I love my Bird. I love my Dog. But I don't love them quite as intensly as this guy loves his horse. Be warned as the video contains some very in-tents love scenes!!!
Hat Tip: V the K.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Are You Lonesome 2-Nite?
I love my Bird. I love my Dog. But I don't love them quite as intensly as this guy loves his horse. Be warned as the video contains some very in-tents love scenes!!!
Hat Tip: V the K.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
Elections? What Elections???
Well, that didn't take long. On another blog (Ausitn Bay's, I think) I made a comment suggesting that the MSM would do their best to downplay the enormous success that was the Dec. 16th Iraqi vote. So here it is one day later and I'm looking at my soon to be former home page, MSNBC News, and here are five of the top six featured stories:
Bush Spies.
Labor Strikes.
Russian Explosions.
Ice Storm Misery.
Al-Zarqawi detained, freed.
So, here we have all negative slanting features, one of coarse aimed at Bush, and there is one story in the group that deals with Iraq, and it's about another failure. But did they remember that there was a little thing called "Free Elections" that went on yesterday in Iraq. Well, kinda. But apparently it wasn't good news either:
"Experts cautious in assessing Iraq election.
Analysts: High turnout, low violence a positive step but not a turning point"
And the "good folks" at NBC couldn't sit down and write the story themselves. They had to import it from another newspaper. Having not yet examined the piece, I can guess that Juan Cole is mentioned in here somewhere, but lets see who is featured in the piece.
We have Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice accentuating the positive. No surprise there. You have Sen. Lindsay "O" Graham with a couple of tiny, for all we know taken out of context, blurbs.
Then we have Anthony H. Cordesman, a Persian Gulf military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies supposedly saying (this is not in direct quotes in the article, so I can't say if this is exactly what he said) "the vote is not the long-awaited turning point but rather a trigger for launching a new political process next year that will include amending a constitution. That, he said, will better determine whether Iraq has a chance of emerging out of turmoil".
And then we have - Hey! There He Is, Univ of Mich Prof Juan Cole, being optimistic as usual. And he gets direct quotes.
"The steady grind of this guerrilla war is going to go on. The elections are not relevant to it, and that's what is going to matter to the American people,"
The elections are not relevant to it? Then why bother. That's going to be the message. It just isn't possible that matybe the guerrilla's are LOSING because THEY ARE THE ONES KILLING THE INNOCENT IRAQI'S AND NOT THE U.S. OR SUPPORTERS OF DEMOCRACY!!! And have we already forgotten that the Sunnis voted en mass, finally turning their backs on Juans beloved guerrillas. I'm not going to fisk Juan here as so many have already done a much better job doing that than I could (more here). But, come on people. Can't we acknowledge the monumental hurdle that has just been crossed??
Nope. Guess not.
PS. VDH, the antidote for negative spin on the war.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Bush Admits Defeat
Scratch That! It's the BBC.
Somewhere I hear the quiet grumblings of anti-Bush, anti-war moonbats saying "Damn it, Damn it, Damn it. Where are the explosions" under their breath.
Somewhere I hear the quiet grumblings of anti-Bush, anti-war moonbats saying "Damn it, Damn it, Damn it. Where are the explosions" under their breath.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Is This Guy Trying To Pull A Ted Kennedy.
OK. Not this guy. Here is the story.
Here is the part that raised my suspicions:
"Prosecutors said they plan to pursue murder charges against Deojay, but with the shed on the Massachusetts state line, they were still sorting out issues of jurisdiction".
Can you say "Chappaquiddick???
"Cut and Paste" on the War
I have argued that we need to be patient and steady when dealing with the Iraq policy. Today in the WaPo editorial page a soldier, who is going back to Iraq for the third time, says it far, far better than I ever could. Here are a couple of snippets:
"It is difficult for most Americans to rationalize this optimism in the face of the horrific images and depressing stories that have come to symbolize the war in Iraq. Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading."
