This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • The NIE and Iran; a lesson in common sense

    An awful lot of people in Washington think Americans are generally stupid – the same goes for an awful lot of people in other countries. So when the now-famous National Intelligence Estimate was released that claims Iran halted it’s nuclear weapons program four years ago, the wonks in Washington were sure Americans were going to swallow it hook-line-and-sinker. After all, it was released by those super-brainiacs at the State Department, right? Those guys with three first names who all graduated from Ivy-league schools.

    Well, according to a Rasmusen poll (h/t Flopping Aces) they only suckered in 18%;

    Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women.

    I’m very happy that women are more skeptical than men - it means women are still thinking deeply about our national security instead of just going along with the herd of men who are trying to get in their pants.

    In the meantime, the Islamic Republic is shocked (shocked, I tell you) the the US is spying on them. Gateway Pundit quotes a FARS news report in which a general does his best impression of Nancy Pelosi;

    “The hypocritical and bullying face of Bush and the US neoconservative reactionaries was brought into light by this report,” Major General Hassan Firooz Abadi said in the wake of the latest report by 16 US intelligence agencies stressing that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

    Meantime, he called on Iran to maintain vigilance, reminding that the hawks are still in power in the US.

    “We should be vigilant as the hawks are still in power in the US and the aggressive forces of the world arrogance are still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and their oppression and cruelty against the Palestinian and Lebanese nations have not ended,” the commander said.

    Meaning, I suppose, that the Islamic Republic’s military supports a Democrat candidate for President next Fall.

    Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Gates took an opportunity to warn about Iran’s continued malfeasance in the Middle East (Washington Times’ Lolita C. Baldor);

    Members of the audience challenged his rebukes of Tehran, evidence of the divide among Arab nations over the Bush administration’s tough stance. Asked if the U.S. would be willing to talk with Iran, Mr. Gates said the behavior of Iran’s current leadership “has not given one confidence that a dialogue would be productive.”

    “Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents — Christians, Jews and Muslims alike,” Mr. Gates said in his address at the event organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    So, apparently, this administration’s policy reflects American public opinion more closely than the media and the three-first-named State Department wonks would care to admit.

  • Succeeding Beyond All Expectations

    The Guardian tells us that today’s girls would rather, like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton, be sexy instead of clever. Well, with that trio as their role models, they are indeed succeeding beyond all expectations. These are the products of feminism, loosened moralities and the fall of religion as the source of societal morals. These are the results of the babyboomer’s “Summer of Love” and of Presidential sex that “isn’t sex”. Great job. Wonderful. But, those aren’t the only things to blame, everyone shares in the blame for this.

    Did you see that girl with her breasts hanging out at the grocery store? Did you take a moment to mention the concept of appropriate dress to her?

    Or did you tell the two boys with the over sized pants and their boxers hanging out to try to buy the correct size or at the very least a belt?

    No, you, like others probably didn’t, for a variety of reasons. So, is this decadence an irreversible trend? In all likelihood, in a few months or a few years modest behavior will be back in vogue, or at least on the pages of Vogue…

    Yes, it is one of the injustices of the world, beautiful idiots are doted upon while the homely geniuses are neglected. Although the pretty people may be the sexual idols and actors it is the homely that get things done. Churchill and FDR wouldn’t have won any beauty contests. Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher were nothing to write home about in the looks department, but they excelled and out performed their contemporaries, to such a degree few today can name the rivals they beat.

    It is nice to be good looking, in my book it is much more important to be a good person.

  • And That’s Just Since He’s Been Married…

    Andrew Young, a civil rights “icon” I hadn’t heard of until five minutes ago, in a Newsmaker’s Journal interview said of Bill Clinton “He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack,” *rimshot*. Young also asserted that Bill is every bit as black as Obama.
    Really? He’s half black? Oh, gee, was that a cheap shot? No, not at all. Obama’s father was a black man from Kenya, his mother was a white girl from Wichita. The various democrat campaigns are waiting for this info to break much closer to a primary. Interracial marriage is no more (or less, I suppose…)insane than uniracial marriage. It just isn’t something that is popular with either white people or black people. Hillary Clinton, you can be sure, is waiting with bated breath for this to sink in with the racist voters of both races, black and white, as it can only help her.
    Bill Clinton could be as black as Al Jolson, and it wouldn’t have any legitimate bearing on Hillary’s competency, honesty or experience.

    Young also commented that Obama needs a network to back him up and protect him. Like the criminal cartel that hovers around in the wings around the Clintons waiting to be used as scapegoats. Those aren’t friends and colleagues, those are lackeys.

    Just think how popular with blacks Clinton would be if Monica Lewinsky had been named Shanequa Jones?

    It isn’t that the calling Clinton Black thing is stupid, it is, but, it is also a kind of racism. Is Obama’s, as Biden noted, clean, articulate nature unimportant next to the charisma of Bill Clinton?

  • So where’d the money go?

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    Mother Harriette

    I can’t believe that this story hasn’t grown legs. No one outside of the blogosphere and the Beltway has heard of this potentially $30 million rip-off by relatively low-level government employees. I work across the street from the DC Tax and Revenue Office and two of my workmates from Baltimore have never heard of the scam. It’s 30 MILLION BUCKS, for cryin’ outloud.

    The worst part? The Feds don’t know how much was stolen or where it went according to the Washington Examiner;

    The number of phony checks recorded by the scandal-ridden D.C. tax office continues to grow, but a critical question remains: Where did the money go?

    If cashed, the bogus checks would have cost the District more than $40 million, according to a report published by The Washington Post, and a similar tally was reached by The Examiner.

