Ok, it's really Friday right???..;-)

I'm going out! Tonight and tomorrow night. I will be with actual adults. No kids in sight. I will not talk about politics. I will drink wine (or witch's brew) and have some fun!

This is an open thread. It can be about anything but tell me your most interesting Halloween story and I will tell you mine when I get back.

Interesting Double Standard.

NEW YORK -"Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter' Libby Jr. was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case."

So basically Libby supposedly lied to a FBI agent on where he heard about Valerie Plame. He is also accused of that same lie to the grand jury.

Ok, now that is wrong. And if he did it, he should be punished. That whole "do not lie" thing really really is a good creed to go by. Why anyone EVER in Washington would do that, I cannot fathom. But as goldeneagle pointed out in my comments, there is a bit of double standard going on here:

NewsMax reminds us of this:

Here's a short list of potential criminal violations for which prosecutors decided not to file indictments during the Clinton administration.

� Lying under oath to a federal judge - a crime U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright determined that President Clinton committed in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Legal resolution: No criminal indictment.

� Lying under oath to a federal grand jury - as Independent Counsel Ken Starr found President Clinton had done in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Legal resolution: No criminal indictment.

� Lying under oath both to Congress and to federal investigators - as Independent Counsel Robert Ray concluded that Mrs. Clinton had done in the Travel Office probe. Legal resolution: No indictment

� Hiding evidence from Starr's Whitewater investigation - as the Senate Banking Committee concluded Mrs. Clinton did in the case of her missing Rose Law firm billing records. Legal resolution: No criminal referral, no indictments.

� Trading presidential pardons for financial contributions - which President Clinton allegedly did in the Pardongate case. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� Trading presidential clemency for votes in a federal election - as President Clinton allegedly did with village elders in New Square, NY - which backed Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate candidacy 1400 to 12. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� Nuclear missile guidance technology allegedly traded by the Clinton administration to China in exchange for campaign contributions. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� The Illegal gathering of confidential FBI files on political opponents - as the Clinton White House did in the Filegate case. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� Misusing the IRS to audit political opponents - as the White House allegedly did with numerous conservative organizations, as well as with witnesses against the Clintons. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� Hiring private detectives to intimidate and/or smear potential witnesses in the Starr investigation. Legal resolution: No indictments.

� Illegally leaking Linda Tripp's confidential personnel file to the press. Legal resolution: No indictments.

Who should be the next nominee?

This sounds good to me. One always has to take into consideration the inevitable smearing the Democrats are now known for. I don't think they can smear this one too well.

Since I have so many of these commenting on my blog....

Perhaps they would like to read about themselves.

Star Trek.

Going where... well, I guess where a lot of men have gone before.'Mr. Sulu' has come out of The Starship Enterprise closet as being gay.

A Quick Look.

Fox News is reporting that Rove won't be indicted, but Libby Scooter might. But for lying to a grand jury. So it looks like no one will be indicted for "outing" a "covert agent."

I suppose the Kos/Dem talking point and stupid phrase "Merry Fitzmas" will have to be put away until they can come up with other juvenile phrases to use.

Harry Reid blames the far right for the withdrawal of Miers as does the blather coming from the rest of the left. HELLLOOOO!!! All of us on the "far right" here thought she was great. She satisfied me being pro-life for sure. It was the more moderate conservatives that opposed her. Especially the elites. Democrats just say things they WANT to be true. Dobson loved her, Kristol didn't. Do we see the difference here?

So hey Dems, let's drop that talking point too.

You have probably heard...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that 'Israel must be wiped off the map.'

Here is some reaction. What can one say? Iran HANGS girls who have sex before marriage. What can we expect from this barbaric and backwards nation? The danger here is obvious. As one commentator pointed out Israel might be justified in attacking Iran.

Why must man hate each other so?

Growing Galloway Garbage.

TimesOnline has the scoop. I look at his estranged wife and think she probably deserved every penny that was snuck into her account. I can't imagine...uhhh....'living' with this guy.

Eww.

Just eww.

h/t Jill

I'm such a doofus.

I was thinking that today was Friday. I guess I was HOPING it was. Anyway, I will be posting tomorrow, the fun won't begin until later. Dang it.

I'm off for some Halloween fun this weekend! Consider this an open thread! (But I WILL be checking in!)

Miers Withdraws.

ABC News has this:

"Miers told the president she was withdrawing at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. In her letter dated Thursday, Miers said she was concerned that the confirmation process "would create a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country."
She noted that members of the Senate had indicated their intention to seek documents about her service in the White House in order to judge whether to support her nomination to the Supreme Court. "I have been informed repeatedly that in lieu of records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy," she wrote.
"While I believe that my lengthy career provides sufficient evidence for consideration of my nomination, I am convinced the efforts to obtain Executive Branch materials and information will continue."

I say nominate a hardcore conservative and take the gloves off.

It's time to show those Democrats who is in charge here. They got Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, we get who we want.

Hippie funk and Taco Bell --- a lethal cocktail.

Just some kids that didn't have dinner with Grandma because they were stoned. Nothing to see here. Just move along...

Is that a scene from the Million Morons March?

It's happened: They've finally whined themselves to death.

via Caption This!

Hannity vs, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)

And Hinchey, as my teen's might say, got told. (this is from last night)

HANNITY: I’m listening to what you’re saying. So you’re saying when the President told the nation that Saddam’s nuclear threats are a real grave danger to America and Saddam’s WMDs are a threat to America, you’re saying that George W. Bush purposely lied to America? Is that what you’re saying?

HINCHEY: I’m saying whoever wrote that speech gave false information to the Congress. Whether or not the President knew it when he gave the speech, I’m not sure. Whoever wrote that speech certainly did.

HANNITY: The only problem is, Congressman, the words I just said to you were John Kerry’s words. John Kerry said that to America. You voted for John Kerry. Now I’ll ask you, did John Kerry give false information to America?

HINCHEY: John Kerry, I think, made a mistake and voted for the resolution —

HANNITY: Oh, he made a mistake and Bush is a liar.

Heh. NRO’s got the video.

via LST

Unfreakinbelievable.

If this were any other black Democrat official the N.A.A.C.P., Al Sharpton, Russel Simmons, Kanye West, and Jesse Jackson would be stumbling over each other to get in front of the cameras to express their outrage and everybody reading this knows it.

Who is afraid of the Pig?

Just read it. Too weird to be believed.

h/t BigDog

More on Elites.

No, not liberals. I realize there are many liberals who are patriotic and love our country. Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report gives us an insight on the true elites:

"But not all of us cherish ties to past traditions. "America's business, professional, intellectual, and academic elites," writes Samuel Huntington in his 2004 book Who Are We? have "attitudes and behavior [that] contrast with the overwhelming patriotism and nationalistic identification with their country of the American public. . . . They abandon commitment to their nation and their fellow citizens and argue the moral superiority of identifying with humanity at large." He believes that this gap between transnational elites and the patriotic public is growing. Huntington knows whereof he speaks: He's been at Harvard for more than half a century."

But Democrats would do well to notice this trend:

"This gap between transnational elites and the patriotic public has reverberations in partisan politics. Americans in military service and those with strong religious beliefs now vote heavily Republican. Americans with strong patriotic feelings are more closely split between the parties, but the growing minority with transnational attitudes vote heavily Democratic. Which doesn't necessarily help the Democratic Party."

Read the rest.

HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Southpark lampoons the overhyped coverage of Katrina. It's the main excerpt, not long. Video excerpt available in Real orWindows Media. My favorite line? "George Bush doesn't care about beavers!" Heh.

h/t BigDog via PW

The Best Summer of My life.

I spent the summer I was nineteen going to the University of Hawaii. I took art photography and history. Have you ever had a time in your life where when the time ended, you just knew that nothing like that would ever happen to you again? Where you knew that that kind of moment would never be better? That is how I felt when I said goodbye to Hawaii.

It was the best summer of my life.

I went alone, but from the moment I stepped on the plane, I was never alone the rest of the summer. Other kids were on their way there too. Everyone from snotty SMU girls to good ole boys from Oklahoma.

My luckiest moment came when I was trying to teach myself to surf and a guy who was born and raised in Hawaii took pity on me and offered to help. Not only did I finally get to feel the strength of a wave under my tanned legs, but he showed me the islands in a way no tourist really gets to see.

I saw the most beautiful sunsets you can imagine with colors not yet named. I played tag football on black beaches and slept on orange beaches. I stood on top of a volcano. I saw a waterfall so perfect it seemed like a dream. The lush earth surrounding it made me imagine I had been thrown back to the beginning of time to the Garden of Eden. I jumped off a small cliff into a pool of the bluest water I had ever seen and the water was so deep I never touched the bottom. I came face to face with eels while snorkeling. (it is possible to scream underwater)

I met people from all over the world for the first time. I met teenagers from Australia, England, Brazil, and Japan. We laughed at each other's accent. One boy from Germany told me that my accent sounded like music. I have never forgotten that. It is probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.

