ABH.........The Movement Got Off To A GREAT Start!

Anybody But Hillary.....analysis from last nights debate....

--Hillary Continued A Strategy Of "Avoiding Direct Answers To Questions." "[S]he continued her strategy of avoiding direct answers to questions: She wouldn't say how she would address Social Security; she declined to pledge whether she would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, or say whether she supports giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants." (Nedra Pickler, "Clinton Gets No Love In Democrats Debate," The Associated Press, 10/31/07)

--The Politico's Roger Simon: "In a debate against six Democratic opponents at Drexel University here Tuesday, Clinton gave the worst performance of her entire campaign....It was that for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled." (Roger Simon, Op-Ed, "Obama, Edwards Attack; Clinton Bombs Debate," The Politico, 10/31/07)

--Time's Mark Halperin: "The failure of her performance was cumulative ...More defensive than usual, and at times too political and too hot tempered. Borderline disastrous moment at the end when she gave an equivocal answer about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in New York ..." (Mark Halperin, "Hillary Clinton, Grade: C-," Time.com, 10/31/07)

--NBC Political Director Chuck Todd: "I think she got stuck when she tries very hard not to answer specifics...[I] think she was trying to figure out a way to have it both ways. I hate to put it in those terms but I think that's what she was trying....Clinton increasingly got worse as the night went on." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "I do believe Hillary lost last night." (ABC's "Good Morning America," 10/31/07)

--MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Hillary Clinton would not answer the question straight." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "At the very end of the debate, she just came off like a politician who didn't want to answer the question." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: "[S]he did struggle toward the end of the debate in a question about her support (or lack thereof) for Gov. Eliot Spitzer's (D) plan to offer driver's licenses for illegal immigrants." (Chris Cillizza, "Democratic Debate Wrap Up: Clinton Under Attack," The Washington Post's "The Fix" Blog, blog.washingtonpost.com, 10/30/07)

--ABC's "The Note": "It was almost certainly Clinton's weakest performance of the cycle..." (ABC's "The Note," 10/31/07)

--NBC's "First Read": "[Hillary] got weaker as the night went on. The exchange over driver's licenses for illegal immigrants allowed her opponents to drive home a narrative that has begun to develop for Clinton at these debates: that she never actually answers the tough questions." (NBC's "First Read," 10/31/07)

--The Des Moines Register's David Yepsen: "Hillary Clinton ... did not have a good night...She turned in an uneven, sometimes waffling performance." (David Yepsen, Op-Ed, "Johnny Be Good," The Des Moines Register, 10/30/07)

Proof God is Real .......got a smart young man here.

Today in History....October 31

* 1892, Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

* 1912, the Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith, debuts as the first gangster film

* 1926, magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured

* 1938, in an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public

* 1941, after 14 years of work, drilling is completed on Mount Rushmore. ALSO: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII

* 1943, F4U Corsair accomplishes the first successful radar guided interception

* 1956, the United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal

* 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to renounce his American citizenship at the US Embassy in Moscow, USSR

* 1961, in the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb

* 1968, the "October surprise". Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1

* 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards (riots soon broke out in New Delhi and nearly 2,000 innocent Sikhs were killed)

* 1991, a three day long snow and ice storm, dubbed the Halloween Blizzard, begins over portions of the Upper Midwest of the United States

ABH, Doctrinal Purity and Mitt Romney

ABH = Anybody But Hillary

Assuming she's the annointed one by the Democrat Party.

The word out is that it's looking more like a showdown between Mitt and Rudy, although we can't quite discount Fred Thompson.......I like him a lot, but gotta see the want in him.

Listening to Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday was quite revealing, many conservative callers saying that if the Republicans nominate Mitt Romney, they would choose not to vote because Mitt Romney is "not a Christian". As we all know, not voting is a vote for Hillary. Whether or not Mormons are Christian or not, I don't really know, I know very little about the Mormon faith......even though I live in a neighborhood (and surrounding neighborhoods, east Mesa, AZ baby) that are full of the good 'ol Mormon folk. I'm not sure, but hell, the guy believes in Jesus Christ, so that backdoors him in as Christian, maybe in a zany way...........zany like they believe Indians as a lost tribe of Israel, Christ visiting America, the celestial stages, etc.

Mitt Romney is obviously a very intelligent man, great experience (Olympics at Salt Lake City needs to be played out more) and governing in a very liberal state.....if Mitt is nominated and conservative's stay home and don't vote for him, therefore voting for Hillary .........I'm gonna show up at your door and boot some serious a$$...........seriously, if the non-voters limit the field because of doctrinal purity, you will very soon regret your absolute narrow-mindedness.

Why? Besides having to listen to her nagging voice and watch her run the USA into the goround, I found this out yesterday........ there are 4, quite possibly 6 Supreme Court Justices that just might be coming up for retirement. They are Justices Stevens (87), Scalia (71), Kennedy (71), Ginsberg (74, Breyer (69) and Souter (68). You elect Hillary and you're going to have a far left Supreme Court for the next 30+ years.

In short my friends, if Romney is the nominee, don't discount him, he knows the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and CAPITALISM, things that Hillary Clinton couldn't give a damn about.

Disclaimer - This is not an endorsement, I have not made my mind yet for the Republican nomination. This is an ABH post!

Gotta go....gotta work!