"Anyone who has spent even a day in the Middle East should know that the Arab street would not thank us for abandoning Iraq. The blame for civil war would fall squarely on our shoulders. It is unlikely that the tentative experiments in democracy we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere would survive the fallout. There would be no dividend of goodwill from heartbroken intellectuals or emboldened Islamic extremists. American troops might be home in the short run, but the experienced professionals know that in the long run, quitting Iraq would mean more deployments, more desperate battles and more death."
Chew on this Yellow Spined Democrats.
Thank you MC. Major Ben Connable.
Hat Tip: Instapundit
PS. Here is a comment I made over at Miserable Donuts a couple of weeks ago.
__________________________________
Tim wrote:
"Does the Left consider losing winning?"
It depends on what the definition of losing is:-)
I find it amazing that those on the left, who are so energized by "ideals", "isms", and the power of the "movement" du jour, remain so ignorant of the ways in which these very things succeed and / or fail. The current WOT is like many others we have fought before; wars in which we are pitted against those who believe they should and will dominate us; that in some way or another we are, either because of race or religion or econo-governmental philosophy, we are inferior and should die. We have fought for the ideal and popular notions of liberty and independence from 1776 - 1783. We have fought against nationalism" and fascism" in WW's 1 & 2. We have fought against communism in Korea and Vietnam. All these wars have something in common. They were all driven by the belief, by one side or another, that their philosophy or way of life was better than that of the opponent or current populous. This is no different in the WOT. Of these wars, only one have we ended up on the wrong side of the winners circle, Vietnam (Korea was a push). Messer’s t.b. and his like absolutely MUST study an honest assessment of both how we failed in Vietnam, and the strategies Gen. Gaip used so well to defeat our will to fight.
Communism's promise of true equality and better living conditions for all was already a popular idea in the region as France's version of western style governance had done little to improve the lives of the ordinary Vietnamese (yeah, I know blame the French). We not only lost because the U.S. public lost its will to fight, and the war was poorly micromanaged by politicians (yes that's a warning to the Dems in congress), but we also lost because we failed to show the Vietnam population that our way could provide a better way of life.
Militarily, the Viet Cong lost the three month long tet offensive. But when Giap saw how the U.S. was reporting that as a U.S. defeat, he knew that he didn't have to win militarily, that all he had to do was keep our casualties mounting and we would lose our will to fight. He was right. Even if we would have "won" the Vietnam war. We may very well have lost the region at a later date because the "idea" of Communism looked more attractive than the what ever we could have provided at the time.
Though the Viet Cong killed and butchered far far more innocent civilians than we did, they won more followers because they had BETTER propaganda, which was partially supplied by us (thank you Dan "It's A Fake!" Rather). We only reported how many of our troops died or how many civilians WE killed, accidental or not. Our free press virtually ignored the vicious slaughter of innocents and massive body count incurred at the hand of the Viet Cong. And they never reported any hard-fought U.S victories as victories. Because people died, all battles were portrayed as failures. Sound familiar?
Hopefully, I don't need to spell out the root of the conflict in the WOT. But I will say this. Look at the attention that Murtha's reckless "Army is broken" comments are getting in our press vs that of fellow Democrat Lieberman's more optimistic WSJ Op Ed. piece. Consider this. If Murtha is right, where are the Democratic proposals to funnel billions into the military budget to help fix the broken Army??? Don't tell me that kind of bill would never get through Congress because, of coarse, no politician would want to show how much MORE stuff they're giving to the military during a time of war. And you can (and probably do) dismiss Lieberman as a tool of the administration, even though he WAS Al Gore's running mate a few years ago, and by you accounts, should be the VP. Fine. But what is his motivation for doing this Op. Ed.? More important however. WHAT IF HE'S RIGHT IN HIS ASSESMENT??? And you wonder why the Pentagon has been giving positive stories to the Iraqi press. They HAVE TO, unless they want to loose in Iraq as they did in Vietnam.
