Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Only in America

The Oakland Tribune reports today that Oakland Police have had to curtail their DUI roadblocks after complaints from Latino organizations that the roadblocks are ensnaring too many illegal immigrants.

Let me see if I have this right. One of the reasons automobile insurance in California is so high is due to the huge numbers of uninsured drivers running about the streets without licenses or any form of liability insurance. Every legal California resident who drives will know what I mean by high insurance rates. This affects you irrespective of your skin color, ethnicity, native language or style of dress. If you are a legal driver in California, you pay through the nose.

But organizations such as Oakland Community Organizations and Oakland City Council President, Ignacio de la Fuente are outraged that Police Officers would demand proof of registration, a driver's license and proof of insurance from illegal immigrants. Arrrgh!

In the short term, the Oakland Police Chief has agreed to notify Latino community organizations of the checkpoint locations and times of operation in advance. Does anything about this strike you as silly beyond belief?

America needs immigration. The vast majority of Hispanic immigrants to this country are hard working family people. But a society can only survive as long as it follows rules and those rules are applied with justice to all segments of society. I have immigrant friends from several countries that had to spend years waiting for visas to even get here.

Now, apparently there is a new immigration policy. Get here illegally and you will have a substantial advantage over legal immigrants and residents. You don’t have to get a driver’s license, you don’t have to pay for auto insurance, we’ll pay to educate your kids and we’ll even pay for your health care.

Why aren’t these idiots like Ignacio pressing for a Constitutional Amendment to allow illegal immigrants to run for President? This is so far beyond the pale I cannot even think of an adjective for it.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Sleep Tight America, The FBI Is On The Job

Today the Associated Press reported the FBI has over 123,000 hours of intercepted wire taps and other audio recordings from terrorist investigations that have yet to be transcribed. To save wear and tear on your calculator, that is just over fourteen (14) years worth of audio!

Of course this follows after the stories of the Arabic-speaking Sephardic Jews who were denied translator jobs with the FBI because it was feared they were "
too close to Israel" and the Sibel Edmonds whistleblowing scandal.

I knew there were problems getting competent translators who could pass some sort of security investigation but a fourteen year backlog? Now that's job security!

Perhaps we should shop these translations out to a legal translator operation I know of in the San Fernando Valley. The quality might not be as good but we would probably get results before the suspected terrorists dies of old age.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

The Answer is Less Government

The New York Times ran an editorial this morning on the “continuing shame” of the treatment of “native” Americans by the Department of the Interior, specifically the handling of the trust fund established over a century ago when reservations were broken up into individual parcels so the reservation lands could be plundered more easily by white men.

Imagine that, people taken advantage of by their own government, what a shock! C’mon people, get real. When has any government ever done anything else but feather their own nest? While it is unlikely that huge numbers of Interior Department staff have personally profited from scamming the Indians on this trust, I am sure they have made many a businessman wealthy.

Every day we watch the government spend billions of dollars without any real accounting. Every time the GAO or someone attempts to audit any government operation they find gross mismanagement, millions unaccounted for and usually some gross fraud as well. When you point out to a bureaucrat that one of their staff has mismanaged millions of your and my tax dollars, often using it for personal purchases, the response of the bureaucrat is usually along the lines of.

Oh! But they have worked here so long and been such a fine employee. How could we possibly let them go?

Well! We’ll certainly chastise them for that. How about two days off without pay? Will that do it?

Actions that, in the private sector, would result in firing and possibly prosecution are simply overlooked by bureaucrats who strive, in the best mandarin way, for the harmony of never having to be responsible for anything. As long as the tax dollars flow and their staffs don’t assault anyone with a gun, everything is just fine.

Until Americans insist on accountability from their elected officials and the bureaucrats they employee, this situation will never change. There are thousands of individuals working for the government who actually care about what they do . . . just as there are thousands who look upon government employment as a license to steal.

So why this editorial whining now about a problem that has existed for over a hundred years? All those who believe more and more government is the salvation of humanity should learn a lesson this. To quote a friend, “The answer is less government. Now what is the question?”

Friday, September 24, 2004

Dan Rather and the continuing death saga of the Mainstream Media

This has not been pretty. Dan Rather had to look America in the eye, at least those few who still watch him, and tell another lie. And it was a lie. The only miscalculations or mistakes on the part of Mapes, Rather and Heyward were in the commission of an act of news making rather than news reporting. To imagine that a team with the experience of this troika could have been taken in boggles the mind.

