Media Bias; Hitler would have done better now.

Can you imagine the NY Times publishing an editorial by a former German dictator right after Hitler invaded Poland? Well if the current group running the NY Times were in place at the time they probably would have. After all they ran an article by former Soviet dictator Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev about the current invasion of Georgia by the Russians. Now admittedly Gorbachev isn't a mass murder on the scale of Hitler. But Russians preplanned invasion of Georgia is on the same order as Hitlers invasion of Poland. In both cases there were "provocations." In the Polish case German soldiers dressed as Poles faked an incident while in the Georgian case the Russians had their South Ossetian puppets attack Georgia which prompted a Georgian response, a response the Russians were waiting for. Anyone who has any familiarity with the Russian military knows that the speed of the Soviet...oops Russian response could only be explained if they were sitting there waiting for the Georgians to do something. Moreover this level of readiness couldn't be sustained by the Russians for an extended period. That meant that the Russians probably knew when the "provocation" would occur.

The indiscriminate destruction created by the Russian behemoth as it overran the Georgian democracy showed that more than protecting "Russian" citizens in the breakaway province was on the Russians minds.

If the US fought a war with as little concern for civilians as the Russians just did the NY Times, and the rest of the major media, would be screaming for blood. But since it's the Russians the media will accuse the man they really hate, Bush. Of course when Stalin was starving 17 million Ukranians to death the NY Times was reporting that everything over there was going just fine.

The media tend to identify with left wing dictatorships because they believe the they, the media, are superior to the rest of us. They're smarter, more cultured, more sophisticated than the rest of us. They believe that the superior people, another resonance with Hitler, should be in charge. So they tend to like governments were the smart people, those without religion or morals, run things. Sure the media don't like the excesses committed by these regimes but they're a small price to pay to keep those fundamentalists out of power.

I wonder how the media would have reacted if Georgia had been a Muslim or atheist state rather than a Christian one. The media hates Christianity because it says that a persons quality depends on their love for their neighbors not their IQ or their sophistication. A religion that says the widows mite is more than the rich mans gold is anathema to the liberal elites.

The Octopus was visible!

This is from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Normally this giant octopus hides in the corner of his tank. But this visit he came out. The tank is very dark in general and i was lucky to get this shot. You can't use a flash, it disturbs the animal. Of course flashs are very problematic in aquariums in general.

Democrats are socialists

It's official the Democrat party is the party of government control and socialism. They don't believe in the law of supply and demand. They are saying that more drilling and hence more American oil won't lower prices. Even though that oil won't have to be shipped all the way from the middle east there will be no impact on the cost of gasoline according to the Dems.

So how do the Dems plan to solve the problem. Well the real solution in their eyes is for all us peasants to stop using gas and return to the 18th century. But their public solution is to nationalize the oil refineries. Yes that's right. The Democrats want the same people who are responsible for cost overruns at the Pentagon or the great service at your local drivers license office to run the refineries. Now there's a way to cut costs!

Will the courts keep you safe?

Senator Obama believes the Clinton approach to terrorism, treat them like crooks, is the way to proceed with war on terror. I don't know about you but given how much liberals have worked to make it hard to convict crooks these days i'd hate to see terrorists go before liberal judges defended by a team of ACLU lawyers. If you're liberal you believe rich white folk can buy lawyers to keep from being found guilty and if you're a conservative you look at the O.J. trial to see how enough money, and a friendly jury, can get you off the hook. Do we really want to require our troops to read captured terrorists their Miranda rights?

Do you think that foreigners who are hell bent on killing Americans and who violate the international standards of war--they dress like civilians for example--should get the same rights as a college student caught shoplifting? I don't. According to international law if you catch a combatant not wearing a uniform you can shoot him on the spot. Back when the US switched from green uniforms to camouflaged ones there was actually a legal discussion about whether or not the new clothing was a "uniform". Clearly dressing like a civilian is not a uniform.

More importantly though is the fact that the record of the Clinton administration was horrible. In fact the barriers that Clinton put up that prevented law enforcement and the intelligence community from sharing information about terrorists was probably a key reason 9/11 succeeded. During the Clinton administration the terrorists got bolder and bolder and nothing Clinton did dissuaded them. In fact Osama bin Laden continues to say that Americans are weak and cowardly because Bill Clinton withdrew our troops from Somalia after the Black Hawk down incident. Terrorists don't respond to diplomacy, they think we're satans agents and you don't negotiate with the devil. Do you think that it's an accident that since 9/11 Europe, which has been weak on terrorism, has suffered multiple major terrorist attacks and the US has suffered none?

