California Measure Would Align Building Rules With Feng Shui: "So it may be appropriate timing that in this most Asian of mainland American regions, State Assemblyman Leland Y. Yee, Democrat of San Francisco, has introduced a resolution that urges the California Building Standards Commission to adopt standards that would aid feng shui, the ancient Chinese practice of promoting health, harmony and prosperity through the environment."
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Yes, and I suppose snake oil and waterwitching and other scientific marvels might proof useful here and there.

Grove City College: "As one who spends time studying such matters, this advice puzzled me. Surely, Dr. Phil knows that the research concerning genetic factors in homosexuality is inconclusive. Has he never heard of LUGs (lesbians until graduation) that recently populate college campuses? If anything the research shows an environmental component must be involved in the development of homosexual orientation. To wit, a recent study of genetically identical twins in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology found that the participants were quite dissimilar when it came to sexual orientation. Consider the study's male identical twin pairs: if one twin was gay, then only 20 percent of the time was the other twin gay. Female twins were alike only 24 percent of the time. With 76 percent to 80 percent discordance rates, environment must play some, and I suspect, pretty significant role in creating the differences."
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Don't buy into the politically correct--but morally and spiritually wrong--opinion that sodomy is genetic. It is a chosen behavior.

Medicare drug plan balloons - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics: "President Bush's budget next week will show the new prescription drug program costs $540 billion over 10 years, more than one-third higher than the $400 billion estimate Congress used in passing the bill in November. "
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This bill was not even needed; it was a pure political ploy in order to make political points, and our children will be stuck with the bill for a hundred years.

Herald.com - Your Miami Everything Guide: "Before the great hunt for scapegoats begins, let's look at what David Kay has actually said about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
First, and most trumpeted, he did not find ''large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction.'' He did find, as he reported last October, WMD-related activities, from a very active illegal missile program to research and development (''right up until the end'') on weaponizing the deadly poison ricin (the stuff found by London police on terrorists last year). He discovered ''hundreds of cases'' of U.N.-prohibited and illegally concealed activities."
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FYI Read the whole article. Then research what Kay really said, don't listen to what the talking heads said he said.

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Hezbollah Makes Threat After Prisoner Swap: "In return, Israel received the bodies of three of its soldiers and won the release of a kidnapped Israeli businessman. Israelis held a memorial service for the three dead, but whisked away Elhanan Tannenbaum (search), who was kidnapped while reportedly engaged in a shady business deal, for interrogation.
At a mass rally in Beirut that Hezbollah staged to welcome the freed Arabs, the group's leader warned it would kidnap more Israelis to use as bargaining chips if necessary to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners."
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400 live prisoners for 3 bodies? And we want the Germans to help us negotiate peace? We better get the Hezbollah to negotiate for us--they seem to have some smarts.

ABCNEWS.com : Document: Saddam Supporters Got Oil Deals: "All of the contracts were awarded from late 1997 until the U.S.-led war in March 2003. They were conducted under the aegis of the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods.
The document was discovered several weeks ago in the files of the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad. "
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Ain't that ducky. It isn't a war for oil after all, but an anti-war for oil.

"You are looking at a political slush fund that was buying political support for the regime of Saddam Hussein for the last six or seven years," said financial investigator John Fawcett.

ABCNEWS.com : Document: Saddam Supporters Got Oil Deals: "All of the contracts were awarded from late 1997 until the U.S.-led war in March 2003. They were conducted under the aegis of the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods.
The document was discovered several weeks ago in the files of the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad. "

Ain't that ducky. It isn't a war for oil after all, but an anti-war for oil.

Vietnam stance irks veterans: "Like Kerry, I have a couple of medals, but who has what medal among combat veterans doesn't make a dime's worth of difference between us. What matters is that we are, for the rest of our life, brothers who kept faith with one another in a miserable war.
A young Kerry, however, broke faith with his brothers when he returned to the United States. With the financial aid of Jane Fonda, he led highly visible protests against the war. He wrote a book that many considered to be pro-Hanoi, titled 'The New Soldier.'
The cover photo of his book depicted veterans in a mismatch of military uniforms mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, holding the American flag upside down."

We are still paying a price for the moral and spiritual disasters of the 1960's. I hated the era then, and I hate it now. I don't like rock and roll in church, pot smokers, tattered blue jeans, zithers, feminism, the queer nation, and wimpy folk singers with soft voices.

KRT Wire | 01/28/2004 | State criticisms of investigation boost Limbaugh's complaints: "The general counsel for the Florida Attorney General's Office criticized Palm Beach County prosecutors Wednesday, asserting they mischaracterized the office's input into the prosecutors' decision to release documents last week in the Rush Limbaugh investigation."

