Today's Order of Business: Three Salient Hypocrisies of the Left.

I. Bush's Mental Capabilities

There are two quite contradictory images painted by liberals of the President. In one he is pictured as a machiavellian evil genius bent on world domination, an abominable adversary of all that is good in this world. In the other, he is a child-like, feeble-minded nincompoop who couldn't tie his shoes without a diagram. Pick your fantasy, you crazies...

II. No Blood For Oil

One of the greatest cries of the AntiWar Left is "no blood for oil", implying that the Iraq war was made up by Bush and his oil-industry buddies from Texas, in order to enrich themselves. Let's examine reality for a fleeting moment, shall we? The liberation of Iraq opens much oil for export to the US. What will this do? Naturally drive the cost of oil down, its simple economics. The domestic oil tycoons will take a huge hit with this new competition. The American consumer will be enriched by lower gas prices, and Bush's Evil Oil Buddies will be hit in the wallet. Also, consider the *allegation* that Bush made a deal with the Saudis to lower oil prices. If he were out to pad his wallets through the oil industry, tougher competition from the Arabs is not going to do it...

III. Fragile Mother Earth

To the kook-environmentalists we are but one species in a great Circle of Life, a small piece in a great and majestic cycle. To them, we are very small and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, only a well-developed sort of animal, really. But then, they show the unadulterated, ridiculous arrogance to claim that we are capable of destroying this planet. We, this tiny bit of bacteria who thinly populate the dry surface of the Earth's crust, are capable of destroying the universe by using too much aerosol hairspray. The facts are that the recent eruption of Mt Pinatubo put out more air pollution than the entire human race has ever done so in its entire history.

I would add a fourth notable one, regarding the fallacy of the incomplete application of moral relativism, with a specific example of gay marriage, but that would warrant a full post or two...I can go into depth. It will have to wait until next week.

Man Fined For Annoying Squirrel

It has come down to this...the Last Great Struggle of Mankind.

They usurp our attics, they seek to supplant us on the Earth. The furry little bastards will stop at nothing until we are subservient to their ultimate agenda. Death to squirrels!!! Heed not the threat of their tiny razor-sharp incisors, or their sneering, chirpy little laughs of defiance! God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear.

I'm thinking of getting a 50 cal BMG Barrett rifle to use as a squirrel gun. It would be dubbed "The Harvester". Hehehehe.

Good weekend for Israel...bad one for Hamas.

Glad to see that Rantissi was duly "offed". The comic irony of it all was, three weeks ago, following the strike that ushered Yassin into paradise, all Palestine was in an uproar, vowing swift and bloody retribution for the assassination of their malignant terrorist god. Cut ahead three weeks, and instead of being stronger or avenged, Hamas has been decapitated. This makes their vows of even more severe retribution less plausible. They were reeeeeeeally mad before, when Yassin was killed. They couldn't pull anything together, so just because their REEALLY REEEEEALLY mad now, doesn't mean they'll have more success. For the sake of innocent civilians let's hope not.

For those concerned about regional peace: though it may not seem like it, I am too. The only way for there to be peace is for one side to win. For the Palestinians to win, Israel must be destroyed, conquered, and turned into an Arab state...the Jews driven into the sea. There are moderate Palestinians who wouldn't require this to accept peace, admittedly, but the ones who do are setting the agenda here. For Israel to win, its enemies (Hamas, Al Aqsa, PLO, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Intifada, etc.) must be destroyed or neutralised so they can no longer kill Israelis. Israel would no doubt accept a neighboring Arab state of Palestine. It just cannot accept one that harbours terrorists bent on the murder of Israeli innocents.

Which one is the better scenario for you? If you really want peace, you'd have to accept one of these. Whether Islam is a "religion of peace" or not, its deranged Jihadis in Palestine are at war with Israel...their will is set, and only death can break it, to borrow a nice line from Tolkien. If death is the only thing that can stop these terrorists from murdering civilians, it seems an unfortunate but necessary prescription. This is why I support Israel.

