Hard Starboard

We've Moved!

2007-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a blog that is now an archive of the middle-Bush43 years! The fur is now flying at our new location! You know, the site I spend most of my vacation setting up! The one in which I will post my first official post two seconds from now!

Oh, screw subtlety! Our new URL is http://www.hardstarboardblog.com! Now (pretty please) get over there, and tell everybody you know to go over there, and keep going there every single minute of every single hour of every single day of the rest of their lives and turn http://www.hardstarboardblog.com into the biggest megablog on the Internet! How else am I ever going to be able to blog for a living, get rich, and retire to a desert island full of naked women and Zefram Cochrane!?!

And don't expect to find any exclamation points over there; I've just used up a decade's worth.

As Kevin Nash used to say, "Come on over....to the other side."

Profitable For Growth

2007-12-31T21:42:00.000-08:00

10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings — what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the LORD rescued me from all of them. 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

-2 Timothy 3:10-17

Odeo Feed Claim of Hard Starboard Radio

2007-12-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

Just one more duty to perform:

Gala Premier!

My Odeo Channel (odeo/100ce74217b31652)

Fred Thompson 2008

2007-12-31T09:02:00.001-08:00

Watch this, and you'll see why we here at Hard Starboard are firmly behind Fred Thompson.

JASmius adds: See below....

Oliver and Hugo Sittin' In A Tree...

2007-12-31T03:45:00.000-08:00

If you still need to be convinced that Hollywood is a cesspool, check this out:

American filmmaker Oliver Stone praised President Hugo Chavez on Friday as the Venezuelan leader launched a mission to airlift three hostages held by leftist rebels out of Colombia’s jungles.
Stone, standing near Chavez, said he was working on a film and hoped to accompany the humanitarian operation into Colombia.

“I’m doing a documentary about Latin America and also about North America. You have to wait around to see it,” Stone told reporters. He said he planned to take part in the mission, calling it a “beautiful, great process.”

“I’m hoping it works. I’m all for this,” Stone said.

The Oscar-winning director, who made a 2003 documentary about Cuban President Fidel Castro as well as the movie “Platoon,” called Chavez a “great man” and said “I’m a fan.”

Urging Stone to speak with reporters, Chavez told him in accented English: “The girls want to see you!” He joked that Stone was President Bush’s “envoy.”

“There are some good Americans. That’s why I’m here, to remind you,” Stone said.

If that last line ain't enough to make you lose your breakfast, I don't know what is. I rarely go to the movies anyway, because there is seldom anything playing that I want to see, but another good reason is in order not to support creeps like Oliver Stone.

H/T Michelle Malkin

The Belayers

2007-12-30T19:07:00.000-08:00

13 But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the LORD, because from the beginning God chose you [a] to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. 14 He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our LORD Jesus Christ. 15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings [b] we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

16 May our LORD Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, Who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

-2 Thessalonians 2:13-17

A Final Appeal For Iowan Sanity

2007-12-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

VBC Missionaries Of The Week: Roy & Elvia Sprague

2007-12-30T08:33:00.000-08:00

Roy serves as minister-at-large for Northwest Independent Church Extension. He travels extensively with Elvia, speaking in churches, conferences, advances, and camps, as well as representing the mission. In 2006 Roy was privileged to serve as interim pastor for a church in Olympia (thus disproving the overpowering assumption that the Donk-dominated state government had them all banned and bulldozed years ago). Roy is also president of the Pacific Northwest Regional of IFCA International.

Their daughter, Judi Allen, is also a VBC missionary.

Pelosi Softening? Not Likely

2007-12-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

When I saw this over at Michelle Malkin's blog, the possibility that Nancy Pelosi is sincere about this phone call really didn't occur to me. Actions speak louder than words. She has spent the last seven years doing everything she can to undermine our military, now she's phoning the father of fallen hero Sgt. Eddie Jeffers to offer her condolences? Smacks of political calculation to me. Sgt. Jeffers' father said she was very gracious, and I'm glad. But I don't believe she was sincere for a moment. Read the whole thing, and read Sgt. Jeffers' words, which were written back in February. She didn't seem to care much about what he thought then, did she?

I'm not usually overly cynical, but talk is cheap, and Nancy Pelosi is cheaper.

It Is Not Good

2007-12-29T20:30:00.000-08:00

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam [a] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man's ribs [b] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [c] He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.

23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman, [d] ' for she was taken out of man."

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

-Genesis 2:15-25

Huckawhine

2007-12-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

There's an old saying: the best defense is a good offense. I don't think it was Sun-tzu who coined that axiom, but it makes a lot of sense nonetheless - particularly in political campaigning.

As I discussed yesterday, Mitt Romney's herculean focus on Iowa and New Hampshire, the lynchpin of his "win early, win the nomination" strategy, is paying the dividends that I predicted they would several months ago. He had nowhere to go but down, and as the finish lines for both early contests approach, he's fading in both.

So the former Massachusetts governor is doing what any pol in his position has to do: opening fire on the rivals who are overtaking him. The other day he ran a quasi-negative ad against John f'ing McCain in New Hampshire that has already paid handsome dividends in provoking "Sailor" to, in effect, blow his stack by countering with an ad that calls Romney a "phony".

Pot. Kettle. Black. Image of McCain as thin-skinned, unstable hothead reinforced.

Romney has done the same against Mike f'ing Huckabee in Iowa, only the reaction he's provoked from the Arkansas vickar was, shall we say, noticeably less manly:

Republican Mike Huckabee on Saturday denounced political attack ads, saying people aren't looking for a president whose campaign is based on what's wrong with someone else.

Huckabee, who has surged to the top of the polls in Iowa with less than a week before the January 3 caucuses, said people want a president who will tell them what he would do if elected. He criticized attack ads aimed at him, saying, "If I believed half of that stuff, I wouldn't vote for myself."

First of all, Romney has been doing nothing BUT laying forth what he believes over the course of this year. True, much of what he says he believes now is at considerable odds with what he said he believed before he decided to run for president, which is most of why the Mittster has faded down the stretch, as I predicted he would. But he has hardly risen to the upper tier solely by stepping on the heads of his rivals.

More to the point, though, and speaking for myself, but knowing I'm not alone in this viewpoint, I find whining about negative ads on the part of a pol to be highly aggravating. This is, after all, a race for the most powerful office on the face of the planet. Running for president of the United States isn't like running for a seat on the local school board, or county water commissioner; it's not playing jacks or mumbledy-peg; it's a full-contact sport; it's the big leagues. And the more success you achieve in the effort, the more hostile fire you're going to attract from your rival(s). It comes with the territory, and I frankly expect any man or woman who has reached front-runner status to not only be aware of that, but accept it, and be willing to give as good as they get.

Now, of course, if an attack ad is recklessly inaccurate, that usually redounds to the detriment of the attacker. This makes it incumbent upon him or her to ensure that the content of said ad is vetted and verified. But then again, there's a difference between an ad with the cliched grainy black & white picture and the ominous voice over suggesting that Senator Bunghole might, just might, be an ax-murderer, and an ad that simply seeks to contrast one candidate's record on issues of importance to an electorate favorably with his/her rival.

And that's all Romney's "attack" ad does with Huckles:

Nothing shocking or unusual about that thirty-second spot. It just seeks to remind Republican voters that Mike f'ing Huckabee is no conservative on foreign policy, national security, fiscal policy, or crime. And it does so very effectively.

As has become emblematic of the Huckster, finding out the downside of being on top sent him careening into stepping on several more rakes in succession:

Huckabee said Americans want a president who will be truthful and consistent in his stands.

"You're not going to hear me say something different about the sanctity of life than I did 10 years ago," Huckabee said, referring to Romney's change in position on abortion rights. Although Huckabee has long been opposed to abortion, Romney had earlier supported abortion rights.

Leaving aside that Huck, in that comment alone, is getting as "negative" as Romney did, his problem is, ironically, that he is being truthful and consistent in his stands. But he's compounding that problem by the incompetence with which he's attempting to expound upon them while under the kilowatt klieg lights of a level of public scrutiny to which he's obviously unaccustomed:

In recent days, Mike Huckabee has tried to answer long-standing questions about who is on his foreign policy team. On Friday morning, he listed former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as someone with whom he either has “spoken or will continue to speak.”

At a Thursday evening press conference, Huckabee said, "I've corresponded with John Bolton, who's agreed to work with us on developing foreign policy.”

Bolton, however, has a different view. “I’d be happy to speak with Huckabee, but I haven’t spoken with him yet,” said Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Sun-tzu once said, "Don't drop names before you have them in your hat." Well, actually, he probably didn't say that, but I'm sure saying it, and my name is easier to pronounce. Either way, it's advice that Huckleberry Hound should have heeded, and indeed should not need. Especially on the heels of his other gaffes of just the past forty-eight hours (if you want an obscene amount of detailed analysis on them, you know where to go):

This follows two embarrassing gaffes on Pakistan after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In one, he mistook the shared Afghan border as being on the eastern side of Pakistan instead of the north-west side, and in the other he accidentally used the word "apologies" instead of condolences. The border error is minor, but the use of the word "apologies" has distinct diplomatic meaning, and if used by a President would have raised eyebrows around the world.

Romney almost doesn't have to bother casting all of Huck's weaknesses like swine before pearls (Can I hear a "suuuuueeeeeeyyyyy!"?). At least, he doesn't have to do much. And that's more than enough for this blogger, who seems to sum it up nicely:

I'm sure Mike Huckabee is a swell guy, but in my eyes, he's a mixture of everything I didn't like about Bill Clinton and George Bush.
A big government conservative with a history of accepting gifts from donors, a compulsion to legislate morality, and an "aw shucks," personality designed to catch you off guard, right before you find yourself taxed more to get less freedom.
If our friends in Iowa could give us a hand, we could Chuck Huck January 3rd.

Oh, did I mention this story?:

Mike Huckabee last year accepted $52,000 in speaking fees from a biotech giant that wants to research human embryonic stem cells, a nonprofit working to expand access to the morning after pill and a group pushing to study whether tightening gun control laws will reduce violence.

Consistency? Or The Price Is Right?

We report, you decide.

Dying To Live

2007-12-28T23:16:00.000-08:00

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. "Never, LORD!" he said. "This shall never happen to You!"

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life [a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it. 26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what He has done. 28 I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom."

-Matthew 16:21-28

Hucked Up

2007-12-28T19:12:00.000-08:00

As Mitt Romney is frantically trying to hold off John f'ing McCain, of all people, in New Hampshire, so his minions are desperately trying to regain the initiative in Iowa by going after newly minted, long-demented front-runner Mike f'ing Huckabee, who I will never stop saying should be running for Mark Pryor's Senate seat instead of a job for which he's manifestly unqualified in so very many ways.

That's quite a list of almost uniform right-wing punditocratic denunciation of the Huckster that Jeff Fuller put together, isn't it? It'd take me hours to even skim every linked article, but a particular favorite of mine was Dean Barnett's contribution in the Weekly Standard. It's so good from beginning to end that it's difficult to distill down individual exerpts, but I'll give it the ol' college try:

The [Foreign Affairs] essay was a disaster for both Michael D. Huckabee and Mike Huckabee. Their bid to persuade America's most serious foreign policy analysts that Huckabee understands global affairs was equal parts embarrassing and unintentionally comic.

In one part of the essay, Huckabee somberly intoned that "Sun-tzu's ancient wisdom is relevant today: 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'" The only problem with citing this ancient piece of wisdom is that it comes not from Sun Tzu, but Michael Corleone. Unfortunately, the rest of Huckabee's essay was silent as to what America should do about Hyman Roth and his Sicilian message boy, Johnny Ola.

Actually, I believe Sun-tzu said, "Know your enemy," or words to that effect. Note the Wikipedia link; note also that this wasn't an off-the-cuff quip in a speech, but a written essay. Which means that either Huckles is as intellectually lazy as his campaign staff, or vice versa, or both.

Other parts of Huckabee's Foreign Affairs opus uncomfortably suggest that the governor isn't just playing at being a rube. Repeatedly, Huckabee clumsily tried to make purportedly serious points in Bumpkin-speak. "When we let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora," Huckabee reminisced, "we played Brer Fox to his Brer Rabbit." At the risk of revealing my lack of bumpkin bona fides, I don't know what that's even supposed to mean.

Ouch. I dunno, maybe that's what passes for being well read in Arkansas. Oh, I guess I'm not too non-bumpkinesque to grasp the point Hucksaplenty was trying to make; personally, I'd have used Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, since EVERYBODY knows THEM. Although that would be an awfully conspicuous slap at our military, which didn't bumble its way into letting bin Laden escape six years ago.

Here's a direct quote from Huck's intellectual tour de force:

"The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised."American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush Administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."

If I hadn't overtly introduced this quote as being from an article written by the 2008 Republican presidential frontrunner, you'd have assumed it came from a Democrat, wouldn't you? It sounds like floor sweepings from John Kerry's quixotic, Thurston Howellesque White House run three years ago, minus the mental twang.

Hucker couldn't leave that isolationist, Ameriphobic bilge on the written page, though:

And then there was the speech Huckabee gave in conjunction with the essay's release. In his speech, Huckabee made certain points that he didn't put in the magazine, perhaps for reasons of space or maybe because some Foreign Affairs editor has a well developed sense of mercy. "The bottom line is this," Huckabee cautioned. "Iran is a regional threat to the balance of power to the Middle and Near East; Al Qaeda is an existential threat to the United States."

Stunningly, Huckabee got it perfectly backwards. Al Qaeda is a menace to American security. But a nation governed by a hostile regime poised to produce a small arsenal of nuclear weapons that its leadership promises to use presents a truly existential threat. We can only conclude that "existential threat" does not mean what Mike Huckabee thinks it does.

Actually, they're both wrong, as al Qaeda and the Iranian mullahgarchy - which are collaborating in their joint war against the United States, particularly in Iraq, if you'll remember - are both menaces to American security. That Huckaplucka elevates American groveling on the world stage above protecting the U.S. from rogue and/or terrorist WMD strikes and still is the (or at least a) frontrunner for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is flatly inexplicable.

Which didn't prevent Mr. Barnett from taking a go at a profoundly dismaying theory: personal likeability and a mistake-free campaign masking....

the most disquieting aspect of his ascendancy. On every major issue save for abortion and gay marriage, Huckabee is dramatically out of step with the Republican party. He talks a class warfare game that would make John Edwards blush. His foreign policy prescriptions make one yearn for the comparably muscular approach favored by Jimmy Carter. His anti-business rhetoric and his past regard for tax increases have left the Club for Growth types fuming. His leniency towards criminals is rapidly becoming legend.

Huckabee has risen because of identity-based politics. The bottom line rationale for his candidacy is frighteningly close to that of a Jesse Jackson campaign. Addressing a sliver [well, more like a helping] of the electorate, Huckabee in essence says, "Vote for me because I'm one of you." ...

If the Republican party nominates Huckabee, it will nominate a man who is both unqualified for the job and ideologically out of step with the party. The Republican party's main advantage over the Democratic party the last few decades has been the fact that Republicans were united by principle, while Democrats were a motley pastiche of special interest groups, each looking to tear a little piece off the government's bloated carcass in exchange for their support.

If Huckabee's ascent turns out to be anything more than a personality fueled blip, it will signal trouble for the Republican party. It will mean the ideology that has defined the Republican party since the age of Reagan is no longer enough to hold the party together. If Huckabee gets the nomination, it will mean that base identity politics have officially supplanted conservative ideology as the Republicans' uniting principle.

And it will be justifiably blameable on [drumroll] the "religious Right".

I guess this is the downside of a "wide-open" nomination race. But as empty-headed Elmer Gantrys and treacherous press fellators surge past pugnacious prosecutors and plastic panderers, it's not as if there isn't an inspiring, bona fide, comprehensive conservative behind which the Republican Party can rally.

If the Republican Party still gives a frog's fat leg about conservative principles, that is.

My theory? Heck, I already said that Huck's rise is inexplicable. Ditto squared "Sailor" McCain's rise in New Hampshire. My hope is that GOP voters still aren't paying close attention yet. My suspicion is that Hillary is so inevitable that they're just not engaging and aren't likely to any time soon, on the assumption that whoever we nominate will be cannon fodder anyway.

