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August 31, 2005

Even NY Times Confirms No Link Between Katrina and Global Warming

On the off chance that anyone saner than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Germany's Environment Minister takes the "global warming caused Katrina" meme seriously, I will take the unusual step of referring readers to the New York Times:

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:50 PM | Comments (6)

No, Wait — It Was the Governor of Mississippi Who Caused Katrina

I didn't mean to be picking on Germans in the post below. It's not like we don't have our own share of kooks. A diatribe by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on The Huffington Post will give an idea of how far out they can go. Here's a sample:

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi's Gulf Coast, it's worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

That's right, according to the environmentalist voodoo in which Kennedy believes, Katrina was caused by a failure to sufficiently regulate CO2 over the last couple of years, coupled with the Senate's wise 95-0 nixing of the absurd Kyoto Protocol. Consequently, Governor Barbour has blood on his hands.

A little more lunacy:

Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and — now — Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

If Bobby Jr. and his kooky clique really do believe that the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is "all about oil," it might be time for someone to break the news to them about what happened on September 11, 2001.

Kennedy finishes up by suggesting that God deflected the hurricane from New Orleans and aimed it at Mississippi to punish the state for electing Barbour.

Let's see if the Germans can top that for moonbattery.

Hat tip: Drudge Report

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:40 PM | Comments (3)

German Minister Blames Bush for Katrina

It's one thing for kooky leftist bloggers to blame Bush for the weather, but aren't government ministers supposed to act like grownups? Apparently not in some administrations. Here's what Germany's Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin has to say on the subject of Bush's complicity with Katrina, via Davids Medienkritik:

By neglecting environmental protection, America's president shuts his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflict on his country and the world's economy. ... When reason finally pays a visit to climate-polluter headquarters, the international community has to be prepared to hand America a worked out proposal for the future of international climate protection. The German Government stands ready.

So thoughtful of the German Government, which has managed to cripple Germany's once mighty economy with senseless regulations, to offer to do the same to ours. As Leigh points out at The House of Wheels, when it comes to blaming Bush, it's getting hard to distinguish between the leftists who mean it and the satirists who make fun of them.

In case anyone actually believes that Katrina was caused by global warming (whether global warming even exists and whether Bush has anything to do with it are separate issues), check out these graphs I lifted from EU Rota (the red line is the average number of hurricanes per decade):

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:11 PM | Comments (7)

Poll Finds Sheehan Circus Has No Effect

Apparently the media is wasting its resources with their relentless hyping of Mother Moonbat's stilted performance in Crawford. According to a Washington Post–ABC News poll, Sheehan's disgraceful antics have had no impact on attitudes toward the War on Terror in eight of 10 Americans. One in 10 say she has made them more supportive of our country's efforts — the same number as those who were successfully influenced to be less supportive. Thank you MaryHunter for the tip.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:44 AM | Comments (3)

August 30, 2005

Moonbats Target Blue Angels

If there is one group we should all be able to agree to admire, it's the Blue Angels. The combination of grace, power, expertise, and raw guts displayed by this legendary team will make any sane citizen proud to be American. From the Official Blue Angels Site:

The Blue Angels' mission is to enhance Navy and Marine Corps recruiting and to represent the naval service to the United States, its elected leadership and foreign nations. The Blue Angels serve as positive role models and goodwill ambassadors for the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps. A Blue Angels flight demonstration exhibits the choreographed refinements of Navy trained flying skills. It includes the graceful aerobatic maneuvers of the four-plane Diamond Formation, in concert with the fast-paced, high-performance maneuvers of its two solo pilots. Finally, the team illustrates the pinnacle of precision flying, performing maneuvers locked as a unit in the renowned, six-jet Delta Formation. Stationed during the show season at Forrest Sherman Field, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, the squadron spends the winter (January through March) training pilots and new team members at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California. The Blue Angels are scheduled to fly nearly 70 air shows at 34 locations in the United States and Canada during the 2004 season. Last season brought out more than 17 million spectators. Since its inception in 1946, the Blue Angels have performed for more than 381 million fans.

Awesome, am I right?

But today I learned on a tip from The MaryHunter that a cave full of kooks known as Veterans for Peace — Maine Chapter actually plans to protest against them on September 10 in Brunswick, Maine. These vermin are pleased to announce that they will be joined by the MSM's beloved Anti-American of the Year, Mother Moonbat herself, Cindy Sheehan. Militant America-basher Kathy Kelly is also slated to participate in this righteous protest against "the false god idolatry of the Blue Angels Air Show."

Congratulations, Blue Angels. With enemies like these, you have yet another reason to be proud.

Actually, this isn't the first time the Blue Angels have met with the displeasure of moonbats. They aren't very popular with Ann Pelo, author of a leftist propaganda manual for guidance in brainwashing preschool children entitled "That's Not Fair!: A Teacher's Guide to Activism with Young Children."

Bernard Goldberg, in his highly recommended "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America," ranks Pelo #51. He describes the section in what he calls her "Michael Moore for Toddlers" where she tells how she spun the Blue Angels to her class. Evidently she managed to convince the little kids that the Blue Angels might drop bombs on them.

Instead of the pride and awe healthy children would feel on seeing the Blue Angels, Pelo's kids were taught to cringe in fear. This is moonbattery in a nutshell. The educrats at the National Association for the Education of Young Children have described her book as a resource "to change the world for the better."

Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes.

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:28 PM | Comments (6)

CNN Weatherman Loses It

Even the weather guy has a screw loose at Ted "Mouth from the South" Turner's gift to cable news. Check it out, compliments of Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:23 PM | Comments (2)

Lisa Fithian: Hard-Core Fanatic, Sheehan Puppeteer

In an interesting piece on NRO, Byron York sheds further light not only on how profoundly contrived the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon is, but on who does the contriving. He notes that when Sheehan's website passes around the hat, donors are request to contact Lisa Fithian.

Fithian is a big-time, profession agitator. In York's words:

Fithian is a legendary organizer who operates in the world of anti-globalism anarchists, antiwar protesters, and union activists; an advocate of aggressive "direct action" demonstrations, she protested the first Gulf war, played an important role in the violent shutdown of Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, was a key planner in protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2000 and 2004, and organized demonstrations at trade meetings in Washington, D.C., Prague, and Genoa.

By the way, Sheehan handlers Code Pink were also involved in the anticapitalism riots in Seattle.

Although reporters have discretely failed to notice, Fithian has been a part of the Crawford Carnival since its very inception.

"I came the first day and helped her [Sheehan] set up the initial encampment," Fithian admits. She's been in Crawford pretty much continually ever since.

To give an idea of Fithian's character, York refers to a November 2003 profile in New York Times Magazine — hardly hostile territory for left-wing activists.

"You don't go to Fithian when you want to carry a placard," said the Gray Lady. "You go to her when you want to make sure there are enough bolt cutters to go around."

Violence, nonviolence, what's the difference? There isn't one, according to Fithian:

Nonviolence is a strategy. Civil disobedience is a tactic. Direct action is a strategy. Throwing rocks is a tactic.

Her hostility to our civilization is not something she hides under a bushel:

I guess my biggest thing is that as people who are trying to create a new world, I do believe we have to dismantle or transform the old order to do that. I just fundamentally don't believe it will ever serve our interests as it's currently constructed.

"Dismantle or transform the old order" sounds innocuous enough to some — but probably not to Russians, who will remember the millions who were deliberately starved or died in gulags when Lisa Fithian types helped dismantle the old order and were then able to seize control of their country.