To apply Occam’s Razor leaves only one conclusion. CBS News in the persons of Heyward, Rather and Mapes knowingly decided to publish a story they knew was based on the most flimsy of evidence from people even the O.J. jury wouldn’t believe along with the most transparent of fraudulent documents that they were warned about by their own hired experts.

This troika decided to make news instead of reporting it and was caught in the act by the new media. Their little jaunt into fiction has cost the network dearly in terms of prestige. We have had to watch Dan Rather throw first Ms. Mapes then Mr. Hayward off the back of the sleigh to the wolves in an embarrassing attempt to save his own neck. Instead he has ended up looking much like Captain Queeg without the nifty uniform or Bogart’s acting ability.

Probably the saddest part of this whole fiasco is the absolute inability of Mr. Rather and his political kin to understand just how far out of touch they really are. By comparison, Geraldo is looking more and more mainstream every day.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

You Call This a Debate?

There is an article in the New York Times this morning describing how both candidates want the commission to "sign-off" on their 32-page parameter agreement document defining the debate format. It was bad enough we had to sit through a pair of infomercials instead of conventions but now they want to alternate making speeches instead of an actual debate.

Merriam-Webster defines the noun, debate as "a contention by words or arguments." It is painfully obvious that we will have nothing of this nature in this Presidential race. The best quote from the article is a statement from a debate expert.

"The candidates are going to end up looking like game show hosts

I guess I'll plan to be out to dinner when the October 8th debate is on.

Monday, September 20, 2004

I did not have sexual relations with those memos

Does this announcement sound familiar? Is this just a mistake in judgement or are these the same sort of "weasel words" we heard a few years ago?

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

After ten days of being exposed by everyone from experts to ten-year-olds with a PC and Word, he has finally been able to get to the emails from those document examiners who told him before the story aired that the documents were questionable.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

This was an error made in the spirit of partisan politics by journalists more concerned with getting a story that might unseat a President. From all I have heard, this story was five years in the making and had been at a standstill until these "memos" fell into their fax inbox one recent morning.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

Dan, you have squandered that trust in you and your network by your shabby actions that are not even up to the standards of the National Enquirer, let alone a national broadcast journalist

Sunday, September 19, 2004

POFS time

I must be suffering from clinical depression. I can turn on the news, pick up the paper or browse the Internet and nothing bothers me anymore.

I can listen to the coiffed twits on network news and talk shows without my blood pressure spiking into pounds per square inch. I can even read a Maureen Dowd or Bob Scheer column without breaking into a sweat.

Have you ever ecountered these symptoms prior to an election? If so, you too are probably suffering from POFS (Political Outrage Fatigue Syndrome). You listen to the politicians. You listen to their spinmeisters. You listen to the pundits. And . . . nothing happens.

So, I'm taking the cure. For the next week I will pay no attention to any news that isn't about sports or automobiles that can cruise at 120 MPH. I will even attempt to finish several chapters of my tome on computer security without a single reference to Carnivore, the NSA or Echelon. I will worry only about the things I personally can deal with.

Courage . . . (whoops)

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Hey Dan, you’re busted, dude!

I think we can safely say that it is now official; the blogosphere has officially joined the ranks of the new media. As Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story and catapulted the Internet into the forefront of journalism, so has the Rathergate story pushed the web logs into the limelight while humiliating one of the major network news organizations.

CBS and Dan Rather have spent more than a week claiming the story is true even if the documents are false, a reporting style most recently used by Comical Ali as he ducked falling plaster in Baghdad while denying there were any Americans near the city.

Using tactics akin to the swarming tactics proposed by Tofflerian military theorists, the blogosphere rapidly developed literally dozens of bits of information from experts on typography, word processing and even military nomenclature that showed the memos in question were undoubtedly fraudulent in nature.

This information was used by the mainstream media to illustrate how CBS and Dan Rather ignored any pretense to journalistic integrity in their campaign to discredit the President and influence the upcoming national elections.

Throughout the ensuing clamor, the story of President Bush’s TANG service faded into the background as the focus of the story became CBS’ and Dan Rather’s defense of a story based on the now discredited memos and the discovery that the former Texas politician is presently a fundraiser for the Kerry campaign.

The blogosphere, like the Internet that spawned it, is huge and composed of people from every walk of life in every time zone. The rapid response of numerous bloggers with excellent credentials to this story illustrates how the grip of mainstream media on news has now been conclusively broken.