I watched a rich boy from Dallas, who had decided to just buy a used Volkswagen Beetle while he was in Hawaii instead of renting a car, just hand the keys to a guy on the street (who looked like he could use a car) and tell him the car was his. The boy drove off in a taxi and left the man staring at the keys in his hands. We had to go over and assure him that he could actually have the car. That was one happy guy.

I took pictures of prostitutes for my art photography class, which turned into quite the adventure. (hint: never go to a bad part of town in an open air jeep)

I had dinner with the family of the boy from Hawaii and had food that I can't remember the name of, but won't soon forget the taste. They told me to use an English accent to ask directions. For some reason the locals loved to give the mainlanders wrong directions.

It just so happened that I had just finished a play, "The Importance Of Being Earnest" and I thought I had my English accent down pretty well. The locals bought it, but at a club one evening using my accent for fun, a guy from England came over with a smirk asking which part of England I was from. I was busted.

On the plane home watching Hawaii fade through the clouds, I knew that nothing would ever be as fun as that summer. I was young. I was happy. I had no worries, no children, no lovers, no responsibilities. Nothing would ever be as easy as it was that one summer.

The best summer of my life.

Did LIberal Elites Ruin The Power of Britain?

Johnathan V. Last from the Weekly Standard thinks so. What can we learn from the history of England?

Does this sound familiar?

"These elites could see evil only at home. The French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir did not believe that Germany was a "threat to peace," but instead worried that the "panic that the Right was spreading" would drag France, Britain, and the rest of Europe into war. St"afford Cripps, a liberal Labor member of Parliament, feared not Hitler, but Churchill. Cripps wrote that after Churchill became prime minister he would "then introduce fascist measures and there will be no more general elections."

Read the whole thing. Good Grief, history really does repeat itself.

h/t Jeff

Never forget who we fight.

Bruce Thornton enlightens us regarding this fight with our enemy. He reminds us of who we are fighting and how we need to get over our own delicate sensibilities in this war (ie: making more of a big deal over the burning of dead Taliban bodies than the atrocities committed by those same people):

"Remember what type of people the Taliban are? Like the jihadists we are fighting in Iraq, they are murderers whose religious beliefs warrant any kind of brutality and atrocity against the “infidel.” These are the people who, when they ran Afghanistan, tortured and murdered their own citizens in a soccer stadium built with Western money. These are the people who behead and murder, the people who kill women and children. And these are the people whose corpses we are supposed to worry about mistreating, whose religious beliefs, the ones that justify murder, we are supposed to be respecting."

He goes on:

"We need to get over the peculiar arrogant belief that everything the enemy does is a mere reaction to what we do, as though these people don’t have their own motivations for their actions. They know that we rescued the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Bosnia, and the Muslims of Iraq. They know that we are sacrificing our own citizens to create an ordered society that will allow Muslims to worship in peace and prosper in freedom. They know that Muslims are killing Muslims all over the world, that the greatest threats to the safety and well-being of Muslims are other Muslims, as we currently see in Sudan. They know all these things, but they don’t care, because what’s important is the jihad against the infidel, the divinely sanctioned struggle to compel the people of the world to accept Islam, live as second-class citizens, or die."

He ends with this:

"All means cannot justify all ends, but some means can justify the right ends. Every war this country has fought employed terrible means that none of us would want to choose, but that were justified by the rightness and goodness of the end. If we truly believe that our goals in Iraq are just enough to kill and die for, then we should stop undercutting and second-guessing our troops in the field who are laying their lives on the line to achieve those noble ends. And if we don’t really believe in those goals enough to grit our teeth and do what must be done, as our fathers and grandfathers did in World War II, then we should pack up right now and go home."

He has a point. Read the whole thing. It's good.

h/t Jeff

Priceless....

Mudville has The Salt Lake Tribune report that 80% of Utah National Guard troops intend to reenlist - a number similar to retention rates nationwide.

1Lt Bruce Bishop, a Salt Lake County firefighter and Afghanistan veteran who's currently deployed to Louisiana gives us his reason why:

"because as I look around at the state of this nation and see all of the weak little pampered candy-asses that are whining about this or protesting that, I'd be afraid to leave the fate of this nation entirely up to them."

Heh. I love it.

via Ace

Open thread on Valerie Plame.

This is all I know. The editor of the NY times is saying that Plame lied to them about her source. Mona Charen is implying that Plame slept with Scooter Libby (they are both married)

To be honest, I don't even understand what this is all about. I read that Rove might have leaked that she was a covert agent, but she wasn't at the time (?) I read that everyone knew anyway. I read that Rove was called by the reporter, not the other way around.

I truly don't even see why this is a big deal. And I would say that even it were a Democrat administration.