My fear is that GOP voters ARE paying attention.

"A dark prospect" indeed.

Questions Are Irrelevant

2007-12-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

Don't believe the claims on my side of the blogosphere that Hillary Clinton's campaign is "collapsing" or "panicking"; if that were true, would she be so free and easy about being herself?

As she races through Iowa in the days before next week's caucuses, Hillary Clinton is taking few chances. She tells crowds that it’s their turn to “pick a president,’’ but over the last two days she has not invited them to ask her any questions.

Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she’s done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A.

She was no more inviting when a television reporter approached her after a rally on Thursday and asked if she was “moved’’ by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Clinton turned away without answering.

There's actually a great deal of logic to this strategy.

First, Mrs. Clinton has demonstrated that she stinks at thinking on her feet and speaking extemporaneously in any sort of genuinely spontaneous exchange as takes place when candidates take questions from an audience of voters. The fewer questions she takes, the fewer opportunities for her to flip-flop her position on an incendiarily controversial issue five times in three minutes.

Second, why answer voter questions when everything she says is buffalo bagels anyway? We all know what Hillary REALLY is: a hardcore left-wing extremist who will take America the way of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela to the greatest degree humanly possible. Donk primary voters know this, she knows they know it, and she's relying upon that implicit knowledge to carry her to the Democrat nomination. As it will.

Third, it's refreshingly honest. Senator Clinton looks upon the American people as cattle anyway; she doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us other than as voters to be hoodwinked and revenue sources to be pillaged. That, too, comes across in ad lib conversation; better for her later triangulation needs if she limits her exposure to such rhetorical minefields that she has no genuine, much less natural, inkling to navigate.

Richard Nixon ran precisely this sort of no-retail/all mass advertising campaign in 1968 and captured the White House. He did so for the same reasons Hillary is now.

She's still up five in Iowa, three in New Hampshire, and seventeen nationally. And the GOP is committing its usual ritual Republicide. So pardon moi if I stifle another yawn.

Bhutto Details Dribble Out

2007-12-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

Remember yesterday when it was thought that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benizir Bhutto was "simply" blow to smithereens by a suicide bomber at a public rally? It's turning out that the story is more complicated - and more harrowing for its implications to that country's immediate future:

American and Pakistani military leaders are seeking to account for what may be renegade commando units from the Pakistani military's special forces in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto's rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to the New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto's armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest, and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police. ...

A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan's Special Services Group, the country's equivalent of Britain's elite SAS commandos. This official, however, stressed this was just a theory at this point. Other theories include that the assassins were trained by Qaeda or were from other military services, or the possibility that the assassins were retired Pakistani special forces.

"They just killed the most protected politician in the whole country," this source said. "We really don't know a lot at this point, but the first thing that is happening is we are asking the Pakistani military to account for every black team with special operations capabilities."

Well, if the notion of bulldozing ahead with parliamentary elections in under two weeks that can only hand effective political control of Pakistan (and its nuclear weapons) over to Osama bin Laden wasn't rendered moot before, it is now. If al Qaeda has penetrated Pakistani Intelligence (the ISI), there's nobody in that country that they can't kill, and they don't even have to use their own jihadis to do it.

Moreover, as Admiral Ed points out, this infiltration and its disastrous result finishes whatever figurative castration of Pervez Musharraf that he hadn't already been compelled to do to himself. If he can't trust his intel service, his military will be correspondingly hampered in its efforts to eradicate al Qaeda and the Taliban from Waziristan. And that leaves aside the question of the degree to which the Islamists have penetrated the Pakistani military as well.

Let's add this up: Musharraf can't fight the jihadis, and he dare not go through with the aforementioned elections. Mrs. Bhutto's successor as opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, is demanding the election's cancellation as well, but against the pre-condition that Musharraf resign first, which would, of course, also play right into al Qaeda's hands. And, closing the vicious circle, many in the American Beltway are backing Sharif's demand upon threat of cutting off US aid to Pakistan.

So, then, Musharraf can't go through with the elections if the opposition boycotts them; if he cancels the elections, he alienates his American patron; if he tries to go ahead anyway, the Islamists will sweep to power.

It seems that there is no alternative that doesn't result in Osama bin Laden conquering Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. Except, of course, Pervez Musharraf and George W. Bush saying, "[Screw] it!", and restoring martial law for as long as it takes to crush the terrorists. It may split the Pakistani army, which would be the country's death knell, but it's appears to be the only alternative to sitting helplessly back and watching the cancerous, inexorable rise of al Qaedastan.

UPDATE: Could Mrs. Bhutto have really died not via the suicide bomb blast, or the ISI snipers, but by hitting her head when ducking back down through her armored vehicle's sunroof and fatally fracturing her own skull? Why on Earth would she be sticking any part of herself into the open in the first place? Hell, how can an armored vehicle expressly designed to protect VIPs possibly have a frakking sunroof at all?

Is it any wonder that bin Laden and his followers think that "God" is on their side?

The Rabbit Is Fading

2007-12-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

At least two newspaper editorial boards REALLY do not like Mitt Romney.

The Concord (NH) Monitor:

The Concord Monitor broke with political tradition Sunday, telling readers in the state with the first presidential primary why they should not vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney instead of whom they should support.

In a scathing anti-endorsement that called Romney a "disquieting figure," the New Hampshire newspaper's editorial board said he looks and acts like a presidential contender but "surely must be stopped" because he lacks the core philosophical beliefs to be a trustworthy president.
In particular, the newspaper noted the former Massachusetts governor's change of heart on such issues as abortion rights, stem-cell research and access to emergency
contraception, as well as on signing an anti-tax pledge.
"When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it," the newspaper said. "Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no."

Leaving aside (with an effort) the absurd notion of independents voting in a Republican (or Democrat) primary, it appears the Monitor is definitely using the standard anti-Mitt "Johnny-come-lately" meme, questioning the "convenience" of his recent Damascus Road-like conversion to conservatism. It also appears that the Monitor fears a Romney victory in New Hampshire (he still has a mid-single-digits lead with under two weeks to go) and is desperate to stomp on his fingers to keep him from hanging on.

Why would the Monitor be so eager to shiv Governor Romney? Well, look at the candidate who has closed to within striking distance: John f'ing McCain, the personification of the political zombie, the man who killed his own campaign last summer with his quixotic, arrogant, obnoxious tilt at the immigration amnesty windmill and now, somehow, is rising in the polls again, and the "maverick" whose torrid love affair with the Enemy Media I guarantee isn't dormant, either. A fact that the Romneylans were quick to point out.

But if the Concord Monitor is just another lib rag, that cannot be said of the other Granite State paper that pissed in Romney's face this week:

Mitt Romney has gotten stung by another so-called "anti-endosement" - a New Hampshire newspaper, the statewide Manchester Union Leader, is calling upon voters to pass on the former Massacusetts governor. Following on the heels of a similar Concord Monitor blast over the weekend, the editorial cites:

"There is a reason Mitt Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire. It's the same reason his poll numbers are dropping. He has not been able to convince the people of this state that he's the conservative he says he is.
Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn't close the deal for us.

My goodness, Hugh Hewitt must be experiencing an overpowering need to jog a few hundred extra miles a day just to sweat out the stress - though, of course, his blog will never show it. And that's before you figure in his guy's six point deficit in Iowa, whose caucuses are only six days away.

Anybody who has followed my admittedly intermittent comments on the GOP primaries over the course of this year know that Mitt Romney's slow fade is no surprise to me. He put all his emphasis on the two earliest states, zoomed out to big leads, and put himself in the classic position of having nowhere to go but down. What does surprise me is which candidates are catching and passing him. Mike Huckabee in Iowa? John McCain in New Hampshire? If the concern of Republican voters and center-right publications like the Manchester Union-Leader is
the alleged ersatzness of the Mittster's conservatism, how can they be turning to two of the least conservative Pachyderms in the race? C'mon, Huck's reaction to the Benizir Bhutto assassination was to apologize for it as though he were channelling Bill Clinton. And McCain? Sheep dip, you can't trust him as far as you can throw him, other than to be what he's been for the past decade: an untrustworthy, backstabbing media whore whose popularity with the Fourth Estate springs precisely from his delight in shafting his own party on issue after issue of crucial importance to the GOP base.

That, of course, makes McCain inherently vulnerable to ads pointing out these facts, and to his credit, Romney isn't wasting any time in laying down suppression fire:

Yeah, there's a difference, alright: one is ashamed of his RINO background, and one is damned proud of it.

Meanwhile, the only comprehensive and credible conservative in the race, the closest Republican candidate to the mantle of Ronald Reagan, is going nowhere.

The spectre of President Rodham looks more and more predestined all the time, doesn't it?

UPDATE: The Admiral generally concurs, and adds the very salient point that while McCain may have an impressive knowledge of national security issues, he has zero, zip, utterly and absolutely no executive experience with them. Of course, neither does Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani, or my man Fred; that's the sort of experience you can only get "on the job," which gets back to character, which gets back to why Fred Thompson is head & shoulders above the rest of the GOP field.

Family Stories

2007-12-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."

4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."

8 So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. 9 Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been [a] in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.

-Joshua 4:1-9

Bhutto Goes Blammo

2007-12-27T20:16:00.000-08:00

The battle of Iraq is over; behold, the battle of Pakistan has begun:

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide bombing that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, a party aide and a military official said.

“At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.

A senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, confirmed that Bhutto had died.

Her supporters at the hospital began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” referring to Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf. Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears.

How knee-jerkingly convenient that Mrs. Bhutto's followers blame Musharraf, whose recent actions in declaring a scarcely any less knee-jerkingly convenient state of emergency that included putting the woman under house arrest created just the soil in which such reflexive recriminations can easily take root - but which were also a nearly inescapable Hobson's choice as well.

Meanwhile, the actual perpetrators weren't shy about glomming the "credit" for their latest murder:

A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda #2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.

"The Egyptian doctor". The irony reels the mind.

Still, this sure looks like an al Qaeda hit. Suicide bomber, ordered by the same man who was behind the assassination of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat twenty-six years ago, which also was carried out by a suicide bomber at a crowded public rally. And it's not as if the Islamists haven't been trying to blow Mrs. Bhutto to bits for the past several months.

Why this is the case is perhaps not quite as obvious as one might think. Clearly it isn't out of an Islamist fear of democracy:

A recent CNN poll showed that 46% of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38%.

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

You could look at it that al Qaeda and the Taliban were practicing the Pakistani version of "hardball politics". By eliminating the Western-palatable alternative to Pervez Musharraf and turning Bhutto's followers even more embitteredly against his embattled regime, our enemies get pretty much the best of all worlds: either Musharraf cracks down again, bringing about a Western crackdown against his regime that would do the rest of al Qaeda's dirty work for them; he sits there, paralyzed, and his country is swept into bin laden's hands; or, as New Mexico Donk Governor Bill Richardson idiotically insists, we take this assassination as an "opportunity" to overthrow Musharraf, Shah-like just because, in order to "democratize" Pakistan - because, you know, any Pakistani democracy would automatically be pro-Western, despite all evidence to the contrary, right? - after which the Islamists will be swept into power by popular demand, just as happened in Lebanon and Gaza.

Both Andy McCarthy above and Mark Steyn in the Corner make powerful arguments that the foolish delusions of Western diplomats, who believe that jaw-jaw can solve everything, were scarcely any less culpable for sending Benizir Bhutto to her death than "Dr." Zawahiri and the demonspawn with the explosives vest. The truth, brought home anew this morning in a flash and a roar, is that Pakistan is Islamicizing, if not already majority Islamicized, and the only possible way to keep it and its nuclear arsenal from falling into OBL's hands is to do whatever it takes, use whatever force, and impose whatever draconian measures necessary to eradicate Islamic Fundamentalism once and for all.

And that doesn't put democratization very high on the to-do list. Unless, of course, people like Bill Richardson want to see Barack Obama's summer-time dream come true.

What, pray tell, was President Bush's reaction to the Bhutto assassination? Well....

The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy. Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice. Mrs. Bhutto served her nation twice as Prime Minister and she knew that her return to Pakistan earlier this year put her life at risk. Yet she refused to allow assassins to dictate the course of her country.

We stand with the people of Pakistan in their struggle against the forces of terror and extremism. We urge them to honor Benazir Bhutto’s memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.

"Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice"? Are we sure that John Kerry didn't somehow gut the real Dubya after the '04 election and put on his skin like the bug did with that redneck farmer in Men in Black? This wasn't a "crime" in any conventional sense of the term, and the remedy isn't conventional law enforcement, any more than it was after 9/11. This was another enemy offensive in the Fourth World War aimed squarely at turning a valuable Western Ally in that war into a nuclear al Qaedastan. And the counter to it isn't the Bush Administration's democracy fetish, which would only lend the enemy democratic legitimacy, but to kill every last one of them, no matter how long it takes.

Hey, it's what Mr. McCarthy concluded:

For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.

The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.

We don’t have the political will to fight the war on terror every place where jihadists work feverishly to kill Americans. And, given the refusal of the richest, most spendthrift government in American history to grow our military to an appropriate war footing, we may not have the resources to do it.

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

Hmmm; the "war on terror" a war of annihilation....trying to win the war on the cheap via the destruction of only two Middle East dictatorships and a "surge" of recycled Wilsonianism that is succeeding in Iraq only because we've got 150,000 troops on the ground while our enemies are left free in Iran, Syria, and now almost Pakistan to run wild dismissed as rank folly, inexcusable cowardice, and courting strategic disaster....It all sounds familiar, somehow.

Makes me feel like the ghost of Christmas to come.

Not that showing Hillary Clinton the future she's destined to destroy would change her mind, as Ebenezer Scrooge's was, of course....

Central Command News (12/27/07)

2007-12-27T05:48:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL KUT CRIMINAL ELEMENT NETWORKS, 11 TERRORISTS KILLED

Posted: 27 Dec 2007 04:23 AM CST

IRAQI POLICE UNCOVER MAJOR WEAPONS CACHE

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 07:43 AM CST

Against All Odds

2007-12-26T23:38:00.000-08:00

Lawrence Kudlow has a good article up over at The Washington Times' web site. He calls it "Bush's Very Good Year." We have commented on this recently on this blog, but I think it bears repeating, because remember how he was being written off after the 2006 election? Why, the Democrats were going to run all over him, then run him out of office. In reality, he has been smacking them upside the head over and over again.

Against all odds, and despite the usual drumbeat of criticism, President Bush had a very good year.

The troop surge in Iraq is succeeding. America remains safe from terrorist attacks. And the Goldilocks economy is outperforming all expectations.

At his year-end news conference, Mr. Bush said with optimism that the economy is fundamentally sound, despite the housing downturn and the subprime credit crunch. The very next day, that optimism was reinforced with news of the best consumer spending in two years.

The prophets of recessionary doom, such as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Republican adviser Martin Feldstein, ex-Democratic Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, and bond-maven Bill Gross have been proven wrong once again.

Calendar year 2007 looks set to produce 3 percent growth in real gross domestic product, nearly 3 percent growth in consumer spending, and more than 3 percent growth in after-tax inflation-adjusted incomes.

Meanwhile, headline inflation (including food and energy) will have run at 2½ percent, with only 2 percent core inflation.

You get the idea. What I keep going back to are the gloom and doom reports of how Christmas season spending was going to be awful this year, and the "experts" were proven wrong again. I'm beginning to wonder how these experts ever got to be experts. Must have been an online 4 week economy course or something. Or maybe...Democrat hopes for bad times for America. That seems more likely.

Still New

2007-12-26T22:13:00.000-08:00

1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance [a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Peter, [b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

-1 Corinthians 15:1-8

The Incomparable Christ

2007-12-25T23:07:00.000-08:00

By an unknown author....

~ ~ ~

He came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman. He put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of Man that we might become sons of God. He came from heaven where the rivers never freeze, winds never blow, frosts never chill the air, flowers never fade, and no one is ever sick. No undertakers and no graveyards, for one one ever dies, no one is ever buried.

He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, reared in obscurity - only once crossed the boundary of the land, in childhood. He had no wealth or influence and had neither training nor education. His relatives were inconspicuous and not influential. In infancy, He startled a king; in boyhood, He puzzled the doctors; in manhood, He ruled the course of nature. He walked upon billows and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book, yet not all the libraries of the country could hold all the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme of more songs than all writers combined. He never founded a college, yet all the schools together cannot boast of as many students as He has. He never practiced medicine, and yet He healed more broken hearts than the doctors healed broken bodies.

He never marshaled an army, drafted a soldiers, or fired a gun, yet no leader ever made more volunteers who have, under his orders, made rebels stack arms or surrender without a shot being fired. He is the Star of astronomy, the Rock of geology, the Lion and the Lamb of zoology, the Harmonizer of all discords and the Healter of all diseases. Great men have come and gone, yet He lives on. Herod could not kill Him, Satan could not seduce Him, the grave could not hold Him.

He laid aside His purple robe for a peasants gown. He was rich, yet for our sake became poor. How poor? Ask Mary! Ask the wise men! He slept in another's slop trough. He cruised the lake in another's boat. He rode on another man's ass. He was buried in another man's tomb. All failed, but He, never! The ever-perfect One, He is the Chief among ten thousand. He is altogether lovely and He is my Savior.

The Blessing Tree

2007-12-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

46 And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the LORD 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me — holy is His Name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear Him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."

-Luke 1:46-55

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

From "The Pastor's Pen" in the December 2007 Voice of the Valley, the monthly newsletter of Valley Bible Church, by guest-posted by Stephanie Buczak. Re-posted here with permission.

~ ~ ~

Thank the LORD we still have a season worth celebrating.

Remember Christmas? Remember waking up early on Christmas morning, sneaking out to the smell of the fresh pine Christmas tree, crawling under the tree to turn the lights on, and waiting ever so impatiently for your parents to wake up? Remember the Christmas program with the manger and the little biblically incorrect blue-eyed baby doll? Remember the angle costumes with theitchy garland halos (if you're blonde that was likely your costume every year when you really wanted to be Mary)?

What is Christmas all about? Certainly, we know what the holidays are all about. Presents, of course. Let's just be honest. Why else would all the stores have so many sales and why is the traffic around the malls so awful this time of year? Presents. The world tries to fool itself by saying that it's all about spending time with family, but that point is not well argued at all. Haven't you heard the commercial about how much of a drag it is to "have to go see the in-laws"? Don't give me "holidays". I don't want any part of such a contadictory sham.

Remember the name? Remember Jesus? Remember? Oftentimes I don't. It's very easy to get caught up in the commercialism of the season. I catch myself evaluating every commercial to see if what they're advertising is really what I want for Christmas. Could I ask for that and not hurt the budget too badly? What I remember is that December 25th is called Christmas, but in all this craziness about Christmas being called anything other than Christmas, I have been reminded that I have a reason for celebrating Christmas AS Christmas.

I celebrate a Savior Who is worth far more than my temporary, covetous wants. He's worth far more than just His birthday. For unto us is born this day....a Savior, Which is Christ the LORD. A Savior; a self-sacrificing, all-powerful, loving-above-all-other-loves, Savior, Jesus Christ. The Savior Who died for me. I have been saved for years and I still can't grasp the fact that Jesus died for me. Knowing that I remain safely in His arms, I still long to hug Him.

Say the Name against and remember it this Christmas: Jesus.

The Forgotten Man

2007-12-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the Name Jesus, [a] because He will save His people from their sins."

22 All this took place to fulfill what the LORD had said through the prophet: 23 "The virgin will be with Child and will give birth to a Son, and they will call Him Immanuel" [b] — which means, "God with us."

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the LORD had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a Son. And he gave him the Name Jesus.

-Matthew 1:18-25

What A Coincidence!!

2007-12-24T01:12:00.000-08:00

This kind of stuff has moved beyond eye-rollingly disgusting to just plain funny.

An amazing coincidence the other day on the campaign trail in Iowa with Hillary Clinton.

The New York senator was in Donnellson as part of a broad statewide tour in which she, her husband, relatives, friends and Magic Johnson spread out to all 99 crucial counties to tell stories meant to soften her image in what's become a very tight Democratic caucus race.

At a campaign forum in the fire station, a caucus site come Jan. 3, Clinton happened to be asked about her religious faith. Practicing Methodist, she responded, adding, "I'm often asked if I'm a praying person, and I am a praying person. My father prayed at his bedside every night and we prayed at the table over dinner."

Then, someone pointed out that Clinton's childhood Sunday-school teacher, Rosalie Bentzinger, from her Park Ridge, Ill., days, happened to be right there in the very same Iowa fire station at that same moment. Can you believe it?

The Sunday-school teacher stood up. Clinton rushed over. They hugged.

The 84-year-old Bentzinger gave Clinton a photograph she happened to have with her. And Clinton announced, "She has a picture of my confirmation class -- March 27, 1959."

Clinton aides said they were unaware the Sunday-school teacher was in the crowd.

Wow, how convenient for Mrs. Clinton that her old Sunday School teacher was there, AND she happened to have a picture of Mrs. Clinton's confirmation class from 1959! But wait...

Hillary has staged another campaign event for her "Hilly Copter Trail of Tears" tour, this time carefully staging a "reunion" with her long-lost Sunday School Teacher in a firehouse in Iowa.

The event was staged to make it appear that Clinton was "suprised" to see her old Sunday School Teacher in the firehouse. The two hugged. The Teacher, Roaslie Bentzinger, even brought a photo of Hillary's confirmation class. Not a dry eye in the house! After all these years!

The event also provided an excellent opportunity for Hillary to expo[u]nd on her religous beliefs (presumably contrasting them with Obama's). The entire staged event was started with a planted question about her faith. After Hillary expounded on her praying habits, the long-lost Sunday School Teacher came forward from the small crowd gathered.

The problem with the event is that Hillary and Ms. Bentzinger are hardly strangers, having met at a similar campaign event in April of this year.

Ms. Bentzinger is hardly an unknown retired Sunday School teacher living in obscurity, either.

Ms. Bentzinger is a well-known regliious scholar and leader and even has a religious scholarship named after her.

Hard to believe Clinton did not recognize her in the crowd, considering they shared BBQ together a few months earlier.

The most incredible thing is she still has supporters who lap this stuff up. It's no surprise that the press does, of course, but it's hard to believe there are enough stupid people in this country to make this woman a viable candidate for anything, let alone President of the United States.

Reserved In Heaven

2007-12-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

-1 Peter 1:3-12

VBC Missionaries Of The Week: Tim & Sharon Simmonds

2007-12-23T06:13:00.000-08:00

The Simmonds are ministering to new candidates at the New Tribes Language Institute. They help with the last stage of training as new missionaries prepare to go into tribal evangelism. Tim is also working on Bible curriculum for the Mamusi churches in Papua New Guinea.

Sharon works in the finance office.

Global Cooling?

2007-12-23T04:41:00.000-08:00

Somebody call Al Gore, quick! Nah, never mind. Don't bother him with facts like these:

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

The mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees in the last 100+ years! Oh my goodness, Al Gore is right! It's a crisis! Send him your money immediately!

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Read the rest of the article. It's full of evidence such as the above that Al Gore and his Green Cult are nothing but a bunch of liars.

Where's The Leash?

2007-12-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

1 Listen to what the LORD says: "Stand up, plead your case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say.

2 Hear, O mountains, the LORD's accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of Earth. For the LORD has a case against His people; He is lodging a charge against Israel.

3 "My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer Me.

4 I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.

5 My people, remember what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD."

6 With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

-Micah 6:1-8

The T-101 Really Is Obsolete

2007-12-22T05:54:00.001-08:00

My, how the fearsome and awesome Terminator has fallen. Shall we take a brief stroll down memory lane?

1984: Out of a ball of dazzlingly electric-blue lightning emerges a massive creature that looks outwardly like a certain Austrian body-builder. Talks like him, too. He's naked, and he knows he needs clothes. He spots three young hoodlums. He approaches them and, ignoring their insolent ridicule of his unclad state, barks in an uncanny imitation of Jorgen Von Strangle, "Your clothes! Give dem to me! NOW!!" He punctuates his demand by backhanding one of them several yards through the air to land in an unconscious heap, impaling the second on his arm, while the third wastes no time in disrobing as fast as frenzied terror will allow.

His mission? To "terminate" a young woman named Sarah Connor who, in the future he comes from, is the mother of the human resistance leader that defeats his kind. He's the villain, but he's the ultimate badass.

1994 (1991, really, but in the movie it's 1994): Out of a ball of dazzling electric-blue light emerges another massive creature that looks outwardly like a retired Austrian body-builder. Still ripped by ordinary standards, and still talks like him for the most part. He's naked as well, and knows he needs clothes. He spots a nearby honkytonk bar. He enters it, sizing up the patrons, until he finds a biker of approximately comparable size. In a calm tone, he announces, "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." After the biker finishes laughing hysterically at him, and putting out a lit cigar on his shoulder, he calmly pummels, hurls, and stabs half a dozen of the establishment's male patrons. The biker sobbingly surrenders his clothes, boots, and motorcycle. But nobody died.

His mission? To protect the son of the young woman his predecessor failed to terminate from a newer, deadlier terminator. He's still a badass, but a kinder, gentler one.

2003 (The actual year isn't specified, but the movie came out in 2003): Out of a ball of dazzling electric blue light emerges a noticeably diminished creature that looks like the father of a retired Austrian body-builder. Sports a good build for a geezer, good enough that you can almost ignore that unairbrushable chin waddle and the heart surgery scar on his chest. Of course he's naked, but he needs clothes to conceal the paunch he's been unable to exercise away no matter how hard he tries. He spots a nearby gay bar. He, um, enters it, er, sizing up the patrons but finding none that match his, uh, size. Finally he settles upon the gay stripper currently, eh, performing on stage. Climbing up beside him, he politely asks, "May I please have your clothes?" After a lengthy negotation the stipulations of which were blessedly kept off-screen, he is donned in the same tell-tale leather ensemble as his predecessors.

His mission? To protect the older version of the young woman's son that shouldn't exist after the successful mission of his immediate predecessor but does anyway, whose older self is terminated after the human victory by the very same model that is trying to protect him now from a fembot - even newer and even deadlier, but still a fembot. And she kicks his ass.

(Later in) 2003: Out of a ball of dazzling electric-blue light emerges a politician. He used to be a body-builder, and then three shrinking terminators, and in his spare time, an Action Hero. He's not naked anymore, and has amassed so much cash that if he never again wore an article of clothing more than once, he wouldn't be naked for over fifty seven million years. But in his jury-rigged heart, the spark of what he once was still flickers, and he decides to apply it to politics.

He spots a nearby state, which he dubs "Gollyfornia". He enters it, sizing up the allegedly elected officeholders, finally settling on an amorphous pipsqueak not anywhere close to his size. But rather than demanding his clothes, he tells the man, in the spirit of his predecessors, to "get out." Governor Gray Davis complies, but only because of the crazed pitchfork-bearing mob gathering behind his assailant.

But to cover his exit he throws his Lieutenant-Governor, a man whose surname translates as "Large Breasts," into the grasping arms of his deposer. He backhands "Large Breasts" several yards away to land in an unconscious heap, then impales him on his arm - electorally, of course.

The Governator is born.

2004: His mission to "do da vill of da peepul" accomplished for the time being, the Governator accepts a new mission: get President George W. Bush re-elected. Believing that to be too daunting a task even for his mighty populist powers, he limits his involvement to the Republican National Convention and a lone, late-October joint campaign appearance in Ohio. Bush, who at this point still is an Action Hero, wins re-election without the Governator's help.

A certain esteemed pundit opined that the Governator was "cool." And he was. But the lugnuts of his coolness were steadily loosening.

2005: Terminator I survived gunfire, multiple car crashes, and massive explosions, and kept on coming. Terminator II defeated the more advanced and deadly T-1000. Terminator III defeated the even more advanced, and definitely hotter, Terminatrix. But as the Governator, champion of right-wing populism, he finally meets, in the California Left, a villain he can't beat.

But rather than displaying the single-minded relentlessness of his predecessors, the Governator quits. No, he does more than quit: he switches sides. His descent from fearsome and awesome Terminator to Governor Girlyman is now complete.

2006: His circle from mighty villain to mighty hero to fallen hero to craven villain now closed, what's an obsolete, emasculated Terminator to do? What else - embark on a new mission. His new persona? The Toxic Avenger. So much for "getting the government off your back," "lowering the taxes," "making government accountable to the people instead of the people accountable to the government," "your family knowing how to spend your money better than the government," and "faith in free enterprise, the resourcefulness of the American people, and the U.S. economy."

2007: It all comes down to this:

California will sue the US government within weeks over its failure to give the green light to the state's tough new vehicle emissions standards, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday.

The movie star turned Republican politician said in a strongly worded statement that the Environmental Protection Agency's rejection of a request by California to be allowed to set its own standards was "legally indefensible."

The statement said California would file suit "within the next three weeks" at the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington to challenge the EPA's ruling, which was issued on Wednesday.

"We will sue to overturn this ruling as quickly as possible," Schwarzenegger said. "I have no doubt that we will prevail because the law, science and the public's demand for leadership are on our side.

"Anything less than aggressive action is inexcusable."

"EPA's denial of our waiver request to enact the nation's cleanest standards for vehicle emissions is legally indefensible and another example of the failure to treat climate change with the seriousness it demands."

Ah-nuld is not only "a coward after all," he's a liar as well.

Funny, I didn't know that Al Gore knew how to reprogram advanced cybernetic organisms....

God's Surprising Answer

2007-12-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

1 "Here is My Servant, Whom I uphold, My Chosen One in Whom I delight; I will put My Spirit on Him and He will bring justice to the nations.

2 He will not shout or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets.

3 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; 4 He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on Earth. In His law the islands will put their hope."

5 This is what God the LORD says — He Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread out Earth and all that comes out of it, Who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: 6 "I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, 7 to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

8 "I am the LORD; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols.

9 See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you."

-Isaiah 42:1-9

The Worst Campaign Ad EVER

2007-12-21T09:53:00.001-08:00

Okay, now that I've wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes...I'll share this with you. Have you ever seen a bigger phony in your LIFE? One would almost believe her opponents put that one on, except at the end she says she approved it. Wow.

JASmius adds: Wow, indeed. Senator Clinton's ad is so....what's the word? Honest. She thinks Uncle Sam should be Santa Claus, wants to turn him into a tranny by taking his place, and she actually made an ad publicly confirming it.

I guess that also confirms that her campaign IS worried about its chances in the looming primary season. There's no triangulation in sight in this ad, and a whole lotta frantic pandering to her party's lunatic neoBolshevik base.

It gives me a new nickname for the Chappaqua Gargoyle, though: Senator Claus.

Sounds right, doesn't it?

A damn sight better than "President Rodham," at least.

Central Command News (12/21/07)

2007-12-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Latest News Feed

U.S. Airmen Help Open Hospital in Afghanistan.aspx

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 12:38 PM CST
FORWARD OPERATING BASE HERO, Afghanistan – Airmen in a medical mentoring team here have been working hard to ensure the successful opening of an Afghan National Army hospital for the past several months.

Multinational Division Baghdad Transfers Authority.aspx

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 11:59 AM CST

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq – Control of Multinational Division Baghdad changed hands during a ceremony here yesterday.

US CENTCOM Press Releases

AL-QAEDA NETWORKS DISRUPTED; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 19 SUSPECTS DETAINED

Posted: 21 Dec 2007 06:06 AM CST

Nuclear Ships, Passing In The Night

2007-12-21T05:39:00.000-08:00

While the Iranian mullahgarchy is frenetically working toward building a massive nuclear arsenal - no matter what the intel defeatniks that put together the latest National Intelligence Estimate hallucinate - that they, unlike we, will promptly use against us and our allies, the United States, under the gelded, beknighted direction of the gutted, emasculated Bush Administration, is sailing suicidally in the opposite direction:

The United States has dismantled its nuclear weapons stockpile faster than anticipated and will meet President George W. Bush's goal of reducing the arsenal by half at the end of this year - five years early, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Bush in 2004 announced a goal of halving the U.S. nuclear stockpile by 2012, which will now be met by year's end, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman said.