The days of Walter Cronkite ending a broadcast with, “and that’s the way it is,” are gone. No longer can a mainstream news outlet rest the authenticity of a story on the gravitas of the talking head who tells it. CBS News and Dan Rather have had their reputations shredded with this story.

In the last day or two the blogosphere has published the contact information for CBS outlets, Viacom stockholders and CBS News advertisers. I expect their e-mailboxes will be overflowing, their fax machines running out of paper and their snail-mail carriers to be groaning under the weight of the protests about CBS News and Dan Rather.

Short of a public on-air apology by Mr. Rather, I would expect Viacom to soon be putting tremendous pressure on him to resign as their stock price drops and sponsors drop CBS News to avoid losing market share.

Pajama-clad or not, experts or not, bloggers have served an important role in exposing an attempted manipulation of public sentiment of a scale not seen since the days of William Randolph Hearst. Hey Dan, you’re busted, dude!

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Danny, You Got Some 'Splaining To Do

Dan, Dan, Dan. We all know that journalistic integrity has never been your strong suite but this last week has been really informational. Did you really think that your stern visage and presence could cover up the obviously fraudulent memos so that everyone would ignore the man behind the curtain and instead pay attention to a story no one else cares about?

Instead of pointing out the obvious fact that practically anyone who got into the National Guard during the Vietnam era had either the luck of a lottery winner or some sort of pull, your story has instead made you and your network look very much like Richard Nixon during Watergate.

You have worn your politics on your sleeve for so long that anyone with the IQ to dress themselves and find their way to work in the morning discounts 75% of what you say to begin with.

You're right, Dan. The Bush story may well be true but it no longer matters. What matters now is that a major network has used the public airwaves and fraudulent documents to try and influence a national election.

Instead of knocking George Bush off his perch, you have managed to simultaneously give enormous credence to those pajama-clad scribblers you so detest and make your network the laughingstock of the country.

Attaboy, Dan.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Windows XP Service Pack 2

Does anyone have the slightest idea how annoying it is to upgrade an entire office only to discover each and every PC now has its own personal firewall?

It Wasn't a Mistake, It Was a Lie

For five days now we have seen Dan Rather and CBS try to defend the indefensible. It is clear that they knowingly used obviously forged documents to influence the outcome of a national election.

ABC News reported yesterday that two of the document expert hired by CBS to review the memos did not authenticate the documents and raised concerns to CBS about their authenticity. The one “expert” shown authenticated only a single signature and the Washington Post reports his claim that he never attempted to authenticate the documents themselves.

Despite this, CBS and Dan Rather went ahead with the story and continue to claim that the documents were authentic. This is not the case of journalists being caught out by forged documents but is instead, an out and out fraud perpetrated on the viewers of CBS by Dan Rather and, by extension, CBS News.

When the story began to unravel almost immediately in the blogosphere, Mr. Rather described the critics of the documents as “partisan political operatives.”
Hugh Hewitt and the other bloggers at Instapundit and Blackfive are right; we need Congressional hearings on this blatant attempt to influence an election.

I always understood the media’s function as reporting the news, not making it up to fit the political agenda of an over-the-hill reporter who is apparently still angry with the Bush family for his 1988 interview with then-Vice President Bush.

It is quite plain that Mr. Rather needs to resign from his position at CBS and register as a lobbyist for the DNC and Kerry campaign.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Is This the DNC of Bill Clinton?

I guess once Bill Clinton left office, the DNC began inhaling. I can only attribute their behavior to some sort of chemical imbalance or Terry McCauliffe has been replaced by a pod person educated in the public schools. If this is not the case, why did they just release the Fortunate Son commercial after knowing that the charges were specious and all the bad information in them was currently under discussion all over the media . . . except by CBS.

Both ABC and CBS have called upon the DNC to pull the ads because they contain copyrighted material (The Daily Standard). To add insult to injury, the CBS material is some of Dan Rather's 60 Minutes II material from last week that will likely cost him his job. At least it doesn't use the Killian memorandums but it does use the interview with Ben Barnes.

This is the interview that was refuted by the interviewee's own daughter the next day. The interviewee that is a major fund raiser for the opponent of the guy he bashes in the ad. The same interviewee who apparently has a book deal in the making . . . much like Joseph Wilson.