Ya'll fill me in please.

Rosa Parks, R.I.P.

Rosa Parks died yesterday at the age of 92. Her arrest for not sitting in the back of the bus in 1955 caused a black boycott of the buses in Montgomery Alabama for 381 days.

As the article mentions, there have been theories that she was a plant of the N.A.A.C.P, since she was a part of that organization, but I say, "So what if she was?" The law was wrong and it needed someone willing to stand up to that law. Remember, the N.A.A.C.P. was not always the liberal leftwing democratic hack organization it is today. Back then it was a determined honest organization committed to civil rights for blacks.

This is what we have forgotten. Civil disobedience isn't about holding up profane signs about our President or showing up nude to protest. It isn't about violence or using crude language. It is about peacefully disobeying a law that you feel is morally wrong and be willing to go to jail for that belief.

Rosa Parks will always be remembered to me as someone who used her "celebrity" in a dignified manner and never tried to make it about herself, but about a greater cause.

She serves as an example of how all of us should approach those things that we feel are wrong. Let that be the lesson she leaves us.

And a great lesson it is indeed.

I never had relations with the food for oil scandal!

Remember the truly obnoxious George Galloway, former Labour Party British MP, testifying before Congress with his deliberate indignant pronouncement of never having anything to do with the food for oil scandal? He was as adamant and sincere as Clinton's famous finger wagging denial of an affair with Lewinsky.

Now, it's looking like he is as good as an actor as Clinton was.

He is denying it of course. We shall see if the paper trail ends up being his blue dress.

UPDATE: A bit more information.

"But the report provides bank account details tracking payments from an oil company through a Jordanian middleman to Mr GallowayÂ’s now estranged wife, Amineh Abu- Zayyad, and his Mariam Appeal fund."

UPDATE 2: I just heard Christopher Hitchens reaction. The best quote:

Referring to Galloway as a -"Prostitute of Iraqi fascism."

Chris has a way with words, doesn't he?

Say What?

I suppose you have heard the latest Howard Dean rant. Here is the quote that stands out:

"I'm tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing," Dean said. "We're fighting for freedom in Iraq. We're going to fight for freedom in America."

Everyone seems to be focusing on the first part, but wait a second! Is Dean admitting that we are actually fighting for freedom in Iraq????

Welcome aboard Howard!!!!

Looks like the comments are working again!

Go for it!

The Media's bias on Iraq.

Brent Bozell brings us this:

" On Saturday, (the 15th) millions of Iraqis walked with determination to the polls to vote for a new constitution. The turnout was high. The violence was down dramatically from the triumphant elections of January. But the network found all this boring. On the night before the historic vote, ABC led with bird-flu panic. CBS imagined Karl Rove in a prison jumpsuit. NBC hyped inflation."

Bozell goes on:

"A massive new study by Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center reviews every Iraq story on the evening news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC from January through September of 2005. That"s 1,388 news stories. He titled it "The Bad News Brigade," because 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, while only 15 percent of the stories were positive or optimistic - a four-to-one ratio. The trend in coverage has also become increasingly negative during 2005, with pessimistic stories rising to nearly three-fourths of all Iraq news by August and September, with a ten-to-one ratio of negative stories over positive ones."

TEN TO ONE!!!! That is an incredible number. What it becomes is not news, but propaganda, in my opinion. We here in the tiny world of the blogosphere, can read Michael Yon (who has a new post on the elections btw) or any of the milblogs and get the real deal. The journalists can as well of course, and probably do. They just don't want to report that part of the war because it doesn't fit their agenda.

And the most sickening of all the left leaning media stories involve our soldiers themselves:

"Noyes found that 79 stories focused primarily on allegations of wrongdoing by American forces in Iraq, including this year's Abu Ghraib hangover stories, compared to only eight that focused on the heroism of American soldiers. Is that still a story? Sure. But what about positive stories about the military? There were only eight stories that focused on the heroism of American soldiers, and only nine on soldier acts of kindness or generosity. The TV news titans not only suggest the mission in Iraq is a waste of money and lives, they are painting our soldiers as a big problem there, not a part of the solution."

Did you get that number? Out of 79 stories only a total of 17 showed our soldiers in a positive light. That is especially shameful since it is easier now more than ever for the journalists to get positive stories straight from the soldiers themselves via the milblogs.

If that isn't left wing propaganda, I don't know what is.

Wonders never cease.

Anne Rice finds God. No more vampire novels, folks.

I tried to read her, but I found her novels too dark. I might have to read the next one though.

via Drudge

UGH!

