News beat
I suppose I should know better than to take a week away from the news. While I was busy pretending that getting a year older wasn’t such a bad thing, all sorts of entertaining events appeared on the television screen, most of them having nothing to do with fiction and everything to do with fantasy.
For example, Senator Harry Reid says the "Mission Accomplished” sign above President Bush as he landed on the Abraham Lincoln in 2003 was, after all, accurate, and we should have brought the troops home that day, if not sooner. But, apparently, simultaneously, he thinks that our troops are -- and ever shall be -- failures in Iraq. He reinforces this improbability in his own mind by skipping those pesky briefing meetings with the field commander just recently -- and unanimously, I might add -- put in charge of Iraq. But then, all other Democrats in Congress -- save Senator Levin -- skipped the same briefings.
The trouble is, most news sources seem to be eager to support Reid in his anti-troop, irresponsible nonsense. They report only explosions and deaths, without once mentioning the numbers of places which, once havens for terrorists, are now free and functioning.
Roughly one-third of the country is now functioning freely. Najaf, once a hot spot for al Qaeda (those guys the left keep saying are not and never have been in Iraq, even though members of al Qaeda Iraq keep explosively insisting they exist) is now a functioning district with a working infrastructure and a crime rate lower than most Canadian provinces. Maysan Province is now repopulated and under the control of the Marsh Arabs Saddam tried to kill off. And many of the Iraqi people have been saying for months, now, that things have improved greatly even in some of Baghdad’s toughest districts. Still, Reid and the media beg us to write the entire of the Iraqi peoples off as not worth the effort. As blogger Mohammed at Iraq the Model said, “We’re not asking the media and the stop-the-war crowd to carry arms and shoot the terrorists; we just want them to stop shooting at us.”
That’s probably too much to ask of some on the left, though.
And, speaking of things left, I was also not aware until this Monday that Cheryl Crow announced we only need one square of toilet tissue per visit to the throne. I have only one thing to say to that: eww. I know I’ve tackled issues regarding tissues before. In fact, in one of my earliest columns I pointed out that it matters which way one puts the roll on the spool, especially if one has cats. Having it come over the top and unfurl down the front means having your cat redecorate the house in a Charmin fashion. But this thing about rationing wipes I hadn’t considered. My mother had a few ideas to offer the green-obsessed Ms. Crow: ancient Romans shared a public wet sponge on a stick; Arabs use the bare left hand; campers use leaves; farmers around here just a couple of generations ago used corn cobs or catalog pages. Is Ms. Crow volunteering to revive any of these methods in this country? Has she never heard of recycled paper products? Or, was she being tongue in... no, let’s not go there.
In Lewiston, Maine, the police are protecting the children from the dread ham steak of doom. They’re investigating a hate crime, in which a junior high school student left a ham steak on the lunch table for a classmate. Nothing to see here, just islamic radicals having dhimmis rewrite the law so that food is now illegal at lunch tables.
I also missed some good news. In Pakistan, in Morocco, in Iran, in Iraqi provinces, in Turkey, and in about a dozen other places, people have held large protests against terrorism and terrorists -- specifically, against islamic terrorists. In Pakistan, in fact, they stood up against the resurgent Taleban. Not only did they stop protesters from destroying a cleric’s home and family, the people of another town came out in droves to defend their own, beating back a Taleban mob which aimed to kill a community’s resident transvestites. Some folks have, it seems, been pushed too far. Would that some Westerners could see more of this true moral courage.
Would that a few more of our own could show some of it.
Suggested further reading:
Malkin: NY Post Hammers Reid.
So does Joe Lieberman.
And don't forget to check out pretty much everything posted at Gateway Pundit. (He's probably the best source for useful international news.)
For example, Senator Harry Reid says the "Mission Accomplished” sign above President Bush as he landed on the Abraham Lincoln in 2003 was, after all, accurate, and we should have brought the troops home that day, if not sooner. But, apparently, simultaneously, he thinks that our troops are -- and ever shall be -- failures in Iraq. He reinforces this improbability in his own mind by skipping those pesky briefing meetings with the field commander just recently -- and unanimously, I might add -- put in charge of Iraq. But then, all other Democrats in Congress -- save Senator Levin -- skipped the same briefings.
The trouble is, most news sources seem to be eager to support Reid in his anti-troop, irresponsible nonsense. They report only explosions and deaths, without once mentioning the numbers of places which, once havens for terrorists, are now free and functioning.
Roughly one-third of the country is now functioning freely. Najaf, once a hot spot for al Qaeda (those guys the left keep saying are not and never have been in Iraq, even though members of al Qaeda Iraq keep explosively insisting they exist) is now a functioning district with a working infrastructure and a crime rate lower than most Canadian provinces. Maysan Province is now repopulated and under the control of the Marsh Arabs Saddam tried to kill off. And many of the Iraqi people have been saying for months, now, that things have improved greatly even in some of Baghdad’s toughest districts. Still, Reid and the media beg us to write the entire of the Iraqi peoples off as not worth the effort. As blogger Mohammed at Iraq the Model said, “We’re not asking the media and the stop-the-war crowd to carry arms and shoot the terrorists; we just want them to stop shooting at us.”
That’s probably too much to ask of some on the left, though.
And, speaking of things left, I was also not aware until this Monday that Cheryl Crow announced we only need one square of toilet tissue per visit to the throne. I have only one thing to say to that: eww. I know I’ve tackled issues regarding tissues before. In fact, in one of my earliest columns I pointed out that it matters which way one puts the roll on the spool, especially if one has cats. Having it come over the top and unfurl down the front means having your cat redecorate the house in a Charmin fashion. But this thing about rationing wipes I hadn’t considered. My mother had a few ideas to offer the green-obsessed Ms. Crow: ancient Romans shared a public wet sponge on a stick; Arabs use the bare left hand; campers use leaves; farmers around here just a couple of generations ago used corn cobs or catalog pages. Is Ms. Crow volunteering to revive any of these methods in this country? Has she never heard of recycled paper products? Or, was she being tongue in... no, let’s not go there.
In Lewiston, Maine, the police are protecting the children from the dread ham steak of doom. They’re investigating a hate crime, in which a junior high school student left a ham steak on the lunch table for a classmate. Nothing to see here, just islamic radicals having dhimmis rewrite the law so that food is now illegal at lunch tables.
I also missed some good news. In Pakistan, in Morocco, in Iran, in Iraqi provinces, in Turkey, and in about a dozen other places, people have held large protests against terrorism and terrorists -- specifically, against islamic terrorists. In Pakistan, in fact, they stood up against the resurgent Taleban. Not only did they stop protesters from destroying a cleric’s home and family, the people of another town came out in droves to defend their own, beating back a Taleban mob which aimed to kill a community’s resident transvestites. Some folks have, it seems, been pushed too far. Would that some Westerners could see more of this true moral courage.
Would that a few more of our own could show some of it.
Suggested further reading:
Malkin: NY Post Hammers Reid.
So does Joe Lieberman.
And don't forget to check out pretty much everything posted at Gateway Pundit. (He's probably the best source for useful international news.)
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