    But investigators cautioned that it is far from certain what amount was ever actually stolen from the city tax coffers. Tax office thieves may have prepared checks that for various reasons were never cashed.

    Law enforcement officials have told The Examiner that the case is probably much more complicated than adding up fraudulent-appearing check approvals from city records.

    The Washington Post reported Sunday that $44.3 million in false payment approvals could be found in a review of tax record offices dating to June 1999. An analysis by The Examiner has found $41.5 in questionable approvals.

    It’s so bad that the Feds are going to give immunity to one of the suspects so they can just get an outline of what the hell happened;

    A former tax office employee has been offered one day of immunity to tell prosecutors what she knows about the largest corruption scandal in D.C. history.

    Diane Gustus is facing up to 100 years in prison on charges that she helped co-worker Harriette Walters siphon off tens of millions of dollars through a series of phony tax refunds and dummy companies.

    But authorities have given her limited immunity for a meeting this week in the hope that she can help unravel the conspiracy and help the government track down the stolen money, sources with intimate knowledge of the case told The Examiner.

    Yeah, lets get some bigger government and give them more of our money because they’re so careful with how it gets spent.

  • Romney Won’t be President

    In one of the all time stupid moves, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has decided to give a speech about his Mormon faith.
    While Jack Kennedy gave a speech about his Catholicism and it helped him, Mormonism is not Catholicism.

    The edge many Republican candidates have held over their Democrat opponents is the support of the Evangelical Christians of the nation. Highlighting the differences between LDS beliefs and those of Evangelical Christians can only hurt any Mormon candidate.

    While Mormon teaching is, in many areas inline with mainstream Christianity, however, it is not the same. The Romney campaign’s best option was to gloss over these differences until after Mitt was either THE Nominee or, preferably, the President. They blew that. His campaign will not survive the loss of the Evangelical Christians.

  • The Majority of Muslims are Peaceful? Tell that to Gillian Gibbons

    Peace loving scholars demand death.

    The Vast Majority of Muslims are peaceful? Really? You may want to ask Gillian Gibbons how she feels about that, well, you can ask after she gets out of the Sudanese PRISON she has been sentenced to because her students (mainly rich Sudanese Muslim kids) chose to name a teddy bear Muhammad. I don’t think she’ll have that view of the Religion of Peaceâ„¢ after her deportation.

  • Yet Another Phony Soldier

    In reference to the Hillary Clinton plant, Keith Kerr at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate the other night, David Horowitz received this email (h/t Atlas Shrugs);

    In spite of my current distractions at home I am forced to enter the public arena to express my outrage at the current republican debate as managed by CNN. Gay Keith is not a brigadier general. He is not even an active duty retired army officer. He spent his years as a reservist solely in the state of California military bureaucracy. His bio is published in the gay organization dedicated to voiding the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy.

    For details. You must note that Kerr was retired from the inactive army reserves in the grade of colonel. With the exception of a few years served on active duty as a lieutenant his entire service was in the reserves in California. He was placed in retired reserve status with the California National Guard reserves and promoted to brigadier general in that federally unrecognized status.

    It damn sure is tough to be a lying sack o’shit in the age of the internet, ain’t it? In case you don’t remember who General Kerr was, Michele Malkin can refresh us;

    The tallest plant was a retired gay vet, one “Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr,” who questioned – or rather, lectured – the candidates on video and in person about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bans open gays from the military.

    Funny. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was exactly the policy CNN adopted in not telling viewers that Kerr is a member of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual- Transgender Americans for Hillary.

    Hot Air has “CNN Defending their Vetting Procedures“

  • Dump debates

    I haven’t watched any of the debates – and I haven’t commented on many of them here. People who know me, know that I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy and that’s why debates never interested me. It all seemed like theater – theater forced on us by the networks who are convinced that they put John Kennedy in office after his debate with Richard Nixon.

    Abe Lincoln never campaigned or debated for his office (the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates were two years before his election to the Presidency). People just knew his position on issues – which is why, without having said a word about slavery, or his intentions as President, the South made plans to secede while he was taking the train from his Illinois home, where he spent the election season, to his Inauguration. It’s also the reason why my fellow Marylanders plotted his assassination before the inauguration and he had to sneak through the State to Washington.

    Well, enough of the history lesson. The reason I bring all of this up is that stupid crap that happened last night at the Republican CNN/YouTube debate. If ever there was proof that we’re being manipulated by the media, it happened last night.

    Michele Malkin is STILL uncovering plants;

    Welcome to Horticulture Journalism 101. (Keep scrolling down for new updates to this handy CNN/YouTube illustrated plant guide.)

    So far, I count eight Democrat operatives from various Democrat campaigns. In addition to Michele, there’s Powerline, Powerline and Powerline, Hot Air, Patrick Ruffini, Glenn Reynolds, Gateway Pundit, Wizbang,JasonColeman, and another JasonColeman.

    Joe Scarborough says it’s “total crap” that CNN didn’t know these were plants according to Newsbuster’s Mark Finkelstein. Vivian Lee, also at Newsbusters, writes that CNN, which chose the YouTube videos, chastised the candidates for not answering any questions about healthcare – a subject for which CNN chose no questions;

    And shame on them for actually answering the questions they were asked instead of drifting off topic and discussing other things.

    Well, my whole point, I guess, is that we should dump these debates, for no other reason than that they are so carefully scripted by the candidates as well as the media, debates are useless now. It’s just an opportunity for candidates to make a four or five word sound bite that’ll propel them over the heads of the others – for one night.

    Then again, the malfeasance of the networks, the candidates and the questioners at these debates provide employment opportunities for thousands of super-attentive bloggers, apparently.