Now, t.b., I'm not going to argue whether this war was planned well from the beginning, or that we didn't have enough troops or blah, blah, blah. All leaders on all side make all sorts of errors and blunders when fighting wars, as is evident if you study the history of all the wars I mentioned in the first paragraph. We can't just come home and forget we were ever in Iraq. In the short term, we may save a few American solders lives. Bbut in the long term, if we leave before the Iraqi government has a change to stand on it's own and defend itself from the violence that will continue no matter when we leave, then doesn't it make more sense to leave at a point when the Iraqi goevnment is ready and not before? Unless, of coarse, you wan't Iraq to fail, you have no faith in the Iraqi people and in the power and appeal of liberty and democratic rule.
"It is difficult for most Americans to rationalize this optimism in the face of the horrific images and depressing stories that have come to symbolize the war in Iraq. Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading."
"Anyone who has spent even a day in the Middle East should know that the Arab street would not thank us for abandoning Iraq. The blame for civil war would fall squarely on our shoulders. It is unlikely that the tentative experiments in democracy we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere would survive the fallout. There would be no dividend of goodwill from heartbroken intellectuals or emboldened Islamic extremists. American troops might be home in the short run, but the experienced professionals know that in the long run, quitting Iraq would mean more deployments, more desperate battles and more death."
Chew on this Yellow Spined Democrats.
Thank you MC. Major Ben Connable.
Hat Tip: Instapundit
PS. Here is a comment I made over at Miserable Donuts a couple of weeks ago.
__________________________________
Tim wrote:
"Does the Left consider losing winning?"
It depends on what the definition of losing is:-)
I find it amazing that those on the left, who are so energized by "ideals", "isms", and the power of the "movement" du jour, remain so ignorant of the ways in which these very things succeed and / or fail. The current WOT is like many others we have fought before; wars in which we are pitted against those who believe they should and will dominate us; that in some way or another we are, either because of race or religion or econo-governmental philosophy, we are inferior and should die. We have fought for the ideal and popular notions of liberty and independence from 1776 - 1783. We have fought against nationalism" and fascism" in WW's 1 & 2. We have fought against communism in Korea and Vietnam. All these wars have something in common. They were all driven by the belief, by one side or another, that their philosophy or way of life was better than that of the opponent or current populous. This is no different in the WOT. Of these wars, only one have we ended up on the wrong side of the winners circle, Vietnam (Korea was a push). Messer’s t.b. and his like absolutely MUST study an honest assessment of both how we failed in Vietnam, and the strategies Gen. Gaip used so well to defeat our will to fight.
Communism's promise of true equality and better living conditions for all was already a popular idea in the region as France's version of western style governance had done little to improve the lives of the ordinary Vietnamese (yeah, I know blame the French). We not only lost because the U.S. public lost its will to fight, and the war was poorly micromanaged by politicians (yes that's a warning to the Dems in congress), but we also lost because we failed to show the Vietnam population that our way could provide a better way of life.
Militarily, the Viet Cong lost the three month long tet offensive. But when Giap saw how the U.S. was reporting that as a U.S. defeat, he knew that he didn't have to win militarily, that all he had to do was keep our casualties mounting and we would lose our will to fight. He was right. Even if we would have "won" the Vietnam war. We may very well have lost the region at a later date because the "idea" of Communism looked more attractive than the what ever we could have provided at the time.
Though the Viet Cong killed and butchered far far more innocent civilians than we did, they won more followers because they had BETTER propaganda, which was partially supplied by us (thank you Dan "It's A Fake!" Rather). We only reported how many of our troops died or how many civilians WE killed, accidental or not. Our free press virtually ignored the vicious slaughter of innocents and massive body count incurred at the hand of the Viet Cong. And they never reported any hard-fought U.S victories as victories. Because people died, all battles were portrayed as failures. Sound familiar?
