Barack Hussein Osama . . . Er, Obama's Stupid Name

Allahpundit is afraid that some of us on the right will continue to 'very stupidly' refer to Barack Hussein Osama's middle name . . . well I gotta tell ya, it is just very hard to get around the most unfortunate name held by a presidential candidate ever. I mean, his name is just one letter off from containing the names of America's two greatest enemies since the end of the Cold War. That is some weird karma going on right there.

Just ask Ted Kennedy how hard it is to wrap your brain around that name - he kept referring to Barack as 'Osama' just like Mitt Romney did. Maybe it's just that peculiar Massachussetts accent. Or the chow-dah.

B.O. should have changed his name to something a bit less ethnic and more anglo-american, like say . . . John Wilkes Booth, perhaps. Osama Obama could have then avoided this embarrassing misuse of the race card: “But I have no doubt that there will be some of that, trying to make me into this foreign, you know, odd clearly black - person. And to scare people.”

Um . . . Osama bin Laden isn't black, really, but don't let that get in the way of a great narrative.

Quote Of The Day

'Speaking at the Thompson Center Arms in Rochester, NH, the Republican senator from Arizona [John McCain] told workers: “I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products.”'

Now that is the kind of pandering I can get behind.

(h/t Don Surber via Drudge)

D.B. Cooper Found?

Okay, we aren't supposed to root for the crook, but the D.B. Cooper story is just so cool . . . it's like pulling for Hannibal Lector at the end of Silence of the Lambs (admittedly an extreme example).

In 1971 D.B. Cooper (not his real name) grabbed a $200,000 ransom and stepped off the back of a 727 over the Cascades in Washington state and disappeared into history. Yes, he had a parachute.

HotAir points to a UPI article with this claim:

In an upcoming article, Lyle Christiansen, 77, claims his late brother, Kenneth, was able to elude federal authorities after committing the sensational crime 36 years ago, The Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune said Wednesday.

I hope it isn't true - this is a much better story if it remains unsolved.

Israel Kills Two Child Terrorists

. . . but that is not how the press is reporting it. Instead, we get headlines like this: Palestinian Children Killed In Gaza, as it was reported by Al-Jazeera. So the press, in its usual anti-Israeli bias, tries to make it seem like two innocent babes were licking ice creams cones when Israelis just suddenly attacked.

Far from being innocent children, according to Xinhua, the two boys, aged 12 and 13, were being used as child soldiers to fire rockets against Israel:

GAZA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Two Palestinian children were killed on Wednesday night during an Israeli army artillery shelling on northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, paramedics and witnesses said.

The witnesses said the two children tried to pull back a rocket launcher from an open area in the outskirts of the town, adding they suddenly heard a huge explosion in the area.

Only later in the report do we find that, surprise, the Israelis struck in response to a Palestinian rocket attack that started the whole bloody affair. Of course it is the Palestinian cult of terrorism that is responsible for this, but the press yet again irresponsibly covers for them, and bends over backwards to blame Israel for defending itself.

One can only wonder if the Palestinians didn't send these children out to die on purpose just to create these headlines.

Did Bob Kerrey Commit Hsuicide Too?

Well, you have to wonder now why he isn't running for senate:

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Democrat Bob Kerrey said Wednesday that he won't enter the race to replace retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel.

The former senator and governor cited family and unfinished plans at New School University, where he is president, in his decision not to run for the Republican Hagel's seat.

But, "I got much closer to saying yes than I thought I would," said Kerrey, 64.

Kerrey personally brought Norman Hsu in to serve on the board of the New School when Kerrey was president there. His relationship with Hsu was a personal one, in addition to a financial one, and this was bound to raise embarrassing questions for Kerrey in his senate race, as well as raising the visibility of the Hsu issue on the national stage as well.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is now in a great position to fill this senate seat with a real Republican, now that both Chuck Hagel and John Kerrey are out of the way.

Harry Reid Blames Cali Fires On, You Guessed It, Global Warming

. . . and then he denies he said it, mere moments later.