With thanks to V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:16 AM | Comments (4)

August 29, 2005

Naked Moonbats in the Snow

Just how nuts are the sort of Bush-bashing, antiwar kooks the media has been trying to pass off as reasoning beings? These photos might give you an idea. Rated R.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:05 PM | Comments (6)

Moonbats Blame Bush for the Weather

At this point readers probably won't be surprised to hear that President Bush — whom lefties blamed for last year's Sumatra tsunami — is now being held responsible for Katrina. Yesterday Swing State Project listed three reasons why Bush should be blamed for the approaching storm. To paraphrase:

1. Thanks to Bush, some members of the Louisiana National Guard, who otherwise would have been present to hold up their hands and stop the wind, are wasting their time fighting al Qaeda.
2. Hurricanes are caused by global warming, which in turn was caused by President Bush.
3. Despite warnings that hurricane season might feature hurricanes this year, Bush spent time in Crawford, when he should have been standing on the Gulf Coast shore, in position to command the rains to cease.

The author forgot another reason that Katrina should weigh heavily on the President's guilty conscience. With all the juice Bush has with the religious right, why didn't he use his influence to have God call off the storm?

With thanks to V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:44 PM | Comments (4)

Is Cindy Sheehan Psychic?

In the spirit (so to speak) of John Edwards, who claimed to be channeling an unborn baby in order to convince a jury to help him mug an obstetrician, Cindy Sheehan now appears to be attributing postmortem quotes to her son Casey. From a speech made last week to fawning Sheehanistas:

When I get up, he's gonna say, "Good job Mom." (applause) He's not going to say, he's not going to say, "Why'd you make me spin in my grave," you know. And I can just hear him saying "George Bush you are really an idiot. You didn't know what you were doing when you killed me. You didn't know what you were getting into."

Needless to say, it hardly seems likely that a man who died a hero would speak so disrespectfully of his Commander in Chief. But I won't claim to speak for the dead.

Wait, no one told her this was going to be televised.

That's better.

Hat tip: LGF, on a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:49 PM | Comments (3)

Cindy Sheehan Spectacle Continues to Deteriorate

The Cindy Sheehan Circus keeps spiraling downward, from contrived spectacle to tasteless farce. Over the weekend, the Sheehanistas were joined by neo-Nazis (link via V the K) and Al Sharpton. At least now this sordid production has reached rock bottom.

The neo-Nazi Stormfronters' objective in coming to Crawford is to "let the world know that white patriots were first & loudest to protest this war for Israel." Mother Sheehan's theory that the dastardly Jews have engineered the war in Iraq resonates loudly in the cavernous spaces that can found between the ears of white supremacists.

Al Sharpton's contributions to anti-Semitism include setting off a pogrom in Crown Heights and a massacre in Harlem, and may help explain his popularity on today's Left. If I were given just two words to sum up why no decent person should support the Democratic Party, those words would be, "Al Sharpton."

By the way, Mother Moonbat has drawn support from another corner of society's cellar. Fred Phelps — whose bizarre cult calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church and has been disrupting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq in order to spread the message that "God hates fags" — has offered his assistance, if this PDF is legit (hat tip: Moonbat Daily). Phelps helpfully explains why her son died (because God hates fags, naturally), and even offers some undeniably excellent advice: "Nix the show-boating and grandstanding for the media."

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:42 AM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2005

Cindy Sheehan, Media Whore

Not that I'm complaining about the makeup. If this is what she looks like after getting made over by pros, she would probably scare Medusa when she wakes up in the morning:

Posted by Van Helsing at 3:37 PM | Comments (13)

More Anti-War on Terror Phoniness

If characters like Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda haven't yet convinced you of the phoniness of the anti-war movement, maybe this will (link via V the K):

CARBONDALE, Ill. — For two years, Carbondale residents have been riveted by the writing of a little girl imploring her father in Iraq: "Don't die, OK?"

Only now are they learning there was never any danger of that.

The Daily Egyptian, Southern Illinois University's student-run newspaper, today will admit to its readers that the saga — of a little girl's published letters to her father serving in Iraq — was apparently an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the girl's aunt.

In fact, the newspaper will report today, the man identified as the girl's father was never in Iraq, and it was the woman who apparently wrote the letters and regular columns that were published under the little girl's name — and even impersonated the girl in telephone interviews.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:23 PM | Comments (10)

Moonbat Medication

Attention trolls: Here's something that might help:

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:23 PM | Comments (1)

August 27, 2005

The Chickenhawk Fallacy

Among the most juvenile — and most common — arguments advanced by left-wing trolls on this blog and others is the "chickenhawk" canard, whereby some sanctimonious fool proclaims that no one has a right to support the war in Iraq who hasn't served in the military. An argument this idiotic is hard to take seriously enough to refute, but apparently the job needs to be done, because moonbats — unable to come up with anything better — just keep trotting it out. There's no need for me to refute it myself. This has already been done quite thoroughly by others.

V the K and The Warden have pointed out in comments on this site that the chickenhawk arguments implies you have no right to expect the protection of the police and the fire department unless you are a cop and fireman yourself. V the K follows this logic further down the twisting lane of antiwar moonbat logic:

How many more cops have to die before the Bushco fascist regime realizes that law enforcement is a quagmire? Fighting crime only creates more criminals! Support the cops by closing all the prisons! The greatest crime in the history of America — the murder of Nicole Simpson — remains unsolved because the regime took their eye off the ball by pursuing other crimes. America isn't safe so long as the "real killers" remain at large.

Jonathan at Crush Liberalism references an excellent piece by Ben Shapiro, and raises some good points himself. For example, he notes that some leftists giggled like "teenage girls at a Justin Timberlake concert" at the idea of the draft-dodging Clinton being Commander-in Chief. He also wonders if he has to stop cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars, since he's never played for the team.

Shapiro' two-part piece (Part I and Part II) drives home the point that by positing that only those who have served in the military are entitled to a point of view on foreign policy, the chickenhawk argument "explicitly rejects basic principles of representative democracy." He notes that leftists are among the last people who would want the military in control of foreign policy, especially since those in the military and their relatives vote overwhelmingly Republican — in 2004, Bush beat Kerry among them 69% to 24%. Democrats are of course aware that they have very little appeal for the military; otherwise the Gore campaign wouldn't have gone to such length to suppress military votes in Florida in 2000. Obviously leaving everything up to those who have served in the military and their relatives would do very little to advance the left-wing point of view.

Here's another of the many good points Shapiro makes:

If they [the American military] fight for the right of pacifist anti-military fifth columnists like Michael Moore to denigrate their honor, they certainly fight for the right of civilian hawks to speak up in favor of the highest level of moral and material support for their heroism.

Whatever might have remained of the asinine chickenhawk ploy was thoroughly obliterated yesterday by Rich Lowry on NRO. Here's a highlight:

By the same token, we could say to proponents of leaving Saddam Hussein in power: "That's an illegitimate position unless you yourself are willing to move to Tikrit to live for the duration of Saddam's regime." Or to supporters of "containing" Saddam: "You're a hypocrite until you go help patrol the no-fly zone." Or to advocates of inspections: "You can't support them unless you don a baby-blue cap and sniff around his suspected chemical-weapons sites yourself."

