Hey, Maybe the Singularity Really Is Near

A very interesting article from Glenn Reynolds stepping outside of his “evil” incarnation as the Instapundit, in which he points out some very strange sounding science and technology at the bleeding edge of the art.

Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology comes out next week. And I suspect that a lot of people wonder if things will really happen as fast as Kurzweil suggests.

But as I look at the news reports, I see quite a few signs that we’re living in a future that not long ago would have looked science fictional. Take, for example, this report: Miracle Mouse Can Grow Back Limbs.

It’s so far out, that the Chief read it in new sci-fi just a few years ago. In spite of the cautious optimism implicit in all of this stuff, there’s also a sobering warning:

Meanwhile, here’s an interview with Ray Kurzweil that I published elsewhere. Kurzweil is an optimist, but even he worries that the Singularity may come as a result of Chinese, not American, efforts, and he’s got some disturbing numbers. The future is almost here, but we’ve still got some choices about how things will turn out. Let’s try to choose wisely.

Indeed!

North Korea Application for membership.

This is a pretty good gag, stumbled across in the New Yorker, online.
It’s worth a look for a laugh.

A couple of items out today that illustrate once again the fundamental importance of the appointments to the bench in determining whether or not we live subject to the whim of judicial dictators arbitrarily wreaking their will, or as Lincoln phrased it, “whether government of the people, by the people, and for the people should not perish from the earth”.

Pledge of Allegiance again ruled unconstitutional

A federal judge declared the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools unconstitutional Wednesday, a decision that could put the divisive issue on track for another round of Supreme Court arguments. The case was brought by the same atheist whose previous battle against the words “under God” was rejected last year by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.

This comes out of the moonbat-grade US 9th Circuit

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge’s reference to one nation “under God” violates school children’s right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.” Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Jerk-it Court of Appeals Schlemiels, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

Instead of “One man, one vote” with Judicial dictatorship we get “One man, I vote”….and as far as the current quality of SCOTUS that the LibDonks are so vociferously defending against conservatives, try this:

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Justice Ginsberg OK’d Child Sex

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg once argued that girls as young as twelve should be able to have sex with adult males, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday – while pledging to make an issue out of Ginsberg’s radical philosophy during John Roberts’ confirmation hearings.

“She argued that the age of consent for a woman should be twelve,” Graham told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity. “She wasn’t representing clients,” Graham noted about Ginsberg’s endorsement of child sex. “She was writing an article about her own views.”

It goes on from there – yes, there is more where that came from…and the hits just keep on comin':

Justice Kennedy’s New Rule of Law

In the Sept. 12 New Yorker, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin pens a profile of Kennedy, who vigorously defends his use of foreign laws and constitutions to interpret U.S. laws and our Constitution. Some in Congress believe Kennedy’s position – and those of several other Court Justices – is a clear violation of both U.S. law and the justices’ own solemn oath to uphold solely the U.S. Constitution.

I tried to find this at the site for The New Yorker, but it wasn’t there – I suppose it’s in the print edition only, at least so far.

What does the collective set of all this stuff mean? Mark Levin in his book Men in Black is right!

At war with an enemy of an unspoken name

Here’s the third installment from Tony Blankley. Check it out, it’s as good as the first two excerpts.

The Chief HAS to get this book!

Al-Qaeda group says chemical arms fired in Baghdad

An Al-Qaeda linked Sunni group in Iraq said it used chemical weapons to attack targets in Baghdad, in a statement on an Islamist website. Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura (Army of the Victorious Community) said its fighters fired shells filled with chemical agents at the interior ministry, foreign ministry, the “green zone” and Baghdad’s security academy.

Did anyone else notice all the MSM coverage of this? No? you didn;t either? Hmmmm. How about our own government’s response? No? Me neither. Like the old Sherlock Holmes story – what’s interesting was the dog that didn’t bark.

Since the Chief, and many otherc commented on the design for the monument in Pennsylvania to Flight 93 that was hijacked on 9-11, and which crashed as the passengers fought to regain control of the aircraft which was apparently on the way to attack D.C. There have been a couple of interesting follow-up items of interest.

Tancredo Questions Shape of 9/11 Memorial

Firstly, Colorado GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo, who is one of the few in COngress that is openly and consistantly opposing our de-facto open border policies, has expressed his own sense of concern over the approved crescent design.

A congressman is asking the U.S. government to reconsider the crescent-shaped design of the memorial to those aboard a plane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, because some may think it honors the terrorists.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican, says the design, called “Crescent of Embrace,” could invite “controversy and criticism.” In a letter sent Tuesday to National Park Service Director Fran Mainella, Tancredo said many have questioned the shape “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam _ and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists.”