First he said this:

As you know, one reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming. One reason the Colorado Basin is going dry is because of global warming.

Then this, several questions later:

Question: Senator, on the California fires, you said that the reason the fires are burning in California is global warming?

Reid: No. Here's what I - I didn't say the reason the fires were burning in Southern California was global warming...

Listed to the Q & A with reporters and see for yourself if Harry Reid has not lost his mind.

(h/t Duane Patterson)

Crooks And Liars Screws The Pooch

The eponymously-named Crooks and Liars blog is having a terrible week. They were caught living up to their liars moniker by whitewashing Pete Stark's offensive comments from last Tuesday, and then pretended to wonder why the right was so upset with him. They claimed a 'coding error' was responsible for the mistake (I was thinking they would go for the 'its satire' angle, but they proved to be more creative in their dissembling). They also posted a poll asking whether Stark should apologize which went about 82% against them, stating that Stark should indeed apologize, and then laughably claimed that Charles Johnson instructed his minions to game the poll. A perusal of the LGF posts on the matter shows he clearly did no such thing.

Ever fearful of comments that might intrude upon their comfortable liberal bubble, they scrubbed away any hint that anyone in America could ever disagree with them, and replaced such comments with snotty editorials, and then closed the comments sections in the posts about Stark's comments and Johnson 'manipulating' the poll.

Well done John Amato. Lie, lie about the lie, send criticisms down the memory hole, and then fail to mention that, oops, Stark apologized for his remarks you 'modified' in order to claim they were not offensive. It says everything about your integrity and your grasp of basic blog ethics.

Pete Stark Does The Right Thing

Rep. Pete Stark needs to be applauded for apologizing for his remarks about President Bush sending troops to Iraq to have their "heads blown off for the president's amusement." He initially dug in and, with nutroots support, refused to back down. But sanity prevailed, and Stark did the right thing. He should be rewarded for turning toward civility, and not castigated for his intemperate remarks. The right should not engage in smug triumphalism here: this should instead be a 'teachable moment' for leftists everywhere instructing them that the American people respect and value dissent, but draw the line at unreasoned hatred. Accusing the President of sending troops to their death for his own amusement is indeed hate, Stark has realized that, and has retreated from his malignant opinion.

His extremist followers need a good lesson in decency, and Stark should be encouraged to set a good example.

Some Call It Islamo-fascism

Christopher Hitchens certainly does:

Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?

I think yes. The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

How Dumb Would You Have To Be To Fall For This?

TOKYO, Oct. 19 — On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Show Urban Camouflage Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

Somehow, I think conceal-carry would be a better solution than this for preventing crime.

(h/t Never Yet Melted)

How World War IV Comes About

Fareed Zakaria is quite possibly the most overrated pundit in the country. His articles for Newsweek are masterpieces of the obvious, with a grasp of foreign affairs about as superficial as Madeleine Albright's (that is, about as deep as a wading pool).

Even when he actually has a handle on the facts, he fails to come up with any meaningful conclusions:

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

This is definitely pre-911 thinking at work here, a failure to recognize that we live in an age of asymmetrical and political warfare, where the size and strength of a traditional military doesn't mean nearly as much as it did during the Cold War.

Here is a quite plausible World War IV scenario for the unimaginative Zakaria: Iran launches a nuclear attack upon Israel on the very first day it is able to do so, Israel retaliates. The Arab nations and the larger Middle East line up to attack Israel, and its puppetmaster the United States. Terrorist attacks erupt against innocents throughout Europe, causing our NATO allies to stand up with us. Pakistan threatens to use its nuclear arsenal in defense of Islam . . . and so it goes.

That, Fareed Zakaria, is the planet we live on, and it didn't take much effort to come up with that scenrio.

In fact, wow, let's come up with some variants! Russia takes sides with Iran, as does China. China uses this conflict as cover to take Taiwan. Iran uses the conflict as cover to take Bahrain. Hugo Chavez decides to get involved and cuts off oil supplies. India decides that nuclear cooperations with the U.S. isn't such a bad idea after all. Turkey decides it is a great time to teach the Kurds a lesson. The world polarizes, and dimwits like Zakaria scratch their heads and wonder how it all came to be.