All of this writer's life, there has been a double standard as far as conservatives are concerned in schools, courts, and the media. One of the greatest accomplishments of the Reagan administration was the burial of the so-call "Fairness Doctrine" which made modern talk shows possible. It has made it possible for the conservative message to get out, because the liberal establishment couldn't imagine that any threat to their power could come from the radio, which had been mostly a vehicle for various genres of music and insipid newcasts.

Newsday.com - This Time, Democrats Go for the Win: "It is not hatred. It is horror at the way Bush took office, at the way he has governed, at the direction in which he has taken the country. Democrats do not necessarily believe it was wrong to go to war in Iraq, but they do believe Bush went about it the wrong way.

They do not believe polluters should write the anti-pollution laws. They don't believe the vice president's former company, Halliburton, should get no-bid government contracts.

They don't believe the drug companies and the insurance industry should be the chief beneficiaries of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, instead of elderly beneficiaries themselves. They are not so much aghast that a record budget deficit has mounted, but that it grows and grows and grows with each successive Bush tax cut, the bulk of which goes to the people who least need the money."
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But slander IS hatred, according to Proverbs 26:28 "A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin." Why don't they say Halliburton, the future vice president's company who received many government contracts from the Clinton Administration; or that Bush shouldn't have gone to war without permission from the U.N.; or that Bush won election according to the law, although Gore and the liberal Florida Supreme Court tried to steal the election; that the tax cut goes to the people who pay taxes and not to people who don't pay taxes; etc., etc. But that is too simple for paid liars.

Mackubin Thomas Owens on John Kerry on National Review Online: "Stolen Valor made it clear why John Kerry's testimony in 1971 slandered an entire generation of soldiers. Kerry gave credence to the claim that the war was fought primarily by reluctant draftees, predominantly composed of the poor, the young, or racial minorities.

The record shows something different, indicating that 86 percent of those who died during the war were white and 12.5 percent were black, from an age group in which blacks comprised 13.1 percent of the population. Two thirds of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers, and volunteers accounted for 77 percent of combat deaths."

This impostor must never be allowed to be Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military in the world. Read this entire article. Please!!

Mackubin Thomas Owens on John Kerry on National Review Online: "John Kerry, we know, is running against John Kerry: his own voting record. But there is another record that John Kerry is running against, and this has to do with his very emergence as a Democratic politician: Kerry, the proud Vietnam veteran vs. Kerry, the antiwar activist who accused his fellow Vietnam veterans of the most heinous atrocities imaginable."

FYI

Basket of Figs: "''The way the Florida public records law works is, anything that is not specifically exempted under the law is permitted,'' Edmondson said. State law trumps any ethical concerns, he said.
But he offered nothing in writing to back up that account. And Limbaugh's legal team produced documents Monday that seemed to contradict it.'"

Tony Blankley: Don't you know there's a war on?: "A French writer living in America has written that 'this war is not a war in the ordinary sense of the word. ...There are two series of conflicts going on at the same time: conflicts (involving military action) and conflicts which are ideological, political, social and economic. The latter transcends boundaries ... The very confusion of the situation has often served as an excuse for recommending a policy of aloofness.' The writer was Raoul de Roussy de Salles. The date of publication was 1942. And the war was World War II. "

The great courage of wartime leaders in 1939-1942 was the understanding that the war against Hitler HAD to be fought. J. E. Hoover, high ranking members of Congress, and others opposed the war. They were good men, able and patriotic, but they did not understand the dire results of allowing Hitler to succeed. Famous men like the Ambassador to England, Joseph Kennedy and heroes like Charles Lindbergh had sympathies for the Nazis and opposed the war. The OSS was founded in 1942 partly because there was a need to have an intelligence agency that would be able to operate apart from the leaking sieve of the FBI and Congress. The CIA replaced the OSS in 1947.

Because America is an open and free country, where people can discuss things freely and elect their officers freely--something the Islamists hate us for, by the way. When America is at war, there are always two wars to fight. The first war is always with ourselves--one we lost in Vietnam, resulting in the slaughter of our friends in the Far East--the other with our armed enemies.

It is a serious thing for America to go to war, because of the political situations in America. Every such decision is fraught with peril for the politician who makes it, and that is the way it ought to be. Another 9/11 type attack on America will surely cost a great many politicians their jobs, but it might also serve to unite the country in the war effort, just as Pearl Harbor did in 1941.

But even another 9/11 attack will not convince the crazies, just as Pearl Harbor did not quiet the nuts, who continued to see conspiracies and traitorous conduct by FDR and Donovon over at the OSS. They could just not believe that the Nazis were evil and that in itself was sufficient reason for the war. They had to assign all sorts of other reasons.