Axis of Evil Revisited

Lefty's who believe GW Bush went overboard with the Axis of Evil statement are living in a phony world. The people of North Korea, those in their own country's torture coamps, would literally kill to be in the resort setting of Guantanamo Bay. Those who want to understand what real torture is, not the dog barking in your face or waterboarding, read this from a 20 year old, North Korean defector. BTW, he had never heard of his country's leader Kim Jong Il.......being locked up in torture camps tend to keep you from hearing anything in the outside world.

Excerpt:

When Mr. Shin was 13, his mother and brother attempted an escape, unsuccessfully. That day, a civilian car met Mr. Shin outside the camp school. He was driven to a secret, underground location.

There, guards demanded details of the plot. Mr. Shin was ignorant of it.
He was suspended over a fire. When he screamed, a hook was hacked into his groin. Unconscious, he was slung into a cell with a skeletal old man.

The man cared for the child's festering injuries and gave him his own
meager rations. It was the first time Mr. Shin had ever received affection from another human. "I will never forget him," Mr. Shin wrote. "I came to love him more than my parents."

After seven months, Mr. Shin was released to witness his mother's hanging and his brother's execution by shooting. Mr. Shin noticed his father in tears, but he had only one emotion: "I was furious with them; as a result of their crimes, I was subject to torture."

Life continued. His niece was raped and killed by guards. He dropped a sewing machine; guards chopped off a fingertip with a knife. Constantly hungry, he once found three corn kernels in a pile of cow manure, his "lucky day." Unaware of any world beyond the wire, his dreams were to excel at work, gain permission to marry or become a team leader.

h/t The Laura Ingraham Show

Today in History....October 30

* 1864, Helena, Montana is founded after four prospectors discover gold at "Last Chance Gulch"

* 1905, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly

* 1918, the Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East

* 1938, Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, causing a nationwide panic
* 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations

* 1944, Anne Frank is deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

* 1945, the U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight

* 1947, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is founded

* 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat

* 1960, Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary

* 1961, the Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest nuclear device ever detonated. Nikita Kruschev announces that the scientists had planned to make it 100 megatons, but had reduced the yield so as to avoid breaking all the windows in Moscow. ALSO:
Because of "violations of Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Josef Stalin's body be removed from its place of honor inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead

* 1973, the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time in history

* 1995, Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote was 50.6% to
49.4%)

* 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's broad-based coalition collapsed when Cabinet ministers from the leftist Labor Party resigned in a dispute over funding for suburban housing, called by the media "settlements"

* 2006, Sen. John Kerry told a California college audience that young people who didn't study hard might "get stuck in Iraq".

A tad busy.....so here's an early Happy Halloween........this'll scare the hell out of you.

America Can't Win the "War On Fire"

"After the all of endless days of the California fire quagmire, it's time for America to admit that it can't win this battle. We must immediately withdraw our forces and go home. But until our so-called "leaders" in Washington wise up to the folly of their current course, all we can do is ask ourselves, "why does fire hate us?".

The roots go deep.

Hhheeeeeeerr'es the rest.....funny stuff. Unless you're Randi Roads at Air America.......

Today in History....October 26

* 1774, the first Continental Congress adjourns

* 1776, Benjamin Franklin departed America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution

* 1795, the French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created

* 1825, the Erie Canal opens --- passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.

* 186, the Pony Express officially ceased operations

* 1881, the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona, as Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and "Doc" Holliday confronted Ike Clanton's gang. Three members of Clanton's group were killed; Earp's brothers and Holliday were wounded

* 1936, the first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation

* 1947, the Maharaja of Kashmir agrees to allow his kingdom to join India

* 1951, boxer Joe Louis comes out of retirement to fight Rocky Marciano. However, Marciano would win the fight in eight rounds

* 1955, after the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares its permanent neutrality.

* 1958, Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York to Paris

* 1967, the Shah of Iran crowned himself and his queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne

* 1972, national security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam

* 1977, the last natural case of smallpox was discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination

* 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim Jae-kyu

* 1984, "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon

* 1994, Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty. ALSO: Announcement that Andrew Wiles correctly proved Fermat's last theorem

* 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act is passed into law

* 2002, the Moscow theater siege ends when approximately 50 Chechen rebels, practitioners of that "religion of peace", and 129 of the 800-plus captives dead after Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the rebels during a musical performance three days earlier

* 2006, President Bush signed a measure authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border

Get a load of this (below) from a poster over at the looney Daily Kos , this is from David Horowitz's blog and his outstanding work with regards to his project Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

Daily Kos: Bushismo-Fascism Awareness Week: Legal Remedies Story Updated.
Bushismo-Fascism Awareness Week: Legal Remedies by james risser
Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 04:52:58 PM PDT

This week, David Horowitz and his band of degenerate murderers, religious
extremists, and fear-mongering terrorists are polluting the country with their
special brand of racism and hatred that we have come to expect from right-wing
Bush sycophants. These religious persecutors, war-criminals, and lackeys
continue on their project to destroy America from within, while murdering as
many brown-skinned people as possible along the way. All who dare not bend
automatically to their sick will to power and their destiny to destroy are fair
game. Not only the religion of Islam, but the international community, its rule
of law, and its respect for human rights are also in the cross-hairs of these
sick, demented brown-shirted bastards. In honor of the Great Professor Horowitz,
and to counter-balance his campaign to infect the world with his ignorance, I
proclaim this Bushismo-Fascism Awareness Week and will present a series of
diaries that describe Bushism and its basis in fascistic ideology.
james
risser's diary :: ::

I think Ann Coulter hit the nail on the head with the last line in her article Have You Hugged an Islamo-Fascist Today:

"If liberals want to face real fascism, try showing up on a college campus and denouncing fascism."

