What can you say about the latest John Kerry foul up ...

... that hasn't already been said.

It's hard to make fun of the man because every time you put him in front of a mic or on camera he manages to do it for himself.

This last one is a doozy though:



and his "apology" isn't much better.

Here, let me summarize for you, "It's all Bush's fault!" oh yeah and "Republicans are chickenhawks!".

I'm sure every Conservative blogger was thinking the same thing as me, "When did Iowahawk become John Kerry's speech writer?"

I'm not quite sure how exactly but he did manage to keep a straight face while blaming the Republican war machine for his attack on the men and women serving in the US Armed Forces. Sadly, many on the far left will accept that explanation whole heartedly, not even bothering to try and reason out for themselves how exactly GWB, Dick Chaney or Rush Limbaugh could have made him say the things he said. My guess, they'll blame Rove.

Hot Air has Bush's statement on the matter.

Still having Blogger problems

I have no idea if it's only me or not but I've tried on several machines and I'm still having trouble posting anything.

I guess you can consider this my test post and, if it works, my general Blogger complaint post.


BTW, have I mentioned how much I love the automatic spell check in Firefox 2.0 yet? That doesn't mean everything will be perfect from now on, but the spell checker in the Googlebar was a bit too flaky to trust with posts with lots of hyperlinks.

Skeet Shooting

The Top Gear way.



As if getting paid buckets of cash to drive the world's fastest, most expensive and luxurious cars wasn't a good enough job perk.

Racist Racists Everywhere

Why is it that liberals can see racism behind every word, action and yes, even sound, one of their political opponents say, do or make? Isn't the tendency to attribute everything that happens to a person a condition of his or her ethnic origins the very basis of racism?

There has definitely been some seriously disgusting racial attacks during this American campaign season, but almost without fail they have been against black Republicans at the hands of the thoughtful progressive left, or have people already forgotten the ordeals faced by prominent conservative candidates like Michael Steele.

Now compare the attacks on Mr. Steele with the the current 'racist' ads against Democrat Harold Ford Jr. Mary Katherine Ham pretty much sums up my view of the subject with her vblog over at Townhall.com. Be sure to check out Allah's and MKH's takes on the Chris Matthews attack of the ads.

Just try watching any of these supposedly racist ads while forgetting the ethnicity of the people involved. Is there anything in the ads to imply of which race the opponent is a member? Is there anything in the ads which overtly insult people of any particular racial background?

About the only group of people I could see that have any right to feel offended at these commercials are Playboy Playmates who do not fit the ditsy blond stereotype. Outside of that you really have to be reaching to try and make these campaign ads anything more than very light hearted attack ads.

The Shape of Things to Come

If this proposed British law passes this may become more common than you'd think.



Now I'm not exactly the biggest proponent of casual sex, but just because you wake up next to 'Coyote Ugly' because you were wearing your beer goggles last night does not give you the right to cry foul. Any decisions you make under the influence can be directly attributed to your decision to have that first drink.

Crazy Ivans

Well it looks like Billings Brindge is hosting yet another meeting of the Erratic Walkers Club this fine October day.

With all the stops, starts, and unannounced 90 degree turns, walking the hallways of the mall is beginning to feel like I'm caught up in some cold war era Russian sub chase.

Another Great Day By Day cartoon

For people who already the need for the War on Terror this may feel painfully obvious, but for those still holding out hope for a peaceful compromise, Chris's cartoon may be just what you need to finally understand the situation.

Hey, still feel free to debate about tactics till everyone's blue in the face, but for anyone with a clue, the debate over 'need' was over 5 years ago.

Truth in the MSM

It's been an interesting weekend for conservatives around the blogosphere as not one but two mainstays of the mainstream media come out and publicly acknowledge problems within their organization.

First we have the BBC's admittance, through details of a leaked meeting, that they are in fact a bias organization which is quite willing to allow agenda driven reporting. While not a surprise to most impartial or conservative viewers of any BBC programming this may put a real crimp in the debating technique of dedicated leftist who routinely try to use the BBC as an impartial observer to back up their anti-Bush arguments. The Captain, Michelle and Charles have more.

Second we have the NY Times ombudsman coming forward and publicly stating that he is now of the opinion that their leaking of the SWIFT financial tracking program from a few months back was a mistake. From his reasoning you'd almost think he actually read someone outside of the NYT/LA Times bubble as it perfectly mirrors the arguments of almost every single conservative at the time of the story; those being A) the program is perfectly legal under American laws and B) there is no evidence that any individuals personal data had been in any way misused by the NSA or any other Federal agency.

His defense of his earlier opinion is almost laughable as he places blame on the condemnation coming from the White House in that it caused him to reflexively defend his paper.

