Conservative Donnybrook

Apparently, there is a memorial in the works on the site of the Flight 93 crash from 9-11. Unfortunately, the designers have opted to pay tribute to Islam with a crescent-shaped memorial. Such a memorial would pervert the memories of those brave men and women who fought to save other innocent lives from the murderous intentions of the Islamic jihadists who hijacked flight 93.

There is a design meeting scheduled for August 2 in Somerset which is going to be protested. Conservatives are not much for protesting, that is certain, but this is a worthy cause. These designers should be made to revere the honor and memory of those who fought to save innocent life, not those who sought death and destruction in the first place. If you are in the neighborhood or have thousands of dollars to afford the gasoline to get there, Conservative Donnybrook encourages one and all to protest this abomination.

h/t Nice Deb

Barack Obama has admirers throughout the world. It is instructive to examine from where his support stems.

The latest Obama devotee is none other than Fidel Castro, who finds him to be “the most progressive of all the candidates.”

Prior to Castro’s endorsement, Obama has enjoyed the support of William Ayres, an unrepentant former domestic terrorist who was a member of the Weather Underground Organization, which sought the overthrow of the United States government.

Obama is endorsed by the leaders of FARC: “In a Feb. 28 letter, FARC chieftain Raul Reyes cheerily reported to his inner circle that he met “two gringos” who assured him “the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support ‘Plan Colombia’ nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement).”

Obama is friendly with the terrorist group, HAMAS:

One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed today that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.

Robert Malley told The Times he had regularly been in contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza but is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.

“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.

But Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly, saying: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”

Daniel Ortega likes the cut of Obama’s jib. Hugo Chavez has endorsed anyone but McCain, which is a backdoor endorsement for Obama.

This post details the motley assortment of tyrants, dictators, and terrorists which find an Obama administration in  their best interests.

The friend of my enemy…

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. Or so the saying goes.

Obama slithered out of the grasp of his first spiritual advisor turning up as a confirmed racist. According to Obama, he missed every inflammatory, racist rant that the “Reverend” Wright ever delivered from the pulpit of his South Side church. Oprah didn’t miss it, but Obama did…and continued to attend. Now we hear that one of his other two spiritual advisors, Fr. Michael Pfleger, is also a confirmed reverse-racist. He’s a white guy who hates whitey.

In a recent homily, Fr. Pfleger said of Hillary Clinton, “I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white, and this is mine! I just got to get up and step into the plate. And then out of nowhere came, hey, I’m Barack Obama. She said, oh, damn! Where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!” Not only did he express his own racist views, but he also attributed racism to Hillary Clinton.

This is one of the three men who Barack Obama has stated are his spiritual advisors. One might be forgiven for thinking two down, one to go, but that would be a very natural reaction. One might believe (implausibly) that Obama did not sign onto Wright’s repeated racist rants, but now there is a second person, involved with the Obama campaign and identified as a spiritual advisor to Barack, so what is one to think?

I will spell it out for one and all.

Barack Obama is a dyed-in-the-wool anti-white racist. All of his associates point to that conclusion. If I assocaited only with KKK members, it would be only nature to assume I am a racist, there should be no difference with Barack Obama. He associates and extols the virtues of anti-white racists. He is clearly racist. This is not a man who deserves the White House – it would probably be offensive for him to live in a house so named.

Without further ado…Father Phleger in his role as pulpit pounder preacher at Trinity Church:

Did he run a marathon before he preached? He seems all out of breath.

Further, Fr. Phleger defends “Rev.” Wright:

As I mentioned in a recent post, my thinking has been set in a certain direction. A new report by the CIA meshes with my latest thinking and causes me to take another look at our intelligence gathering organ. As we have, and our more paleo-inclined readers, have been especially prone to point out, the CIA blew it in their claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Whether they actually blew it, or we telegraphed our entrance into Iraq to allow the nation to hide the evidence is a question we will never have the answer to. Regardless of whether they got it right or wrong, their reputation was tarnished as a result. And, the anti-American crowd on the Left and Right have excoriated Bush for its intelligence failures.

