I have a few little tweaks left to do, but I'm tired and going to bed now!
As you can see, we redecorated! I hope the new look is a happy thing for one and all.
I'm really pleased with the way it turned out!
OK... the hostage situation in Russia was a tragedy. But, I personally believe the government did the right thing in releasing the fentanyl to stop the situation. The Chechen terrorists had threatened to start killing hostages if they're demands weren't met, and they started to do that. The Russians were looking at the deaths of 700 people. The gas did cause people to die, but the loss of life was much less than what they would've had if they had done a frontal assault.
Thanks to Redwood Dragon for the link! I really do appreciate it!
At some point over the next few days, you may visit and find the site all wonky :)
I'm working on a new design for the blog so I may be constructing.
There are days when I am so glad I chose not to be a Canadian citizen! And this is one of them.
Get a load of this latest from Government Canada:
Canada, in a highly unusual warning, was on Wednesday urging Canadian citizens born in Middle Eastern countries such as Iran and Iraq to think carefully before entering the United States, which has introduced tough new anti-terrorism rules.
The Foreign Ministry said it issued the advisory after the introduction of new U.S. rules stipulating that anyone born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria needed to be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in the United States.
Thoguh, after yesterday's news, maybe we should thank the Canadians for keeping their potential terrorosts at home!
UPDATE 11.01.02: We caved! Damn it!
What a despicable, tasteless, crass display the Democrats made of Senator Wellstone's memorial. By all accounts, the Senator was a decent man who truly held his convictions. A good father and husband. Heaven knows, I would never vote for the man, but surely he deserved better from his own. What will his surviving children think a year from now, when the shock and grief have receded? When they remember what their father's -- and their mother's and sister's -- memorial really was? How empty and meaningless an affair all for the sake of power.
Wake? That wasn't a wake, it was political rally that the media was lured into covering. But maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it ripped the blindfolds off a few eyes. Are these truly the people you want running our country? After last night's performance, I'm more dedicated than ever to keeping the Democrats out of office. Last night, the true soul of the Democratic party was revealed -- are we really surprised to discover that they have none?
Canadian Link to 9/11 Pilots Alleged
In what may be the strongest Canadian connection yet to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Mauritanian who was questioned but released by Canadian authorities three years ago has been identified as having recruited two of the key suicide hijackers.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who calls himself the imam of a Montreal mosque, was investigated by Canadian intelligence agents after he arrived in Montreal from Germany in 1999, but officials lacked evidence for an arrest and let him go.
He subsequently fled Canada.
Yesterday, a German magazine reported that a captured al-Qaeda operative had admitted that Mr. Slahi, who lived at the Montreal mosque in 1999 and 2000, was responsible for recruiting Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah
I originally posted this as a comment to one of Rachel's blog posts. The subject was hate mail, and this seemed to fit in. (and if you pop over there, make sure to check out Rachel's splendid fiskings of that blowhard, Michael Moore. Absolutely delicious!)
The other thing is that I wasn't sure which blog to post this to. On the one hand, it's political, which would put it on Gaggle, but it's also a personal anecdote, which puts it on Muse. So I decided to post it on both. I guess there's always going to be occasions of overlap.
Way back when I was in 8th grade, our history class assignment was to do a report on the upcoming Ford/Carter election. I was going to school in Lafayette, CA at the time, but living in Berkeley. So, after school, I stopped by the Ford election headquarters in Lafayette. They gave me information, and I ended up helping out a few days after school because I thought it was great fun. (I was already a budding political junkie)
One afternoon, I got on the bus at the BART station in Berkeley on the last leg of my journey home. I was wearing a Ford for President button. This guy on the bus started haranguing me about my button. After being obnoxious to me for what seemed like hours, he finished with, "When you're older, you'll know better." Not one person on the bus told him to back off and stop verbally attacking a child. (I was 13, but I looked more like 10.)
That experience solidified my not so kind feeling towards Democrats. I would love to be able to tell that guy on the bus that I am older, and I know even better than I did when I was 13! And I'd probably throw in some seldom used bad words!