The number of nuclear weapons is classified and the agency is working to reduce the stockpile by another 15%, John Broehm, an NNSA spokesman said.

"We are reducing our nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest level consistent with America's national security and our commitments to friends and allies," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement.

She said the reduction would put the U.S. stockpile at less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War.

"It is a comprehensive effort to reduce U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons and streamline and modernize our nuclear infrastructure," Perino said.

I am disquieted by the notion of unilateral nuclear disarmament just on general principles. It takes far longer to build a nuclear arsenal than it does to heedless throw one away, after all, and history shows that disarmament inevitably necessitates re-armament by the encouragement such overt displays of weakness give to our enemies. Only in this case and these circumstances we may not even get the chance to rearm before our willingly embraced vulnerability destroys us.

What strikes me in particular is the reference to "reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons." During the Cold War we relied upon a strong nuclear deterrent to defend Europe from the Warsaw Pact because we were so hopelessly outnumbered in conventional forces and unwilling to invest in the level of manpower and weaponry it would have required to maintain parity with that enemy. After President Reagan won the Cold War (by BUILDING our nuclear stockpile, among other "warmongering" remedies), and our "holiday from history" passed, we found, and find, ourselves in both a new war and new KIND of war, one that doesn't focus as much on the faceoff of massive land armies and more on far-flung, small-scale guerrilla (or "insurgency") campaigns scattered across the globe, but with the paradoxically greater likelihood of the use of weapons of mass destruction - including nukes - against our homeland. The surest and most straightforward means of winning such a conflict is to deprive Islamist terrorists of the support and sponsorship of like-minded regimes who are hell-bent on gaining access to WMD for the sole purpose of using them against us.

Regimes such as the one that used to dominate Iraq, and the ones that still exist in rogue outposts like North Korea and....Iran.

Yet how is the Bush Administration handling the metastasizing Iranian nuclear threat? Do you really want to know?

US President George W. Bush said Monday that Russian deliveries of nuclear fuel to Iran only fed the need for the world to clamp down more firmly on Tehran's home-grown atomic work.

And the US State Department announced consultations Tuesday with five other powers on a draft UN Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to freeze uranium enrichment.

"Iran was a threat to peace, Iran is a threat to peace, and Iran will be a threat to peace if we don't stop their enrichment," which can be a critical step towards getting nuclear arms, Bush told a town-hall style audience here.

The Russian deliveries of nuclear fuel to Iran resumed only after the brain-dead "The mullahs stopped seeking nukes four years ago despite their crash-course enrichment drive" NIE was vomited onto the global news nets, handing Tehran a load of propaganda largesse that Santa Claus couldn't have managed. Coincidence? I think not.

It also had the intended effect of cutting off any embryonic decisive move by the Bush White House to "neutralize" (or sterilize) the mullahgarchy once and for all at the proverbial knees. Not that any such move was remotely in the offing, but now it's bloody impossible. Which both limits Dubya to futile multilateralist diplodiddling about meaningless UNSCRs and toothless sanctions measures and anything and everything but the only thing that can stop the mullahs from getting the nuclear weapons they are making no secret of seeking: regime change by American military force; and guarantees a bloody end to this process, with most of the blood being spilled out of American civilian veins.

The greatest irony? By not employing our conventional military superiority where it is most needed - and whose very existence had already, at least I THOUGHT, "reduced our reliance upon nuclear weapons" - that reliance will only INCREASE as hostile, irrational regimes build ever large nuclear stockpiles and distribute them out the tentacles of the terrorist networks they animate. And that's in addition to the still vast Russian nuclear arsenal, in the hands of Time's Man of the Year who has shown a nascent desire to revive the Cold War of late, and the ever expanding Red Chinese nuclear and conventional military machine.

If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, we seem determined to divest ourselves entirely of the means of both.

And that's BEFORE Hillary Clinton moves back into the White House.

Perhaps it's not so ironic that the shadow of war looms over this season of ostensible "peace on Earth." "While they are saying, 'Peace and safety!' then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: to modify an old Maoism, "Peace and safety come out of the barrel of a gun; that gun must never slip from the grasp of the United States of America."

And we're throwing it away - on (almost) every front.

How's that for a stocking-stuffer?

Where, Oh Where Has My JASmius Gone, Oh Where, Oh Where Can He Be....?

2007-12-21T04:24:00.001-08:00

I'm still here. I'm just still recovering from the long, dark tunnel that was this recently concluded budget season. I'm also more of a creature of habit than I remembered, or perhaps was even aware of.

That's the nature of an externally imposed change in one's daily routine. It seems temporary at first, but after awhile the change becomes the routine. You get used to the new situation, adjust to it, and soon forget, at least consciously, about the status quo it replaced.

When I first ventured forth into the wonderful world of blogging three and a half years ago, I had all the time in the world to indulge that passion. My day job, as compared to what it is now, was orders of magnitude simpler and both less burdensome and less stressful. I had ample time on breaks, as well as ample time on evenings and weekends, to commentate away to my heart's content. And the timing - coming into the home stretch of the 2004 presidential campaign - was golden. I rummage through the archives from that period and marvel at my wit and perspicacity (if I do say so myself).

After 2004 the day job started to change. Or, more specifically, expand, as in beyond the original parameters of the one for which I interviewed and which I accepted. The workload, hours necessary to fulfill it, and concommitant stress level, rose malignantly. The effect manifested itself here by the dwindling of my posting output, both in quantity and quality of content as well as frequency.

Oh, yes, there have been ebbs and flows. As recently as last spring I resolved to get back to the level of the early days, and did enjoy some success. But that resolution got bludgeoned by the Seven Weeks Of Vocational Hell, and even now that they've passed (for now), I find myself unable to focus on blogging like I used to, either years ago or mere weeks.

Not even on days off. That leads into another drain on blogging time and focus that didn't exist in days gone by: my family. Between my father-in-law passing away back in February and my mother-in-law's infirmity and ultimate move closer to where we live, and the hassles and burden of trying to manage her affairs and the disposition of the estate that have afflicted Mrs. Hard Starboard, to the awareness it raised in my mind about my own septuaginarian parents, to my son's behavioral and academic problems, to simply having a teenage daughter (and one who is obsessed with getting her learner's permit, thence to driver's ed, thence to a driver's license, thence to a new level of paternal worry - and that doesn't even figure dating into the equation), there are more than sufficient distractions around Hard Starboard Galactic HQ to crowd mere commentating on the onrush of events that could determine the future of humankind on this planet out of sight, and thus out of mind.

Then there's all the to-do list stuff that continues to languish. Home repairs (several doorposts, no hot water in our shower, a new kitchen floor, putting a roof and walls on our deck to make a "rumpus" room, a storage shed, disposing of a seemingly ever larger quantity of boxes and other deritus that clutter our laundry room, the aforementioned deck, and have spilled out onto our front porch), non-critical "homework" from the office that I haven't been able to get to, routine household finance work that remains to be done, and a couple of CPE courses I have to order and complete by the end of next week. Indeed, much of this list is on the list because of my frustrated attempts to keep up with blogging over recent months. As the old saying goes, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

And my body is making me invest more of them than I'd like in sleeping. I just can't burn the midnight oil like I used to. Time was, going clear back to my college days, when I could easily get by on six hours of sleep a night. Rare was the evening that I went to bed before midnight. Like my father, I was a classic "nightowl," only whereas dear old Dad would sit up until two in the morning reading Popular Mechanics and listening to his police scanner (which he still has, BTW), or in more recent years watch tapes of aircraft programs on cable, I would be clackity-clacking away at this keyboard, contributing my own unique take on the world and its events to which our vast and loyal readership has (or HAD) grown addicted. But not anymore; nowadays when I get home I can already barely keep my eyes open, and as often as not am asleep within half an hour of coming in the front door. All but one night this week I didn't even make it to nine o'clock. Which is most of why I'm up at this ungodly cow-milking hour clickety-clacking away on nothing to do with the Earth-shaking place-takings of the day. Besides, I'll never have time once I get to the office, and I'll probably fall asleep on the way home tonight.

And as if all of the above wasn't depressing enough (at least to my still-functioning blogging compulsion), you have no doubt noticed the technical problems we've been experiencing for months, both in the incessant crashing of the main page (You have to click your browser's "stop" button after the posts load) and the inability of most of my graphics to load. Actually, the "fix" to the crashing problem partially negates the graphics problem by truncating the full loading of the sidebar, which suggests that the crashing problem is caused by conflicting scripts somewhere therein. A conflict I suppose I could find if - drumroll, please - I had the time to tear it apart and determine just exactly what is conflicting with what. Which, of course, I do not have, which is why the problem has persisted. Oh, I've tried to contact the good folks at Google and beg for suggestions as to how to fix either or both problems; but, of course, Blogger is a free service, and as in most things in life, you get what you pay for.

So what is the solution to all these problems? How should I know? Arrogant pagan "science" hasn't quite fabricated a "unified field theory" that explains everything and ties together all the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos; how could I arrogate to myself a remedy that would restore temporal balance to my life, get my fat ass back on this site pixelating like I'm capable of, and make the site itself work like it's supposed to?

The first two are irresolvable unless you remove the need for sleep and earning a living from the equation. Well, okay, if I could earn a living FROM blogging, that would be a solution - but we can't all be Ed Morrissey. But as to the last issue, one of my old bosses had a saying: "When the going gets tough, EXPAND!"

Or, in this case, upgrade. As in migrate Hard Starboard from Blogger to a different host (one I'd have to actually pay for), with our own honest-to-goodness domainname (no frakking "blogspot" in the URL), on honest-to-goodness Moveable Type v. 4.0. A move I have contemplated on several occasions over the past few years, but never bothered actually pursuing because there wasn't any overt need for it. Until now, that is.

You see where this is headed, don't you? I have next week off, and nine uninterrupted days of freedom sound like a lot, which is why they always end up half-overloaded and entirely squandered as everything I plan to do during the typical week off gets procrastinated into limbo by sleep and the sheer joy and release of the absence of stress (or immediately proximate stress, anyway). Relaxation from the frenetic regimentation of my professional (and increasingly, family) life to me means its diametric opposite - do nothing. Which is incompatible with finishing "homework," dispatching two CPE courses, rebuilding a full blogging regimen, taking my daughter out to finish her Christmas shopping (and do some belated Christmas shopping of my own) and - MAYBE - get her her learner's permit, if only so I can laugh uncontrollably at her first attempts to drive a standard transmission, catching up on the towering mound of home receipt data entry, ANNNNNND obtaining new digs for this once and future (?) Empire Of The Mind. And besides, Mrs. Hard Starboard always gives me grief whenever I try to relax anyway, evidently out of a heartfelt devotion to the axiom that misery both loves and DEMANDS company.

I don't honestly know how long it would take to carry out the migration. But it appears that I no longer have a choice if we want to have a blog that actually works, and in that context I would like to have it up and running by the dawn of 2008.

That's not a promise - not yet, anyway. But the eventual new URL will be http://www.hardstarboardblog.com/, and everything should work again.

Eventually.

A pity regaining my blogging stamina won't be even this easy.

What Al Doesn't Want You To Know...

2007-12-21T01:01:00.000-08:00

So, how much have you seen about this?

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust.” (LINK) In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement. (LINK)

You and I know it's a hoax, but there are people out there who actually believe this global warming garbage. It's another venue for the liberals to claim that America is baaaaad, and that they must have more control over our lives for our own good.

Video Tribute For The Troops

2007-12-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

Check out this blogger video tribute for the troops.

Doing Good

2007-12-20T16:18:00.001-08:00

8 Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. 11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil." [a]

13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear [b]; do not be frightened." [c] 15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as LORD. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

-1 Peter 3:8-17

Central Command News (12/20/07)

2007-12-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

DETENTION OPERATIONS HOLD EID AL ADHA RELEASE CEREMONY

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 05:34 AM CST

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE SPECIAL GROUPS CRIMINAL ELEMENT LEADER, DETAIN THREE SUSPECTS

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 05:30 AM CST

Indiana Democrat Sees The Light

2007-12-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I was happy to see this! Indiana Democrat Representative Joe Donnelly made the trip to Iraq and came back with a different view of the situation than we've been hearing from the Treason Times:

U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly returned from a second trip to Iraq in five months encouraged that the mission there is going better and that by 2009 the U.S. military's role could be primarily as trainers and advisers.

"I feel we've made progress, and the other part is I feel we can see an end game in sight," Donnelly, D-Ind., told reporters on a conference call Tuesday from Washington. "It isn't we just keep plugging away in the hopes something will turn out right. Gen. (David) Petraeus is working a plan and we seem to be heading toward a place where the Iraqis can be self-sustaining and we'll have a smaller presence in the background."

Get ready, Rep. Donnelly. You now have a MoveOnToDefeat.org target painted on your back. Just look at what happened when Rep. Brian Baird told the truth.

Donnelly is from my state, and I will be writing to him and thanking him for being brave enough to tell the truth in the face of his party's sedition.

A Real Christmas

2007-12-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the LORD's Christ. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the Child Jesus to do for Him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took Him in his arms and praised God, saying: 29 "Sovereign LORD, as You have promised, You now dismiss [a] Your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation, 31 which You have prepared in the sight of all people, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to Your people Israel."

33 The Child's father and mother marveled at what was said about Him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, His mother: "This Child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a Sign That will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

-Luke 2:25-35

Pathetic Little Weasel

2007-12-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

Harry Reid is again proving his childish hatred for Bush.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has announced that he will call the Senate into pro forma sessions every several days during the upcoming winter recess in order to prevent President Bush from making recess appointments.

Reid explained that he and Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff, were not able to reach an agreement to prevent Bush from giving a recess appointment to Stephen Bradbury, the actiing head of DOJ”s Legal Counsel, and without that agreement with the White House, Reid refused to allow the Senate to recess for three weeks.

As it stands now, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) or some other Democrat will come in every couple days, gavel the Senate into session, and then immediately adjourn. This will block Bush from using his recess-appointment authority.

That'll show him, Harry! This is nothing but a tantrum thrown by a little man with a little mind. I hope there's a way around this little fit, and I hope Bush uses it. No wonder Congress has approval numbers in the basement, with its "leadership" pulling stunts like this. Way to get things done, Harry!

Frogs

2007-12-18T19:20:00.000-08:00

1 O LORD, You have searched me and You know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O LORD.

5 You hem me in — behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, [a] You are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," 12 even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.

-Psalm 139:1-12

Central Command News (12/18/07)

2007-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

SEVERAL MILITANTS KILLED DURING AFGHAN, COALITION FORCES OPERATIONS IN HELMAND

Posted: 18 Dec 2007 04:27 AM CST

Bush's Tenacity

2007-12-18T01:19:00.000-08:00

Great column by Dinesh D'Souza regarding Bush's tenacity and what he'll be remembered for:

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. --Theodore Roosevelt

Listening to the fatuous Al Gore claim his undeserved Nobel Prize and maunder on about how America is ruining the planet makes me realize how fortunate America is to have as its president George W. Bush. Yes, Bush has his ample share of failings. He occasionally speaks at the fifth-grade level. He is too willing to surround himself with cronies and sycophants. An unsupple man, Bush sometimes reminds me of the toy soldier who walks into the wall and keeps going.

Yes, we all have problems with some decisions Bush has made. For many, if not most, conservatives, it has been his willingness to overspend. However, as D'Souza points out, he more than makes up for that.

Bush's weaknesses, however, are more than compensated for by his one great strength. This is a man with unbelievable tenacity. No American president in my lifetime, not even Reagan, had Bush's guts. Perhaps one would have to go all the way back to Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt to find comparable determination. On the international stage, Bush's stamina recalls that of Churchill. Consider: when Bush was elected in 2000 with the tiniest conceivable margin--a margin so slender it required Supreme Court intervention to place him in the Oval Office--I was sure that Bush's proposed tax cuts were dead. But no: Bush pushed ahead and got most of what he proposed. And the subsequent health of the economy--low interest rates, low unemployment, steady growth--has undoubtedly been nourished by Bush's tax cuts.

