embraced by America’s enemy, Al-Qaeda, an organization that salivates over the prospect of murdering more United States citizens on our home turf, and plots everyday to bring an even more gruesome bloodbath than 9/11 to fruition. Did the Left, who were so aghast at the thought of a docudrama that might actually (and rightly) place at least some of the blame for September 11 on Clinton administration failures, chastise Michael Moore for his blatant non-truths? Or his manipulation of interviewees who protest that their words were taken out of context?

Of course not. That was a matter of free speech, and since the object of its malice was the Left’s Public Enemy #1, George W. Bush, not only perfectly acceptable, but quite admirable. Thus, the rotund, lying filmmaker was given a place of prominence at the Democratic National Convention, seated next to another presidential failure, Jimmy Carter. Speaking of Carter, if the Path to 9/11 had any shortcomings, it was its exclusion of Carter as the father of modern terrorism, via his impotence in dealing with Iran’s takeover of the American embassy and the ensuing hostage crisis. But I digress.

So where was the Left’s celebration of First Amendment rights as they pertained to ABC’s film? Why was this segment of the population that prides itself on “tolerance” and non-censorship, supporting Bill Clinton in his quest to force ABC to scrap the broadcast of this movie altogether? Many of us have seen the copy of the letter Clinton’s lawyers sent to Bob Iger, President of ABC, threatening the network’s broadcast license if they refused to comply with Liberal demands. And all because this docudrama dared to trace events leading up to the carnage of 9/11, beginning with the 1993 WTC bombing, which historically includes 8 years of the Clinton White House.

So while they are quick to affix blame and cast vitriol relentlessly upon President Bush, (who inherited the terror failures of the previous administration), in a time of war, while offering no viable alternative to fighting it, they cannot abide the fact that the public might actually become aware that a Democratic President stubbornly refused to take the Islamo-fascist threat seriously, and that his willful disregard for public servants who did get it – like John O’Neill of the FBI -- left the country vulnerable to the worst attacks on American soil.

So while AQ, UBL and the rest of the Islamic thugs orchestrated and committed one act of war after another against the USA (’93 WTC bombing, the US Embassy Bombing, the USS Cole bombing, etc.), Clinton and his cronies’ adolescent denial of their evil intent left the succeeding Presidential administration to clean up the bloody mess and finally put this country on a strong offensive, where it rightfully belonged.

In that light, I guess I can’t blame them for trying to sandbag ABC. I suppose it’s too much to ask of Clinton what the Left constantly harangues George W. Bush for – admittance of mistakes and offerings of apologies (for perceived “grievances”).

And I have to admire them for condemning the repulsive film that debuted last week at the Toronto Film Festival, entitled, Assassination of a President, bringing to life the Leftist fantasy of President Bush’s untimely end at the hands of a gunman. Oh, hold on a second – that never happened! This was another case of “free speech”, even if the subject matter is – to use one of their favorite words – “troubling”-- to most US citizens.

Staggering, breathtaking hypocrisy. What we’ve sadly come to expect from the other side; as David Limbaugh notes, they are indeed, Bankrupt.

But getting back to the Path to 9/11, ABC deserves credit for standing their ground and running the film, even with the one-minute edit. There was still plenty of damning evidence to suggest that bureaucracy, poll-watching and image-preserving in the face of re-election ruled the day, and not national security concerns. Sandy Berger and George Tenet came off as immature teenagers unwilling to face the wrath of the President, should the attempted capture of Bin Laden turn into a messy ordeal. Meanwhile, field agents were left holding the ball in a hostile country, Afghanistan, frustrated by their superiors’ lack of conviction.

Madeleine Albright’s portrayal as a shill for President Clinton was both effective and expected, but Richard Clarke’s on screen personification as a hero left me cold. This was the same man, who during the 9/11 hearings, laid all of the blame squarely at the feet of the Bush administration, and with his book, attempted to negatively impact Bush’s re-election.

While it was incredibly frustrating to observe obstructive bureaucracy in action, it was also refreshing to witness the dedication of so many men and women in the FBI and CIA, who worked diligently to bring down the enemy and protect their country. Donny Wahlberg’s character and his relationship with General Massoud of the Northern Alliance, was especially touching and ultimately heart-breaking. Massoud had the best line of the film when he lamented, "Are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?"

The final 40 minutes of the film depicting the actual events of 9/11, however, were the most emotionally powerful. From the Flight Attendant Betty Ong’s chilling call to American Airlines, alerting them to the hijacking of their plane while the Twin Towers draw head-spinningly closer, to Deena Burnett’s horrific realization that her husband and the passengers of Flight 93 are doomed to die in their quest to fight back against the terrorists, the movie recalls the atrocities of the day with stunning dramatic effect. And it clearly reminds Americans of their true enemy – radical Islam and its culture of death.

Another great reason for the PC Left to bash this movie; for the rest of us, a call to arms to support candidates who put national security ahead of all else, even in a town as ruthless as Washington D.C.

September 11 Profile: Christopher Newton

2006-09-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

Joining with bloggers all around the country, I participated in Dale Roe's excellent project to honor the memory of the 2,996 victims of September 11. Each blogger was assigned a name and asked to research the person's biography, then display the post on September 11. As per Dale's suggestion, I decided to post it now, and keep it displayed for the entire week.

Working on the life of Christopher Newton, I came to realize all over again the depth of America's loss on September 11. Here was just one honorable, faithful and beautiful life ended too soon and in the most horrific way. Knowing that an upstanding patriot, husband, father, son, brother and friend like Chris, who embodied everything good about the USA and humanity, was but one example of what was brutally taken away in the attacks on our country, truly saddens and angers me.

Read about his life and always remember him and everyone who perished on that terrible day.

By all accounts, Christopher Newton was a man of honor and integrity, who loved his family and made significant contributions to the world around him. Newton, who was 38 at the time of the September 11 attacks, was president and chief executive officer of Work-Life Benefits, a consultation and referral service.

His longing to spend more time with his wife of 15 years and their two children, ages 7 and 10, led him to relocate the family from California to Virginia, in an effort to cut down on the 200,000-plus miles he logged every year, mostly by air, from the west coast to the east coast.

Newton, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon, was on his way back to Orange County to retrieve his family's yellow Labrador, who'd been left behind until they could settle into their new home in Arlington, Virginia.

In the aftermath of the attacks, The LA Times printed this quote: "That's one of the horrible ironies of this whole thing," said a friend and co-worker, Denise Markley. "One reason he moved to the East Coast was so that he wouldn't have to travel so much."

The Times also provided a short bio of Newton, and some reflective thoughts from his mother:

Reared in Long Beach, where his parents live, Newton earned degrees from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UCLA, and for a long time sang in his church choir. He is also survived by a sister and brother.

"The world lost a really good person," said his mother, Barbra Newton. "He was very excited about the future."

Never forget that the hopes for a bright future possessed by innocent people like Christopher Newton were destroyed by a vicious anti-western, anti-American enemy, with absolutely no regard for human life -- including their own.

As we pay tribute to the fallen, let us be ever vigilant in protecting ourselves and our fellow-citizens from future harm, recognizing that America truly is the world's best hope, as evidenced by the lives of extraordinary people like Christopher Newton.

May he, and all of the victims of September 11, rest in peace in the presence of God. And may God bless their families and the United States of America as we join together in remembrance.

Off To A Great Start: Eagles Beat Texans 24-10!

2006-09-10T16:28:00.000-04:00

Thanks in part to #5, whose impressive stats for the day were 24/35 for 314 yards, with 3 TD's and 1 Interception.

However, my favorite Eagle also turned in a noteworthy performance, as did recent (and brilliant) acquisition Donte Stallworth, garnering 71 yards rushing and 141 yards receiving, respectively. Factor in 5 awesome sacks by the defense and their 2nd half shutout of the Texans and you have the makings of a focused, determined and talented Superbowl contender.

And with Miami a mere 50 minute drive to the south, Superbowl hopes are running high for this die-hard Eagles fan. But it is a loooong season, and anything can and will happen on any given Sunday. So, for now I'm savoring this very auspicious season opener and looking forward to taking on the NY Giants at the Linc next week.

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!

Three Hours to Kick-Off!

2006-09-10T10:15:00.000-04:00

Woo-hoo!

My favorite Eagle, Brian Westbrook, is starting today. If you don't live in the Philly area anymore, the Eagles website offers some helpful suggestions for game-day viewing with other relocated Birds fans.

Here in South Florida, this place is all the rage for Eagle-watching with the faithful. I'm not sure yet where I'll take in the season opener; I may opt for a friend's house nearby, which is equipped with every channel known to mankind. Or, maybe I'll hang out here.

Wherever I decide, I'll be revved up and ready for some Eagles "fitball!!!"

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!

The Die-Hard Derangement of Democrats

2006-09-08T09:06:00.000-04:00

Watch today's episode of Vent with Michelle Malkin. Not only do I question Democrats' patriotism, I question their sanity.

As disappointing to conservatives as some Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain have been, they are still a far superior choice, given the grave challenges facing this country.

Do we really want a majority party in Congress that steadfastly believes that either Jews and not Jihadists, or George W. Bush and his Administration, were the perpetrators behind 9/11????

It feels like deja vu as I'm starting to panic over these mid-term elections, just as I did the Presidential election in 2004. This week alone I came face to face with two very sick individuals in Delray Beach, one asking me if I was "psycho-religious" simply because I was persuing David Limbaugh's Bankrupt in a bookstore; and the other sporting a despicable tee shirt featuring George Bush and a map of Texas, declaring that "A village has lost its idiot."

Now ABC caves into dictatorial threats from Camp Clinton, for daring to present the many faults its administration made in the prosecution -- or lack thereof -- of terror. The truth certainly does hurt, and from the '93 Trade Center bombing to the Khobar Towers to the USS Cole, Clinton and his gang stubbornly refused to take Osama Bin Laden and terror threats seriously. And liberals pride themselves on non-censorship and free speech??? Once again, their staggering hypocrisy reveals itself and knows no bounds.

Contrast this with George W. Bush, who in the face of outright lies and fabrications presented in Michael Moore's crock, Farenheit 9/11, said nothing. Nor did he protest the outrageous ads likening him to Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and every other psychotic dictator to ever commit mass murder and other vile atrocities. And he has remained silent regarding ABC's mini-series, though he is also held accountable for the events of 9/11, as he should.

However, Clinton had eight years to deal with the issue, contrasted with Dubya's scant 8+ months. The Clintonistas are devastated by the thought that Americans might actually "connect the dots" and realize that they bear the heavier burden for the horrific deaths of 2,996 Americans on that infamous day. And since the only "legacy" Bill Clinton has involves sexual assaults, scams, perjury and the pardon of criminals, coercion of ABC to edit or cancel this program is their only hope to "preserve" it.

I'm absolutely disgusted by the Democratic Party as it continues to sacrifice this country on the altar of political power and ambition. Wasn't the price tag of 9/11 high enough? Thanks in part to Bill Clinton's presidency, a free Osama was able to mastermind the worst attack on American soil, leaving another President to pick up the bloody pieces and prosecute a very necessary and difficult war, both abroad and at home.

I pray that patriotic Americans everywhere will see through the smoke and mirrors and elect officials who will put their country's safety and security ahead of blind ambition. Our survival depends on it.

Bad News for Bubba and Company

2006-09-06T23:46:00.000-04:00

They say the truth has a way of surfacing eventually, and it looks like Bill Clinton and his former joke of an administration will finally experience that for themselves. And for all those who think 9/11 was orchestrated and executed in the mere 9 months following George W. Bush's inauguration, and is therefore, solely his fault and responsibility, this documentary should set them straight. I say "should" because it probably won't. With BDS running rampant and deep in their hearts and minds, even factual evidence can't cure them.

And in fairness, from what I've heard, the production is tough on George Bush, too, as it should be. However, Clinton and company laid the groundwork by refusing to take terrorist threats and events (like the '93 WTC bombing) seriously. Imagine, this former United States President, over whom so many elites fawn adoringly (and sickeningly), could have had Osama Bin Laden -- the vile human scum responsible for the carnage of 2996 Americans on 9/11 -- on a silver platter, and obstinately refused!

But give them some credit; this is the same inept administration that "saved" Americans from the ominous threat caused by a little Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez --whew!-- now that could have really spelled disaster, had he been given the chance to stay in the country. Who knows how many American lives have been spared?

But I digress. I am thrilled that ABC had the gumption to produce a thorough, fact-based documentary of the run-up to that horrible day nearly 5 years ago, and I look forward to watching it. I hope other Americans will, too.

Bush Derangement Syndrome in Books a Million?

2006-09-06T22:56:00.000-04:00

In beautiful Delray Beach??? Who'd have believed it?? Yet, I'm pretty sure that's what the gentlemen who approached me was suffering from.

After working out at Get Fit, I had a few moments before meeting a friend for coffee so I decided to stop in the Books a Million store in the Delray Plaza. I'd seen David Limbaugh's appearance on Hannity and Colmes, and thought I'd check out a copy of his new book, Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party.