A Little Addition: Let the guy on the bus put this in his pipe and smoke it! Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan, Sway U.S. Elections Of course, people like the guy on the bus would probably see nothing wrong with it.
Thanks to Random Jottings for the link.
The ever scintillating Mark Steyn's take on profiling, Muslim extremism, and the "angry white male", and how Christian Fundamentalists really need to start catching up.
From the AP The White House refused to criticize Russian special forces for pumping a mysterious sleeping gas into a theater to end a hostage siege, killing 116 hostages.
Why should we criticize the Russians for doing what had to be done? Would it have been better to storm the place with troops and give the terrorists an opportunity to blow everyone to kingdom come?
It's terrible that so many people died, but preferable to them all being killed. Does anyone really doubt that the intentions of the terrorists were to kill themselves and every single one of their victims? In the end, the Russian government was left with a choice between the lesser of two evils.
So the Dems are apparently checking on the election law in Minnesota before deciding what to do. Dems checking the law?? Isn't that a sign of the Apocalypse?
Just wondering....
Terror group targeted north Australia: report - theage.com.au
Northern Australia has been targeted by the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) to form part of an Asian Islamic superstate, according to a secret intelligence report.
The report, to be detailed on tonight's ABC Four Corners program, comes from the Philippines, chosen by al-Qaeda as its first base in South-East Asia in 1988.
Not entirely surprising, just one more thing to add to the list. And one more reason we need to shoot first, ask questions later (in a manner of speaking)
The entire story here.
Hillary Clinton to Crowd at Fund-Raiser in Los Angeles: Bush Was 'Selected' President, Not Elected; Says Bush's Machine Has Raised Far More Money to 'Ruin the Reputations of Our Candidates'
You know, reading anything this woman says is really bad for my health! What a frelling hypocrite she is! It boggles my mind that so many people buy into her load of crap and think she's some sort of hero. The woman is little better than a criminal. It's only power that kept her out of a jail cell, not the facts. It's not really surprising that she's actually in a position of power -- after all, the Dems keep good old Ted in power election after election even after everything he's done and gotten away with -- but it sure is sickening. I'd hoped, after all their shenanigans and their obvious attitude that they are above the law, that a light would go off in the brains of the rank and file. But incredibly, they still get support, they're still lauded and feted. What does it take? I wish I knew.
You need to go check out "Bitchpundit"
Not only is it a great blog, but what makes it special is the art. Especially, "Patriots Never Forget". I'm not very good at explaining how certain pieces of art affect me, but this one made me fight back tears.
As you can see, Gaggle has a new home! I managed to get moved over to Moveable Type all by myself! and, boy, am I pleased with myself [g]
I think I've done all the needed tweaking, but if you notice any glaring problems, please let me know!
This is copied from the old site cus I need some stuff to keep all the tables in place.
TO READ:
* Michael Moore, You Are Such An Idiot
* U.S. Unprepared For Another Attack
* And, as usual, Victor Davis Hanson hits it out of the ballpark. "North Korea as metaphor of the times"
A few excerpts: (but go read the whole thing)
Apparently a privileged class of men and women in the West, the beneficiaries of higher education and of ample means, share a tendency to believe that the world works according to their own Enlightenment logic — or at least that its reasoned judgment can appeal even to the uninitiated like Kim Il-Sung. And the ego of these new missionaries of wisdom is mighty.
Thus Mr. Carter once gushed that the Korean dictators, who had executed thousands of their own citizens, had suddenly on his arrival been transmogrified into "intelligent and well informed" statesmen and thus worthy partners in his own Cartesian dialectics. Since his 1994 visit, he has boasted that he never ordered a single military attack during his term, that he was the first American to go to Pyongyang in 43 years, that he wished to begin his Habitat for Humanity project in the North, and that the United States had no business building a missile-defense system since North Korea had no nuclear capability.
So let us beware of personable but smug men like Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton, the prizewinners who assure us that either their ostentatious morality or their self-righteous glibness is equivalent to wisdom. It is not. I'd prefer a less nuanced and less conceited Truman or Reagan, who sensed something evil about the Sung dynasty that our present generation in its missionary pride has forgotten.