Why should this line of argument be limited to Iraq? "You think we should help fight AIDS in Africa? Well, go work in a clinic in Lavumisa, Swaziland." "You oppose land mines? Go clear them from the Korean DMZ." "You think there should be a new U.N. protocol in favor of [insert fashionable cause here]? Then spend interminable hours helping negotiate it yourself." "Support jobless benefits? Become a clerk at an unemployment office."

Alas, the argument only swings one way. A few radical antiwar groups, including Code Pink and Veterans for Peace, have released a statement supporting the Iraqi insurgency. But no one is badgering its members about whether they are going to go set off roadside bombs in Baquba. Jihad is so easy when it's someone else's son or daughter doing all the suicide bombing!

Shapiro sums it up as well as anyone:

The "chickenhawk" argument proves only one point: The left is incapable of discussing foreign policy in a rational manner.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:46 PM | Comments (11)

72 Virgins Await

Thanks Wiggins, for passing along this indication of what the afterlife might have in store for hoodwinked losers who kill themselves in the process of murdering innocent civilians at the behest of an evil god that isn't real.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:47 AM | Comments (4)

August 26, 2005

Living Library Lunacy

The Wall Street Journal reports that a library in Malmo, Sweden lends not only books but human beings, in an effort to help the unenlightened overcome their prejudices. If you bring your library card, you can take out a homosexual, an imam, a gypsy, a journalist, or even a Dane. Not to be outdone, a Dutch library plans to start a similar program, which will allow patrons to check out a politician, a homosexual, a Muslim, a gypsy, a drug addict, or a German.

"The customers can rent a veiled Muslim woman and finally ask her all the questions they would never dare to ask if they met her on the street," says Jan Krol, director of the Dutch library.

Evidently this is on the level. WSJ suggests that European libraries offer Americans, so that "even Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder could check them out."

Of course, whether borrowing an American would help Europeans overcome their bigotry would depend on the American: if you brought home Sean Hannity, it would leave you with a very different impression than if you brought home Michael Moore. Apparently the European librarians involved do not feel that the same principle would apply to Muslims, homosexuals, etc.

If this concept catches on, I'm sure library patrons in Vancouver won't have long to wait before they can check out prostitutes and drug dealers.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:06 PM | Comments (9)

Code Pink Activists Taunt Wounded Soldiers

It's not easy for an organization that raised money for al Qaeda to find new lows, but Code Pink is doing its level best — or rather worst.

CNSNews.com reports that Cindy Sheehan's Crawford puppeteers have been busy in the capital, organizing protests directly in front of the main entrance of The Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where hundreds of veterans are recovering from wounds sustained defending the liberties of all Americans, including the vermin waging psychological warfare against them.

The idea of looking out the hospital window to see that you had sacrificed yourself for scum, and that the scum doesn't even appreciate it, is bound to be disheartening. But most soldiers are aware that — media spin aside — the Code Pink/Cindy Sheehan Show segment of our society is far from representative of normal Americans. A more cruel twist of the knife is the protestors' play on survivors' guilt. Kevin Pannell of the Army's First Cavalry Division — who was recently treated at Walter Reed and had both legs amputated — explains:

We went by there one day and I drove by and [the anti-war protesters] had a bunch of flag-draped coffins laid out on the sidewalk. That, I thought, was probably the most distasteful thing I had ever seen. Ever. You know that 95 percent of the guys in the hospital bed lost guys whenever they got hurt and survivors' guilt is the worst thing you can deal with.

Here, as in Crawford, the activists would probably claim to be supporting the troops in their own special way. Here, as in Crawford, they would be lying. Code Pink has made no secret of its hostility to the military.

Check out CNSNew's video report.

Hat tip: Museum of Left Wing Lunacy.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:53 AM | Comments (9)

August 25, 2005

Party Time

Here we see the grieving Mother Sheehan, mourning yesterday at a Texas airport. You can easily see that no amount of adulation by the media can offset the grief that tears at her noble soul. Hat tip: LGF, via V the K and Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:39 PM | Comments (12)

Aussie Treasurer Warns of Left's Frankenstein Monsters

Connoisseurs of moonbattery will be aware of various Frankenstein monsters created by the Left, often as byproducts of ill-advised social engineering experiments, but sometimes merely as unavoidable results of their constant barrage of pernicious rhetoric. How long can members of the education establishment spew corrosive propaganda intended to denigrate the USA, Western Civilization, and even the human race in general without at least a few kids being heavily influenced by these depraved views, with inevitably disastrous consequences?

Australia's Treasurer Peter Costello has noticed the problem of politically correct fools sowing seeds of trendy anti-Americanism that might sprout into terrorist attacks that won't necessarily be limited to America. But when he tried to raise a flag, teachers were predictably unreceptive (thank you Bergbikr for the link).

"Anti-Americanism can easily morph into anti-Westernism," Costello observed. "Particularly you've seen that with terrorists. They don't really draw distinctions between Americans or Britons or Australians; they just like to hit anybody who they consider to be part of the West."

Costello made other observations unlikely to sit well with educrats, for example:

If the world is to have a hegemon, the modern United States is the kind of hegemon we would like to have: democratic, respectful of human rights, with strong and genuine belief in individual liberty.

None of this sat well with the NSW Teachers Federation, which denounced Costello's insights as "absolute nonsense." Showing the same distaste for constructive criticism that is a hallmark of teachers unions here in the USA, its Senior Vice-President Angelo Gavrielatos defensively whined, "The constant denigration of teachers isn't good for the country."

But hopefully Costello's remarks will cause a few left-leaning teachers to take off their dunce caps and scratch their heads, wondering, what if the kids take this PC bilge we teach them seriously? What if they grow up hating their own country, their own culture, their own history, their own ethnicity? What's going to hold civilization together if no one believes in it?

And of course, there's Costello's immediate concern — if students from other cultures are fed a steady diet of revisionist grievances, how can we be surprised if a few years down the road they are setting off nail bombs on school buses to avenge some sick dictator like Arafat or Saddam?

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:19 PM

Yahoo Slips

What is it with Yahoo? Like Google they have kowtowed to the communist dictatorship in China, helping them to censor the Internet; Yahoo News features a moonbattery-laden Anti-War Movement section (no corresponding pro-War on Terror section is to be found, as Lady Jane notes); and now this:

Zooming in on the lower left corner:

V the K assures that this is no photoshop. Let's hope it isn't a Freudian slip.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:30 PM | Comments (11)

New Front in War on Terror: Our Backyard

As the MSM whips itself into a delirium over the irrelevant Pat Robertson's suggestion that we might make the world a better place by ridding it of Hugo Chavez, let's just hope that this isn't true:

The Chavez-Castro axis is preparing a Caribbean Terror: biological weapons. In May 2002 Fidel Castro personally went to Iran, which the U.S. labels as the world's most active supporter of terrorism. He was received by that country's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared that "U.S. grandeur can be broken," and that if it is, "it will be a service rendered to mankind and even the American people." Not to be outdone, Castro told the Iranians, according to the Associated Press, that the U.S. is an "imperialist king" that "will finally fall, just as your king was overthrown."

In July, Castro then sent his close confidant Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras - a congressman and the head of the Cuban-Iraqi Friendship Society - to Iraq as an envoy. This was after Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez had already been to Iraq himself, to pave the way for a Latin American Castro-Chavez pact with Saddam Hussein. As BBC reports from Iraqi TV and Iraq Radio in Baghdad, Alvarez Cambras met with Saddam Hussein to convey a "verbal message" on behalf of Castro and also with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. The message was that Castro and Chavez wanted to work with Saddam on developing new bioweapons for use against the United States.

