Glenn Beck nails it again:

Palestinian Child Abuse: (h/t: LGF)

Great minds have purposes,
others have wishes.

- Washington Irving

A 'precision-guided' "Amen, brother"!  Posted from Jawa:

Misha found a lump of gold at Cold Fury:

This war has become demoralizing because of repeated incidents of this nature: the unwillingness of Western powers to crush the enemy even in service of defending our own people. We have allowed the enemy to think he is braver than us. We have, thereby, emboldened the enemy and made things tougher for ourselves, not easier.

We fire not on their fortress mosques, nor on their ships, nor during their holy days, nor in their holy cities, nor at their “holy men.” We dare not humiliate. Instead, we allow ourselves to be forever humiliated and forfeit our men and women. So concerned are we about not offending Muslim pride we have thrown away our own. The West has decided that all things Islamic are to be granted a reverence we no longer grant ourselves. The sand and plaster of the fortress mosque seems to carry more importance than even the flesh and blood of our own soldiers.

If there is a more accurate, precision-guided missile of "Amen, Brother" out there, we have yet to see it.

It is really a complete disgrace. The Democrats (and weak Republicans) in Washington are apparently satisfied with this. Hell, they openly advocate for it.

A muppet with more guts than a Democrat: (h/t: Hot Air)

Of course this is highly dramatized, but it's awesome just the same:

 Friday Night Music Set - Lisa Gerrard.  End theme from 'Gladiator'.  Enjoy:

I offer no caveat, no apologies for my title.  Frankly, I'm PO'ed.

After reading this story, I'm quaking with rage:  New Orleans unveils Katrina recovery plan.

Oh, do tell!

18 months after the bloody hurricane, you're just now getting off your a$$?!

You're tired of waiting for federal aid?  WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

The feds are trying to get $300 million back from the crooks, er, victims in and around New Orleans.

Up to $1,000,000,000 in fraud may have been generated due to Katrina.  Something like $600 million dollars is still waiting to be claimed! $3 BILLION dollars in federal aid was allocated for Katrina relief; but your tired of waiting on the feds?

I wish you'd have got tired of waiting a year ago!  I wish you'd have developed a plan back then you lazy, ungrateful, corrupt, nanny-state buttheads!  We could have all been spared over a year of your whining!

Mr. Nagin, you had your chance to lead and be a force for good, but you ran away, abandoned your responsibilities and received a pass by the MSM when you blamed everyone but yourself for your problems!  You have used every politically despicable tactic since the hurricane to play on the fears of your constituents and pander to those who enable the "give-me, give-me" attitudes of your supporters.

You've supported wacko conspiracy theories.  You've played the race card.  You were sure to place your family out of danger while leaving thousands stranded.

And to the people of New Orleans - you're just as bad!  You re-elected this abject failure so you deserve every corrupt policy he enacts.  You also share the responsibility for your plight!  What have you done to better your own position or your communities?  I've seen a lot of people with their hands out, but very few pulling themselves up.

The feds may indeed have made some mistakes, but using that excuse now - well, that dog don't hunt any more!

As far as I'm concerned, the people who didn't go back to New Orleans are the smart ones.  I've seen them here in San Antonio.  They've moved on and made something of themselves.  They got a hand up and were grateful. 

Again, I don't apologize for anything I've said.  I know there are good people in New Orleans; I know there are people trying.  But you are far outnumbered by those who haven't done a blasted thing.  My words aren't directed towards those who I just described, but Nagin is speaking for you.  He's continually lumped you in with the n'er do wells.  Which bothers you more?

And that my friends is why New Orleans sucks!

Photo Gallery:

F-15 Eagle


F-16 Falcon


F-22 Raptor



Some oldies but goodies:

F-4 Phantom (Wild Weasel)


F-111


Just a sample of some of my favorites.

I know what your thinking, "What about..." 

I am in the USAF; I gotta go with what I know!

All of the initiatives of the climate change alarmists are being implemented, one at a time.  The science  doesn't matter, liberty and freedom are the targets.  Mark my words.

Don't believe me?  Lets' look at what's already in the works across the nation.

Our first stop is in Boulder CO.  Read this:  Nation’s First ‘Carbon Tax’

City of Boulder voters approved Initiative 202, the Climate Action Plan Tax, in the November election, making this the first time in the nation that a municipal government will impose an energy tax on its residents to directly combat global warming. The tax will be collected by the local electric utility company based on the amount of electricity used.

