May 2003
5/1/03:
HAPPY MAY DAY from us! I don't know what to
say just yet, but I'll think of something....
HOW COME all
you hear about from Iraq these days is the crazies who are obviously being
whipped up by Shi`ite mullahs or Ba’athist party regulars—leaving the impression
that the entire nation hates us and wants us to leave? Incidents like this one
are much less reported, and buried in specialty media like The Weekly Standard:
One man comes up to the Bradley with a bowl of small wrinkly dates and
some delicious flat bread--the first fresh food anyone onboard has tasted for a
long time. "Thank you," say Captain Hume, Sergeant Deckard, and a hungry
reporter. "No, thank YOU," says the Iraqi man with a smile.
The friendliness is overwhelming, so much so that on the way home
Sergeant Deckard says, "I hope we're going to do right by this country."
posted by Alois 05/01/03
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5/5/03:
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5/8/03:
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5/9/03:
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..........
5/15/03:
MITCH BERG, again:
“Just Watch... - ...as the media spins the attacks in Riyadh as some sort of
defeat against the War on Terror. It makes sense, I think, in the same way that
it made sense that the last shots fired by die-hard Nazis were fired in Berlin,
rather than in New York. They're on home turf!
"Truth is, the fact that it's taken Al Quaeda 19 months to carry out a
serious follow-up attack, on what is essentially their home field, shows how
well things are going in the War, not how badly.”
Good call, Mitch.
posted by Alois 05/15/03
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5/16/03:
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5/19/03:
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5/20/03:
..........
5/21/03:
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5/23/03:
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (especially appropriate for May Day): “The
nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over. You
are a good and gifted people – the heirs of a great civilization that
contributes to all humanity. You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and
torture chambers. You deserve to live as free people. And I assure every citizen
of Iraq: your nation will soon be free.”
--President George W. Bush
posted by Alois 05/01/03
SAM, SAM, SAM... The
irrepressible Mr Muldia pulls
another, er, Muldia today with this:
"Yes, it's the first of May yet again, and socialists, communists,
marxists, stalinists, maoists, anarchosyndicalists, anarchists, envirowackos,
PETArds, idiotarians, and Teddy Kennedy are out breaking things and throwing
liquor bottles at the police. Yes, it's the international Lefties Break Stuff
Day™...
"That's right, Tim Robbins, my dear actor-turned-meteorologist, us
Estonians can only imagine the chillness of the winds blowing across America,
the climate of fear moving in from Washington D.C., with heavy showers of
McCarthyism following a political pressure front. A private organization
refusing to give you a podium to shout down the Imperialist American Capitalist
Swine? What nerve!"
Truly chilling stuff, Sam... but you forgot Hillary Clinton, the
real antichrist!
posted by Alois 05/01/03
..........
ambulance storm
chaser—please read Why I’m Not A Storm Chaser if you want to know why—but because
this is part of what I am and what I do.
Today is the second day of a major tornado outbreak in the south-central
U.S., and this morning I felt something of that old rush return when I’d monitor
the hourly bulletins and updates from the Storm Prediction Center and the Interactive Weather Information Network and excitedly keep track
of the moisture profiles, lifted indices, and radar images. None of it has
seemed to matter since September 11. In fact, I’ve hardly noticed the weather at
all, which is about the saddest statement a meteorologist can make.
Some part of me has always belonged to an optimist, and maybe this is a
sign that things are really beginning to look up. I hope so. And not just for
me, either—for all of us.
posted by Alois 05/05/03
..........
France. Cheese: No one rivals the good old United States of America in this
department... especially not the cheeses originating in our home state of Wisconsin. Perfume: Estonia makes the sweet stuff,
and we do a pretty good job right here in the U.S.A. too. Beer: For our money, the best beer in
the world always came from the Czech Republic (Pilsner Urquell)—and the
United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan don’t do too shabby of a
job either!
posted by Alois 05/06/03
DAILY
GAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEN!AWARD goes to Jonah Goldberg for this trenchant observation: “Of course, nothing says ‘solidarity
with the proletariat’ like a lobster-and-champagne fête cordoned off by a ring
of guard dogs, armed ‘ushers,’ and metal detectors.”
He’s talking, of course, about the Hollywood Dumbocrats.
posted by Alois 05/06/03
WHAT
ISN’T RIGHT ABOUT AMERICA: I guess another sign that life might,
prayerfully, be returning to normal is that I once again feel the urge to get a
few things off my chest that have to do with domestic, not foreign, policy.
I get the feeling that a lot of my fellow conservo-bloggers endeavor to
overlook some of the genuine problems in a pure free-market capitalist system.
In a nutshell: The safety nets we have exist not only to take hard-earned money
out of the pockets of the deserving, but also because there are always plenty of
people that, through no fault of their own, just can’t quite ‘measure up’ and
contribute enormously to our economy. This may be because they’re sick or
injured or unemployed… or it could be, and I don’t mind saying it, that maybe in
some cases they’re just not as really wonderful and smart as the rest of
us are. Does that mean these people should just be left to fend for themselves?
Not in any kind of fundamentally decent society.
I’m also getting tired of apologists for our health-care system, and
these apologists include many of my favorite bloggers and pundits. Health care
is a basic human right—and too many of us these days don’t have access to
it. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to have your head way, way, way up in the clouds
not to see that something stinks in our health care system. Am I the only one on
the right side of the fence who thinks that there is something unholy in the
American menage-a-trois of HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical
manufacturers? Just saying that “socialized medicine is no better” doesn’t cut
it, either. Neither does the disingenuous plea that medical costs in this
country continue to skyrocket because our pharmoconglomerates have to spend half
our GNP every year researching the super-duper wonderful drugs that most of
us can’t afford anyway. These are just cheap cop-outs to avoid facing the
issue that the “holy trinity” is getting obscenely rich while fewer and fewer
Americans are able to afford the most basic health care. Again, this isn’t the
same thing as Sam Walton or Bill Gates getting ridiculously wealthy; health
care, unlike shopping at Wal-Mart or using Windows, is—again—a basic human
right.
Nope, what our “holy trinity” is really up to is much more reminiscent of
Saddam’s robbery of his own people so he could build ridiculously opulent
pleasure palaces. It’s that offensive, and that wrong. Am I going to have more
to say on this in the future? You’d better believe it.
posted by Alois 05/06/03
..........
DAILY GAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEN! AWARD goes to “Dave,” who had this to say on
The Anti-Idiotarian
Rottweiler:
”You know, I'm watching the news up here in Seattle, and the USS Abraham
Lincoln just pulled back into port. Massive party in Everett right now. People
jumping up and down, sailors hugging wives or girlfriends or families, some
sailors seeing children for the first time in 10 months… or just for the first
time period. It's a joyous sight.
”But I'd bet that most of them would jump right back on the ship if we
told them the next target was Paris.”
posted by Alois 05/07/03
ALOIS
SPRECHEN: "NO MORE 'PURPORTED AUDIO TAPES'!!! THIS IS INSULTING MY
INTELLIGENCE! Shit, why don't I make a tape and say I'm both bin Laden
AND Saddam? I could probably sell it to the media!"
UND ZEN, KLAUS SPRECHEN: AP-"The Alois tape! It was handed to Mr.
Alois by a nervous, middle-eastern man while Mr. Alois was eating his lunch at
Smokey Jon's BBQ. The man then disappeared. The (audio) tape is of a
conversation between Mr. Hussein and Mr. bin Laden who met in a Turkish bath in
Paris. They are quoted as saying that the ground under the feet of the infidels
would turn into fire spitting serpents and encouraged the Iraqi people to praise
these Serpents of the Wrath of Allah, to rise up in the streets and cast the
infidels into the sea. The tape is currently being analyzed at the Madison Media
Institute to determine if it's a genuine TDK or a cheap Cambodian knockoff."
posted by Alois 05/07/03
..........
..........
OUTTA HERE. See y'all
Tuesday... and Do Good.
posted by Alois 05/09/03
AND DON’T MISS: Deb’s
Parental Pledge. If every American parent would abide by these standards,
we’d never have to worry about the future of our country.
posted by Alois 05/15/03
ANDREW SULLIVAN
already linked to this, but in case you haven’t been out to his site in a couple
of days, don’t miss this incredible editorial in The Arab News. We are, indeed, making
real progress in this war.
posted by Alois 05/15/03
..........
BIN LADEN
DIDN’T “GIVE” ANYBODY JACK SHIT... because he’s dead. Why do our esteemed
news agencies persist in playing along with this favorite
fiction of the Islamofascists—that pumping al-Jazeera with an audiotape actually
proves anything?!?! As several folks in the blogosphere have pointed out,
all OBL would have to do is show up on videotape holding a copy of
today’s New York Times and he would make a much, much better case for his
vivacity. But he doesn’t. And it’s been sixteen months since Tora Bora.
I’m not buying it, and neither, apparently is anyone else—except a few
Islamo-freaks and the big news media..
posted by Alois 05/16/03
QUOTE OF
THE DAY: Hard to beat this li’l gemette from Michele Catalano:
”Guess who's gonna end up playing air guitar to Poison while wearing a
coconut bra and little else? That's right. Me. And when we are all too drunk to
stand, we'll sit around watching Sixteen Candles.”
posted by Alois 05/16/03
TODAY’S
DON’T-MISS: Bill Safire on why the Poles should be—and are about to
be—rewarded for putting up when it came to put-up-or-shut-up... and why the
French and their running dogs (no slight intended to dogs) can take a flying
you-know-what at a rolling doughnut.
posted by Alois 05/16/03
HAW HAW
HAW. Just plain haw haw haw haw haw! Courtesy the Rottweiler.
posted by Alois 05/16/03
..........
DAILY
GAAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEEN! AWARD:
A shepherd was tending his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new Jeep Cherokee appeared out of a dust cloud, advanced toward him and
stopped. The driver, a 20-something fella wearing a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes,
Ray Ban sunglasses, and a YSL tie, leaned out of the window and asked the
shepherd, "If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will
you give me one?"
The shepherd looked at the young guy, then at his peacefully grazing
flock, and calmly answered, "sure."
The young man parked his car, whipped out his notebook computer,
connected it to a cell phone, surfed to a NASA page on the Internet where he
called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, then opened up a
database and some Excel spreadsheets with complex formula. He finally printed
out a 15-page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer, turned around to our
shepherd and said, "You have here exactly 1,586 sheep!"
"Amazing! That's correct! Like I agreed, you can have one of my sheep,"
said the shepherd.
The shepherd watched the man make a selection and bundle it into his
Cherokee. When he was finished the sheepherder said, "If I can tell you exactly
what your political persuasion is and who you work for, will you give me back my
sheep?"
"Okay, why not," answered the young man.
"You're a Democrat and you're working for Jesse Jackson," said the
shepherd.
"Wow! That's correct," said the young man. "How did you ever guess that?"
"Easy," answered the shepherd. "Nobody called you, but you showed up here
anyway. You want to be paid for providing a solution to a question I already
knew the answer to. And you clearly don't know squat about what you're doing.
Now . . . can I have my dog back?”
--Unknown
posted by Alois 05/19/03
..........
IN CASE
YOU NEEDED TO VOMIT: This should do more for you than sticking your finger down
your throat.
”"Anyone who tells you that my race didn't play a role in my career at
The New York Times is lying to you. Both racial preferences and racism played a
role. And I would argue that they didn't balance each other out. Racism had much
more of an impact.”
--Jayson Blair (via The Drudge Report)
posted by Alois 05/21/03
QUOTE OF
THE DAY, from the oft-quotable Mitch Berg:
”I was in a "discussion" with a particularly irritating DFLer
[DFL=Democratic Farm Labor Party, the “ruling elite” in Minnesota until very
recently--ed.] the other day - a man that fits every unfortunate,
demeaning stereotype I've put forth about DFLers. Let's call him "Ben Anjerry".
He was a fiftyish, thin, new-agey, retro-hippie, Wellstone-worshipping,
henpecked-looking man who teaches some soft-science at a local college.”
posted by Alois 05/21/03
HEY! I’ve
just solved the Broblem of the Balestinian Beoble, once and for all!
And HERE is what the new Balestinian Homeland will be called:
Guantanamo Bay.
A veritable Tropical Paradise for all the Boor Little Balestinians! Bwaa
haa haa!
posted by Alois 05/21/03
BUT
SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... by about this time of the week, I just get tired of the
bullshit. In fact, I may declare Wednesday “Tired Of The Bullshit Day.”
The Palestinians have shown no evidence in recent years that they are
truly interested in having their own state, at least not if it means coexisting
with the Israelis. Well I for one do not feel inclined (and I think I speak for
the majority of Israelis here as well) to bend over as far as I can and see what
the Hamas-supporting Palestinian “Authority”’s idea of a brave new world looks
like. They blew that chance when they wouldn’t accept the Barak deal; they blew
it again on September 11 when they were out in the street laughing their asses
off; and they blew it most recently when they made it plain that they supported
Saddamned Insane in GW2. Oh yes, and they blow it totally out the window every
time they send a suicide bomber into Israel. These people aren’t serious and
they can’t be trusted. The Palestinians have proven only that they are in no way
ready for anything resembling statehood, especially not at Israeli expense.
More bullshit: Can’t we do something here in the United States to come up
with a middle way?
We have evolved into a two-party system that looks, in essence, something
like this: The Republicans can’t be trusted with domestic policy, and the
Democrats can’t be trusted with… uh, anything.
I see a microcosm of this reality here in my state government job: Under
the Republican administrations in place from 1988 until last year, the state
enjoyed a period of expansion until too many sweetheart deals and tax loopholes
were made for too many fat-cat contractors and sports supporters (note I
refrained from saying “athletic supporters”) and far too much of the state
budget started lining the pockets of far too little of the populace. The
Republican’s idea of how to fix this was to give everyone in the state a check
for $300 (gasp). It doesn’t sound like much—and it wasn’t—but it had the effect
of demolishing the state’s rainy-day fund and sending us spiraling
uncontrollably into the red.
Enter the Democrats.
I would be the first to admit that they inherited the fiscal mess and had
little to do with its creation. But in the most uninspired (that’s a polite
term) fit of budget-cutting in the history of this state, the Dems chose to gut
the state’s ag department—and this in a state with a very large agricultural
industry—and get rid of tax agents and auditors (gee, wonder who brings the
money in? but, well, never mind). Meanwhile, their favorite programs—natural
resources, family services, the university system—were scarcely touched. After
the first few rounds of layoffs of beleaguered state workers, the Dems next
announced that paid health insurance for state workers was no longer a sacred
cow and that employees should have to kick in a goodly percentage of the cost of
their insurance (wonder who’s in bed with the insurance companies? Hmmmm… since
an individual employee has nowhere near the leverage of the state government as
a whole, this basically puts state workers entirely at the mercy of our
gluttonous health-insurance/HMO industry). And this is the “party of the little
guy”? Don’t make me laugh. It will be up to the next administration—which almost
certainly won’t be Democratic—to figure out how to recruit state workers for the
decimated civil workforce when the only two selling points of state employment
(job security and great benefits) are gone... thanks to the Dumbocrats.
High-level appointees of this administration are a sorry sight, too, so
much so that most of us are starting to miss the stout old Republicans with
their American-flag lapels who used to roam our halls. A race of lean, hungry
yuppies in expensive suits, they barricade themselves in their corner offices
and gab with friends on their cell phones all day, ordering the “peons” around
in ways the Republicans never dreamed of. So far, the only noticeable initiative
I have seen them show is trying to figure out how to get more and better toys
for their own offices (PDAs, flat-panel monitors, fax machines) at a time when
the state is hemorrhaging employees and the rank and file is trying to figure
out how in the hell they are going to afford to keep themselves insured.
Next Wednesday I think I’m going to go off on civil liberties. Thanks,
I’m done for now.
posted by Alois 05/21/03
DAILY
GAAAAAAAZ-O-LEEEEEEEN! AWARD goes to JB Doubtless over at Fraters Libertas for this
long-overdue social observation:
”And somewhere in the closet lay those sandals you got a few years ago…
Let’s just end this little charade right now, shall we? The sandals must go.
Dispatch them to the ash can this instant. You are an adult, and unless you’re
still an active hacky-sacker or a university professor, then it must end, now.”
Were, alas, that it were so...
posted by Alois 05/21/03
..........
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY:
"I don’t blame Rockford College President Pribbenow for this very poor
choice of speaker; I do blame him for not intervening as this poorly chosen
speaker alienated the majority of the audience. From my vantage point next to
the stage, I observed a female graduate pleading with him, tears in her eyes,
“Make him stop! This is our graduation! My family wants to leave.” Pribbenow
acknowledged her with an arrogant glance, and then turned his attention back to
the speaker. The graduate was still crying.
”No, I don’t blame Pribbenow for siding with the minority; I blame him
for making the graduating class and their families choose sides at all, and not
showing an ounce of care or regret in the process. I call him a fraud for
appealing to ‘academic freedom’ while in the same breath asking dissenters to be
silent.
”Or how about Assistant Dean of Students Bradley Knotts? I observed him
arguing with a visibly upset ex-serviceman who had ‘served in Afghanistan’. When
Mr. Knotts’ reason failed, he put the soldier in his place: ‘You obviously
didn’t go to college, so you wouldn’t understand what’s going on here.’ There’s
really nothing I need to add here; those arrogant displays of self-righteous
pseudo-academia speak for themselves. And I’m left with the image of an
‘uneducated’ marine who showed the restraint to walk away from this insult
against him and his country." –Ulf Grasse, Rockford College graduate, commenting
to the Rockford Register Star (via Little Green Footballs)
posted by Alois 05/22/03
..........
TODAY'S DON'T MISS: My main man, Victor Davis Hanson,
explains how the mess in the Muslim world is all our
fault (and Israel's too, of course). I nearly wept...
posted by Alois 05/23/03
OUTTA HERE. See y'all
Tuesday... and Happy Memorial Day.
posted by Alois 05/23/03
5/27/03:
TODAY’S
MUST-READ: A serviceman’s letter to Imperial Wizard Senator Robert Byrd
(D-Pretoria) concerning his near-blasphemous remarks about President Bush’s
stopover on the USS Lincoln. This guy just totally nails it. (Via the Rottweiler)
posted by Alois 05/27/03
DUHHHHH.... Klaus und I have been saying all along that al Qaeda's
big-time operators are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer; any fool
can fly a plane into a building. Perhaps the best case in point is that, had
they waited just a year or two longer instead of shooting their wad on 9/11,
they probably could have obtained a nuclear weapon. Our liberal, er
friends still beg to differ, wanting us poor Amerikaners to believe that we are
up against a race of intellectual supermen with cellphones and laptops and it is
just a matter of time until we will have to surrender (or make nicey-nice with
the Wahhabist self-aggrandizing wizards o' destruction).
Here is just the latest proof that Klaus und I knew whereof we
spoke, right from the beginning.
Ja.
posted by Alois 05/27/03
5/28/03: