I Feel Safer

…already.

FEMA to Prep Gulf Coast for Hurricanes

Just When You Think Texa$$ is the Last Bastion of Frontier Manliness

…they go and f*ck it up royally. The Dalla$$ POH-leese are now conducting drunk driving sweeps IN the local bars, before the drunk staggers out to his car. OR his designated driver. OR back up the stairs to his or her hotel room. Or just sits there and sobers up on his own.
Be very grateful, citizens of the Big D ~ you’re being protected from yourself, before you even do anything.

“Anybody out there who is drinking needs to be aware that you have to drink responsibly, even if you’re not driving,” criminal defense attorney Barry Sorrels said. “If you’re inside a bar, you could be arrested.”
Texas law states that anyone who is drunk in public and poses a danger to themselves or others can be arrested regardless of whether they were inside a restaurant or bar, or on a city street.
Sorrels said the key to the law lies in the potential danger. He said it is not illegal to be intoxicated in public. The gray area comes in determining the degree of risk, Sorrels said.
“If (the) TABC is going to adopt this as a get-tough policy, they have to be fair on who they arrest,” Sorrels said.
Three people caught in the recent sweep were arrested at a bar inside a hotel at which they were registered guests. All three said they had no intention of driving.
“It’s no defense if you’re staying at a hotel where you were publicly intoxicated at a bar,” Sorrels said.

(NoBrainer’s confused, too.) Isn’t this the same state where an open container is okay ~ as in ‘legal‘? I sense a disturbance in the force…
Via the Sunday night NBC news report “Did crackdown on drunken driving go too far?”

Be A Bollywood Star!

Your stardom begins here.
Here’s an example.
(h/t ROTA)

Pensacola Lost a Legend Last Night

Admiral Jack Fetterman was a dynamic, incredible, wonderfully accessible individual. Bless his heart, Pensacola was so lucky to have him. All our sympathies to his precious, gracious wife Nancy and their family. We going to miss him terribly.

Somehow I Don’t Think That Kids In Daycare In Berkeley…

…are indicative of the general population:

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.
At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

I would imagine that, in fact, everyone in Berkeley was out to get the conservative kid…
Whenever I read stuff like this I’m reminded more and more of the old Soviet Science Academies and the ‘facts’ they would churn out.
But maybe I should just quit whining…
Update: I see Ken was up whining even earlier than I was.
Update and bump: Michele Malkin has a scoop on this center that was studied:

Well, the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center is only open to children of U.C. Berkeley faculty and staff:
The University Preschool offers full-day developmental child care for preschool-aged children of UCB faculty and staff.
(The “Preschool” is a subset of the “Child Study Center.”)
In other words, ALL of the children in that study were the offspring of U.C. Berkeley professors, lecturers, and staff members.

Gee, ya think that might have some effect on the ‘study’?

Russia Gave Saddam Our War Plans

Really, this ABC series on the documents is fascinating stuff, and ABC deserves a lot of credit for the work they are putting into it. Look at this latest beaut:

Document written sometime before March 5, 2003
The first document (CMPC-2003-001950) is a handwritten account of a meeting with the Russian ambassador that details his description of the composition, size, location and type of U.S. military forces arrayed in the Gulf and Jordan. The document includes the exact numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, different types of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, aircraft carriers, and other forces, and also includes their exact locations. The ambassador also described the positions of two Special Forces units.
Document dated March 25, 2003
The second document (CMPC-2004-001117) is a typed account, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Hammam Abdel Khaleq, that states that the Russian ambassador has told the Iraqis that the United States was planning to deploy its force into Iraq from Basra in the South and up the Euphrates, and would avoid entering major cities on the way to Baghdad, which is, in fact what happened. The documents also state “Americans are also planning on taking control of the oil fields in Kirkuk.” The information was obtained by the Russians from “sources at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar,” according to the document.

Sadly, I don’t think anyone is too shocked by this, given how far the Russians, and especially this ambassador, were up Saddams tail pipe:

(Editor’s Note: The Russian ambassador in March 2003 was Vladimir Teterenko. Teterenko appears in documents released by the Volker Commission, which investigated the Oil for Food scandal, as receiving allocations of 3 million barrels of oil — worth roughly $1.5 million. )

I really hope an effort is made to find these moles. I guess the real surprise is that the info didn’t come from the French.
The rest of the ABC article has documents concerning interaction between Iraq and some guy named Osama Biin Laden. Nothing of interest to the MSM there…

GREG GUTFELD’S 29 AMAZING REASONS WHY AMERICA SUCKS!

Heh.

28. Native Americans getting rich off casinos instead of staying dirt-poor does nothing to prove how bad colonialism was.

Imagine The Ocean Level 20 Feet Higher

Due to warming of the Earth, undisputable warming, factual warming; what would the naysayers say? Nay, no? Will the Bushes and Cheneys of the world be rolling in their graves in shame over all these coastal areas being inundated by the savage seas?
Well, no, actually, because it happened 130,000 years ago:

At the current rate of rising temperatures, by the year 2100 Arctic summers could be as warm as they were 130,000 years ago. Back then, in a time known as the last interglacial, the oceans were 20 feet higher than they are now.