Next we hear from more energy tax advocates:  CO2 Tax Could Cut Emissions and Reduce Other Taxes, Economists Say

When you read that, it's pretty easy to pick out what the real object of the exercise is but the last paragraph really hits it:

Mankiw said he would support carbon and gasoline taxes, even if science proved that global warming was not linked to CO2 emissions, because of the impact such taxes would have on other externalities such as urban congestion and vehicle accident rates.

So even if mankind isn't responsible for GW, we need the taxes anyway for "other externalities."

Finally, more Washington political smoke and mirrors:  Bill to Ban Regular Light Bulbs Introduced in House.

As Cybercast News Service reported last week, Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) held a news conference Wednesday calling for more efficient lighting options, and Manzullo said "the last thing we want to do is force legislation down people's throats."

One day later, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would set target dates for certain types of light bulbs to be prohibited for sale in the United States. - emphasis mine.

And this:  Cuba two years ago began phasing out incandescent light bulbs in a reported bid to ease the strain on the communist-ruled island's overtaxed electricity grid. Following Havana's example, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last November launched a program to distribute millions of energy-saving bulbs, for free, to the country's citizens.

Folks, when anyone holds up Cuba or Venezuela as examples the United States should follow, we're in trouble.  One thing that gets me is that no one is concerned that Cuba can't produce enough energy to run a conventional light bulb!

Government agencies at all levels want to control what you do and they want you to pay more for doing it.  I was ridiculed by a environmental economist who said I was incorrect in my assertion that if we don't change our behavior, the government will end up forcing us anyway.

Seems like I've made my case beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

A great piece from The Patriot Post: 

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Useful Idiots: Back in style!

"I can't get them out of my head"

In addition to last week’s anti-American marches marking the fourth year of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a gaggle of Hollywonk Glitterati have proven, once again, that idiocy has no limits.

I am referring, of course, to the loudest of the “useful idiots”, AKA Sean Penn, Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen.

While the motives of this trio of limousine-lib national-security experts comport with those of certain Demo-gogue traitors on Capitol Hill, their rants are even more incoherent than those of Barbra Streisand, Ted Turner and Hanoi Jane Fonda.

First up, Sean Penn, whose last major excursion into public-policy matters was his comedic Katrina recovery effort when his “rescue boat” had to be rescued because it was taking on water. Penn has now teamed up with ultra-Left politicos like Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters—members of the “Out of Iraq Caucus.”

At a rally last week, Penn told a group of disheveled protestors, “You [President Bush]... and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket can take your war and shove it! Let’s unite not only in stopping this war, but in holding this administration accountable.”

Barbara Lee—she of the solitary “no” vote against removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan—spoke on behalf of her cadre who voted against additional funding for American troops in Iraq, saying, “We can’t afford to spend one more dime or lose one more American or Iraqi life on this illegal and un-winnable war.”

Penn added, “The money that’s spent on this war would be better spent on building levees in New Orleans and healthcare in Africa. Iraq is not our toilet. It’s a country of human beings whose lives that were once oppressed by Saddam are now in Dante’s Inferno.”

“Dante’s Inferno”? Perhaps Penn has read Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century poem, Divine Comedy, but missed Professor Miguel Asin Palacios’s scholarly 20th-century analysis, “Islamic Eschatology and the Divine Comedy.” It may be more accurate to equate Saddam’s reign of terror (or “oppression” according to Penn) with Dante’s Inferno. But I digress.

Penn’s patent accusation is that America’s Armed Forces have condemned the Iraqi people to a life of torture and misery—but he “supports the troops.”

Speaking of torture and misery, ABC talkinghead Rosie O’Donnell took Penn’s assertions even deeper into fantasyland this week. O’Donnell, who apparently moonlights as a mouthpiece for the mad mullahs of Iran, told her ever-shrinking TV audience, “I have one thing to say [about the 15 British sailors and marines being held hostage by Iran’s outlaw regime]. Gulf of Tonkin.” (Many historians believe that the reported attack on a U.S. Naval vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 was staged so that Lyndon Johnson could justify increased military action against Communists in North Vietnam.)

Apparently, O’Donnell has divined that the 15 Brits are sacrificial pawns in a staged event intended to justify an attack on Iran.