Why is it that the same DNC that took Slick Willy to the White House twice and even managed to paper over the second impeachment proceeding in the history of the country can't even get a simple attack ad straight?

Monday, September 13, 2004

The Killian Memorandum

No longer is the story about President Bush's conduct in the TANG. For the past four days the story has been about the memos used as the basis of Dan Rather-biased's most recent attack on President Bush. I am really enjoying this.

Dan Rather was my introduction to the phrase media bias during the Iran-Contra hearings. I would wake up early and watch them on PBS, then listen to them on NPR at work. But I would come home every evening and be puzzled because Dan Rather appeared to be reporting on a different set of hearings than the ones I was watching.

I didn't catch 60 Minutes on Wednesday but caught the furor on the web Thursday afternoon. Powerline was one of the first on this but I was even more impressed by the Prowler's apparent leak from CBS on the source of the memos. Hugh Hewitt has been very on top of this with probably the greatest collection of links to the various sites debunking the memos.

And what does dapper Dan say? Attacks by right-wing nuts!

This just keeps getting better and better. I would imagine that by this next weekend Mary Mapes will be polishing her resume along with any other poor sod who got caught out on this. Rather himself may be bulletproof from internal arrows but he may soon be broadcasting to an audience no larger than the staff of the DNC and Kerry camapign headquarters.

Hmmm, maybe he can do a guest spot on the Today Show.

The Lies of The Left

As I write this, John Kerry is talking about the gun ban that expired today. His comments made his tales about Vietnam sound like gospel truth. First he pointed to seventy police chiefs who, he claimed, would now be threatened in their jobs by military machine guns and Uzis because of the lapse of this gun ban.

This is an absolute lie, not a misstatement or one of his typical "nuanced" non-answers but an out and out lie. Fully automatic or selective fire weapons have been banned since 1934! The gun ban that expired was a ban on scary-looking guns.

Do you know how those proud legislators decided a decade ago which guns to ban? Did they ask engineers or experts in the field? No. Did they go to a rifle range and determine which weapons were more destructive? No. Did they look at the gun violence statistics to see which weapons were used more than others? Not even. They looked through gun catalogs and picked out weapons that looked too military or that had big banana clips hanging off them, that's how!

Ten years ago the Clinton administration passed a piece of feel-good legislation that would make them look like they were doing something. Even a recent review of the legislation and crime statistics by the Justice Department was able to find no correlation between the drop in gun violence and the assault weapons ban. Everyone got a photo-of and nothing else.

I have absolutely no desire to purchase an AK or Uzi look-alike. I find large banana magazines difficult to use from the bench or a prone position. But there are people who enjoy shooting these guns, so what exactly is the big deal?

When the ban went into effect all that happened is the manufacturers removed the bayonet lugs and flash suppressors then replaced the black plastic stocks with wooden ones and continued selling the same weapons with nothing more than cosmetic changes.

Now all we have to do is get the government to sunset or repeal the other twenty gazillion stupid laws on the books and we might be able to breath easy for a year or two. Of course, the right is not immune to the same silliness. Wow, prescription benefits for seniors. I believe the last estimate I heard for this was something like three trillion dollars for this program - to be paid by those of us who haven't retired yet. Arrrgh!

Sunday, September 12, 2004

The Twisted Pravda of Dan Rather

"This story is true. The questions we raised about then-Lieutenant Bush's National Guard service are serious and legitimate," he said. "Until and unless someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill." - Dan Rather

Mr. Rather is so convinced the questions about "then Lt. Bush's" service are true he is willing to ignore overwhelming evidence that the documents supporting these questions are forgeries. This sort of twisted logic could be expected from the old Soviet Union or even North Korea today but to hear it from the anchorman for CBS News is bizarre

By this same logic, Mr. Rather would sit in his chair and insist the building was not on fire because his chair wasn't warm yet. Using the geometric logic of Captain Queeg, Mr. Rather has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he in no longer a journalist but rather a disillusioned old man out of touch with what is going on around him

If Mr. Rather and CBS ever admit to being duped, they will no doubt blame Carl Rove as the source of their misfortune just as Terry McCauliffe has. To paraphrase Pauline Kael, nobody they know voted for Bush. Perhaps the DNC and the Kerry campaign could save on costs by just moving into the CBS newsroom

Saturday, September 11, 2004

We Shall Not Forget

Three years ago tomorrow morning, America was treacherously attacked by Islamofascists. That morning one thing stuck in my mind - all those first responders standing by their ambulances with absolutely nothing to do. Both towers were down and there were no survivors.