Today in History....October 25

* 1917, the First Marxist revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia

* 1929, Albert B. Fall, who served as secretary of the interior in President Warren G. Harding's cabinet, is found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office. Fall was the first individual to be convicted of a crime committed while a presidential cabinet member

* 1936, Adolf Hitler, ym"sh, and Benito Mussolini create the Rome-Berlin Axis

* 1944, during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide bombers against American warships for the first time

* 1945, the Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies

* 1962, U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba

* 1971, the United Nations seated the People's Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)

* 1972, the Washington Post reports that White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman was the fifth person to control a secret cash fund designed to finance illegal political sabotage and espionage during the 1972 presidential election campaign

* 1983, Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a coup d'état.

* 1992, Lithuania holds a referendum on its first post-Soviet constitution

* 2001, a day after the House signed on, the Senate sent President Bush the USA Patriot Act, a package of anti-terror measures giving police sweeping new powers to search terror suspects' homes and business records secretly and to eavesdrop on telephone and computer conversations. ALSO: Microsoft releases Windows XP

* 2004, Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American dollar will be banned by November 8

Today in History....October 24

* 1648, the Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War.

* 1795, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is completely divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia

* 1861, the First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express

* 1901, Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel

* 1911, Orville Wright remained in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina setting a new world record that stood for 10 years

* 1912, the Battle of Kumanovo concludes with the Serbian victory

* 1917, Battle of Caporetto starts on the Austro-Italian front of World War I

* 1926, Harry Houdini's last performance, which was at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan

* 1929, "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange

* 1930, a bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ousts Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, the last President of the First Republic. Getúlio Dornelles Vargas is then installed as "provisional president"

* 1931, the George Washington Bridge, connecting New York and New Jersey, was officially dedicated (it opened to traffic the next day)

* 1940, the 40-hour work week went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

* 1945, founding of the United Nations

* 1952, Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower pledges United States support to South Vietnam

* 1962, the U.S. blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis officially began under a proclamation signed by President John F.
Kennedy

* 1973, Yom Kippur War ends

* 1977, Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)

* 1980, government of Poland legalizes Solidarity trade union

* 1986, Nezar Hindawi, a practitioner of that "religion of peace", is sentenced to 45 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down by a British court, for the attempted bombing on an El Al flight at Heathrow. After the verdict, the United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, claiming that Hindawi was helped by Syrian officials

* 2002, police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.

* 2003, the Concorde makes its last commercial flight, bringing the era of airliner supersonic transport to a close, at least for the time being

* 2001, the Provisional Irish Republican Army of Northern Ireland commences disarmament after peace talks

* 2002, Chechen rebels seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage

* 2006, American officials unveiled a timeline for Iraq's Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm Baghdad and said more U.S.
troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed

Hhhmmmmm......I wonder how many evil SUV's it would take to equal the amount of pollution the fires in SoCal have contributed to the atmosphere? Just sayin'....................
(click photo to enlarge)

My Liberal Friends, Are You A Phoney Liberal?

Take the test, and then check your "phoney-ometer".

h/t columnist extraordinaire from the Land Down Under, Da Bolta.....Andrew Bolt.

This past sunday, the Mrs. and Joe Jr. ran in the City of Chandler (Arizona) Triathalon Sprint, the Mrs. partnered with 2 of her friends Tammy and Colleen in the competition, she doing the biking, Tammy the swimming and Colleen the running part. This was the Mrs. second attempt in this type of competition......her team came in 2nd!

Joe Jr. entered his first ever competition that consisted of swimming 100 meters in the 50 meter pool, biking 4 miles and running 1 mile, he proceeded to pull off a 3rd place medal!

What happened to liberal thinking and the Democratic Party?

The seventh word here will throw you (well some anyway), read and guess who wrote this article about the pathetic path the Democrats have taken.

By habit I remain a registered Democrat, largely because my parents and grandparents were agrarian populists in outlook. I also try to vote and support (even as our district boundaries keep changing) one Democrat, Jim Costa, our local Democratic congressman, who is cut from the Scoop Jackson mold. Central Valley Democrats used to be considered mainstream center-right people in a way unimaginable now. We forget that a long time ago, Democrats were considered sort of tough, practical minded, a world away from the blueblood golf course crowd, receptacles of conservative values in a way the elite Republicans were not. That’s ancient history now.

I throat clear like that because of the steady insanity shown by the Democratic political class. Now Congressman Stark accuses President Bush of enjoying the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq; this follows Harry Reid’s letter trying to intimidate and silence Rush Limbaugh. And, of course, we witnessed a litany of insanity voiced by Sens. Kerry, Durbin, and Kennedy about Iraq and our soldiers, who were libeled as everything from terrorists to Saddamites to Nazis by those three. Congressman Murtha pronounced Marines guilty of war-crimes before they were tried. Sen. Obama asserted our troops killed innocent civilians, while Sen. Reid and Clinton essentially called Gen. Petraeus a fabricator (“suspension of belief”).

When we factor in the “Betray-us” ad, the Hollywood antics, and the university embarrassments, whether denying Larry Summers a right to speak at UC Davis or welcoming in Ahmadinejad at Columbia, one is forced to ask, “What happened to liberal thinking and the Democratic Party?” Why do dissent and criticism almost immediately devolve into elemental rage, whether Durbin screaming that our soldiers are Nazis or Moveon.org that their leader is a traitor? Why do deans, media heads, and politicians show such bad taste?

