December 2008

Today We Got Proposed To...

...by Barack Obama.

"If you put your trust in me — if you give me 'your hand and your heart' — then that's exactly what I intend to do as your next President."

Columbia: Famously Hot

Columbia's new marketing campaign.

History 101

For those that don't know about history, here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1. Liberals, and 2. Conservatives. Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history. It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above history lesson. A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that they will immediately inform other true believers and more liberals just to tick them off.

And there you have it.

Let your next action reveal your true self...

The Messiah

He ventured forth to bring light to the world: The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers.

Read more about it here.

Our new hobby

Family Ties

A Meeting of Two Great Minds

How many headlines?

We don't care much for the NBA, but for some reason we enjoyed jumping on the Celtics bandwagon this playoff season. The thought occurred to us today at work - how may headlines looked something like this after Boston won the Finals earlier this week?


Laker's can't handle The Truth








Turns out we're not that original. There are 252 hits on Google for that very phrase.

Boumediene v. Bush

Holding: "[A]liens designated as enemy combatants and detained at the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba . . . do have the habeas corpus privilege." Boumediene v. Bush, 2008 U.S. LEXIS 4887

Translation: "Alien enemy prisoners, waging a jihad against the American people and captured by our military in a war authorized by Congress, have a right — under our Constitution — to petition our courts for their release." National Review Online

Precedent: Never before in history has there been

an instance where a court, in this or any other country where the writ is known, has issued [habeus corpus] on behalf of an alien enemy who, at no relevant time and in no stage of his captivity, has been within its territorial jurisdiction. Nothing in the text of the Constitution extends such a right, nor does anything in our statutes.

Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the Supreme Court majority in Johnson v. Eisentrager ("case involving German operatives captured in China and held in zone of postwar Germany fully controled by occupying American forces.")

So much for precedent.


My Hero: "Eisentrager thus held — held beyond any doubt — that the Constitution does not ensure habeas for aliens held by the United States in areas over which our Government is not sovereign…. [The majority opinion] is a sheer rewriting of the case.… By blatantly distorting Eisentrager, the Court avoids the difficulty of explaining why it should be overruled."
Justice Scalia, dissenting in Boumediene v. Bush.

What this case is really about: "The United States Supreme Court now routinely invents constitutional rights to support whatever social, political, and legal goals it deems desirable. It is so much easier to legislate from the bench than it is through the branches of government that were created by our Founders to do just that." Peter Wehner, Supreme Disgrace, National Review Online

What it means: "[F]oreign al-Qaeda killers detained in Cuba can march right into the federal district courts and demand what, suddenly, are their constitutional rights. In those courts, judges — without guidance and emboldened by the high court’s usurpation of war powers — will be encouraged to make it up as they go along: More access to classified information? Subpoenas commanding the testimony (and cross-examination) of our soldiers regarding the circumstances of capture? Miranda warnings? Prompt access to counsel, which is certain to halt any questioning — and thus any revelation of lifesaving intelligence — before it can even start? Full-blown trials in the criminal-justice system with the same presumptions of innocence, privacy, and other privileges vested in American citizens?" Editors, National Review Online.

More Scalia:

The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today… It sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

"What drives today's decision is neither the meaning of the Suspension Clause, nor the principles of our precedents, but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy."

"The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

More commentary on this ruling by "the al-Quaeda wing of the U.S. Supreme Court":
Supreme Cowardice, American Spectator
Lord Kennedy, American Spectator



Remember what the Obamessiah said about the type of judges he'd nominate to the Supreme Court?


We're convinced: A vote for Obama is a vote for al-Quaeda.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin D. Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry S. Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John F. Kennedy

Oh yeah, and this:

• "What they'll say is, "Well it costs too much money," but you know what? It would cost, about--It-- It--it would cost about the same as what we would spend--It--Over the course of 10 years it would cost what it would cost us (nervous laugh). All right. Okay. We're going to--It--It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about - hold on one second. I can't hear myself. But I'm glad you're fired up, though. I'm glad. Everybody know that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven't had much sleep in the last 48 hours."-- Barack Hussein Obama

Amen to that

Seen on the marquee near the interstate exit where our office is located:

Free Local Calls.
New Renovation.
God Bless America.

That's the beauty of our great nation - there are few countries in the world where the hotel you've chosen to stay in will have new renovations and can still offer you free local calls. Forget the HBO in France, baby - in these United States, you can call the pizza store down the street...for FREE!

If only the Rev. Wright had stayed at the EconoLodge in Irmo. Maybe then he'd be singing a different tune (or screaming a different nonsensical rant - we get the two confused).

God bless American, indeed.

Global Warming...

...from a meteorologist's perspective.