With that in mind, one would expect the intelligence organs of America to tread lightly and make doubly sure of their facts. In light of this assumption, the latest report coming out of Iraq is encouraging. It seems that we are beating back the forces of Islamic jihad and changing the hearts and minds of those whose future are directly affected by the outcome. What is especially encouraging is the CIA’s forthrightness about the foe we are fighting. They are quite open about the idea that America’s war is against Islamic jihad – and not to encourage Democracy or any such nebulous objective.

Michael Hayden, said recently that our efforts in the Middle East had netted “[n]ear strategic defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for Al-Qaeda globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.”

It is that last sentence which gives me hope: the fact that the CIA sees this as an ideological struggle. “Hayden said bin Laden is also losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely lost his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit new members.”

It is encouraging to this commentator that contrary to the administration’s protestations that Islam is a religion of peace (which is patently false), the CIA sees that Islamic jihad is the threat. The CIA views the threat as a thing which the winning of the “hearts and minds” of people will have an effect. As long as they keep that in the foremost of their minds, there is hope that our recent successes will be multiplied to eventual (and probably near) victory.

Add in the fact that stories report that the Iraqi army is increasingly capable and even the anti-American Left and Right will realize their dream of coming home soon.

According to the New York Post, Susan Sarandon says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, “It’s a critical time, but I have faith in the American people.”

It appears that hockey will be coming to Wrigley Field in January.  Outdoor hockey is gaining steam!  See AWB’s post for more old time hockey nostalgia.

The Nepali people have thrown off the chains of monarchical government and declared themselves a republic!  The monarchy ruled for the past 239 years.  Yet there wolves in the shadows, communist wolves. 

Maoist rebels fighting the monarchy for a socialist/communist state agreed to lay down arms and join the provisional government to oust King Gyanendra from his throne.  The former rebels are more transparent than they believe.  Soon after the declaration of the republic, the communists announced that 20,000 youth volunteers were converging on the city to “help control celebrations.”  These youth “volunteers” are essentially ruthless soldiers well known for their brutality.  Further cause for concern follows from successive days of bombings in the Nepali capital of Katmandu in which two civilians were wounded.  The bombings appeared to be aimed at pro-democracy demonstrators and activists.

The scene in this south Asian nation is much like the one that developed in February, 1917 in Czarist Russia.  There a provisional republic was created after deposing Czar Nicholas II.  Soon after seeking power, pro-democracy forces freed imprisoned and exiled Bolsheviks in the hope that they would join their cause.  Instead, the Bolsheviks seized power, imprisioned the pro-democracy officials and embarked on a nearly 75 year reign of terror and murder.  Similarities between the Russian Revolution and the current Nepali situation abound.  And dreadfully, as in Russia, Nepali communists seem poised to grab power.

Making the situation worse, if not possible in the first instance, is Nepal’s location.  Red China sits directly to the north of this small and agrarian nation.  Communist forces have and will continue to receive arms and funding from their ideological neighbor.  It appears the fate of Nepal is sealed, at least for the foreseeable future.  Nepal will be communist soon.

I originally thought to call this post the “threat of anti-nationalism” which may be closer to the truth. I have recently read a pair of essays which have launched my thinking in a certain direction. On top of that come two stories out of Europe which only confirm everything written in those two essays.

The first essay was written by Victor Davis Hanson and concerns the value of cultural memory. In that essay, Hanson argues that in ignorance of the events and circumstances which made America great we risk the likelihood that we, as a people, will attribute to ourselves the greatness of America. In reality, we stand on the shoulders of the giants who went before us and provided the heritage which we now enjoy. To some extent this is what I was writing about in my previous post in attributing the great freedoms which we still enjoy to the efforts of our American servicemen and women. To be sure, they are one branch of our freedoms. It may also be attributed to the statesmen who fashioned a constitution under which our freedoms are (theoretically) secured (but which are slowly being eroded under the guise of a living constitution).

The other essay, which also made its way into my latest post, was written by Andrew McCarthy and made the case that our fight is against Islamic jihad. Or rather, the Islamic jihad has targeted America and we fail to respond only at risk to our existence.