Violence Down 70% In Iraq

Drudge linked to a Reuters article detailing a 70% drop in violence in Iraq since the Surge came up to speed at the end of last June.

There are still pockets of violence in the country, and the article points to a localized rise of violence in Nineveh province, which is where much of al-Qaeda fled to after being beaten to pulp in the Surge.

The temptation here is to credit the Surge and General Petraeus for this success but, not to take anything away from them, the real slogging grunt work of taking on al-Qaeda has been going on ever since the fall of Baghdad, and we are now seeing the lagging results of those efforts. Today's success stories - and they are pouring in daily from Iraq now - were made possible during those times when things didn't look quite as bright.

There were a lot of us who were saying all along that things were not nearly as grim in Iraq as the press tried to portray it, and we can pat ourselves on the backs now for hanging in there and not giving up. It is the leftists who are, once again, on the wrong side of history.

Hey Hillary, I guess you can stop 'suspending your disbelief' now.

Thank You, Democrats

The Democratic Party 'leadership' pushed a bill last week condemning the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, which infuriated our Turkish allies. This increased tension was one cause of recent worldwide oil price hikes, as doubts about Turkish willingness to help stabilize Iraq grew.

These higher oil prices now "help Iran mitigate the effects of any new sanctions" according to a New York Times article on the resignation of Iran's 'moderate' nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.

The Iranian economy is in tatters, and high oil prices are the only thing sustaining it, as well as sustaining the mullahs nuclear ambitions. Irresponsible and short-sighted political stunts like those attempted by the Democrats last week are godsends to these tyrants, but the Dems are blissfully unaware of the implications of these actions. In their myopia, they think that only Bush will pay the price, and they don't care about the collateral damage suffered by others in the process. This is the same myopia that drives the anti-war movement: anything to punish or embarrass Bush and cause our defeat, but who cares if it results in a genocide of Iraqi innocents?

Now the Dems' purposely ill-timed Armenian genocide bill is only one small factor in worldwide oil prices, and alone is not determinative of the recent rises. You cannot say it will be a major cause of the Iranians achieving their nuclear ambitions, which seems assured at this point. Small as it was however, it was a factor in the mix. It is yet another drop in the steady drip of division and disaffection that keeps our nation disunited, weakens our resolve, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

It is time for Democrats to pay heed to the unintended/intended consequences of their 'get Bush' policies, and realize that ultimately it is the American people that pay the price.

Betty Casey Wins Limbaugh Smear Letter Auction

Betty B. Casey is the winner of the Limbaugh Smear Letter auction on eBay, which ended with a $2.1 million winning bid.

Betty B. Casey is a noted philanthropist and supporter of the arts, particularly the Washington Opera, and donated prime real estate to the Salvation Army when objections to a planned mayoral mansion for D.C. killed the plan. She has also donated $6,900 to Barack Obama's campaign, as well as to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Thank you Betty for donating to this worthy cause, and poking these silly politicians in the eye.

Do Awards Mean A Damn Thing Anymore?

According to Slate.com Chris Matthews is about to receive some prestigious award I've never heard of called the Reeves Award for, get this:

"excellence in writing or speaking about Churchill's life and times, or for applying his precepts and values to contemporary issues among the English-Speaking Peoples," according to the affair's invitation.

Well sure this makes about as much sense as giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Yassir Arafat, the man who perfected the suicide bomb vest (but oddly and sadly never tested the prototype himself). After all, it was Chris Matthews who wrote Jimmy Carter's notorious 'malaise speech' which was of course downright Churchillian in placing the blame for America's failed leadership squarely where it belongs: on the American people themselves.

Jack Shafer gushes a little bit here about Matthews:

Legendary. Supporter of democracy. Learned reporter. Distinguished. Prolific. All of these words may capture Matthews' character, but not as well as do flighty, braying, shameless, and opportunistic. It's a shame that nobody gives a Sammy Glick Award. Matthews would be a cinch.