The same thing happened in the cold war. Communism whose base was the old Soviet Union was just as dedicated to the destruction of the United States as Islamists are today. They used many of the same tactics. The war against the evil of communism was also fought on two levels. There were great patriots who saw the evil clearly and fought against it. They had to be destroyed. We now know from the Russian archives that Soviet intelligence planted stories about J. Edgar Hoover, who was as right about the Soviet Union as he had been wrong about Germany. The stories still circulate that he was a cross-dresser with weird sexual tastes, propaganda tales planted by the Soviets. But freedom wins over totalitarianism and despite some spectacular successes--notably the fall of Chiang Kai Chek in China and the Fall of South Vietnam--the US won the war against the Soviets, just as we will win the one against Islamists. The external war against Al Quida and other terrorist organizations will be long and bloody. George Bush may be a political casualty in the war, other political careers will be made and broken on all sides of the internal war, and the American way of life may be severely damaged for years to come, but the alternative to winning the war is unthinkable, just as losing to the Nazis and the thugs in Italy and Japan was unthinkable to both right thinking Republicans and Democrats in 1939.

The only real debate is the same one that took place concerning the Nazis. Everyone knew that Hitler must be stopped; the question was could and should it be done by alliances and diplomacy or was it necessary to take up arms. The answer to that question was clear after Pearl Harbor. 9/11 was not the Islamist Pearl Harbor. That may very well lie sometime in the future, but it will come. There will probably be crazies around who will blame who ever is in office at the time, just as some nuts blame Dubya for 9/11 as their fathers blamed FDR for Pearl Harbor and the John Birch Society blamed Eisenhower for Soviet advances after WWII. Conspiracy theories will always abound just as maggots occupy a dead carcass. It took great Democrats like Harry Truman and John Kennedy and great Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan to win these wars and the powerful consensus came together in America as the issue became clear. America is slow and reluctant to commit to all out war, but she is a deadly foe when she finally understand that it must be. Islamists cannot win by terrorist acts in America; those will just serve to bring our people together.

None of the candidates for public office in America desire an Islamist America. They may be selfish and ambitious and unscrupulous, and do put their selfish political interests above the good of the nation, but that is the genius of the American system. One man's ambition trumps the ambition of another and selfishness and arrogance is neutralized as factions compete for public opinion, but most will put their aside their differences when the peril becomes immanent, just as Americans did after 9/11 and Congress voted plenary powers to the President to wage war against Al Quida.

Part of Bush's problem now is that the War on Terror has gone so very well. There have been no more incidents of major import in America since 9/11/2001. The threat does not appear immanent, and we enjoy the luxury of playing the "what if" game, and "I think" game, and "If Bush had done" game.

There is a great difference between this war and the Viet Nam War. There is no political and media establishment in America that supports Al Quida in the way that communism was supported by the educational, media, and political establishments during the Cold War. The narrow fundamentalist convictions of Islamists are offensive to the New Age relativism of modern America and their disregard of human and women's rights are offensive to most Americans. Even many Muslims in America have come to escape the repression in their own countries and will support the War on Terror just as many American Germans fought the Nazis even while they supported some of the ideas of Hitler. They also distrusted the Jews, but they would not have supported gassing them. A nation of immigrants like the United States will always have those whose loyalties are both with the U.S. and with the people in their homelands, but when push come to shove, they will rally behind the US, just as the American-Chinese and American-Japanese did in WWII, Russian and Eastern Europeans against the Soviet Union, and American Germans against Hitler. It is my conviction that most Muslims in America will side with freedom.

America will always be a nation of mixed loyalties, because we are a nation of immigrants. People will sing the songs of their homelands, they will listen to the tales grandma and grandpa tell of the old country. They will bring their prejudices and philosophies and form political and religious blocs. They will distrust their government, especially if the party in power is not to their liking. But they will not want the totalitarianism of the old world established in America, be it religious totalitarianism, economic totalitarianism, or cultural totalitarianism. We love our freedom and people come from all over the world to be here. They come legally and illegally. But they come and freedom is the lodestone that attracts them. They will fight with each other and accuse each other. Old animosities that have existed from time immemorial in the old country will survive, but little by little the edges will be taken off those animosities, to be replaced by new ones. These divisions will be very deep and bitter at times.

But attack this liberty and put it in peril and the American giant will arise. She may be sleepy and sluggish, but she will arise to defend her heritage. It may be a strangely Amercanized heritage with roots in the old country, but freedom will be the leaven that permeates all.

The right to speak freely; the right to worship freely; the right to assemble and engage in peaceful political activity; the right to vote in secret; the right to bring up children according to the old ways; the right to be secure and own and dispose of property; to have my daughters and wife treated with respect and dignity; to be safe in the streets and in my home; to work according to my gifts and abilities in the profession that I choose--these are liberties that every man and woman aspires to, but are out of reach in so much of the world. But this is the light that draws people to America, and if Americans perceive that there is a real threat to those liberties they will rise like a bear robbed of her whelps and tear and destroy.

