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Get Over It

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Sometimes you have to endure a Carter to get a Reagan.

We survived Jimmah; we'll survive this.

It's pretty well established that Vladimir Putin wants to bring back the Soviet Union; his actions (Medvedev? Who?) in Georgia point pretty strongly to that. In true Soviet style, he's trying to blame the U.S. for the Russian invasion:

MOSCOW: As Russia struggled to rally international support for its military action in Georgia, Vladimir Putin, the country's paramount leader, lashed out at the United States on Thursday, contending that the White House may have orchestrated the conflict to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election.

Putin's comments in a television interview, his most extensive to date on Russia's decision to send troops into Georgia earlier this month, sought to present the military operation as a response to brazen, cold war-style provocations by the United States.

. . .

On Thursday, Putin, now prime minister, also said Russian defense officials believed that United States citizens were in the conflict area supporting the Georgian military when it attacked the separatist region of South Ossetia.

"Even during the cold war, during the time of tough confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we have always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, let alone our servicemen," Putin said. "We have serious reasons to believe that directly, in the combat zone, citizens of the United States were present." [emphasis added]

Putin is lying. Surely he can't have forgotten about KAL 007, where a Soviet fighter pilot shot down a Korean Airlines 747, killing all 269 aboard (including 69 Americans - one of whom was a Congressman).

And let's not forget that Soviet MiG-15 pilots fought beside Chinese and North Korean pilots in the Korean War:

In order to begin to understand the military, political, and diplomatic forces that shaped the Cold War, it is useful to start with what we now know of the Soviet Union’s military participation in the Korean War. Before scholars gained access to previously top secret Soviet-era archives in the early 1990s, they could only guess at the extent of Joseph Stalin’s direct involvement.

. . .

Recent research in the Soviet-era archives in Russia not only verifies the direct involvement of Soviet units, but also provides an inside view of Stalin’s high-level diplomacy and the military deployments that implemented these policies.

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Let me get this straight - not only did the first female Speaker of the House not get a headlining speech at her party's convention...

"Now we have Nancy Pelosi bloviating, and I say that in an affectionate way, behind us," [Bill] O'Reilly said. "It doesn't seem like the crowd is on the edge of their seats."

Fox's viewers weren't allowed to judge for themselves. Same thing for CNN at the time, where Wolf Blitzer was holding court as Pelosi talked. Among the cable news networks, only MSNBC gave Pelosi's speech any real attention.
... the keynote address was given by the candidate's wife.

Now *that's* respect.

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Joe Biden announced today that he was entering the 2008 Presidential race. Today, he also stepped on his dong with track spikes:

Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said.
This SHOULD mark the shortest campaign for President by a major party candidate that I can remember, but since he's a Democrat, he'll probably get away with it.

Ironically, given his prior originality-impairment problem, he is attempting to attribute the remark to someone else: to his mother:

My mother has an expression: 'Clean as a whistle and sharp as a tack.'

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The Gift That Keeps On Giving

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You've probably heard by now about John Kerry's slam on the military. Of course, the Waffler can't get his damage control straight, lashing out at the folks who called him on it:

The Massachusetts Democrat called the White House attack "a classic GOP textbook Republican campaign tactic" that reveals Republicans' "willingness to reduce anything in America to raw politics."

"I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes," he said. "It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."
while simultaneously trying the old bully-caught-red-handed-by-the-principal tactic of 'it was all a joke:'
Kerry said the comment in question was "a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops ... and they know that's what I was talking about."

First of all, there's the old Freudism about there being no such thing as a joke, from which one could infer that Kerry does indeed hold the military in contempt. Second, was he trying to say "pay attention in school, or you'll end up President of the United States?" Sure, that'll be a deterrent. Third, even if he was trying to say "pay attention in school, or you'll end up like Bush," that would just be another Operation Foot-Bullet for him, because Kerry didn't do any better at Yale than Bush did!

John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.

But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

Incidentally, here's one of those "Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country" (from the second link above):

GOP Sen. John McCain, like Kerry a decorated Vietnam veteran and a potential 2008 rival, said while campaigning for Republican candidates in Indiana that "the suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat today."

The backlash is so bad that Democrats are diving for cover:

A Democratic congressman told ABC News Tuesday, "I guess Kerry wasn't content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too."
and recognizing a Lurch endorsement as the kiss of death:
A Democratic Congressional candidate from Iowa is canceling a campaign event later this week with Senator John Kerry.

Brucy Braley says Kerry's recent comments about the Iraq war were inappropriate.

Braley is running against Republican Mike Whalen in Iowa's First District congressional race. It's a contest considered to be one of the most competitive House races in the country.

Braley's decision to distance himself from Kerry came as a furor grew from comments Kerry made about the Iraq War during a campaign stop in California on Monday.
A Democrat running in "one of the most competitive House races in the country" doesn't want to be associated with his party's candidate from the previous Presidential election. Priceless.

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What, You Thought He Was Going To Disappear?

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Ned Lamont is 'surprised by [the] harshness of attacks' in the wake of his primary victory over Joe Lieberman. MSNBC:

Conn. Senate nominee stunned by partisanship
Lamont says he’s surprised by harshness of attacks from Lieberman, Cheney

WASHINGTON - Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont, the anti-war candidate who toppled Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary, says he was surprised by Lieberman and Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims that his victory could embolden terrorists.