My first thought was to ship every tank, APC, Bradley or other armored vehicle to the coast of Lebanon, offload them, arm and crew them then line them up axle to axle and begin driving East until we reached the Persian Gulf. If it moved, kill it. If it didn't move, grind it onto dust. With the Battle Hymn of the Republic blaring over loudspeakers we would grind the classic Arab lands into dust in a way that not even Rome would have imagined. I remember the comment by Admiral Nimitz after Pearl Harbor to the effect that soon, Japanese would be spoken only in Hell. As for Arabic, that worked for me.

I've worked with Arabs and other Muslims throughout my career and I finally admitted to myself that these good people were not responsible for what happened to my countrymen. It was instead a small sect of perverted, self-hating vermin that need to be eradicated like any other vermin.


To those who lost loved ones in New York, at the Pentagon or in that field in Pennsylvania; I will never forget the price they paid this day three years ago. To the families, brothers and sisters of those first responders who gave theirs in an attempt to save others lives. They did not die in vain but in glory.

To the families, friends and the thugs who sent those men against us, you will pay. Your families will pay. Those who support you will pay. The imams, mullahs, ayatollahs and other purported holy men who have perverted the faith of Muhammad to create such as you will pay.

Russia, that remnant of the Soviet Union that just suffered their own version of tomorrow, has now joined us and many of your ilk will remember them from Chechnya, Afghanistan and the other "stans." They may not currently have the wealth and technology that would let them strike you as America has but do not count them as insignificant. They have memories, long memories and they will not stop until the killers of children and innocents have been wiped from this earth.

Yes, you may still strut down your dirt streets in your mountain villages where you hide from our wrath. You can claim that you are winning merely because you aren't dead yet but you are losing as we speak.


We snapped our fingers and Afghanistan fell. Saddam was a joke and we found him hiding in a hole. Your fighters come at us in droves and we mow them down like grass. Soon, even the ayatollahs in Iran will step over a line they never recognized was there and the rest of the world will put them down like the rabid dogs they are.

Your own people don't even trust or like you and they will turn their backs on you as you deserve. When you die even Allah will spurn you as unworthy for your poisonous attacks against the innocents. And where will you be then, when even your god turns his back on you?

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

Dan Rather and CBS may well be right that Lt. Bush was a less than stellar soldier in 1972. Does anyone care? The President himself has said he wasn't much of a person back then, nor has he ever tried to base any portion of his campaign on what he did as a young man.

Their abject failure to understand this and their determination to try and make a story of it shows their complete and total irrelevance to the current campaign for President of the United States of America as well as their status as shills for the DNC and the Kerry campaign.

The very fact that liberal and conservative media both have raised serious doubts about the authenticity of the documents they "reported" while ignoring their content is telling,

By Monday or Tuesday we'll have more information on the documents and one of two outcomes will be clear. Either Rather and CBS will be discredited for having reported fraudulent information or they will be ignored for reporting a non-story.

John Kerry put himself in harms way when he built his entire campaign on the strength of his four months of service in Vietnam and tried to ignore his anti-war record, his liberal, anti-defense senate record and his apparently puffed-up service record. Many of his public statements about the Vietnam war, made over the course of many years, have been shown to be fraudulent. He made his military service a major piece of the campaign, not the Republicans.

Unless the President is found in the Oval Office with a nine-year-old or a sheep it appears this election is just about over.

Friday, September 10, 2004

Did Dapper Dan Take A Dive?

Gasp! Could it be true? Could that man who invades fewer and fewer homes every night to spin his magic . . . that towering hero of the media . . . could even he be wrong? Say it ain't so, Dan.

While the American Spectator is hardly neutral, their data is usually pretty good. This morning the Prowler published a story on the genesis of the documents aired on 60 Minutes - they came from the DNC and Kerry campaign.

If this is indeed the case, I can only assume one of two things. Either the Dems decided to let CBS take the hit for releasing what even they thought were poorly-provenanced documents or Mr. Rather was so happy to have something he could pin on Bush he failed to perform even the most modest due diligence.

