Varifrank

Moving Day

I've Moved!!!

www.varifrank.com

Update your links. By this evening, this site will refer to the new location.

Construction Dust II

The new varifrank Moveable Type site is coming along nicely, and to quote Stephen Green on the use of Sekimori Design, "She Rocks!.

I dont want to give away the whole show here, but the new look and feel is pretty-damn-cool. One problem is that my oh-so-cutsey masthead " Forget it Jake, It's Chinatown" doesnt really work with the new motif.

So we had to come up with a new masthead, heres a sample on how that conversation went:

Hm. The tagline is too long for that space on the bottom right, so I've had to adjust the bars a bit. See what you think (attached).

Ok let me think, how bout this: "Exterminate The Brutes"

No, that's a bit over the top. Too much English Lit. Besides, it sounds like something for a blog based in Hayden Lake, Idaho. You don't want to give people the wrong idea here.

How about this: "You either surf or you fight".

Well I like it, but I don't think anyone else will get it. That's as bad as the "Chinatown" reference.

Ok, what about: "An epic drama of adventure and exploration"

Come on man, its a blog, written by a guy who can barely spell and got a D+ in English every year in school . Yes its a "2001" reference, but we already had a problem with the length of the Chinatown line and this is even longer. Come back into the light, Frank...

Ok, quickly say the first three words you'd use to describe your personal wish for the world:

Liberty, Freedom , Victory.

Ok, that's better. Let's go with that. Its almost jingoistic enough to put on a flag like "don't tread on me". Simple and to the point.

Stay tuned. (And she does Rock!).

Selective Memory

Golly, I remember the hordes of Democrats that were saying in 2003 that there were "No WMD's in Iraq", because they were the ones saying that "thousands of soldiers were at risk of attack by "Iraq chemical and biological weapons". I also remember the Democrats saying that because they all still voted for the action against Iraq. Clearly all those brave policy makers were just intimidated by the evil Bush administration who holds the puppet strings of government in the US.

I also remember the French, Russian and German Foreign ministers and intelligence services saying that there were "no WMD's in Iraq". I remember because they also issued memos at the time stating the risk to civilian populations from Chemical and Biological Weapons. Why did they do that? Because those three countries still had the receipts for selling Iraq the equipment to build WMD's.

I'm sure the UN said something about WMD's at the time, but I'm also sure the memo started with a rebuke of Israel and its nuclear weapons, so I just tuned it right out.

Let's see how this works. In 1990's Afghanistan was an infected host state giving sancturary and support for a set of bloodthirsty murdering parasitical thugs who attacked the US in Manhattan in 1993, again in Saudi Arabia, and the USS Cole in 2000. What did the US do in the 1990s to stop the terrorist threat from Afghanistan in the 1990's? Did anyone acknowledge that there was a threat? Nope, not a thing and not a word. Why, the're just funny little people, they might blow up a car here and there, but no real threat to the country.. The Result? The terrorist parasites living on the host body of Afghanistan go on to kill 5,000 civilians by using nothing more sophisticated than 19 suicidal dupes and a stack of box knives.

9th Century religious death cult + box knives = mass death : Ergo - WMD's.

Nope, no WMDs here. move along...

In 2003, we have a thugocracy in charge of Iraq that has threatened or attacked every single one of its neighbors and committed genocide in its own country, and is clearly judged by every country in the world to be a terrorist state. It also has a large capacity for the creation of chemical and biological weapons and with their clear demonstrated ability to use them against their own civilian populations they are very dangerous indeed. Iraq also has access to vast amounts of cash. It has also violated every-single-agreement with the UN in regards to abiding by the armistace of 1992 and threw out UN weapons inspectors in 1998, leading everyone to believe that they must have them.

And the answer the Democrats seem to give today is that despite the recent experience that 9/11 taught us, despite Bali and Beslan, we should have just looked the other way when it come to action on Iraq. The Iraq action was a Preemptive War. It was meant to stop Iraq from becoming a bigger threat than it already was. We failed to take action on Afghanistan when we could've stopped 9/11. Afghanistan had no infrastructure, it could only provide sanctuary. Iraq could not only provide sanctuary but access to capital and industrial infrastructure. Should we just let it fall into the hands of the Jihadis? Should we allow its assets to fall into the hands of the Iranians?

19 fanatics and box cutters. Thats the low end of the spectrum for WMD's.

19 fanatics with access to not much more technology and cash than the average crack or meth house has in it and you can kill millions with anthrax bacilli. thats the middle spectrum for WMD's

19 fanatics with access to billions of dollars, access to inport/export facilities, multinational trade agreements, intelligence services/infrastructure/data, aircraft and shipping, international banking letters of credit with the a host state. A host state with an active chemical industry. Thats the high end of the spectrum of WMD's.

Thats what we took preemptive action to stop. The potential threat was there, the expressed threat was there. If you wait for the threat to become a real threat, you are already dead. We learned that on 9/11.

Did Iraq have WMD's? probably not. Do I care?, no. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I didn't need WMD's to decide to take action in Iraq, and whatever reasons I may have put on the table before the invasion, the reality of "Childrens Prisons" removed any other prerequisite. Only people who have lost their moral compass and a good portion of their brain needed the WMD's to be sitting in a big warehouse just waiting to be captured by US forces. By every measure of decency and strategy, Iraq needed to be liberated. From just a strategic sense, Iraq made all the sense in the world as it provides wide access to the border with the next threat, the far more sophisticated and dangerous Jihadi host state - Iran.

Those who decry the invasion and liberation of Iraq are also those who are wondering why we arent in Iran or North Korea. Look at a map, tell me what surrounds Iran? American Troops are on the eastern border, the northern Border and the Western Iraninan Border. We control the seas of their southern ports . Now, Look at a map and tell me what type of geographical feature that is Korea. Korea, is a pennisula. American Troops are on the Southern Korean DMZ against North Korea, side by side with their South Korean Allies. The American Navy has a defacto blockade underway around the Korean shoreline. The Chinese, following a long standing tradition is building large physical barriers ( some might even say its a "wall") on the northern border of their one time client state.

If Bush was "lying about WMD's", dontcha think he could also plant some WMD's? Would it be that hard?
Why didnt he order Iraq to be salted with WMD's? Because, he, like me, didn't care. It wasnt the WMD's, it was the place and the people that needed to be turned into assets against the Jihadis instead of a waiting for it to become a real threat against us.

Bush didnt lie. Some people just didnt hear what he was saying. Afganistan was a threat, it is no longer. Iraq was a threat, it is no longer. The Bush Doctrine says " If you are a terrorist, or if you harbor terrorists, we will make no distinction". The only question you have to ask yourself about the future is how many people have to die before you take action to stop it?

UPDATE: In Response To A Reader of this post, I also wrote this, following a theme on a couple of earlier posts:

Thanks, I appreciate the review and the link.

As far as why people find the Iraq situation so much different than I do, I have no idea. 60 years ago, we got attacked in Hawaii and the first country we invaded in response was Morocco. Why? Because it fit the larger strategy of ending fascist power in Europe. 60 years ago, the smartest man on earth( Einstein ) said we should build an atomic bomb before the Nazis did, it turned out the Nazis didnt even come close to building an atomic bomb. If FDR can be wrong, If Einstien can be wrong, then what can we really expect of the rest of us. There's two ways that history could've come out, One way the Nazis do get the bomb, at which point this email would be written in German or the other way, were we are wrong but alive to say so. I prefer the second version, which is what happened then, and its what happened now in Iraq.

But it also turned out that the Nazis were killing their own citizens, ( albeit an unpopular religious minority, but German citizens none-the-less) so fast that they had to develop new technology to dispose of the bodies. Genocide wasnt why we went to war, but in the end its why everyone fought so hard. The people who fought that war on our side didn't fight for peace, they fought for Unconditional Surrender and Total Victory. We had 7,000 KIA and 18,000 wounded in Iwo Jima, just one battle in the Pacific Theatre of War, in a bigger world war where 52 million people lost their lives, nobody got weepy and said that we needed a damn "summit" with our allies or that we were sustaining all of the casualities.