Two articles from the Brussels Journal underscore these two essays and bring those themes into stark light. It turns out Europe is already struggling with these issues and perhaps even finds itself attempting to recover. That is, if they have enough self-awareness to struggle at all.

In the first article, a Christian in Algeria has been arrested for carrying Bibles in her handbag. The prosecutor in her case asked for three years imprisonment for such an offense. To the credit of France and the United States, we have voiced concern over the treatment of this woman in her efforts to practice her religion. Nonetheless, the spokeswoman for France locates the authority for any sort of clemency in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights – a weak appeal if ever there was one. Many of our commentors point to our posts as being beholden to a faith in the deity of the State, but it is stories like these which reveal the sure difference between our stances and that of dyed in the wool Statists. This story is alarming not least of which is because France’s spokeswoman implies that if the population of Christians in Algeria were greater than one percent, they might pose a threat to the dominant religion (Islam) and therefore the offense of carrying Bibles might be rightly punishable. Meanwhile, France itself continues to shed any pretense at Christianity and moves steadily toward a future of sharia rule.

The second article involves our closest ally, which is committing suicide. Apparently, it is an act of racism to display the flag of England in England. Indeed, according to authorities it might offend immigrants. It is clear that England has lost any sense of cultural memory and the forces of multiculturalism are selling the country out. While England itself loses it identity, its colonies – Wales, Ireland and Scotland – are beginning to secure representation in Parliament. It is indeed fortuitous that the American colony parted ways in 1776 as the British Empire is contemplating self-immolation on the pyre of European Union, with its reckless multiculturalism.

On the bright side, America is not so far down the road as our European counterparts and there is hopefully time left to stem the tide. It is incumbent upon Americans to recognize the danger that unlimited immigration poses to this country. As France and England lose its cultural identity (and really, France? which is so fierce about protecting Frenchness?), the United States should learn from their demise and secure against it. We need to understand that there is great risk in importing large numbers of Muslims who seek to be ruled according to Koran. As McCarthy writes, Islam is not a religion of peace and jihad is not an internal struggle. Ibn Warraq, one of Islam’s greatest scholars and expositors states it quite succinctly:

Jihad is jihad…. There is no such thing as commerce, industry and science in jihad. This is calling things . . . other than by [their] own name. If God . . . says, “Do jihad,” it means do jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades and with the missile. This is jihad. Jihad against God’s enemies for God’s cause and his word.

Let us not be duped into thinking otherwise. America would benefit from paying attention to her heritage and finding value in it. Its heritage, its history, and its habits have made America the greatest nation on earth. Those values are now under attack and there are precious few who rise to defend them. Our children no longer have a sense of history from which to respond. It is up to those of us whose education still retained some rudiment of the American tradition to stand up and say, “No more.” We should not tolerate the dismantling of our inheritance. It is to those whose institutional memory still encompasses the great patriots who told King George that his abuses of our liberties would not stand and then acted upon that statement to stand fast in the face of the multicultural hordes who would sell our inheritance for a pittance.

Liberty is a fragile thing, which Europe demonstrates is too easily squandered. Let us take note of Europe’s demise and guard against such an eventuality here.

On this Memorial Day, Conservative Donnybrook would like to thank the men and women of our armed forces for the valiant service and sacrifices they have made on behalf of their country and fellow citizens. Without these exemplary citizens, we would not enjoy the freedoms and advantages that come from being born in the United States of America. It is because of their efforts that we can unabashedly say that we live in the greatest nation ever to grace this earth.

On this date, our nation is engaged in a life-and-death struggle against Islamic jihad. Our armed forces are on the front lines pushing back the efforts of these religious extremists who would take the hard-fought freedom to worship as one wishes away from Americans. Because of their efforts, the jihad has been contained to the Middle East. For six and half years, we have been sheltered from the evils of terrorism visited upon innocent Americans in their homeland.

Today, many in the Middle East can look forward to the possibility that they will be able to pursue their lives in relative freedom from the tyranny of despotic regimes who do not think twice about liquidating thousands of citizens because of they express a desire for the freedoms which we as Americans take for granted. Those people, whose purple thumbs attested to their desire for a new future, like those of us in America, can thank the men and women of the United States armed forces for this opportunity.