Plenty of explanations come to mind: the Democrats were out of power and frustrated with their impotence, and show a furor at being out of the loop for years. There is also something to the changing demographics of the party, which now includes a number of rich and mega-rich supporters, who apparently feel, that unlike a hardware store owner, or an accountant, they have made it, are exempt from mundane worries, and have enough money not to care about taxes and climbing entitlements.

Among this very elite, liberalism is now a sort of entrée for business, entertainment and leisure, a social requisite, like being a petty Christian official in the Medieval World, always taken for granted and not often examined.

Among this new influential class, clustered in universities towns, and progressive cities like Seattle, the Bay Area, the southern California Coast, Boulder, New England, and the suburbs of Washington, hating George Bush, or assuming that Western industrial rapacity is heating up the planet for profits, or that Iraq is a war for Halliburton is all akin to having oak floors, leather furniture, a stainless steel, granite kitchen, a glass of white wine after work at a fern bar, or driving a Prius to campus—manifest symbols of taste, erudition, and culture. Championing social causes at a distance also provides the upscale a sort of psychological penance: e.g., something like ‘I wouldn’t dare live or tutor in East Palo Alto, but will play the radical at Stanford’s picturesque campus as spiritual recompense.’

NB: the Kerry and Gore and Michael Moore lifestyles at odds with their professed rhetoric. I doubt should the obese Moore need heart surgery that he will go to Havana, or that Gore will plug his mansion into wind turbines or fly commercial, or that Kennedy will allow a windmill on his vacation home horizon.

Other factors that explain why Democratic leaders appear so ill-mannered are the legacies of the general uncouthness of the 1960s. One sees that in Cindy Sheen talking about her womb, or Moveon.orgs tasteless ads, or the language of a Bill Maher, or the sort of placards you see at campus protests, or the web postings on the leftwing sites.

In the 1960s, there was a general assault on manners, language, habit, protocol—anything deemed “plastic” or part of the “establishment” responsible for classism, imperialism, racism, and sexism. We forget that those who embraced it an early age (I saw the very tail-end of that dying movement as a freshman at UC Santa Cruz in 1972), did not just fly off to Mars.

Instead their coarseness was imprinted deeply upon their souls and the culture at large. And as we watch that generation age, whether in Congress or in films or at our universities, we see people inherit great positions of power—deans, bureau chiefs, senators—even as their small 1960s essences remain trapped in aging bodies. So just rent the DVD Woodstock, add 40 some years to those bodies, and, presto, imagine them all with suits and ties running universities, newspapers, foundations, and government, torn between the enjoyment of the lavishness that democratic capitalism provides them and their very abstract disdain for it.

Who wrote this article? Scroll down.......









One of the world's greatest war historians and classicists........... a farmer, one of my all-time fav's and "go to guys" for clarity..........Mr. Victor Davis Hanson.

Today in History....October 22

* 1797, 1000 meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump

* 1836, Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas

* 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties

* 1895, in Paris, an express train overruns a buffer stop and crosses more than 30 meters of concourse before plummeting through a window at Gare Montparnasse

* 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt visited The Hermitage, the Nashville, Tenn., home of the late President Andrew Jackson. (Years later, Maxwell House claimed that Roosevelt had praised a cup of its coffee during this visit by saying it was "good to the last drop.")

* 1924, Toastmasters International is founded

* 1926, J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal. (Contrary to popular belief, appendicitis and not the punch was the likely cause of Houdini's death -- although the pain inflicted by the blows may have masked the pain of the appendicitis, preventing the performer from seeking treatment until nine days later)

* 1928, Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover spoke of the "American system of rugged individualism" in a speech at New York's Madison Square Garden

* 1934, in East Liverpool, Ohio, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents

* 1949, Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear bomb

* 1962, President John F. Kennedy announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation

* 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor

* 1966, the Supremes become the first all-female music group to attain a No. 1 selling album (The Supremes A' Go-Go)

* 1968, Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times

* 1972, in Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. Thieu rejects the proposal and accused the United States of conspiring to undermine his regime

* 1979, President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment — a decision that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis

* 1981, the United States Federal Labor Relations Authority votes to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization for its strike the previous August

* 1983, two correctional officers are killed by inmates in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspired the Supermax model of prisons

* 1986, President Ronald Reagan signs the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law

* 1999, Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy France government during World War II, is jailed for crimes against humanity

8 2002, bus driver Conrad Johnson was shot to death in Silver Spring, Md., in what would be the final attack linked by authorities to the Washington-area sniper attacks

* 2006, a Panama Canal expansion proposal is approved by 77.8% of voters in a National referendum held in Panama

Joe Guitar Slinger
Back in 1989, I met Carvin Jones at Arizona's Battle of the Bands (Professional and Amateur) contest at the old Chuy's in Tempe, AZ. The Carvin Jones Band won The Best Amateur Band contest and he took off from there. Myself and my buddies would go dork out and watch Carvin a few times a month and became somewhat friends, we would walk into a bar/club, Carvin would shout out ....."Hey Dan (me), Hey Matt" etc., he possesses quite a memory. He doesn't drink, do drugs or smoke......except on the guitar. He tours around the world, check him out when you get a chance, especially if you like SRV, Hendrix, Albert Collins, etc., he's an excellent entertainer.

Honoring Hate Crimes

Well, let's bring this up again......what if this were reversed? Let's say it again......Where' Jesse and Al?

Hypocritical, sick and pethetic. The hip-hop / rap culture and kiss my a$$.