MilitaresDemicraticos.com also reports that Chavez, not content to praise the attacks of 9/11, or to spend September 12, 2001 publicly burning American flags, gave $1 million to al Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Chavez's anti-American rhetoric has been in overdrive lately. Like bin Laden before 9/11, he has made no secret of his intense hostility.

Meanwhile, it appears that the US military is taking steps to address a possible Arab terrorist foothold in South America. The region where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet "is home to a large Arab community, which various intelligence services have identified as a source of financing and shelter for Islamic fundamentalist groups."

And of course, it isn't just Mexicans pouring across the Mexican border.

As our enemies draw closer, the media chips in by distracting us with the Cindy Sheehan circus, eating away at our will to fight any way they can. It's almost as if media people think that terrorists will spare them in reward for their services.

Thanks to Wiggins for links.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:48 AM | Comments (3)

August 24, 2005

Recommended for Younger Readers

If you're having a hard time finding suitable reading material for a budding young conservative, you might have a look at Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed. Here's Amazon's description:

This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.

The book might also make a suitable gift for liberal friends. You don't want to start them right off with Atlas Shrugged.

Thank you Wiggins for the tip.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:45 PM | Comments (7)

Dr. Seuss, World War II, and the War on Terror

Nickie Goomba has up some Dr. Seuss cartoons from World War II that would need only superficial alterations to be perfect statements about the War on Terror and its moonbat detractors — especially regarding the Iraqi theater. Here's an example; just put bin Laden or al Zarqawi at the controls instead of Hitler and it could have been drawn this morning:

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:39 PM | Comments (10)

Mark Kurlansky: Not Exactly the Salt of the Earth

Another good link passed along by V the K offers a glimpse into the strange mixture of nastiness, egotism, and jejunity that makes up today's liberal elite intellectuals. Mark Kurlansky was understandably proud to have heard that President Bush was reading his book Salt: A World History. You almost can't blame him for puffing out his chest and boasting to his cronies at The Guardian about it. Unfortunately, he couldn't stop spewing sophomoric venom even long enough to pat himself on the back:

What does it mean that George W Bush, a man who has demonstrated little ability for reflection, who is known to read no newspapers and whose headlong charge into disaster after cataclysm has shown a complete ignorance of history, who wants to throw out centuries of scientific learning and replace it with mythical mumbo-jumbo that he mistakenly calls religion, who preaches Christianity but seems to have never read the teachings of the great anti-war activist, Jesus Christ, is now spending his vacation reading my book, Salt: A World History?

Kurlansky then goes on to pontificate that one day oil won't be as economically critical as it is today. Since all sophisticated intellectuals know that the struggle to uphold democracy and defend our civilization against terrorism is "all about oil," this means that Bush should put away his books and his silly grownup stuff like foreign policy and go out to chat with the hostile freaks at Cindy Sheehan's sideshow.

To answer Kurlansky's question as to what it means that the President read his book, it probably means that since you can learn from pretty much anyone, even an obnoxious fool's book might be worth reading.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:31 AM | Comments (2)

Just How Contrived Is the Cindy Sheehan Show?

This should give an idea (from NRO):

Cindy Sheehan's connections to MoveOn include a relationship with Fenton Communications, who have coordinated public relations with MoveOn for the last several years. The Houston Chronicle first reported the question back on August 11th, "Sheehan has developed media savvy with assistance from the national public relations firm Fenton Communications, which has also worked with MoveOn.org, the liberal group that campaigned against Bush last year."

As V the K wondered, is hiring a publicist a stage of the grieving process?

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:48 AM | Comments (8)

August 23, 2005

Salt Lake City Vets Hold Firm on Support for Bush and War on Terror

Despite the media's propaganda campaign to undermine public support for the War on Terror, a clear majority of veterans continue to support the President and to keep their heads on straight regarding our country's noble efforts in Iraq, to judge by the reaction of Vets to Bush's speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Salt Lake City yesterday.

"We owe them something," said the President, referring to those who have sacrificed their lives to defend us from terrorism. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us ... fight and win the war on terror."

The audience concurred. VFW officials blamed the current dip in support for the war on the media's relentlessly negative coverage.

"It doesn't sell newspapers, opening schools and hospitals," said John T. Spahr, who served in the Air Force during the Korean War. "I get emails from my friends over there telling me positive things about Iraq. It's not heard over here, and that belittles the effort in Iraq."

Recent polls suggesting that most people would now prefer to deal with terrorism by trying to ignore it until the next 9/11 comes to find them didn't seem to dishearten the vets.

"Take a poll here and it would probably be 80-20 percent" in support of the President and the war, said Vietnam Navy veteran Gary Wellesley.

This must come as a great disappointment to the city's moonbat mayor, Rocky Anderson (link via V the K), who violated the rules of political decency by trying to whip up his own town to protest against the visiting President. As Anderson spluttered in an email sent out last Friday,

There should be a collaboration of health-care-provision advocates, seniors, the (gay, lesbian and bisexual and transsexual) community, anti-Patriot Act advocates and other civil libertarians, anti-war folks, pro-Social Security advocates, environmental advocates, anti-nuclear-testing advocates, and anti-nuclear-waste-shipment-and-storage advocates.

Unfortunately for Anderson, his coalition of kooks — which held a petulant anti-Bush rally about six blocks from the VFW convention — is unlikely to have the leverage to get him reelected.

Mike Parkin, the senior vice commander of the VFW's Atomic Post 4355 in Salt Lake City, appropriately characterized Anderson's behavior as "very unpatriotic" and "despicable." He voted for Anderson, but won't be doing so again, which I would imagine is a very common sentiment in Salt Lake City right now.

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:55 PM | Comments (2)

American Talk Show Host Silenced by Islamic Terrorist Front Group

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the same terrorist front group that was able to dictate corny plot alterations to the folks at 24, has another notch in its belt, as Western Civilization, rotted away by moonbattery, lets itself slip a little closer to dhimmitude. I'm referring to the sad and terrifying case of DC talk show host Michael Graham, whose show has been canceled by ABC at the insistence of Ibrahim Hooper and friends.

After thirty seconds of Howard Stern, you would be forgiven for thinking that absolutely anything goes on the airwaves today. After all, if Randi Rodent can joke about shooting the president on Air America, what could possibly be off limits? What could Graham have said that was so unconscionable as to compel ABC to fire him over it?

Here's what: He publicly observed that there is a connection between Islam and terrorism.

Maybe he could have gotten away with this before 9/11. Not now. Now we're supposed to bow and scrape and worry about Ibrahim Hooper's feelings as we patiently wait for the next plane to fly into an office tower, or the next nail bomb to go off on a school bus.

Graham stated the obvious, and now he's out of a job. There's a lesson in this: Watch your mouths, dhimmis!

The Radio Equalizer has the whole story.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:22 AM | Comments (22)

August 22, 2005

All About Zombies

Thanks, V the K, for passing along this great clip.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:04 PM | Comments (1)

Frank Rich and the "Insurgency"

It's human nature to look for meaning even where we have little hope of finding any. Sometimes it pays off, because insight can be gleaned in the most unlikely of places. For example, Frank Rich's marathon diatribe entitled "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan" actually contained a sentence that made me think.