Either way, CBS is going to take a hit on this and if CBS' source of these truly was the DNC or Kerry campaign, it will be just another nail in the coffin the Dems seem to be building for themselves.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

The Death of an Industry

According to the mainstream media, the Republicans are the bad guys. They're the ones who make the personal attacks against their opponents. With the exception of the black helicopter sites like World Net Daily and News Max which I discount almost as much as I discount the similar sites on the left, conservatives are much less likely to make personal attacks then the Left. I read the Weekly Standard and National Review and find more rational discussion of issues and positions than I do on equivalent sites on the left.

With the exception of his tax cuts and foreign policy I am not a fan of Bush's policies. To the best of my knowledge the Bush administration has made few comments about the Kerry/Edwards ticket and they certainly compare favorably to the diatribes flowing from the Kerry/Edwards campaign, the DNC and their lapdogs in the media.

I like to make my own decisions, based on reality rather than the meanderings of some journalist with less objectivity than the marketing manager of an Internet company. If I want opinions I'll read the editorial page, not the front page but the mainstream media insist on presenting opinion as journalism which only makes me even more determined to ignore their propaganda - yes, propaganda. I live in Los Angeles where the only local outlet that writes stories more than three paragraphs deep is the Left Angeles Times (often referred to as Pravda - West).

Perhaps the greatest embarassment of this election cycle is the mainstream media. They have become so overtly biased it is difficult to pay the slightest attention to their coverage of the news. Cable, the Internet and talk radio have replaced them as a source of news for so many I don't think they realize they have lost control or, if they have, they are frantic in their scramble to regain it.

Maureen Dowd and Robert Scheer are no longer considered pundits but merely political humorists and not very good ones at that. The great Gray Lady has become little more than a Leftist Chicken Little. It must be difficult to realize nobody is listening anymore.

But look on the bright side, newspapers are still useful for wrapping fish and shopping for cheap tires.

Poor, Poor Pitiful Dems

If it weren't for the fact that I believe we need more than one party in this country I'd be dancing in the streets like a Palestinian after they blow up some more children and young women. Watching the campaign of Senator Kerry self-destruct reveals so much about the conceits, self deceptions and absolute lack of ethics on the part of the current management of the DNC.

Senator Kerry, he was in Vietnam you know, built his entire candidacy on the strength of four months spent serving in the Swift boats. After Wesley Clark tanked, the DNC was so overjoyed to have a candidate who had not only served in the military but actually had medals to prove it they never even bothered to check his resume.

Along came the Swift Boat Vets with their non-partisan attack on this self-important git with his puffed-up resume and it all began to fall apart. Talk radio and the blogosphere kept the message alive at first while the mainstream Leftist media ignored it and the DNC turned their attack lawyers loose on any media outlet who ran their ads.

After their book, Unfit for Command, hit the bookstores (and is now in its third week on the NY Times best seller list) the major media had to pay some attention to the story and thus began the litanies of unsubstantiated stories and calculated attacks while Chris Mathews and others never let Mr. O'Neil even finish a sentence before they began shouting him down.

It didn't work. The Left was depending on their pet media to quash or subvert any criticism of their candidate and they failed. Too many people watch Fox News, listen to talk radio or read the Internet for the traditional media to be able to control what they see and hear. Now we have 60 Minutes (another unbiased source - NOT) doing a story on what appear to be forged memos claiming Bush received favorable treatment in the National Guard.

What we have here is a terrified Left trying to prop up a candidate done in by his own words and deeds. Granted, there are enough ABB (anybody but Bush) people out there to probably avoid another McGovern disaster but too many in the Democratic base will remember their own or their parent's service in Vietnam to be able to stomach a man whose words were used as flails against American servicemen incarcerated in the Hanoi Hilton. Too many in the Democratic base will do the same thing Zell Miller was castigated for by Jimmy Carter this week.

They will hold their noses, break ranks with the Democratic leadership and vote - not so much for Bush but against Kerry.

And the DNC can't understand why this is happening. What could be wrong with these people? Don't they understand that we have their best interests at heart? Don't they understand that only we can properly run this great nation as it should be run? Don't they understand that we should only go to war when the enemy has landed on the beach and is driving towards downtown Toledo? Don't they understand that we are lying through our teeth to them when we say we feel their pain? If they aren't careful, we'll fire up those lawyers we have on staff and sue their asses off!

The Democratic leadership of today isn't the party of Wilson, FDR or even Kennedy. The Democratic leadership of today is a bunch of spoiled social scientists and demagogues who are angry they are out of power and are even angrier at that contemptible electorate that voted them out.