How that generation survived the great depression, then fought both the Nazis and the Japanese empire then came home and raised an entire generation of whiny little piss-pants quitters, I'll never know. My personal "pet theory" is that this is what really happened when they put fluoride in the water back in the 1950's.

We are at war, thats not conjecture, its a fact. We didnt start the war, but we damn well better win it. Winning does not mean quitting and hoping for the best. Winning means ensuring that the word "Jihadi" has the same resonance as "Nazi" or "Klansman" or any of the other losers in the humanities hall of shame.

Construction Dust

That noise you hear in the background is the great Sekimori Design studios at work on the new Varifrank.com Site.

Stay Tuned. Regular speed-blogging to resume as just soon as the paint is dry.

The Week To Be

History will record this week as one of the busiest and most significant in recent history.

October 4th - SpaceShipOne to take the X Prize

My heart and mind will be glued to the TV monday morning. That "Pilot Induced Roll" that we've now seen twice has me more than a bit concerned. Mr. Melville, Just get up there in one piece and get back in one piece, I dont give a damn about the prize.

Update I Success. On the anniversary of the Sputnik launch!

Update II Gordon Cooper, One of the Mercury 7 Astronauts, died today.

Update III Best quote:
Mr. Rutan said he had not decided how many more times to fly SpaceShipOne and its carrier plane, White Knight, before donating it to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which has asked for the spaceship. He did say that he planned to focus his efforts on designing and building Mr. Branson's planes, which he called SpaceShipTwo. "Innovation is what we do here," he said, "because there's not much else to do in Mojave."

October 5th - Vice Presidential Debate

Outgoing Senator John "silky pony" Edwards meets Older-than-dirt Vice President Dick "Big time" Cheney. Corporate CEO vs. Southern Trial Lawyer. Cheney has socks that are older than Edwards. Edwards is used to getting a Jury that he helped seat and he's used to getting a follow on chance to make his case at the "court of appeal". I find Cheney to be the adult in world of infantile children and I didnt think Edwards every held up well under fire during the Democrat nomination campaign. I wont miss this WWF event for the world.

Update I: Not Blogging it.

October 5th - Supreme Court back in action.

Oh, so THAT'S why this election is important!

Update II: Rodney Dangerfield has died. It's got nothing to do with a historical week, but I like Rodney and its my blog.

October 8th - Last Employment Report Prior to Election.

Last test before the election. I expect it to be a disaster,nor because it is, but because so many people need it to be.
Will 3 Hurricanes hitting the south effect the jobs situation?
Does $50.00 a barrel for oil put any sort of drag on the economy?
We shall see.

October 8th - 2nd Presidential Debate.

The second presidential debate will use the town meeting format in which undecided voters, selected by the Gallup Organization, will question the candidates.

Will the audience stuffed with DemocraticUnderground readers? Will there be one "mother of a dead soldier" there to hang around the neck of President Bush like an albatross? Will Bush surprise everyone since having lowered expectations on his ability to deliver, make a strong stand on Kerrys Democrat home turf, the "economy"? We shall see....

October 9th - Australia/Afghanistan Vote.

Will Australia go the way of Spain? Will Afghanistan complete the vote, thus making the most backward of islamic countries also into the most free? Will the people of Pakistan catch the irony? Can it then be argued that since Terrorists were so busy with Iraq that they were spread too thin for Afghanistan?

Oh by the way, theres a volcano about to blow on the west coast of the US. If it is sufficiently strong, it could spread ash clear across the country.

This is a great time to be alive. Take notes, 20 years from now, this will be a week in history that is studied like the movements of the armies at Gettysburg in the summer of 1863.

Debate I: After Action Report

Kerry's job for the past 20 years has been to do what he did last night. Talk, followed by more talk, followed by a polite photo op for the folks back home. He's good at it, and as talk goes, it doesn't have any consequences, if it did, he would have been run out of town on a rail a long time ago because of his long standing tradition of consistently being on the losing side of history in every opportunity that history has provided him during his tenure as a Senator.

