...And Welcome to It

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Striding on the cliffs, brandishing a jeweled meat hammer, cometh Mark! And he gives a low bellow: "I'm going to bludgeon you until you can no longer smell pretty things!"

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I said it. Bush said it. Rumsfeld said it. The State Dept. didn't say it, but Paul Wolfowitz did, and it looks like we were right.

Busy day yesterday, so I didn't get to give you all as much bloggerific goodness as you deserve. And I completely blew off this story. ABCNews has the low down on a situation arising where many of the soldier's letters were identical. It's not as bad as the initial reports sounded; just a case of an officer saying "mail this". I reserve judgement. Link thanks to Instapundit.

Jimmie Walker, yes, that Jimmie Walker, has some wise words about Rush.

This case should be interesting.

Mark Steyn on the California Recall.
Just in case any Democrats have come back down to Planet Earth, here's what happened on Tuesday: The two Republican candidates -- Schwarzenegger and Tom McClintock -- pulled 62 percent of the vote between them; the Democrat, Cruz Bustamante, got 31.7 percent. The remaining 6 percent was divided among the other 132 candidates. Just to recap: Republicans 62 percent, Democrats 31.7 percent -- in the most liberal state in the nation. As long as all those angry voters keep expressing their anger by voting for Republicans over Democrats by two to one, I think I can live with it.

More importantly (at least to me) he agrees with me about what should be the top priority of the Democratic party.

Oh, well. If I were a Dem, I'd go with Howard Dean. Even if he loses, he'll de-Clintonize the party along the way, which ought to be the most important priority. Otherwise, it's all down to Sen. Rodham Clinton in 2008 -- or, as Paul Maslin would put it, the triumph of the Hill.

Jeff Jarvis says Andy Rooney is an idiot.

Here's acomplete transcript of the Democratic Presidential Debate.

Here is the link to Limbaugh's press release.

"I am not making any excuses. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes. They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem.

"At the present time, the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete. So I will only say that the stories you have read and heard contain inaccuracies and distortions, which I will clear up when I am free to speak about them.

Well, little details yet, but Rush Limbaugh has announced he is addicted to painkillers for the past 6 years. He is entering a 30 day program to rid himself of the addiction. I was afraid of this, and I wish he had done this sooner.

You think it's wonderful and life-affirming to be pro-choice; well read this. She definitely got her choice all right.

As you probably don't know, I'm from Missouri. As such, I like to see it when my home state reps do something good. It turns out Jim Talent has a good idea on how to make health insurance more available. Here's a report by Ramesh Ponnuru.

Did you watch the Democratic debate last night? Neither did I, but here's a wrapup from Byron York.

So....very....tired. Well, I feel better than yesterday, but I do fell, as Bilbo said, "like butter stretched over too much bread". I don't know how much blogging will get done today, but I'll try to be a little better next week.

Another soldier lets us know the real story.

Read the whole thing. I defies excerpts, but I'm going to give you a tase, and hopefully you'll buy the whole meal.


I had to become familiar with the massacres and attempted genocides that have shaped modern Iraq, the repression of the Kurds and Iraqi Shiites, the mass graves, gassings, the razing of villages and the attempted destruction of entire cultures and peoples.

There are places on Earth where "police" can arbitrarily arrest and torture whom they like, and ask for bribes not to do so. And some people in the United States, sheltered from such things, will tell you that American soldiers are no different from such fighters.

It is their right to think so. But the children know. The children of those tortured lands laugh and play with American soldiers, wave to them, speak a few American phrases, ask for candy and treats or simply give a shy smile. They crowd around us when we walk the streets, cluster around our bases and safe houses, run out into the streets to wave to passing convoys. They thank us.

Well, between sleeping late and mucho work, I haven't blogged all day. I feel pretty guilty about that, but whachoo gonna do? For anyone interested, here's a drinking game for tonight's Democratic Debate.

A friend of mine writes:

In regards to your link to the N. Korea article, I have a question. Why would anyone be surprised about what is going on in North Korea? It has been described as a "Stalinist" state for decades. And it's full of starvation, arrests, gulags, murder, summary trials and executions, torture, cannibalism, paranoia, repression and in general keeping the peasants slaves to the state. Aren't these exactly the same things that occurred in the 1930's in the USSR? No matter how you describe it or where it exists, communism is communism and it's just plain evil.

