In the News:
Italians Outraged As European Court Rules Against Crucifixes in the Classroom

Will the abortion issue derail Obamacare?

Here is the most ridiculous thing written in the aftermath of the Fort Hood Massacre. By Andrew Bast of Newsweek:Is Fort Hood a Harbinger? Nidal Malik Hasan May Be a Symptom of a Military on the Brink. How hard it is to avoid seeing that which is right in from of your nose. Instead, let's explain it as "pre-traumatic stress disorder."

George W. Bush Secretly Visits Fort Hood Victims Meanwhile, Obama salutes fallen soldiers "...with no fanfare, telling only a small group of reporters... ."

Something form this summer you may have missed: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants As this report notes, she has broken Laura Bush's record of 15.

Benny Hill blocked from appearing on stamps by Royal Mail

In the Mail

First woman on the moon.

Of all of the silly promises I've heard from politicians seeking election or re-election (or, in this case, in defiance of term-limits legislation, re-re-election), I think this one takes the proverbial cake:

"Not only will more middle class families be staying in the city and
sending their kids to our schools here, I believe we'll start to see and
entirely new phenomenon. Families from around the nation and the region will be
moving into the city for the schools,"

Thomas Sowell:

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

In the Mail

Presented without comment,as with most ITM's:

This 4th grade teacher has said it all, and she was brave enough to attach her name to it.

April 17,
2009

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW
Washington , DC
20500

Mr.Obama:
I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct
on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.

You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America .. You are responsible to the citizens of the United States. You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.

I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world. Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead? What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century?

Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country? Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States? This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this?

Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia .... You didn't show Great Britain , our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia .. How dare you, sir! How dare you!

You can't find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don't want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey ...... You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves. What's the matter with you? I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you..

You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them?
Anything? I seriously doubt it.

What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven't said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn't!

Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million, not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven't you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now?

I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do. We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you.

I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities. I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country.

Sincerely,
Every real American

P.S. I rarely ask that emails be 'passed around'.................PLEASE
SEND THIS TO YOUR EMAIL LIST......it's past time for all Americans to wake
up!
Ms Kathleen
Lyday
Fourth Grade
Teacher
Grandview Elementary
School
11470 Hwy .
C
Hillsboro , MO 63050
(636) 944-3291
Phone
(636) 944-3870 Fax

In the Mail

This brief clip from a few months ago is making the rounds. Why won't the Russian bigwigs shake hands with Obama? Fear of the American swine flu pandemic? Racism? Cooties? I'm not an Obama supporter, but, like him or not, he's my country's president. This apparent disrespect is troubling.

The JP: Russia's not afraid of an Iranian Bomb. In fact, the story implies that Russia wants Iran to get it. And it makes sense. But keep trying, Hillary!

Well, I guess he's just outside the mainstream. Scientist: Carbon Dioxide Doesn't Cause Global Warming

The Washington Times:Human rights groups see Obama wavering. And if you thought you wouldn't be giving your tax dollars to Acorn anymore, see this.
New York Post: White House hands out white coats to doctors for photo op.
David Letterman, glad to be an American: Saudi gets 5 years jail time and 1,000 lashes for bragging on TV about his sexual exploits

In the Mail

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberaldoesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is avegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meatproducts banned for everyone.
If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy. A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.
If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life. If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful. Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church. A liberal non-believer
wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed. If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he’s in labor and then sues.
If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh. A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

Must see TV. This evening, at a well-known bookstore in Huntington New York, John Derbyshire of the National review did a presentation in support of his new book, We Are Doomed, followed by politely hostile questioning from liberal talker Alan Colmes, late of the Fox News Channel shoutfest Hannity and Colmes, and still a voice on Fox Radio. C-Span recorded it for future broadcast. If you catch it, you will hear remarkably well-informed, trenchant questioning from a guy sitting in the second row. Unfortunately, I believe the questioner's back was to the camera, so you will be unable to experience how telegenic he is. But I'm sure that the word "mellifluous" will run through your mind as you enjoy his soothing, plangent voice.
Plangent? Did I just write plangent?

Ahmadinijad is Jewish? How funny is that?

The news that Chicago was the first of the final four cites to be knocked out of the running for the 2016 Olympics stuns me. I had assumed that Obama would not risk any political capital on a relatively trivial issue like this. I assumed that he went to Copenhagen only after a back-room deal had been done: ask in person, and you shall receive. But no.
I really thought that Obama (or, at least his brain trust) was smarter than that. I was wrong. Yes, I'm big enough to admit it.

Politico: The left aims for critics' jugular Not exactly breaking news.