In his must-read eco-thriller, State of Fear, Michael Crichton creates a brilliant visual to assist us in wrapping our minds around the components of Earth's atmosphere. On page 387, he likens the atmosphere to a football field. The goal line to the 78 yard-line contains nothing but nitrogen. Oxygen fills the next 21 yards to the 99 yard-line. The final yard, except for four inches, is argon, a wonderfully mysterious inert gas useful for putting out electronic fires. Three of the remaining four inches is crammed with a variety of minor, but essential, gases like neon, helium, hydrogen and methane. And the last inch? Carbon dioxide. One inch out of a hundred-yard field! At this point I like to add, if you were in the stands looking down on the action, you would need binoculars to see the width of that line. And the most important point-how much of that last inch is contributed by man-made activities? Envision a line about as thin as a dime standing on edge.

Are you still worried about the dangers of CO₂?

Me, neither.

Obama, Political Viagra

A good reality check from Mark Steyn at National Review Online:

"If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six months, see your doctor."

Maybe

At least the great orator is original.

The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Black bean or pinto?

You know you're a regular, "always order the same meal," creature-of-habit patron when your Quicken 2004 recognizes the repetitive price receipts for Moe's Southwest Grill and asks you if you would like to "schedule this transaction as a recurring bill?"

Spellign

Where do you get your news?

We like ESPN.

At least, we like them when they do what they're good at.

Sports.

For the most part, ESPN provides us with good coverage of all the breaking news in the world of sports, and ESPN.com is our number source for all things sports. When it comes to sports, ESPN are experts.

So stick to what you know. Please. Keep up with your 24-7 over-the-top sports commentary and analysis, but leave the political punditry to the folks who have actually studied things other than a play book and sports almanac.

More and more, we seem to find ESPN writers commenting on things other than sports, or worse, using a sports related story to advance a political perspective.

Consider this story from ESPN.com, where Pat Forde uses a story about Rick Majerus as a back-door promotion of stem-cell research, abortion, and (maybe?) even Hillary Clinton. Think its just a coincidence that Majerus' pro-choice views were highlighted during the week of the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade? We doubt it.

That's not all:

• There was the article (and Sportscenter segment) on the firing of the Univ. of Missouri lacrosse coach, which was unapologetically pro-gay in its emotive reporting.
• Speaking of lacrosse, how can we forget their coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal? ESPN often seemed less concerned with the lacrosse team and more interested in exploiting the racial tension in Durham and pointing a finger at the white, middle class lacrosse players at an expensive private university
  
• Or this story about a kid athlete from Atlanta, in jail for having oral sex with a 10th grader. A moving story, no doubt. Nevermind that he broke the law -- ESPN finds it necessary to write this story using the oft-used political template of a "backwards South" with "archaic laws" that just can seem to catch up with the modern progressive society that ESPN lives in.
  

We thought ESPN had decided that sports and politics just don't mix. Isn't that why they fired Rush Limbaugh from Sunday NFL Countdown?

Yet it doesn't get much more political than this. When ESPN commentator Ivan Maisel reported on the alleged sexual improprieties recently surrounding (now former) Arkansas football coach, he wrote this:

A self-described supporter of Arkansas athletics acquired Nutt's cell phone records through a Freedom of Information Act request. Media members across the nation, including this one, received pdf files detailing Nutt's communications.

The innuendo came at no extra charge. Nutt's detractors have put him in the impossible position of proving a negative--he must have cheated on his wife because there is no proof that he did not.

It is a maneuver borrowed from national politics, Rovian in style and execution. Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to President George W. Bush, made his career on attacking an opponent's strength. In the 2004 presidential election, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth eviscerated Sen. John Kerry's stature as a war hero. Kerry's candidacy never recovered.

Rove had no visible affiliation with the Swift Boat Veterans, except that a tactic he made famous benefited his candidate.

Three years later, the tactic has been imported to Arkansas and used against Nutt.

Really, Ivan? We thought the openly biased anti-Bush reporting was something only the New York Times did.

Guess we were wrong.

Guess ESPN is no longer just an Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Judges, our jurisprudential nannies

Who said this, and what was he/she talking about?

“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old . . ."

That would be Obama. And he wasn't talking about the head of a non-profit organization, or the Pope, or even a charismatic presidential candidate. We'll let Obama tell you what he was talking about:

— and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”

So much for the rule of law.

As Jonah Goldberg put it, "Supreme Court justices are supposed to decide what the written law requires, not pick winners and losers based upon some sense of noblesse oblige. That’s why all of those statues of Lady Justice show her standing blindfolded, not bent over kissing the boo-boos of the unfortunate and the downtrodden."