Archive for the 'Civil Truth' Category

For those who haven’t seen this yet, the leading nominee of this year’s primary season for “over the top campaign video” – the infamous Demon Sheep ad.

Hard to get out of one’s brain once you’ve seen it. Though I wonder among other matters, if your target audience is fiscally conservative Republicans, does it really help your cause to portray your audience as sheep?

I don’t know how this will actually play out in the primary, but for Carly to actually make Babs appear sensible by comparison constitutes starting the general election with an own goal (should she manage to be the nominee).

Way to go, Carly. Pyrhhus would be proud.

Tom Campbell’s campaign came out with an obvious and unsubtle take-down which opened with

Carly Fiorina’s campaign is in full Mutton Meltdown mode, with an increasingly bizarre fixation on farm animals. She’s admitted missing a decade’s worth of opportunities to vote for budget reform, but instead of offering solutions, all she has for voters are dogs, cats and demon-sheep.

As for me, I’m supporting the other guy in the race who is the only actual conservative running, Chuck DeVore for Senate.

Thus in this political brawl between Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell – I’m “rooting for injuries”.

And Chuck did make a campaign promise that I trust he will keep, which you can find at the headquarters of the newly formed S.T.E.O.D.S.F.O.P.D., the Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep from our Political Discourse:

You go, Chuck!

Then the angel said…”Fear not: for behod I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” – Luke 2:10-11

On this Christmas eve, let us remember our soldiers who are living away from family and friends, many in far off places defending our freedom and freedom for the peoples of the nations in which they are serving.

Merry Christmas to Raven, Duncan, Bigfoot, and our family of readers!

-civil truth

Now that the Senate Democrats (and their fellow-traveler independents) have found their way to pass the current health care bill, we will have seen an historic event presaging the very end of the American experiment in a Constitutional federal republic comparable to the repeal of the 17th Amendment and other events that opened a hole in the Constitution to allow the growth of an all-powerful central government.

Here is what is unprecedented:

1) Both houses of Congress have voted that to annex from states and individuals responsibility for and control of the provision of health care to every American citizen. This is a breathtaking expansion of the Federal government’s claims over the citizens and individuals that will irreversibly alter the balance of power between the Federal government and the states or people, putting a nail into the coffin of limited central government. Having reached a critical mass of power, there will be no limit to future expansions of federal power.

In other words, Congress (in conjunction with the Executive Branch) have now laid claim to health care as its exclusive province.

And as history demonstrates time and time again, once the Federal government accrues and arrogates power unto itself, it does not willingly surrender it back to the people (or states). The flow of power almost always runs towards greater centralization at an accelerating rate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Damn the science: full speed ahead

According to a Fox News story today, the EPA is set as soon as tomorrow to “officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy”.

And since every living being is an emission source for CO2, coming soon, mandatory CO2 scubbers for every American man, women, and newborn? Or perhaps breathing taxes – and meters so that heavy breathers pay more?

Want to do those aerobic exercises? Or how about those erotic exercises, those night-time romps in the sheets? Be prepared to pay for those additional emissions.

Plus, the EPA will now have power to regulate every source of CO2 emissions, from power plants to industrial production to farming lawn mowers or backyard barbecues. Don’t you just love that enumerated powers section of the Constitution that gives an unelected Federal executive agency the power to control every waking moment of our lives?

The story also goes on to state this:

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

How’s that hope and change, evidence-based EPA working out for you Obama voters? There’s no deliberate attempt to use science manipulate the political process here, is there? Nothing here about politics trumping science, right? It’s only Republican administrations that we are allowed to (wrongly) levy such charges against, now – got it.

With its remarkable sense of timing and “sticking its fingers in its ear and humming louder” – the EPA looks determined to respond to Climategate and previous accusations of suppressing scientific dissent among its staff by simply ignoring the evidence and proceeding to ram the icebergs dead ahead, since these icebergs really aren’t there according to the climate global warming models.

Well the only sure thing from here is that this EPA announcement will only exacerbate CO2 emissions by lawyers, while killing millions of CO2 mitigating trees for legal briefs. And we all lose with that.

Responsible environmentalism takes another, perhaps fatal, blow in the face.

A dramatization of the representatives of the 13 colonies voting on a resolution to approve a declaration of independence from the British Crown

Excerpts from a letter from John Adams to his wife dated July 3, 1776, the evening before that fateful vote:

Read the rest of this entry »

Comparing Barack and President Sarkozy in their response to the Iran election fraud and subsequent coup d’état, were I the French parliament, I would pass a bill taking this:

and renaming it:

How far we have fallen…

[*Newsflash: Dave Letterman last night (6/10) claims he wasn't making jokes about statutory rape, merely jokes about rape...and he's totally down with that.
Excuse me, I need to throw up...
Commentary to follow in a separate post...]