…and, in response, CAIR sounded off with some unhappiness. (Time for the waaambulance again: waa-waa, waa-waa, waa-waa.)

CAIR: CO Rep’s ‘Crescent’ Comments a Ploy to Gain Publicity
GOP Leaders Urged to Repudiate Tancredo’s Islamophobic Views

The Council on American-Islamic Relations Council of Angry Islamofascist Radicals (CAIR) today dismissed Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-CO) comments on the design of a memorial to those aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 as a cynical political ploy designed to gain national attention.

(Emphasis added.)

“…those aboard a plane that crashed…”??????? Hello? The plane just happened to crash, or something? Even knowing the Islamofascist nature of these traitorous weasels, this leaves the Cheif breathless in amazement. They truly have no shame at all, and the diversity crowd says we need to respect this? As we used to say when I was on active duty before the mast on a guided missile destroyer: “I might, but I f——g doubt it!”

Start-up Firm Building New Space Capsule System

No links to this YET – but the October issue of Popular Science reports on a firm called T/Space which is developing, with NASA backing, and some project collaboration with Rutan’s Scaled Composites, a capsule system called the CXV or Crew Transfer Vehicle capable of carrying three or four astronauts to low Earth orbit, and returning for a wet landing, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo had.

The launcher is an aircraft launched propane & liquid oxygen rocket. The whole emphasis has been on economy and simplicity of design – and seems to be making some real progress – possibly having things ready to go b\y ’08 or ’09 – an unheard of timeline for NASA projects.

Best of all, this will be privately owned/operated, flying as contractors to NASA, or whoever else wants/needs to get to orbit. Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with its plans for vehicles to replace the shuttles also apparently based on a larger, more advanced capsule design for personnel, and a heavy lift cargo launcher, for well, cargo. NASA doesn;t plan to be ready to fly before 2012 at best, so the T/Space CVX could fill a gap to help keep the International Space Station in business until then.

The folks at T/Space emphasize that they are NOT building a shuttle replacement – but perhaps a modern replacement for the truly antiquated Soyuz technology.

This is truly good news – the US must maintain an effective capability for space, if for no other reason, to prevent a default ceding of the ultimate high ground to China, Russia, or whoever else goes after it.

Virgin plans oil refinery

The highly successful independent entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has apparently once again decided that there is a need that is not being met, so he has resolved to go into the refining business. If he does this with his usual competance and panache, he’ll pull it off and introduce an outside bit of competition to the established oil companies and cartel.

Think you are upset about high gas prices? Maverick British entrepreneur Richard Branson is so furious he wants to build his own oil refinery….”If we don’t start now to get more refineries built then fuel prices could literally rocket to $US100-$US200 (per barrel of oil) and the world economy would come to a grinding halt,” Branson said in an interview on financial news network CNBC overnight.

He should know about rocketing a bit, from being involved in the private spaceflight venture Virgin Galactic. The Chief has of course heard of virgin pressed olive oil, so why not Virgin Oil?

Roberts Rebuffs Democrats’ Questions

THe Chief heard some of the hearings with Judge Roberts – one thing that was readily evident was that one good, sound judge was able to run circles around a whole klatsch of LibDonk senators out to try to Bork him. How sweet it is!

Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts repeatedly refused to answer questions about abortion and other contentious issues at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, telling frustrated Democrats he would not discuss matters that could come before the Supreme Court.

This has become known as the Ginsburg Standard, after the absolute refusal of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to answer ANYTHING specific about any case that might POSSIBLY come before the court.

Roberts struck sparks when he indicated his refusal to answer certain questions was based in part on a precedent of “no hints, no forecasts, no previews” that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set at her hearings a dozen years ago.

What drives the Donks crazy, is that the sauce for the goose has turned out to be sauce for the gander – plus the fact that it is apparent that Judge Roberts is far and away the intellectual master of the law, and that senators like Kennedy, Biden, and Leahy don’t have enough background to do more than run through obviously canned questions prepped by their staff flunkies.

The Cheif remains cautiously optimistic on Roberts’ overall legal orientation, but in spite of the Donks’ fulminations in the hearings, it looks more and more like there will be a decisive and positive vote on the confirmation.

‘An Islamist threat like the Nazis’

Except for radio talker Michael Savage, the Chief has seen no one else in the media with as much situational awareness as Tony Blankley does with this article, and apparently this book.

