New post. You can’t resist the urge to go there.

Interesting stuff. Turns out that Christians, defined loosely, are the most dominating religious group in the world. I thought it was Muslims.

Go over there and vote 5 for it when it gets approved.

Mickey Kaus writes:

If you want to find evidence of a sociological impact for welfare reform, look at this chart. It shows that the percentage of black children living with two married parents jumped from 33 percent in 1996 to 38 percent in 2002 (when the Census changed the definition of “black”). Meanwhile, the percentage of black children living with “mother only” fell from 53 percent to 48 percent. … Those figures still aren’t very promising–the percentage of white children living with two married parents is 76 (and for Hispanics it’s 66). Still, the improvement for blacks is significant. Why isn’t welfare reform to blame? If a single mother is going to have to work, it makes sense to team up with another breadwinner. …

A law giving immunity to those that report suspicious activity related to terrorism was shot down by democrats. This is an example of a law that is appropriate in helping deal with terrorism while opening the possibility for abuse. It seems prudent that citizens have no fear of retribution for reporting suspicious behavior.

I suspect the reluctance on the democrats side is that it opens the door to discrimination without consequence. Given that most Al Qaeda operatives fit a couple of profiles, reducing the cost of vigilance towards those that match the profiles is prudent even if it means more hassle to this group. Increased hassle for some citizens seems more desirable than dead citizens.

Tinker with citizen rights to prevent death by terrorism and democrats have a stroke, but completely eliminate one of our constitutional rights to prevent civilian death with handguns and the democrats don’t just support the bill, hell, they sponsor it.

Related to the last point.

Freaking Hypocrites.

Consider that many of the writers and editors of the The New Republic go onto work in many different main stream news sources. Consider that the current staff of this publication published an article detailing the deplorable acts of our soldiers in Iraq. Now consider the actual stories.

We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. After a minute or two of eating in silence, one of my friends stabbed his spoon violently into his pile of mashed potatoes and left it there.
“Man, I can’t eat like this,” he said.
“Like what?” I said. “Chow hall food getting to you?”
“No—with that fucking freak behind us!” he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth.
“Are you kidding? I think she’s fucking hot!” I blurted out.
“What?” said my friend, half-smiling.
“Yeah man,” I continued. “I love chicks that have been intimate—with IEDs. It really turns me on—melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses . . . .”
“You’re crazy, man!” my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue.
“In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? ‘IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.”
My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.

And this one:

About six months into our deployment, we were assigned a new area to patrol, southwest of Baghdad. We spent a few weeks constructing a combat outpost, and, in the process, we did a lot of digging. At first, we found only household objects like silverware and cups. Then we dug deeper and found children’s clothes: sandals, sweatpants, sweaters. Like a strange archeological dig of the recent past, the deeper we went, the more personal the objects we discovered. And, eventually, we reached the bones. All children’s bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades. We found pieces of hands and fingers. We found skull fragments. No one cared to speculate what, exactly, had happened here, but it was clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort.

One private, infamous as a joker and troublemaker, found the top part of a human skull, which was almost perfectly preserved. It even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt. He squealed as he placed it on his head like a crown. It was a perfect fit. As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The private wore the skull for the rest of the day and night. Even on a mission, he put his helmet over the skull. He observed that he was grateful his hair had just been cut—since it would make it easier to pick out the pieces of rotting flesh that were digging into his head.

Or how about this one:

I know another private who really only enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs. Occasionally, the brave ones would chase the Bradleys, barking at them like they bark at trash trucks in America—providing him with the perfect opportunity to suddenly swerve and catch a leg or a tail in the vehicle’s tracks. He kept a tally of his kills in a little green notebook that sat on the dashboard of the driver’s hatch. One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book. The second kill was a straight shot: A dog that was lying in the street and bathing in the sun didn’t have enough time to get up and run away from the speeding Bradley. Its front half was completely severed from its rear, which was twitching wildly, and its head was still raised and smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all.

A child - a freaking child - could easily tell you that these stories could not possibly be true. The defy all logic. ALL LOGIC . Unsurprisingly the pro-war bloggers are now in the process of determining the actual veracity of these stories (Some might call that the job of the press but they can’t be bothered with actual events when they are trying to vilify our military). The Weekly Standard (a conservative publication) has got the ball rolling posting emails from, you know, actual military personnel in Iraq that are stationed in the places they stories are reported to occur. None of these people have heard of anything that is even remotely matches these stories. Furthermore they give details about how the equipment can’t be used in the way the stories describes them being used or that how soldiers never treat each other in those ways because they have all have horrifying experiences with IEDs.

Bear in mind that many of that staff that works at The New Republic go on to serve as reporters for other more ‘neutral’ newspapers. It’s impossible for me to see how someone that reports on this clear fabrication as true can be neutral when they move on to another publication company. People with a view this slanted lacks the basic skeptical eye needed to pass as a competent reporter. Honestly, if a news rooms is full of people this biased, no one can possibly believe their coverage is bias free. To do so would be to defy logic.

Instapundit notes:

We’ve seen this pattern before.

I suspect in reference to Vietnam in which press elements took great effort in presenting the US solider as being evil. Anything to further the cause of getting out of a war they disagreed with.

Fortunately this ain’t Vietnam and the press no longer has a monopoly on information. Heres to hoping the pro-war can return control of military action back to the people and out of the hands of anti-war minority. It really hurts our ability to deal with terrorism to have our military hamstrung by a hostile press.

Obtained absolute truth. Now if only they could do something useful, like create value.

Check it out. You know you want to.

Apparently there is legislation being considered to increase cigar tax by 10 dollars.

The association has lobbied to exclude cigars from the bill, but bristles at the public relations challenge: How do you oppose a sin tax Congress has rigged to help sick kids? Senate staffers couldn’t be reached for comment.

Im so sick and tired of these lobbyists attempting to influence politicians against the will of the american people. Everyone in this country would favor a tax on CANCER causing cigars to provide free health care for POOR children. God damn lobysists they are no good at all.