Today in History....October 19

* 1453, the French recapture of Bordeaux brings the Hundred Years'
War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil

* 1466, the Thirteen Years' War ends with the Second Treaty of Torun'. Gdansk Pomerania and Prussia as a whole are incorporated into Poland; the Teutonic Knights are allowed to rule its eastern part as Polish vassals

* 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties

* 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered to a Franco-American force led by George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War

* 1789, Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

* 1812, Napoleon I of France retreats from Moscow

* 1813, the Battle of Leipzig concludes, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats

* 1873, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers universities draft the first code of American football rules

* 1933, Germany withdraws from the League of Nations

* 1943, Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University

* 1960, the United States government decides to place an embargo on Communist Cuba

* 1973, President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court demand to turn over the Watergate tapes

* 1977, the supersonic Concorde made its first landing in New York City

* 1987, in retaliation for Iranian attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy disables three of Iran's offshore oil platforms.
ALSO: Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22% (Black Monday)

* 2005, Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity. ALSO: Hurricane Wilma becomes the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882 mb

* 2006, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 12,000 mark for the first time

Serious dexterity of the mind....and hands.

Thanks to Jimbo in the office

PAKISTAN DECLARES ALL OUT WAR ON AL-QAEDA IN THE WAZIRISTANS

Huuuuuuuuggge news if true.

Won’t the Taliban and al-Qaeda run away to fight another day?

The militants have little option but to stand and fight, rather than slip across the border or melt into the local population. Aside from the sanctuary and succor afforded them in the Waziristans, most of the fighters there are either Waziris, or from other parts of Pakistan, or foreigners. They would be unable to support themselves in Afghanistan, especially as most of the non-Waziris do not speak Pashtu – a fact that also prevents them from disappearing into the Waziristan populace.

Just how important is this coming battle?

This could prove to be the turning point in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan while setting al-Qaeda’s operations back to where they were in 2003 after the Taliban was defeated. A “qualified” intelligence estimate is that pacification of the Waziristans would reduce the capability of the Afghan resistance by 85% as well as “deliver a serious setback to the Iraqi resistance” who depend on the bases in Waziristan for money, weapons, and logistical support.

In addition, as the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on al-Qaeda shows that much of its command infrastructure had been reconstituted since 2003. If the Pakistani military is successful, that infrastructure will be destroyed along with their bases. And how huge is that?

Here's the rest.

h/t Right Wing Nut House

ROTFLMAO.....Rush Limbaugh Bury's 41 Senators

The bidding is up to $851,100 as of 3:00pm PCT.
This could not have turned out any better for Rush. What he should do now is ask his listeners to match his match! If these bids are for real, this should reach over $1MM. This is a lot of dough no matter who you are, but Rush has got bank. The winners? The recipient of these moneys, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation and Rush. The losers? Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the hole in the wall gang....I have some advice......when in a deep hole.......quit digging. Actually, don't....this quite revealing and entertaining.

Your current 11% Senate approval rating next week will seem high.

Do You Believe That.........

-The goal of the Islamo-Fascist jihad is world domination
-The Islamo-Fasacist Jihad demands the suppression of all Infidels
-The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Women
-The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Gays
-The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Christians
-The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Jews
-The Islamo-Fasacist Jihad is a war against non-religious people

And do you believe that it is.........

-The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity
-The freedom of the individual conscience: to change religions or have no religion at all
-The equality of dignity of women and men
-The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion

In conjunction with David Horowitz, FrontPageMag.com and Islamofascism Awareness Week .........go here and sign this petition....it takes 5 seconds.

Today in History....October 18

* 1648, Boston Shoemakers form first U.S. labor organization

* 1748, signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession

* 1767, Mason-Dixon line, survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed

* 1851, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London

* 1860, the Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty

* 1867, United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million

* 1892, the first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago was officially opened (it could only handle one call at a
time)

* 1898, United States takes possession of Puerto Rico

* 1925, the Grand Ole Opry opens

* 1929, women are considered "persons" under law in Canada

* 1944, Adolf Hitler, ym"sh, orders the establishment of a German national militia. ALSO: Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia

* 1945, the USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. ALSO: A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, staged a coup d'etát against then president Isaías Medina Angarita, who was definitely overthrown by the end of the day

* 1954, Texas Instruments announces the first transistor radio

* 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Tokyo, said the U.S. was willing to use its full military might to defend Japan in light of North Korea's nuclear test. ALSO: The Dow Jones industrial average passed 12,000 for the first time before pulling back to close at 11,992.68

History of Religion in 60 seconds

It's pretty cool....a map tour.

More Surge Success....................Quote of the Day "They Brought Ass, We Kicked It"

Via Black Five ..........

Greyhawk really sums it up well when he writes:

...For what it's worth, I
don't know or care if anything like that background conversation is ongoing or
not. As I said, we've won.

Lt. Gen. Odierno is absolutely right to note:
"it only takes three people" to construct and detonate a suicide car bomb that
can "kill thousands". And John Kerry was wrong when claiming (in an effort to
undermine homefront morale in another war) that no one wants to be the last man
to die for a mistake. In fact, al Qaeda will always have someone eager to prove
him wrong.

Yes, they could pull off a "Tet". Hell, they could manage
something like their own version of the battle of the bulge, but the reality is
they're whipped.

They brought ass, we kicked it.

Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark. Read the whole piece here.