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

We cannot afford to lose Europe. We cannot afford to see Europe transformed into a launching pad for Islamist jihad.

While we in the United States and Europe have vast resources for protecting ourselves, we have thought ourselves into a position of near impotence.

This is the first of a three-part series in the Washington Times – it looks to be well worth following. Blankley also has a new book out on the same topic. Looks to be a “must-read” for the Chief…and if you can’t figure it out, I concur entirely with the premise and significance of this view.

UPDATE: Here’s part 2 of the series just posted:
Needed: Old war spirit in a new war

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you’ll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he’s in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

The rest of the article goes on to demonstrate the case for this proposition. It has reason! Take a look.

Jews and Freemasons controlled war on Iraq, says No 10 adviser

What can one say about THIS stuff, except to seriously question Tony Blairs choice of an advisor. The Chief hesitates to call this Nazi apologist a moonbat – a far stronger appelation is in order!

One would hope after this that Ahmad Thomson, the Islamofascist in question, might lose standing with the Blair government, but since he’s been spouting his brand of venom since publication of a book in 1994, this hope would be in vain, especially with government mouthpieces admitting no wrong:

A Government spokesman confirmed last night that ministers and officials consulted Mr Thomson on issues concerning Muslims but refused to be drawn on his views. “We talk to a lot of people, including many whose views we do not necessarily agree with,” she said.

What insight can the Blair government be gaining from this Islamofascist?

Mr Thomson said: “Pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events.” Mr Thomson wrote a book in 1994 in which he said Freemasons and Jews controlled the governments of Europe and America and described the claim that six million Jews died in the Holocaust as a “big lie”.

This has got to be the ultimate example of politically correct diversity run amok. What POSSIBLY could be credible from an openly published holocaust denier? It boggles the mind.

The Chief thought Blair had more on the ball than this, but then again, at heart he IS a socialist – and so it goes.

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

Now HERE’s a big shocker! The MSM not reporting the reality of events, but rather tailoring their report to match their agenda! Say it ain’t so…but is is, unfortunately.

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow….But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Once again, “ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS, WE PRINT”.

From a man who has some REAL experience with such matters:

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that: “The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

The same style of journalism that reports on events in Baghdad from the hotel bar, is active in the hurricane areas, as well:

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out. So they libel as a “national disgrace” the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

Indeed!

Defeating Al Qaeda, the Strategic Information Power

A good strategic-minded post on Austin Bay – it occurs to the chief that the blogosphere is one way to counteract the fluttered MSM rolling over for the Islamofascists.

H/T to Glenn the Instapundit on this one.

“Crescent of Embrace” Selected Design

Few would protest the appropriateness of a memorial at the site of the crash of United Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA on 9-11. More than a few are apparently appalled, as is the Chief, by the design that was selected:

What in the world possesses some of these people when they do something like this. Here’s the group of people featured on this evening’s TV special (Discovery ch.) THE FLIGHT THAT FOUGHT BACK, being supposedly honored by a design that effectively creates a large Islamic crescent on the landscape using red-leaved trees.

Are they REALLY so dense as to be oblivious to the reactions to this, or is there some other agenda of uber-political correctness? One has to wonder.

Michelle Malkin has about as complete a presentation on this as anywhere, with links to other explanatory sites.

Rick Rescorla Was a Soldier

If you were to tread one post for 9-11, the Chief suggests strongly that this would be the one! Rick Resorla was security head for Morgan Stanley in the WTC. He predicted an attack on the building through the parking garage before it happened. After security on that was beefed up, he actually predicted air attack via crashing airliners as the next method to be used.

As if that isn’t enough, there is an exceptional record of service and heroism in the life of this Cornwall born naturalized American that is well worth remembering as exemplifying the best. He served with distinction in the Royal Army, and then in the US Army 7th Cav in Viet-nam.

Check Greyhawk’s post in the Mudville Gazette out – it’s well worth it. Check out the links there, and don’t forget to sign the petition for Rick to get the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

UPDATE: History Channel tonight running an excellent program “THE MAN WHO PREDICTED 9-11″ – about Rick Rescorla. By the way, you can see Rick Rescorla’s picture on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young.

A Soldier, indeed.

Fuel protests ‘will bring Britain to a standstill’

This is in the category of “I complained because I had no shoes…then I met a man who had no feet.”

Fuel protesters vow to bring Britain to a standstill this week as the cost of petrol sits at a record £5 a gallon.