The thing about it is, they are. Or rather, they push it to the back of their mind so they can focus on the "injustices" in our own society. There are those that think that countries like North Korea and Cuba have some valuable lesson to teach us. I can't see any lesson they are qualified to teach, unless it is one of what to avoid. So we've got to remind them. To point it out to them. Time and again, over and over. Don't let them get away with being blind. Remind them, every day, every minute if necessary.

I'm all for fair-mindedness, but the relative inequality between rich and poor in capitalist countries is a small price to pay to live in a society with so much wealth-creation that even the poorest are well-fed.

The ugly din of some of our own citizens who have become so deluded to reality that they think that George W. Bush is some kind of fascist monster who revels at the deaths of innocent children is actually music to the ears when we consider that it is inevitable cacophany of a free nation, where no one is denied a voice, from the wise and the brave to the foolish and the craven. Various actors and politicians declaring, on national TV no less, that they are being silenced, is comedy if nothing else.

No, real silence is the silence of North Korea; the silence of death, of the grave. They can't march, they can't protest, so it's up to us to rub the world's nose in it, to remind people at every opportunity, to shovel the shit right up to their doors until they have to deal with it, if for no other reason then to get rid of the smell.

I like to take potshots at Europe as much as the next guy. But then something like this happens.

German brewer Spaten donated 600 cases of its namesake lager to the U.S. Navy Sept. 3, to thank U.S. Sailors and Marines who deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Nice gesture guys.

Congratulations to Governor Schwarzenegger. More than a million votes more than his closest opponent; yeah, I'd say he got his mandate. Now let's hope he turns out to be something more than the empty shell he seemed like to me during the election.

Scary thought, I can now say that I've seen a US Governor naked.

Ya'll might be interested. Hillary Clinton is registered as a candidate for President.

(edit) Well looks like it ain't true. Turns out she was filed by a draft Hillary campaign and has nothing to do with it. Oh, well. No doubt she will jump in, but she hasn't yet.

Well, today is the day. No links for this one; you know who the players are. On one side we have the delightfully sleazy Gray "Please, please, pleeeeaaaase let me stay" Davis, clutching desperately at the last shreds of his dignity, and his job. On the other, we have the Terminator, er Arnold "I'm veddy veddy soddy" Schwarzennegger, as well as the likes of Tom "I'm the only qualified person on the ticket, but I act like a stick" McClintock, Cruz "we don' need no steenking whities" Bustamente, and a horde of also-rans like Gary "whatchoo talkin' bout, Davis?" Coleman, Mary "Look at my boobs" Carey, and Larry "I'm a First Amendment crusader" Flynt. Why is it that all First Amendment advocates seem to be pornographers? The answer to that we are probably not meant to know.

So, anyway, today should be an interesting day, and one that reminds me how truly great our country is.

On the care and feeding of Geeks. Funny article, and some dismayingly true bits.

We geeks are comfortable in herds, so keeping yours content requires that he have the opportunity to associate with his own kind now and then. Conveniently, this also solves the movie problem: Our taste for multiple viewings of certain films may not appeal to you, so let us go with our friends as often as we like. Since geeks generally like movies of all kinds (we just gravitate towards those with dragons or starships over others), you can feel free to choose whatever films you'll see as a couple without fear of whining. Try that with a football star.

The LA Times has gone after Schwarzennegger, and let's face it, it's fair. The guy is a boor. He's the guy all the ladies warn each other about, and then pretend to smile when what they'd really like to do is plant their 4 inch heels into his instep and say "Get your hand off my ass, or I'll break it off and feed it to you." But they don't, and why? Because they know ultimately he's a harmless lech, and his behavior was ultimately not worth making a scene over.

But how about a serial batterer. How about a guy so prone to fits of rage that female employees actually transferred jobs to avoid him? Well, apparently that doesn't rise to the level of the Times standards. Try this on for size. Jill Stewart blasts the LA Times for deliberately covering up repeated offenses by Gray Davis.

Since at least 1997, the Times has been sitting on information that Gov. Gray Davis is an "office batterer" who has attacked female members of his staff, thrown objects at subservients and launched into red-faced fits, screaming the f-word until staffers cower.

I published a lengthy article on Davis and his bizarre dual personality at the now-defunct New Times Los Angeles on Nov. 27, 1997, as well as several articles with similar information later on.

The Times was onto the story, too, and we crossed paths. My article, headlined "Closet Wacko Vs. Mega Fibber," detailed how Davis flew into a rage one day because female staffers had rearranged framed artwork on the walls of his office.