The recent campaign of misogyny by men from the left to dehumanize and subjugate conservative women who speak out in public continues to spiral ever downward to new and unprecedented depths of depravity. In the past week, we have now reached the pit of public rape fantasies.

But first, let’s go back to August 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hillary Clinton made a guest appearance on This Week this past Sunday. (H/T James Taranto)

Her interview with host George Stephanopoulos gave rise to this amusing exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: A year ago, you bowed out of the presidential campaign, very graceful speech…. You know, it was a bitter campaign. And I’m just wondering: How did President Obama convince you to come on his team?

CLINTON: …he was quite persistent and very persuasive. And, you know, ultimately, it came down to my feeling that, number one, when your president asks you to do something for your country, you really need a good reason not to do it.

Number two, if I had won and I had asked him to please help me serve our country, I would have hoped he would say yes.

And, finally, I looked around our world and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

If you say so, Madame Secretary. But may I commend to you the First Law of Holes:

When you’re in one, stop digging!

Many articles have been written concerning Obama’s speech in Cairo in the past day since the speech was delivered, including some very insightful editorial commentary. Unfortunately, these interpretations analyses have fallen into the same trap that dominates the interactions of the U.S. and the West with the Arab world.

That trap is almost all Western attempts to interpret our relations with the Arab world are based solely upon the English language portion of our interactions. Unfortunately, this is fatally incomplete, as this only encompasses what Western speakers say in our half of the conversation to our people and what Arab speakers want us to hear of their half of the conversation.

What is missing is the other half: what the Arab speakers are saying in their language to their people, and what our Arab audience is actually hearing of our portion of the conversation. And whether what the leaders are saying (in Arabic) is the same text as what their peoples are being told is being said.

Without knowing what is said in both languages, we cannot know whether what we say is what our audience in hearing – and vice versa. And more critically, we need to know whether the two are substantially different – and if so whether this difference is a mistranslation (in which case we need to correct the translation) or more seriously whether the difference is intentional – to mislead or misdirect the English-speaking and/or Arabic speaking audiences.

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The Battle of Midway

Skandenberg at RedState today narrates the fateful events that reversed the course of the war in the Pacific. Excerpts follow:

When early June rolls around each year, June 6th is accorded a great deal of reverence for the well-known events of the Normandy landings of 1944. On the decadal anniversary years, there are major ceremonies and there is extensive news coverage. Sadly, an equally (at least) important anniversary on June 4th goes largely neglected. On June 4th 1942, an outnumbered American fleet won a staggering upset victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the waters near Midway Island. This battle was arguably the single most important military action by the United States during the entire 20th century. However, Midway remains largely forgotten and uncelebrated…

With Midway seized by surprise, barely more than 1000 miles from Pearl Harbor, the American fleet would be forced to sail forth to contest the seizure. The Japanese would pounce on the outnumbered Americans, destroy the remaining American aircraft carriers, and force the end of the war with Japan’s conquests intact and recognized as permanent.

Unfortunately for Admiral Yamamoto, his calculations were off in two important ways. First, the Yorktown had not in fact been sunk [in the Battle of the Coral Sea]… Second, Yamamoto and the Japanese High Command were still unaware that their naval codes had been cracked by American Naval Intelligence. Fully aware of the Japanese plans, the Americans prepared to turn the tables and set a trap for the Japanese.

Just as the [Japanese] order to launch the airstrike had been given, suddenly and without warning the dive-bombers from the Enterprise and Yorktown appeared on the scene. The earlier fighting had exhausted the Japanese combat air patrol, and the fighter planes had landed and been cleared below decks to free up the flight decks for the airstrike. The American planes were able to attack without opposition, and the results were catastrophic.

In a span of less than five minutes, the Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were all hit by multiple bombs. As the bombs burst among the waiting Japanese aircraft, fuel and ordinance began to explode in a chain reaction. As the fires spread, the carelessly stacked ordinance in the hangar decks also began to detonate. Within minutes, the three great ships were burning wrecks. In just a few astonishing minutes, a handful of planes and men had devastated the Japanese fleet and ended any notion of Japan winning the war at Midway.

Midway was a great victory, but a defensive one. The Japanese had been decisively beaten, but at the height of their tide. Midway assured that Japan would not win the war; the only hope for Japan from that point would be to try to make the coming American counter-offensive so costly that Americans would lose heart and seek to negotiate some reasonable peace with Japan rather than fight onward to complete victory…

Henceforth, the initiative passed (permanently) to the Americans. By August, the first American offensive in the Pacific got underway – down in the South Pacific, in the Solomon Islands…

It’s worth reading the whole post at RedState, in honor of the many pilots and others who died.