For all the skill of talking that Kerry has honed over the past 20 years in the forge of the Senate floor, I found Kerry to be almost as incomprehensible as Bush. It's the next day, and I've read the transcripts twice, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what the hell Kerry is talking about.

Bush didn't say very much, and what he did say he didnt say well. If I wanted a company spokesman for president, Kerry would have a shot. However, these are serious times, and serious times aren't times for talk, they are times for action.

I'd give anything for Bush to be able to inspire with a good speech and stagecraft, but Im not willing to trade a man of action for a man of words at this stage in the Jihadi War. Our problem in the West isn't that we dont sound good to the other countries of the world, it's that for too long we have neglected to take action.

Kerrys action plan is a "summit". Wheeee! Doesn't that make your heart just swell up? I'm old enough to remember decades of "summits", and not a damn thing ever changed in the world as a result. Once a President took action to end the Soviet Union rather than try to get along with it, the world changed and it changed for the better.

Oh, and by the way, President Reagan took that action against the advice of the rest of the world, many of his advisors and other countries governments, but he did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do. The lesson was clear, You don't accomodate evil, you end it.

Take Action Now. This is what I want from a president.

( Thanks Punch and Jeff for the Inspiration)

Update: In what is surely a sign of the coming end times, David Brooks of The New York Times covers the same subject, and comes up with another angle but seems to reach the same conclusion.

The Money Quote:

" I suspect that the reason Bush's approval ratings hover around 50 percent, despite a year of carnage in Iraq, is because of the reason many of us in the commentariat don't like to talk about: in a faithful and moralistic nation, Bush's language has a resonance with people who know that he is not always competent, and who know that he doesn't always dominate every argument, but who can sense a shared cast of mind. "

In that simple sentence, David Brooks brings into stark reality the true nature of the American voter versus the European voter. We see polls that constantly say that if it were up to the voters of France or even Europe as a whole, Kerry would win by a wide margin.

Many people in the press, effected by the malarial fever of the Vietnam infection that has ruined the minds of so many of his generation cannot understand how any president taking what he deems to be "great losses" is at 50% approval ratings. Here we are in what he feels is an illegal war, losing troops every day, oil at $50.00 a barrel, everyone hates us around the world, and Bush is at roughly the same point now as the beloved President Clinton was in 1996.

David Brooks puts his finger on one of the key differences between America and the rest of the world, and also puts his finger on why it is that President Bush is also hated by the left. America, despite its obvious decadence, is actually quite a religious nation, much more so than Europe. President Bush is also an expressly religious man. The expression of a religious belief by a politican is anathema to many in the liberal world and the leftist mindset, but to a wide majority of Americans, the expression of religion is a central part of their lives.

I offer by way of a parallel this observation: There are constant jokes about Wal-Mart in the media and our culture at large, but the thing that everyone is missing when they laugh at Wal-Mart is that every Wal-Mart you ever see if chock full of people, and these people tend to think about the world the same way that George W. Bush thinks about the world. Everytime the "commentariat" laugh and deride President Bush, they are really laughing at a large portion of American voters. What must also be truly shocking to those of the left, is that 20 years ago, these same people were reliable Democrat voters, but today, 'Democrats at Wal-Mart' are far and few between. Worse still, Wal-Mart is the fastest growing business is America. What does that tell you about election trends in the long run for Republicans and Democrats? More Wal-Marts equals more Republicans? It sure looks like that to me.

One other cultural difference that I've noted over the years is that in America, we are told repeatedly when we are kids that "Someday, you can grow up to be the President'. The effect of this simple tale is to teach every generation to look at the President as being "just one of us". All Americans get uneasy about a Presidential candidate who is somehow is not a 'Regular Guy". Europeans are taught that there is another class of people who take care of you, the average European is certainly not raised with the phrase "someday son, you too can grow up to be Prime Minister". The result is that "haughtly and snotty" is actually a selling point for a candidate in europe as is shows that the candidate is part of the ruling class, where its a serious drawback here in the US. Most Americans live in dread fear of speaking in public and empathize with President Bush and his inability to put on a good show, while the patrician upper class pacing of John Kerry voice grates on the ears and nerves of many who live in "Wal-Mart America".