Free Speech? It makes you wonder, doesn't it? But then, everything is allowed, right?

Like I said, ugh.

via Drudge

I want to add something here. We must keep in mind that as disgusting as these girls are, We should be just as disgusted with people like Kanye West and his lie about Bush hating black people and the recent rantings I quoted of Louis Farrakhan. All are bigoted and do nothing but separate us.

The Prozac Nation (warning! Religious Alert!)

As I have mentioned many times, I sorta checked out of the political and cultural scene in the 90's. Clinton was President, which made me literally sick to me stomach and this was way before Lewinsky. My husband's family is from Arkansas, so we knew all about Bill and Hillary. I was busy with 2 small children and I had two more in the 90's. I had my hands full and I wanted to concentrate on what was the most important thing in my life, raising these children right.

If Jack Kemp had been the Republican nominee in 92' instead of Dole, I would have worked hard to get him elected. I had campaigned for him in 88' and I still think he is a wonderful man who would have made a great President. His 'empowerment zone' idea, which was later put through in a very watered down form, would have truly changed things for those stuck in the vicious cycle of poverty in this country. Just like so many good people, I think Kemp saw that it wasn't worth it to stay in public life. It was too mean. And that is a crying shame for all of us.

Anyway, I missed the national bestseller "The Prozac Nation" by Elizabeth Wurtzel. It was made into a movie as well. If you hadn't read it , it is an autobiography of Wurtzel from childhood to her late 20's and her struggle with depression, drug abuse, her father's desertion, being sexually used, and suicide attempts. As you might expect, not an easy read. I had been meaning to read it forever and I finally did this weekend.

Even through her decidedly pathetic and sad personal life, she manages to graduate from Harvard. When she wrote the book in her early 20's, even she was shocked by the reaction to it. She had been one of the first to be on Prozac when it came on the market. Just a few years later 6 million people were on Prozac. Now there are 20 million of Americans on some type of anti-depressants. She has an "afterword" in her paperback about how shocked she was by the number of depressed people in the country. She wonders (as I do) how many are truly clinically depressed and how many are just sad about life.

As I read about her childhood and life, I kept thinking that if my Dad had left me and ignored me for most of my life and I had the kind of life she had, I would be depressed too. Not to downplay her real depression, but I wonder if it would have developed if not for her circumstances? She does touch on some subjects of her experiences with broken kids from broken homes. She sees a pretty clear connection between the broken home and the broken child. At one point she miscarries without even knowing she is pregnant. She brings up abortion and how she would of course had one if she hadn't miscarried, but she says that saying it is a "choice" is a lie. She feels that for women like her, there really is only one choice. A sad telling statement. We live our lives in such a way where we see no other choice but that which we know to be awful. So isn't the choice made long before we become pregnant?

Anyway, let me get to the heart of my point here. At the same time I was reading this book, I heard a homily where the Priest was speaking of the sin of adultery. What he said touched me deeply. He said that when Christ came upon the woman about to be stoned for adultery, he did not condemn her, he did not tell her she was going to hell. He said to the crowd, "You who are without sin, cast the first stone." Christ himself could have cast that stone, because he was without sin. But he didn't. He didn't because he knew that what the woman had been looking for was love. He knew she had been looking for Him.

I see that in so many people. They are looking for love, and as the country song goes.."in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces..." When the one face that they will find that love, THE LOVE, they ignore. They ignore because the culture makes it seem as one has to be like Pat Robertson or TammyFae Baker to love Christ. But that isn't true. It is a false picture of Christianity.

So my heart went out to the little girl that Elizabeth Wurtzel had been. The pain she felt as her father ignored her most of her life. My heart broke for the teenager and young woman she became, so damaged and hurt by life that she turned to drugs and sex and fell into the pit of despair. When the Father she had been looking for and needing was right there all along.

Toward the end of the book, she is in England and at the end of her rope. Her soul is twisted with despair and grief. She feels she can hardly hold on any longer. She meets a couple who are going to Israel for Passover and she asked them to leave a note for her in the Kotel, in the cracks between bricks of the Wailing Wall, because she had been taught that God answers all prayers that are deposited there. She scrawls on a piece of paper, "Dear God, Please send me a miracle that gets me out of this depression because I can't go on this way."

She doesn't believe in God, but she reaches out this way in her desperation. Almost as soon as she returns to Harvard from England, her Doctor decides to try and give her this new drug called Prozac that finally, after a lifetime of sadness, lifts her out of the black wave of depression. But for some reason, she doesn't seem to make the connection that God had answered her prayer in the Wailing Wall.

And that, to me, was the saddest thing of all.