Monday, September 06, 2004

The Face of The Enemy

Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef, an Egyptian who is the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement
Dr. Hassan Huweidi, his deputy in Syria
Muhammad Habib, his deputy in Egypt
Isam Al-'Attar, former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, who resides in Germany after having fled Syria
Sheikh Dr. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, head of the newly-established (in July) London-based International Council of Muslim Clerics and head of the European Committee for Religious Law
Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, Secretary-General of the Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiyya in Lebanon and spiritual leader of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France
Sheikh Muhammad Al-Jouzo, the Mufti of Mount Lebanon
Khaled Mash'al, head of the political bureau of Hamas
Dr. Ramadhan Abdallah Shallah, Secretary-General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hizbullah

These men, many living in European nations, all recently signed a letter expressing solidarity with the Iraqi fighters, and calling for Muslims to join in the fight against the U.S. Can anyone tell me why they are still walking free on the face of this Earth? Wouldn't a nice tropical vacation at Guantanamo Bay be a welcome respite from exhorting young Muslim men to join with their brothers in Iraq, Beslan and other soon to be announced locations? The Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech should not be interpreted to allow espousal of armed agression against the United States or her allies in time of war. It should be explicitly understood by those who publicly espouse terrorism that it is a quick ticket to the East end of Friendly Fidel's paradise in the Caribbean.

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Just What Part Don't They Get?

Two Russian airliners down and hundreds of children and their parents dead. Russia just suffered through their own version of September 11th. Some intelligence points to a Saudi/Chechnyan cell as the ones responsible for both events. And the Left seems to think we can use dialogue as a verb with these people?

Perhaps we should just line up every Abrams tank, every Bradley and anything else that is armored and carries guns axle to axle on the coast of Lebanon and Syria and start them East. If it moves, kill it. If its over a foot tall, destroy it and just not stop until we reach the Persian Gulf. Then we start North until we meet the Russians doing the same thing down through Iraq and Iran until there is as little left of classical Arabia as there was of Carthage.

A radical Muslim cleric in Britain who was kicked out of Saudi Arabia for being too radical said recently that he sees no problem with taking women and children hostage. Can anyone tell me why this man is free to walk the ground of a nation with troops fighting in Iraq?

The Arabic Muslim world better decide whether it wants to survive or whether it wants to continue to be ambivalent about this Islamofascist bunch of vipers in its midst. If it refuses to come to its senses and put these people out of everyones' misery it will find itself under the guns of every non-Muslim on the planet.

And Senator Edwards thinks we should give nuclear fuel to the Iranians as long as they promise to make nice! The current Democratic leadership is truly too out of touch with the realities of this post-9/11 era to be allowed to govern a playground, let alone a nation.

Did Senator Kerry actually think no one would remember those statements of his before the Senate in '71? Is he so out of touch with reality he thought no one would notice that Nixon wasn't in office at Christmas of '68? Is the Left so impressed with their stand on the Vietnam war that they thought their blue-collar base, many still carrying the scars of that war, would rise in solidarity or some other useless marxist phrase to stand behind this "nuanced" lawmaker and his trial-lawyer partner and shout, "Hell no, we won't go" again?

Lots of people, myself included, are no fans of President Bush but the Democrats have left us no choice as long as there are people out there trying to kill us.

Saturday, September 04, 2004

Oh Those Daffy Europeans

While every other country is phoning in condolences and regrets to Russia for the children and parents brually murdered by Islamofascists in Beslan, the European Union demands to know how the Russians could have let this happen.

Two hundred seventy five adults and one hundred fifty five children died at the hands of these vermin and the EU demands an explanation. And some people wonder why we didn't listen to them in Iraq.

One day soon, they will become victims of these killers and you have to wonder who they think will help them drag the bodies of their loved ones and children from the rubble. Cheese eating surrender monkeys indeed!

Friday, September 03, 2004

A Password Is Like Underwear

Really, a password is just like underwear. You should always wear it and change it frequently. You can be unconventional if you like but at some point you will be embarrassed or worse.

Forget about antivirus software, DMZs, firewalls and VPNs. The one item that provides more protection for your PC, your applications and your data than anything else is a password.

If you have a PC at home or at your office that doesn't require a username and password to get to the desktop, you are leaving the gate open and the light on. Anyone from the janitor to your seven-year-old son has access to your checkbook, your business plan and all those cached web pages from your most recent cruise around the Internet.

Even if they don’t care what's on your PC there is the possibility an unauthorized user can delete or corrupt a file or even an application.

Basic security for any PC should be as follows.
1. Disable the "Guest" account.
2. Every user on your PC should have their own login account and password.
3. Every login account should be configured to go to a password-protected screen saver after fifteen minutes or so.
4. If this is an office PC, the interval should be set even shorter to 5 or 10 minutes.
5. Financial applications (Quicken, Peachtree, etc.) should always be password protected in addition to the access passwords noted above.
6. Every password should be at least six characters long. It is even better to use a combination of characters and numbers.
7. Don't use your name, your phone number or anything else too obvious.

When you cruise the Internet and log into your bank account or other financial sites, remember the same principle. All of these websites have a little box on the login screen that says, "remember my password" or "remember me." Make sure that little box is unchecked.

Otherwise . . . anyone who managed to get into your PC will be automatically logged in to those sites - sorta like writing your PIN on your debit card.

Yes, passwords are a hassle to use and a pain if you forget but if you don't password protect your PC and data, you are just asking for trouble.

The same advice applies to your router, your wireless access point or any other hardware on your network. All of these come with "default" passwords that are not only noted in the user manual but are available on the web.
Whenever you install such a device, you should change the password from the default.

If you install a wireless network you should also change the SSID from the default as well.

If an employee or partner leaves the organization, change all the passwords – better safe than sorry.

Sure you need antivirus and spyware software. Of course you should use a firewall (preferably hardware, not software). But if you fail to password protect your systems, you are asking for the most common kind of computer damage, theft or corruption of your data.


Attaboy G. W.

One thing I have learned about the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them and whatever strengths you have, you’re going to need them. These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget. I have tried to comfort Americans who lost the most on September 11th people who showed me a picture or told me a story, so I would know how much was taken from them. I have learned first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I’ve held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom.

And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong.- President George W. Bush

On to the Debates

I honestly don't know who is more worried, the Kerry campaign or the mainstream media who support him. With control of a national budget the size of ours up for grabs, politics is a deadly serious blood sport. The shrieks and wails of the media about Zell Miller's speech and the Swift Boat vets while ignoring the comments of the Al Gores, Donna Braziles and the Soros-supported 527s show that they believe they are losing and they are terrified.

G.W. is not my to my taste in many ways but at least he understands that there are people out there who are trying to kill us. The incident at the Russian school only underscores why we cannot afford to "reply to any attack" but be proactive and take the fight to the enemy.

Now all I have to do is make it through two more months of campaign rhetoric before I can cast my ballot and get this whole thing over with.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Party Time in New York

Who knew? Tommy Franks comes out for Bush while Kerry appears to be hiding in the bushes somewhere. Bush has two things going for him, foreign policy and tax cuts. After listening to his speech tonight I'm ready to believe he's FDR ready to pull us out of the Great Depression. What does Kerry have left to run on after Bush steals the entire social program from the Democrats?

For all his myriad flaws, George Bush understands one critical item that his opponent does not. Islamofascism is our implaccable enemy and the only way for us to win is to, bit by bit, remove the climate of poverty, absolutism and tribalism that allows it to flourish. This upcoming election is a plebiscite on this, nothing more, nothing less.

One thing struck me about the difference between the Democratic and Republican conventions. At the Democratic convention, Amazing Grace was an instrumental solo and the Battle Humn of the Republic was conspicuous by its absence. The Republicans, on the other hand, had no trouble speaking the word, God.

You know I just have to ask this. Why is it a Republican administration that has the most diverse (sorry about that word) staff ever, not the "come together" Democrats?

Beware of Microsoft and XP Service Pack 2

Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson! We gots trouble right here in Redmond City. If you are running Windows XP, be aware that installing Service Pack 2 could cause problems with proprietary browsers (Yahoo, AOL, etc.) as well as some firewall and other security applications.

Both my ISP and Information Week have informed me that Windows XP Service Pack 2 may cause problems with some of my applications. My ISP tells me I have to upgrade their proprietary software before installing the Windows XP Service Pack 2 to avoid problems. A recent article in Information Week tells us that as many as ten percent (yes, that's one in ten computers) may encounter problems with some of their applications as a result of installing the service pack.

Part of this is due to the wide variety of security applications, many of whom have proprietary and non-standard solutions, many people use to stop spam, spyware and provide network security. Microsoft made some serious changes in an effort to upgrade security in this latest service pack and it is causing lots of problems.