The venomous and barely coherent editorial took up more than half a page in yesterday's NY Times, perhaps explaining why they yet again didn't have enough space to tell us about what's going on at Air America. The content is what you would expect. "Swift Boating" as a verb refers to the Swift Boat Vets' revelations as to John Kerry's less than heroic military service — in the alternate world from which the Times reaches us, Kerry really was a war hero, Standard Form 180 be damned. This horrible Sheehan woman that Rich and his kind are propping up in front of the cameras for propaganda purposes is being "slimed" by bloggers who keep maligning the poor creature by quoting some of the depravity that has been erupting from her mouth like pea soup in The Exorcist. With the sophistication of an ill-behaved chimpanzee, Rich takes the opportunity to throw clots of his poo at the usual targets, naturally including the President, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Fox News.

Within a paragraph, I realized I had read it all before, and my eyelids began to get heavy. Then at last I reached the last sentence:

But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

"Insurgent" of course is the euphemism the MSM uses to replace the word "terrorist" in the context of Iraq. After all, they can't call the terrorists terrorists and still maintain that fighting them has nothing to do with the War on Terror. Many if not most of the "insurgents" are not Iraqis, but al Qaeda recruits who arrive from other countries to blow up innocent citizens in their struggle to undermine democracy.

An example of the heroic activities of these "insurgents" is setting off bombs where American troops are handing out candy to Iraqi children. These are the people Michael Moore (whose website has been hosting Sheehan's rants) compares favorably to the patriots of the American Revolution — a profoundly depraved point of view that begins to take on a warped kind of logic when you consider that Moore, like Sheehan and Rich himself, is a member of the twin "insurgency" here at home.

What Rich got me wondering is — if the word "insurgent" means "terrorist" in Iraq, what does it mean here? The answer is probably somewhere between "moonbat" and "traitor."

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:44 AM | Comments (35)

August 21, 2005

Moonbats Over Arizona

Click the picture for actual video footage of a Sheehanista in Phoenix, via The Political Teen. You won't be much surprised when you find out what he does for a living.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:10 PM | Comments (6)

Cindy Sheehan and John Kerry in a Single Nutshell

Thank you ScrappleFace for summing up both the Cindy Sheehan spectacle and John Kerry in a single sentence:

In related news, the grieving woman's agent said that tonight's vigil will include an appearance by Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, who will throw her son's military medals over the fence at the Bush ranch.

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:34 PM | Comments (7)

NY Times Goes Back to Ignoring Unfolding Air America Scandals

It looks like the short piece that the NY Times finally coughed up in Section B, Page 3, Column 4 a week ago last Friday acknowledging that even they know something's rotten at Air America is their last word on the subject (other than an erratum, where they admitted to watering down Al Franken's statements on the topic).

Meanwhile, more curious journalists have discovered that stealing $875,000 from a charity that helps the inner-city poor is just the tip of the iceberg of Air Un-American's rottenness. Via Michelle Malkin (link from V the K), the New York Sun reports that the network's transfer of ownership was apparently an illegal scam known as "fraudulent conveyance," intended to evade creditors. MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting (among the largest minority-owned broadcasting companies in the country) has been stiffed for $1.5 million — and they are taking "The Limbaugh of the Left" and his friends to court over it.

Hopefully no one is missing the irony that the people Air America has been screwing are minorities — in stark contrast to the sanctimonious race-based rhetoric that constantly emanates from the sort of liberal elitists who are running this slimy operation.

I waited until after the Sunday paper came out to give the NY Times an opportunity to present their take on all this. But they acknowledge none of it, not even in Section B, Page 3, Column 4. It looks like the complaints of NY Times ombudsman and normally loyal company man Barney Calame have been in vain. From Calame's Public Editor's Web Journal (hat tip: Times Watch), dated August 17:

Readers of The Times were poorly served by the paper's slowness to cover official investigations into questionable financial transactions involving Air America, the liberal radio network. The Times's first article on the investigations finally appeared last Friday after weeks of articles by other newspapers in New York and elsewhere.

The Times's recent slowness stands in contrast to its flurry of articles about Air America in the spring of 2004, when the network was launched. "Liberal Voices (Some Sharp) Get New Home on Radio Dial," read the headline on The Times's article the morning of March 31 when the network went on the air. The article noted that the network had a staff headlined by comedian Al Franken and hopes of establishing a counterpoint to conservative radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh.

Two months later, The Times reported that the network had come close to running out of money in April but had received an infusion of an undisclosed amount of cash from sources that weren't identified. The article noted that Evan M. Cohen, a primary early backer and the chairman of the network, had resigned.

Yet The Times was silent as other publications reported that city and state investigators were looking into whether the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in the Bronx had made improper loans of as much as $875,000 to Air America. Mr. Cohen, it turned out, had served simultaneously as a top executive at Air America and as the club's development director. And since the club operated largely with grants from government sources, any money passed to Air America may have come from the public till.

It has become clearer in the past week or so that Air America hasn't yet fully repaid the "loans" from the club, and its financial condition remains murky even in The Times's article Friday. So the future of the radio network seems to be a key question for The Times to answer.

"We were slow in the first place and need to do more," Rick Berke, an associate managing editor at The Times, told me Monday. While it's no excuse for such a belated response to the brewing scandal, it's true that pieces of the unfolding story fell in the domains of three different parts of the newsroom: the metropolitan desk, the business desk and the culture desk. There was, my inquiries suggest, a lack of coordination and awareness of what the paper's competitors across town were writing.

But it seems to me that this story is still unfolding, and The Times, for the sake of all its readers, needs to get to the bottom of any improper conduct and assess Air America's future.

There's another reason to get to the bottom of the scandal. It's the perception problem — a perception of liberal bias for which I haven't found any evidence after checking with editors at the paper.

Failing to cover the story until late last week has led numerous readers, especially those who seemed inspired by conservative bloggers, to write in saying that a liberal bias in the newsroom caused the paper to downplay the budding scandal. One reader put it this way: "If a conservative radio network had been started with money improperly 'borrowed' from a charity like a boys and girls club, it would be front page news for weeks in your paper. Once more, your left-wing bias is showing."

Maybe the Gray Lady isn't totally oblivious to the outside world after all. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them to report on Air America again.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:12 PM

August 20, 2005

Relatives Reclaim Heroes' Names From Sheehanistas

Mike's America has up a good post on one of the props being used on the set of the Cindy Sheehan Show outside the President's ranch. Sheehan's handlers thought it would be effective propaganda to stick crosses in the ground, decorated with the names of fallen American soldiers, thereby drafting these heroes into the antiwar movement, just as Sheehan drafted her own son.

But not all relatives are willing to trade the honor of their love ones' sacrifice for an opportunity to poke their country in the eye. Some are traveling to Crawford to remove the crosses with their relatives' names. Matt and Toni Matula lost their Marine son in Iraq last year. Here's what Matt Matula had to say on KXAN, after going to Crawford to stand up for his son:

He's not a victim, he's a hero. ... I went there and had Matthew's name taken off of there. It's fine for people to grieve their own way. It aggravates me to see them using other people's names to further their cause.

Reclaiming the names of the fallen from the ghouls protesting in Crawford can be a dangerous business. Here's an eyewitness report, via Confederate Yankee (thanks to Josh for the link):

They're not the nice people that CNN is showing. I saw them go over and just about attack a young girl who was very distraught because her brother had died in Iraq, and they had all those crosses up, and his name was on the cross. So the mother and the sister came out to remove that. They didn't want him to be a part of that, and so they encircled her, tried to stop her from being able to get the cross, she finally did. They were just about at the point of attacking her, told her that her brother was a murderer, that he had killed innocent people, and that he died for nothing.