In America, anyone can be President, Bill Clinton and George Bush are both proof of that.

James Lileks, Master Of His Domain

In the two months since I started blogging I've noticed that although I dont have deadlines, I do have competition. I dont mean to say that I'm anywhere as good as James Lileks or Stephen Green, its just that if I get an idea on which to blog, I know I have to finish it fast, or those guys will clock me in the head like Cassius Clay, and they are two full hours ahead of me in timezone and light years in writing ability. I stand in awe sometimes by what they write and how they write it.

Tonight, James Lileks lays it down for everyone to see.

The money quote:

"If the rightness of a cause is measured by the number of one’s allies, would Britain have been right if the US had stayed neutral in World War Two?".

Damn. Maybe I should take up whittling?

Boy, Is This Gonna Be Great!

Dontcha just dig this? I mean, here we are, in the worlds greatest Democracy, the worlds only Nuclear Superpower, and here it is, willingly putting its entire executive branch of government in the hands of people, who are sitting in living rooms all across America, watching two guys beat each other to death for the chance to get a job that will leave the winner weak and infirmed for the rest of his short post-presidency life. You ever look at a President when they start the job and after they are done with their time in office? They all come in like Steve Mcqueen but they all leave like freshly hammered dog crap. Anyone who is or was the President deserves our respect, just for surviving the experience. Imagine what its like to go to bed every night knowing there are billions of people who want to kill you and your country. Imagine what its like to read the intelligence reports that the President gets every day. Imagine what its like having to trust the commanders of every nuclear submarine, every carrier, every bomber pilot, all the while knowing that they are both commanded and flown by men, and all men have flaws.

Tonight, Kerry did fine and Bush did fine but "We, The People", did great. Thank God Kerry put up a good fight. Thank God Bush did as well, but the real winners were the American people. What did I like the most about tonight? It was a fair fight well played. No snot nosed cheap shots, no fascists street theater in the audience. Just two guys on opposite ends of the political argument banging on each other to determine the truth. We are all well served by the contest displayed tonight. At the end, they shook hands and their wives joked about wearing the same dress. It was a great scene.

All I want for Christmas is for those who lose on Election day to accept the loss and remember that you are all Americans and we are all on the same team. No one is served by undermining this contest by saying its illegitimate. Try to remember that our contribution to mankind as Americans isnt the strength of our armies but that we willingly and regularly put that military under the command of a civilian, who is chosen by average folks.

That, is a miracle, and we live in it every day.

I just love democracy. I just love election season but I think I really need to get a hobby.

UPDATE: later tonight, The old man weighed in:

"I don't understand a damn thing that Bush says, but I sure as hell know what He's doing and why, where with Kerry, what He says sounds good enough but what He does don't make no damn sense at all".

I couldn't agree more. I wonder if the simple eloquence of that statement can be translated into French?

Holocaust Denial

Once upon a time, there used to be a clique of crazed self-loathing people called "Holocaust deniers". These people were from all walks of life, some were your average trailer park trash but there were even some who were accredited academics. The Historian David Irving serves as the poster boy for the "I'm so smart I'm stupid" movement.

Their like has died out somewhat, I'm not sure why, whether its a generational thing with the passing of the WWII generation the experience of the Jewish holocaust is somewhat lower on the bigots playlists of something that needs to be perverted, since fewer people remember what the holocaust was and what it meant to the world.

Anyone in the world today who stands up and says "The holocaust didn't happen" or "Hitler wasnt a threat to the United States" is considered, and rightfully so, a self centered bigot.

Now, just to be clear, We didnt declare war on Nazi Germany to save the Jews of Europe and we didnt even declare war on Nazi Germany until after Hitler, in one of the true turning points of history, declared war on the United States. . Frankly we did very little to save the Jews. It is to our eternal shame that we stood by and did nothing. You could argue in the 1940's that no one would believe that such things were possible, but not after the 1940's. We know, We all know how far men can go in the search for power.

