RW-(the original) Dancing Madly Backwards Through A Liberal Minefield

But, there he was, looking half-asleep more than anything. The fat man with the unkempt beard [ed. and it wasn't the Goreacle], the King of the Radicals, the Prince of Flower Power, the Guru of Peace and Love. He called himself poetically, "Unicorn," because the name Einhorn (a German-Jewish name) means "one horn". But, this character was not a myth; he was very real and had created from an innocent era a flip-side world of reefers and LSD and free love. His was an innovation in the Age of Aquarius and he was the Chief Aquarian in Philadelphia, at one time revered by the "new generation" of the 1960s. Read the rest

And now for your reading pleasure while you enjoy this typical and normal Spring day a few updates on the hysteria of man made global warming.

OK, so maybe not completely typical since it's on track to be the coldest April in 113 years.

Is the debate over? Let's ask Richard S. Lindzen who is an MIT Professor of Meteorology , but really only needs to be as smart as a sixth grader to show this to be a myth.

There are some that say the earth has a fever and others that say global warming is going to make WWII look like heaven. Hmmm, I wonder what they have in common? The President of Czechoslovakia thinks one of them may be insane, but he didn't say anything about Silky Pony Pink Sapphire so it must be their political ambitions, oh and their lack of any credentials on the subject.

I know I'm not taking any chances today though. I'm going to fill a grill full of charcoal and do some serious BBQ, but I'm also going to plant some tomatoes and jalapenos. Happy Earth Day!

Senator Reid,
It is difficult to write this letter with any civility, but I think enough people will scream so much, with enough cursing and invective, that I will not need to add any more for you to get the point, that you infuriate those Americans who serve in the military with your careless, ignorant, mean-spirited, and frankly, dangerous remarks.

You, sir, are not any average, private citizen. You are a Senator of the United States of America, and whatever your political views or allegiances may be, you must first show loyalty to and serve with honor your country. Yet, you do not do so, and you have disgraced whatever nobility or honor you might have earned serving your constituency.

Even if our efforts in Iraq were an absolute failure, which they are surely not, you abuse your position and the Nation’s trust by declaring that the war is lost. Can you not comprehend how wrong it is for you to make such a statement?! Regardless of your partisan views, which seem to me awfully petty indeed when compared to the national security of our country or the lives of our soldiers, you must have enough sense of decency or patriotism that, at the least, to know that you don’t damage or hurt your nation and the public servants with the most on the line?!

You embolden our enemies, you discourage our allies, you demoralize the troops who serve, and you denigrate those Iraqis who have turned to the US as their hope for freedom, after decades of living under the tyranny and violence of a war criminal and a brutal oppression.

You are a disgrace. Made worse by the fact that you’re wrong.

There are many ways to view our efforts in Iraq. While a private citizen may well believe, and interpret events to indicate, that we have somehow “lost the war in Iraq,” that’s based more on ignorance and media hype than on actual, ground truth. Citizens will only be as informed, well or ill, by the sources of news to which they choose to listen. We live in a free society. But thanks to dishonest and in my view, disloyal Americans such as you, and the media who abet you, a majority of Americans have been misled about what we do in Iraq and what is really going on.

I am an Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III Vet, mobilized with the National Guard, and deployed to Iraq from January to November 2005. I served as a First Sergeant for 160 guard soldiers. We served in Tikrit, and every one of our soldiers came back without injury. Sure, we didn’t see a lot, just our own slice of Iraq, but we were regularly exposed to mortars and rockets on base, and the threat of IEDs on supply convoys several times a week.

I think you could make a good case that we won the war in a few weeks in 2003: the war against Saddam Hussein’s Army, which collapsed in a spectacular liberation of Iraq. I am shamed to think you probably viewed this event with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make another excellent case that we won the war to establish democracy in Iraq, helping the Iraqis hold three hugely successful elections with huge Iraqi participation (greatly in excess of any modern US elections). I am shamed to think you probably viewed these elections with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make a plausible case that we have defeated the Sunni Baathist based “insurgency,” with the destruction and de facto surrender of so many holdouts among the former regime. I likewise think you could make the same case about Al Qaeda in Iraq, the presence of which you and your supporters adamantly denied for a very long time. They are on the run, they are defeated at every turn, their own intercepted communications say admit that very fact. I am shamed to think you probably viewed these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

Now, as we help the Iraqis grow in strength in defending their own democracy, you say the “war” is lost. Which one? I can’t but help to think that what you really mean, is the defensive war this Administration has been fighting against you and your party colleagues since we invaded Iraq.

If the current surge can be successful at fully securing, once and for all, the security of the Iraqi democracy, this will prove you and your allies wrong. As an American, I recognize what a truly magnificent accomplishment that would represent, for Iraq, and for the Coalition who made that possible.

I am shamed, appalled, and heartsick to think, you would certainly view these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

1SG Jeff Nuding
642 MI BN
42nd ID “Rainbow”
“Rainbow….Never Forget!”

Donald Tai Loy "Don" Ho (August 13, 1930 – April 14, 2007)

Finally, Moran offers one of those cutesy, let's-roll-the-news-events-of-the-moment-into-a-neat-package sentence when he says dismissively that the three men are "are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team."

Yes, they are. They spent a year in torment, as did their families. They and their families incurred huge legal fees (and it says something about Terry Moran, awash in a multi-million-dollar network contract, that he might think "well-heeled people" can afford $1 million plus in legal fees without suffering hundreds of sleepless nights over them and the possibility of having to, say, go into hock for the rest of their lives).

The Rutgers women's basketball team was insulted by a shock jock, and in about 12 minutes became America's darlings. I'd say the Duke three were "differently situated." With the exception of Don Imus, America has greeted the Rutgers team as heroes. Most of elite America was certain for months that these three men were guilty of rape.

If you're John Edwards we're still not sure, but it's pretty low.

When you visit the John Edwards for President Web site, you're invited to send a sympathy note to the Edwardses. And tens of thousands of well wishers have done so since that heart-wrenching news conference two weeks ago at which Elizabeth Edwards courageously discussed her incurable cancer.

What those well wishers get in return -- e-mail messages soliciting contributions to Edwards's campaign.

Visitors to the Edwards site who choose to "send a note to Elizabeth and John" are first taken to a heartfelt letter from the candidate that was written the day after he learned that his wife's cancer had returned. Edwards thanks readers for their "prayers and wishes," vows that he and Elizabeth will "keep a positive attitude always look for the silver lining" and declares that "our campaign goes on and it goes on strongly."

Anyone who then chooses to send a note of sympathy to the Edwardses -- and, thus, provide his or her e-mail address -- automatically becomes part of the Edwards campaign's online e-mail database, a list that is crucial to any campaign's ability to raise vast amounts of money over the Internet.

If you sent a note to the Edwardses before the critical March 31 end-of-the-quarter fundraising deadline, you would have received frantic e-mail solicitations from the campaign, such as the one on March 28 from Edwards campaign manager David Bonior titled, "96 hours to show substance works." The solicitation asked for "$25, $50 or any amount you can afford to give."

By the way, this explanation from the campaign is a flat out lie:

Jonathan Prince, Edwards's deputy campaign manager, acknowledged that the campaign adds the e-mail addresses of Elizabeth Edwards's well wishers to its e-mail fundraising list. Giving a one-line explanation, he said, "Nobody gets an e-mail from us without explicitly agreeing to receive e-mails."

There is no mention whatsoever that you're agreeing to be contacted by return email when you go to the page to send a message of sympathy for any reason at all, much less a crass fund raising drive. The least they could do is solicit funds for cancer research rather than John's egotistical quest for power.