Update: Just had to point this t-shirt out. Available from Ranger-Up:

Today in History....October 17

* 539 Before the Common era, King Cyrus the Great of Persia marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile and making the first Human Rights Declaration

* 1604, German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation. Ophiuchus, which turned out to be the last supernova to have been observed in our own galaxy, the Milky Way

* 1777, American troops defeat the British in the Battle of Saratoga

* 1888, Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)

* 1912, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War

* 1931, Al Capone convicted of income tax evasion

* 1933, Albert Einstein, fleeing the Nazis, ym"sh, moves to America

* 1937, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Donald Duck's three almost identical nephews, first appear in a newspaper comic strip

* 1941, for the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship

* 1965, the New York World's Fair closes after a two year run. More than 51 million people had attended the two-year event

* 1977, 4 days after it was hijacked by practitioners of that "religion of peace", Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board

* 1979, the Department of Education Organization Act is signed into law creating the US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services. Both replace the Department of Health, Education and Welfare

* 2002, Ira Einhorn, the '70s hippie guru who had fled to Europe after being charged with murder, was convicted in Philadelphia of killing his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, and stuffing her corpse in his closet a quarter of a century earlier. (Einhorn was later sentenced to life without parole.)

* 2006, President Bush signed legislation authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions. ALSO: The United States population reaches 300 million

Treason, Sabotage and Dirty Politics

Nancy Pelosi in her element.

PLAYING POLITICS WITH GENOCIDE.....
How the Democrats are using the Armenians to get their way in Iraq

Pretty much sums it up.

If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?

Too many Democrats in Congress have gotten into the habit of treating the Iraq war as President Bush's war — and therefore fair game for political tactics making it harder for him to conduct that war.

In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said that an American victory in Iraq "would be a real big problem for us" in the 2008 elections.

The Democrats are sticking a knife right into the backs of our military, should this resolution pass, House Minority Leader John Boehner says, “If the Turks cut off our ability to use Incirlik, there’s no question that this could jeopardize our troops on the ground in Iraq. And frankly, if this is just the latest in the Democrats’ string of back-door attempts to force a retreat from the war against al Qaeda, it’s certainly the most dangerous.”

Jed Babbin has a great piece here, and Thomas Sowell here.

Today in History....October 16

* 1781, George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia

* 1793, Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution

* 1834, much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster in London is burnt down

* 1843, Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers

* 1869, Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is discovered

* 1939, in World War II, first attack on British territory by German Luftwaffe

* 1946, 10 war criminals of the Second World War, condemned in the Nuremberg trials are hanged

* 1949, Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War

* 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba began, as U.S. President John Kennedy was informed of bases in Cuba were equipped with Soviet missiles

* 1987, rescuers freed Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl who had been trapped in an abandoned well for 58 hours in Midland, Texas

* 1998, British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London

* 2001, 12 Senate offices were closed and hundreds of staffers were tested for anthrax

* 2002, President George W. Bush signed a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq. ALSO: The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed it had a nuclear weapons program

Last Day

It’s the last day to nominate your favorite blogs in The 2007 Weblog Awards...

Being a Democrat Means Never Having To Admit Being Wrong

If only we'd surrendered to them when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi wanted:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

Read the rest of some good news that rarely gets reported......if you're a Democrat...read it and weep.

And this was reported in the Washington Post!

Today in History....October 15

On this day in....

* 1917, Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who had spied for the Germans, was executed by a French firing squad outside Paris

* 1945, the former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, was executed

* 1946, Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed

* 1966, President Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation

* 1976, in the first debate of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F. Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston.

* 1990, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

* 1991, after facing s exual harassment allegations by Anita Hill, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, 52-48

* 2002, Iraqis turned out for a national referendum on whether Saddam Hussein should remain their president for another seven years; Saddam won with a reported 100 percent of the votes cast

Meanwhile.....Back At The Ranch

Who's getting all of the publicity today? Surely not the bravest of the brave, sacrificing his own life to protect his comrades, Navy SEAL Lt. Michael P. Murphy

Can't the media get a clue? Is there even a question which one means more.....The Medal of Honor or the Nobel Peace Prize? Hell, even Yassar Arafat and Jimmuh Carter got one. On top of that....this makes it even more of a joke.

Well..........at least Al Gore sacrificed one of his SUV's for a Prius.

BEST. SPIN. EVER.

Bush Ties Peace Prize Record
With the selection of the International Committee on Climate Change and Al Gore, Jr., for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, President Bush has moved into the record book for most Peace Prizes awarded to Americans during their presidency.

His Presidency is tied with three others for most Americans winning the Award!
Previous American Presidents to share multiple peace prizes during their Presidency were Ronald Reagan, Richard M. Nixon and…Herbert Hoover.

Heh.

h/t InstaPundit

Today in History....October 11

On this day in …

* 1492, Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached East Asia

* 1582, because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain

* 1773, America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia

* 1792, first celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York

* 1793, the cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina

* 1823, Charles Macintosh, of Scotland, sells the first raincoat.

* 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in unison by students in US public schools

* 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.