I quickly discovered Limbaugh's latest offering among a number of other left and right leaning political books (kudos to Books a Million for their intellectual diversity), and unobtrusively perused it by a table of discounted offerings in an unoccupied aisle. While I alternately chuckled and fumed quietly to myself in reaction to its various contents chronicling a political party that is so consumed with hatred for President Bush it brazenly puts its own country in mortal danger even in a time of war, I was interrupted by a barely audible male voice.

As I looked up, I met the stare of a well-dressed black man approximately in his mid 20's to early 30's with a disapproving smile on his face. I honestly didn't understand what he'd asked, partly because he mumbled and partly because he had some type of foreign accent. "Excuse me?" I asked politely.

This time it sounded something like "Are you a psycho religious?" Again, he spoke in a very low whisper. In an effort to bestow the benefit of the doubt -- he looked like a nice guy, after all -- I asked for clarification a second time. And, just like before, it sounded very much like "Are you a psycho religious?"

Judging by the determined look in his eye, I felt pretty certain that I'd heard him correctly. While every ounce of my being wanted to retort sarcastically, "Are you a radical Muslim terrorist?," I resisted the temptation and simply demanded to be left alone. But I walked away just in case; after all, nice conservative girls should never resort to the disgusting tactics employed by many on the far left, no matter how justified. And sometimes I just can't trust myself to rise above the fray when dealing with BDS sufferers.

While I respect this man's right to disagree with David Limbaugh and me, I didn't appreciate his obnoxious question, especially since I was minding my own business; it's also a sure bet that if the situation had been reversed and I'd asked him if he was an America-hating Muslim in response to his choice of book, he'd probably denounce me as a "racist infidel," or something along those lines.

Anyway, the book uses plenty of real life examples to support its premise that the Democratic Party of today is indeed intellectually and morally bankrupt. Sadly, there's plenty of evidence. And that's a shame, because as Limbaugh notes, Republicans need a robust opposition party of ideas to keep them sharp and to serve the needs of this country. And while lots of Republicans (including President Bush) are at times at odds with conservative values and the will of the people, they are still a better choice than today's typical Democrat.

Am I "psycho religious?" Well, I don't fly planeloads of innocent people into buildings or hack away at the heads of non-Christians using blunt instruments to make the gruesome death as painful as possible. But I do read conservative authors, attend church regularly, pray for my country, friends and family and do my best to forgive my enemies, as taught by Jesus in the Bible (ok, I'm not always 100% successful on that one).

Oh -- but I did vote for President Bush twice, a sure sign of psychosis in the minds of people like the gentleman I encountered today.

Looks Like I'm Voting for Crist This November

2006-09-05T23:02:00.000-04:00

I'm too tired right now to analyze it, except to say, I guess it beats the alternative.

Marvelous Mona Vie Part II

2006-09-05T19:46:00.000-04:00

Another huge factor in the astonishing growth of network marketing and the health and wellness industry is technology. Unlike years ago, distributors no longer have to stock their garages with inventory; they simply educate their prospects on the benefits of their product, and via the internet, ship the orders directly to the person's front door. And since the world wide web is open 24/7, business can be conducted around the clock, and many times, is taking place while the distributor sleeps.

Companies who utilize network marketing, which has also been called "word of mouth" advertising, also tend to put forth a superior product, since this model allows them to channel more funds into research and development, while also permitting a huge pay-off for independent distributors. In effect, the "middle-man" or retail chain of command, is eliminated. And since no one is paying celebrities to hawk their products, or taking out ads in major print, cable and network media, the consumer is getting a better quality item at a reasonable cost.

Finally, there's the credibility issue: Most independent distributors are required to actually use their company's product. Therefore, when they promote its benefits to a prospect, that person can rest assured they are speaking from personal experience, assuming they're dealing with an upstanding citizen. Additionally, the consumer is able to "try it before they buy it," which tends to ensure greater customer satisfaction and retention. And when the product works, people get excited about sharing it with others, just as they would their experience at a new restaurant or movie.

So let's get back to Mona Vie, an extraordinary drink that is doing unbelievable things for people's health and/or wealth. As I mentioned, I'd already been sold on network marketing as a viable method of creating income. Problem was, although I loved the products I'd been representing for the other company, I was stuggling to make serious money with them, though many people involved were achieving unprecedented levels of success. Even after nearly a year of disciplined phone calls, trainings, one on one meetings, motivational seminars, regular attendance at business leads groups, and endless prospecting, I couldn't get beyond the mid-level pay position. What was I doing wrong?

Enter my sponsor, a gentleman I'd met in a business-leads group. Since he'd already known I was a serious network marketer, he'd contacted me first about Mona Vie, after attending a tasting and business briefing. His goal was to make me his "wing man." However, when I first obliged his "demand" to visit the Monavie website, I wasn't terribly impressed, the beautiful design notwithstanding. It was hard for me to get excited over a juice, no matter how nicely packaged. Then there was the matter of flavor; if it didn't appeal to my taste buds, there was no way on earth I was getting involved and I told him so right off the bat. He assured me it was indeed delicious and "tasted like berries." Still skeptical, I kept an open mind and agreed to meet with him.

Once I drank a few ounces of this enticing beverage, I was hooked. And when I learned it was a convenient way to get 4-6 servings of fruit with just 4 ounces per day, and eliminate the multitiude of vitamin capsules I'd been forcing myself to swallow, I knew I wanted to drink Mona Vie on a daily basis.

A proprietary blend of 19 fruits and berries, all chosen for their proven health benefits, the juice's "Crown Jewel" is the acai berry, found in the Brazilian rainforest, and used by natives for centuries to solve all kinds of ailments. It had only recently been discovered by medical experts, including Dr. Ralph Carson M.D., Monavie's Chief Science Officer, and brought into the mainstream. The fruit had also been praised by Dr. Nicholas Perricone in his book The Perricone Promise, as well as in a very highly-publicized venue -- The Oprah Winfrey Show.

With stats like those, it seemed a sure winner, at least from a product standpoint. But what about the equally important income aspect of the business? If I wasn't reaching my goals with my current company whose products were also phenomenal and consumable (though not a functional beverage, and therefore, not in direct conflict with Mona Vie), how would this opportunity prove any different?

The answer lies in the marketing plan, which I'd heretofore assumed was a standard, cookie-cutter feature of all network marketing companies. The Marine explained that unlike my company, Mona Vie utilized a "non-flushing" binary system, which basically forces a team effort and generates a motivating weekly payout. You build two "legs," instead of having to sponsor wide and deep (picture a very large rectangle), and as you continue to personally enroll distributors beyond your original two, you have nowhere else to place them, but under each of your intial distributors, which helps their volume as well as yours. Basically, you get your original two, and help each of them get their two, even as you continue to personally sponsor others.

Without getting too complicated for the purposes of this post, there are multiple payouts, but the one that becomes most lucrative as your organization grows is the "team commission." The challenge is to keep your "legs" balanced, as team commission is 10% of the lessor leg. The "non-flushing" part means you never lose the volume from the greater leg; it holds until you catch up to it. Compared with the plan I'd been working, this seemed much simpler, and indeed, I am experiencing much greater success with this venture. But the real life testimonials are by far the most exciting part of the Mona Vie experience for me.

While the company makes no claims -- after all, this is a food, not even a supplement or an herb -- the personal stories are breath-taking. From a microbiologist's friend whose cancer spots on the liver disappeared a short while after drinking the juice, to my own mother's dramatically-lowered blood pressure and arthritis relief, I continue to be impressed with Mona Vie. Somehow the antioxidants and phytonutrients in these specially-chosen fruits assist the body in achieving balance; therefore, whatever the issue may be -- migraines, chronic fatigue, diabetic neuropathy, heart disease, etc. -- there's an excellent chance that Mona Vie can alleviate the problem.

And now that I've debunked the myth of the "pyramid scheme" I'd be happy to show you how Mona Vie can improve your financial situation as well as your physiology.

To your health....and wealth!

Marvelous Mona Vie Part I

2006-09-05T18:22:00.000-04:00

Ok, here comes the "shameless" plug, but not before I provide some background information, to put it all into context.

I was not seeking out another business opportunity back in late-February, when my sponsor -- a previous Network Marketing success story with another company -- called me and ordered me to go onto this website (did I mention he's also a former Marine with an intense personality?). "Why am I going onto this website?" I demanded, sort of uncooperatively. At that point in time, I was still very much focused on another health and wellness business with excellent products; it wasn't until I got involved with Mona Vie that I came to realize that not all marketing plans are created equal. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Certainly, it all begins with a high-quality, results-oriented product in the red-hot health and wellness industry, which economist Paul Zane Pilzer predicts will produce The Next Millionaires. With baby boomers -- who account for nearly 2/3 of the country's spending -- growing older, the demand for alternative products designed to create better health and longevity (and in some cases, a younger appearance) has sky-rocketed. After all, this demographic is known for being, shall we say, a tad self-absorbed? That translates into unlimited opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard and represent a reputable product.

But that's just the beginning. While the direct sales industry is experiencing a growth spurt in tandem with health and wellness, network marketing still elicits negative reactions with some prospects, ranging anywhere from mild derision to outright horror. Anyone who chooses to develop a residual income stream with an upside as high as that of the network marketing concept must also be prepared to handle rejection and in some cases, ridicule. Sadly, the misconception is founded in events that took place decades ago (i.e. "the Ponzi scheme") that have no bearing on the modern-day system and certainly, no roots within the network marketing companies of today.

Are there disreputable network marketing companies and/or distributors? Sadly, yes. Just as there are disreputable corporations, contractors, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., who represent a small minority of their profession, network marketing has its share of bad eggs. But that doesn't mean it's not a sound, legal and profitable concept, and it most emphatically doesn't mean that all companies that employ this model are evil. Of all business models, network marketing is most aligned with capitalism, precisely because it is firmly rooted in free enterprise and competition. Further, it creates a level playing field and in most cases, imposes absolutely no limits on the independent distributor's income. Not many corporations and small businesses can make that claim.

For example, how many people do you know that can afford to fork over anywhere from $1.1 million to $1.7 million for a Taco Bell franchise? If you're anything like me, not many. And how long does it take the average franchise-owner to break even, let alone make a profit? Typically 2-3 years. Factor in things like employee turnover, payroll and other taxes, and liability insurance, and you have a truly losing propostion, no matter how well-known the company.

In Chapter 12 of his book, Multiple Streams of Income, multi-millionaire real-estate mogul and network marketer Robert G. Allen recounts his journey from multi-level skeptic to unlimited passive income-earner, prompted by the unexpected resignation of his secretary one fateful day, not long after she'd invited him to join her in her network marketing business. Both Allen and his equally successful contemporary and author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, tout the industry as a vehicle for the average person to create an extraordinary residual income and lifestyle with a very low start-up cost, thus generating unlimited prosperity and freedom from the very tired "time for money" trade-off offered by traditional corporations. Where else can a diligent, hard-working secretary extrapolate herself from the 9-5 grind and earn money while enjoying a Hawaiian vacation?

With the support of reputable business leaders like Allen and Kiyosaki, the once pervasive stereotype of the "pyramid scheme" is slowly losing traction as more people realize that 1. There is no such thing as job security; 2. Financial freedom is not obtained by working for someone else; and 3. Only network marketing provides incredible -- and in some cases -- unfathomable passive income, if you are willing to put in the required time and diligence up front. It is most definitely NOT a "get rich quick scheme;" it is a serious and rewarding financial freedom vehicle for those professionals who treat it as such.

Primary Day in Florida

2006-09-05T17:58:00.000-04:00

My friend Carole is working diligently as a poll-watcher as I type this. Better her than me in this county, but I'm thankful that there are Republicans with the stomach for such unpleasant tasks. Conventional wisdom says Crist will run away with it, but I guess we'll know for sure soon enough.

Other business obligations have kept me from blogging over the last few days, but I hope to be back to my usual schedule soon. On the plus side, business is picking up. I'll post a "shameless" plug about that very soon!

In other news, I've been offered a columnist position with another site. I won't give the address just yet, as my first article is on a trial basis; if they like it, then I'll be a regular. It's a pretty impressive site and I am very excited about being a small part of it.

With football season upon us, I think I'll write my first piece about life as a female football enthusiast. Every once in a while, it's good to take a break from politics and terrorism. Sadly, they will both still be there when I return to them.

Oh well, what did Ronald Reagan say about the former; something like "politics may not be the world's oldest profession, but it bears a strong resemblance to it?" I'll have to reseach that, so I can post the proper quote.

Back soon!

Santorum Narrows the Gap in PA with Strong Stance Against Illegal Immigration; It's Definitely Not Miller Time

2006-09-01T13:49:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Times:

Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, has dramatically narrowed the huge poll lead held by state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. in November's election, and Republican strategists say his tough stance on immigration has been a key factor.

"Rick's immigration message is resonating," said John Braybender, Mr. Santorum's media consultant, who has helped the campaign produce two immigration ads in recent months. "People understand that the immigration issue is much more far-reaching than just border states."