Imagine a grieving young girl being attacked by a horde of sweaty hippies. After reading about this, George Romero movies will never be the same.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:40 AM | Comments (16)

August 19, 2005

Meanwhile, Over Transylvania...

With all the excitement in Crawford, you would almost think President Bush was the only politician to vacation in August. On the contrary, the fact that Washington is pretty much empty this month is what freed up the media to devote so much time to the Cindy Sheehan Show.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, for example, is reportedly visiting with relatives in Romania. Here we see her taking advantage of overcast skies to make a rare daytime flight over the Carpathian Mountains.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:11 PM | Comments (3)

Cindy Sheehan Is Winning Converts — For Conservatives

No wonder the folks at the Cindy Sheehan Show are actively recruiting other grieving relatives to replace the star, who has moved off stage. Trying to spin this depraved woman as some sort of normal person is getting to be hard work. Cindy is starting to have a very different effect than her leftist handlers intended — a great example of what Victor Davis Hanson calls The Biteback Effect (hat tip: Little Green Footballs).

V the K sent along this link to the inspiring story of a liberal led out of the wilderness by Saint Cindy and her crowd. Here's the abridged version:

I actually felt myself become a republican today. It was around 10am, when I read the latest update of the Cindy Sheehan saga in CNN.com. ... The good little democrat in me tied the little noose around his neck and jumped off the stool. He just couldn't take it anymore.

Take what? The whining. The constant whining by the extreme left about the reasons for war, the incompetence of this administration, and how we've all been lied to, and how we should pull out of Iraq immediately, because, *gulp* our soldiers were in danger.

Guess what folks….they signed up to join the Army, not the boy scouts. ... To imply that they are simple kids who didn't know what they were getting into, or even worse, that they died for no reason, or an immoral reason, does a horrible thing. It strips their sacrifice of the honor that it deserves. Even though those folks sitting out there in the Texas fields claim to honor and support the soldiers, they obviously have been blinded by their own selfishness as to the real way to support them.

Because, long story short, we can't end this war now. That would send the message that those bastardly little terrorists have won. It doesn't matter if the administration told us the desert sand was made of gold, and we are going over there to collect it in little buckets to bring home, the concrete fact that we are at war doesn't change. We are there, and we have a job to finish. We've toppled a regime that was dangerous not only to its own people, but also to the rest of the world. Now, we are there fighting the same terrorists we are fighting in Afghanistan. We've given liberty to millions of people, and we're trying to help create a government, in an area that is very volatile, that will be a bastion of freedom and hope for an entire race of people. I hate the fact that our boys are getting killed over there, and I wish it didn't have to happen.

But, it is, there's nothing we can do about it, except for doing everything we can to offer support and hope to the folks fighting over there. Arguing and whining about the reasons we're there, and the need to come home not only kills morale, but it is a complete waste of time.

I never was a big fan of Bush. But, one thing I do believe….he honestly wants to make this country, and this world a better place. Think about it…the war almost cost him the election. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, he'd have won in a landslide.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:09 PM | Comments (8)

Hollywood Film Snobs Cheer Reagan Being Shot

One of the reasons Ronald Reagan is such an admired figure — he was recently voted history's Greatest American by viewers of the Discovery Channel — is that the man had so much class. To give an idea of why class is important, here's an example of the absence of class:

The Washington Times (thank you Wiggins for the link) reports on a special screening of the 1964 noir "The Killers" before a prestigious Hollywood crowd that included "actors, actresses, writers, reviewers, scholars, researchers, and film presevationists." The event was sponsored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When "Also Starring Ronald Reagan" appeared in the opening credits, many in the audience booed. When the character played by Reagan was threatened with a gun and pushed out of a speeding car, the audience responded with "malicious cheers." Worse yet — considering that Reagan was shot and nearly killed in 1981 — when Reagan's character was shot and killed, the audience erupted in glee.

This little anecdote gives some perspective on the culture of Hollywood. It might even help explain why box-office revenues are drying up.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:15 AM | Comments (3)

August 18, 2005

WaPo Pulls Plug on Support for 9/11 Memorial Event

Bowing to pressure from left-wing extremists Operation Ceasefire and International ANSWER, The Washington Post has withdrawn its support for an event organized by the Defense Department to memorialize the victims of 9/11, on the grounds that the event could have a "pro-war slant."

Rick Ehrmann, a local representative for the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, was pleased with the decision. "In this case The Post was sponsoring the Pentagon's Freedom Walk, which ties the attack on Sept. 11 to the Iraq war, and of course, The Post's reporters have proven ... that there is no connection between the two, that that link is false."

That's right, according to someone who makes his living in the news industry, it is a proven fact that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. It would be equally logical to say there was no connection between Pearl Harbor and the war against Hitler, and therefore no event to commemorate the victims of Pearl Harbor should be supported, on the grounds that someone there might be in favor of D-Day. Leftists in the news media have raised selective stupidity to an art form.

But how do they know the folks at the Freedom Walk support the war in Iraq?

Allison Barber, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Internal Communications and Public Liaison, had this to say about the Freedom Walk, as quoted in the Western Star:

This is not a statement about the war in Iraq or about any policy decisions. This is a statement about, "We remember we came under attack, and we're grateful for our men and women in the military who volunteer to serve our country."

So there you have it, they actually admit to supporting the military. But that's not the smoking gun. What really outraged the Left is that Clint Black is going to be giving a free concert at the end of the march. Not only is Black a country singer, his song "Iraq and Roll" explicitly supports our troops fighting in Iraq.

Naturally the Washington Post could have no association with an event that in turn is in any way associated with a man like Clint Black.

As Post spokesman Eric Grant puts it, "It is the Post's practice to avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of the Post's news coverage."

The word objectivity must have felt awfully strange coming out of his mouth. Is Grant worried that someone might suspect the Post of siding with their own country against al Qaeda?

Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:36 PM | Comments (10)

Deborah Johns: The Anti-Sheehan

In all the excitement of the media's Cindy Sheehan hypefest, a few stories are getting left by the wayside. Here's an example:

Supporters of U.S. Involvement in Iraq Plan Caravans to Texas

The anti-war protest by a Vacaville mother outside the president's Texas ranch is galvanizing some who support the country's continued involvement in Iraq. One of those is a serviceman's mother who feels now more than ever the country must stand strong behind the troops.

Roseville resident Deborah Johns' son William is a Marine stationed in Iraq. She sympathizes with Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protester who lost her son to enemy fire 16 months ago. However, Johns believes a pull-out now would negate what troops are fighting for in Iraq. She takes exception to Sheehan's protest and plans to do something about it.

"It absolutely mushroomed, but that's our liberal media," said Johns. "They continue to like to hear the negative and not the positive that's going on." Johns is organizing what could be hundreds of others to participate in a caravan leaving San Francisco on Monday. The caravan is destined for Crawford, Texas, in a gesture of support for President George W. Bush.

Johns believes it's important to demonstrate her support for the course Bush has chosen. "If God took my son and called him home, I would continue to stand behind my military men and women and I would continue to support my president of the United States," she said.

Sheehan's protest has also been fodder for conservative talk radio, which is urging listeners to join a number of caravans being organized by Move America Forward, a conservative Sacramento-based organization that, according to its website, is dedicated to supporting the troops and the fight against terrorism.