Let’s see – £1 = $1.50 more or less. So $7.50 per gallon! Yowch! And it isn’t just the market forces at play over there either:

The fuel tax duty of 47.1p a litre collected by the Government accounts for about half the cost of petrol sold at today’s prices. British drivers pay far more than those in France and the United States, where prices per litre average 85.22p and 37.9p respectively.

(Emphasis added)

And we think WE have it rough!

Mystery Bulge in Oregon Still Growing

This type of bulging is one of the key indicators of some form of volcanic activity. Most of the Cascades volcanic mountains are candidates for eruption. St. Helens continues to percolate, and this recent finding indicates activity in the vicinity of the Three Sisters volcanic formation(s).

Bulge as viewed using radar interferometry.

A recent survey of a bulge that covers about 100 square miles near the South Sister indicates the area is still growing, suggesting it could be another volcano in the making or a major shift of molten rock under the center of the Cascade Range.

This site is remote enough to probably not be a disaster, even if it erupts, but it’s still something neat enough to keep some track of.

Base-closure panel finds overestimation of savings

The final Base Re-alignment and Closing Commission report has been sent to the President. The final version notably maintains Ellsworth AFB of South Dakota as a going concern. Hopefully, the report is accepted.

The Pentagon overestimated savings from base closings by $30 billion and some of its plans for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient, a federal commission that reviewed the process said yesterday.

With its five months of work complete, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voiced its concerns even as it approved roughly 86 percent of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommended as he sought to save money by getting rid of extra space in the domestic military network. That’s on par with previous years, when commissions changed only about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed.

California’s New Orleans

Quick, name an American city of 450,000 where the majority of the population is non-white, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty, and where some of the city streets are, even on a dry day, below sea level. New Orleans, of course. But also Long Beach, California.

What happened in NOLA could apparently also happen in California’s Long Beach, complete with large minority populations left at the mercy of the elements. The biggest difference is that they are being kept that way by envirowackos who feel that a “natural” beachfront is better than bothering to protect people & their homes, etc.

Parts of the city in southern Los Angeles county stand an average three feet below sea level, compared to eight feet for New Orleans. Yet despite all the talk from the political left that the Bush administration has effectively drowned New Orleans residents, that same political left is working assiduously to leave Long Beach residents exposed.

Typical moonbat logic – or lack therof – never to be bothered by a mere bugaboo of being consistant.

Read the rest to gain a bit more insight into the mind of the elitist envirowacko cult of nature uber alles.

Blacks fault lack of local leadership

Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially in the city of New Orleans.

The Donks’ old lock-step loyalty is getting frayed in the face of some unpleasant doses of reality ignoring party affiliation.

“Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself,” said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. “The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people of New Orleans. … The truth is, black people died not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco,” he said….”If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities,” he said.

A light in the forest! But speaking of other cities, note the post next to this one, about Long Beach: the hits just keep on coming!

Gone with the Water

From an article in the October 2004 issue of National Geographic magazine:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV “storm teams” warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

Sound familiar? Read on:

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Fortunately the casualty rate doesn’t seem to be this high for NOLA, but the rest sounds spot on.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

Pretty good for a year in advance. Imagine what would have happened if the Louisiana state government, and the City of New Orleans had made some realistic emergency plans based on this sort of projection.

Like it should have been their priority, since they’re the ones directly on the scene – right? As it turned out, wrong!

Bush Administration Wins Appeal on Padilla

In a victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that the government can continue to hold indefinitely an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

This decision is fully in line with long-standing precedent where US citizens who had been engaged as enemy combatants in WW-I and WW-II were held as POW’s without any access or recourse to the civilian judicial system. Any other outcome would also be insane from the viewpoint of national security.

“The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al-Qaida, an entity with which the United States is at war,” Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote. “We conclude that the President does possess such authority.”

This decision also happens to highlight a judge who may go to SCOTUS. This would be a welcome addition to them:

Luttig, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, was joined in his opinion by Judges M. Blane Michael and William B. Traxler Jr.

FEMA Dumps Brown As Katrina Relief Chief

Call a spade a spade: Pres. Bush appointing this guy as head of FEMA was NOT a positive move. Pulling him out of the Katrina situation into a role of “overall supervision” is effectively kicking him upstairs to get him out of the way.

This is a necessary move, and frankly, the Chief hopes that he is gracefully moved out altogether after some period of time, to complete the process of error correction.

His replacement, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has HIS ducks in a row, and will be a major improvement.

YIKES! Blogposts Vanish into Ether!

Something horrible happened this afternoon resulting in the deletion of all of the Chief’s postings from June through the current date/time.