Internal polling by the Santorum campaign -- as well as by House and Senate campaigns across the country -- suggests that the immigration issue will help Republicans in November.

And while I haven't viewed his campaign commercials, I am pleased that Rick makes an often overlooked point in the "we're a country of immigrants" rationalization:

Voters, he said, see the issue as more than just illegal aliens streaming across the border. It's also about giving them Social Security benefits, waiving certain back taxes and other matters of lawfulness and fairness. In one ad released recently, Mr. Santorum tells viewers about his own immigrant background, but uses the opportunity to point out that his grandparents came here legally and obeyed all the immigration laws.

Why is it too much to ask that Mexican immigrants do the same? And why should they receive preferential treatment over immigrants from other countries who do go through the proper channels?

The answer, unfortunately, is the fault of both Left and Right, who pander to the Latino market for differing reasons:

While left-leaning politicians exploit illegal immigration for votes, many on the right are obsessed with cheap labor and corporate profits. Just today, Miller Beer exposed itself as a shameless profiteer willing to endanger their own country's national security by sponsoring an illegal immigration march in Chicago.

Via Michelle Malkin:

Marchers had to duck into fast-food restaurants for water when they first took to Chicago's streets in support of illegal immigrants five months ago. At the next two marches, family-owned grocery stores offered free bottled water from trucks emblazoned with their names.

This time, as demonstrators march from Chinatown to House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-Ill.) Batavia office this weekend, they will have Miller Brewing Co., as a sponsor. The brewer has paid more than $30,000 for a planning convention, materials and newspaper ads publicizing the event.

With football season upon us, I suggest that fans and angry Americans everywhere send Miller a message by boycotting their product. Since I detest beer, the best I can do is encourage others who love their country as much as a cold brew to support other beer-makers who put patriotism ahead of profits.

Oh, and cast a vote for pro-border enforcement candidates come November.

The "Sophistication" of Hatred

2006-08-31T19:23:00.000-04:00

Heard about this new film on the Drudge Report via Wizbang and the Anchoress. It is scheduled to premier at the Toronto Film Festival, where it is sure to garner rave reviews from "sophisticates" who, unlike us simple folk with our passe sense of right and wrong, inhabit a world of moral relativism, where nuance is king and feeling good is the only justification required.

During the 2004 Election, I was alternately shocked, outraged and even saddened at times by the sheer hatred of some on the Left for President Bush, which found expression in the most distasteful and in many cases -- dishonest -- ways. Michael Moore's "crock-u-mentary," Farenheit 9/11 is a high-profile example, but I recall an incident in Tennessee that was equally appalling. President Bush was portrayed as a retarded Special Olympian on a flyer, his face distorted and exaggerated with Down's Syndrome features; underneath the photo the verbage warned voters not to send a "retard" back to the White House. Having an older brother with Down's Syndrome, this was especially repulsive. Yet it is a stunning example of what passed for discourse and debate on the left side of the aisle in 2004 and to this day.

With the President's decisive victory the Left's descent into the maelstrom accelerated, as did their condescension of their fellow-countrymen. Bush voters were ignorant rednecks and scary Jesus freaks, while the trite and unoriginal refrain of "Bush is Hitler," dominated most of the dialogue.

Then along came Katrina and with it, unfounded accusations that President Bush "hates black people." Apparently, this didn't include the black people in Mississippi and Alabama, who -- thanks to competent local leadership -- are rebuilding their lives right alongside their white neighbors. No criticism of black New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, whose racist "chocolate city" remarks were not decried as "divisive" by anyone on the Left; that's a charge reserved for -- you guessed it! -- President Bush.

But just when sane Americans thought they'd seen the worst from this unhinged segment of the population, along comes this vile film. I have to give them credit; I didn't think they could possibly sink any lower, but they've proven me wrong. It is a frightening example of the power of hatred when it becomes an all-consuming force in the hearts and minds of human beings. I shudder to think of how much venom and malice must be flowing through the veins of everyone involved in this production, to be able to manufacture a movie about a sitting President's assassination, and call it "art." Shame on them!

I only hope that come November, they pay dearly for their trangressions at the ballot box.

Crazy for Coffee

2006-08-31T14:36:00.000-04:00

Personally, I'm a Dunkin' Donuts kind of girl. But I wrote the following article as an objective comparison of America's two most popular brews: Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. Though not the focus of this study, I'd be willing to wager that preferences between the two are split along party lines, with Red Staters partial to the brand that began (ironically enough) as a coffee and donut shop in Massachusetts and Blue Staters preferential to the European-style, Seattle-based coffee giant. I could be very wrong, of course. Maybe I'll do a little research into it and post the results at a later time. Meanwhile, enjoy this over a cup of your favorite blend!

If the thriving, ubiquitous presence of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks locations around the USA is any indication, Americans sure do love their coffee. According to the Dunkin Donuts website, it is estimated that more than 100 million Americans drink a total of 350 million cups of coffee a day. That’s a lot of caffeine (and decaf) consumption going on from coast to coast. So how does that translate into profits for the country’s two most recognizable coffee purveyors? How well does each company’s brand capture their share of this sizeable market?

To any casual observer, the stark differences between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, and their respective demographic, is relatively easy to identify. While many Americans prefer the pleasant, flavorful blend of DD’s 100% Arabica coffee, there are countless others who crave the decidedly stronger, darker strains of high-quality, whole bean brews and Italian-style espresso beverages offered by Starbucks. The former, with its trademark hot-pink and orange logo and limited seating (at least in most locations) tends to draw in a “hit and run” type of crowd, looking for their morning shot on the way to the office. Starbucks, on the other hand, with its wireless connections, comfy chairs, contemporary fixtures and up-to-date musical ambiance, offers the perfect “gathering place” atmosphere, whether you’re an entrepreneur conducting business, a college student surfing the internet, or a hip guy or gal, looking for a “third home” to hang out and read the paper.

Yet each continues to thrive, even as they change with the times, precisely because each remains firmly rooted in its origins and purpose. Dunkin Donuts was founded back in 1950 by Bill Rosenberg in Quincy, Massachusetts, having originally operated under the name “Open Kettle,” a coffee and donut shop established by Rosenberg in 1948. Hailed as a “visionary” by Success magazine and “the father of franchising as we know it today,” by Nation’s Restaurant News, Rosenberg was the embodiment of the American spirit of hard work, passion and dedication. Having come of age during the depression, with limited education, his original concept came to life in 1948, in the form of the Industrial Luncheon Services Company, that delivered meals and coffee break snacks to customers in the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts.

If its website is any indication, Dunkin’ Brands, which today has a unique portfolio of three complementary brands: Dunkin’ Donuts, Togos (the legendary California sandwich shop with the oft-mispronounced name) and Baskin-Robbins (the largest and one of the most-loved ice cream chains in the world), has no intention of abandoning its focus on high-quality, affordable food and beverages on the go. Each of their brands appeals to a different time of day, working together to offer great food and great value to their customers. The company combines the strength of its brands by housing two or three in a single storefront, completely redefining the quick service experience for their clientele.

Supporting this emphasis on quick but quality service, the Dunkin’ Brands launched its “America Runs on Dunkin” advertising campaign on April 10, 2006. With a focus on “how Dunkin’ Donuts keeps busy Americans fueled and on the go… the new campaign is a fun and often quirky celebration of life, showing Americans embracing their work, their play and everything in between, accompanied every step of the way by Dunkin’ Donuts.”

The release continues, “Visually, the ad campaign comes to life through a set of interactive icons that represent the campaign tagline - "America Runs on Dunkin'." The icons help to drive the concept that Dunkin' Donuts' freshly-made coffee and baked goods energize Americans from all walks of life so they can keep the country running on their dedicated hard work and positive outlooks. The campaign pays homage to those who embody the authentic spirit on which America was founded, as everyday people are shown bringing their honesty, enterprising creativity and good humor to their work, families and communities.”

If Dunkin’ Donuts pays homage to the energetic spirit of America, Starbucks offers it a European-inspired “home away from home” alternative, complete with familiar green umbrellas, outdoor and indoor café seating and an extensive – oftentimes confusing (at least for first timers) – menu. While Dunkin’ had expanded its offerings over the years to include things like cappuccino and coffee coolattas, Starbucks began its existence with a desire to upgrade American taste as it pertained to coffee beans.

The company was founded in 1971, by three friends with a passion for fresh coffee - Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker – who opened a small shop and began selling fresh-roasted gourmet coffee beans and brewing and roasting accessories in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Named after the first mate in Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, Starbucks and its mermaid logo would soon revolutionize the industry.

In the early 1980’s, Howard Schulz – a recent addition to the highly-respected local roaster and retailer of whole bean and ground coffees – took a business trip to Italy, where he became captivated by the rich tradition of the espresso beverage. According to the company profile, espresso beverages then became a core element of Schulz’s vision for Starbucks, which he purchased with the support of local investors in 1987.

Yet, according to Lawrence Cheek in a Special for the Post-Intelligencer, “it’s not about the French roast. Nor is it the caramel macchiato, the lemon scones, or the Elvis Costello CD’s. Starbucks' globe-storming success is about place -- creating coffee bars that feel grounded in their neighborhoods, that lure people to hang out for a wide spectrum of reasons, and that somehow make us think "Starbucks" for refreshment or conversation.”

Unlike the standard, energetic hot-pinks and oranges of the Dunkin’ Donuts chains, each Starbucks – while undeniably in sync with the company’s overall look – encompasses elements of the particular neighborhood in which it is located. Cheek continues, “Starbucks' stores are worth some architectural investigation because, unlike fast-food joints, there are real differences from one location to another -- not just in size, shape and furnishings, but in the feel of each. This is clearly part of the company's formula: unlike Burger King, venturing into a Starbucks you haven't tried before offers the hint of adventure.”

Whether located in an upscale piazza like Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida, or in a northwest contemporary shed on Mercer Island in the Pacific Northwest, each Starbucks beckons its clientele to not just enjoy a cup of coffee in its various forms, but to partake of a socially-relaxed yet intellectually-stimulating atmosphere that aligns itself more with a European-style café than an American fast-food-and-drink operation.

Launi Skinner, quoted in Cheek’s article, and at the time a senior vice president for store development, said Starbucks is "less about the transaction, and more about the experience. Starbucks interior design is a much closer kin to a modern book store than to a fast-food outlet because the goal is to nurture a long-term relationship with the customer rather then to provide short-term refreshment.”

Unlike Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks does not franchise to individuals, though it does consider licensing its operations to a master concessionaire or other company, where appropriate, e.g. in the case of an airport. So how well does the Starbucks concept feed its bottom line?

According to the company’s Fact Sheet, there are 5,393 company-operated coffee houses and 2,952 licensed locations in the United States alone. In July, 2006, net revenues increased 20%, to $596 million. Obviously, this is a business-model that’s working well for the Seattle-based coffee giant.

However, the franchise concept that pioneered the impressive growth of Dunkin’ Brands is a model that continues to generate revenue for Massachusetts-based Company. Dunkin’ Brands boasts 7,600 units in the United States, with 2004 fiscal year earnings of $4.1 billion. Though not the focus of this investigation, both Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts also operate thriving worldwide locations – Starbucks in 36 countries and Dunkin’ Donuts in 29.

For Americans, it all comes down to choice, and whether you prefer a reasonably-priced, quick cup of coffee on the go, or possess a willingness to fork over a few dollars more for a full-bodied brew, housed in a bookstore-type atmosphere, you can certainly find your perfect blend at either one of these corporate American coffee icons.

Functional vs. Traditional

2006-08-31T13:47:00.000-04:00

And I'm not talking about furniture! I'm posting my latest article here, which delves into the emergence of functional training as a "new" method of shaping up, achieving better health and improving one's lifestyle. Studios like Get Fit are providing a welcome alternative to the impersonal mega-gym, though each has its place in the rapidly exploding Health and Wellness Industry.

According to economist Paul Zane Pilzer, the Health and Wellness Industry is now a $350 billion dollar business. Out of that astonishing figure, $24 billion accounts for fitness club memberships, with another $12 billion paid to Personal Trainers. While this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Wellness Industry as a whole, those figures merit a closer look into the preponderance of mega-gyms around the country and the simultaneous emergence of a new kind of workout regimen known as functional training. Clearly Americans have come a long way. As Pilzer states, “In 1975, jogging was regarded as a “craze,” a fringe thing, like the hula hoop that would go away quietly if we just gave it enough time. The idea that an entire nation would consider running as a normal, everyday activity would have been sheer lunacy.”

Today, it is hard to meet anyone who doesn’t at least give lip service to the idea of regular exercise. But what is the difference between a traditional gym and this new phenomenon of functional training, and how does design impact the success of each? A good place to start is with their target markets.

According to Christine King, Founder and Director of the Delray Beach, Florida-based, Get Fit! Functional training studio, their services cater to the professional 45 year-old female who’s too busy to exercise and intimidated by the gym. Additionally, she doesn’t really believe she can actually accomplish her goals due to a lack of guidance and structure. As King observes, for many of these clients just walking through the door is an accomplishment.