Thank you Wiggins for the link, where you can go to see video of the full story.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:39 AM | Comments (20)

Cold Chill

Just wondering: Did anyone else feel a chill go up their spine when the news this morning showed what looked just like cattle cars being brought in to haul Jews away from their homes in Gaza?

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:03 AM | Comments (3)

August 17, 2005

Firefighters Defend Ground Zero From Leftist Kooks

As reported in the New York Post, the sacrilegious scheme to turn Ground Zero into a shrine to moonbattery may have been foiled by NYC's firefighters' union.

Uniformed Firefighters Association President Stephen Cassidy observes that the "International Freedom Center" would "diminish the sacrifices that the 343 members of the FDNY made on 9/11. That is unacceptable." He has sent a letter announcing the UFA's position to World Trade Center Memorial Foundation director Gretchen Dykstra.

Family members of 9/11 victims have been strongly opposed to the IFC and the Drawing Center, both of which are backed by left-wing extremists who apparently want to use Ground Zero as a soapbox from which promote their anti-American ideology.

According to a Post editorial, the UFA's withdrawal of support for the Memorial Foundation "may have ended the threat of institutionalized activism at Ground Zero." Let's hope so. Considering that 343 firefighters died on 9/11, it won't be easy for big-money moonbats to ignore their opposition.

Not that the New York Times is likely to give up without a fight. Predictably, they have thrown their considerable weight behind the IFC, in an attempt to snuff out any feelings of patriotism that may be kindled by a more respectful memorial. But having no moral ground to stand on, they are losing their footing. Accusing Debra Burlingame — the sister of a pilot killed on 9/11 and founder of Take Back the Memorial — of "dictating" to the rest of us is not likely to persuade anyone. Their free speech argument is lamer still. No one is impinging on free speech. The Michael Moore types waiting in the wings with their "cultural centers" have the right to spew whatever vile, terrorist-supporting propaganda they like. But it is simply obscene for them to spew it at Ground Zero.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:19 AM | Comments (32)

August 16, 2005

Chris Matthews Wants Cindy Sheehan to Run for Congress

Those of us who regarded the obnoxious MSM tool Chris Matthews as a half wit were only half right, because to judge from this report, he has lost his wits altogether. Here's what Tweety had to say on Hardball yesterday to the most thoroughly contemptible human being to dominate the news since Michael Moore's last movie came out:

MATTHEWS: "Are you considering running for Congress, Cindy?"

SHEEHAN: "No, not this time. I'm a one issue person. I know a lot about what's going on in Iraq but I don't know anything about anything else. And I want to focus my energy on bringing the troops home."

MATTHEWS: "Okay. Well, I have to tell you, you sound more informed than most U.S. Congresspeople, so maybe you should run."

Anyone who is not utterly appalled by this suggestion is encouraged to read up on Sheehan and the depraved, anti-American movement that has been utilizing her as a figurehead.

Meanwhile, Sheehan's husband Patrick has shown a great deal more sense by filing for divorce (hat tip: Michelle Malkin).

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:13 PM | Comments (16)

Who's Producing the Cindy Sheehan Show?

A post by Saint Cindy at Michael Moore's website should give some idea who's behind the scenes pulling strings at the Cindy Sheehan Show. Via the New York Sun, Sheehan writes:

We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House. I talked with John Conyers today and he wrote a letter to George signed by about 18 other Congress members to request that he meet with me. I also talked to Maxine Waters tonight and she is probably going to be here tomorrow.

A more vociferous bevy of leftist kooks would be hard to imagine. About the only names she forgot to drop were George Soros and Kim Jong-Il.

GSFP stands for Gold Star Families for Peace. On their website you can read that the whole circus being performed in Crawford is in response to the following "asinine and hurtful statements" attributed to President Bush:

We have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen by completing the mission.

The families of the fallen can be assured that they died for a noble cause.

Code Pink's treasonous activities have been discussed here and here. Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out are all represented (as is the Communist Party USA) on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice. To get an idea of the mentality of their following, the Sun polled protesters at a march they organized during the 2004 Republican Convention. Of the 253 surveyed, 67% agreed with the statement, "Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance."

For more on the Israel-hating Crawford Peace House, which managed to blame Israel even for the Abu Ghraib fiasco, see Solomonia.

John Conyers and Maxine Waters will be well known to connoisseurs of moonbattery.

A colleague Sheehan forgot to mention is Lynne Stewart, who is now rotting in jail for actively assisting Islamic terrorists to carry out their murderous activities. When San Francisco State University burnished its leftist credentials by inviting Stewart to speak on their campus (see FrontPageMag.com), Sheehan was on hand to compare Stewart with the heroic lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Sheehan took the opportunity to impart the following message to the SFSU students:

This country is not worth dying for.

To sum up, the rats scurrying around behind Sheehan's stage in Crawford aren't just the Left — they are the hard Left. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that a majority of them would side with the terrorists who killed her son against the country he died for. By associating with these people, she is spitting on his grave.

Sheehan is being used like a $5 whore by this lowlife, but I don't hear her complaining. In fact, she seems to be having the time of her life marching to the front of every line with her gold-star ticket.

Thanks to V the K and Cao for links.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:59 AM | Comments (4)

August 15, 2005

Cindy Sheehan and David Duke: Kindred Hearts Entwined

Cindy Sheehan may have gotten more than 15 minutes of fame out of her despicable willingness to climb atop her son's coffin to denounce everything he died for. She may have found true love.

Sheehan, who believes the treacherous Jews are responsible for our unconscionable effort to democratize Iraq, has found an avid admirer in former KKK leader and neo-Nazi nutcase David Duke, whose point of view is remarkably similar.

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," Sheehan declares, as quoted by Drudge.

Duke couldn't agree more. In yesterday's love letter to Sheehan (thank you V the K for the link), he lauds her contemptible behavior, and stridently agrees with her that her son died defending Israel, not America — since the entire war is a Jewish plot. There is hardly a word of Duke's diatribe on the wrong-headedness of the war that could not come directly from the mouth of Sheehan or any of the rabid extremists who are milking her for so much sickeningly fawning coverage from the MSM.

If you snag an invitation to the wedding and can't decide what to wear, tie-dyed sheets might be appropriate.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:04 PM | Comments (11)

August 14, 2005

Howard Dean Exorcism Goes Poorly

Concerned that Howard Dean's loose cannon antics and the increasingly demented rhetoric erupting from his mouth were alienating the few voters remaining in their camp, Democratic moderates have resorted to exorcism in an attempt to reign in his demonic behavior.

The results were discouraging. Although holy water was able to evoke a few prolonged screams, the Roman Ritual seemed only to annoy the DNC Chairman, who added projectile vomiting and levitation to his repertoire. One exorcist died of heart failure; the other was driven insane and leaped out the window.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:14 PM | Comments (12)

August 13, 2005

NARAL Ad Shows Liberals Have Yet to Reach Bottom

When I heard that even Lanny Davis — the poor guy who logged about 10,000 hours on cable news flacking for Bill Clinton during his impeachment — had condemned the cartoonishly demagogic NARAL ad accusing John Roberts of complicity in acts of violence against abortion clinics, I thought: here it is at last — the bottom. There had to be a bottom, a point below which liberals simply would not go. At last we had found it. Not only was the ad pulled off the air, David Seldin, NARAL's director of communications, left his job with a clearly visible shoeprint on the seat of his pants.

A true milestone, I wistfully thought. From here, maybe Democrats could turn around and start moving toward honor and self-respect. Maybe we could one day have two legitimate parties again, so I won't have to worry about being forced to vote for someone like John McCain.

My naive daydreams came crashing to earth when I read the Washington Post's take on the NARAL story. It seems Davis is the exception, and liberals' search for the moral equivalent of zero degrees Kelvin continues.

"Has the opposition lost its nerve?" WaPo asked. My jaw dropped when I realized they were pushing the idea that NARAL's preposterous calumnies should never have been withdrawn. (I'm not going to get into why the NARAL ad was outrageous. By now you already know. If not, Power Line's summary is as good as any.)

The Post then went on to huff righteously that Republicans never backed away from the Swiftboat Vets' allegations regarding the phoniness of John Kerry's loudly touted war hero status. The obvious difference — that the NARAL ad was indisputably false and the Vets' allegations weren't — was pointedly not acknowledged.

"Republicans don't mind running an ad that's entirely false, but Democrats have never learned, and I'm not sure many of them want to learn, how to play that kind of politics," opined Robert Shrum — who is to Karl Rove what Al Franken is to Rush Limbaugh. The ad had to be pulled because "they weren't getting support from any substantial quarter."

The fact that the ad was vicious and false was not seen as relevant by either Shrum or the Post.

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said the NARAL ad "was great, and exactly the type of offensive that breaks through in the modern age."

Displaying the Left's remarkable talent for moral equivalence, WaPo then compared Karl Rove's pointing out the obvious fact that liberals don't exactly have their heart in the War on Terror with Dick Durbin's comparison of US troops with genocidal Nazis and communists. Rove didn't apologize (why on earth would he?), whereas Durbin supposedly did (whether it was really an apology is debatable; mainly he blubbered like a baby in an attempt to portray himself as a victim). Without a hint of irony, the Compost attempted to spin this as evidence that Republicans won't play nice like Democrats.

While Lanny Davis shows some awareness of the reality out there beyond leftist rhetoric, other Democrats cling desperately to the empty and increasingly absurd snobbery that has to serve their party in the place of self-respect.

"The problem is our politically impractical insistence on always residing on the moral high ground," sniffed Kerry advisor Jim Jordan. "A large part of our ethos goes to what we perceive to be moral superiority and the sad truth is in politics that's sometimes inconvenient."

A more radical disconnect from reality would be difficult to imagine.

But I have faith. There is a bottom; once liberals hit it, they will wake up and realize what they have let themselves become, they will jettison some of the vile individuals who have come to dominate the Democratic Party, and they will work to recover the respect they have lost. The bottom is there, they just haven't reached it yet.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:04 PM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2005

Raging Grannies Prove That Hippies Aren't Getting Any Younger

As seen on (and fawned over by) NBC, the Raging Grannies — a group of aging kooks with too much time on their hands, not to be mistaken for the relatively tasteful Rabid Grannies — are letting it be known that their sophisticated understanding of world affairs has lead them to disapprove of President Bush and his policies. Their attention-getting gimmicks include wearing large, foolish-looking hats and singing inane protest ditties to the tune of popular songs.

Here's an example of their lyric-writing skills (to the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business"):

There's no business like war business
The worst business we know
Never mind the homeless and the hungry,
Never mind the people without jobs
Nowhere can you get that special feeling
Than when you're piling up the bombs.

There's no business like war business
The best business we know
Multinational profits going through the sky
They multiply while children die
The same amount buys food and clothes
For everyone all over the world.

I don't think I've heard anything this moving and insightful since the Dead Kennedys broke up.

The Raging Grannies of Tucson normally do their part to undermine resistance to terror and the spread of democracy by performing their infantile act on a weekly basis outside a local recruiting office, but they recently escalated their crusade by actually barging into the office and disrupting business, forcing the police to arrest them for trespassing.

If I were their agent, I would recommend they put their show on the road to Crawford. They might grab a slot as the warm-up act for Cindy Sheehan. I'm sure the reviews from the MSM would continue to glow with admiration.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:53 PM | Comments (11)

August 11, 2005

Help Yourself to a Pot of Gold

I always hoped that reading the Wall Street Journal would one day enable my financial independence, even though the only part I read is the editorial page. Sure enough, it has given me a potentially lucrative idea. All eligible readers are invited to join in a class action lawsuit against leprechauns and their ethnically insensitive accomplices.

It was the Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent decision to allow a locust swarm of John Edwards types to loot their state's health care system that made me realize what a schmuck I must be to slave away creating wealth for a living, when you can bring in much more money by helping yourself to the wealth of others. The question was, how to join up with the gravy train?

The NCAA going on the warpath against anything that reminds them of Indians gave me the answer. According to the NCAA (although not according to most Indians), sports teams that honor Indians by naming themselves the Warriors, the Chiefs, the Seminoles, etc., are somehow being "hostile and abusive" toward the first ethnic group to settle in the Americas. Consequently, all teams with names or mascots that remind the NCAA's high priests of political correctness of Indians will be banned from all NCAA-sponsored postseason tournaments.

But it's not just Indians who should be defended from imaginary slights. What about the Irish? Like millions of Americans, I regard myself as having some Irish ancestry. How much, I couldn't say, but what difference does it make? The point is, when I see a leprechaun behaving like a greedy little deviant, indirectly casting aspersions on the homeland of some of my ancestors, it causes me emotional suffering, for which any trial lawyer should agree I deserve to be well compensated.

Why go after leprechauns in particular? Why of course, because every leprechaun has a pot of gold!

You may be thinking that it will be difficult to lay hands on an actual leprechaun. That's why the lawsuit will also apply to their accomplices. Take Jennifer Aniston. She's got plenty of dough. Her career began — was launched, you might even say — when she played the bimbo you kept hoping would die in the 1992 horror movie Leprechaun — a shamefully insensitive film that portrayed the title character (and by extension all Persons of Irishness) as a hideous troll who cackled maniacally as he swilled Irish whiskey and inflicted mayhem in his greedy quest to secure a missing piece of gold.

It should be child's play to convince the right jury that Ms. Aniston's wealth was built upon callous insensitivity to Persons of Irishness. She and others are going to need some very good lawyers. If you would like to join in the suit, you must be willing to swear that you are offended in exchange for free money. And you have to turn over a percentage of your loot to me. After all, it was my idea.

I'm going to be the next Erin Brockovich. Maybe they'll make a movie about me!

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:17 PM | Comments (4)

August 10, 2005

DU Paranoiacs Fear for Cindy Sheehan's Cell Phone

"Can you hear me now?"

If the answer is no, you might have experienced the sort of normal disruption in reception to which all cell phone users have become accustomed. On the other hand, you might be the victim of a conspiracy on the part of the sinister Bush Administration. But unfortunately for President Bush, the tinfoil hat illuminati at Dhimmicratic Underground are wise to him.

Yesterday the heart-wrenchingly pathetic moonbat mom Cindy Sheehan was being interviewed by phone by Thom Hartmann of the illustrious Air America. But her cell phone reception in rural Texas kept cutting in and out, so that in the end Hartmann had to hang up on her.

Normal cell phone behavior? Not according to a DU poster who observed that "it would be easy for the Bush Crime Family to be screwing with her cell phone reception."

Just "another cheap trick to thwart democracy," another DUmmie declared.

Every time I visit DU, I find myself wondering: Why can't we spray their marijuana crops with Thorazine?

Hat tip: Moonbat Daily

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:25 PM |