Dan Rather's suit against CBS, which grew from Dan's use of phony documents to try to defeat Bush in 2004, has been dismissed.

Breaking News: Senate Committee rejects Public Option

We, the taxpayers of America, have just given a sweetheart loan to Al Gore, who is going to use the money to build cars at a price that the vast, vast, majority of us will be unable to afford. But at least the money will create jobs... in Finland.

Rasmussen: Support for Health Care Plan Hits New Low. Time for another Obama media blitz!

G20 takes helm of world economy. Oh good. Obama's placing us in the best of hands.

Commander in Chief watch

More examples of the mainstream media sounding as if they think Obma is not just the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, but of, well, everything.
NBC Chicago sees him as the CinC of lobbying to get the Olymic games to their town.
The New York Daily News sees a CinC when Obama reads bad poll numbers.
TMZ.
Ron Moore (health care).
Bob WeirUh-oh. Conservatives are picking up the habit.
Fox News. He's the Attorney General's Commander in Chief.
MLB.com He's the CinC of sports. Sheesh.

But it took 'em 360 years to mandate warning labels: ‘Smoking kills’, doctors warned in 1606. A cynic would say that all seventeenth century smokers would be dead by now anyway, but I'm no cynic.

Now, assume you are ambivalent about Obama's public option. You think it's a good idea, but you are fearful that it would lead to a complete takeover of the healthcare system by the Federal Government. Does this reassure you?

Slate: Bidenisms. Even funnier that Bushisms, in my humble opinon.

It's well known that Terry Moran of ABC is about as fervent a supporter of Barack Obama as one can be without, well, I don't know, being Barack Obama, I guess. That's why I doubt that his leak of Obama's "Jackass" reaction to Kanye's West's latest was done without the administration's tacit approval. But I was unaware until today that Terry's support can be traced to his belief that Obama's birth was a miracle of biblical proportions. How did I miss this?

This one's a keeper: Obama and Acorn - perfect together.

The home page of MSN this morning headlines a story "Dinner with Palin costs $63K." What do you figure that means? Click on the headline, and you get a story from AP (reproduced by MSNBC) that says that someone bid that much on eBay to meet her. The internet auction was for a charity that benefits wounded veterans. Too bad most people who see the headline won't read the story and find out where the money goes.

Here's Obama's National Security advisor James L. Jones explaining the decision not to go forward with missle defense in in Eastern Europe. It had nothing to do with pressure from Russia. But it will have "an ancillary benefit" in that our relationship with Russia will improve. Oh.

Here's a backgrounder on that ridiculous picture of Glenn Beck on the cover of Time. As it indicates, the photographer, Jill Greenberg, specializes in making conservatives look bad.

What? The ACLU is outing CIA agents? I thought that was a bad thing.

Jeffrey Lord: Media Malpractice

Jay Nordlinger in The Corner today:

I thought Barack Obama would be a poor and troublesome president. Did I think he would yuk it up with Hugo Chávez, smirk with Daniel Ortega about the Bay of Pigs, turn his wrath on a Central American country trying to follow its constitution, denounce President Bush abroad, bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, endorse a radical Middle Eastern view of how Israel came into being, knock Western countries that try to protect Muslim girls from unwanted shrouding, invite the Iranian regime to our Fourth of July parties, stay essentially mute in the face of counterrevolution in Iran, squeeze and panic Israel, cold-shoulder the Cuban democrats in order to warm to the Cuban dictatorship, scrap missile defense in Eastern Europe, and refuse to meet with the Dalai Lama — in addition to his attempts to have government eat great portions of American society? No, I did not. You?

Me? Yeah. I did. Maybe not in every specific detail (the bow, for example, was a stunner), but in broad outline? That's indeed what I expected. I expect even worse things to come. I take Jay Nordlinger's surprise a s good sign. If a sophisticated observer of the world scene finds Obama's foreign policy not just abominable, but unexpectedly so, then how is the rest of the country reacting.

Nile Gardiner: Barack Obama surrenders to Russia on Missile Defence

What signal does this send to Ukraine, Georgia and a host of other former Soviet satellites who look to America and NATO for protection from their powerful neighbour? The impending cancellation of Third Site is a shameful abandonment of America’s friends in eastern and central Europe, and a slap in the face for those who actually believed a key agreement with Washington was worth the paper it was written on.

That's your Commander-in-Chief for ya. Hope and Change.