As I met with her in her studio office, Christine motioned to the chair I’d been sitting in and remarked, “I’ve renamed that the ‘crying chair,’ because our required initial consultation tends to be a highly-emotional experience for our customers. So many women want to lose weight and feel better, but they’re incredibly frustrated because nothing they’ve tried – including the mainstream gym approach – has worked for them.”

So how does Get Fit appeal to its client-base? It begins with a user-friendly website, carefully crafted after much research into the pros and cons of various competitor sites. In their design, Christine employed clean lines against a white space, with easy-to-read information within a simple navigation system. The studio itself is friendly, bright, cheery –and most importantly – clean. The naturally-lighted space is devoid of two major elements that characterize the traditional gym atmosphere: Wall to wall mirrors and intimidating machines.

Christine’s philosophy of “keeping it simple” is also reflected in photographs hung at each station that mimic its respective form and assist the client in understanding how to execute the move. This emphasis on the client’s needs separates Get Fit from other competitors in the fitness industry. As Christine explains, “We focus on the person and their individual goals, not the studio. We share what our studio can do for them, not the other way around.”

And with a staff of highly-trained, certified professionals, Get Fit can also accommodate the needs of clients with disabilities, since the circuit is adaptable to all fitness levels. Among some of the physical issues the studio addresses are MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Autism and severe back injuries. About the last one, Christine states with confidence, “Bad backs - we can fix them,” a claim not often heard in the traditional gym arena, or even in Get Fit’s closest rival, Curves. Also unlike the popular women’s fitness chain, Get Fit is open to both sexes and provides a “personal training experience,” without the extra cost. Whether there’s one person or fifteen working out at a time, each receives personalized attention and instruction from a highly-knowledgeable expert.

Among traditional gyms, LA Fitness is one of the most popular, with over 140 locations nationwide. As with Get Fit their official site is user-friendly and set against a white background, though the many photographs of athletic-looking men and women participating in everything from a basketball game to a dumb-bell workout would most likely succeed better at driving away, rather than enticing the typical Get Fit consumer. Then again, the LA Fitness client profile is significantly different.

According to trainer Matt Swig, regular gyms like LA Fitness appeal to an 18-40 male and female demographic, many of whom are seeking a “larger than life” workout experience. To that end, most gyms are happy to oblige, with wall-to-wall mirrors, lots of imposing equipment, a separate cardio area with ubiquitous treadmills and stationary bikes, and a “muscle-head” section, featuring a plethora of free weights in varying increments of poundage.

As is the case with LA Fitness, gyms tend to keep cardio and weight-training in distinctly different areas, due to their unique cultures. Most cardio areas are stacked higher than other gym offerings, to keep the consumer engaged in the activity; by offering a view, along with a TV set, the aim is to keep the person working harder and longer. By contrast, those who frequent the free-weight area are, as Matt says, “looking for the clang.” They want to hear the noise of the weights, which fuels their “machismo” as they lift and lower. According to Matt, gyms like LA Fitness are rife with “cliques,” segments of the membership who either gravitate to one form of exercise or the other, without a lot of crossover.

Another departure from the functional training concept is the lack of experience of most employees hired by the national fitness chains. Unlike Get Fit, there’s typically no guidance and no supervision. Once you get past the initial, friendly -- and usually inexperienced – Greeter -- and sign on the dotted line, you are pretty much on your own. Most machines have no instructions or photographs to help the user, so in many cases, members can’t be sure that they are even orchestrating the moves properly or efficiently.

As its name suggests, LA Fitness lures its market by invoking an aura of glamour and California-style good health and looks. Each location has a standard design and is the exact same square footage. But if you are suffering from a disability or struggling in post-rehab from a sustained injury, LA Fitness is not your best option since there are no programs for physically-challenged clients. At best, you’ll find two pieces of functional equipment: a stability ball and a medicine ball; hardly enough to build a results-oriented workout around.

In fact, according to Matt, the large-chain fitness centers don’t even really want healthy clients, once they’ve paid their membership. “Most gyms are designed to get your money and hope you never come back,” Swig states, “because if everyone did, there’d never be enough equipment to meet the demand.”

Still, the model is working, at least for the fitness chain’s bottom line, if not necessarily their clients’ figures. Established in 1984, LA Fitness now boasts 140 thriving locations nationwide as mentioned earlier; a quick zip-code search for nearby centers netted 10 results in just two South Florida counties, all within easy access. By contrast, although Get Fit as a functional-training company recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, the privately-owned studio of the same name has been in existence for just 2 years. Still, it’s a concept that is growing steadily, fueled by Christine King’s local involvement in the chamber of commerce and other civic organizations, and weekly Fit Chat conference call, a free service designed to inspire members to reach their personal goals and improve their overall health and quality of life. Additionally, King has been nominated for “Small Businessperson of the Year,” which will yield positive publicity for her burgeoning enterprise, regardless of the outcome.

In the end, as always, it is up to the consumer to choose the method of fitness that’s most beneficial for their personal circumstances and preferences. With the addition of functional training studios to the fitness scene, they now have more variety than ever before.

End Note: I've been happily working out at Get Fit for the past 5 months, and continue to be impressed with the quality of their staff, the cleanliness of the studio and the overall effectiveness of functional training.

Just 10 More Days 'til Regular Season Kick-Off!

2006-08-31T11:30:00.000-04:00

E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!!

David Bossie's Border War Movie

2006-08-31T10:19:00.000-04:00

Via Hot Air, just discovered the trailer for this welcome and timely film by David Bossie. It's gratifying to see a cross-section of Americans, including 1st generation Mexican-Americans, united against ILLEGAL immigration. I stress the word "illegal," because Americans who care about protecting our country's borders are unfairly portrayed as "racist" and "anti-immigration' by the mainstream media and posturing politicians.

Sadly, even our own President referred to the upstanding citizens that comprise The Minute Men as "vigilantes." Pathetic, and one of the critical areas where Dubya and I part company.

From the corrupt Mexican government to left-wingers looking for votes and right-wingers looking for cheap labor, to the radical Reconquista movement, and terrorists seeking to exploit our weaknesses, the USA is facing an epic crisis. One public servant who gets it -- Congressman J.D. Hayworth -- appears prominently in the documentary.

Kudos to David Bossie and everyone involved in the making of this film.

More Derangement in Salt Lake City

2006-08-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

I saw Mayor Rocky Anderson on Fox and Friends this morning, and let's just say he represents the unhinged left very well. E.D. was rightfully teed off and forcefully called him on his claim that the media (of all things) assisted George W. Bush in hoodwinking the American people about WMD's in Iraq, pointing out that countries like France, Russia and England were all under the same conviction.

Too bad there wasn't enough time to deconstruct this very tired and lame argument -- I would've added that while we fiddled with the UN for 18 months, Saddam got busy smuggling the weapons into Syria. More to the point, the man was actively funding and training terrorists all over Iraq, not to mention torturing, murdering, raping and otherwise oppressing his own people.

Rocky Anderson did the Kos Kids, proud, I'm sure. As did the organizer of today's "Death to Israel" Rally in Salt Lake City, orchestrated in response to President Bush and Condi Rice's attendance at an American Legion conference. These people really do need jobs...and a clue.

Kooky Conspiracy Theories

2006-08-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure which is more fear-inducing: The actual threat of radical Islamic terrorism or the sheer lunacy of conspiracty theorists. But after reading Mark Steyn's review of the book, Debunking 9/11 Myths:Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, , I was dismayed to discover just how many misguided souls subscribe to this beyond-ridiculous notion -- a staggering 36% of people polled.

Steyn's article focuses on a -- surprise, surprise -- adjunct professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario, A.K. Dewdney, who fervently believes that 9/11 was an inside job:

"To account for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush White House has produced a scenario involving Arab hijackers flying large aircraft into American landmarks," writes the eminent Ontario academic. "We, like millions of other 9/11 skeptics, have found this explanation to be inconsistent with the facts of the matter."

Instead, he argues, a mid-air plane switch took place on three of the jets. "The passengers of one of the flights died in an aerial explosion over Shanksville, Pa.," he writes, "and the remaining passengers (and aircraft) were disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean." Most of us swallowed "the Bush-Cheney scenario" because we were unaware that, when two planes are less than half a kilometre apart, they appear as a single blip on the radar screen. Thus, the covert switch. Instead of crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the flights were diverted by FBI agents on board to Harrisburg, Pa., where the passengers from all three planes were herded onto UA Flight 175 and flown on to Cleveland Hopkins and their deaths. By then, unmanned Predator drones had been substituted for the passenger jets and directed into their high-profile targets. The original planes and their passengers were finished off over the Atlantic.

O Canada! Has it really come to this?

The Steyn article goes on to highlight various other examples of proponents of this bizarre line of thinking. Of all of the side effects of Bush Derangement Syndrome, this is by far the most insane -- and in light of recent events -- the most dangerously unfounded. Do these people also believe that other radical Muslim assaults were an inside job, too? Steyn continues:

When I was on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple of months back, a listener called up to insist that 9/11 was an inside job. I asked him whether that meant Bali and Madrid and London and Istanbul were also inside jobs. Because that's one expensive operation to hide even in the great sucking maw of the federal budget.

And that's where the book comes in, though the conspiracy nuts childishly cling to their crazy theories, even in the face of hard evidence and physics:

Debunking 9/11 Myths does a grand job of explaining such popular conspiracy-website mainstays as how a 125-foot-wide plane leaves a 16-foot hole in the Pentagon. Answer: it didn't. The 16-foot hole in the Pentagon's Ring C was made by the plane's landing gear. But the problem isn't scientific, it's psychological: if you're prepared to believe that government agents went to the trouble of researching, say, gay rugby player Mark Bingham's family background and vocal characteristics so they could fake cellphone calls back to his mom, then clearly you're not going to be deterred by mere facts. As James B. Meigs, the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, remarks toward the end of this book, the overwhelming nature of the evidence is, to the conspiratorially inclined, only further evidence of a cover-up: "One forum posting that has multiplied across the Internet includes a long list of the physical evidence linking the 19 hijackers to the crime: the rental car left behind at Boston's Logan airport, Mohammed Atta's suitcase, passports recovered at the crash sites, and so on. 'HOW CONVENIENT!' the author notes after each citation. In the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic of conspiracism, there is no piece of information that cannot be incorporated into one's pet theory."

As the saying goes, "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts." Or, in this case, "I hate George W. Bush and America. My mini-mind is deranged; therefore it is willfully impervious to facts."

I suppose the fact that their logic-challenged, severed heads are just as desirable to Islamo-thugs as those of rational westerners is lost on them, too.

A Cure for Airport Idiocy

2006-08-30T16:36:00.000-04:00

Ilana Freedman's New York Post column today decries the "idiocy" of current airport screening procedures and offers a viable alternative that might actually thwart terror plots, instead of encouraging evil-masterminds to develop newer methods of destruction. Referring to the attacks of 9/11, "shoe bomber" John Reid and the foiled London plot, Freedman states:

In each case, we responded to the last attack by putting measures in place that would foil that exact same attack if it were tried again. Yet terrorism is characterized by continual change and adaptation; fighting the last war is worse than useless: It threatens our security at every level.

Terrorists succeed because they're flexible, adapting their tactics to our changing vulnerabilities. They study what we do and how we think, and craft their attacks to take advantage of the holes.

So if our present-day airport security is inconvenient at best and ineffective at worst, is profiling the answer, even though the very thought of it sends some Americans into fits of hyperventilation? Yes -- sort of. She continues:

Many Americans are upset by the politically correct refusal of our security screeners to engage in profiling. They're right - and wrong. It's important to screen everyone who gets on an airplane. But some require closer screening than others - and the faster we understand that, the safer we will be.

Should we be looking more closely at Middle Eastern men aged up to 40? Absolutely. All the 9/11 terrorists fit that description, as did hundreds more who carried out the deadly attacks against the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in East Africa, Khobar Towers and public transit in Madrid and London.

But we also need to screen grandmothers, pregnant women and babies. Why? Because they make good "mules" - who can carry aboard items that they may not even know about.

Freedman uses the example of Anne Marie Murphy, a young Irish pregnant woman who unknowingly tried to board an El Al plane with luggage full of enough plastic explosives to blow up the plane -- courtesy of her Muslim fiancee -- to argue this point.

How did Israel prevent what could have been a gruesome airline fatality? Only by the "trained eye of Israeli screeners, who recognized signs of danger."

An excellent proposal. If only someone in the DHS and TSA would take heed.

No More Pain at the Pump?

2006-08-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

If this USA Today article is accurate, looks like Dick Morris could be proven wrong in his assertion that gasoline prices -- not the War on Terror -- will be foremost on voters' minds come November.

Actually, I never agreed with his assessment, anyway. And even if his argument had merit, the recent foiled terrorist attacks in London earlier this month should hopefully serve as a sobering reminder to Americans that when it comes to Islamic Jihad, we are not out of the woods by a long-shot.