. . .

After British officials disclosed they had thwarted a terrorist airline bombing plot on Thursday, Lieberman warned that Lamont’s call for a phased-withdrawal of troops from Iraq would be “taken as a tremendous victory” by terrorists.

Cheney on Wednesday had suggested that Lamont’s victory might encourage “the al-Qaida types” who want to “break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.”

If he's surprised, he ain't paying attention, for two reasons. First, that's the Vice President's response to EVERYBODY who wants a timetable from a withdrawl from Iraq. You may not agree with that argument, but for Lamont to be surprised by it is, well, surprising.

Second, it's not like Lamont's hands are exactly clean on this. He'd like us to forget that a prominent leftist blogger who he didn't know who he met once who directed him in a commercial and followed his campaign with very close access posted a picture of Lieberman in blackface and tried to send it down the memory hole when busted on it.

I'm OK with bare-knuckle politics, but don't do shit like that and act surprised when your opponents respond in kind.

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Code Monkey No Like War Protesters

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So you're a modern-day Northern Irish socialist, lazing around the commune, when you hear that the Zionists have invaded Lebanon and are driving back the heroic Hezbollah charity who wants nothing more than to be left in peace so they can distribute rockets food to the Israelis poor people of Lebanon.

This is absolutely the last straw; now you've just GOT to stick it to The Man. Remembering the axiom "Think Globally, Act Locally," you recall the local instantiation of the Imperialist Capitalist Running Pig-Dog Military/Industrial Complex just over the hill in Derry. Your mates have been protesting this Raytheon building on and off ever since it came to Derry, but just kid stuff, really - a brief sit-in and a bit of street theater. No, it's now time to show the Zionists and their warmongering enablers some Direct Action:

Anti-war protesters today stormed American arms manufacturer Raytheon's Londonderry base, with nine people barricading themselves into the building and wrecking equipment.

The protesters were soon locked in a tense stand-off with upwards of 50 police officers, after some of them inflicted considerable damage, especially to computers.

According to the protesters, the computer system was "completely disabled".

Amid chaotic scenes at the Buncrana Road site, thousands of documents and dozens of computers were burned and thrown from windows by members of a group that entered the building at 8am today.

That the building is a software development center writing Air Traffic Control systems software is irrelevant; it's all about the symbolism:

Fellow anti-war protester and member of Socialist Environmental Alliance Goretti Horgan, who was one of those protesting outside the building at the Ulster Science and Technology Park on Buncrana Road, said: "There is a bit of property damage but that is as nothing compared to the thousands of people dying.

"We had to do the damage in order to get a chance to put Raytheon in the dock. We want to try and stop or slow down Raytheon production even for a short while because any kind of delay to getting bombs to Israel to drop on innocent Lebanese and Palestinian people has to be welcomed."

And your stunt must have worked really really well - so well, in fact, that Bu$hCo was forced to trump up a pretend terrorist crisis in order to keep you off the front page! Brilliant!

I, for my part, will help you take your message to the next level: if you really want to 'stop or slow down Raytheon production,' I'll start a collection for plane fare to fly you to Tucson where the missiles are actually built.

You'll have to bring your own body bags, though.

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False Dichotomy

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I read in several places that Brian Bilbray's narrow victory over Francine Busby in a special election to replace ousted Congressional scumbag Duke Cunningham was a bullet dodged by the GOP, and that the closeness of the election in a thought-to-be-solidly-Republican district was a bad sign for Republicans in general in November.

Did it occur to anybody that there was an additional factor at play in this election that won't be in effect in November - that there might be some resistance in this particular district to replace this particular disgraced Congresschmuck with somebody else from the same party?

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Ask A PETArd

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Ace (via Potfry) has pointed me to a site where you can actually ask PETA questions.

Boy, are they going to regret that one, and if 1/10th of the questions in the comments of Ace's post get sent to Carla, she's going to need therapy - that is, if she doesn't already for being a human-hating animal-worshiper.

So here's my question:

Dear Carla,

Recently, some Canadian geese have migrated into my neighborhood and decided they don't want to migrate out of it. Their droppings are a real nusiance and are starting to become a health hazard, especially for my canine life partner, who has developed a taste for them. I want to deal with the geese in a humane fashion.

So what I need to know is how fast I should hit them with my car to kill them as quickly and humanely as you kill 85% of the unwanted dogs and cats that come into your possession?

Update: Apparently you can't actually submit a question to be answered. Too bad.

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Actively Pursuing A Resume Stain

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So my former mayor (and by that I mean 'the SOB who is responsible for the fact that I now live in the city limits against my will without even moving') is going to assume the helm at the Brady Campaign:

. . .he considers finding that common ground [with Second Amendment defenders] the primary mission of his new job.

“They can’t agree on anything at this point,” he says. “Part of my job will be to review where the focus is, to see what makes sense. Let’s find where we’re getting the greatest pitched battles. It seems there should be at least some room for agreement.”
So it won't be a long tenure for Helmke as President of the Brady Campaign - once the disarmers see that he's seeking common ground, he becomes their enemy.

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