A humorous little blurb from the news reports I'll paraphrase...a Hamas leader to succeed Rantissi "has been appointed but not announced". Yes, these courageous Jihadis are as bold as lions, aren't they?

Two column quotes in one day...well, they were just THAT good.

"'The truth is,' as Tony Blair had said earlier in the week, 'faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.' Indeed, nobody enjoys taking pleasure in the misfortune of others with greater relish than the ragged remnants of the counterculture, who never found their way home from the '60s and who sit now in the shade of their own impotence, simmering with bitter frustration."

- Wes Pruden

Wow...a great bit of writing from Andrew Sullivan concerning liberal talk radio:

"Educated liberals, after all, decry populism. A large part of their self-esteem is bound up in believing themselves better educated and more enlightened than the average person, certainly smarter than, say, George W. Bush. So actually getting on the air and engaging in irresponsible, shameless spin and ideology goes against the grain. Conservatives, in general, are happy to confess their biases. Liberals like to think their biases are actually reality. That's why they are much happier on, say, the BBC or, in America, on National Public Radio, which bores and uplifts the average listener into eventual submission to centre-left orthodoxy. And they're objective, of course. There is no bias at the BBC or NPR. Just professionalism!"

Read the rest of the article...

A pet peeve of mine: "Mister Bush"

My wife astutely observed this phenomenom a while back...how not only the Bush-hating fanatics, but also the allegedly neutral media insist on referring to our president as "Mister Bush". I never recall our former President being referred to commonly as "Mister Clinton". He is PRESIDENT Bush. You can call him Bush, President Bush, George Bush, Mister President, or even Dubya for all I care, but the sour-faced, deliberate disrespectfulness [oft thinly veiled as reverence, making it an even fouler crime] epitomized in the phrase "Mister Bush" is very unbecoming of any American.

Now, "Mister Kerry" is appropriate. He is not the president. "Monsieur Kerry" might be more apropos actually...

On a side note, looks like (from Drudge's initial report) Air America is bombing predictably. So sorry Al!!! Down the tubes you go...hehe. Liberals should stick to publicly funded radio (NPR) because they are selling a product almost nobody wants or cares for...the only way to get their funding is to swipe it from the pool of taxpayer money. Although Franken, often mentioned as being a "comedian", is more and more becoming the joke himself. His slavish attempts to degrade O'Reilly by imitating him echo the less mature moments on the playground of an average American elementary school. What a squalid, overgrown baby...a pitiable creature.

The recession that began in the late months of the second Clinton administration actually ended just after September 11, and by the end of 2003, the economy was booming at a rate of more than 6 percent annually. You have to go back to the Reagan years to find numbers like that. The Club for Growth researched the so-called "misery index," determined by adding the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, to calculate a figure for the past six presidential election years. Jimmy Carter, to no one's surprise, set a misery standard that is likely to stand until the Rockies crumble, Gibraltar falls and the Chicago Cubs win the National League pennant. The misery index stood at 20.6 percent in March 1980, which was all Ronald Reagan needed to send Mr. Jimmy home to his peanut patch. An unfavorable misery index preceded the defeat of Gerald Ford (13.5 percent) and George H.W. Bush (10.5 percent) as well. But here's the surprise: The misery index for George W.'s administration is lowest of all six of those worthies. George W. inherited the Clinton misery index of 8.4 percent and has shaved it (so far) to 7.7 percent. You just wouldn't know it from the coverage of the economy. The Wall Street Journal calls it "the Rodney Dangerfield recovery" because, as Rodney might say, "it don't get no respect."

-Wes Pruden

As the horrific and grisly details of the Fallujah terrorist attack of yesterday are revealed, I am reminded of some of the words of Tolkien's Eomer:

Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen,
meet was his ending. When his mound is raised,
women then shall weep. War now calls us!

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!