O’Donnell, who has been a vociferous opponent of OIF, believes there is a much deeper conspiracy originating with 9/11—this from her blog: “At 5:30 p.m. on 9/11/2001 WTC7 collapsed.  Fire brought down a steel building, and reduced it to rubble. The fires in WTC 7 were not evenly distributed, so a perfect collapse was impossible... [WTC 7] contained offices of the FBI, Department of Defense, IRS (which contained prodigious amounts of corporate tax fraud, including Enron’s), US Secret Service, Securities & Exchange Commission (with more stock fraud records)...”

O’Donnell insists that 9/11 was part of a grand conspiracy by the Bush administration and “Big Oil” to wage war in the Middle East, with the objective of controlling and profiting from oil. “Big Rosie” supports her claim by insisting that those “steel buildings” could only have imploded if secondary explosives were used—as if Operation Enduring Freedom against al-Qa’ida jihadis wouldn’t have been justified had the Twin Towers somehow withstood the barbaric attack.

The principal peddler of the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks is actor/activist Charlie Sheen, who has been arrested more than 50 times for theatrical protests. His theoretical assumptions make Oliver Stone’s “JFK” look like a straight-news documentary.

Sheen insists that the 9/11 hijackers could not have succeeded without the Bush administration’s complicity: “It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions.”

Sheen plans to narrate a 9/11 propaganda film called “Loose Change,” which may be distributed with help from billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. This film is a moron-friendly version of Michael Moore’s infamous Fahrenheit 9/11. “It’s a story that needs to be told,” insists Sheen. “It’s a story about the truth, and the truth needs to be exposed. It’s not just me, not just the Hollywood community [that] is standing up saying what you have given us doesn’t make sense.”

What doesn’t make sense is Penn, O’Donnell, Sheen and the “true believers” they have amassed—at least on first pass. But the explanation for their break with reality is wrapped up in the collective Pathology of the Left.

In effect, adherents to conspiracy theories are so insecure in their person that they can’t handle the truth. Thus, they become fanatical devotees of “alternate realities,” about which they believe they possess special knowledge and insight, which, in turn, creates a comfort zone for them.

Consider a widely circulated 9/11 conspiracy diatribe entitled “9-11: Can You Handle The Truth?” As with the aforementioned video, “Loose Change,” this invective purports that the 9/11 attack was a U.S. conspiracy. Ironically, in the first line of his thesis, the author writes of those who believe the government’s account of 9/11: “A religious like fervor cemented by fear and denial prevents most people from acknowledging facts and easily-exposed misrepresentations...” Ironic, because he has just described himself and those who subscribe to his thesis with a “religious like fervor cemented by fear and denial.”

(Of note, the pathology underlying conspiracy adherents is quite similar to the cult pathology of those who tenaciously cling to Albert Gore’s global warming theories.)

As for Penn, Sheen, O’Donnell and their fellow crackpots, may they sleep well tonight knowing that our Armed Forces are forever on the frontlines, forever vigilant, forever defending their right to regurgitate such rubbish.

Illustrated:

Don't you love making fun of Al Gore?  I do.  And it's even better when you read stuff like this:

Posted from Hot Air:

In Norway, with the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in the audience. Public debate over the left’s pet causes always devolves into their opponents being cast as racist somehow; this is the Gorebot’s clumsy lurch in that direction, coopting a movement where the opposition really was racist to make the moral authority of his own agenda a bit more absolute by association. CAIR does the same thing in labeling critics of Islam “Islamophobes.”

That’s not what you’re watching for, though. You’re watching for the end, where the Gorebot lowers his voice and tries to slip the surly bonds of robotdom by achieving a poignant, human moment. With predictably comic results.

For the video, follow this link.  You'll also read about how 'ol Al is almost a sure lock for a Nobel.

Teaser:  “I have Gore as a clear favorite,” said Stein Toennesson, head of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. “I think the committee will be unable to resist the temptation to add their voice” to concerns about global warming, he said.

Terri's brother speaks out.  Great article!

Posted from WorldNetDaily:

By Bobby Schindler

Saturday, March 31, will mark the two-year anniversary of my sister Terri Schiavo's death by dehydration. Not a day passes that my family does not think of my sister and relive the horrific images of her needless and brutal death at the hands of those who deliberately set out to kill her.