There has been a lot of opinion generated by the recent loss of a British soldier in Afghanistan during a mission to rescue a journalist who, despite emphatic advise to avoid a dangerous region of the country, was captured there by the Taliban. Was the reporter morally responsible for the soldier's death? Or (as Tunku Varadarajan asks) was the British Army morally obligated to undertake the dangerous rescue mission?
To me, it calls to mind a classic panel discussion televised by CBS news in 1987 about the relationship of journalists and the troops with whom they are embedded. Mike Wallace, the announcer/game show host/commercial pitchman whose career culminated with a lengthy stint as a reporter for CBS's 60 Minutes, sat on the panel. He expressed a view that many (including me) found appalling. He said that an American journalist who found out about an impending ambush by the enemy had no duty to warn American troops of it. Brent Baker of Newsbusters did a retrospective of the broadcast on the occasion of Wallace's retirement in 2006, with video of the event. The response by Marine Corp Colonel George Connell to Wallace's pronouncement is unforgettable.

Photographer Willy Ronis has died at age 99.

Ancient skeletons discovered in Georgia threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution. It's the other Georgia

Andrew Sullivan gets special treatment from the Massachusetts Federal district attorney after fed cops bust him for marijuana possession on fed property. The feds won't say exactly why they think Mr. Sullivan, who is not a U.S. citizen, is entitled to treatment that most U.S. citizens do not receive. Here is the decision of U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert. B. Collings, reluctantly dismissing the charge at the urging of the lawyer whose salary you pay. What a great country! And note that AS made sure he got someone who knows people to represent him.

The Times of London: B[ritish] P[etroluem] lobbied Jack Straw before he changed mind over Lockerbie bomber

Here's the report from the IG of the SEC on why they blew it on Bernie Madoff, with trenchant (well, obvious) comments by one Joel Zand. This will, of course, be a trial exhibit in every suit by any fool who gave money to Madoff, and tries to get it back from the taxpayers.

Speaking of Thomas Sowell, here is what one of his "Randon Thoughts" columns might look like if he were as immature as I.

Is it possible to be heteronormative without also being homophobic? Or visa-versa? Are homophobes afraid of homosexuals? If not, why are homophobes phobic?

I'm sorry, but it's not the Little League World Series. It's tournament, not a series. In sports, a series is a consecutive grouping of games played between two teams until one team wins a previously-established number of them. The winner of the tournament in Williamsport is a determined by results of a group of individual games.

Speaking of sports, Pete Rose is not subject to a "lifetime ban" from baseball. He is subject to an eternal ban from baseball. It it were truly a lifetime ban, Shoeless Joe Jackson would be represented with a plaque in Cooperstown, since he's dead!

Why does Thomas Sowell write for the "Jewish World Review" if he's not Jewish? (Yes, I'm making an assumption there.) Does the Jewish World Review purport to review the Jewish world, or the whole world from a Jewish perspective? And why was Martin Luther King named after Martin Luther even though his parents weren't Lutheran?

Thomas Sowell on the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, quoting Scotsman Adam Smith: “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

Instapundit takes note of this report from the Southern Poverty Law Center about racism in Hawaii. OK. Wait a minute. ...
Now that I'm over the the stunning realization that libertarian Glenn Reynolds can cite with approval a report from the ultra-left-wing SPLC, I now must confront the realization that I can do so, too.
I spent over two years in Hawaii while I was in the Army. Yeah, I can hear you saying 'Aww, poor baby.' Yeah, I'm no war hero. But listen to me. The animosity of native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, and Asians toward white and black Americans in our fiftieth state while I was there was scary. Especially toward those short-haired young men like me who were so obviously in the armed forces. Many of my friends were threatened when they dared stray from the tourist traps; some were beaten - one severely. I'm saddend to hear that it's still a problem.
I don't know why. I have some feelings, but they are nothing more than that.

From the folks who want to run health care: Stimulus checks went to Prison Inmates

Ellie Greenwich has died. You could always tell an Ellie Greenwich song from one from her contemporary, Carole King. It's summed up by how they used the work "love." Compare Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow to I Wanna Love Him So Bad.
And yes, I've noticed that this blog is starting to read like an obituary column.

Video of Hellen Keller and Anne Sullivan

News from Britain: Farmers issue warning after fatal cow attacks

Accused serial killer will have his private attorneys fees covered by taxpayers!

Something I just stumbled upon from National Geographic: Why Men Are Sloppy Kissers. The author's name is Christine Dell'Amore, which amuses me somehow. ... When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

Seven crimes you can commit in Illinois that carry a smaller penalty than downloading music without paying. No knock on Illinois, BTW. I'm sure you could make a similar list for each of the other 49.

Bill Whittle on political correctness.

Muhammed Ali's best and worst quotes.