First of all, as he now admits, the NY Times outed a perfectly legal, well run intelligence gathering program which the government had already used to capture at least one high profile terrorist, effectively reducing it's usefulness to nil, so I believe any words of anger from anyone in the administration were well warranted.

Secondly, as ombudsman, it's his job to objectively review complaints or questions about the conduct of the paper he works for. If, as his defense seems to put forward, when he feels his paper is being attacked he automatically defends them without judging the merits of the attacks he does not deserve the job of ombudsman. While I'm glad Mr Calame came forward and reversed his earlier decision based on the facts of the case, by his own admission, he is a complete failure as an independent arbiter which is precisely what the job of ombudsman requires. I'm with Patterico on this one, Byron Calame Should Resign.

Now if we can only get the CBC and CNN to openly admit their general bias; CNN founder Ted Turner doesn't seem to have a problem doing it. And at least CBS had the decency to discredit themselves in front of the entire world when some of their staff tried to push their anti-Bush views (save to a few dedicated leftists, like a certain D. Rather, who will still argue the veracity of the Killian documents despite all expert testimony to the contrary) .

Troubles with Blogger

I really hope Blogger 2.0 hurries up and gets moved into prime time.

It was easier for Mac to get a deal for his new book (congrats by the way Mac) than it's been for me to get anything published on here for the past couple of days.

The Prophet of Hockey

It just speaks volumes about the type of man Roger Neilson was that although he only spent a few short years in Ottawa as an assistant coach for the Senators, almost immediately after his death in 2003, plans for Roger's House, a pediatric palliative care facility, were announced. Since it's opening earlier this year, 41 families have found the help they've needed to get them through some of the worst times in their lives.

This week however, Roger's House was the site of a much happier, though solemn occasion as members of the Israeli under 18 hockey team visited the site to share their memories of the man who almost single handedly introduced hockey to their country. Through the camp that he founded there in 1997, hockey has grown to the point in Israel where they are able to have both an under 18 and adult national teams.

Until today I didn't even know that anyone in Israel even knew what hockey was, but it's not all that surprising to find out that Roger Neilson was directly involved in bringing the sport he loved to children on the other side of the world.

IraqBodyCount responds

LGF has a link to the openly anti-war but still universally respected, IraqBodyCount's review of the latest Lancet report.

In keeping with their dedication to presenting an accurate count of war related deaths in Iraq they dismantle the Lancet study in an 8 page press release.

The Reason YouTube Was Created

By way of Ace:

Martians for 9/11 Truth

Just found this transcript of O'Reilly's interview with Jim Fetzer, one of the most visable members of the nutjob, 'Scholars for 9/11 Truth' movement. There's a link to the video at the top of the actual transcript portion of the page.

Every time I see this guy he puts forward the same sad tired thoroughly debunked claims. When Eric Cartman puts forward a more logical conspiracy theory than your entire organization (with enhanced photographic proof to boot) it's time to close up shop and call it a day.

Update:
Hot Air has a better copy of the O'Reilly video here.

For the time being, The Political Pitbull has the entire South Park episode linked from his site.

While I'm on the subject ..

.. of beautiful intelligent analysts I just have to put up a pick of Megyn Kendall. I have no idea on which side of the political spectrum she falls, which is a good thing in a news analysts, and I don't really care, but any excuse to put up a picture of Megyn is good enough for me.

My favourite liberal

Ms. Kirsten Powers.



She's smart, ready to back up her arguments, and doesn't opt for personal attacks when confronted with an opposing opinion. Her looks don't hurt much either. I'm even pretty sure that her smile in this latest Hot Air production is genuine and not a 'get me out of this room with these crazy conservatives' type of thing.

Judging by her article on Alaska's response to Hugo Chavez's gas offer, I think there's still hope that she may come into the light soon.

Liberal Witch Hunt

Just remember, this is from the party of 'love and understanding':

Daily Kos:"Out" all Republican Gays in Congress

Just read the comments to see how easy it is for those on the far left, or as it is more commonly called, the Democratic Party, to throw out all morals and ethics when they see a chance to push their agenda and punish those they disagree with. Sadly, only a small handful of commentators seem to understand that the use of situational ethics is not the way to garner support for your cause.

I've still yet to see exactly where they give concrete examples of how the Republicans are 'anti-gay'. What so many on the left fail to understand is that not wanting to grant special privileges to groups of people based solely on a particular characteristic is not being anti-anything, it's in fact being more inclusive. Until liberals get over their need to frame every issue in terms of identity politics there will always be conflicts with conservatives who just want to create a level playing field for everyone. If I punch a guy in a fight my punishment should not depend on his race, creed, religion or sexual orientation; it should be based solely on the circumstance of the assault.