While it is especially proper to thank those who are answering the call today, we’d also like to recognize the veterans whose service these men and women emulate. In particular, I would like to thank the veterans of Vietnam, among whom my own father is one. It is especially important to remember these veterans who fought in a war, like the current Gulf War, that was unpopular with a segment of the population. A week ago Saturday, the city of Indianapolis held a special ceremony welcoming home our veterans of the Vietnam War. Astonishingly, when these men arrived home, they were not welcomed but vilely excoriated. These were men of honor who fought bravely at Hue, Saigon, Dak To, and Khe Sahn and places no one has ever heard of. Welcome home and thank you.

We thank all of our veterans whether they are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan today, the First Gulf War, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Panama, Beirut, Grenada, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, the Bay of Pigs, Lebanon, Korea, or in either of the World Wars. We also thanks those who stood ready as soldiers in our armed forces, but who were not called to arms. Thank you.

The Dodgers have made some of the worst free trade acquisitions ever. With Darren Dreifort, Jason Schmidt and Nomar Garciaparra coming on recently one would think they could not do worse. Then came Andruw Jones. It really is amazing just how horrible he is this year, not that he was much better last year.

Jones has played in 43 games and had 133 at bats with the Dodgers this year. He is batting .165 with 45 strike outs. He is an abysmal 1-32 with runners in scoring position. And still Torre insists on playing the bum. Take last night for example. The Dodgers are down 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth with one out. Matt Kemp is at the plate when a rain delay is called, leaving Kemp with a 3-2 count. When the game resumes, Kemp takes a ball and walks to first. He steals second as Blake DeWitt strikes out. Kemp took third on a ball-four wild pitch to Delwyn Young. With the pitchers spot up and the tying run 90 feet away, Torre sends Andruw Jones to the plate. The crowd sighs. Jones proceeds to strike out on a ball low and outside to end the game.

I hate Jones. I would rather have seen Lasorda at the plate.

An excellent bit of reporting from my favorite newspaper.  The author quotes political leaders as saying, “No other ticket is capable of rallying this nation around a clearer, more unified message of chaos and hopelessness….”

Enjoy. 

Who ever shall he choose to run with?  McCain will host three potential Veeps at his home in beautiful Sedona, Arizona over the Memorial Day weekend.  So, whom shall McCain play host to?  Crist, Romeny and Jindal.  The decision will be a painful one indeed.  Judging by the roster McCain has put togther, he has his choice of the Bush/Lieberman hybrid (Crist), the competent yet flimsy flip-flopper (Romney) or the potentially exciting but utterly unproven newbie (Jindal).  Let’s take a deeper look.

Crist:  Mr. Crist served as the attorney general of the Geriatric State from 2003-2007.  He was lauded by liberals for his efforts to end the free market on utility rates and his desire to raise the price of oil by refusing to allow drilling in Florida waters for much needed oil.  His involvement with ponzi schemes and fraudulent campaign practices will surely be fodder for the already surging Obama campaign.  Crist was elected to governor in 2006, running on a platform of insurance reform, education standards, opposition to gay marriage and tougher immigration laws.  Crist would make a weak running mate and could potentially be a liability for McCain’s futile campaign.

Romney:  Mitt Romney is a notorious flip flopper on issues ranging from abortion, to taxes and back again.  He hails from a prominent Michigan political family.  Romney served as governor of Massachusetts from 2002 through 2006.  Mr. Romney is a Mormon and is open about his faith. Yet, many of his statements have contradicted his stated beliefs.  He is a classic politician with no discernible position on anything.  He simply can not be trusted.  Furthermore, with the very public raid on a polygamist compound in Texas, he religion is too great a liability for the already struggling McCain campaign to bare.