As far as I'm concerned, national security ought to be the overriding consideration when choosing elected officials in a post 9/11 world. Quibbling over gas prices would be a moot exercise indeed, should the USA (God forbid!) surrender to this brutal enemy. Further, voters would do well to take obstructionist politicians (and RINO's) like John McCain to task for blocking alternative drilling in ANWR, which would greatly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Sadly, even Dubya seems to have abandoned this viable solution.

In any case, falling gasoline prices might aid Republican chances of holding onto Congress while boosting the economy. Good news for sure.

More Family Football Follies

2006-08-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

Just found this toast I'd written for my brother Paul in celebration of his 40th birthday a few years back, and thought I'd post it here. While I'm not much of a poet, I managed to capture the spirit of a brother with whom fond memories of childhood are forever intertwined with Philadelphia Eagles football.

Our family gift in commemoration of his birthday milestone was a "boys trip" to South Florida, complete with tickets to the Monday Night Game against the Miami Dolphins at Pro Player Stadium. I had a great time acting as tour guide to Dad, Mark (my oldest brother) and Paul, as we crammed the highlights of Palm Beach, Broward and Dade into one hectic weekend.

As an added bonus, we got to celebrate the "spider hole" capture of one of the world's most evil dictators, Saddam Hussein. Ah, memories!

Ode to Paulie and the Philadelphia Eagles

You were always a devoted Eagles fan, from a very early age,
Though suffering through painful losses often threw you into a rage.

From the losing seasons of the early to mid 70’s, whether watching at the Vet or in the finished basement of our Springfield home,
You admired great players like Bergey, Dempsey, Carmichael and Gabriel,
And wondered if they’d ever see a Superbowl.

Then along came Dick Vermeil, and a reason to believe –
The Miracle of the Meadowlands, a cause for celebration,
As our once-dubbed “Beagles” fought back from rock-bottom,
With Herm Edwards, Wilbert and Jaws
Whose “never-say-die” attitude and tough work ethic
Gave even the Dallas Cowboys pause.

Remember Tony Franklin’s barefoot 59-yard field goal? We all screamed with delight, as our underdog Eagles took to flight,
and beat the much-despised Cowboys that fateful Monday night.

Then came a bitter cold winter’s day in January, 1981 – the 11th to be precise,
With your two sisters Carolyn and Daria freezing by your side,
You witnessed another miracle --- sparked by a Jaworski-Montgomery touchdown hand-off – our end!! – and howled with delight.

We feared you’d jump right onto the field in your euphoria –
The Eagles were finally headed to the Superbowl in New Orleans!!!!

Needless to say, you took the 27-10 loss to the Raiders to heart,
Stomping to your room in dejection and ire,
Wondering what, after such a tough road to the top, could have doused their victory fire.

And who could forget the early morning rides to O’Hara,
With WYSP blasting on the radio with the voice of Frank Le Master.

Through the years of Buddy Ryan, the Swamp Fox and Ray Rhodes,
Although living in Nashville and studying in Med School at Vandy,
Your fidelity to the Eagles never wavered,
You cheered on Randall Cunningham, Mike Quick and Clyde “the Glide,”
Your only hope a Superbowl VICTORY this time!

Now with Andy Reid, as a fan you remain stalwart,
Supporting your team from your home in Cortland,
Sometimes scaring your children with your exuberant cries,
Rooting on McNabb, Westbrook, Staley and the rest of the guys.

So on this your fortieth birthday, we thought it only fitting,
To reward your devotion to your favorite football team,
So… at Pro-Player stadium in Miami, on December 15 you’ll be sitting!

And if that alone isn’t awesome enough, just think, you’ll get to see your little sister, Muzz!!

The Welcome Return of AJ Feeley

2006-08-30T12:42:00.000-04:00

Woo-hoo! I was so excited to read about the return of a true team player and quality human being to the Eagles' roster -- AJ Feeley -- on the Philadelphia Eagles' website today. Feeley is a class-act, whose talent and ability to rise to the occasion salvaged the Eagles' 2002-03 season, when both Donovan McNabb and back-up QB Koy Detmer were injured:

A fifth-round draft pick by the Eagles in 2001, Feeley started five games in 2002 and led the Eagles to a 4-1 record down the stretch to help the Eagles clinch the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs.

With Donovan McNabb recovering from a broken leg, and with Detmer sidelined with an elbow injury, Feeley completed 86 of 154 passes for 1,011 yards, 6 touchdowns and 5 interceptions.

Feeley did not take a snap the following season, 2003, as McNabb returned to full health and played 16 games.

Feeley was then traded to Miami on April 3, 2004.

Welcome back, AJ!

Given this latest development, I'd say an invincible season is definitely within reach!

No News is Good News for Floridians

2006-08-30T12:16:00.000-04:00

Thankfully Ernesto turned out to be a non-event, at least for Floridians. Hopefully it won't intensify back out over the Atlantic and create problems for other parts of the country that have already been ravaged by early-summer flooding.

Looks like blogging will continue today at its usual pace!

Know Your Enemy

2006-08-29T17:50:00.000-04:00

Some sobering reminders from Dennis Prager. Here's an excerpt:

No Muslim country treats non-Muslims and their religions anywhere nearly as decently as any Western non-Muslim country (including Israel) treats Muslims. That is why tens of millions of Muslims immigrate to non-Muslim societies and virtually no non-Muslim immigrates to any Muslim society. In every Muslim country, non-Muslims are either systematically persecuted at worst or treated as inferiors at best.

Read the whole article and send it to anyone you know who considers Israel and Hezbollah -- or for that matter -- the USA and enemies of western civilization, as moral equivalents.

Twenty-Five Years of Trash

2006-08-29T16:06:00.000-04:00

Chuck Colson takes MTV to task in his column, "Empty Legacy," found on Townhall.com:

Perpetual adolescence and living only for the moment are just a couple of the twisted values that MTV has foisted upon us over the past twenty-five years. There’s also exhibitionism, voyeurism, promiscuity, greed, and a host of other vices. Through its style as well as its content, MTV has done all it can to promote the cheap, the vulgar, and the flashy over the good, the true, and the beautiful.

I’m not saying that MTV has added anything to the culture that wasn’t already present. All these elements have always been part of sinful human nature. Where MTV distinguished itself was in glorifying these things - moreover, glorifying them for a young audience.

Thanks in part to networks like MTV, American culture has been degraded to the point where most young people can name every character on The Simpsons, yet have no clue as to the name of the USA's current Vice President, or any one of the present administration's cabinet members. In a post-9/11 world, this is especially tragic. If the younger generation has no reference or respect for past and recent history, how are they to appreciate and understand the ramifications of the radical Islamic assault on western civilization?

Sadly, it seems as if our society has already lost its sense of outrage. And while not all of it can be blamed exclusively the MTV network, it certainly plays an instrumental role in perpetuating a "feel-good" culture of moral relativity and deliberate indifference. As Colson remarks:

Only in a culture shaped by MTV’s kind of values, for example, could Madonna’s latest stage act—hanging on a mirrored cross while singing—draw little more than yawns and “Oh, there she goes again.” Madonna and her onstage antics are a perfect expression of the channel and the culture that helped create her. Or take that infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl. As the AP implied, what shocked an audience full of adults was old hat to many of their kids, who had seen far worse in MTV’s videos and reality shows.

It’s not many people who can look back and say that they changed a culture. That can be pretty awe-inspiring. But when you change it in the way that MTV did, you don’t celebrate: You hang your head in shame.

We've traveled a long way from Little House, I'm afraid.

Katrina and the (Political) Waves

2006-08-29T15:39:00.000-04:00

Here's a snippet of the Wall Street Journal's take on failed government bureaucracy in the wake of Katrina, and the insistence of most politicians on relying on an obviously inefficient system:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, touring New Orleans: "What is needed in New Orleans is public works projects." Senator Hillary Clinton, from a church in Harlem: "Our leadership has turned its back on those people who still need us."

Turned its back? As the chart nearby indicates, Congress has approved $122.5 billion for the Gulf Region, a figure incomprehensible in size to anyone but, well, a politician. The real wonder is that anyone is surprised, much less feigning surprise, that things are going poorly.

New Orleans' plight is not the result of federal underspending. Uncle Sam has spent some five times more on Katrina relief than any other natural disaster in the past 50 years. Both parties in Congress and the White House opted for the status quo by relying on federal bureaucracies to oversee the rebuilding effort. If Uncle Sam were deliberately trying to waste these funds, it is hard to imagine a better way than to funnel the money through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Both HUD and the SBA have been on the chopping block back to the early Reagan years.

Read the whole thing.

Woo-Hoo! Can an invincible season be on tap for the Eagles?

2006-08-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

With the addition of Donte Stallworth, it just might be!

Terrorist Media Follies

2006-08-29T14:44:00.000-04:00

As today's episode of "Vent" proves, they may be living in the Dark Ages, but when it comes to media manipulation, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah are masters of 21st Century exploitation. Michelle Malkin debunks several myths concerning Israel's supposed intentional bombing of "innocent" Red Cross ambulances, and calls on concerned citizens to send the video to their local political leaders. God knows, we can't rely on the ethically-challenged dinosaur media to admit to any fault or complicity.

Instead, most in the mainstream media (with the notable exception of Brit Hume), as usual, demonstrate their anti-Israel colors by swallowing terrorist tall tales whole, while at the same time denouncing astute bloggers who blow the whistle on these outrageous machinations.

If the media refuses to tell the truth, even in the face of this perilous War with Global Jihad, it's up to those of us who love our western civilization and want it to survive, to expose these murdurous, lying thugs. Some things are inherently worth fighting for.

More On Vince Papale

2006-08-29T13:56:00.000-04:00

For those of us who just can't get enough of a nice guy's triumph against all odds, this Vince Papale video is a must-see.

In addition to Vince, the Nationwide Speakers bureau boasts many real-life heroes and heroines, whose individual stories speak to the greatness in all of us. America as the land of opportunity continues to shine brightly as evidenced by these amazing citizens and human beings.

Lovely Little House

2006-08-29T10:19:00.000-04:00

Though I'm not much of a TV watcher anymore, save for the occasional History Channel Special and FOX News, I gave in to the urge to channel surf last night, and was delighted to come across a childhood staple, Little House on the Prairie, broadcasting on the network, TV Land.

It just happened to be one of my all-time favorite episodes, where Almanzo -- the cute guy who'd been the object of Laura's affection from the time he'd arrived in Walnut Grove -- finally realizes that "Beth" (his nickname for her, established early on in their friendship) was now a grown-up and that his feelings for her have suddenly blossomed into love.

Of course, back in 1980, when this episode first ran, having read many of the Little House books penned by the real Laura Ingalls, I knew Almanzo would eventually become her husband. The televsion series, however, did an outstanding job chronicling their initial meeting, courtship and subsequent marriage.

In last night's episode, the show captured the spirit of family and community within which people met, socialized, dated and ultimately exchanged marriage vows. Laura -- finally a teacher -- accepts her first assignment as a substitute teacher for a nearby town, whose schoolmarm has suffered a broken leg. Almanzo, in the spirit of helping out one's neighbor, agrees to provide horse-drawn transportation for Laura. She stays with the incapacitated school teacher during the week, and returns home on the weekends, escorted by Almanzo.

It is during one of these routes that he remarks to her, with a silly grin on his face, "You look different." Later, when Laura excitedly shares the exchange with Ma, her delighted mother advises her that "Men like to be the pursuer. So you just let them do that." Good advice from Ma Ingalls, and not just for her 19th Century daughter; some truths, as they say, are eternal. Based on personal experience, I've come to believe in the validity of Caroline Ingalls' statement. But I digress.

When Laura takes her Ma's words to heart and promises Almanzo, "I'll think about it," in response to his invitation to attend an upcoming church social with him, he's obviously crushed and more than a little confused. A series of heart-warming and amusing scenes follow, including one where Almanzo, lost in thought over his new love, bids his sister goodnight and then walks out the front door, instead of heading up the stairs. In another, he mistakenly interprets an innocent embrace between Laura and one of her students, and punches the young boy to the ground, inciting the ire of Miss Ingalls and resulting in his humiliating exit.

Later he recounts the incident to Charles, Laura's protective Pa, who struggles to keep a straight face as Almanzo admits he wrongly concluded that the boy "was making advances to Laura." When the would-be suitor is safely outside of hearing range, Charles bursts into laughter, though at the same time he's hit with the reality that his "Half-Pint" will soon be leaving the nest and starting her own family.

This charming episode ends with the entire Ingalls family in attendance at the church social, where familiar and not-so-familiar (i.e. extras) townsfolk dance, talk and laugh. A glum Laura searches for her beloved, while a polite young Albert sweetly asks his dateless school-teacher (Almanzo's sister), Eliza, to dance, an invitation she accepts gratefully.

Against this backdrop of small-town merriment, Laura finds Almanzo sulking in the kitchen, and greets him with a tentative, sympathetic "Hi." When they discover that their "dates" for the evening are each other's family members, and not romantic rivals, they are clearly relieved, though still obviously nervous about admitting their feelings to each other.