* 1928, an iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston

* 1932, the first American political telecast took place as the Democratic National Committee sponsored a program from a CBS television studio in New York

* 1933, the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice

* 1942, World War II: Japanese ships retreat after their defeat in the Battle of Cape Esperance with the Japanese commander, Aritomo
Goto- dying from wounds suffered in the battle and two Japanese destroyers sunk by Allied air attack

* 1960, Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonialist policy being conducted in Eastern Europe

* 1984, Margaret Thatcher survives an IRA bomb, which shredded her bathroom barely two minutes after she had left it

* 1999, the Day of Six Billion: The proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born

* 2000, the USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, practitioners of that "religion of peace"; 17 crew members were killed and at least 39 were wounded

* 2002, the Senate joined the House in approving, 77-23, use of America's military might against Iraq

* 2006, a plane carrying New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger crashed into a high-rise apartment building in New York City, killing both men. ALSO: The charge of treason was used for the first time in the U.S. war on terrorism, filed against Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who'd appeared in propaganda videos for al-Qaida

Today in History....October 10

On this day in …

* 732, Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle

* 1582, because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain

* 1631, a Saxon army takes over Prague

* 1780, The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean

* 1845, in Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors

* 1911, Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China

* 1913, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal

* 1933, a United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation

* 1938, the Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany

* 1967, the Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, enters into force

* 1971, sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, the London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona

* 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office

* 1985, U.S. fighter jets forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy,

where the gunmen, practitioners of that "religion of peace", were taken into custody

* 2002, House voted 296-133 to give President Bush the broad authority he'd sought to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support. ALSO: Two executives who'd overseen WorldCom's financial record-keeping pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal

* 2006, the Bush administration rejected anew direct talks with North Korea in the wake of the communist country's nuclear test, and suggested it was possible the test was something less than it appeared

Hillary John F'n Kerry Clinton

(click to enlarge)

40 Years Ago Today.......Was A Great Day

Today is the 40th anniversary of an excellent day in the history of freedom -- the day the bloodthirsty Communist thug Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia.

Portions of the contemporary American left view Guevara as a hero, leaving those who actually remember him to wonder whether they hold this view because they don't know who Guevara was or because they do.

Embarrassing Sports Stat of the Day, courtesy of the Arizona Cardinals:

With a 3-2 record, Ken Whisenhunt is the first Cardinals (NFL) coach since Charley Winner in 1966 to have a winning record after his first five games.

Hey, at least we have great weather year in, year out.

More Proof That Harry Reid Is A Spineless, Wussbag, Pinhead

Second Lady Lynne Cheney has been defending Mitt Romney against attacks based solely on the fact that he's a Mormon.As, in fact, all of us should be doing. Religious bigotry -- whether it's directed against a Democrat or a Republican -- is just plain wrong. But it's particularly noteworthy that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been so silent -- after all, he's a Mormon, too. It's Reid's right to speak up or not, as he chooses. But his silence forces the question: Is bigotry against his own religion OK with Reid so long as it's directed at someone with whom he disagrees politically? After all, it's hard to imagine him standing idly by if a Democrat co-religionist were being attacked in a comparable way.

The Burglar-Meister, err Master

Sandy Berger -- who stole classified terrorism documents, destroyed them and then lied about it -- is now advising Hillary Clinton.This stunning display of arrogance and poor judgment on Hillary's part does nothing to dispel suspicions that Berger committed those crimes in order to shield from public scrutiny sensitive materials pertaining to the Clinton Administration's handling of terrorism matters.

Today in History....October 9

On this day in …

* 1446, the Korean alphabet, created under the aegis of King Sejong, was first published

* 1701, the Collegiate School of Connecticut -- later Yale University -- was chartered

* 1776, a group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco

* 1888, the public was first admitted to the Washington Monument

* 1930, Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field, N.Y., to Glendale, Calif.

* 1967, Latin American terrorist leader Che Guevara was executed while attempting to incite revolution in Bolivia

* 1975, Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

* 2002, Dean Harold Meyers was shot to death at a gas station near Manassas, Va., in the latest sniper shooting in the Washington, D.C., area

* 2006, North Korea faced a barrage of condemnation and calls for retaliation after it announced that it had set off a small atomic weapon underground; President Bush said, "The international community will respond."

Today in History....October 8

On this day in …

* 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wis., and in the Michigan communities of Holland, Manistee and Port Huron

* 1918, Sgt. Alvin C. York almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and helped capture 132 in the Argonne Forest in France

* 1934, Bruno Hauptmann was indicted by a grand jury in New Jersey for murder in the death of the son of Charles A. Lindbergh

* 1945, President Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada

* 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0

* 1957, the Brooklyn Baseball Club announced it was accepting an offer to move the Dodgers from New York to Los Angeles

* 1981, at the White House, President Reagan greeted former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon, who were preparing to travel to Egypt for the funeral of Anwar Sadat

* 1982, all labor organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned

* 1997, scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life

* 2002, a federal judge approved President Bush's request to reopen West Coast ports, ending a caustic 10-day labor lockout that was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day. ALSO: Two Kuwaiti gunmen, practitioners of that "religion of peace", attacked U.S. forces during war games on a Gulf island, killing one Marine and wounding another before they were shot to death

* 2006, word reached the United States of North Korea's claim that it had conducted its first nuclear weapons test (because of the time difference, it was Oct. 9 in North Korea)

The Black Flash

AKA...........the Mrs., is getting ready and training for a mini-triathalon.......and her training partner? Our 10 year old boy.......... who's going to compete in the Junior division. Why the Black Flash? "Cause she's fast and dresses like Zorro...... dressed in black tights.

Wrenching Stuff.....

A Truly Great American.
Christopher Hitchens writes a moving tribute to a great American.
Hitchens confronts that fact that it was his columns that persuaded a young man to fight for his country, and that man ultimately died due to an IED blast.

Hitchens writes.....

