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Website of the Week
Another great movie from the BBC.
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last modified Jul 8, 2008 at 22:33
Jon Barlow laments the decline of intellectual debate of politics, e.g. WFB's Firing Line. The degeneracy of this higher level of discourse is illustrated in Bill O'Reilly's recent interview with Michael Moore.
I posted my analysis to Barlowfarms this morning:
Moore trounced O'Reilly, which is a bit ironic, given how O'Reilly was challenging Moore to appear on his show.
It seemed to me that Bill was just unprepared or unable to deal with Moore's arguments. Bill let Moore get away with asking him whether or not he would sacrifice his children by sending them to Iraq. Well, this is just plain silly. No parent sends their children to Iraq or even to join the armed forces, for that matter. Young men and women volunteer to join the armed forces and therefore, are the ones responsible for having placed themselves in a potentially dangerous occupation.
Another Mooreism that went unsuccessfuly challenged was that "Bush lied" about WMD to get us into the war with Iraq. Bill should have asked Moore how he can support a presidential candidate (Kerry) who made the same arguments for attacking Iraq after 9/11. Also, Bill Clinton and many during his administration made the same arguments for going to war with Iraq, which is why he signed legislation making regime change in Iraq one of the major foreign policy goals of the United States.
Regardless of this, it is still way too early to say that there Iraq did not have WMDs. In fact, we know that Iraq had WMDs at one point. The real question is what happened to them. Were they destroyed, disseminated to terrorists, or sent to Syria, we don't know.
C'mon, Bill, do your homework next time.
That is the message displayed on the new t-shirt from Planned Parenthood in an effort to remove some of the stigma that is placed on the act of having your child brutally and mercilessly killed in the wound.
Maybe they should wear this message on the back of the tee.
This is an interesting, if not extremely heretical, site. At Absolution Online, you are offered absolution for offenses involving the Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins, Internal Sins, Physical Sins, and General Sins. If Martin Luther had known about this in his early years, he might never have left his computer.
Annie Jacobsen has written a follow-up to her horrific account of a possible terrorist dry-run in "Terror in the Skies, Again". Ms. Jacobsen contends that political correctness, in contrast to what we are trying to prevent, has left us open to a repitition of 9/11.
This brings us to the heart of the matter -- political correctness. Political correctness has become a major road block for airline safety. From what I've now learned from the many emails and phone calls that I have had with airline industry personnel, it is political correctness that will eventually cause us to stand there wondering, "How did we let 9/11 happen again?"
The NY Times has decided to take Abu Ghraib off the headlines for a nanosecond to try to build some legitimacy back into their reporting. I don't know if that is possible, but this story does show that maybe Bush wasn't as crazy as people thought when he named Iran among the Axis of Evil:
The final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks will offer new evidence of cooperative ties between Iran and Al Qaeda, including information drawn from intelligence reports suggesting that Iran provided several of the hijackers with safe passage in the year before the attacks, government officials said yesterday.
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The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the embargo placed by the commission on discussing the report until its release, said the panel had recently obtained intelligence showing that Iran had ordered guards at its border stations not to stamp the passports of Qaeda members from Saudi Arabia who were moving through Iran after training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The existence of the new intelligence was first reported on Time magazine's Web site.
I had no idea that the actor James Woods had witnessed a dry run by terrorists on a flight in August as accounted my Mark Steyn on his blog SteynOnline.
On August 1st, James Woods, the motion picture actor, was flying from Boston to Los Angeles. With him in the first class cabin were half-a-dozen guys, four of whom were young Middle Eastern men. Woods, like all really good actors, is a keen observer of people, and what he observed as they flew west persuaded him they were hijackers. The FBI has requested that he not reveal all the details, but he says he asked the flight attendant if he could speak to the pilot. After landing at LAX, the crew reported the incident to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA did …nothing. Two of the four were on board the September 11th planes. Woods turned out to be sitting in on a rehearsal for the big day.
After 9/11, the standard line was that Osama bin Laden had pulled off an ingenious plan. But he didn’t have to be ingenious, just lucky. And he was luckiest of all in that the obviousness of what was happening paradoxically made investigating it all the more problematic. His agents aren’t that smart – not in the sense of IRA smart, or Carlos the Jackal smart. The details Woods is permitted to discuss are in themselves very revealing: The four men boarded with no hand luggage. Not a thing. That’s what he noticed first. Everyone going on a long flight across a continent takes something: a briefcase, a laptop, a shopping bag with a couple of airport novels, a Wall Street Journal or a Boston Herald.
But these boys had zip. They didn’t use their personal headsets, they declined all food and drink, they did nothing but stare ahead to the cockpit and engage in low murmurs in Arabic. They behaved like conspirators. And Woods was struck by the way they treated the stewardess: “They literally ignored her like she didn't exist, which is sort of a kind of Taleban, you know, idea of womanhood, as you know, not even a human being.”
