:: PROLEGOMENA ::

:: Tuesday, June 29 ::

THE IRAQI BUZZ

"Mr President, Iraq is sovereign. Letter passed from (US civilian overseer Paul) Bremer at 10:26 AM Iraq time - Condi."

When I woke up yesterday morning expecting to hear NPR make "Abu Ghraib" my first two words of the day, I heard instead of the surprise early handover. "Brilliant!" was my first word of the day, and NPR wasn't the one saying it.

My second word yesterday was the same as the first:

Blair, Bush, and NATO leaders with troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq knew that the handover had been accelerated, but other leaders in the same meeting who did not support the war were in the dark, US officials said.

French President Jacques Chirac, who led international opposition to the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, only learned about it when Bush announced it at the meeting, said a spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna.

Bush then speaks in Turkey, praising their secular democracy and their place as Europe's bridge to the world beyond. Predictably, Arab autocrats, asses itching in their dish-dash-ahs and oil money in their accounts, criticize the US failure to handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I guess it's time to broker another deal for the Palestinians to break.

Let's go back a little to the March comments by best-ex-president Jimmy Carter:

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticised George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.

We now have a sovereign Iraq, free of one of the most evil regimes in world history. Does Carter now view this as "installed democracy based on lies"?

AND - Chirac shows it hurts:

Mr Chirac is known for his sharp tongue but, even during the most bitter disputes last year over his opposition to war in Iraq, he never hurled personal abuse at Mr Bush.

However, yesterday the French president lost any such reserve when he told Mr Bush that EU affairs were none of his business.

Stung by Mr Bush's call for the EU to give Turkey a firm date for accession, Mr Chirac responded: "He not only went too far but he has gone into a domain which is not his own.

"He has nothing to say on this subject. It is as if I were to tell the United States how it should conduct its relations with Mexico."

Memo to Chirac: if you can keep your fellow countrymen from spray-painting the graves in Normandy, perhaps we will come back for a third time to help you with whoever is invading you, even if it isn't our domain.

:: michael parker Tuesday, June 29, 2004 [+] ::
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SLAMMED - ABSOLUTELY NO TIME TO BLOG

but

Copied and pasted directly from the Drudge Report, this list of headlines was a delightful read... and think of the time I saved!

Clinton's Book Signings Draw Adoring Throngs in NYC...

CNN: 'My Life' sets records...

BUT... Sales slow in Florida...

Stacks Left Untouched on Maryland Shore...

Clinton book sales quiet in Arizona...

Memoirs not on Houston's best seller list...

Tome slow out of gate in Cincinnati...

Not flying off shelves in Hudson Valley...

Mixed reaction in Manitowoc...

Mixed book sales in N.E. Georgia...

Creates little hoopla in San Antonio...

Not Selling in Shenandoah Valley...

Book not so magical in Wichita Falls...

Hoosiers react quietly to memoir...

Just hype? asks Gainesville...

Sales can't measure up to Harry or Hillary in suburban Chicago...

Memoirs don't stir Saginaw...

Memoir is no 1st-day best-seller in Ft. Wayne...

Not selling in VA Beach...

No best seller in Billings...

Slow in Sacramento...

:: michael parker Wednesday, June 23, 2004 [+] ::
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PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN SAID...

Putin: Russia Gave Bush Iraq Intelligence

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) - Russia gave the Bush administration intelligence after the September 11 attacks that suggested Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was preparing attacks in the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

Putin said he couldn't comment on how critical the Russians' information was in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. He said Russia didn't have any information that Saddam's regime had actually been behind any terrorist acts.

"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said.

This from the Russia that opposed our action in Iraq.
and Bush acted...

:: michael parker Friday, June 18, 2004 [+] ::
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IT'S PRONOUNCED "HOOTS'-PUH"

"G-8 demonstrators ask for handout"

Savannah city leaders gave G-8 Sea Island Summit demonstrators just about everything they asked for.

Now organizer Kellie Gasink is asking for a little bit more.

In a letter sent to the mayor and aldermen this week, Gasink requested $2,000 to cover shortfalls stemming from last week's International Festival for Peace and Civil Liberties in Forsyth Park.

Gasink had projected more than 5,000 participants during the June 8-10 events, and was hoping to cover costs by selling T-shirts and posters she and her husband, William Pleasant, had created.

T-shirts and posters for sale? Thousands of leftovers? how about sending them back to the third world where they came from?

via Sam Johnson via Spot On


:: michael parker Thursday, June 17, 2004 [+] ::
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IF THIS JUST IN FROM DRUDGE IS TRUE:

Clinton tells Rather he is proud that he fought the impeachment battle that failed to drive him from office. "I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back," he tells Rather. "The whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate," says Clinton of the impeachment process that he calls "an abuse of power."

No one remembers this was about a President lying under oath before a federal grand jury, or that the feminists' choice was lying about actions that violated federal workplace sexual harassment rules. Then again, the feminists really didn't want Afghan women freed from their burkhas, either. And isn't "stain" an interesting choice of word?

Clinton views his economic plan as the greatest accomplishment of his presidency. "I kept score, how many people's lives were better off," he tells Rather. "I think the fact that we were able to have 22 million jobs and record home ownership and lower interest rates...people actually had the ability to do more things than ever before," says Clinton.

Dan Rather and MSNBC have apparently done such an effective job blaming errors and downturns on the then-governor of Texas that even Clinton believes he wasn't President then, either.

He had many days as president that he counts among his best, including his efforts to help the residents of Kosovo and rid the world of a dictator. "The day that Kosovar war ended and I knew Milosevic's days were numbered was a great day. I had a lot of great days," he says.

Can we get Dan Rather and MSNBC to credit Clinton for the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime so we can all agree it's very good that Saddam is gone?

:: michael parker Thursday, June 17, 2004 [+] ::
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Well, JUMP BACK, MUHAMMED! This must scare the shit out of the mullahs:

"Europe to Rebuke Iran Over Nuclear Program"

Delegates at a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors described the draft, written by France, Britain and Germany, as strongly worded. Slight modifications were meant to appease nonaligned nations traditionally allied with Iran, said the delegates, speaking on condition of anonymity.

``The substance remains the same,'' one delegate said. ``The heat is still on.''

HA! The heat is on from the French, who can't survive a summer heat wave.

Oh - I suppose the Iranians will take France seriously since they were so allied with Saddam's Iraq.


:: michael parker Wednesday, June 16, 2004 [+] ::
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WATCH OUT - HE MAY DO SOMETHING CRAZY

Mall Bomb Suspect Ordered Psychiatric Help

Can we ever get to the point when we can do these evaluations when they are entering the country? Michelle Malkin writes on this subject with some examples worth remembering in "America's insane asylum for terrorists"

:: michael parker Wednesday, June 16, 2004 [+] ::
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MOURNING AND MANNERS

I choked when I saw Mrs. Reagan touching the casket in the Rotunda this morning. Then, this very interesting article:

"Nancy Reagan showed how to touch casket"

"If she had not touched the casket, I assure you no one else would have. She in a way gave people permission," said David Kessler, director of palliative care at three Los Angeles hospitals and author of "The Needs of the Dying."

:: michael parker Friday, June 11, 2004 [+] ::
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A FUNERAL BILL CLINTON CAN SPEAK AT

Ray Charles Dies at 73

:: michael parker Friday, June 11, 2004 [+] ::
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BOO F*****G HOO, PART 3

Lawyer says Saddam tortured

:: michael parker Friday, June 11, 2004 [+] ::
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WAS IT VENUS AGAIN?

It is a rare week that I put down a Hitchens column with disgust. Until, maybe, the last two paragraphs, which I read three times and still do not know what Hitchens is saying here. He anti-eulogized Bob Hope as well, to the disgust of many conservative bloggers, but that didn't bother me. In fact, I agreed with Hitchens' critique of Hope's humor.

It has never happened before that I actually like what Maureen Dowd writes. I still bet she returns to what I expect to read with her next column.

UPDATE: Dowd is back... but with a Brobdingnagian word...

:: michael parker Thursday, June 10, 2004 [+] ::
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ABU-REAGAN, or BOO F*****G HOO, PART 2

Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather lament excessive media coverage, yet they never followed-up with Gary Condit and Chandra Levy.

Rather offers this rather truthful statement about the state of the media:

"Once the herd starts moving in one direction, it's very hard to turn it, even slightly," Rather said. "Nationally, the herd has grown tremendously."

No worries, boys, you can get back to Abu-Ghraib as soon as Saturday.



:: michael parker Wednesday, June 09, 2004 [+] ::
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VENUS AND MOSES

I get this via e-mail from an astrology-reding friend, wriiten by Astrologer/"Alchemist"
Moses Siregar III. Venus' love struggles to conquer all:

The heart (Venus) set her controls to come directly between the Earth and the Sun, so that as we looked up at the Sun from Earth, Venus appeared to sit near the Sun’s heart, and again it’s been over 121 years since this last happened. Adding to the interest, the Venus-Sun occultation takes place in front of the backdrop of the sidereal constellation of Taurus, a peaceful sign which Venus herself rules and is generally more auspicious within. It’s hard to imagine a better stellar motion picture about the power of love for an earthly drive-in movie. Taurus is the screen, the Sun is the projector, and Venus is the star. This Venus-Sun-in-Taurus movie could be called, “The Power of Peace.” Perhaps unfortunately, this movie also has some competition. Just ask anyone in Iraq.

Yes, Moses, feel free to ask anyone in Iraq yourself, and thank you for not mentioning Abu-Ghraib. Better yet, Herr Astrologer, why don't you just go to Astronomy Picture of the Day and shut the hell up.

:: michael parker Wednesday, June 09, 2004 [+] ::
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BOO F*****G HOO

If Drudge is right about this:

Former President Bill Clinton has privately expressed anger he has apparently been left off the speakers list of Friday's Reagan State Funeral, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"President Clinton really held out all hope the funeral would be a nonpartisan event, like Nixon's was," a top Clinton source said on Tuesday morning. "He's angry and disappointed neither he nor President Carter have been asked to speak, as of yet."

The top source says Clinton has been critical that both Bush presidents will address the crowd gathered at National Cathedral.

Was this predictable? Hell, I hoped all through the two-term Clinton Presidency that Reagan would hang on so we could avoid this very thing. Does anyone else think it makes sense for the current President to speak? So what if Gerald Ford did not speak at Nixon's funeral?

The low-class behavior of Clinton while in office has been echoed by Carter out of office. While Clinton allowed China to advance its nuclear evolution by 20+ years, Carter helped the Stalinist North Korean regime in its own nuclear goals. While Clinton made a mockery of oath-taking and played with the definition of the word "is", Carter continues to outright lie by his use of the word "unilateral". Both have bashed the current administration, and both are completely incompatable with Reagan's attitude toward the Presidency.

:: michael parker Tuesday, June 08, 2004 [+] ::
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TODAY IN HISTORY - THE DEATH OF MUHAMMED

At historychannel.com, the opening paragraph does the good thing of not calling him a prophet: "In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aishah, his third and favorite wife."

As many continue to post their low-class scribblings at Democratic Underground, celebrating the death of Reagan, I will post my own regret that Muhammed ever lived. I have always been bothered by the hyper-use "infidel" in Islamic preaching, "O" this and "O" that... the drama of it all making it sound so fake. Then today we are left with a religion, said to be abused and slandered, that seems to only encourage human nature. Why else would 57 Islamic nations give a standing ovation to Mahathir Mohamad's speech blaming the ills of the Muslim world on the Jews?

Then, Lo!, a prophet arrives six centuries after Jesus Christ to bring forth a holy Qu'ran that reads like a rip-off of the Old Testament, and modern-day apologists who claim that Christianity flourished and spread thanks to the Islamic tradition of tolerance, which somehow existed six centuries before Islam existed.

The Qur'an/Koran is online at a University of Southern California website. See if you can find the word "Jerusalem" in it anywhere.



:: michael parker Tuesday, June 08, 2004 [+] ::
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BLAME WHERE IT GOES

We need to see more of this in America's hyper-sensitive areas as well:

But communal support for the smugglers has cooled as Israeli forces have razed more and more parts of Rafah said to be hiding tunnels. With 13,000 people now homeless, many of whom say they concealed nothing, residents are turning on the tunnel men.

Harder to believe is that this report comes from a Reuters site:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, June 6 (Reuters) - Mustafa used to fear little but a periodic Israeli army raid as he dug arms smuggling tunnels into the Gaza Strip for the Palestinian revolt. Now he has to worry about the neighbours too.

Running guns and contraband through tunnels into Rafah refugee camp from nearby Egypt was once both profitable and patriotic in Palestinian eyes. It put rare cash into a poor economy and fuelled "resistance" to Israeli occupation in Gaza.

I would pay money to see the look on Rachel Corrie's face.

:: michael parker Monday, June 07, 2004 [+] ::
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D-DAY

The 60th anniversary of course saw anti-American protests in France. A pro-American crashed the protest in song and sign:



and got escorted away for "disturbing the peace" - no kidding..

Allah Pundit points to a photo that begs for a funny caption contest.
Here.
and
at Allah's site with funny comments posted.

:: michael parker Monday, June 07, 2004 [+] ::
...

The news of Reagan's death I got from the TV in a biker bar in Lake Lure, NC. Nobody discussed it, really. I was also in a biker bar on September 11, 2001. There wasn't any discussion really going on then either. It's nice to be in an all-American environment when something significant takes place and everyone around you seems to be already in agreement.

The state funeral of this President is enormously fitting. I don't remember as much the politics of much of that administration as its image. The Reagan White House was sophisticated, ergo, stately. I remember worrying that Reagan would die with Clinton still in office.

This Friday's state funeral, and the current President's respect for the formalities of his office, will be something for a world inundated with weeks of Abu Ghraib photos to see instead.

Allah Pundit points to a good eulogy, a third of it here:

Today resembles the darkest days of the 1970s, when the Soviet Union was advancing with impunity and given a free pass by what were not yet known as the forces of political correctness. To tell the truth about jihad today is the same as telling the truth about Communism then: unpopular, even ridiculous. Few grasped the urgency of the moral imperative to rescue the oppressed and defend the threatened, and few do now. Ronald Reagan did.

:: michael parker Monday, June 07, 2004 [+] ::
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HEADLINE:
Judaism growing among black Americans

How does this interesting growth compare to blacks embracing Islam?

Do black American Jews have an interesting take on Israel? They may. The article refers to Ethiopian Jews, thousands of which were taken into Israel years ago.

:: michael parker Friday, June 04, 2004 [+] ::
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SO THERE WAS THIS CONTEST

to see who could hand Osama over to America first.

Taliban told US it would give up Osama - middleman

BERLIN, June 4 (Reuters) - U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.

If this turns out to be true, will Dan Rather or MSNBC be the first to blame this Sept, 2000 failure on the then-governor of Texas?


:: michael parker Friday, June 04, 2004 [+] ::
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JUST BE-COS

My local paper ran a report that some NAACP members are upset at Bill Cosby:

"I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't? Where you is? And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English -- except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."

(Black) columnist Walter Williams is predictably supportive:

Don't give me any of that legacy-of-slavery nonsense unless you can explain why all of these problems were not worse during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when blacks were much closer to slavery, were much poorer, faced more discrimination and had fewer opportunities.

The New York Times says "Black Flight to Private Schools Is Growing"

For a parent like Elisa Helligar-Lewis, the emphasis on achievement meshed with an overall sense of safety. She had worried that her two bookish sons would be "used like mops" by bullies in her neighborhood public school. At Trey Whitfield, nobody mocks them for doing their homework, participating in class or speaking in standard English rather than street slang. "The whole environment," she said, "is conducive to study."

:: michael parker Thursday, June 03, 2004 [+] ::
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A KERRY WITH A CLUE

Kerry: Nuclear Terrorism Is Gravest Threat to U.S.

Wow - where do you think he got that idea? Not from a faded bumper sticker like he did his "regime change" call. Well, lucky for us he evidently started listening to President Bush before he saw the "Arms are for hugging" bumper sticker on his family's SUV.

Does this now mean our "unilateral" action with our allies was right? Might it even mean that Israel's truly unilateral destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 was right? (and, Kerry, is that why none of the 39 Iraqi scuds fired at Israel during the Gulf War carried a nuclear warhead, or why we could move right in and kick Iraq out of Kuwait?)

Written five days before the World Trade Center was destroyed, a writer for both Instapundit and National Review made the point that Israel's action at Osirak was "only really successful nuclear nonproliferation effort to date." (There was South Africa's own denuclearization, but if Kerry is to be the Second Black President he has to say they did that to keep blacks from getting the bomb.)

Still, is neo-nuclear-aware Kerry going to offer policy in agreement with National Review's writers? For the next five months, maybe, but the truth is people like Kerry, who as they speak are motivating the terrorists to bomb before the election a la Madrid, are the gravest threat America now faces.

:: michael parker Tuesday, June 01, 2004 [+] ::
...