Speaking of Awakenings

Something has stirred McCain from his slumber. He has just whacked Obama upside the head with a bucketload of facts.

Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.

Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. … In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.

Read the whole thing. If McCain keeps this up he may find more of his “lesser of two evils” vote becoming “enthusiastic“.

Sudden Backbone Outbreak in Senate

What’s this? Republicans acting like, well, Republicans?

Harry Reid not only went unstable with a bunch of reporters afterword, he and the democrats have just handed the Republicans a winning issue to run on all summer. Will the Repubs get used to walking erect and using their opposable thumbs long enough to take advantage of it?

If so, the “inevitable” Democratic sweep of Congress in November may not materialize. And once people get a better look at The Chosen One, his down-ticket coattails may shrink a bit.

I think now that November is either a squeaker of a win for the young Marxist, or a decisive one for the old Socialist. But if Congress doesn’t swing as far left as feared it could ameliorate the damage a little.

TSA = Mob

The incompetent, unionized, kabuki theatre operator known as the TSA is acting like the mob.

Jeffrey Denning was originally praised by the Federal Air Marshal Service for his work. He conducted surveillance on a man in an airport who turned out to be on the terrorist watch list. Denning was given an award. “I left FAM Service on good terms,” Denning explained, “but the reason I left was because the agency was grossly mismanaged at the expense of the traveling public. I felt I could better serve elsewhere.”

After leaving the Federal Air Marshal Service, Denning spoke out. Now, more than a year later, he’s the target of a federal investigation. Could the mob be right? Is revenge really best served cold?

Maybe they can’t find a terrorist, but they sure can attack their critics. Michael Chertoff and all of his miserable goons need to be thrown out on their collective, well-padded asses.

Disband the TSA. Before it gets someone killed.

Not Mere Brass

Chief Warrant Officer David Cooper’s are made of titanium.

On the afternoon of 27 November 2006, Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—the “Night Stalkers” —was leading a formation of six helicopters north of Baghdad. The formation comprised two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters (one flown by Cooper), two MH-6 troop-carrying Little Birds, and two MH-60 Black Hawks carrying Special Operations soldiers. When the formation was 50 kilometers from Baghdad, Cooper heard his wingman shout “Mayday!” An insurgent had hit the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, severing the tail rotor. Despite the damage, Cooper’s wingman was able to land his helicopter without sustaining major injuries, and the other helicopters in the formation landed to assist.

The Black Hawks soon evacuated the downed pilots, leaving behind 20 special operators and the Little Bird pilots to set up a perimeter around the disabled helicopter. Forty minutes later, eight enemy anti-aircraft gun trucks approached the crash site, and Cooper took off in his Little Bird to investigate. He immediately came under attack by the enemy force but stayed in the air to draw fire away from the exposed U.S. soldiers on the ground. Meanwhile, two more trucks unloaded enemy forces into a house about 800 yards away, where they began to set up mortars and machine guns.

Cooper immediately began attacking the numerically superior force using his Little Bird’s miniguns and rockets. When his helicopter ran out of ammunition, Cooper landed and the men on the ground quickly unloaded the rockets from the downed helicopter and put them on Cooper’s, despite intense enemy fire. Cooper took off and again started to pummel the enemy despite the bullets that were striking the helicopter inches from his face. When low fuel forced Cooper to land again, the soldiers on the ground used a Leatherman tool to remove an auxiliary fuel tank from the disabled helicopter and attach it to Cooper’s Little Bird. Cooper went back into battle a third time, finishing off the trucks and mortar positions once and for all.

For Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper’s “complete disregard for his personal safety and extreme courage under fire,” he became the first Night Stalker to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. “I just happened to be the guy there that day,” Cooper said. “Any one of the Night Stalkers that’s in this formation would have done the same thing I did.”

Randy Pausch is gone

Sad, but not unexpected news.

(Watch the video if you haven’t yet. It’s on the page linked above.)

“And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel…”

…and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Addendum:

Yea, and when the Child learned that his Tribe of Media would be denied entrance, he chose not to visit the wounded warriors.

Yay, Pete!

Pete Hoekstra wins one for the home team.

Rep. Hoekstra added an amendment to the Intelligence Bill that denies funding to this ill-conceived propaganda campaign (aptly referred to as “McCarthyism in reverse”).  Despite the predictable opposition of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat leadership, 55 Democrats joined Republicans to pass it by a whopping 249-180 margin.