Even more unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be retrievable – AND – this occurred with no backup for the time in question. (I know, always do regular backups – and I DO, at least for my working files – but I didn’t think to do so for my blog. Oh well.

What’s the old moonbat-ish cliche? Oh yeah, this is almost like the first day of the rest of the blog – and I’ll have new posts up (generally) daily.

Daschle Coterie Continues Campaign of Lies against Thune

Maybe it’s time to get out the oaken stakes, garlic, and crucifixes to try to deal with the undead of South Dakota politics, the hapless partisans of Tom Daschle that are currently spouting a series of lies, half-truths, and distortions in an ill-begotten attempt to assissinate the character and image of Sen. John Thune.

The gory details are laid out by Sibby here, here, and here. (Not to short-change the yeoman service done over at South Dakota Politics on this also: they are regularly linked by Sibby in his postings.)

On the face of it Hildebrandt, Epp, and the rest of thier ilk from the Daschle camp seem to have a reality problem: their guy lost the election, largely because their true orientation on the issues was too far removbed from what most SD voters thought. Somebody better call them a waahmbulance: wah-wah, wah-wah, wah-wah!

H/T to Maha Rushi who had this on his show today. The OpEd here from the SanFran Chronicle (not a stronghold of the VRWC) describes a mental odyssey that took the writer out of the left, into the world of reality:

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I’m leaving the left — more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere — reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode.

Nice bit of writing and thinking here – the writer also called and discussed this some more with Rush also. Pretty good nerve for still living in SanFran – possibly the ultimate center of the moonbat habitat.

Maybe you’d like to hear about a real American, somebody who honored the uniform he wears. This was e-mailed to the Chief, you may have seen it, but I haven’t before, & think it it well worth some attention and thought:

Meet Brian Chontosh. Churchville-Chili Central School class of 1991. Proud graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Husband and about-to-be father. First lieutenant (now Captain) in the United States Marine Corps. And a genuine hero. The Secretary of the Navy said so yesterday.

At 29 Palms in California, Brian Chontosh was presented with the Navy Cross, the second highest award for combat bravery the United States can bestow.

It was on the march into Baghdad. Brian Chontosh was a platoon leader rolling up Highway 1 in a humvee. When all hell broke loose. Ambush city.

The young Marines were being cut to ribbons. Mortars, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades. And the kid out of Churchville was in charge. It was do or die and it was up to him. So he moved to the side of his column, looking for a way to lead his men to safety. As he tried to poke a hole through the Iraqi line his humvee came under direct enemy machine gun fire.

Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack. He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the .50 cal unload on them. Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines.

Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride, and he ran down the trench, with its mortars and riflemen, machine-guns and grenadiers.

He fought with the M16 until it was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man’s AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man’s AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion.

When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon’s flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more. But that’s probably not how he would tell it. He would probably merely say that his Marines were in trouble, and he got them out of trouble.

The citation concluded: “By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, 1st Lt. Chontosh reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.”

NOT TYPICALLY BEING REPORTED BY THE MSM – BUT CERTAINLY WORTHY OF NOTICE.

“People sleep peaceably in their beds because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” – George Orwell

Europe faces up to double rejection of treaty

Interesting report from across the pond: The Frogs and the Dutch seem poised to vote NON! on the proposed Eurocratic Constitution. Oooops. There goes the push for a fully integrated United States of Europe, or whatever it would have been called.

Pesky democracy! Those sheeple just don’t vote the way their leaders say they should!

Promises Action in Spite of RINOs in Gang of 14

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) warned Democrats yesterday that he will not hesitate to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” to enforce an eleventh-hour deal that a centrist coalition of 14 lawmakers struck Monday on President Bush’s stalled judicial nominees.

At least some in the Senate continue to fly the Republican flag instead of the white flag of the RINO caucus. Meanwhile, two of the RINOs are developing their waffling skills to a previously unheard of level:

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) (RINO-SC)and Mike DeWine (R-O) (RINO-O), two of the seven Republican signatories to the memorandum of understanding on the judges, backed up Frist, threatening to vote for the option should Democrats attempt to block nominees in circumstances that the two lawmakers would not consider “extraordinary.”

So what’s THAT all about? Feeling some heat from back home? Or what?

Anyway, the CHief hopes that Frist and the remaining real GOP senators go ahead and PUSH the agenda to the max, & let the chips fall where they may. At least that way the wafflers on both sides wpuld be exposed for once and for all for what they really are, or are not. THAT would seriously clear the air!