Almanzo breaks the ice with a "Sweet Sixteen" gift, a beautiful embroidered shawl that Laura promptly ties around her shoulders and softly announces "It's like I'm wearing your colors." The two draw ever-so-slowly closer to each other, before finally exchanging their first tender, chaste kiss. The show ends with the emergence of Laura and Almanzo on the dance floor, now officially Walnut Grove's newest couple.

In this day and age of instant gratification, meaningless hook-ups and safe sex, television dramas like Little House , with its focus on proper courtship, respect and family values probably seems corny and quaint to most people. But watching this episode last night, I found myself nostalgic for an era that, while lacking in personal conveniences, was rife with men and women of character.

Hello Ernesto!

2006-08-29T10:10:00.000-04:00

The good news: It probably won't regain hurricane status before slamming into South Florida. The bad news: I'll still probably lose power (and therefore, blogging ability).

But I'm not complaining; we can deal with heavy rain for a few days.

Just Go Away Jimmy

2006-08-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me that the USA's absolute worst President ever refuses to allow the country to forget he ever occupied the White House. If I were Jimmy, I'd spend less time publicly criticizing the United States and President George W. Bush and more time building Habitat houses, in an effort to deflect retrospection on my many failures as Commander-in-Chief. Alas, the man from Georgia just can't help himself.

Allan Ryskind in Human Events Online takes advantage of Carter's misplaced arrogance and details some of his dubious achievements during his tenure in office:

Let’s see. On Jimmy’s watch, Fidel Castro was on the march in Africa and fueling potent Marxist revolutionary groups throughout Central America. El Salvador and Honduras were under siege. Grenada actually went Communist in 1979. Nicaragua was taken over by Marxist thugs in the same year.

Jimmy’s astute analysis: Fidel was not a problem.

Even his State Department was telling him otherwise.

When the Sandinistas seized Nicaragua, Jimmy proclaimed to reporters: “I do not attribute at all the change in Nicaragua to Cuba.”

Then there was his admonition to Americans about our "inordinate fear of communism":

Ah, well, Jimmy didn’t think the Soviets were much of a problem either, given his rallying cry for America at Notre Dame University in 1977: The U.S., Jimmy happily pronounced, “was now free of an inordinate fear” of communism.

Then—surprise!—the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Finally alerted to Soviet perfidy, Jimmy decreed that the U.S. would boldly boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Bold moves, indeed.

And let's not forget the most dangerous failure of all --- the one that paved the way for the Global War on Terror:

But there’s more. While Jimmy was in the White House, Iran changed from a pro-Western, friendly government (under the Shah) to the grisly rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and his fundamentalist followers, who seized more than 50 American hostages. And haven’t things been sweet ever since?

The civilized world is in great pain because of the power-mad fanatics running Iran these days, and there is a school of thought that Jimmy’s human rights policy encouraged the shah’s overthrow. In any case, Carter did nothing to forestall that revolution or lessen its catastrophic impact.

Does this sound like a man with any justification to condemn the United States and its current President, who, thanks in part Carter's clueless foreign policy, is now forced to contend with maniacal, ideological fanatics, hell-bent on the destruction of the west?

Ryskind continues:

Thus, when Carter takes Bush to task for his entire Mideast policies, ignoring the ousting of al Qaeda and its terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Libya’s surrender of its WMD program, this is a hard pill to swallow. Bush hasn’t been up against a softie like Sadat, but ferocious killers and messianic murders such as Osama, Saddam, Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad and other horrific figures.

Carter's staggering hypocrisy largely goes unchecked by members of his own party, who apparently believe Americans have forgotten his deplorable record as President --one that also included high-inflation, double digit interest rates and gas lines.

Of all of the examples of breath-taking Leftist arrogance, Jimmy Carter's would perhaps be the most laughable, if not for its complicity in paving the way for murdering Islamic thugs to threaten our very existence today. Thanks to Carter's gross ineptitude, George W. Bush is forced to contend with Middle Eastern maniacal dictators and "religious" leaders whose sole purpose in life is the extermination of western infidels.

If anything, Carter should be apologizing to our current Commander-in-Chief, instead of chastising him around the globe. Then he should hold a press conference and apologize to the American people for his many failures as President, before vowing to stay out of things that thankfully, no longer concern him.

Free and Unharmed

2006-08-27T12:41:00.000-04:00

Thank God there's a happy ending for Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, to this terrifying story. And for their families, indescribable relief, I'm sure.

Inspiring Invincible

2006-08-26T13:23:00.000-04:00

Having been born in the city of Rocky, and raised on Philadelphia Eagles football, I learned at an early age the art of cheering for the underdog. I am descended from a family of loyal sports fans, who stand by their team no matter how painful – and believe me – faithfully following and supporting the Eagles during most of the decade of the 1970’s was excruciating. And contests against division rivals like the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys felt at times like cruel and unusual punishment.

My parents had purchased season tickets long before I arrived on the scene, joining my three brothers and my sister, in the tradition of family and football. And though I was only 9 years-old at the time, I remember the excitement and hopefulness we all felt when Dick Vermeil took over as Head Coach, ushering in a new era in Philadelphia football. I clearly recall the name of Vince Papale and his rags-to-riches story, but it wasn’t until viewing Disney’s Invincible that I discovered a true appreciation for his dramatic rise from unknown neighborhood bartender to beloved Eagle – a hard won victory born out of sheer determination and character, against rather formidable odds, and overwhelming heartache.

The film sets the tone from the start. As the camera presents a montage of scenes of tough South Philadelphia neighborhoods in 1975, against the musical backdrop of Jim Croce’s “I’ve Got a Name,” it’s clear that things are going to feel pretty bad before we get to experience anything resembling triumph. Indeed, the camera next pans to a snow-covered Veterans Stadium before focusing in on one die-hard fan in the 700-level, who despite his team’s deplorable performance, and 31-0 deficit, refuses to leave until the bitter end. “Come on, Eagles, show some pride out there!” he yells passionately from the stands, inciting ridicule from the frustrated fans around him, and giving us a glimpse of the strong character that will soon propel him to greatness.

While he may have grappled personally with pride, "heart” is something Vince Papale had in spades. A hard-working, responsible guy who subsequently suffers the loss of his teaching job and his unsupportive wife in the same week, he finds solace in the company of friends with whom he plays regular football and commiserates at Max’s Grill and Bar, where he toils as a part-time bartender. By the summer of 1976, things take an interesting turn, when the bar-room TV broadcasts Dick Vermeil’s proclamation of open tryouts for the Philadelphia Eagles.

A speed-demon even at the ripe old age of 30, Vince’s friends encourage him to go for it, despite his reticence and fear of facing another failure. In post-Vietnam and worker strike plagued Philadelphia, it’s no wonder Papale’s friends and father needed a vicarious victory. And as demonstrated by their willingness to help him out financially and emotionally, their loyalty to Vince is both touching and refreshing. As one friend implores, “Even if you’re down there for one hour, you’re down there.”

Turns out, making the cut was just the beginning. Facing intense opposition and ridicule from rookie hopefuls and seasoned veterans alike, Papale struggles with matters of the heart – his budding romance with his friend’s cousin and fellow-bartender, Janet – whose only “character flaw” is her passion for the New York Giants; and his own doubts about the future.

In one locker-room scene, rival Eagle hopefuls invade his privacy and read the nasty note left for Vince by his soon to be ex-wife, a piece of paper we’d seen him pick up off the floor earlier in the movie, but whose contents were unknown up to this point. When the words – along the lines of “You’ll never amount to anything”-- are shown on screen, it dramatically speaks to Vince’s determination to prove his critics wrong, using an intensely personal source of motivation. In one of the film’s most gratifying moments, a triumphant Vince tears the letter apart and trashes it, before running out onto the field with his Eagle teammates.

Mark Wahlberg as Vince Papale turns in an authentic, likeable performance, as does Greg Kinnear in the role of Dick Vermeil and Kevin Conroy as Papale’s long-widowed, working-class father. The movie paints a realistic portrait of loyal, blue collar Eagles’ fans, and captures the essence of the tight-knit community of mid-70’s South Philadelphia, with accompanying musical soundtrack. Kudos to Disney for also providing footage of the actual player and coach at the end, with a brief synopsis of Eagles history in the Vermiel-Papale era.

For loyal Eagles fans, Invincible brings back fond memories of the beginning of their team's transformation from soul-less losers to never-say-die winners, embodied so beautifully by the life of Vince Papale. For everyone else who loves a good real-life triumph against all odds, the film scores a touchdown.

Friday Fun and Football

2006-08-25T12:57:00.000-04:00

Due to a change in friends' schedules, I'll be "playing hooky" later this afternoon to take in the much-anticipated "Invincible" this afternoon at the Muvico Premier in Boca.

Though I know, based on the film's trailer and my own childhood memories of the real event, that I will absolutely love Disney's latests sports inspiration (following in the footsteps of earlier achievements like "The Rookie" and "Miracle"), it was gratifying to read The Hollywood Reporter's positive review.

However, I do take issue with Kirk Honeycutt on this point:

Opening on the cusp of the football season, the film will attract a male following of all age groups, so it should do moderate theatrical and video business in North America.

While I have no doubt the movie will play well with male audiences, as a female and life-long fan of the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles, I take issue with his omission of women as fans of both the sport and this film.

Although I grew up with three brothers and a father -- all avid sports fans -- it was my Mom who instilled a passion for pro football in me. Her devotion to the Eagles sometimes contributed to personal hardship, like the time she contracted pneumonia from sitting through a game in the freezing cold of December. The youngest in the family and not yet in school, that incident led to my one-month stay with my grandmother and great aunt, until she fully recovered.

Pneumonia notwithstanding, Mom's love of the game and the Philadelphia Eagles never wavered, though she cheerfully surrendered her season ticket (we had three in all) to one of her children when the weather turned frigid. Some of my best memories involve Sunday dinners with family and friends centered around kick-off time; and attendance at triumphant victories at the Vet, not the least of which was the Eagles' NFC Championship win over the Dallas Cowboys, 20-7, on January 11, 1981. That blustery winter day will also go down in my history as one of the absolute coldest I have ever experienced, even with the sweet taste of victory and vindication over a much-despised rival.

Looking forward to watching a bit of Philly history on-screen. Back with a review later!

Eagles Television Network Goes Behind the Scenes with the Cast of "Invincible"

2006-08-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

Rob Alberino's account of his experience with the cast and crew of "Invincible" is a must-read, especially for Eagles fans. Nice to know there are down-to-earth stars in Hollywood; especially gratifying is Massachusetts-native Mark Wahlberg's promise that "if the Pats are out, I am cheering for the Eagles from now on," and the fact that he's also a huge fan of Donovan Mc Nabb.

Vince, as always is a class-act.

Can't wait til' Saturday night at the Premier; look for my review of the film on Sunday! (here's a hint: I'm sure I'm gonna love it:)

E-A-G-L-E-S!!!

Do We Really Want Democrats in Charge?

2006-08-24T11:32:00.000-04:00

Larry Elder's column today is a stark reminder for conservatives that this is no time to "punish" Republican representatives for their egregious overspending. For those of us who despise government waste, the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican-controlled Congress is certainly a valid motivation; however, the consequences of ousting the GOP are simply too dangerous.

Looking first at the War with Global Jihad, Larry remarks on the recent outcome of the Lamont/Lieberman Connecticut primary, and its implications, should Lamont prevail in the General Election. Ironically, Larry uses liberals' favorite historical event -- the Vietnam War -- to make his point:

Lamont's "phased pullout" would send yet another signal to the enemies to simply wait us out. Osama bin Laden considers America impatient, lacking resolve and unwilling to sacrifice. Recall that our hasty pullout from Vietnam, and subsequent failure to abide by promises made to the South Vietnamese, resulted in a bloodbath in Southeast Asia that left 3 million or more dead.

In reference to the buffoon of a former President who just won't go away (and I am not referring to Bill Clinton, though the same descriptor applies), Larry notes:

For insight into the Democrats' brand of appeasement foreign policy, look no farther than former President Jimmy Carter. Just a few months into his presidency, he urged Americans to reconsider our "inordinate fear of communism." Carter kissed then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on the cheek. Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan.

Carter, a staunch Bush critic, helped to usher in the "Iranian Revolution" of 1979 by leaning on the Shah of Iran to "release political prisoners." To show their gratitude, Iranians seized 90 hostages at the U.S. embassy, holding 52 of them for 444 days, before releasing them minutes after Ronald Reagan took office. At the time of the hostage crisis, Carter sent what some called a believer-to-believer letter in longhand to the Ayatollah Khomeini. The letter praised the ayatollah as a "man of God."

A Man of God?

I suppose Carter would also advise us to reconsider our "inordinate" fear of Islamo-fascist terrorists, since they are also "men of God," carrying out what they believe to be His will -- the worldwide slaughter of innocents using the most diabolical tactics they can conjure. Never mind that some of them -- like Hezbollah -- are funded by Iran.

What would Carter have said, had the terrorists succeeded in blowing up 10 American airliners over the Atlantic? Would he have condemned them as vicious killers driven by an ideology of hate? Of course not. He would've laid the blame on George W. Bush for failing to "dialogue" with these determined, relentless enemies of western civilization.