When Bush believes in something, really believes in it, he doesn't give up until he gets it. The above is pretty amazing, but even more amazing has been this:

Then in 2006, after the midterm debacle, I thought that Bush's Iraq policy was finished. And you could hear the pundits and the newly-elected Democratic congressmen and the pathological Bush-haters gleefully declaring, "Now he's going to have to start pulling out of Iraq." Instead Bush pressed for an increase of 20,000-25,000 troops. Incredibly, he got it. Congress shrieked and howled but went along. The American people were very doubtful, but Bush serenely told them to "wait and see." Bush has seemingly singe-handedly pursued his vision for Iraq even when his allies both at home and abroad have dwindled or lost their nerve. And once again Bush's policy seems to be working. Iraq is becoming more peaceful, and apparently there are Shia and Sunni leaders cooperating with the Americans. The Bush-haters are still with us, but the wind has gone out of the antiwar movement.

After the mid-terms last year, everyone had pretty much written Bush off. It was nothing short of amazingly gutsy to forge ahead with the surge in the face of everyone saying that the mid-terms were a mandate for us to get OUT of Iraq, and here is Bush proposing sending MORE...ad GETTING it! He has never wavered in his resolve to protect America.

This kind of tenacity and character is, unfortunately, very rare in politics these days. The Democrats are hopelessly addicted to power at any cost, and we have some timid Republicans who know what the right thing to do is, but waver when the rubber meets the road. Perhaps some will learn from Bush's defiance in the face of the naysayers who do not believe in this country's greatness. We can only hope.

Forever Joyful

2007-12-17T19:01:00.000-08:00

6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, Who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, Who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our LORD Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in His own time — God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and LORD of lords, 16 Who alone is immortal and Who lives in unapproachable light, Whom no one has seen or can see. To Him be honor and might forever. Amen.

-1 Timothy 6:6-16

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes....

2007-12-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible. The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah." The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"

The little girl replied, "Then you ask him."

~ ~ ~

A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work.

As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, 'I'm drawing God.' The teacher paused and said, 'But no one knows what God looks like'.

Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, 'They will in a minute.'

~ ~ ~

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to 'honor' thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, 'Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?'

Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, 'Thou shall not kill.'

~ ~ ~

One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head. She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, 'Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?' Her mother replied, 'Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white.'

The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, 'Momma, how come ALL of Grandma's hairs are white?'

~ ~ ~

The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture. 'Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, 'There's Jennifer, she's a lawyer,' or 'That's Michael, He's a doctor.'

A small voice at the back of the room rang out, 'And there's the teacher, she's dead.'

~ ~ ~

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, 'Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.' 'Yes,' the class said. 'Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?'

A little fellow shouted, 'Cause your feet ain't empty.'

~ ~ ~

The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray: 'Take only ONE . God is watching.'

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. A child had written a note, 'Take all you want. God is watching the apples.'

[h/t: Li'l Sweetie]

Central Command News (12/17/07)

2007-12-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

MNC-I SOLDIER DIES FROM NON-COMBAT RELATED INJURY

Posted: 17 Dec 2007 05:23 AM CST

BY CHARGÉ D'AFFAIRES PATRICIA A. BUTENIS AND GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS ON THE TRANSFER OF SECURITY RESPONSIBILITY FOR BASRA PROVINCE

Posted: 16 Dec 2007 01:53 PM CST

Selah Moment

2007-12-16T20:09:00.000-08:00

1 Earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2 for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.

3 Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in His holy place?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false [a], 5 he will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God His Savior.

6 Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob. [b]

7 Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.

8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.

9 Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.

10 Who is He, this King of glory? The LORD Almighty — He is the King of glory.

-Psalm 24

Over The Hill

2007-12-16T13:36:00.000-08:00

On last Saturday morning's blockbuster (because I had a full phone signal, mostly) edition of Hard Starboard Radio, I alluded to the pre-meditated spin the Democrats would put on their latest surrender to the Bush White House on appropriating full funding for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically, Senate Donks would make a big to-do of zeroing out the funding from the Defense authorization bill in retaliation for the Administration refusing to fold to their incessant, irrational, obsolete demands for American retreat, and then their House counterparts would add it back in "under protest" of the inevitable, un-overrideable Bush veto. The Senate would then meekly go along, and that would be that.

Looks like dhimmism's Fifth Column's "organized withdrawal" is right on schedule:

The Democratic-led Congress authorized more Iraq war spending on Friday, sending President Bush a defense bill requiring no change in strategy after failing again to impose a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals.

The defense policy bill, approved 90-3 by the Senate, also expanded the size of the U.S. Army and set conditions on the Bush Administration’s plan to build a missile defense system in Europe.

The measure already had passed the House and now goes to Bush, who is expected to sign it into law. It authorizes Pentagon programs expected to cost $506.9 billion during fiscal 2008, which began in October.

Now you must remember, of course, that while the war funding has been authorized, it hasn't yet been actually appropriated. The Pentagon can keep operations going - just as soon as they actually get the money. And that means another week of this tiresome, futile quisling Kabuki dance before the Dems cave again, go home for Christmas and New Year's, and then come back to keep the same maturbatory defeat fetish rolling desultorily on.

The Dems' problem coming into this Congress was the same as the Republicans encountered when they took over in 1995: they had small majorities and the White House was still in the opposition's hands. Thus, whatever they could accomplish - first and foremost, forcing the abandonment of Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran and al Qaeda - hinged hugely on whether that president was obligingly weak and accommodationist or opted to be inconveniently and defiantly "relevant." And, just as Bill Clinton blew Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole out of the water over the government shutdowns a dozen years ago, so George W. Bush has slapped back hard the 110th Congress's Bonnie and Clyde, Speakerette "Crazy Nancy" Pelosi and Senate Majority Chisler "Dirty Harry" Reid, both on the Donks' rampant overspending and even moreso on the war.

That frustration has started to boil over. Not that the legislative Gloria Swanson was ever all that strong on self-control and public decorum in any case, but this week she really started living up to her nickname:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at Republicans on Thursday, saying they want the Iraq war to drag on and are ignoring the public's priorities.

"They like this war. They want this war to continue," Pelosi, D-CA., told reporters. She expressed frustration over Republicans' ability to force majority Democrats to yield ground on taxes, spending, energy, war spending and other matters.

"We thought that they shared the view of so many people in our country that we needed a new direction in Iraq," Pelosi said at her weekly news conference in the Capitol. "But the Republicans have made it very clear that this is not just George Bush's war. This is the war of the Republicans in Congress."

No, Madame Speakeress, this is America's war. America was attacked on 9/11, not just Republicans. If the heroic passengers of Flight 93 hadn't taken down the terrorists in the field in Pennsylvania, you and the vast majority of your colleagues might not even be alive today. That makes it your war as well. That you can be so incensed at that inarguable truth that you redundantly slander your domestic political opponents speaks volumes about who and what you and your ilk really are.

That pegging would include being singularly obtuse, as the President did, indeed, give us a new direction in Iraq - the Surge and accompanying Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy, which has been so successful that it has rendered your party's stubborn, insipient treason irrelevant. Annnnnnd for which, never EVER let it be forgotten, your Senate comrades voted eleven months ago. Too flipping bad it worked, huh?

Evidently, according to the Admiral, this Pelosi outburst caused even like minded journalists to say "Whoa, dudette":

When pressed by stunned reporters, Pelosi realized she'd made a mistake. She retracted the statement, saying that she meant that Republicans supported the current strategy in Iraq and supported George Bush's continuance of the effort. Pelosi then expressed surprise that the Republicans would not accede to public polls on the matter.

In other words, she can't understand why Republicans and George Bush don't sacrifice national security for political gain.

Maybe it's just me, but her "retraction" and "clarification" don't look all that different from her original vomit. And why wouldn't we ALL support the current strategy in Iraq and the President's continuance of it? It's working, after all. Which, of course, is what is so sorely vexing to the Marin County bag lady.

That's why I can't quite square Ed's reference to Republicans and Bush gaining politically if they would only sacrifice national security. It looks clear a year later that the public's dissatisfaction with Iraq was that we weren't doing everything possible to win, not that we weren't getting out fast enough. That's the message Dubya took away from the 2006 midterms, and it certainly appears that he read the electoral tea leaves a lot more incisively than the Democrats did.

What's that old saying? Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is always an orphan.

Maybe that's why the aforementioned Dem frustration is turning them openly fratricidal:

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) accuses Senate Democratic leaders of developing "Stockholm syndrome," showing sympathy to their Republican captors by caving in on legislation ...

And the Senate:

Reid, in turn, has taken to the Senate floor to criticize what he called the speaker's "iron hand" style of governance.

And the House:

Asked about his decision on government funding, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) groused to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call: "I'll tell you how soon I will make a decision when I know how soon the Senate sells us out."

And the Senate:

"I understand the frustration; we're frustrated, too," Bayh said. "But holding a bunch of Kabuki theater doesn't get anything done."

And the House:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) called it a "hold and fold" strategy: Senate Republicans put a "hold" on Democratic bills, and Senate Democratic leaders promptly fold their tents.

Hell, I could do this all day.

Hard not to chuckle at the Donks' fate, seeing as how they're now having done to them what they spent the previous twelve years doing to the GOP. The true wonder is that the Republicans are actually retaliating.

Maybe that helps explain the results of two special House elections for GOP-held seats, one of them in allegedly "blue-izing" Ohio:

Republicans retained two House seats in special elections Tuesday, including a hotly contested Ohio race that the two parties spent nearly $700,000 trying to win. ...

State legislator Bob Latta decisively defeated Democrat Robin Weirauch in Ohio’s 5th District, leading by 56% to 43% with 90% of the vote in. The special election was held to replace the late Representative Paul Gillmor (R).

In Virginia’s 1st District, GOP state Delegate Rob Wittman won a landslide victory over Iraq war veteran Phil Forgit (D) in the race to succeed the late Representative Jo Ann Davis (R).

With 100% of precincts reporting, Wittman had 61% of the vote, while Forgit had only tallied 37%.

The story of the evening was Latta’s victory, however, given signs in recent weeks that the reliably Republican district, based in Bowling Green, was in danger of falling into Democratic hands.

These were considered two seats ripe for Dem pickups, particularly in Ohio, which was believed to be trending heavily to the left.

Turns out that reports of the GOP's death in the Buckeye State may have been a wee bit premature. Mr. Morrissey elaborates:

The issue involved more than just the 5th CD in Ohio. Democrats won the governorship in Ohio last year, and they had hoped that the special election would show that they have the momentum in the Buckeye State. The state Republicans took a beating over scandals involving the previous governor and other state officials, and Democrats believe that they can win the state in the next presidential election - which could provide the key to winning back the White House.

In order to make that case, the Democrats poured money and effort into OH-05. Governor Ted Strickland campaigned personally in the district. Labor sent its activists to bolster Weirauch's ground game. The national DCCC spent almost a quarter-million dollars attempting to tie Latta to the past scandals of state GOP officials.

In the end, it availed them nothing. Despite all of the attention, Latta won the seat by the same margin as the late Dan Gillmore did in 2006 with the advantage of incumbency. It strongly suggests that Ohio remains solidly Republican even after the 2006 spanking it took over Bob Taft and Tom Noe. That puts a big crimp in the Democrats' national plans for the presidential race, and could mean that they will have to forego a big push in Ohio and look for better ground elsewhere.

Maybe 2006 wasn't the Noahaic deluge watershed election that the Dems claimed it was and the Enemy Media sold it as. Maybe the tapioca that filled voters' brains last November has been crowded out by fresh grey matter. Maybe the Republicans are manufacturing their own comeback, and the Democrats are blindly helping them do it by believing their own press clippings and openly championing extremism that perhaps isn't as popular as we've been told it was over the past year.

Then again, all it would take is another 9/11, or the Islamist takeover of Pakistan, or another "stock market crash" to fill the Left's PR sails with fresh flatulence. And we ARE about to nominate as our 2008 presidential standardbearer a not-ready-for-prime-time man who gives every indication of believing he's running for national viccar.

But why not enjoy the friendly trade winds while they're blowing out way for a change? After all, the GOP CAN use all the forward momentum it can get.

VBC Missionaries Of The Week: Warren & Lyn Sears

2007-12-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

The Sears serve as missionaries to the students at New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, Mississippi. Warren is personal campus ministry coordinator and is in charge of campus security. Lyn is an administrative assistant and office manager.

We Need God AND People

2007-12-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: 10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!

11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?

12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

-Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

....Piggledy

2007-12-15T06:51:00.000-08:00

Well, now, that was a refreshing five hours of sleep. Shows what you can accomplish when you have a cat for a furry alarm clock. I do so enjoy having my face sat upon before the sun comes up.

A few hours ago we left off with the "religious Right" opting to stay in the GOP and fight for the imposition of their pious populist, former Arkansas Governor Mike Up-Huck, and his Donk-lite nannyism upon the rest of the Republican Party, and the dismaying success they appear to be having in the propulsion of this "flavor of the month" tomato can to the upper tier of its presidential race. Huckles couldn't beat Hillary with a sledghammer and her blindfolded (as well as bound and gagged), but he's got the one thing going for him that is immensely difficult to overcome: he's peaking at just the right time. His past affinity for rationing of political speech not withstanding, of course. (And yes, at the risk of dissuading an actual posted comment, I know our guy supported McCain-Feingold).

Intriguingly, if only in an academic sense, you would never guess in a zillion turns who is occupying the other end of the timing spectrum:

Barack Obama has chipped away at Hillary Clinton’s lead in New Hampshire, and the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are now locked in a statistical tie less than one month before the first-in-the-nation primary, a CNN/WMUR Poll released Wednesday shows.

Clinton has dropped 5% points since the CNN/WMUR November survey, while Obama has gained 8% points, according to the poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Clinton is now at 31% to Obama’s 30%.

Of course, that's only one poll, and CNN is as reliable as the US Postal Service. They want Hillary to win, but not like the New England Patriots are winning this season, blowing every team out by fifty points en route to an undefeated season and another Super Bowl crown. They want something interesting to cover on the way to the Empress' coronation. They want a horse race, even if they have to manufacture one out of whole cloth, or even burlap. And what better way to do both than to portray a "crisis" for the Clinton Machine out of which they can tell the story of her gritty and courageous "comeback" when she starts inexorably grinding out one primary victory after another? Indeed, what better way to reward Senator Obama with the vice presidency for "battle-testing" Mrs. Clinton and "preparing" her for the "onslaught" of the "Republican attack machine"?

The above sentiment is by no means limited to CNN, of course. But neither is the polling showing the Donk race tightening - here and there, at least:

NATIONAL: Hillary by 22

IOWA: Obama by 3

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Hillary by 3

MICHIGAN: Hillary by 31 (as of the most recent {mid-November} Detroit News poll, which I believe was pre-Philadelphia)

NEVADA: Hillary by 17

SOUTH CAROLINA: Hillary by 2

FLORIDA: Hillary by 30

CALIFORNIA: Hillary by 25

PENNSYLVANIA: Hillary by 28

NEW JERSEY: Hillary by 34

So what does the above mean? For all the wishful hyperventilation from some, er, quarters about Mrs. Clinton's "collapse" and wildly implausible speculation about an Obama nomination's potential to "change the tone" (Where have I heard THAT phrase before?) of the 2008 campaign, I see the Generalissimo with the Denobulan grin frantically exploiting her Nib's breathtakingly candid drivers-licenses-for-illegal-aliens pirhouetting to employ Romney's "win early" strategy. The Illinois default senator wants to try and pull a "reverse-Kerry" by convincing Dem voters to NOT go with the most electable general election candidate and gamble on a dubious long shot instead. With the uncharacteristically generous assistance of either (depending upon how you look at it) a clumsily hamfisted or hair-trigger panicky bit of very characteristic low-ball scandalmongering, the Clintonoids appear to be helping Obama along, perhaps out of genuine concern, or more likely to cure the boredom of their mistress' inevitability and get the ol' "war room" blood flowing again by shedding some of their rival's.

Are they outsmarting themselves, or drowning in their own complacency? C'mon, folks, these are the CLINTONS we're talking about. If nobody ever tugs on Superman's cape, he's gonna, um, tug on it himself just to keep himself awake. But he's still Superman. And Hillary is still the next president of the United States - especially if our side goes through with its evident determination to commit "Huckacide."

So how do both sets of primaries ultimately shake out? Reading current trends (which only matter on the Republican side), my crystal ball (currently) reads thusly:

Huckabee wins Iowa, cementing his usurpation of Fred Thompson's rightful upper tier spot. But Romney follows through and wins New Hampshire, creating Hugh Hewitt's beloved "two-man race," with Giuliani's last stand coming not in Florida, where he now trails, but in Michigan, where all three are tied. If Rudy wins there, it's a triple-threat fight; otherwise, with South Carolina and Florida tending in his direction, it starts looking more and more like the Huckster's nomination to lose.

The Dems? You have to ask? Hillary narrowly falls to Obama in Iowa, pulls out New Hampshire, the "Comeback Kid II" is born, and the coronational processional resumes.

And to think we have Reagan with a twang right smack in front of us, and are rushing past him to genuflect before that gaunt Elmer Gantry instead.

I guess that clinches the return of burnings at the stake a year from now....

Higgledy....

2007-12-14T23:40:00.000-08:00

Seven weeks ago I fell down a rabbit hole into a netherworld of vocational agony and professional purgatory the likes of which I have never experienced this side of a pink slip. It made the nightmare of a budget season of three years ago look like wearing the lamp shade at the office Christmas party (minus the head cold, he admitted grudgingly - on the infirmity front I had to settle for several more years being shaved off my lifespan in artery-hardening and hypertension instead). The most conspicuous effect it had here was my conspicuous absence beyond the minimum posts on war news headlines and devotional passages, with the occasional desperate weekend catch-up post here and there.

Before I was waylayed, the dynamics of the presidential primary contests on both sides were long since set. Hillary was the Democrat nominee and next president of the United States, and Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney were fighting a valiant uphill struggle against runaway GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani, with FDT leading in South Carolina, Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Giuliani everywhere else.

I'll get to the Dems in the morning as part of my show prep. Here I'll examine what in the blue hell has happened to the Republican side of the race, and most likely fail miserably to make any sense of it.

Well, that might be a tad overstated. I maintained for months that I didn't think Mayor Giuliani was nominatable. Any Republican that defends Roe v. Wade yet promises to nominate federal judges in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito had, it always seemed to me, a huge credibility problem that logically should extend to every other right-wing promise in his platform and would combust his candidacy when the GOP electorate started paying attention in earnest. Besides which, I also believed that Rudy was leading based upon national name-recognition and celebrity more than anything else, and that wouldn't be enough by itself to carry him to the nomination.

Similarly, I have never been sold on Mitt Romney, the supposed GOP wunderkind of the '08 cycle. He seemed to be a sort of reformed Republican Bill Clinton, a RINO with a comprehensively center-left background that may or may not have been forced upon him by the necessity of having to win election in a hard-left state like Massachusetts, but which he only recently, and awfully conveniently, shucked off when he pursued his presidential ambitions to the national stage. His stage presence and smooth-talking delivery smacked of the same sort of Clintillian opportunistic ersatzness, while at the same time lacking anything remotely resembling the killer instinct that fuels the invincibility of the Clinton Machine.

Governor Romney pursued the eminently conventional strategy of trying to win Iowa and New Hampshire going away in order to vault himself to the perception of inevitability that his general election opponent has enjoyed from day one. But that made him the "rabbit" of the race, and as in any competitive endeavor, if you reach the top too soon, there's nowhere to go but down. And I believed that sooner or later, after all these months somebody would clothesline the Mittster off the summits of those two early mountains.

The man I assumed would do the clotheslining was, of course, our candidate, former Tennessee Senator and this campaign's voice of reason, Fred Thompson. He had all the momentum back in the summer, with rumors circulating that he was going to jump into the race after the fourth of July. Except he didn't, and that momentum dissipated, only to revive when he did formally declare his candidacy after Labor Day. However, inexplicably, FDT has gone straight downhill ever since, to where he's struggling to stay above single digits nationally.

Even more inexplicable is the identity of the man who has accomplished what I predicted before my recent excruciating disappearance from these hallowed pixels: ex-Arkansas Governor and should-be-running-for-the-Senate-instead Mike f'ing Huckaburger. I've just gotten through updating the numbers, and the results are jaw-dropping:

NATIONAL: Huckabee by 1

IOWA: Huckabee by 11

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Romney by 14 (Huckabee a close third)

MICHIGAN: Huckabee by 1

NEVADA: Romney by 3.5 (Huckabee a close third)

SOUTH CAROLINA: Huckabee by 8

FLORIDA: Huckabee by 4

CALIFORNIA: Giuliani by 14 (Huckabee a close third)

You do the math. Romney's "win early" strategy has been halved, Giuliani's Florida "firewall" has been breached (Huckabee went from fourteen points down ten days ago to eight points ahead yesterday, a twenty-two point surge in the space of nine days), and Ready Freddie's Palmetto state beachhead is a distant memory. Rudy still has home court advantage in "back yard" states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but even there Huckaplucka is closing the gap.

How is this possible? Divine intervention? Mass, party-wide psychosis? Ghosties and beasties? Huckleberry is the polar opposite of Giuliani, solid on social/moral/values issues but Rockefelleroid on taxes, federal spending, domestic policy, and decidedly wobbly on the war. If the one-time master of Gotham was unnominatable because of his support for abortion on demand and gay rights, I would think Huckaglukbuk would be just as radioactive over his penchant for tax hikes and national security knock-kneedness.

Hmmm; "Huckleberry is the polar opposite of Giuliani". That sounds familiar, somehow. Let's see; which GOP bloc was it that was most alarmed at Rudy's frontrunner status, to such a degree that a few months back some of its stalwarts were threatening to bolt the party altogether and commit third-party suicide?

Ah, yes, now a pattern seems to be emerging. And I would have been the first to nail it, too, if I had the incalculable advantage of being a professional blogger like somebody whom I nakedly (but good-naturedly) envy:

It appears that the evangelicals have begun to make their voice heard in this race. For months, they complained about the lack of choice for their constituency, even at one point threatening to splinter into a third party. Instead, they seem to have collected themselves and looked for the most representative candidate in the race - and Huckabee has the strongest record on pro-life and social-conservative causes.

What the Admiral doesn't say, but I will, is that evangelicals - of which, you should recall, the two contributors to this site are card-carrying members, except on this issue - have broken ranks just as many threatened to do earlier in the year - but not in the same way analysts thought. Rather than leaving the GOP altogether, they are lining up behind the candidate who best embodies their issues stances - but ONLY on their issues. There's no pretense of coalition building or uniting behind the most electable general election standardbearer. The burgeoning ranks of Huckamaniacs are, for all intents and purposes, flipping off the rest of the Reagan Coalition, the supply-siders and federalists and budget hawks and "neocons". They've gone provincial; they're looking out for number one. And they're taking what was an already-uphill battle to keep the White House from falling back into Clintonoid hands and transforming it into a rout of, well, biblical proportions.

I will say it right here, right now, because I don't have to wait and see, or devote more than token skullsweat, to predict what a Huckabee nomination would precipitate: a party split comparable to that which a Giuliani candidacy would generate, and an ensuing blowout defeat next November the blame for which would be hung, ironically, around the necks of the same party wing that would be blamed for a like Rudy loss: religious conservatives. It would be 1992 magnified, leaving a reeling, riven GOP, a truimphant Democrat party with enormous, invincible congressional majorities, and a megalomaniacal Clinton ruling the country once more.

My brethren may think they're exacting their revenge, if nothing else, for getting dissed, or whatever their reasoning process is in deciding to jump on Mother Hucker's bandwagon. But they're just fooling themselves, and making a Hillary presidency even more inevitable than it was already.

And the biggest irony of all? The Admiral concludes:

Can Huckabee make that sale? Can anyone in this race make the whole-package sale? Obviously not, and that's why some have taken a second look at the Arkansas governor.

Mr. Morrissey is wrong. Not only is there someone in this race who can "make the whole-package sale," he's already done so. If you doubt that, and you consider yourself a Reagan conservative, go see for yourself.

Fred Thompson is solidly right-wing across the issues spectrum, showing more boldness on the looming entitlements crash than the rest of the field combined, and has the country-fried avuncularity and eloquence to not only sell the package, but close the deal eleven months from now - even against the mighty Hildebeast juggarnaut. No other candidate in the Republican race can make that claim without his nose growing to phallic dimensions.

Certainly not Mike Huckabee, whose first official act as the latest Republican frontrunner was to embody the pagans' coarsest Christophobic stereotypes and attack Mitt Romney's (admittedly cultic) religion.

Makes me feel like I've fallen down another rabbit hole.

The Facts Of Life

2007-12-14T20:42:00.000-08:00

24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. 25 "The LORD has done this for me," she said. "In these days He has shown His favor and taken away my disgrace among the people."

26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The LORD is with you."

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with Child and give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the Name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The LORD God will give Him the throne of His father David, 33 and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; His kingdom will never end."

34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"

35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called [a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God."

38 "I am the LORD's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.

-Luke 1:24-38

Wishful Thinking

2007-12-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

Well, I'd love to believe this, but...

Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign is teetering on the brink, no matter what the meaningless national horserace numbers say. The notion that she has a post-Iowa “firewall” in New Hampshire is a fantasy, and she is in danger of losing all four early contests, including Nevada and South Carolina – probably to Senator Barack Obama, who is now, in momentum terms, the Democratic frontrunner.

Although I don't think Mrs. Clinton is as much of a sure thing as my esteemed co-blogger does, I DO believe she will win the nomination. Don't get me wrong...I'd love to see her lose. I frankly think Obama would be relatively easy to beat. But...the Clintons do not go down easily...plus Howard Fineman is hardly a reliable source. This is probably a case of them lowering expectations so that when she does win they can crow about her "overcoming adversity" or some such rot.

Geez, I'm getting cynical...

JASmius adds: "The Return Of The Comeback Kid", anyone?

By the way, though, if it Fineman turns out to be right and the Generalissimo does pass the Empress, get ready for a playing of the race card like you've never seen before. The GOP will be cast as the Klan on a nation-wide night ride for even fielding a general election candidate, and anything less than an Obama landslide will result in the Left denouncing America as hopelessly, irredeemably, and viciously racist. Which, of course, would get the next Republican administration off to precisely the start that its predecessor just finished.

Fredophobia, anyone....?

Scream-Worthy

2007-12-14T06:53:00.000-08:00

ARGH. This headline from the AP makes me want to scream.

The U.S. and Europe headed toward a compromise solution Friday at the U.N. climate conference, breaking a deadlock over how ambitious the goal should be in negotiating future cutbacks in global warming gases, the German environment minister said.

I wish someone from the U.S. would stand up and tell those people where to shove their global warming hoax. Cite some of the many studies that prove it's a hoax, intended to provide cover for bleeding more money from the U.S., and more control over our lives by liberals here at home. Even several of our Republican candidates for President are too weak in the spine to stand up and tell the truth about it. It's sad that there are so many people who buy into this snake oil.

Pay It Backward

2007-12-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

27 "But I tell you who hear Me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

-Luke 6:27-36

Central Command News (12/13/07)

2007-12-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

JOINT STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR RYAN C. CROCKER AND GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS ON THE CAR BOMB ATTACKS IN MAYSAN PROVINCE

Posted: 13 Dec 2007 04:28 AM CST

IRANIAN ROCKETS FOUND, TURNED OVER TO COALITION FORCES

Posted: 13 Dec 2007 04:25 AM CST

IRAQI FORCES, U.S. SPECIAL FORCES DETAIN SUSPECTED AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ LEADER

Posted: 12 Dec 2007 09:20 AM CST

Trashing America

2007-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

What is it about liberals that makes them feel they have to trash their own country when they're overseas? Now it's AlWhore:

Al Gore said Thursday the United States is "principally responsible" for blocking progress at the U.N. climate conference, and European nations threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington compromises on emissions reductions.

The former vice president urged delegates to take urgent action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

"My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," said Gore, who flew to Bali from Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change.

Forgive us, Oh Mighty Goracle, for not falling at your feet and worshiping at the altar of Global Warming. We should accept whatever these tinpot nations want in order to further the advancement of the Cult of Environmentalism and Liberal Whoredom. It's *always* our fault; when are we going to realize that??

JASmius adds: When CNN's "Mad Jack" Cafferty calls Al Gore "a pompous jerk" on the air, you can rest assured that Fat Albert has plumbed new depths assholery.

Just think: there, but for 528 fewer votes and the grace of God, would have gone America.

Or was the imposition of his dark vision just deferred for eight years?

National Review Endorses Romney

2007-12-13T03:08:00.000-08:00

The editors at National Review magazine have endorsed Mitt Romney for President. See their reasons here.

They argue each candidate's strengths and weaknesses, and decide that Mitt Romney is the most conservative candidate with a chance to win nationally. However, I found their argument against Fred Thompson (both Jim & I prefer Thompson) a bit weak:

Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise — and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

First of all, Fred Thompson isn't as conservative as Romney, he's more conservative than Romney. They admit that Thompson has come up with some pretty good ideas on the most important issues in the country, but seem to think that the fact that he is not a professional politician negates that. Have any of the others articulated a plan for Social Security the way he has? I haven't heard it...perhaps they're afraid of the issue because they know what a hot button it is. As a side note, I would relish the opportunity to watch him mop the floor with Hillary Clinton, or any of the Democrat candidates, in a debate.

It seems to me that NR is "settling" for Romney. Don't get me wrong, I will enthusiastically support Romney if he wins the nomination. However, I believe Fred Thompson is by far the best choice for the party, and more importantly, the country.

JASmius adds: I can understand NR's criteria. What they're basically saying is not that Romney is the most conservative candidate in the field (he isn't), but that he's the most conservative candidate in the field with bona fide executive experience. The latter is documented; the former is, shall we say, conveniently recent, and has the high likelihood of disappointing conservatives a few years from now in a way very similar to the disappointment the Right has expressed in George W. Bush the past few years should the Mittster ultimately make it to the White House.

Where this blog differs from the flagship of right-wing publications is in how sold we are on Mitt Romney's conservatism. That bloom-off-the-rose dynamic appears to be kicking in the minds of GOP voters in Iowa and South Carolina and several other early states, which can't be good news for the Romneylans, which is why their Praetor is playing up the NR endorsement so much.

The enigma is how Mike f'ing Huckabee, another former governor who is less conservative than Romney, can possibly be the beneficiary of the ex-Massachusetts governor's slide instead of Ready Freddie.

'Tis a pity, I guess, that FDT didn't run for governor of Tennessee instead of the Senate. He'd be running away with the race by now.

Grief Is Messy

2007-12-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

13 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. 15 According to the LORD's own Word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the LORD, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the LORD Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the LORD in the air. And so we will be with the LORD forever. 18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.

-1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

More Proof Of The Hoax

2007-12-12T01:51:00.001-08:00

Yet another study has shown that Al Gore is full of pigeon poop:

As much of the U.S. is being blasted by vicious ice storms, a blockbuster report published in a prestigious scientific journal insists that the evidence shows that climate warming is both natural and unstoppable and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.

Writing in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society, professor David H. Douglass (of the University of Rochester), professor John R. Christy (of the University of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson and professor S. Fred Singer (of the University of Virginia) report that observed patterns of temperature changes ("fingerprints") over the last 30 years disagree with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

The conclusion is that climate change is "unstoppable" and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

Of course, this will be all over the newspapers, right? It really is amazing that so many buy into this garbage. I guess it just makes the Chicken Littles feel better to pretend to be doing something meaningful.

H/T Neal Boortz

Richly Blessed

2007-12-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

1 Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise Him.

2 Praise the LORD with the harp; make music to Him on the ten-stringed lyre.

3 Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.

4 For the word of the LORD is right and true; He is faithful in all He does.

5 The LORD loves righteousness and justice; Earth is full of His unfailing love.

6 By the Word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth.

7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars [a]; He puts the deep into storehouses.

8 Let all Earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere Him.

9 For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.

-Psalm 33:1-9

Central Command News (12/11/07)

2007-12-11T06:59:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL-QAEDA OPERATIONS; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 19 DETAINED

Posted: 11 Dec 2007 05:55 AM CST

5 IRAQI DETAINEES KILLED IN ROCKET ATTACK

Posted: 10 Dec 2007 08:06 AM CST

Be A Star

2007-12-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

1 fter Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "Where is the One Who has been born king of the Jews? We saw His star in the east [b] and have come to worship Him."

3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ [c] was to be born. 5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written: 6 " 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a Ruler Who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.' [d]"

7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the Child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship Him."

9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east[e] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the Child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

-Matthew 2:1-12

The Nobel For Lying

2007-12-10T11:20:00.001-08:00

The lying windbag Al Gore accepted his award today, and bloviated more of the same hogwash he has been selling for the past few years. It is difficult to listen to him for more than a few minutes without retching. Check out what he said last year, from Deroy Murdock's column over at NRO:

When Nobel laureate Albert Gore Jr. collects his Peace Prize in Oslo today, he should tell the gathered Norwegians exactly what he meant when he remarked about global warming: “Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem,” Gore told Grist in the May 9, 2006 Grist Magazine. “Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”

In other words, it's okay to lie about the facts if it gets you the attention you want. Read the rest of the article, Murdock shoots Gore down again and again. Don't look for any of this on your network news or in your newspaper, though. It's buried along with the surge success and the roaring economy.

Central Command News (12/10/07)

2007-12-10T06:52:00.001-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

TALIBAN EXTREMISTS DETAINED IN KANDAHAR PROVINCE

Posted: 10 Dec 2007 04:23 AM CST

SEVERAL MILITANTS KILLED, 10 DETAINED, TWO WOUNDED CIVILIANS FOUND AFTER HELMAND OPERATION

Posted: 10 Dec 2007 04:15 AM CST

PRESS RELEASE: COALITION PRECISION STRIKE KILLS SEVERAL MILITANTS

Posted: 10 Dec 2007 04:11 AM CST

Say WHAT?!?! Part Deux

2007-12-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

Now THIS is funny. Apparently Crazy Nancy was for waterboarding before she was against it. Boy, the trouble for the Democrats just keeps on comin'...

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

It's gonna be fun to watch her try to twist out of this one.

Oversight?

2007-12-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

I'm sure it's just an oversight that the mainstream press is not widely reporting on this. Apparently, during the second of those horrific church shootings yesterday, the gunman was shot and killed by an armed church security officer. She no doubt saved many lives, but we can't go around having people protect themselves and others, can we?

More proof that the media sucks.

Blue Christmas

2007-12-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the Arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

4 Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.

5 But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.

-Isaiah 53:1-6
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

VBC Missionaries Of The Week: Stan & Carol Rubesh

2007-12-09T06:25:00.000-08:00

Stan and Carol are working via the Evangelical Alliance Mission with a Sri Lankan congregation, providing leadership and encouragement. They also were working with the Bible Society to produce a full-color Gospel presentation booklet in the Sri Lankan language. The Oasis Hospital, with which they were affliated, has been officially handed over to CURE International.

The Rubeshes also have field responsibilities for TEAM missionaries.

Are We Selling Out?

2007-12-08T23:23:00.000-08:00

12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 "Make level paths for your feet," [a] so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the LORD. 15 See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 16 See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.

-Hebrews 12:12-17

Central Command News (12/8/07)

2007-12-08T06:53:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

ANA, ISAF LAUNCH OPERATION MUSA QALA

Posted: 07 Dec 2007 12:32 PM CST

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE TERRORISTS INVOLVED IN BAGHDAD CAR-BOMBING OPERATIONS

Posted: 07 Dec 2007 12:29 PM CST

The Speech

2007-12-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a transcript of Mitt Romney's speech given on 12-6-07. No doubt you have heard a lot about it, I suggest you read it for yourself. Personally, I think it is a great speech and I'm glad he gave it. Imagine any of the Democrat candidates giving a speech like that. You can't, can you? That's because Democrats simply do not believe in America's greatness, nor do they have respect for our heritage. They are more interested in the here and now, grabbing all the power they can.

"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

No wonder the liberals are freaking out. They do not accept the above. Read the whole transcript, it truly is inspiring.

Change Your Name

2007-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. 2 Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. 4 Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" 5 So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.

6 Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." 7 Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. 8 He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. 9 When all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

11 While the beggar held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. 12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: "Men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus. You handed Him over to be killed, and you disowned Him before Pilate, though he had decided to let Him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the Author of life, but God raised Him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through Him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.

-Acts 3:1-16

Central Command News (12/7/07)

2007-12-07T07:01:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

AL-QAEDA NETWORKS DISRUPTED; THREE TERRORISTS KILLED, 19 DETAINED

Posted: 06 Dec 2007 01:28 PM CST

RECONCILIATION TAKES CENTER STAGE ACROSS MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION - CENTER

Posted: 06 Dec 2007 01:24 PM CST

What We Already Knew...

2007-12-07T02:54:00.000-08:00

You and I know putting Democrats back in control of Congress in 2006 was a huge mistake. Apparently, lots of other people are figuring that out as well. From Rush's web site:

Don Surber: "The War is twice as popular as Congress. Under Democratic leadership, the 110th Congress is the least popular Congress since pollsters began measuring this. Various polls peg the disapproval at various numbers at various times. But one thing doesn’t change: Worst Congress ever. Democratic apologists say that this is because Congress has failed to end the war. Well, that may explain the low marks on the Democratic end. But the 63 votes so far this year on the war obviously are turning off independents and Republicans. Let us review. In November, Gallup pegged the Congressional job approval at 20% with 69% disapproval. In December, Gallup found that 40% of Americans think the Surge is working, 39% say not working. And while 57% now say going into Iraq was a mistake, 41% say it was not a mistake. Apparently 69% say electing this Congress was a mistake. Only 20% apparently believe this Congress was not a mistake. While obviously the questions are slightly different, the pollster is the same: Gallup."

I knew it was a disaster when it happened. Unfortunately, some of our own helped it happen by trying to "teach the Republicans a lesson." But...that's history.

Republicans have a real chance to capitalize on the moronic things the Democrat leadership as done and said. They are already backpedaling on their Iraq position, not because it's the right thing to do, but because to their chagrin we're kicking butt over there and their meme is being proven wrong. Politically, they are up against the wall. It's up to the Republicans to nail them there.

I've believed for a long time that our military - not our political savvy or even our high principles - is going to carry the day for the Republicans. They are going to prove that we were right about the war, that we were right about Iraq being able to govern itself as a democracy, and that the Democrats were dragging them through the mud for their own political gain.

Gifts Within The Gift

2007-12-06T18:23:00.000-08:00

9 We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which He has given about His Son. 10 Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about His Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life....

20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him Who is true. And we are in Him Who is true—even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

-1 John 5:9-13, 20

Freedom Update

2007-12-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

The latest from Dick Armey's FreedomWorks:

Four Reasons to Oppose the Sub-Prime Mortgage Bail Out

Congress is falling over itself in the rush to bail out speculators in America’s mortgage and real estate markets. The House has already passed a sweeping new regulatory bill and Senator Hillary Clinton is proposing a $5 billion taxpayer fund to pay individual mortgages. These proposals come despite the fact that there is little or no economic case for government intervention, and polling shows that a majority of homeowners do not support a bail out. Further, many of the ideas Congress is currently considering will make the problem worse by reducing available credit or by rewarding irresponsible behavior by lenders and borrowers.

Members of Congress need to pause before doing more harm to mortgage markets, and consider some of the basic facts about our current real estate situation....[Read
More]

Sixty-One Economists Sign Letter Opposing Mortgage Bail Out

As President Bush prepares to announce a plan to freeze mortgage rates for many homeowners, FreedomWorks organized a letter signed by sixty-one economists from universities and think-tanks across America opposing a bail out.

The letter warns that “These [bail out] proposals would fundamentally alter the workings of the mortgage market, leaving consumers with fewer choices when seeking to buy a home and potentially increasing taxpayer exposure for bad loans.”

This letter should give policymakers pause. Most of the policy proposals before Congress would arbitrarily rewrite private contracts, reward speculative lending and borrowing, and expose taxpayers to additional risks. Though it's understandable that legislators might want to respond to homeowner difficulties, the proposed regulations only serve to decrease credit availability for the poor and disadvantaged. Today’s letter adds an important new voice to the debate, that of many of the nation’s professional economists, who are calling on Congress to act responsibly and allow the subprime market to work through the current repricing of mortgage-backed securities....[Read the full letter]

Pending Energy Legislation Threatens Your Wallet

Energy legislation now moving in both chambers of Congress threatens American taxpayers and the U.S. economy as a whole through a combination of tax increases and a new cobweb of regulations for energy producers. According to a recent study conducted by CRA International, fixtures in these different bills including tax hikes on the oil industry, renewable fuels mandates, stricter CAFE standards for automobiles, and curbing domestic exploration and production of both oil and natural gas. The results could amount to 4.9 million lost jobs, a trillion dollar hit on the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and diminishing the average American family’s purchasing power by approximately $1,700…not a very nice Christmas present.

A SMART Way to Prepare for Retirement Security

Many of you requested more information about Rep. Jeff Flake’s new SMART Act, which was introduced recently as part of the FreedomWorks Liberty Summit. I’ve made a short YouTube video that explains the plan, which modernizes Social Security and Medicare, in more detail:

Big Time & His Big Stick

2007-12-06T10:13:00.001-08:00

I love Dick Cheney. I love his straightforward, no-holds-barred approach to what he believes is right. He nailed it so well in this interview with Politico.

Vice President Cheney warned in an interview Wednesday that a premature withdrawal from Iraq would invite “further attacks” against the United States and said he has been surprised by the weakness of the Democratic Congress.Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.).

In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the big spending and energy debates of the year.

Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.”

In other words, they're WUSSES. I know Cheney can't say that, but you KNOW that's what he was thinking. Here's how HE put it:

But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected.”

Okay, well, that works, too. The Botox Biddy seems to have them pretty well in hand...except Murtha went and ticked her off with his declaration that the surge is working. It's the woodpile for you, m'boy...

Security and Sovereignty Update

2007-12-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

The latest from Secure Our Future Now, Senator Jim Inhofe's outfit:

The UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) has become a hot issue in recent weeks, though it is far from new. When Ronald Reagan was serving as President, he was instrumental in keeping the U.S. from ratifying LOST. Senator Inhofe opposes the treaty and contends that none of the issues raised by President Reagan, including the ceding of economic and security authority to international bureaucrats, have changed. U.S. endorsement of LOST would greatly diminish US sovereignty and empower a supranational bureaucracy - the International Seabed Authority (ISA) - with unprecedented powers to regulate seven-tenths of the earth's surface, levy taxes, govern ocean research and exploration, and create a multinational court to render and enforce its judgments.

Almost every conservative organization, from the center for Security Policy to the Family Research Council, some 75 organizations in total, is armed with facts and ready to fight the LOST treaty with Senator Inhofe. To date, GOP presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee have publicly stated their opposition to the treaty.

Here are some highly educational - and eye-bulging - links on the LOST:

World Net Daily: L.O.S.T. at sea

Wall Street Journal: Environmental Peril Posed by Law of the Sea Treaty

The Conservative Voice: Beware the Law of the Sea Treaty

The National Ledger: Law of the Sea Treaty: LOST All Sense

Central Command News (12/6/07)

2007-12-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Latest News Feed

Guard Film Tells Soldiers' Stories.aspx

Posted: 05 Dec 2007 12:44 PM CST

WASHINGTON - Like many Soldiers deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, Soldiers from the Oregon National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry brought their personal cameras to Iraq during their deployment in 2004. They snapped photos of each other firing weapons, shot video of explosives they detonated and logged plenty of footage of their own commentaries intermixed with Soldier humor.

Air Force engineers improve Marine quality of life in Iraq.aspx

Posted: 05 Dec 2007 12:27 PM CST

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) - Airmen are improving the lives and operating conditions of Marines by constructing more than $9.8 million in aircraft shelters, taxiways and temporary shelters at Al Asad Air Base.

New air traffic control tower to expand TQ’s capabilities.aspx

Posted: 05 Dec 2007 12:06 PM CST

AL TAQADDUM, Iraq - The AN/TSQ-120B is a temporary air traffic control tower used by Marines in expeditionary operations until a more sturdy structure can be built. Although designed for just 90 days of continual use, the one at Al Taqaddum Air Base has seen more than its share of sorties since it was raised during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

US CENTCOM Press Releases

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE WEAPONS AND FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, 10 DETAINED

Posted: 05 Dec 2007 12:57 PM CST

Changed Landscape

2007-12-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

1 gThen Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. 3 The tempter came to Him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' [a]"

5 Then the devil took Him to the holy city and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command His angels concerning You, and they will lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.' [b]"

7 Jesus answered Him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the LORD your God to the test.' [c]"

8 Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 "All this I will give You," he said, "if You will bow down and worship me."

10 Jesus said to him, "Away from Me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the LORD your God, and serve Him only.'[d]"

11 Then the devil left Him, and angels came and attended Him.

-Matthew 4:1-11

Inevitable No More?

2007-12-05T02:31:00.000-08:00

Rich Lowry has an interesting take on the Democrat campaigns so far.

Extraordinary. She's lost some altitude nationally, and a little ground in Iowa where it's always been a pretty close race, so nothing seems to suggest a need to break the glass—as in "break the glass in case of emergency." But there's broken glass scattered over the place and she's taking the fire ax to Obama's campaign. What does the Clinton campaign know about this race that we don't?

Like Jim, I tend to think that most of what the Clintons do is an act and part of a grand scheme. Maybe we give them a little too much credit. As she proved in Las Vegas, when Hillary is truly challenged, she falters. As Lowry observes:

It now looks like Clinton has never really found her footing in the new post-Philadelphia dynamic of the race. I thought she had in the subsequent Las Vegas debate, but it looks like that was a blip. The brilliance of Hillary's campaign most of the year was positional—i.e., she found an Iraq position that satisfied Democrats and then spent the rest of her time positioning for the general election. Meanwhile, she could bolster her positive, and diminish her negative, ratings with an above-the-fray attitude to the rest of the field.

She could do this because she wasn't being seriously challenged by Obama or Edwards, and now that she's getting challenged, she's been flailing.

I think Lowry may be right...as long as she was sure of her eventual nomination, she didn't have to take any positions and could do her little Clinton dance uninterrupted. However, now that she has a potentially serious challenge, she's falling apart. Okay, maybe not falling apart, but certainly not the Rock of Gibralter everyone thought she was. To quote Lowry: "If you didn’t like Hillary when she was pretending to be pleasant, just wait until she takes the bark off the first African-American ever to have a plausible chance of becoming president."

It's gonna be interesting.

JASmius adds: Personally, I think Lowry is attempting to gin up some "horse race"-oriented suspense on the Democrat side of this race where none really yet exists in order to (1) create a story for him and his publication to cover and (2) to dredge up some hope to sustain the center-right over the ensuring thirteen months to the Empress's coronation.

Now I will acknowledge that the Rasmussen national tracking poll showed Hillary's twenty-two point lead over Barack Obama of November 28th shrinking to a nine-point spread only three days later - doubtless the dynamic to which Lowry is making reference. But her Nib's advantage has since found a new equilibrium in the ten-to-fifteen point range, she's tied for the lead in Iowa, leads by twelve in New Hampshire, thirteen in South Carolina, thirty-three in Florida....

Suffice it to say, I don't see the results that this "serious challenge" Senator Thunder-Thighs is getting from Obama, much less Edwards is supposedly producing. Still less do I buy the notion of the facile, gaffe-prone, not-ready-for-prime-time, Pakistan-invading, wouldn't-even-be-in-the-Senate-had-he-not-run-functionally-unopposed Chicago street hustler having "a plausible chance of becoming president." I mean, for Frigg's sake, a "Carteresque theme of national healing and a fresh start"? Carteresque??? Barack Obama is going to overcome Hillary on a mantle of abject failure and indiscrete arrogance? I don't think so.