Jindal: A relative newbie to politics.  He was first elected to public office in 2004 as a Congressman from the 1st District of Louisiana.  He won he 2006 re-election bid with a staggering 88% of the vote.  In 2007, Jindal won the race for the Louisiana governorship with a 54% majority.  While 54% doesn’t, at first blush, sound like a large victory, he was running against three other opponents in this bastion of liberal corruption.  Jindal appears promising, yet he did, prior to his election to Congress, serve in the Bush administration.  This fact alone makes him somewhat vulnerable to Obama’s already daily “Bush-McCain policy” rhetoric.

Other names mentioned as possible McCain running mates include Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham and, of course, the laughable Mike Huckabee.  In the end I am not sure McCain even has a decent choice as to his running mate.  Furthermore, I am not sure any serious politician wants to be associated with the likely loss McCain will suffer at the socialist hands of Barack Obama in November.  So, pick some one you actually like, Mr. McCain, it may make your sinking ship a little more tolerable for you.  

To my way of thinking there are three major conservative magazines: National Review, Chronicles, and Weekly Standard. I subscribe to the first two. I find Bill Kristol to be irritating and wrong. A lot. And Fred Barnes is not much better. Therefore, one might surmise that my two subscriptions are NR and Chronicles. The last several months NR and Chronicles have arrived on the same day – which, of course, raises a dilemma. Which do I read first?

I find that I am reading NR as a first option and only then reading Chronicles. Interestingly, it is not because I think Chronicles is badly written. I don’t. However, it is a monthly mag whereas NR is fortnightly and so NR is slightly more topical (although even an every other week effort finds itself out of date frequently). I have been going back and forth between the two magazines as far as which I agree with more. As a traditionalist, much of what Chronicles writes resonates, although I think that several of the writers on NR are superior to almost everyone other than Fleming and perhaps Trifkovic. And so, every time I receive the two mags at the same time, the internal debate rages. Sometimes it depends on what Chronicles is covering in any given month, as they are more prone to writing theme mags than NR.

This month in NR is “Escaping the Tyranny of Genes,” which I am desperately hoping has something to do with the findings of Hernstein and Murray, with the promise that it will be interesting and controversial versus “Surviving the Global Economy.” Which to choose…

I can think of a couple other “conservative” magazines, like First Things and American Conservative, but I have not read them regularly. If anyone has a particular favorite, I would love to hear which one you like and why you prefer them over the subscriptions I already take.

For the record, I take Crisis over any other Catholic mag and find it to be the best I’ve seen.

Comrade Chavez thinks the United States is using military aircraft to spy on Venezuela.  The United States refuted his statement saying the aircraft are used to perform anti-narcotic surveillance in Colombia.  The U.S. did acknowledge that militray assets did unintentionally violate Venezuelan airspace and that the Air Force is working to ensure it does not happen again.

If we are spying, and we should be, it had better happen again!  collecting verifiable intelligence on hostile regimes is essential to the national security of the United States and out allies in South America.  Keep up the good work, Air Force.

In 2012, nearly 250,000 people will descend on the city of Indianapolis as it hosts its first ever Super Bowl. The NFL team owners selected Indy over Phoenix and Houston. According to this story, the city of Indianapolis secured $25 million in support for the Super Bowl entirely from private sources. The event is estimated to net the city $300 to $400 million in revenue. And, if we’re lucky, the Colts will be able to play a home game in Super Bowl XLVI.

I had thought that the French were starting to get their act together. They elected the relatively pro-U.S. Nicolas Sarkozy and started talking tough with Iran over nuclear weapons. But if this ban is passed, the country will be thrown back to square one. This is the type of legislation that will follow the smoking bans in New York City and Chicago. Pretty soon there will be a uniform number of beers an individual may consume before having their evening prematurely ended by the all knowing government.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times online edition carries the title: “California chief justice says same-sex marriage ruling was one of his toughest.” It’s not surprising considering the fact that it wasn’t based on any law (or more to the point, was contrary to existing precedent and the unambiguous will of the people). It is always difficult to fabricate new rights from thin air with no support in the law. In a 121 page decision filed on Friday, the “moderate Republican” chief justice of the Supreme Court of California wrote that:

Accordingly, the legal issue we must resolve is not whether it would be constitutionally permissible under the California Constitution for the state to limit marriage only to opposite-sex couples while denying same-sex couples any opportunity to enter into an official relationship with all or virtually all of the same substantive attributes, but rather whether our state Constitution prohibits the state from establishing a statutory scheme in which both opposite-sex and same-sex couples are granted the right to enter into an officially recognized family relationship that affords all of the significant legal rights and obligations traditionally associated under state law with the institution of marriage, but under which the union of an opposite-sex couple is officially designated a “marriage” whereas the union of a same-sex couple is officially designated a “domestic partnership.”