In the pot-calling-the-kettle-black category, Democrats are at their hypocritical best:

The other major Democrat line of attack accuses the Republicans of fiscal irresponsibility. This is their strongest and most persuasive argument. For it is true that this president, with the approval of the Republican-run legislature, ran up bills at a rate faster than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Even if we exclude the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, homeland security and Katrina relief, the Republican Party turned its back on their alleged "limited government" philosophy.

But the Democrats' primary criticism is to call Republicans too stingy. About the monstrous expansion of Medicare with the prescription bill for seniors, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said, "Because the administration and the Republican leadership refused to provide the funds needed for an adequate drug benefit, more and more seniors are facing the ridiculous 'donut hole.' That's the huge gap which leaves enrollees with major out-of-pocket costs."

Regarding their six-pronged "New Direction for America" agenda for change, Elder notices some very glaring omissions:

Not one word about North Korea. Not one word about Iran. And virtually every one of the six Democrat initiatives requires greater federal government intrusion, higher taxes and contempt for the private sector to compete and innovate. In short, "fiscal irresponsibility."

But don't worry, there is one area in which they oppose government spending -- defense. As Elder reminds us:

And the next time you hear a Democrat attack Republicans for "reckless spending," ask the following question: "Aside from defense, where should government cut back?" The silence will be deafening.

Remember that this November and resist the urge to "send a message" to pork-happy Republican Congressmen. There's just too much at stake for our country and the free world; risking national security to make a point -- valid or not -- is no justification for putting innocent American lives in greater peril.

Honoring the Fallen

2006-08-24T09:52:00.000-04:00

Please visit this site and volunteer to tell the story of a brave American who perished in the attacks on 9/11. Click on the link, register today and use your blog to remind the United States and the rest of the world that we will never forget.

Debunking the Myth of the "Republican" Corporation

2006-08-23T13:22:00.000-04:00

David Hogberg and Sarah Haney of Human Events Online have brilliantly deconstructed the myth of American corporations as pawns of the right. Having worked for one of the financial institutions (affectionately dubbed "WAMU" by its employees) cited in their study, I was not surprised to discover that in 2003, it contributed absolutely zero to right-leaning causes, while lavishing $60,000 to left-of-center non-profits.

During much of my tenure at Washington Mutual, I worked in the Community Relations and Marketing departments, where I witnessed first-hand the company's affection for radical groups like La Raza. My position was based in South Florida, where I originally reported to a very professional, but very liberal boss, who was instrumental in determining the company's grant recipients for the entire state. La Raza was one of the minority organizations she held in high esteem.

I also dreaded WAMU's annual United Way Giving Campaign -- an effort for which I was required to play an active role -- for various reasons, particularly United Way's support of pro-abortion outfits like Planned Parenthood. Additionally, I found it distasteful and wrong for the company to attempt to legislate its employees' charitable giving, which is a private matter best left to their own discretion and financial situation.

While no one was forced to give to the United Way, the endless barrage of meetings, kick-off events and required attendance at United Way "celebrations" sent a loud- and -clear message that all employees, especially Assistant Branch Managers and above, were expected to participate, preferably via payroll deduction, the "lifeblood" of the United Way organization. One Regional Manager who tended to lead by fear, actually did require all of her branches, from entry-level Teller to Financial Center Manager, to cough it up for United Way, else suffer the wrath of the consequences in the form of public humiliation at the next staff meeting.

I recall a conversation with my boss as we tallied up the statewide donations, in which she derided all non-participating employees as "selfish," a description she later repeated over the phone with the Area Manager. When I raised the possibility that many of them might already support their own charities of choice, she promptly dismissed my theory, as if they were incapable of demonstrating generosity, unless prompted by our benevolent employer and done in the name of the noble United Way. My theory of choosing one's church over United Way was met with more outrage, as if giving to God instead of UW was an umbrage to humanity. Further, she rejected the argument that financial hardship could also be playing a role in the disappointing (at least from WAMU's POV) numbers, though later as a Recruiter with intimate knowledge of the company's salary levels, I'd realize the validity of my earlier statement.

The NFL's lovefest with United Way is also very discouraging to this hard-core Eagles fan, but at least now I feel freer to exercise my freedom of choice as it pertains to charitable donations. I must admit, during my tenure at WAMU, I acquiesed to political pressure and financially supported the campaign; my boss would most certainly have frowned upon my lack of interest had I not contributed, considering my yearly required role as United Way cheerleader and organizer.

Getting back to the Human Events article, the authors present a compelling argument as to why certain businesses support causes that seem to be in direct conflict with their products and services:

The need for good PR may help explain corporate gifts to environmental groups such as the Keystone Center ($459,610), the Nature Conservancy ($1,903,388), the Trust for Public Land ($670,034), the Wilderness Society ($104,790), and the World Wildlife Fund ($680,637). Some corporations, such as Johnson & Johnson, which produces medical supplies, and Pfizer, which makes pharmaceuticals, would seem to have little reason to placate environmentalists. But perhaps they understand that few terms confer more saintly status than the moniker “environmentalist.”

What better way to credibly claim the environmental mantle than to give to environmental groups? In 2004, Johnson & Johnson gave more than $100,000 each to the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Wilderness Society, and $450,000 to the World Wildlife Fund. Pfizer gave more than $250,000 to the Keystone Center and more than $130,000 to the Nature Conservancy.

And when it comes to PC madness, Washington Mutual is not alone:

The charity-as-investment strategy may also account for grants to left-of-center minority organizations. Corporate foundations may reason, for example, that grants to groups identifying with Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, will help them tap the Hispanic consumer market. Bank of America is a case in point. It has engaged in extensive efforts to tap into the Hispanic market, including launching Spanish-language ads in 2003 in the Hispanic-heavy states of Texas and California. In 2004, Bank of America Foundation donated $40,000 to the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation and $31,000 to the Mexican-American League Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF.

Nothing irked me more as a marketing person for Washington Mutual than its constant pandering to special interest groups in the name of the almighty dollar. Thus, the bank went out of its way to print brochures and other collateral in Spanish; adorn its financial centers with Spanish ads; and enter into marketing sponsorship agreements with carefully selected politically-correct events like the Gay Pride parade.

The final two reasons for left-leaning corporate support are even more sinister:

Left-wing groups are far more likely than groups on the right to organize boycotts and protests to embarrass corporations into caving into activists’ demands. Some groups, such as the radical Rainforest Action Network, use so-called “civil disobedience” to disrupt corporate meetings and operations. Instead of stiffening corporate resistance, their tactics frequently help open company checkbooks.

Of course, most right-wingers are too busy producing on the job to demonstrate in the streets in the name of their causes; additionally, most of them regard obstructing corporate meetings and operations in the name of "justice" rather unbecoming and ultimately hurtful to their own --and by extension, their country's --success. But some on the left, such as Jesse Jackson, have elevated the "shakedown" to an art form:

Jesse Jackson is the master of the corporate shakedown. His tactics are tried and true. Jackson first fires off a letter to a corporation criticizing it for not hiring enough minorities. He demands a meeting. If the corporation defends itself and rejects the demands, Jackson publicly accuses it of racial insensitivity, announces a protest and calls for a boycott. Since corporations recoil at charges of racism, they usually attempt to appease Jackson and agree to a meeting. The upshot is that Jackson can claim a historic breakthrough that also produces a corporate contribution to Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition.

And then there's the matter of Matching Donations:

It is worthwhile to note that many corporate foundations have programs that match donations made by company employees. Corporations sometimes observe that they can hardly be expected to monitor small employee gifts that they match. For instance, on the Bank of America Foundation tax return we found a matching $300 gift to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a $50 gift to the Progress Unity Fund. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society maintains a fleet of ships that sink fishing vessels. The Progress Unity Fund is the parent organization for International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.),which is best known for organizing protests against the War on Terror. In fact, the group’s leaders support the communist dictatorships of Cuba and North Korea. Nicole Nastacie explained that Bank of America does not pass judgment on employees’ personal philanthropy. “We respect our associates’ individual charitable giving choices by matching associate gifts to all eligible 501(c)(3) organizations,” she said.

If the Fortune 100 represents corporate America, then the belief that corporate America is more generous to public interest and advocacy groups on the right is clearly wrong. Unfortunately, that misperception is embedded in American consciousness. How often are groups on the left derided as “corporate lackeys”?

In the end, there's little hope that the misperception as corporations-in-the- pocket- of- evil- Republicans will change anytime soon. If my experience at Washington Mutual is any indication, even its own employees (particularly those based out of the Seattle HQ) subscribe to this thinking, United Way and La Raza notwithstanding. And liberal politicians are all too eager to exploit and perpetuate the myth.

Will the pattern change? Corporate foundations could make a start by better monitoring their matching grants. But real change requires that they commit themselves to free-market principles that are the basis for the liberty that lets enterprise grow and prosper. If corporations use their foundations to stifle competition and buy off opponents, there is little hope that they will be bulwarks of freedom—no matter what liberal commentators believe.

Amen.

Update on Centanni and Wiig

2006-08-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest from the FOX News website:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A previously unheard of Palestinian group released video footage on Wednesday showing two kidnapped FOX News journalists and demanded Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails be released within 72 hours in exchange for the men, a Palestinian news agency reported.

In the footage, American correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand, said they were being cared for and appealed for help in winning their release. The footage was the first sign of the journalists since they were kidnapped Aug. 14 from their TV van in Gaza City.

At least they appear to be alive and well. Hopefully they'll be released soon and unharmed.

Reproductive Republicans Do Their Part for America

2006-08-23T10:03:00.000-04:00

Apparently, Red-Staters are more eager to reproduce than their Blue-State counterparts, according to the Arthur C. Brooks, in his Wall Street Journal column:

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

This reproduction gap between conservatives and liberals was also the topic of yesterday's Day by Day cartoon by Chris Muir, and a tidbit on Brit Hume's "Grapevine" segment of Special Report last night.

For Democrats, however, the news gets even worse:

The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party.

According to the nameless, haughty liberal columnist quoted above, conservatives who start families, raise children and pay taxes -- ok, I threw that last one in there, but it does apply since liberals love taxes -- are selfish creatures with no regard for mother earth and the supposed "dire" effects of overpopulation. What the columnist doesn't take into account is the fact that these children, "neo-con" or not, have the potential to grow up to make incredible contributions to the planet, whether through science, medicine, engineering, business, etc. Further, we live in a free country, and people have the right to create as many offspring as they desire.

The unnamed columnist appears to fall right in line with the intolerance and pessism that seems to dominate the left: In this case, a newborn baby is viewed as a detriment to the world, instead of a miraculous new life who might actually make it a better place; conservatives who make babies are evil, religious nuts who reproduce simply because the Bible tells them to "Go forth and multiply."

It's more than a little ironic that the self-proclaimed "party of the people" is now suffering from its own population shortage, but for those of us who actually want the United States win this War against Global Jihad and thrive as a beacon of hope and harbinger of freedom in the world for countless generations to come, having kids is the ultimate contribution.

So much for the stereo-type of the "sexually-repressed" conservative!

Bad News for Global Warmers, Great News for Floridians

2006-08-22T22:41:00.000-04:00

I hate to rain on their parade, but I couldn't help linking to this Neil Boortz commentary:

OK ... so the global warming nuts were wrong. They predicted a horrible hurricane season. It isn't happening. So ... what's different? What happened? Here's where you global warmistas need to sit down. Surface temperatures on the world's oceans are getting ...... cooler. According to a paper to be published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, between 2003 and 2005 globally averaged temperatures in the upper levels of the ocean have cooled. They've cooled not just a little ... but dramatically. Sea surface temperatures in the western Atlantic .. where hurricanes are fueled ... are now slightly below normal.

Oh well. Whatchagonna do!

I for one, am gonna celebrate, having endured two very active seasons in a row here in South Florida. And seeing Al Gore proven wrong once again, is another excellent reason to party.

Earlier this summer, I was amazed (but not totally surprised), by most Floridians' reaction to his scare-mongering cinematic debut, An Inconvenient Truth. Rather than question where he got his facts and drew his conclusions, most people blindly accepted his wild predictions (i.e. Florida's falling into the ocean). Guess Mother Nature isn't cooperating with ol' Al. Doesn't she know he has an agenda to fulfill?

Nevertheless, as I write this, Tropical Storm Debbie has just formed off the coast of Africa. Considering that we are nearing the end of August and this is only the 4th named storm, that's pretty good. Hopefully, wind shear and other factors will tear the storm apart before it can cause any mischief.

As for Al Gore, that's one blowhard I guess we'll have to put up with for a while.

Welcome Mark!

2006-08-22T22:22:00.000-04:00

As my new tagline suggests, my big brother Mark is joining the blog! Mark, an Attorney and Entrepreneur who lives in the Philly-area, will bring his special brand of humor and wit, along with some great conservative commentary, to Muzz Musings.

In a way, he's responsible for the title of this blog, having given me the nickname "Muzz" when I was about three years-old, so it is only fitting that he add his two-cents here.