So they weren’t masters of disguise, adept at blending into any situation. They weren’t like the Nazi spies in war movies, urbane and charming in their unaccented English. It apparently never occurred to them to act natural, read Newsweek, watch the movie, eat a salad, listen to Lite Rock Favourites Of The Seventies, treat the infidel-whore stewardess like a human being. Everything they did stuck out. But it didn’t matter. Because the more they stuck out, the more everyone who mattered was trained not to notice them. The sort of fellows willing to fly airplanes into buildings turn out, not surprisingly, to be fairly stupid. But they benefited from an even more profound institutional stupidity. In August 2001, no-one at the FBI or FAA or anywhere else wanted to be seen to be noticing funny behaviour by Arabs. In mid-September, I wrote that what happened was a total systemic failure. But, as the memos leak out, one reason for that failure looms ever larger. Thousands of Americans died because of ethnic squeamishness by Federal agencies.
This is just too funny. These guys crash liberal and anti-war protests with conservative signage and messages.
This account of a mother and her family's encounter with possible terrorists on a commercial plane will freeze the blood in your veins and make you think twice about how safe we really are from terrorists. One thing you realize after reading this account is how we are trading our safety for political correctness in an attempt to not offend anyone. Scary.
For the next hour, the men congregated in groups of two and three at the back of the plane for varying periods of time. Meanwhile, in the first class cabin, just a foot or so from the cockpit door, the man with the dark suit - still wearing sunglasses - was also standing. Not one of the flight crew members suggested that any of these men take their seats.
Watching all of this, my husband was now beyond anxious. I decided to try to reassure my husband (and maybe myself) by walking to the back bathroom. I knew the goateed-man I had exchanged friendly words with as we boarded the plane was seated only a few rows back, so I thought I would say hello to the man to get some reassurance that everything was fine. As I stood up and turned around, I glanced in his direction and we made eye contact. I threw out my friendliest remember-me-we-had-a-nice-exchange-just-a-short-time-ago smile. The man did not smile back. His face did not move. In fact, the cold, defiant look he gave me sent shivers down my spine.
Happy 62nd Birthday to Harrison Ford! And please, please, please, take out that silly earring. It does not look cool and Indiana Jones would kick your tail if he saw you wearing it.
I've ripped this off from a local tidbits newspaper, but it is pretty interesting. Snopes debunks this here, but it still has entertainment value.
This is a genuine psychological test. It is a story about a girl.
While at the funeral of her own mother, she met a guy whom she did not know.
She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be, that she fell in love with him there and then... A few days later, the girl killed her own sister.
Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?
DON'T Scroll down until you have thought what your own answer is to this question!!!!!
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*Answer: She was hoping that the guy would appear at the funeral again.
If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in this test and answered it correctly. If you didn't answer correctly - good for you. If your friends hit the jackpot, may I suggest that you keep your distance. (If you got the answer correct, please let me know so I can take you off my distribution list...)
Okay, folks, let's test your knowledge of the arcane. What do these two codes mean:
1. 007 373 5963
2. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A
Okay, step right up folks! It's time to place your bets on who's going to be JFK's (that John F. Kerry) VP choice this week.
Will it be:
a. Richard Gephardt
* This guy is so boring, he manages to make Kerry look exciting. He does carry weight with BL (that's Big Labor, not Big Labowski) and could help swing some key battleground states up North.
b. John Edwards
* Sadly, not the Puritan minister. Trial lawyer who has an engaging personality. Imagine that. Remember, even sharks have huge grins on their faces.
c. Tom Vilsack
* Kerry/Vilsack. I'm sorry, but it won't happen for the same reason you don't name your kid Chester or Mortimer (and you thought Bush/Quayle was bad). The late night jokes would make political and comedic hay out of this ticket.
d. Hillary Clinton
* As Dick Morris sagely noted, Hillary would have nothing to lose by running as Kerry's VP. If he wins, she'll get to run for President in 8 years with VP on her resume. That is, if some liberal whacko didn't make her President sometime before then. If she loses, she runs as the favorite in 2008.
My wager is on...Dick Gephardt. He locks in labor votes in key battleground states and, like I said earlier, plays the role of the ugly girl sidekick to the lead actress, making Kerry look like the Prom Queen.
I'll be placing a few bucks on Hillary, too. Her nomination would create a media bizarre from now until November. Vice President Clinton... Be afraid, be very afraid.
That's what a catholic church lawyer may be doing with his lawsuit against John Kerry. According to the organization De Fide's website, Marc Balestrieri, has filed a Denunciation of US Senator John F. Kerry for Heresy in the Ecclesiastical Court of the Archdiocese of Boston.
It is an undisputed fact, externally verifiable, that the Defendant is one of the most visible, notorious, and vocal members fo the United States Senate to advocate and support the right to choose murder.
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On Sunday 11 April 2004, with camera crews trailing behind him, Defendant received Holy Communion at Easter, even after the Rev. Christopher Coyne, representing the Archdiocese, publicly stated: <<The matter has been brought to his attention.>> Despite full advertence, <<As he entered, Kerry was asked if he would take Communion. He responded with a firm <Yes>>>...Defendent Kerrry received the Eucharist at St. Scholastica Church located in Pittsburg... On 30 May 2004 Defendant received Holy Communion at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
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Defendant's actions and omissions have directly led Americans to believe that one may <<be a Christian in good standing though you reject all or significant parts of the brand of Christianity to whicy you formally adhere...it's a heresy nowadays to accuse someone of heresy.>>
This is very interesting and gets into some pretty heady Catholic theology, but it is good to see Kerry being called to the mat for his proabortion advocacy. What is most provocative about all this is the consideration of where this lawsuit will end. The Pope? Excommunication?
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