As hideous as it was, the truth is, long before Terri's case made headlines, the removal of basic care – food and water – was becoming commonplace. It continues to happen every day across our country oftentimes in cases, like Terri's, where the patient does not suffer from any life-threatening condition.

Much of the problem that exists stems from a blind acceptance of misinformation that has moved us from a firm belief in the sanctity of life to a "quality of life" mindset, which says that some lives are not worth living.

This shift, what I call lethal bigotry, began with the medical community, has infiltrated our judiciary and is taking over our nation. People are making decisions in place of God, while even many Catholic leaders remain silent despite the Church's teaching and the pope's constant reminders that God alone is the arbiter of life and death.

The sad fact is we have become a nation that spends billions trying to find the perfect body, while ignoring the condition of our collective soul; where altruism seems to be a thing of the past, and moral relativism has become a bona fide religion.

Combined with a popular media selling the notion that killing people in certain conditions is an act of compassion, one can understand why people with disabilities are in danger.

My sister's case is a perfect example. Look how the popular media presented Terri's story, abandoning any attempt at objective or ethical reporting in their rush to justify her death. In an effort to dehumanize Terri, they repeatedly reported she was in a coma, brain dead, a "vegetable" and that the autopsy proved she was in a persistent vegetative state, all of which are patently false.

All one has to do is watch the videos of Terri to see how alive she was. If that's not enough, more than 40 medical affidavits stated Terri wasn't in PVS and/or could have been helped with new medical technology.

The media chose to ignore all of this, instead reporting what Terri wasn't able to do and referencing a doctor who took pride in the moniker, "Dr. Humane Death."

They painted a story of a husband's unconditional love as he carried out his wife's "wish" to die, completely ignoring the fact that there was no evidence of this and that Michael essentially abandoned Terri as soon as he began living with his new wife-to-be.

They framed this as a strictly pro-life issue, ignoring the 30 disability groups publicly supporting Terri's life.

They quoted Catholic priests who agreed with her "husband's" position, despite the fact this was completely contrary to Catholic teaching.

Completely unaware of their own hypocrisy, they commended Christopher Reeve's wife, Dana, and rightly so, for her dedication in caring for her husband, while vilifying my parents for wanting to do the same thing for their daughter.

In the same vein, they repeatedly questioned the intent of our legal team while glossing over the fact that Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, admitted in his book to having violent images of bludgeoning his wife to death.

They chastised former Gov. Jeb Bush for doing his job by trying to stop the two-week dehydration death of an innocent disabled woman, but praised him when he placed a moratorium on death row executions after a lethal injection went 15 minutes too long.

They justify the destruction of embryos to produce stem cells (ignoring both the success of adult stem cells and that embryonic cells have produced no cures), reporting that their use will improve the lives of the disabled, and at the same time they work to convince the public that it is OK to kill the very same people they say this research could cure.

And, finally, they paid more respect to and had more compassion for a racehorse than they did my sister.

To this day, every story in which a person emerges from a condition similar to Terri's, or an advance is found to help the severely brain-injured, is an opportunity for the media to remind us that, of course, "this is nothing like the case of Terri Schiavo."

Should we be surprised with what is happening when we have so easily bought into what our popular media is promoting? Or that even people like Bill O'Reilly, who claim to be both conservative and Catholic, can be so ignorant on this issue as to raise the idea that if someone "costs" taxpayers too much money, it should be OK to kill them?

This is the same propaganda used by the medical community in Nazi Germany immediately prior to the Holocaust when hospitals were used to kill at least 200,000 handicapped, mentally ill and others who were deemed physically or mentally inferior.

Unfortunately, I don't know if people realize how the mainstream media influences their everyday lives, or the scope of what is happening in our hospitals. Perhaps, more accurately, they just don't care.

With tens of thousand in conditions similar to and even worse than Terri's, we should be alarmed. While many would prefer not to educate themselves on this issue, the cold reality is that one day this "quality of life" approach could very well impact their families, as it did ours.

We will never forget Terri.

This is why, in the years since Terri's death, we have worked, through the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation to protect the lives of the vulnerable. We are developing a nationwide network of attorneys and physicians to help families in desperate situations, whose loved ones are in danger of being killed … for the simple reason that they don't meet some arbitrary and subjective "quality of life" standard. We will continue fighting against those that threaten the lives of the disabled, until all are protected.

Terri and others like her should be a constant reminder to all of us that caring for the disabled is never a burden, but is instead an act God's unconditional love.