CAIR, natch, is up in arms — you always know you’re doing the right thing if all the right people are in a snit.

So here, in celebration, is the formerly banned word:

Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad.

So there, CAIR.

ConSource

Original document fans and constitutional scholars rejoice. Now there is ConSource, an on-line, fully indexed resource for the constitution. You register (easy, free) and can then use radio buttons to turn a page of the constitution into clickable text, linking to founding documents. Really slick and, apparently, used in the recent Heller case.

Dogging Iran

The optimist in me wants to think that we, or one of our allies, is doing this.

In May, officials blamed British and American agents for an explosion at a mosque in Shiraz that had just finished staging an exhibition of Iran’s latest military hardware. Last year more than a dozen Iranian engineers were killed while trying to fit a chemical warhead to a missile in Syria.

A few months earlier, a train reported to be carrying military supplies to Syria was derailed by another mysterious explosion in northern Turkey. It is highly unlikely that these incidents are unrelated, which has only served to deepen the mood of fear and suspicion gripping the Revolutionary Guards’ leadership.

Perhaps it’s a mix of us, other Middle East actors, and Iranian resistance. Whoever it is, I hope they keep it up.

Don’t Like Obama?

Then you’re a racist!

At least according to one violent, crazy lady. And most of the press, I’d wager.

Princess Obama

Melanie Phillips proves that not everybody in Britain has lost their minds.

His very incoherence over policy, the fact we don’t know what he really believes in, enables people to project onto him their hopes and desires. He is the perfect fantasy politician. He is America’s very own Princess Obama.

But, of course, the belief that a handsome prince can magic away the troubles of the world is infantile. The idea that there is a new kind of sanitised politics by which problems can be solved without having to make hard choices is a dangerous delusion.

Obama’s World

In Obama’s world there are 57 states in the U.S. There was one bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor. You can sleep through church enough to miss twenty years of sermons. Nuremberg was a good example of habeas corpus. And presidents serve for, oh, eight to ten years. (Oh, well. It’s not like he taught constitutional law or anything.)

So what if he gets a little confused between Germany and Poland?  Get a load of where he chose to give his speech in Germany.

To paraphrase a favorite movie, “Truly he has a dizzying intellect.”

(This failed to post the other day when I wrote it. The gaffes continue, at such a pace I can’t keep up.)

The Itch

This article in the New Yorker about the neurology of itching ends up going into fascinating territory when it talks about treating phantom limb problems with mirrors.

Much of it is speculative, but fascinating none the less. The neurological frontier is certainly expanding.

Jackbooted Goons

Time to disband the TSA.

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Outrageous. Unless Mr. Perry happens to be a middle-eastern male of military age, of course.

Cdesign Proponensists

A search-and-replace smoking gun for anybody still doubting that “Intelligent Design” is nothing more than relabeled “Creationism”.

How Algore Killed My America

A brief from reader JohnnyB:

Despite his actual work in creating the legal infrastructure for the internet, and his good work in evacuating Katrina victims:

1. Gore announced the X33 space plane as the winner of the next heavy lift platf
orm for the US, while the competition was still going  on. The Delta Clipper fo
lks were shocked.

2. His challenge of the Florida Election has people voting with  computer touch
screens, as that is supposedly a more secure way. It is actually doing worse t
han paper ballots.

3. His challenge of the Florida election cast doubts on our electoral system.

4. His challenge of the Florida election has undermined the President of the United States.

5. His challenge of the reason to invade Iraq — “He played on our fears!”– undermined my friends and family in the military.

6. His “playing on our fears” with global warming have me poisoning my home with
CFC bulbs filled with mercury — soon to be a law

7. He destroyed what getting an Oscar was for.

8. He sits on the board of Apple computer. (Although if he’s done damage there I
haven’t detected it -Ed)

9. His constant talking is emitting enough carbon dioxide to be considered toxic
waste.

10. He has the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing of note. but then so did some
dead terrorist.

Well, Al has certainly made a fan there!

We live in an age of miracles

Check out this video of a man who hasn’t walked in twenty years. Now he can – thanks to an exoskeleton.

UN: Relax! We don’t want gun control.

Well, that’s comforting.

Where Do We Get Such Men?

Read this account of the FOB in Afghanistan that was abandoned (not overrun!) after a real “fistfight of a firefight.”

“It was some of the bravest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life, and I will never see it again because those guys,” Stafford said, then paused. “Normal humans wouldn’t do that. You’re not supposed to do that — getting up and firing back when everything around you is popping and whizzing and trees, branches coming down and sandbags exploding and RPGs coming in over your head … It was a fistfight then, and those guys held ’ em off.”

Stafford offered a guess as to why his fellow soldiers fought so hard.

“Just hardcoreness I guess,” he said. “Just guys kicking ass, basically. Just making sure that we look scary enough that you don’t want to come in and try to get us.”

H/T BlackFive.

Don’t Know Much About History

In Obama’s world there are 57 states in the U.S. There was one bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor. You can sleep through church enough to miss twenty years of sermons. Nuremberg was a good example of habeas corpus. And presidents serve for, oh, eight to ten years. (Oh, well. It’s not like he taught constitutional law or anything.)

So what if he gets a little confused between Germany and Poland?  Get a load of where he chose to give his speech in Germany.

To paraphrase a favorite movie, “Truly he has a dizzying intellect.”

A Thousand Words

Guess where this KFC is.

Update:

The chicken outfit may well exist in Fallujah, but it’s not official KFC.

The Unitary Executive

In case you’ve ever been puzzled by the phrase or heard it misused by the MSM and it’s left-wing friends, Ilya Somin does a great job here of demystification.

Consensus Cracking

So the consensus on anthropogenic global warming at the American Physical society is crumbling a bit, but not officially. The clarification is kind of funny, really.

Update:

The plot thickens.

More updates:

Buttle’s World reader Agrapha sends along some links indicating that the sun’s cycles are still normal, They seem to explain historical temperature changes as long as you account for volcanic aerosols, and while we know they’re important, current climate models don’t seem to account for them fully.

Ergo, your SUV is warming the planet. Or something like that.

More here.

NASA’s Orion Ahead of Schedule and Under Budget

Made you look.

Best Puff Piece Ever

So says the Onion. And they’re never wrong.

AOPA’s Blunder

I’ve been a member of AOPA (AIrcraft Owners and Pilots Association) for something like a quarter of a century. It’s always been a good resource for pilots, and a fine advocate for general aviation.

Which is why I was shocked to learn that they have been taken in by Algore and the morons at SOSN (Stop Oil Speculation Now.)

I just used their contact form to send them this message, and I encourage all members of the AOPA to do likewise:

I have heard that the AOPA is urging pilots to join “Stop Oil Speculation Now”. If this is true I must insist that you withdraw that letter and withdraw all support for SOSN immediately.

Oil speculators do not drive the price of oil. They are indicators of probable future prices, not the causes of them.

Al Gore and his SONS cronies are in it for the money. As long as environmentalists and their “peak oil” agenda keeps driving up the price of oil, they stand to make millions off of “alternative” energy sources.

As a pilot I’m as miffed as anybody at spending $6.18 per gallon to tank up the Warrior. If the AOPA wants to help lower my fuel bill it should support not only alternative energy but oil drilling HERE and NOW.

I am shocked that the AOPA could have fallen for this. You can see in your records how long I’ve been a member. I’ve enjoyed the magazines and the online services. But I will not send ONE MORE PENNY to an organization that tries demonizing the free market. It’s antithetical to everything I, and other pilots, stand for.

Once again, I insist that you withdraw all support for SOSN.

Pilots: Once again it’s time to make your voices heard. Sadly, it’s our own AOPA that needs to get the message.

Phony Theory, False Conflict

Charles at LGF dug up an old Charles Krauthammer column that (should have) put a stake through the false dichotomy the ID gang insists on using.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Even those of us who don’t (or, as in my case, no longer) believe in God have to agree. If you want wonder, and something to marvel at, you can’t beat how life on this planet has evolved. God should take it as a compliment.

The Vatican has made peace with evolution. Mormons are going that direction, too. It’s a relatively narrow brand of Christianity and, unfortunately, a much larger swath of Islam, which thinks evolution is an -ism which contradicts religion.

The Unbearable Lightness of Barack

Charles Krauthammer asks the musical question, just who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

If you can read the whole thing without laughing and/or crying, you’re a better man than I.

Dr. Horrible

Joss Whedon can write.

And during the writer’s strike he wrote this.

I can hardly wait for Act III.

A Right Recognized in Britain?

Not quite. But Samizdata is cautiously optimistic.

Meanwhile, the police in Chicago are preparing to mow down crowds of people.