Perhaps my education was sorely lacking, but I don’t seem to recall there being cars or factories or even that source of all things globally-warming the good ‘ol U S of A 130,000 years ago; hell, Dick Clark wasn’t even born yet. So, it would seem to me that a possible answer to global warming, one that we have uncontested scientific proof, is that Mother Gaia has hot flashes every couple hundred thousand years. Think that’ll get much press?
Be prepared for the shock of the most honest headline you will ever see on CNN about global warming:

Earth’s past points to future melting

Reporting This

…has GOT to be killing ABCNews. At least they did.
UPDATE: Yup! Musta REALLY killed them.

The Leaders of the “Religion of Peace ” Speak Out

Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity should be killed regardless of whether a court decides to free him.

Wonderful bunch there. I think maybe we should have gone in to save Rahman instead of the Christian Peace types.

It ALMOST Makes You Want to Send the F*ckers Back

…to the snake pit hell they pulled them out of, along with the ingrates at their organization. I didn’t see a simple, grudging “thank you” anywhere in the text.

…“We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.
“Today, in the face of this joyful news, our faith compels us to love our enemies even when they have committed acts which caused great hardship to our friends and sorrow to their families.
…“We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq.

Bravo to whoever it was in uniform who risked their lives going in to get them.

Why, Oh WHY Can’t We Just Want High School Seniors

…who can READ, WRITE and MAKE THE CORRECT CHANGE at Mac Donalds? HUH? (I’d ask for “be pleasant”, too, but don’t want to push it.) What kind of frickin’ gobbledee GOOK is this pig poopie?

Lila and Andrew Zoghbi are bored five days a week in classes at Chiles High School.
It’s not that they are slackers. They are honor students: Lila, 15, plans to be an engineer, and her brother, 17, wants to design video games.
The problem, they say, is that school is not giving them the career preparation they want.
“It’s just stuff I don’t think I’m really going to need for the job I want,” Lila said. “I’d probably like it if I had more things to help me in the future.”
Students like the Zoghbis would get an education more tailored to their career plans under a proposal from Gov. Jeb Bush that education experts say would make Florida the first state to require incoming high school freshmen to declare a major, just like college students.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. The heartburn and brain freeze pain at this moment is overwhelming.

I Hope Mbube Sleeps Tonight

Decades later, but justice triumphs. How sweet is that?

Three impoverished South African women whose father wrote the song known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” have won a six-year battle for royalties in a case that could affect other musicians.
The story surrounding the song that never seems to go out of date amounts to a rags-to-riches tale, replete with racial overtones.
…Linda composed his now-famous song in 1939 in one of the squalid hostels that housed black migrant workers in Johannesburg. According to family lore, he wrote the song in minutes, inspired by his childhood tasks of chasing prowling lions from the cattle he herded. He called the song Mbube, Zulu for lion.
It was sung, in true Zulu tradition, a cappella. Linda’s innovation was to add his falsetto voice, an overlay of haunting “eeeeeees,” to the baritone and bass main line. To this day, this style is called Mbube in South Africa.
The song sold more than 100,000 copies over a decade, probably making it Africa’s first big pop hit.
In the 1950s, at a time when apartheid laws robbed blacks of negotiating rights, Linda sold worldwide copyright to Gallo Records of South Africa for 10 shillings – less than $1.70.

Awwwww…She’s Back

And I really do think for the last time. Gut feeling.

She breaks my heart.

Conducting Whiny Child Stereotype Research

First question: If you were presented with this photo of a significant political personage, would you guess him to be a “confident, resilient, self-reliant kid” who grew up to own a man-purse and vote LIBERAL ?
Or would he be the whiny kid who nows votes CONSERVATIVE and whose backpack has jets?

Let’s Hope This Means

…these sorts of amendments’re on a roll.

New Hampshire lawmakers gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a constitutional amendment that would limit government’s ability to seize private property.
…The amendment would prohibit the taking of private property for use by private developers.

Why hold up traffic hunting…

like this person, when there are more fun ways to do away with the nasty creatures.

Some Numbers to Crunch

…if you can’t be AT ~ and in support OF ~ the RALLY FOR ABDUL RAHMAN in D.C. on Friday.

Friday March 24
Noon to 1pm
Outside the Afghan Embassy
2341 Wyoming Ave NW.
Washington DC

Michelle Malkin has more.

If you can’t be in D.C.,
BE on the PHONE !!

For the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington and Contacting the White House in the extended section.

Read more »

I found what Ken mentioned about the poor guy facing death for converting to Christianity…

here.

“For 30 years, we have fought religious wars in this country and there is no way we are going to allow an Afghan to insult us by becoming Christian,” said Mohammed Jan, 38, who lives opposite Rahman’s father, Abdul Manan, in Kabul. “This has brought so much shame.”
Rahman is believed to have converted from Islam to Christianity while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
He then moved to Germany for nine years before returning to Kabul in 2002, after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime.
Police arrested him last month after discovering him in possession of a Bible during questioning over a dispute for custody of his two daughters. Prosecutors have offered to drop the charges if Rahman converts back to Islam, but he has refused.