It was towards the end of the war that we confronted the horror of what happened in Europe, not the beginning. General Eisenhower took explicit and exacting steps to ensure that a record was kept of the holocaust. The world took steps to make sure that everyone understood what happened in places like Dachau and Treblinka, if we didn't, its entirely likely that no one would believe it. How could anyone believe that such evil exists unless confronted by the filmed evidence. The bodies stacked like cordwood, the boxes of teeth, extracted for their gold, nevermind the innocent mouths they were ripped from.

After the war was over, after the world began to put itself back together, the UN, in one of its few moments of decency, helped create the modern state of Israel out of recognition that the Jewish people of the world could not be expected to live on the "kindness of strangers" any longer. They would have one state on earth where they would not be victims by being an automatic racial and religious minority.

The collective world opinion has been and should always be that the Jewish Holocaust happened, that it was bad, and that the world should feel ashamed for not doing more to stop it. Everyone in the intelligencia looked at the holocaust and gasped at the horror, and we all learned to say "Never Again". Well, atleast we learned to use the words.

Now, Here's what I'm grappling with.

It occurs to me that today's academic intelligencia, today's media and today's Democrat party are operating in regards to Iraq almost exactly the way that the holocaust deniers did in regards to the Jewish Holocaust.

First, They deny that evil actually exists.

Today, Kerry said this to Dianne Sawyer:

"We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today."

Now, I'm not going to get into the time-twisting illogical connection that this statement is attempting to make, but when Kerry says something like this, he is saying it with full knowledge of the situation in Iraq before we arrived. Kerry is a Senator, he sits on the Intelligence Committee. Kerry has seen things we will never see about Iraq and lots of other places.. Frankly, He knows better. We know Michael Moore would like everyone to believe that Iraq was the world's kite flying capital before we screwed it up, but we know better. Death came easy in Iraq long before we arrived. It came in large numbers, entire towns were gassed in the Kurdistan areas, and the Shia civil war that occured after the first Gulf war was particularly bloody. Saddams security forces kept order by killing entire families at a time. I've always said that the entire run up for the Iraq Invasion, the WMD search, or any other justification went away when on the 4th day of the invasion we liberated the first of many "Childrens Prisons".

Once I heard about "Childrens Prisons", the whole reason for being there changed for me, it no longer mattered about sovereignty, or any other justifications, theres just some things that are not right and should not be allowed.

But to many in the Democrat party, the existence of such horrors is simply said to be "none of our business". It's as if to say that because it's not in the United States we have no right to say that its wrong and should be stopped. What's worse, to many more people in the Democrat party, the only evil involved is our cultural imperialism for wanting to stop the Iraqis from practing their institutions ( like Childrens Prisions ) in what ever way they see fit.

Second, Excuse the crime as misinterpretation of data.

I actually had someone argue with me that the "Childrens Prisons" were actually the Iraqi governments way of ensuring the welfare of children while their parents were incarcerated. They went on to argue that it was we here in the west that didnt understand the ways of life in the middle east and that if we in America would only try to understand the Islamic world, we wouldnt get into so much trouble misunderstanding things like the "Childrens Prision".

I was reminded of when Senator Patty Murray of Washington said that Osama Bin Laden was a hero to the Islamic world because he was building "day care centers" in the middle east. Now, for just a second, think about that and remember that in the middle east, women are routinely stoned to death for disobeying their husbands commands and ritualistic "honor killings" dont even make the news because they are such common occurances. Women are not "fast talkin career gals" in the middle east, they are farm animals that get to eat at the kids table.

Third, Misdirect the crime to other crimes that fit their agenda.

You can tell you are making headway with your argument when you get someone who says "well it was America who gave them weapons of mass distruction in the first place."

Now by way of analogy I usually have to offer this up:

OK, Let's say Dr. Frankenstein has created his monster. Suddenly, Igor gets careless and the monster gets loose and begins to ravage the the town below the castle.

Should Dr. Frankenstein:

A) Take a seat and enjoy an Martini while the townsfolk deal with the monster?

Or

B) Grab a pitchfork and help put the monster out of his misery, side by side with the townsfolk?

Dr. Frankenstein created the monster. That means that Dr. Frankenstein has a responsibility to get rid of the monster! Doing nothing is not an option! Doing nothing would be W-R-O-N-G.

The townfolk arent going to look at Dr. Frankenstien and say "well I guess since he created the monster, hes too politically impure to help us get rid of it, I guess he has to remain neutral". Hardly. The townsfolk are going to make their decision on whether Dr. Frankenstien gets fitted for a rope afterwards based solely on whether or not he gets his ass up and helps get rid of the monster.

Fourth, Blame it on the Jews.

Today, when you hear the word "neocon", try to remind yourself, that this is the left media polite way of saying "Jew". When the first name you hear in a complaint about the Administration is "Wolfowitz", guess what? You're talking to a Bigot! A real life, sheet wearing, knuckle dragging bigot, and it doesnt matter if the person saying it has a latte in one hand and this weeks "New Yorker" in the other. The home of Bigotry can be found in every zip code.

Ask yourself this. In this election year, has anyone in the Democrat party made a clear unequivocal statement in support of Israel? Why would this be controversial? Senator Lieberman is practically a pariah in his own party for his stance on the war, and for his stance on Israel. When did this happen? If Republicans were not necessarily supporting israel, it would follow a historical norm, but Democrats?

This - is something new.

I find it hard to understand why one of our political parties is talking about the war in Iraq, as if it hasn't happened yet. There was a war, its over, we won, the Iraqis won and there are no more "Childrens Prisons", and we should all be happy. Iraq was once a net exporter of terror, and its now become a net importer. The Imported terrorists are not to coming to restablish an Islamic cultural Capitol, but to return Iraq and its resources back to the people who would use those resources to re-enslave the region. Where once was a tribe of madmen who used profits from oil to spread terror and disease throught the world, now is a burgeoning Democracy. Where once the countries surrounding Iraq lived in fear and blackmail from the head of the tribe in Tikrit, The people of Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan and yes, Syria and Iran have nothing to fear from Iraq because the head of the tribe is now an inmate awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity and his two evil sons are dead.

I find it impossible to understand why one political party is not excited at the fact that Afghanistan is less than 30 days from engaging in a free election, one in which women are given equal rights, as if it can't possibly happen. Afghanistan will soon have more rights than Russians are afforded in their country. Imagine that! Afghanistan is soon to be arguably more free than Pakistan. Imagine that! Now try to imagine the level of hate you have to have in your heart to go out that far out of your way to ignore the good news of freedom in a place thats never seen it before by a people who have known nothing but war.

I find it impossible to believe how one political party with a major constituency of Jewish people hasn't made one-single-statement about Israel. Not even to bring the awful phrase "Peace process" into the game. Israel has made a fence to keep the peace with its neighbors, but you would think that Israelis were putting Palestinians up on pikes like Vlad Dracula. Support from Democrat party for Israel? Only Crushing Silence comes from the Democrats about Israel and when Republicans give unequivocal support, Democrats only sneer in response.

So, it appears to me that there is a new generation of Holocaust Revisionists. Only its not the Jews of Europe being exterminated thats being denied, but the Shia, The Kurds, The North Koreans, and now Darfur. Apparently to the left and the current Democrat party, the color of the skin of the victim determines the level of indignity one should shed towards the crime. But even if it were the Jews of Europe being exterminated, would the left of today call Treblinka and Dachau a crime, or just an unfortunate cultural misunderstanding with "Middle Europe"?

I've Got A Bad Feeling About This...

If you live east of the Washington or Oregon, Its time to get your plastic sheeting out and get your cars in the garage. Mt. St Helens looks like she's going to give us another example of how the earth is not as solid as it looks.

Add this to the 6.0 quake in Parkfield Ca and the recent uptick in volcanic activity in Mammoth Lakes Ca, and I'd say we are probably going to get some ash out of this.

UPDATE: Thar she blows!