The problem that the chief justice wrestled with stemmed from the fact that California already provides “domestic partnerships” for gay couples replete with all of the rights and privileges that married heterosexual couples enjoy. The only real difference between the two is terminology. In fact, because of California’s Domestic Partnership Act, Proposition 22 merely reserved to traditional marriage the label “marriage.”

Nonetheless, this minimal disparity in terminology was seized upon by the supreme court of California as an occasion for judicial activism. The plaintiffs claimed that the difference in terminology placed a stigma on their relationships, relegating them to the status of “second class citizens.” Domestic partnerships were insufficient for the radical gay activists who demanded that traditional marriage be dispensed with and redefined so as to include their particular sexual perversions.

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The Senator doth protest too much, methinks.

In a speech to Israel’s Knesset, President Bush said:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush told the Knesset in Jerusalem on May 15, 2008.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” he said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’

We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Obama immediately took umbrage and began firing back, questioning the President’s patriotism.

“The president did something that presidents don’t do,” he told a crowd of some 2,100 in South Dakota. “And that is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation.”

Obama followed up his criticism of the Commander in Chief by saying,

“On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, he accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists, and said we were ‘appeasers’ – no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler,” Obama said.

“That’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that has divided our country, and that alienates us from the world.”

Obama went on to criticize presumptive Republican nominee John McCain for embracing Bush’s comments shortly after giving a speech about elevating civility in politics.

“So much for civility,” Obama said, adding he was ready to debate McCain and Bush over how to best protect the country.

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This U.S. soldier declared before Congress that he would not deploy to Iraq in June to participate in an “illegal” war. Other soldiers were paraded in front of members of Congress, all of them spewing horror stories of the murders and rapes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq. I find this shameful on several levels. First, Mr. Chiroux signed up with the army knowing full well that he would most likely be put in harms way. It is not his position to make decisions on the legality of the war, rather he is to serve as a valuable piece of machinary in the military machine. To run an army any other way is absurd. I can already hear some among you arguing that soldiers can abstain from fighting in a blatanly “evil” war. That may be true but the illegality or evilness of the war must be so apparent that there can be no question as to the illegitimacy of the war. That is simply not the case here.

Second, I am offended that partisan groups would parade these soldiers who are against the war in front of Congress and the national media, with the hope of demoralizing our soldiers in Iraq by demonstrating how “unstable” or “lawless” our troops are. I would argue that these few men and women are the exception to the rule of competent and reasonable military men and women who make up our armed forces. Why are their voices not being brought in front of Congress? I have had the opportunity to speak with several individuals who have fought in Iraq and not one of them thinks that the war was wrong and that we cannot win and that our armed forces are conducting themselves as we would hope. This dog and pony show in front of Congress is akin to Hanoi Jane and the Vietnam Vets against the war in the early 1970s.

Third, and Bill already addressed this in a previous post, is the constant focus on post traumatic stress disorder that some soldiers return home with. I have no doubt that some if not all soldiers return home changed and with baggage. Undoubtedly it is serious baggage. However, did soldiers not have this baggage in any previous war? War is hell and soldiers who voluntarily sign up to engage in war will have to deal with it, just as U.S. soldiers have been since the Revolution. The idea that this is some new problem and those diagnosed are any different or more harmed by the stress of combat than any previous soldiers makes no sense to me. This stress is not unique or special. It comes with the territory.

Andrew Cline wrote an amusing article for The American Spectator on the passage of a disastrous farm-welfare bill.  If you are not a farmer, this is the only joy you will get out of this bill’s passage.