This is unacceptable.

The Way We Were

Cold War-era survival supplies found at Brooklyn Bridge
In 17 years of working in the darkened nooks and crannies of the city’s bridges, Joe Vaccaro has made some unusual finds: a 100-year-old copy of a newspaper, sepia-toned photographs. But none of them matched the level of intrigue generated by another discovery he and his co-workers made in the Brooklyn Bridge.

As they made their way through the musty, dusty and dark structural foundations on the bridge’s Manhattan side last week, they discovered a Cold War-era cache of provisions to have been used in the wake of a nuclear attack: some 350,000 packaged crackers, paper blankets, metal drums for water and medical supplies.

Cool.

Except the Guy Running the Place, You Mean

…right?

North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected from the communist state said on Wednesday.

Why Do I Find ‘Raised the Case’ So Damn Disgusting?

Probably because I want to hear DEMANDED his release in the name of FREEDOM. The FREEDOM paid for WITH, protected and MAINTAINED by, American lives.

Afghanistan said on Wednesday the judiciary would rule on a man facing death for converting to Christianity after the United States and three NATO allies with troops in Afghanistan urged respect for religious freedom.
… The United States, which counts Karzai as a key ally in the region, raised the case with visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah on Tuesday, calling on Kabul to uphold Afghan citizens’ constitutional right to choose their faith.
“We hope that the Afghan constitution is going to be upheld and in our view, if it’s upheld, then of course he’ll be found to be innocent,” said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Department’s third-ranked diplomat.

And if it’s not upheld, he’s dead, Mr. Burns. This administration has talked a fine line about freedom, democracy and tolerance, but when it comes down to crunch time, they fold like a three dollar bill.
Michelle Malkin has more on the current effort to declare him a loon, as Mr. Summers pointed out in comments below. But that’s a bullsh*t, easy way out for everyone, including the President ~ gilding the poop lily so everyone saves face. What happens when the next Muslim finds God on a different path or decides she/he’s a secular being’, but no one hears he’s been arrested? What happens to that guy? (If it’s a woman, I’m sure she’ll be hustled off and hung with little fanfare from her American feminist sisters in arms.)
God, they make me SICK. You can call the Afghan embassy, but I think the White House and all those cushie tushies up there need to be flooded with pissed off emails and calls before anyone else. They TOLD the Afghan people they were FREE from the Taliban, from the horrors of Sharia. Just because Karzai is more visually appealing than Mullah Omar doesn’t mean he gets a pass.

The UN Attacks Denmark

Via RWDB comes this excellent post at Agora on a UN report from Human Rights Jedi Master Mace Windu

oops I mean UN special rapporteur Doudou Diéne

that tells us quite plainly who is at fault here:

“Finally, the Danish government’s first reaction – rejecting to take an official position on the nature and publication of the cartoons while referring to Freedom of Speech as well as rejecting to meet with the ambassadors from the Moslem countries – is symptomatic not only for the political trivialisation of Islamophobia but also, due to its consequences, to the central role those politically responsible have for the national extent and the international consequences in the shape of demonstrations and expressions of Islamophobia.”
“Judicially, the Danish government ought therefore, especially considering its international obligations, to have, respecting Freedom of Speech, taken a position not only on the consequnces of the caricatures for its community of 200.000 Moslems but also for the protection of peace and order.”
“Their uncompromising defense of a Freedom of Speech without limits or restrictions is not in accordance with the international rules which are based on a necessary balance between Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, especially to combat calls for racial and religious hatred, and which all the member countries of UN have decided are the basic rules for Human Rights. This attitude shows an alarming lack of sensitivity and understanding of the religious conviction and deep emotions of the groups of society in question. Thus the newspapers strengthen the connection between Islam and Terrorism which arose after September 11th and which is the most important reason for Islamophobia being on the rise in the world at large and in their own countries.”

Which means, in English (which is seemingly the one language that the UN hasn’t printed this in, btw. Go figure), that it’s the Dane’s fault and they should throw the cartoonists in jail, as it is the newspapers and cartoons that are strengthening the link between Islam and Terrorism, not, oh, say the Islamic Terrorists that silly befuddled folk like me might be inclined to think are maybe, dare I assess, to blame.

Speechless

It doesn’t happen often (certainly not as often as some might wish) but sometimes I read something that someone has said and I am left speechless:

“Wearing a headscarf is of course culturally determined. And that’s the way these women experience that, because that’s how they experience their religion. In addition, the headscarf offers opportunities for women is some Islamic countries, because without one they won’t be able to leave home.“

Barcepundit replies perfectly to this…this…toad.
(h/t to Vodkapundit, whose trackbacks keep giving me a 404)

What Would Hillary and Babs and Susan Say

…to this twelve year old?

“I didn’t expect anyone would help me but God. I was really surprised that there were also nice people: the neighbor, the rickshaw driver, the police,” she says. “I pray for those who helped release me.”

Would they still try to tell her that we’re the monsters?