Look for him to post soon about his evening with PA Republican candidate for Governor, Lynn Swann, in Springfield. The momentum is building!!!

And his sports analysis -- especially with football season upon us -- is sure to be entertaining and informative.

Welcome, Mark!

Anti-Americanism, Actually

2006-08-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

Since I'd written the review for this transparent movie long before my blog came along, I decided to post it here. Sadly, with all of the anti-American sentiment looming large in the world, it's still quite relevant:

Anti-Americanism, Actually

Thanksgiving, the quintessential American Holiday that compels us to reflect on the foundation of our beloved country and express our gratitude for the many blessings bestowed upon us by the Almighty, has always ranked as one of my very favorites, just slightly behind Christmas. There’s something sacred about pausing from the daily activity of life (football aside), and remembering how truly fortunate we are as Americans to live in a strong and free country, rife with opportunities.

As we went around the table last Thursday, we each shared our unique reasons for feeling thankfulness, yet a common theme prevailed – Thank God for the United States of America, and the brave, selfless Military men and women who put their lives at risk everyday to defend our liberty.

Such unabashed faith and patriotism is apparently lost on our European “friends,” if pop culture is any indication. For anyone who has been paying attention since September 11, 2001, this is not a news flash: From the radical Iraq War protestors to the Oil for Food Scandal, much of what Donald Rumsfeld appropriately (though not affectionately) refers to as “Old Europe,” has proven itself devoid of integrity, morality, spirituality and yes -- gratitude. From the French to the Germans to the British (with the notable exception of Prime Minister Tony Blair), Europe seems to have forgotten the many blessings bestowed upon them, courtesy of the USA and the blood of its many servicemen and women who have freed them from the evils of Nazism, Fascism and Communism.

Like the Liberal elites in our own country, the “Euro-weenies” (as coined by the exceptional columnist Michelle Malkin) consistently refuse to see the real enemy of our time – Islamo-fascism and its Ideology of Hate – and instead place their misguided anger on America and its President, George W. Bush.

From their absolute shock and indignation at the significant number of American citizens voting for “moral values” (as described by Bill Kristol on FOX News’ “Special Report with Brit Hume”), to their sheer disgust and dismissal of over 59 million Americans as “dumb,” the British citizenry has shown its true colors – and they are not in solidarity with star-spangled red, white and blue. After all, as Bill Kristol reported, the flabbergasted BBC admitted to him in an interview that “moral values” would never motivate a Brit to vote for or against a candidate. One can almost imagine the entire population of England snickering in condescension at the thought of “stupid” “God-fearing” Americans giving thanks to the Almighty before sharing a turkey among family and friends.

Yet for all of the recent examples of British Anti-Americanism, the most striking example hit home with me just last night, after viewing a film called “Love, Actually.” I’d just returned to my friend Theresa’s home, after we’d both attended the lighting of the 100 foot Christmas tree in Delray Beach, an annual event to which we all look forward. (The prior evening, I’d volunteered with my Kiwanis club at the Boca Raton tree lighting ceremony, where I’d kept kids and parents in line as they waited to see Santa; however, that’s a story for another column, along with the beautiful Nativity Scene that sits proudly in front of the tree. As far as I know, no one has yet called the ACLU).

Theresa, a staunch Republican, invited me to stay and watch the DVD of the film, which she termed a “great kick-off to the Christmas Holiday Season” and a movie that celebrated the fact that “love is actually all around us.” It sounded promising enough, and as the scenes unfolded, I felt pretty confident I’d enjoy the entire two hours. Ten minutes into the film, however, the striking differences between the value systems of America and Britain, and the latter’s utter disgust for the former became painfully apparent.

Take the Christmas Holiday, for example. Never have I seen one of the most sacred of Christian celebrations so desecrated for the purpose of a few laughs and some pounds at the box office. Though many American movies tend to lose sight of the significance of Christmas as the birth of Christ, most of them at least retain and celebrate the Christian values of generosity, concern for others and the joy of family and friends.

In “Love, Actually,” basic Christian morality is all but forgotten. The movie segues back and forth between different sub-plots and characters. One of these plots involves the filming of a pornographic movie, in which the two stars matter-of-factly discuss weather and traffic as they grope each other’s naked bodies and take on various sexual positions as ordered by the movie’s Director. Of course, by the end of “Love, Actually,” the two have fallen madly in love, as if to prove that just because one sells his or her body for screen profit doesn’t mean he or she is a bad person. In fact, as a result, they’ve discovered true love! Bah-humbug.

Then there’s the plot involving a washed-up, 50-something rock star trying to hold onto his popularity by changing the lyrics to his hit song, replacing the word “love” with “Christmas.” It’s a crass attempt to revive his career, which the film takes every opportunity to poke fun of. The problem is, one of these “comedic moments” has him unzipping his fly and exposing himself on national television, in front of children. Even more disturbing is the fact that one of the main characters –a boy of about eight years old – witnesses the event without a trace of surprise or outrage. Apparently, naked men displaying their manhood on television are as commonplace in Britain as pubs and fish-and-chips.

Speaking of the young boy, one of the most ridiculous storylines involves his “love” for another classmate, an American girl who is soon to depart for her homeland, along with her mother. With the aid of his step-father, the boy goes to all kinds of preposterous lengths to win her affection, including breaching Security at the airport, an offense for which neither the child, nor his legal parent are punished. Ah, true love trumps all other issues, even in a world threatened by Islamo-Terrorism!

Throughout the movie, there are all kinds of assaults on Christmas as we know it, including the party scene in which an artist’s works are displayed prominently on the walls. None of the merry-makers seems offended by the painting depicting a woman’s nipples adorned with Santa hats or the afore-mentioned over-the-hill rocker appearing on national television with scantily-clad women in sexy Santa outfits – a la Robert Palmer – licking their lips provocatively as they move suggestively to the music.

As if it weren’t enough to desecrate and secularize a beloved Holiday, “Love, Actually” takes a final plunge into the mud with its depiction of the American President, played with smug arrogance by actor Billy Bob Thornton. In the most distasteful scene in the movie, the President barks orders at Parliament and the Prime Minister, played with debonair humility by none other than Hugh Grant (who is neither debonair, nor humble), asserting American dominance over the world and declaring that if Britain doesn’t like it, too bad!

This is followed by the “very good” Prime Minister’s witnessing of the “very bad” American President’s sexual harassment of one of the Prime Minister’s staff, a sweet, attractive woman for whom he’s carried a torch throughout the film. The PM goes into hero mode at the subsequent press conference, when he refuses to play ball with the smug American President, and admonishes him, that “though a small country, England is a proud country…the home of Shakespeare and Harry Potter (not surprisingly, he neglects to mention Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher)…and if the President thinks England will just roll over, he’s in for the fight of his life!” This speech is of course met with rousing applause and rowdy cheers from the crowd, a reaction I am sure took place in movie theaters throughout Great Britain as audiences viewed the scene.

Can’t you just hear them whispering excitedly in each other’s ears: “What a perfect depiction of that dastardly American cowboy they have the nerve to call a President! Here’s to his defeat next November!” Undoubtedly, after watching this ridiculous movie, British citizens everywhere were salivating at the thought of George W. Bush returning to the saddle in Crawford, Texas. Sadly, from their point of view, they grossly “misunderestimated” not only our President, but the strong character of the American people.

Some of us might have actually spent money last year at the box office on “Love, Actually.” Maybe some of us even liked the film (my guess is that the blue states folks probably did). But as the British and the rest of the world would discover 11 months later, America still stands with her head held high, deeply rooted in her religious heritage and tradition of moral integrity. Or, straight to the point for all of our British friends scratching their heads over the election: “It’s moral values, actually.”

I Agree With Juan (For Once)

2006-08-22T10:46:00.000-04:00

As a staunch Conservative, I am happy to say I finally agree with Liberal Juan Williams on something. Juan, a FOX News' Political Analyst and a Senior Correspndant for NPR, usually has me shaking my head over his take on politics, national security, terrorism and the like, although he always comes across as an honest man with deeply-rooted beliefs.

Especially entertaining are the "panel" moments on Brit Hume's Special Report and on FOX News Sunday, when Brit's exasperation at Juan erupts into spirited sparring matches, with both men passionately fighting for their point of view.

While I am normally on Brit's side in such altercations, I am impressed with Juan's Op-Ed in The Washington Post, and, judging by his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor last night, his willingness to take on race-baiters like Al Sharpton. The two went head-to-head on the program, with Juan emerging as the thoughtful gentleman with his facts straight. Sharpton, as always, was an emotional wreck who couldn't put together a cohesive argument.

Williams' piece today provides a sampling of his new book, Enough, which deals with the tricky subject of minority advancement and what he calls a Culture of Failure:

With 50 percent of Hispanic children and nearly 70 percent of black children born to single women today these young people too often come from fractured families where there is little time for parenting. Their search for identity and a sense of direction is undermined by a twisted popular culture that focuses on the "bling-bling" of fast money associated with famous basketball players, rap artists, drug dealers and the idea that women are at their best when flaunting their sexuality and having babies.

In Washington, where a crime wave is tied to these troubled young souls, the city reacts with a curfew. It is a band-aid. The real question is how one does battle with the culture of failure that is poisoning young people -- and do so without incurring the wrath of critics who say we are closing our eyes to existing racial injustice and are "blaming the victim."

Williams echoes Bill Cosby's call to personal responsibility in the wake of Katrina and the dire statistics quoted above. Hopefully his example will inspire more true black leaders to speak out and finally put an end to the Sharpton-Jackson shakedown tactic, whose primary aim is to pad their pockets while keeping minority populations mired in the mythology of victimhood.

Still Missing

2006-08-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

Found this post on the CBS blog, via Michelle Malkin, regarding the lack of interest/coverage of the kidnapping of FOX News' correspondant Steve Centanni and cameraman, Olaf Wiig.

Vaughn makes some interesting observations:

Are We Tired Of Journalists-Under-Fire Stories?

Maybe it’s just us, but it seems the kidnapping of two Fox News journalists in the Gaza Strip last week has gotten far less attention from the press than other high-profile kidnappings – like that of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll. Now, there may be a lot of reasons for that: It may be the difference between women and men captives; it could be because the Fox News journalists were captured in Gaza, not Iraq; or I could be all wet about the whole thing.

I could be "all wet" about this myself, but I can't shake the feeling that there's an underlying bias against these two for the simple reason that they work for FOX News Channel, a network that sticks to the facts -- like calling Hezbollah for what it is -- a terrorist organization funded by Iran and Syria. It's very likely their captors are somehow punishing them for their network's "pro-Israel" stance.

Perhaps Jill Carroll received more attention because she's a female, but whatever the motivation, the mainstream media's silence in the wake of the kidnapping of these two men is quite disturbing. As a regular viewer of FOX, I am familiar with Centanni's work, and while I do not know the man personally, he always came across as an honest reporter and a gentleman.

It pains me to think of what he and his cameraman could be enduring at this very moment, while their families wait and worry. God bless them all, and may they be returned unharmed immediately.

The Enemy Within

2006-08-21T12:27:00.000-04:00

Michael Barone's latest piece addresses the serious issue of America's "covert" enemy, and its dangerous implications for the War with Global Jihad. Here's an excerpt:

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Judging by the pervasive attitude that George W. Bush is the "real" terrorist, and an "idiot" I'd say the covert enemy has achieved some measure of success. If not for the emergence of alternative media like cable news, talk radio and the internet -- which presents a balanced portrayal of the facts -- university professors, mainstream media journalists and other proponents of moral equivalence would have almost free reign in the promotion of their anti-American agenda.

Still, the Global Jihadists must be laughing themselves silly at the covert enemy's ingestion and acceptance of Muslim propaganda, rejection of profiling to prevent further attacks, misguided hatred of President Bush and condemnation of terror-fighting programs like the Patriot Act and the NSA Wiretapping. How they must have howled with delight over Carter-appointee Distict Judge Anita Diggs Taylor's moronic decision declaring a highly-effective terrorist surveillance program "unconstitutional."

If anyone doubts that her ruling was based on anything other than pure politics and Bush-hatred, they've no doubt succumbed to the teachings of the covert enemy. (Don't even get me started about Jimmy Carter, easily one of the worst Presidents this country has ever had the misfortune of electing. Given his deploroble legacy of high-inflation, long gas lines, impotent response to Iran's seizure of the American embassy and abject failure to get our hostages released, this man ought to do us all a favor and stick to building houses for Habitat for Humanity).

It's downright dangerous and highly-depressing that in addition to radical Muslim extremists around the world, America also has to contend with a determined enemy within, whose impenetrable mind-set constantly puts the blame for worldwide death and destruction in the name of Allah squarely on their own country's shoulders, instead of where it truly belongs.

Eagles Fans Are Ready!

2006-08-20T14:33:00.000-04:00

Makes me wish I could be in Philly!

Only 5 More Days To Go!

2006-08-20T14:27:00.000-04:00

Until the story of Vince Papale hits the theaters....can't wait to be inspired all over again!