......the story was almost too perfect: this handsome lad had been born on the Fourth of July, was a registered Democrat and self-described agnostic, a U.C.L.A. honors graduate, and during his college days had fairly decided reservations about the war in Iraq. I read on, and actually printed the story out, and was turning a page when I saw the following:

"Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … "

From a love letter by Mark Daily to his now widowed wife:

"One thing I have learned about myself since I've been out here is that everything I professed to you about what I want for the world and what I am willing to do to achieve it was true. …

My desire to "save the world" is really just an extension of trying to make a world fit for you. "

It goes without saying, you should read it.

Off to San Diego........back friday.

Joe Bandwagon

I'm on it, as a native Arizonan these things are too few and far between. One of the minor irritants about Phoenix is that we are full of sports fan transplants from other parts of the country.....Chicago Cubs visit Chicago west for tonights match-up.........GO DIAMONDBACKS!!!!

Today in History....October 3

On this day in …

* 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day

* 1941, Adolf Hitler, ym"sh, declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been "broken" and would "never rise again."

* 1951, the New York Giants captured the National League pennant as Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer off the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca in the "shot heard 'round the world"

* 1995, the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial announced its verdicts, finding the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial)

* 1997, Attorney General Janet Reno said Justice Department investigators had no evidence President Clinton had violated the law with White House coffees and overnight stays for big contributors.
However, Reno did extend a probe of Vice President Al Gore's telephone fundraising

* 2002, five people were shot to death in the Washington, D.C., area within a 14-hour period, sparking the hunt for the "Beltway Sniper"

* 2006, North Korea triggered global alarm by saying it would conduct a nuclear test, but the North also said it was committed to nuclear disarmament, suggesting a willingness to negotiate

Who Will Be The 21st Century Superpower?

USA
CHINA
INDIA
RUSSIA
ISLAM

Hint:

It will not be a country. That's not my prediction, but let's take a look.

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY is a FANTASTIC website that you should check out and all of the links. Jihad Watch: Following comments by Robert Spencer about this website's creator, Stephen Watts:

Take a look around the website. Look at every page. While those who know how Sharia institutionalizes the oppression of women and non-Muslims may recoil at this prospect, Watts is certainly being a realist given the world situation and the abysmal failure of the West so far to respond to the full reality of the Islamic supremacist challenge in all its dimensions.


I am not saying that the emergence of this superpower is inevitable, or that anyone should ever give up as long as life and breath remain. But while those who are concerned about human rights may not want to see this happen, given the world situation as it stands today can Watts reasonably be faulted for thinking that it will happen, and that the best we can do is try to ride the wave and adapt to the new world order?

An excerpt from this site.....

"Throughout history, superpowers have been defined more or less by the same standards. Whether one looks at the most recent 20th century models demonstrated by the United States, the USSR, or Great Britain; or the more ancient models of the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, or the ancient civilizations of the Greeks or the Persians, the standards have been the same. The best definition, commonly accepted in a historical context, is a nation with the ability to project its cultural identity and geopolitical will on other peoples, cultures and nations.

The USA, it is argued, emerged from the cold war with the communist USSR as the only nation capable of projecting a global military, economic and cultural presence around the world without any real competition or barriers to entry to other cultures. This is best seen in the adoption of the English language as the accepted language of international commerce and the American dollar as the accepted form of international currency. The spread of democracy, as a sociopolitical solution to the general governance of people in the context of national identities, is widely argued as due to the American model of government. Other evidence of the superpower nature of American culture is the rapid adoption and affinity for American movies, music, and fast food. The final qualifier for superpower status is the ability to project military power, anywhere, anytime and the associated critical possession of nuclear weapons.

Given these parameters, it is the intent of this article to introduce the hypothesis, with supporting evidence, that a new superpower is emerging in the 21st century - ISLAM. This superpower not only possesses all the requirements highlighted above, but it also has unique qualities that will make the 21st century a very different place in which to live and work. This is a superpower that for the first time in the history of civilization will neither rely upon, nor need to develop a dominant military strategy. The power of the Islamic Superpower will reside primarily in its economic, cultural and theological foundations. The most powerful and compelling distinction of this superpower is that for the first time in the history of the world, a global superpower will not be constrained by nationalistic motives or geographic limitations of artificial borders. This new Islamic Superpower will possess the ability to effectively fight poverty and corruption where the Western powers have failed. It will be the most effective, if not only legitimate response to radical Islamic fundamentalism.

The 21st century will be the Islamic century as much as the 15th century could be argued as the Christian century with the emergence of the global military, economic, and theological capability of Christian Spain, Portugal, France, and England. These, and all other Christian countries are becoming more Islamic, more secular, and less Christian. As you will see, the sheer demographic growth of Islam will overtake every Christian nation by 2050, with the exception of most South American countries and the United States."

Today in History....October 2

On this day in …


* 1780, British spy John Andre was hanged in Tappan, N.Y.

* 1835, the first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers defeated a Mexican cavalry near the Guadalupe River

* 1919, President Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed

* 1941, during World War II, German armies began an all-out drive against Moscow

* 1944, Nazi troops, ym"sh, crushed the 2-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which a quarter of a million people were killed

* 1950, the comic strip "Peanuts," created by Charles M. Schulz, was first published in nine newspapers

* 1958, the former French colony of Guinea in West Africa proclaimed its independence

* 1975, President Ford welcomed Japan's Emperor Hirohito to the United States

* 2002, a resident of Silver Spring, Md., was shot and killed by a sniper in a store parking lot in Wheaton; the next day, five people in the Washington, D.C., area were shot dead, setting off a frantic manhunt. (John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were later arrested for 10 killings and three woundings; Muhammad has been sentenced to death, Malvo to life in prison.)