One wonders why they awarded it to Matthews - after all, Rosie O'Donnell has lots of time on her hands these days and, wow, have you read any of her haiku? Churchillian doesn't begin to describe them.

Limbaugh Smear Letter at $851,000

I was surprised when it passed $100,000 . . . with 20 more hours to go on the eBay auction of the letter from Harry Reid and 40 other senators asking Clear Channel to condemn Rush Limbaugh, can a cool million be next?

Turning the cheap politics of personal destruction into a huge windfall for a needy charity.

Only in America.

Is Pelosi Working On Impeaching Bush?

God I hope so, that would be monumentally dumb politics for the gang that can't shoot straight:

Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-Culver City) spoke in front of an audience of some 150 activists from various LA antiwar organizations at an Iraq Town Hall meeting in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 14th hosted by California Assembly Majority leader Karen Bass and the ‘47th Assembly District People’s Council’ at Hamilton High School.

The audience responded angrily when Watson responded to a call for the impeachment of President Bush by saying, “We simply don’t have the votes.” After groans and boos and at least one cry of “At least do something!”, Watson went on to say, “Right now, Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi is working very quietly and very effectively, behind the scenes. "We need 285 votes to uphold an impeachment, and so far we have 260 members telling us they support impeachment.”

Sounds like nothing more than a lame attempt to placate the petulant adolescent base of the Democratic Party.

Via Jeff Goldstein.

Vote For Giuliani, It's The Moral Thing To Do

If you are pro-life, you can do no better than Rudy Giuliani as your candidate for president.

Consider that even if James Dobson himself were elected president, he could not sign legislation outlawing abortion - it would simply run aground on the Roe v. Wade precedent. All he could hope to do is appoint Supreme Court justices that adhere to a strict constructionist philosophy of constitutional interpretation, that might be able one day to overturn Roe. You cannot impose an anti-abortion litmus test on judicial nominees, because no nominee will ever state, in advance, that they will vote to overturn abortion precedents.

Rudy Giuliani has promised to do just that, appoint justices who believe in strict constructionism in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Neither Mitt Romney nor Fred Thomspon could promise to do more for the pro-life view of things.

Consider what would happen if the evangelicals listened to James Dobson's horrible advice and considered voting for an independent candidate who, as I have just pointed out, can do no more for the pro-life movement than Giuliani has already promised to do. They will elect Hillary Clinton, and probably ensure that she appoints one or two SCOTUS justices within the first two years of her administration. Overturning Roe v. Wade will be put off for another generation at least, and if the sheer number of abortions is an ethical concern for you, ask yourself if you can sleep well knowing that your wasted vote ensured that millions more unborn human beings were murdered because you helped elect Hillary Clinton.

Not to mention that evangelicals will never be forgiven by the rest of the Republican Party for putting Hillary into the White House. You want all of that on your head? Then go ahead and pay heed to Dobson's destructive and extremely short-sighted advice. But don't say you weren't warned.

JAMA On MRSA

A 17-year-old high school student died from a new 'superbug', causing Beford County, Virginia to sanitize all 21 of its school buildings.

This superbug called MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, has also been a big topic in the news today because of an article in JAMA just released today (but embargoed - sorry, no link) stating that "based on 8,987 observed cases of MRSA and 1,598 in-hospital deaths among patients with MRSA, we estimate that 94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases."

I have a friend who nearly died from MRSA, was uninsured, and had multiple operations to control the infection and fix damage to his hand, all told costing the State of Illinois over one million dollars. How did he get MRSA? He didn't wash his hands. Ever. MRSA is extremely preventable, even in the hospital where it is of course most commonly found, by simple hygiene.

There is nothing so 'super' about this bug that a little soap and common sense can't take care of.

Big Hitter, The Lama

In honor of Bush meeting the Dalai Lama today, I present you with the immortal commentary of Carl Spackler: