clear and hold

I haven't been blogging in a while, and for that I apologize to those of you that have been waiting with baited breath for my latest post. Thing is, lately I've felt like I'm slipping, at least mentally. I used to have a very analytical approach to life, compartmentalizing and organizing all the things I needed to do, and in general just very at peace at the end of the day with the accumulated success of my efforts. Although lately I feel like I've been adopting a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of attitude, and while it certainly is easy, it is not the direction I would like to be headed in. I need to get back on track, I will try to organize, ponder the moves I make more carefully, look at it from all angles before moving, and above all, be speedy. I will be praying later on tonight for God to help me with this. I fear one cause for this entropy of the mind is all the weed I was smoking, and so now that I have rid it from my daily regimen, and am walking the straight and narrow for all intensive purposes, my brain should begin a slow process back to the original form. Excellent planning, reading, intelligence-increasing, and above all, determination to succeed in being steadfast in my goal, never wavering should accomplish the desired result.

White House Correspondents Dinner : Belated Stephen Colbert Analysis

Note : I have decided to conduct an analysis of the methods employed here by famed liberal Stephen Colbert in his virulent attack on President Bush under the guise of "comedy" for the purposes of further familiarizing myself and others with the dirty tactics liberals use, and better improve strategies of negating and defeating them.

Analysis of Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner:
Section 1A:
____________________________________________________________________
Joke 1:

Stephen Colbert makes fun of a shooting accident Dick Cheney had where the vice president accidentally shot his friend. Make fun of an accident where somebody got shot in the face, that's real funny, Colbert.

Joke 2:

Stephen Colbert makes joke about how the NSA is listening in on the conversations the people at the dinner are having, i.e. "Speak into your napkin for a drink order".
This is not only not funny, it's inaccurate. The NSA case involved overseas calls between suspected terrorists and persons inside the United States.

Joke 3:

Stephen Colbert makes joke how feelings "from the gut" are factless. Not sure if he's saying Bush has ever used that phrase in any meaningful context before, if at all.

Joke 4: Says that Fox News is a "no fact zone". Uhh, ok. Good one. How can I think up zingers like those?

Joke 5: Says America exists, can't wait to see how the Washington Post spins that. Supposed to be sarcasm, Colbert is mocking those that say the Washington Post is biased. Problem is, he used a strawman argument, i.e. setting up a false contrast.

Joke 6: Colbert says democracy is our greatest export with heavy sarcastic tone. Not sure if lifting paragraphs from Bush's speeches, twisting them, and delivering them with obvious sarcasm is supposed to be funny, or if the sheer ludicrousness of it all is supposed to be.

Joke 7: Says "The government that governs best is the government that governsl least, and by those standards we have set up a fabolous government in Iraq". Not much here other than an attack on the Iraq war effort, saying the government is not governing that much. Obviously the plan in Iraq is to help the government get on their feet, apparently not everybody is on board with that plan and don't really care if Iraq succeeds or not. It seems by now that the format for tonight will be misrepresenting the President's views on domestic and foreign policy into obviously absurd positions, and then delivering them with a straight face. So basically, he's playing to the far-left crowd, and by the sound of the correspondents, they're eating it up. Who needs articles to prove media bias? Just turn up the sound to hear their guffaws as they listen to some cable goof slandering and mocking the President of the United States.

Joke 8: Colbert says he's a Christian, then says "I respect all religions, though, I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ". The implication here is that although Bush says he respects all religions, he is forcing his own religious views on other people, expecting them to become Christians too. Another distortion, there's never been any evidence of forced Christianity anywhere, especially by Bush.

Joke 9: Says Bush has 32% approval rating, approval ratings reflect public opinion in "reality", and "reality" has liberal bias. I guess he doesn't know approval ratings are only polled from about 1-10000 people. And there's 300,000,000 people in the United States. As well as it would be a sorry politician who changed their views whatever the wind blew. But it's not really about the ratings. Colbert simply wanted to insult the President, and the approval ratings were the tool. He says the ratings don't have a liberal bias, although most of the time it's liberal newspapers who are conducting these same polls, or liberal organizations.

Joke 10: I don't even know if I could safely qualify these as jokes anymore. I'll just start calling them bits, because this guy is just a complete fool. But here's 10:
Colbert compares Bush to Rocky, then describes Rocky getting "repeatedly punched in the face, hitting the mats, everybody's telling him to stay down, eventually he loses". Weak comparison, all that Colbert wanted here was to create the visual of all these violent things happenning to Bush. And people say liberals aren't insane, violent people. This gives you a glimpse into one man's imagination, and it's not pretty.

I will continue more on this speech later. Next up will be another 10 Bits, maybe more if I have the time. I think it is important to do this for the dissection of liberal tactics. As for those who say we've seen those tactics enough, I say you cannot know your enemy well enough.

North Korea and Brinkmanship

I haven't been able to blog in a while; mostly a combination of forgetfulness and time constraints. But I wanted to make a quick mention on this topic:

In the past days, North Korea has declared itself free of the moratorium it agreed to on launching ballistic missiles and has readied a missile for a test flight. It is not clear what the flight path would be, but as expected, this move has drawn international outrage here, here, and here, most notably from the US, Japan, China, and Australia.

The Captain speaks:

The Taepodong-2 missile has Alaska in easy reach for a direct targeting profile. Depending on the configuration used, however, the Taepodong-2 can hit targets in the continental US using a ballistic polar route for its flight. The pending launch has the US and Japan on high alert. Without a doubt, if the rocket fires, the US will have no choice but to respond in some forceful manner -- and if we're lucky, it will only be a successful demonstration of the missile defense system.

So North Korea hasn't been in the spotlight in a while, and suddenly they decide to fuel their missile for a test launch. What do they want? Well, soon after the US decided to activate their missile defense system, Kim Jong-Il decides he wants to talk.

I'll just throw out a guess here. Kim Jong-Il thinks he can blackmail the US into giving him more stuff(aid, money, whatever), using his Taepodong missile as leverage. What we should do is bomb this guy to the Stone Age, except he would then destroy South Korea. But something's definitely got to be done about this, and it should be sooner rather than later.

tipping point...

Israel has had enough. The Palestinians, most notably Hamas, have so far been a thorn in their side, but Israel has finally had enough. Hamas has quite suddenly and inexplicably called for a ceasefire.
ThreatsWatch has analysis:

"This is a clear and sudden change in tone from Hamas. It is a tone that is largely a response to Israel directly speaking their language: The language of force and threat. The ‘new tone’ also includes an agreement with Fatah to pull its militias from the streets of Gaza, though Hamas has agreed to this in the past. In return, Abbas’ Fatah has agreed to blend them into the PA Security Forces structure. Perhaps this time Hamas will honor the agreement under the additional direct pressure from Israel and the international community."

Israel has finally had enough. Hamas knows Israel could decapitate their leadership in an instant if provoked enough, and it appears that tipping point was reached. And like the bully in the schoolyard who is finally confronted, Hamas suddenly backs off with the hands up, saying "We definitely want quiet everywhere. We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere."
This should happen more often. It shows how cowardly the terrorists really are, as if we didn't have enough evidence from the men, women, and children they send to die in their place.

Tide is turning...

Yet another step in the right direction.

http://news.yahoo.co­m/s/ap/20060615/­ap_on_re_mi_ea/i­raq_terror_bluep­rint;_ylt=AnB7v0­GhsQj7mCCd1lrVx5­hvaA8F;_ylu=X3oD­MTA2Z2szazkxBHNl­YwN0bQ--

Iraq's government is in place, Zarqawi is dead, and now his own personal correspondence reveals how much his own movement is losing. That is, before we dropped a few bombs on him.

In general, the Iraq mission is proving to be a success. There is, however, one factor that will not go away until confronted.

Iran has been supplying the terrorists with the IED's improvised-explosive-devices that are killing our fellow Americans, as well as other arms.

There is no way you can eliminate the insurgency when they continue to be propped up by a neighboring country intent on fomenting strife there. It is like filling a leaky bucket. You can never fill it up; you first have to plug up the hole. Iraq is the bucket, democracy is the water, and Iran is the leak. Plugging up the leak in this case means dealing with their meddling in another country's sovereign affairs.

So, eventually I believe either Bush or Iraq's government itself will have to address this.

But it is exciting to see the formation of a democracy where there has never been one before.

on the beat...

As if we weren't fully aware of the latest death toll from Democratic talking heads and their brothers in arms, the mainstream media, the AP decides to celebrate the benchmark of 2500 with a cheery little article :

The Pentagon confirmed Thursday that 2,500 U.S. troops have died in the

Iraq war since it began more than three years ago, marking a grim milestone even as President Bush hopes a recent spate of good news will reverse the war's widespread unpopularity at home.

The latest death was announced as Congress was launching into a symbolic election-year debate over the war, with Republicans rallying against calls by some Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

While there were no details on who it was or where the 2,500th death occurred, it underscored the continuing violence in Iraq just after an upbeat Bush returned from a surprise visit to Baghdad determined that the tide was beginning to turn.

Seems like a big number, huh? 2,500? Maybe we just need to put it in context.

So I decided to do a little research, and see what casualties from other wars have been like:

US Military Deaths (listed by most number of casualties):
Source : Wikipedia

American Civil War : 620,000 Deaths

WWII : 407,300 Deaths

WWI : 126,000 Deaths

Vietnam War : 58,200 Deaths

Korean War : 33,000 Deaths

Iraq War : 2,500 Deaths

Kinda puts it in perspective, huh?

gotta rid me of, get rid of me....

I just grabbed Ann Coulter's appearance on Jay Leno and it was surprisingly blase.
Not really any flareups. George Carlin, another guest, is apparently a liberal, but he stayed pretty quiet throughout the whole segment. I'd never really watched Leno before, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought he was pretty civil. His arguments were very liberal-like in nature, the whole "But wasn't this passage too nasty", or "I'm a little confused about this part", basically the whole I'm-usually-very-openminded-but-you're-an-extremist-you-freak, but Ann didn't give an inch throughout. He'd set up his arguments pretty easily, such as "Politics used to be civil. Now they're not. Your book is one of the reasons why they're not." But Ann didn't even get caught up believing his establishing-the-pillar-of-the-argument assertion and try and defend it, and say her book was civil, but immediately targeted the beginning assertion required for the whole argument and deconstructed it, thereby negating his whole statement. She just said politics were civil in the Soviet Union too, when there was only one opinion, and credited the lack of civility today to there being TWO perspectives as opposed to the previous ONE perspective dominating the media.

So, overall, very good. It's good to see conservatives appearing on more-and-more mainstream media shows, it means they're breaking the glass ceiling. Ann made some excellent conservative points, talked about liberal tactics, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, received quite loud applause from the audience. I'm not sure if Leno's audience is partially conservative, or if conservatives bought tickets specially because of Coulter's appearance, but that was the most surprising and gratifying aspect of it all.

A voice rises up...

The NYT has an article about Ann Coulter's comments regarding the 9/11 widows.
This is the second level of attack regarding the liberals attack on Ann Coulter. The first attack was very similar to Matt Lauer's reaction, simple rude confrontation, no real point, and basic slander. But they discovered this was simply making her point, that simply saying "How dare you criticize their "loss"" was not sufficient anymore as Ann had pulled the wool from the eyes of the people, and now they had realized yet another of the liberals dirty tactics. "Human shields", or the process of using another's loss or grief publicly to score political points has now been revealed, and this is why it is a good thing Ann is getting this publicity. Now that it is shown how this attack works, it is negated. It is hard to use this tactic anymore with any great efficiency. Now, liberals realized they were simply making her point when they responded to her argument with hypocritical chest-puffing and indignant "how dare you's" to the potent point she was making, and have concocted a second attack on Ann Coulter, hopeful that it will prove more effective now that their initial mode of attack has been neutralized. This new attack is evident in the NYT article, and I predict you will be hearing it more and more from Democratic talking heads, and as part of the talking point when confronted with questions regarding it. The smarter ones will use this second mode of attack, as the public is not yet aware of it, and the first mode is rather hysterical.

SECOND MODE : Negate Ann's point by portraying her as a "controversialist" looking to say "controversial" things to "sell" books. Draw any attention away from the actual things she is saying by talking about her drive to sell books, have handy quotes ready, misquote them without providing any real context with the only objective to momentarily shock, and then slide the proverbial knife home by framing her as money-hungry and ready to say anything to make a quick buck.

Unfortunately the NYT article is no longer available free to read, but here are a few excerpts:

"All manner of televised talkfests, including 'Today,' welcome Ms. Coulter's pirate sensibilities back aboard whenever she has something to peddle, in part because seeing hate-speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress makes for compelling viewing.

"Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us."

The first part is pretty obviously blatant in calling Ms. Coulter's words "hate speech", and then making a (sexist?) comment about a blonde in a cocktail dress making for compelling viewing, as ironic as that is.

The second paragraph labels her a "nut", then laments how far political literature has fallen for Ms. Coulter to be a leading political writer. All in all, a rather petulant tone throughout. Not that it's surprising. Ann Coulter decimates the NYT on a regular basis, this pitiful response is more than expected.

But expect this to be the second mode of attack while she is still in the limelight. She will be appearing on Jay Leno on Wednesday, so it will be interesting to see how any liberals on that show attack her. There is certainly no question they will attack her, the only question is how, and whether or not they can muster a fairly intelligent volley. Time will tell, as for me, I will try to watch it and comment.

pants on fire...

Mahmoud Abbas has been a naughty boy. He's been going around "Palestine", trumpeting his referendum on the so-called "two-state solution", drawn up by terrorists in prison. The only problem, according to the "prisoners document", is that apparently it makes no reference to two states at all. But listening to Tony Snow, you wonder if the White House has even read it yet.

Well, once again, Prime Minister Abbas has demonstrated that he's somebody who wants to work toward a two-state solution. And that was one of the things, as you know, that came up in the conversation with Prime Minister Olmert earlier with the president. Prime Minister Olmert said that he was going to be holding talks at some point with the prime minister, and we're just going to have to wait and see what happens -- whether he's able to have a referendum and what happens. But I think it's important for Palestinians to wrestle with the issue of whether they want to have a two state solution.

Either the media has read the prisoners document, and are purposefully misrepresenting the issue, or they are hopelessly ignorant on an issue they're reporting on. Neither options strikes me as particularly attractive, although I can say with confidence they are certainly no strangers to either of them.

First Hurricane?

Ten days into the hurricane season, and it looks like we've got our first tropical depression. Here we go.

Introduction

This blog has been created to advance the idea of a much-needed third party in Congress.

I feel disillusioned with our leaders. Although I have long leaned to the Republican side in Congress, as of late, I feel they too have begun to take our votes for granted, if for no other reason, because there is no other choice. They are the lesser of two evils.

Countless times I have both read and heard this argument. This blog means to inspire in others the idea that yes, a Third Party can be created, it's core values, ideas and ideals articulated, and its creation is both a plausible and possible thing.

- Citizen K