He so violently shoved his loyal, 62-year-old secretary out of a doorway that she suffered a breakdown and refused to ever work in the same room with him. She worked at home, in an arrangement with state officials, then worked in a separate area where she was promised Davis would not go. She finally transferred to another job, desperate to avoid him.


There's more, and Ms. Stewart published her story. But what happened at the Times?

After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources.

Read the whole thing.

Here's another one. Man goes to Iraq, does good work, and comes home to find out that everybody here is being told how terrible it is. In addition to the deception, it is plain insulting to the many fine men and women who are doing yoeman's work in Iraq, to present all their efforts as failures.

Read this. Then put your hands together, and pray. Thank God you live in the United States. Thank God that your children will never know suffering like this. And then the question we must ask "How can we make this suffering stop?" The same way we always do, with blood.

Okay, Here we go. A new week, new posts, new news (that sounded silly). Here's more from David Kay, who's a little surprised to find his efforts so far branded a failure.

Well, I thought maybe I had an insightful response to one of my blog posts. I received an e-mail from "John" entitled "You suck" Surely this meant someone was reading me and was about to embarrass me with the great power of their gigantic intellect, as evidenced by the sheer audacious witticism which they entitled their e-mail! Alas, twas not the case, merely spam inviting me to try some new privacy/anti-virus program to make my penis bigger.
So please, if you're reading this, send me an e-mail. I want to suck more! Wait a minute, that didn't sound right...anyway salamandyr@hotmail.com. C'mon...please?

This is just sick. Pfc. Lynch, whatever the true story of her ordeal was, did not seek out the attention the media has ladled on her. And even if this is true, I don't see how these photos in some way detract from the character she showed as a soldier and POW in Iraq.

I've always felt that the Lynch episode was overplayed by a media hungry for a female war hero and role model. They wanted to show the world that women could be just as heroic as men and they exaggerated Pfc. Lynch's story to make their case. In doing so they obfuscated real heroic deeds by soldiers more deserving of accolades. But this is not Jessica's fault. She didn't choose to become the poster girl for the GI Jane fantasies of countless journalists. That role was draped around her before she was even rescued. The script was written, and she was forced to play the role they wrote for her.

If you're a fan of Limbaugh, and you care about his current predicament, then you probably listened to his opening remarks today. If not, here is FOX News take on the story. Note that in the second section, they give a good rundown of the current state and origin of the drug investigation.

John Podhoretz takes us to school on the Wilson-Plame affair.

And remember; if we, the American people were misled about the state of the Iraqi weapons program, so were the Bush and Clinton Administrations, the UN, British Intelligence, French Intelligence, Russian Intelligence, and pretty much every country that could find two people to stand around on street corners in trench coats passing secret messages to each other. And the perpetrator of that deception, Saddam Hussein himself. Screw him.

Andrew Sullivan has more blogging and more links about the David Kay report. His impression is the same as mine. The media is deliberately distorting the report to put the Administration in the worst light possible. This report actually reinforces the President's prewar claims. Iraq did have a weapons program. It did conceal important material from the UN inspectors. The entire point was to take care of the problem before Hussein became so big a threat he was a direct danger. Remember the Bush Doctrine; "if you're going to hit us tomorrow, we'll hit you today."

Susan Estrich blasts the LA Times for their last minute smear of Schwarzennegger.

But none of these women, as The Times emphasizes, ever came forward to complain. The newspaper went looking for them, and then waited until five days before the election to tell the fragments of the story.

Slate is defending Rush Limbaugh.

Is the NAACP shutting out minority candidates when they are Republican?

Desmond Tutu is speaking out against Robert Mugabe and the ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe. I see this as a good sign. The problems in Africa are our concerns, but we (and by we I mean the rest of the world, not just the US) cannot lead the way. Africa cannot begin to heal until its own people resolve to do so. Here's hoping someone's listening over there.
Urging civil society groups in Africa to put pressure on their governments to address problems in society, Tutu said: "How can we persuade our governments to realise that it is obscene to spend so much on arms in the absence of an external enemy when the greatest threats in most of our countries are poverty, disease and ignorance.”

It's begun. Bob Graham is set to drop out of the race tomorrow.

David Kay, in a classified brief to the House and Senate has confirmed that they have not found any WMD's in Iraq at this point. I'm scratching my head wondering where Reuters got all this information if it was classified? But that's not important right now. What is important is Reuters' standard operating procedure of putting the information most important to the Pro War side as far down in the article as it's possible to get without it dribbling off the page and onto the floor.

Way down in paragraph 14 we get:

The team has discovered dozens of WMD-related activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during inspections that began in late 2002, Kay said in his statement.


He cited laboratories and safehouses run by the Iraqi Intelligence Service that had equipment suitable for chemical and biological weapons research, a prison laboratory complex possibly used to test biological weapons agents on humans, and strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which could be used to produce weapons.


There was systematic and deliberate destruction of evidence, including computer hard drives and files. Some suspect equipment was cleaned, apparently to hide its real use.


Information uncovered so far suggests that after 1996, Iraq focused on maintaining "smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW (biological warfare) agents," Kay said.


C'mon guys, this here is the smoking gun that states that regardless of the existence of stockpiles, Iraq was operating in violation of UN resolutions. And you put it at the bottom of the story!?

Two days and the American press has still not picked up on the WMD story I linked to on Wednesday. What's the hold-up guys?

G-File today.

So let me just get this out of the way as quickly as possible. Criticizing someone else's criticism — even when a government official does it — isn't an assault on free speech. It is free speech. And leadership does not require saying "thank you sir may I have another" every time some yutz takes an unfair swipe at you. If giving as good as you get intimidates people from speaking their mind, maybe that's a good thing, because it most likely means those people haven't thought through their positions well enough to offer an opinion worth listening to. If that makes you sad, if that makes you want your boo-boo-kitty and a cookie from your mommy, that's fine. But spare me the prattle about how dissenters are being intimidated. Either offer some facts or stop your whining.

Andrew Sullivan is a lot harder on the LA Times than I was. And his accusations make this look like the worst sort of partisan journalism.

Looks like I was right (I love being right). There is indeed something to the story of Schwarzenegger as womanizer. But I gotta say I like the way he handled the accusation this morning.

"Let me tell you something,'' the actor said. "A lot of [what] you see in the stories is not true, but at the same time, I have to tell you that I always say, that wherever there is smoke, there is fire. That is true.

"So I want to say to you, yes, that I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful, but now I recognize that I have offended people.

"And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do.''



The Davis campaign claims to have nothing to do with the content, or the timing of the LA Times story. Suuuurrrre.

John R. Lott Jr. says that Switzerland is preparing to abandon their traditionally liberal gun policies in favor of the rather ill considered gun control of their neighbors.

Here's a link to the Arnold smear hitting the wires today. The latest accusation allegedly occurred in 2000, so we're not talking completely about ancient history.

Is it true? Your guess is as good as mine. There's enough Arnold womanizer stories going around that at least a few are probably true, and if that sways your vote, fine, I can't say as I blame you.

The interesting thing is the timing of the accusations. Everybody remembers (actually nobody does; it's fallen into the black hole where inconvenient information resides) that the news of George W. Bush's drunk driving arrest was such a powerful last minute attack that it obliterated the comfortable lead Bush was carrying into election day. Had the drunk driving arrest not surfaced, we probably would not have had the election debacle of 2000 for the simple reason that W. would have buried Gore in a landslide. Seems the Dem's are hoping for a repeat, with an even better conclusion for them.

K-Lo says it beautifully.

Hey look! I'm on-aAfghan radio! (sorry, old-bad song reference). But hey, women dj's and shimmying middle aged pop stars. Afghanistan's gonna be all right.

More on the Rush controversy. This has got to be the biggest case of misfire we've seen in a while. First off, he didn't criticize the NFL, he criticized the media for focusing on a player's race instead of their ability. Second, what kind of double standard is the NAACP working under when they take umbrage at this remark, when they are currently in the process of threatening several teams for hiring white coaches? Please and thank you, his remarks were intemperate, but racist? Hell, no!

Well,Rush seems to have stepped into it big time. Between stirring up controversy on ESPN, and drug charges, the Big Man is in for some hard days. I, for one, think he's got a point about the media's fascination with black quarterbacks and I hope the drug charges are a lot of hot air. If not, well, prayers and best wishes for him and his family.

Well, here is a source link for the previously mentioned info. According to the article, the Kuwaiti secforces will be publicly turning over the weapons to the FBI soon, but with no actual date. This story is pretty thin gruel, but let's hope it turns out to be true.

Damn it, Glenn! The link is busted.InstaPundit.Com: "Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday."

I'll post more when I find out more.

If you're reading this, send me an e-mail. It'd be cool to see if anybody has noticed me. salamandyr@hotmail.com

This is a great idea. Front Line Voices is a new site (it's official launch is today) which allows the soldiers, marines, and airmen in Iraq to tell us the truth in their own words. Beauty, eh?