Hopefully, I don't need to spell out the root of the conflict in the WOT. But I will say this. Look at the attention that Murtha's reckless "Army is broken" comments are getting in our press vs that of fellow Democrat Lieberman's more optimistic WSJ Op Ed. piece. Consider this. If Murtha is right, where are the Democratic proposals to funnel billions into the military budget to help fix the broken Army??? Don't tell me that kind of bill would never get through Congress because, of coarse, no politician would want to show how much MORE stuff they're giving to the military during a time of war. And you can (and probably do) dismiss Lieberman as a tool of the administration, even though he WAS Al Gore's running mate a few years ago, and by you accounts, should be the VP. Fine. But what is his motivation for doing this Op. Ed.? More important however. WHAT IF HE'S RIGHT IN HIS ASSESMENT??? And you wonder why the Pentagon has been giving positive stories to the Iraqi press. They HAVE TO, unless they want to loose in Iraq as they did in Vietnam.
Now, t.b., I'm not going to argue whether this war was planned well from the beginning, or that we didn't have enough troops or blah, blah, blah. All leaders on all side make all sorts of errors and blunders when fighting wars, as is evident if you study the history of all the wars I mentioned in the first paragraph. We can't just come home and forget we were ever in Iraq. In the short term, we may save a few American solders lives. Bbut in the long term, if we leave before the Iraqi government has a change to stand on it's own and defend itself from the violence that will continue no matter when we leave, then doesn't it make more sense to leave at a point when the Iraqi goevnment is ready and not before? Unless, of coarse, you wan't Iraq to fail, you have no faith in the Iraqi people and in the power and appeal of liberty and democratic rule.
Monday, December 12, 2005
OH MY GOD!!!
These are too damned good. I'm not even going to tell you what they are. Just click on them and smile.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
File in the "Isn't Technology Great!" Dept.
This is my best V the K impression.
1. Of all the horrible things I did to my sisters Barbie, I could never have done this!!!
2. Barbie! The Ultimate Fembot!!!
3. "And my head, I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brai..." Oh, Hey. That's MUCH Better!
4. Barbie. 2.0
5. After all these years, the Lawnmowerman actually gets to go on a real date.
6. Sadly, after she and Ken parted ways, Barbie became totally addicted to the internet.
7. Don't call her "dumb" anymore!
8. I always suspected Barbie was a Mac girl.
9. Oh, Hey. That's MUCH Better!
Hat Tip: Digg
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Car Stuff
Haven't done a car post in a while. They're closing plants and laying off workers. They sold part of their financing unit. The GM fire sale continues. I find this interesting, as the initial attraction for GM was Subies' advanced, light weight AWD systems. I wonder if this means GM will be selling Saab also, since they have been using the WRX as the base of one of their models???
PS. For anyone who is curious about just how the U.S. auto industry got where is , you should read this book.
PPS. The Japanese are keeping a close eye on this over seas rival, whose product and quality have become quite competitive in the last few years.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Blogtopus Update
I've added a few more recently. They are:
Reason, Hit and Run, a blog from Reason.com, the consrevative - libertarian web site.
Miserable Donuts, a milblog.
Just One Minute,??? I'm not sure what the origins of this blog are. But he has been all over the PLame Game. It's fun, yet hard to follow.
Reason, Hit and Run, a blog from Reason.com, the consrevative - libertarian web site.
Miserable Donuts, a milblog.
Just One Minute,??? I'm not sure what the origins of this blog are. But he has been all over the PLame Game. It's fun, yet hard to follow.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
Since I'm Picking on France
This bit of news crossed my desk today via Slashdot. The French are trying to pass a law that will, in effect, make free software illegal. Here is a comment from a Slashdotter in response to the French and their proposal...
" I was on the fence, but now they've done it. I am officially giving up croissants, snobbery, and disdain for other people. I just can't be associated with them anymore".
Thursday, December 01, 2005
File this in the "We're Not a Gang! We're a Club" department.
The quote above is how John Belushi described his LA gang in an old SNL skit. Which brings us to France's Dominique de Villepin descriptions of the riots, er, I mean "social unrest" in his country this fall.
PS. Gangs are also know as a "loosely knit neiborhood organization". I think I thought of this myself, but it is more likely that I heard it somewhere else, as I'm not clever enough to think of something like this.
Hat Tip: Insta...
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