Americans are a patient and long-suffering people. We will suffer our beard to be tweaked, for we value the lives of our soldiers and will not commit them lightly to war and danger. "Is this war really necessary?" we ask, and we ought to ask it. Those who lead us into war must make their case, for we never win the external war if we do not win the interior one. It is usually our enemies who make the case for us, as the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor, and Al Quida did on 9/11. Howard Dean has misjudged the temper of the American people and it looks as if he has paid a price for it. Senator Kerry needs to pay attention, if he would be President. America is more concerned about her safety from terrorism that she is about dreams of United Nations pseudo-legalities. While the UN coddled dictators in the name of non-judgmental tolerance, they were teaching their people "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." What did the UN do beside pass resolutions that the old world corrupt governments did not find in their interests to enforce.

"Do we just talk and talk forever?" That question must be answered. Bush answered the question one way. If Kerry would be president he must show that his answer is the better one. He has not done that yet. But he should remember that we are the nation of Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, John Elway, the atomic bomb and Clint Eastwood. We don't like to talk on and on. We take the home run, the slam dunk, the Hail Mary, and the big boom any day of the year. We do not issue the challenges, but we look on threats as an opportunity for us to have a good day. I am not sure that a liberal from Massachusetts understands that.

Herald.com - Your Miami Everything Guide: "Prosecutors consulted the Attorney General's Office and the Florida Bar in response to the Jan. 15 public records request by the Landmark Legal Foundation, which sought all available documents in the case. They concluded the state public records law required releasing the plea dealings, even though doing so violates ethical rules for lawyers.
''The way the Florida public records law works is, anything that is not specifically exempted under the law is permitted,'' Edmondson said. State law trumps any ethical concerns, he said.
But he offered nothing in writing to back up that account. And Limbaugh's legal team produced documents Monday that seemed to contradict it."

Is there any doubt now about the nature of this whole thing? Political to the core.

New York Post Online Edition: news: "Democrat Howard Dean has touched off a new flap heading into tomorrow's New Hampshire primary by claiming that the living standard for Iraqis is 'a whole lot worse' since a U.S.-led force toppled Saddam. "

Yeah, Dr. Governor. Daisy cutters and cruise missiles have a way of lowering the standard of living. I guess you are running out of ammunition to use in your tilt against the Bush windmills.

Don't you love this blogging? It used to be that my family would be afflicted by my running commentary on the television news. Now I can relieve my frustration by blogging. Isn't it great. And you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

My Way - News: "An Iranian defector, preparing to testify in Germany's second major Sept. 11 trial, said on Tuesday that a son of Osama bin Laden had personally told Iranian leaders of the planned attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rejected the accusation, saying the defector was not credible and had invented his story."

How do you sort out this when the whole bunch are liars and sons of liars?

Michael Ledeen on War on Terror on National Review Online: "The cooperative strategy evidently included the secret transfer of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to neighboring countries. According to a recent statement by Nizar Nayouf, a brave Syrian journalist who was arrested and tortured for a decade after criticizing Hafez al Assad's brutalities, Iraqi WMDs were hidden in three primary locations in Syria. He has provided maps of the secret locations, which he says came from dissident elements at high levels of the Syrian military and intelligence services. (He has also claimed that billions of dollars from Saddam's personal stash were smuggled into Syrian and Lebanese banks, and these claims have been substantially verified). And last October, the CIA was indirectly approached by a man who claimed to have carried a quantity of enriched uranium from Iraq to Iran four years ago. He offered to take American inspectors to the secret underground laboratory from which the uranium was taken, but the CIA declined the offer. Someone might ask David Kay why, after initial enthusiasm, he changed his mind and decided not to look."

Why is it that modern dreamers can imagine the most ludicrous conspiratorial theories [We fought Iraq to steal their oil!!], when the evidence for hard nosed understanding of the real evil we face is overlooked. It looks like a generation or two of hate America and Christianity in the public schools bears fruit in our day. People who have been indoctrinated by hatred and vitriol do not think clearly. The left wing in America is as mad with vicious dreams as those who urge jihad against us.

But neither will succeed. But I expect a lot of blood will be shed.

Jack Kelly: A real coalition: "As of Jan. 21, 97 soldiers from Britain, Poland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and the Ukraine have been killed in Iraq, according to the Web site Iraq Coalition Casualties Count. Soldiers from 34 countries besides the United States -- a much larger coalition than that assembled to beat the Nazis in World War II -- are taking part in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and another 13 nations are supplying non-military assistance.
So much for unilateralism."


Get this: more nations than the ones that fought the Nazis. But it is only the French who count, right?