Further think about it. Have our law enforcement agencies managed to shut down drug cartels or organized crime? It's not because the people who put their lives on the line to fight crime are stupid, lazy, or evil--they're actually very smart and dedicated. Rather it's due to two factors, the difficulty in getting anyone convicted these days due to all of the rules the liberals have put in to protect the guilty, and the fact that it's hard to get anyone in a tight knit organization to talk. Terrorist organizations are even worse than the mob and the drug cartels from the perspective of law enforcement. Can you imagine the scenario if a terrorist is acquitted because the search warren that was executed to find their stash of explosives had the wrong date on it? Don't laugh a real crook got off because while the judge had approved a search warrant for a certain day the clerk filled in the paperwork incorrectly. The evidence uncovered by the search, executed on the day defined by the judge, was thrown out of court.

Senator Obama seems to fail to realize that we are at war with extra governmental powers who do not adhere to anything resembling the international standards of war. Their objective is to kill civilians. They are monsters. I'm sure that Senator Obama would condemn the people who brought black slaves over to the US, as would any sane person, but it's far worse to kill the innocent than to enslave them. Yet the Senator wants to make it as hard as possible to deal with terrorists.

We know that it's unlikely that innocent people are held at Guitmo. Why? Well over 30 of the people that were released from Guitmo have turned up on the battlefield attacking Americans. Clearly if the release policy was as draconian as Senator Obama has suggested it's unlikely that so many confirmed terrorists would have been released. So if the Guitmo system is basically working why go back to the failed Clinton policies.

Think about it. If we go to a law enforcement approach to getting terrorists if we find that Osama bin Laden is in a house someplace we can't bomb it and kill him. We either have to let him go or send in a team to capture him, alive.

So what's the obvious?

Terrorists aren't crooks and they aren't Americans. Giving them the same rights as Americans is both stupid and proven to fail.

If you're taking a car trip...

When my parents died my family and i drove across the country. One thing i did that was kinda fun was make a movie of the trip. I did this by putting an old digital camera on the dashboard and setting it up to take a picture every minute--the fastest that camera would take photos. I then combined the images, using Quicktime Pro on a mac, into a movie. That way we could see where we'd traveled.

The only thing i'd change is to try and take a picture every 10 seconds or so. One minute is fairly long when you're driving fast down a freeway. You generally speaking can only see the same feature over time, at 1 minute photo intervals, if you're in a flat part of the country, say the southwest.

Would you trust your health care to this man?

The vast majority of Americans agree that once a baby is born she's a person. Even the Supreme Court agrees with that. So if we as a country agree that once a baby is outside of her mothers body, and breathing she's a person. In fact i could go so far as to say that anyone who advocated the right to choose to kill a born baby would be viewed by most Americans--excluding professional bio-ethicists -- as pretty monstrous.

Now that we've all agreed on that let's look at Senator Obama. In an earlier post--read them all it's worth your time--I pointed out that Senator Obama when an Illinois legislator had voted against a bill that would require that medical care be provided for babies who were born alive during the course of a botched abortion. We've all agreed that if the baby is born, it's no longer part of the mothers body remember, she's a person.

You might ask what Obama's reasoning was. He said that the law in question would tend to erode women's right to choose. While i find that reasoning entirely irrational, after all we're talking about a born baby here, it is the Senators position. But what the heck let's think about it for a second. The basis for abortion is that the unborn fetus--remember that fetus is just a term for a phase in the course of human life no different than say baby, teenager, or elderly--isn't a person. So how could a 8.5 month old baby who happens to survive an abortion not being allowed to die in the gutter hurt a woman's right to kill a fetus? So i guess i'll have to retract my statement. Senator Obama's position is entirely reasonable if you view a woman's right to kill her baby as the most important thing in the world. Abortionists aren't the cream of the medical profession--doctors become doctors to heal people not kill them--so there are reasonably large number of botched abortions. If the babies who manage to make it out alive were to be allowed to live and grow up then people might be able to see that there are no fundamental differences between a fetus and a baby. Sure the baby is more developed than a fetus but then a toddler is more developed than a baby and a kindergartner is more developed than a toddler. From the time they're conceived to the time they die people are constantly changing. There is no magic line based on scientific knowledge, other than conception, that divides a persons life into person and non-person phases.

How should we interpret this then? Well it means that either Senator Obama believes that born babies aren't people, a position i can't imagine him holding, or that he's willing to deny medical care to some classes of people if that would be detrimental to political causes he supports.

Since Obama is a Democrat he'll try and give the government control of your medical care. That's what Democrats do. But do you think that someone who will let babies die in order to avoid risking one of his other political positions is the sort of person you want to decide your health care plan?

So what's the obvious:

Senator Obama is willing to let babies die to protect a political position he holds dear. He can't be trusted to control health care since we have no way of knowing who else he will be willing to let die if they're politically inconvenient.

By the way i based this blog on a letter written to the National Catholic Register which made this point.

I hope this doesn't bug you.