On a related note, but not related to the outing issue, I also love the generic throw away lines like "that's what they do" and "it's time to for us to stop playing nice" that always pepper these type of progressive threads. Can someone please tell me when the time existed that liberals weren't willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find dirt for a personal attack to destroy their opponent? I'm not saying that conservatives are blameless in this whole game, but come on, when you have a party that not only elects but praises former Klansman who still routinely use the 'N' word and who have actively worked against equal rights legislation and minority appointees, alcoholics who have been directly responsible for the death of a passenger in their car under highly suspect conditions (to put it mildly) and 46 year old politicians who had active sexual affairs with 17 year old pages you have to question the effectiveness of mud slinging as a Republican campaign strategy.

Sure there are those on the Right who enjoy flinging a little dirt around, but in general it is the conservative base that is more responsive to ethical violations and not the liberals and the Dems know that. That's how you can have a party in which a Senatorial leader who 'forgot' $700,000 profits from shady land deals he used his federal powers to sweeten and a Congressman who hid nearly $100,000 in bribe money in his freezer are not only allowed to keep their seats, to no great surprise, but that can then turn around and try to sell their constituents on the idea that it is the other guys who are the 'Party of Corruption'.

(h/t LGF for the original Kos link)

Compare and Contrast

Just take a look at the comments attached to the 'signatures' on the two online petitions covering the whole Columbia University Minuteman controversy.

It's very telling that the majority of honest replies on the Pro student protesters petition seem to be from organized unions or people directly involved in the university system. Luckily, of the 2400+ replies, a strong majority seem to be people who are just signing up to leave negative comments condemning the students actions.

The Anti student protesters petition, on the other hand, seem to pretty much cover the gambit of the rest of society with very few fake signatures.

Wednesday Funnies

These are about as unrelated as two events can be but they both have that same mix of creepiness and hilarity that brings a smile to my face.

First a little KO pillow talk courtesy of the New York Post.

And second, Airyck's current favourite YouTube video:

600,000 +- 599,453

I don't know if I'd trust a group who saw fit to release a previous study which reports an margin of uncertainty between 8,000 to 194,000 but for all those interested, the Lancet has released a new study which based on interviews with 1800 families around Iraq has determined that between 426,369 to 793,663 'civilians' have died.

If that type of degree of uncertainty doesn't put the results in enough of a questionable light, of the 101% of deaths represented in their latest study (and no that's not a typo, it's actually a total of their own percentages) they once again fail to differentiate between true civilian deaths and those of the military or insurgents.

Well they should be congratulated if for nothing else managing to even outdo their previous astronomical error range of 186,000 with their new 367,294.

I truly had no idea it was so easy to be a liberal pollster nowadays.

Rick at Right Wing Nuthouse does an excellent job in his initial dismantling of this latest Lancet offering.

Update:
It just gets better and better, LGF adds this link to a YouTube video of the Lancet Editor speaking to a recent anti-war crowd. He's got all the key points in there for any good moonbat rant; mentions of imperialism, how the government prefers the killing of children to the building of schools, etc..

Watch it for yourself and decide if this is the face of an impartial observer:

Mixing it up a little

Firgured I'd give a little push to this independant Canadian band. You can check out their myspace page for some additional downloads.

When will they learn

The DNC is doing it's best to defend the US Armed Forces, too bad they don't know what they look like.

Through the looking glass (Red Chamber edition)

Since when do Liberals begin pushing for more military spending and joining the US missile defense program?

While this could just be a last ditch effort from the Senators of all political stripes to make to make sure the people of Canada see that they do occasionally do some work, at least it's much more constructive than they House counterparts general obstructionist tactics.

This Day in Foleygate

Things just continue to get weirder and weirder.

I'd like to state for the record, that no matter how much exculpatory evidence that comes out about this case, I still think Mark Foley did the right thing and resigned. I just wished he had left it at that and walk out of Washington with his head held low and instead of trying to defend his horrible breech of the public trust with his attempt to make excuses.

Oh yeah, and weirder still!

Update:
Still adding on the weird.

(h/t LGF, Protein Wisdom)

It not the crime

in politics it's the cover-up that kills you. Being a conservative doesn't help much either.

So the cliff notes version of the Mark Foley saga thus far is this:

• Republican Congressman is confronted about "overly friendly" emails to a former page.
• He agrees to stop and the incident is deemed settled by all parties involved.
• Fast forward one year later, IM chat logs surface that, unlike the previous emails, are sexually explicit in nature and can in no way be considered just "friendly" in any way.
• Congressman, rightfully resigns seat and Monday morning quarterbacks come out of the woodwork.
  

I have seen absolutely no, even partially, substantiated claims that any Republican leaders had any knowledge of the level of Foley's contact with the former pages. If such evidence arises then without question those involved have to follow Foley's lead and resign their seat. That being said, the part of the story that seems to be completely left out by most of the MSM outlets is that it appears the Democratic leadership was also made aware of the emails at about the same time and also accepted the outcome. Like the Republican leaders, it appears that is all they were aware of until very recently when the story starts to get a little greyer.

While no one has come forward to show that the Republicans were made aware of the more graphic communications, there is growing indirect evidence that at least some Democrats were made aware of these IM logs by far left supporters prior to the news story breaking last week. If this turns out to be true, the tide may actually change from what is now essentially a witch hunt to find some Republican outside of just Foley to hang this scandal on, to a damming example of just how far partisan politics have sunk. The very idea of a group holding on to this type of information just so that they could schedule the timing of the release for the greatest political benefit would most likely sour a great number of moderates against their side.

What really amazes me about this story though has less to do with Foley's actions than the response from people on both sides of the isle. There seems to be a odd sort of agreement that just because Congressman Foley was homosexual (though not publicly out) that any contact he had with underage boys was to be suspect. That this argument is being put forward by some hard right spokespeople, while still wrong, is to be expected, but that exactly the same case is being put forward by the far left smacks so much of opportunistic hypocrisy that I can feel my blood pressure rising whenever I hear it. Prior to last week, there was little evidence that his contact with the pages was anything more than in the nature of a teacher enquiring about former students and if the story had ended there, which it did until recently, any reference to his sexual orientation would have been condemned by these very same liberals now calling for Republican heads. In fact, when a similar instance occurred with Congressman Gerry Studds, whose actions went well beyond electronic communications and actually involved a sexual affair with a 17 year old male page, while 'censured' by the Democratic congress at the time, he also received a standing ovation from his caucus after his condemnation of those who outed his affair as violating his privacy. Instead of resigning his seat he actually ran and continued to get re-elected until he retired in 1996 with his full parties support.

While Foley's actions are gross violations of the trust put into him by both his constituents and all those involved in the Congressional Page system, regardless of the sexes of those involved, and he deserves whatever he gets from this fallout, from a purely blogger viewpoint this is looking more and more like another example of selective outrage based more on liberals targeting conservatives who they disagree with. It was really no surprise to see John Aravosis's name attached to this story. Aravosis and his ilk seem to dedicated to the idea of outing any homosexual that doesn't fit perfectly into their mould of what gay should be (remember when Jeff Gannon dared write for a conservative online magazine).

Gateway Pundit is staying on top of the who knew what/when questions and has several interesting links.

Best Headline E..V..E..R!

Some journalists wait their entire careers to have a legitimate reason to use a headline like this one:

"Hubble Discovers Dark Spot on Uranus"

PHB Strikes Again

I just dropped by Airyck's cubicle to see if he was going for a coffee walk (I rarely drink the stuff myself, but any excuse to get out of the office is fine with me) anytime soon when he told me of his latest run in with one of our many PHB's. This one, even regular Dilbert readers may be hard pressed to out do.

Apparently at some point over lunch, Airyck's laptop decided it really didn't want to log on to the network, which was in direct opposition to Airyck's plans. Needless to say the laptop won and he managed to get his account locked after too many bad login attempts. As if that wasn't bad enough, even after having the lock reset he managed to do it again. After spending a few minutes questioning his sanity (a pretty regular occurrence around these offices) he decided to surrender and just ask for his password to be reset. This, of course, requires a managers approval so enter PHB #4 who jumped right on top of the situation and sent off the request to the LAN guys.

As time passed ever so slowly (there really isn't much to do around here when you're a programmer and your network access has been cut off) Airyck finally broke down and went back to #4's office to see what was taking so long. It was then that he was informed, completely straight faced, that the request had been granted, almost immediately as it turns out, and that the PHB, in his infinite wisdom, had emailed his new password to him.

=)


On a side note, it appears Airyck's memory is still intact and it really was just his laptop being a bit grumpy as even the new password wouldn't work until he went to another machine and logged on first.

Is it just me?

Or is Protein Wisdom down again?

I haven't seen anybody else mention anything about it so I'm just wonder if I'm alone in this.

On a possibly related note, I switched back from Rogers to Sympatico as my primary ISP last week and I have to say unless I can get a modem that doesn't drop connection every 15 minutes, I may just have to bite the bullet and make my move back to Rogers permanent. I love Sympatico's unlimited bandwidth usage (exceeded 150GB last month which is about 90GB above Rogers max) but the intermittent connectivity is a real hassle. Hopefully getting rid of my Speedstream 6300 will make things a lot better.

Anyone have any suggestions about which modem I should ask for? I've already got the wireless part covered.

I don't care if it rains or freezes ....

I guess that won't really work in this case but hey, what weather pattern rhymes with Mohammad?

This is right up there with T-Shirt Hell in it's use of subtlety to get it's point across. Get 'em while the getting's good. (h/t Michelle)