There's no question that Mrs. Clinton's brittleness and clumsy slipperiness was garishly exposed in the Philadelphia debate. But hers is still THE winning "brand" in the Democrat Party, and her top competitors are an empty-suited neophyte and the roaringly phony, double-loser from 2004 who ducked a Senate re-election campaign he knew he couldn't win. All Lowry's ruminations mean is that her margin of victory will be smaller than it otherwise might have been - kind of like the New England Patriots have been playing closer games of late.

But they're still undefeated. And Hillary is going to be the Democrat presidential nominee.

It's only a matter of time.

Lowry would better occupy his allocation of that scarce and irreplaceable temporal commodity analyzing how Mike f'ing Huckabee can possibly have risen to a tie for the national lead on the GOP side of the race, and passed Mitt Romney in Iowa. God knows I haven't the opportunity.

And you thought Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney were hopelessly overmatched in a showdown with the Empress.

Active Compassion

2007-12-04T18:14:00.000-08:00

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence 20 whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.

21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him. 23 And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. 24 Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.

-1 John 3:16-24

Central Command News (12/4/07)

2007-12-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Press Releases

MOSUL AIRPORT REOPENS FOR COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS AFTER 14 YEARS; RELIGIOUS PILGRIMS BOARD IRAQI AIRPLANE FOR HAJJ

Posted: 04 Dec 2007 06:13 AM CST

AFGHAN DOCTOR, COALITION FORCES SAVE AFGHAN BABY

Posted: 04 Dec 2007 06:10 AM CST

UPDATE: COALITION FORCES POSITIVELY IDENTIFY TERRORIST KILLED IN RECENT RAID

Posted: 04 Dec 2007 06:07 AM CST

COALITION FORCES TARGET AN AL-QAEDA FACILITATOR; ONE DETAINED

Posted: 04 Dec 2007 06:04 AM CST

Keep Reaching For The Top

2007-12-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the LORD Jesus Christ, 21 Who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.

-Philippians 3:12-21

Central Command News (12/3/07)

2007-12-03T07:18:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Latest News Feed

Coalition Forces Treat 450 Afghans During Medical Outreach.aspx

Posted: 03 Dec 2007 07:58 AM CST

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan – The towns of Eskandareh and Pacha Khak hide deep within the mountains of the Kohe Safid district in Afghanitan’s Parwan province.

US CENTCOM Press Releases

AN NASIRIYAH SWAT CAPTURES HIGH-LEVEL IED FACILITATOR, FOUR OTHERS

Posted: 02 Dec 2007 08:51 AM CST

TIKRIT LAW SCHOOL AFFILIATES WITH BALTIMORE LAW SCHOOL

Posted: 02 Dec 2007 08:46 AM CST

SIRAJ HAQQANI SHARES NAME OF FATHER ONLY: DIFFERS IN PHILOSOPHY, TACTICS

Posted: 02 Dec 2007 08:41 AM CST

If Bill Clinton Were A Republican....

2007-12-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

....would a story like this one not sound awfully familiar?:

The revelation that security costs for Rudy Giuliani’s trysts with Judith Nathan may have been hidden in obscure New York accounts exposes the former Big Apple mayor to harsh questions his campaign wanted to avoid - about character, truthfulness and a penchant for secrecy.
Confronted at Wednesday night’s GOP debate in Concord, Giuliani said, “as far as I know,” his security officers’ handling of travel records was appropriate.

The records show Giuliani making his first trip to the Long Island town of Southampton, where Nathan had a condominium, from August 31 to September 1, 1999 - well before the former mayor acknowledged in the spring of 2000 the breakdown of his second marriage.

There were ten more trips before Giuliani left office on January 1, 2002, including visits every weekend in August 2001, as well as the 2001 Labor Day holiday. Security costs for those trips were charged to agencies such as the New York City Loft Board, which regulates loft apartments. It was billed $34,000. The Office for People with Disabilities was charged $10,000, while the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, which provides lawyers for indigent defendants, was charged $400,000.

A city auditor discovered the Loft Board charges, and when City Comptroller William Thompson asked for an explanation, he was rebuffed by mayoral aides who cited “security,” a spokesman said.

Okay, that's a good point - the Enemy Media would never cover a story like this, or any negative story, about Bill Clinton. One would think that the adulterizing, which wasn't exactly unknown before now, would have affected Rudy's efforts to sway evangelical voters, to say nothing of nixing Pat Robertson's endorsement. But the addition of the whiff of corruption to the equation creates problems for the former ruler of Gotham and, given the unparalleled propaganda exploitation capabilities of the Clinton Machine, has to now finally raise some doubts about his general election electability as well.

One would think, anyway.

That Giuliani's woes could possibly be benefitting Mike Huckaplucka, of all also-rans, is as baffling as it is appalling. But it also speaks, I think, to Mitt Romney's electability doubts as well:

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who once trailed badly with little money and a skeletal campaign staff, has now pulled ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to steal the lead....

The phenomenon that is Mike Huckabee has not been lost on others deeply involved in the 2008 contest. Bill Clinton has candidly admitted that Huckabee may just be wife Hillary’s worst nightmare in a general-election matchup.

And Senator Barack Obama is on record saying that Huckabee is his personal favorite GOP candidate.

Does it alarm you at all that Democrat presidential candidates and hangers-on like Mike Huckabooboo so much? Does it surprise you given what a comprehensive economic policy RINO he's turned out to be? Does it irritate you that one of his self-touted selling points - "authenticity," or as he phrases it, "being comfortable in my own skin" - is even truer of Fred Thompson, who isn't a burgeoning, nacent nanny-statist? Or that the ex-Arkansas governor claims general election electability on the basis of this claim:

“I went into a legislature that was more lopsided than any other legislature in the country including Massachusetts,” Huckabee explains. “No governor faced a more overwhelming opposite-party legislature than I did and that legislature was heavily populated by people politically related to the Clintons.

“Bill and Hillary campaigned for every opponent that I have ever had,” he says, explaining how he took on the Clinton machine in Arkansas and beat them twice.

Huckabee notes that his unique advantage is that, in his opinion, nobody running for president knows the Clintons better - and knows how their campaigns will be operated as well as he does.

“Believe me, the political machinery that they set up in Arkansas was the machinery against which I had to run every time I faced an opponent.”

To that I would lodge at least two caveats:

1) After Mr. Bill's two terms, Clintonoid standard operating procedure isn't exactly classified information. Indeed, no Republican campaign has any excuse for not knowning that playbook inside and out.

2) Everybody - EVERYBODY - for whom the Clintons campaign always loses. As endorsers, Bill & Hillary are political leprosy. But when they are campaigning for themselves, they are invincible. And Mike Huckleberry has never run against either one of them.

I'm telling you, the GOP nominating electorate is flailing around looking for a candidate who is both comprehensively conservative and capable of beating back the Hillary beast, and they keep looking everywhere but right in front of them. Fred Thompson, and Fred Thompson alone, satisfies both criteria; not the Populist Pastor, not Plasticman, and not the Mayor Who Couldn't Keep It In His Pants (On His Own Dime), but Ready Freddie.

Perhaps Senator Thompson should start saying so. I'm doing all that I can, but I just don't have the time....

A Promise Fulfilled

2007-12-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the Name Jesus, [a] because He will save His people from their sins."

22 All this took place to fulfill what the LORD had said through the prophet: 23 "The virgin will be with Child and will give birth to a Son, and they will call Him Immanuel" [b] — which means, "God with us."

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the LORD had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a Son. And he gave Him the Name Jesus.

-Matthew 1:18-25

Checking In & Flipping Out

2007-12-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

So now I've disappeared even on weekends, eh?

Yes, it is true. Now not only has my never far from tenuous day job completely taken over my life (again) but the personal life of which I have virtually none anymore is completely crowded out every last remaining second of blogging time I could possibly scrounge up without literally giving up sleeping.

How can this be, you ask? Because our minivan died last week and we're down to one functioning vehicle. This means I am now the ubiquitous family chauffer, ferrying my wife to and from work every day, taxi-ing my daughter to school events, my son anywhere he has to go, on top of working an endless marathon of sixteen-hour days - and, oh yes, I clean forgot, volunteering with our church's AWANA club and teaching a dozen or two unruly upper primary children about the fascinating life of the Israeli patriarch Joseph.

And leave us not neglect to mention car-shopping with a spouse whose level of irresolution makes John Kerry look like the Rock of Gibralter. Yesterday, after my award-deserving radio program, my son and I picked up Mrs. Hard Starboard from work with what I thought was the intention of visiting a particular car lot to reconnoiter for an hour or two and then go home.

Well, I either have as bad a memory as I self-deprecatingly put over, or I am incapable of curing myself of irrational optimism, because last night's sortie turned into a five hour debacle that took us and that poor salesman all over that lot during a driving snow/rain/snow/rain storm and did not end until past 11 PM, or three and a half hours past their closing time. To say nothing of at least two hours past mini-me's bed time, which has me indebted to him for dragging him along on it, which I would not have done if I'd anticipated such an outcome as I should have (and if I'd known that my daughter was going to be home instead of coming with us as well - guess she drew the long straw, or palmed it....). Hint: that KFC popcorn chicken and litre of Mountain Dew Code Red isn't even a downpayment on the downpayment. Arrrrrgh.

And, naturally, to the degree that wifey is not paralyzed like the proverbial starving donkey trapped between two bales of hay, we're at our usual "big decision" impasse, as I am leaning toward the 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan and she got sold on a 2007 Chrysler PT Cruiser that looks like a 1940s version of the Herman-Munster-mobile. It was all I could do not to laugh in the sales guy's face when he pulled up in that eyesore. Not that I cared about his feelings, but rather I didn't want to end up sleeping on the couch (which is actually immensely more comfortable than our bed, but that's another topic).

I figure we need one larger vehicle with ample cargo space even after our kids (who are both teenagers) eventually leave the nest, and the Grand Caravan provides that within our price range (a continuum that doesn't include a whole lot of that sort of vehicle). The PT Cruiser (PT as in Barnum, I'm guessing) isn't even classified as a van, mini or otherwise, but as a "mid-size," subdesignation "sport wagon," which is either the most garish automotive oxymoron in the English language or some manufacturer actually came up with a successor to the Wagon Queen Family Truckster. If we're going to purchase a mid-size car, I'd prefer it to look like something that wouldn't lead people to suspect that its driver has bolts sticking out the side of her (or my) neck - say, a Ford Taurus or a Chevy Impala, whose trunks are actually separate from the passenger compartment and have real, honest-to-goodness lids that no-foolin' shut.

Of course, if we were shopping for MY next car, we'd be looking at compacts and this wouldn't even be an issue. But we're not looking for my next car, but my wife's, so I'm limited to telling her that I think the PT Cruiser easily deposes the Ford Focus and AMC Pacer for the title of "ugliest automobile ever spawned," but she'll be driving it, so it's her decision. Which will, of course, paralyze her volition even more, and extend the duration of my stint as ubiquitous family chauffer even longer.

How's that for "sweet torture"? And does it beat the couch? Which, come to think of it, would be less embarrassing to drive down the road than the PT Cruiser.

I don't know that it matters in any practical sense, other than which will give me back weekends to catch up on the blogging of which I've been robbed during the week by the accursed need to earn a living, which seems like it's never far from hanging by a thread.

There's an old Chinese saying: "May you live in interesting times." Guess I need to cut back on the lunches at Peking Gardens, and for other reasons beyond lowering my sodium intake.

VBC Missionaries Of The Week: Bob & Katherine Rodgers

2007-12-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

Bob Rodgers is NICE field director for Washington and Alaska. He and Katherine give oversight to newly planted churches, encourage missionaries, speak at advances and conferences, counsel churchs and individuals, and represent the mission.

They became first-time grandparents this past year and are thoroughly enjoying it.

Krakatoa!

2007-12-01T23:35:00.000-08:00

1 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our LORD and Savior through your apostles.

3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's Word the heavens existed and Earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and Earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the LORD a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The LORD is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

10 But the day of the LORD will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and Earth and everything in it will be laid bare. [a]

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.[b] That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new Earth, the home of righteousness.

-2 Peter 3:1-13

Central Command News (12/1/07)

2007-12-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Latest News Feed

Obstacle clearing teams keep Anbar roadways safe.aspx

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 12:53 PM CST

AL ASAD, Iraq - Lance Corporal Allen R. Rossi said the closer service members get to a possible land mine or improvised explosive device, the less worried they become. “You won’t feel a thing if it goes off that close,” explained the Camden, Ohio, native.

US CENTCOM Press Releases

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, CAR-BOMBERS, PROPAGANDA CELLS; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 17 SUSPECTS DETAINED

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 02:34 PM CST

BLACK LIONS ARREST ALLEGED EXTREMIST LEADERS

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 02:18 PM CST

Forty-Five-Year-Old Promise

2007-11-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

6 Now the men of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, "You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, 8 but my brothers who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt with fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. 9 So on that day Moses swore to me, 'The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.' [a]

10 "Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said."

13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance.

-Joshua 14:6-13

Say WHAT?!

2007-11-30T12:36:00.000-08:00

Here's something I thought I'd never see:

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), one of the leading anti-war voices in the House Democratic Caucus, is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the “surge is working.” This could be a huge problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, who are blocking approval of the full $200 billion being sought by President Bush for combat operations in Iraq in 2008.
Murtha’s latest comments are also a stark reversal from what he said earlier in the year. The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the powerful Defense subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, has previously stated that the surge “is not working” and the United States faced a military disaster in Iraq.

Murtha told CNN on July 12, following a Bush speech, that the president’s views on the success of surge in Iraq were “delusional.”

…Murtha even yelled at a reporter during a recent press conference, telling the reporter that the news coming out of the Pentagon regarding Iraq is not believable.

“They don’t need to do the things — you’re missing the point — because the Pentagon says it, you believe it?,” Murtha yelled. “You believe what the Pentagon says? Huh? With all the things that they have told us, you believe what — I mean, go back and look — ‘mission accomplished,’ al Qaeda connection, weapons of mass destruction, on and on and on, and you believe the Pentagon?”

Kinda fun to watch them twist and turn, ain't it? I mean, it would be if they hadn't done so much damage with their seditious undermining of the military, ESPECIALLY Murtha. I didn't catch an apology in there anywhere, especially for the Haditha marines, did you?

Looks like Murtha might have a challenger for his seat. This story is a month old, but boy, we can hope, can't we? Seeing that old turd bumped out of his seat would be as much fun as it was when Carol Moseley-Braun lost her seat, or even when Tom Daschle was ousted. Now, if we could just get the people of Massachusetts to wise up.

Central Command News (11/30/07)

2007-11-30T07:37:00.000-08:00

US CENTCOM Latest News Feed

Air Force firefighters teach Iraqis blaze fighting basics.aspx

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 08:21 AM CST

ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) - Seven local Iraqi firefighters shared a momentous occasion as they graduated from the Ali Base basic firefighter skills course.

Army Mechanics Go Distance to Keep Wheels Rolling.aspx

Posted: 30 Nov 2007 07:26 AM CST

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan - A young Soldier rubbed sleep from his eyes as he stumbled into the giant machinery garage at 10 p.m., his vision flooded with harsh yellow light. He'd been working on various trucks and machines since 4 a.m., but he still had to work on one more.

US CENTCOM Press Releases

COALITION FORCES TARGET FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, ASSASSINS, SENIOR AL-QAEDA ASSOCIATES; 12 DETAINED

Posted: 29 Nov 2007 11:07 AM CST

The CNN/YouTube Debate Question You DIDN'T See

2007-11-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

....because it would have given Fred Thompson more speaking time, and as we all know, everybody has now had the Fear of Fred put into them.

Seriously, with national security relegated to a sideshow (by all such questions being directed to non-entity John McCain), Hugh Hewitt's two purported "front-runners" relegated to a playground pissing match, and Mike f'ing Huckaberry designated the star of the show, what other conclusion can one draw?

Dick Armey is definitely looking long in the tooth, but his question is one that would have driven lefties up the wall, and reduced the other candidates to yapping mongrels at Senator Thompson's feet.

Which they kind of were anyway, only absent the spotlight being where it belonged.