I just received an e-mail from the patriot who is raising money for U.S. troops by auctioning off George Galloway's treasonous book. You can participate in the auction here. Would it shock any of you to know that he has received a slew of hate mail and fake bids?

Two bidders, I am told are especially guilty of abusing eBay policy and have bid up the price to over 9 million dollars (screenshot below is evidence). They appear to be from the U.K. What do Galloway supporters in the U.K. think of British and American troops in Iraq? Your friends, brothers, and children are, and this is a direct quote, "people who kill women and children for a living."

Ladies and gentleman, your average Galloway supporter! They don't want the troops out of Iraq because they care about your sons and daughters. They want the troops out of Iraq because they hate your sons and daughters. Baby killers, that is their view of the American soldier.

If that weren't enough, our patriot friend continues:

Not only have they found my auction "disgusting", which is quite the compliment coming from those who find suicide bombers as glorious, but they have also expressed to me their wish for every American and British soldier to find their end in Iraqi soil.

Of course, most of those against the war say they support the troops. There is actually a fair argument to be made that we should end the war because we cannot win, and we should not fight any war where we cannot attain victory. However, this is not the argument being made in D.C. this weekend by these protestors. What they are arguing is that the U.S. is bad, mmmmkay, and then try to dodge their own logic which inevetably leads one to conclude that if the U.S. and its allies are really the bad guys then it is perfectly acceptable to support those that murder them. more...

Posted by: Rusty at 02:05 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 373 words, total size 3 kb.

In a move that has delighted Star Wars enthusiasts and enraged Republicans everywhere, famed intergalactic heroes Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca recently turned up at an anti-war protest in Washington, DC.

Information and images here.

Posted by: Rusty at 01:45 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 44 words, total size 1 kb.

Rita Has come ashore just east of the TX/LA border. Rita was downgraded to a category 2 about 7:00 CDT. Some damage reported. I also have recieved reports of winds near 100 mph near Beaumont. Several Tornado warnings have also been issued. It's just a wait and see game now.

CNN has a pretty good update this AM.

The NHC said the storm made landfall at 2:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. EDT) at Cameron Parish, on the extreme southwest coast of Louisiana between Sabine Pass and Johnson's Bayou. Cameron Parish, is a flat marshy area stretching along the coast eastward from the Texas state line...... .....all but a few of the 10,000 residents of the parish evacuated. Damage from the storm was already reported in several locations, particularly Lake Charles, La.

Update:

Good news Rita has been downgraded to a tropical storm and initial reports are good considering. ZERO deaths reported so far and Damage has been less than expected. Reports after Katrina were good too, let's hope this one stays that way.

more...

Posted by: Howie at 08:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 279 words, total size 2 kb.

I hope Rusty doesn't mind, but I'll be posting here full time on a part-time basis until I get my mu.nu digs.

Or is that part time on a full time basis?

Whatever, I quit the old space.

Don't worry, I won't clutter your monitor with my mindless drivel, because if I can't come up with something like this every day, why, it's not worth posting at all.

*Sigh* I put my site back up.

Posted by: Vinnie at 12:49 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 87 words, total size 1 kb.

Things were just about getting back to normal in New Orleans. The lushes were out in force, transvestyte hookers were trickling back into the city, and a strip club had reopened to service the needs of armies of insurance adjusters and lonely FEMA workers. There were even rumors of a new Girls Gone Wild: Hurricane Victims edition about to begin production work. Alas, it will all have to wait. Damn you Rita! Damn you to hell!!!

If you want to see the picture accompanying this story, better check out Riehl World View--and yes, that picture actually was part of a news story. Because journalists are after the important scoops. Notice that both the Reuters story and the pic that Dan Riehl have is of the same stripper. Why do I have the feeling that one Reuters reporter is a very satisfied customer? Reuters :

In a sign that things may be returning to normal in New Orleans, strip shows are back in the city's famous French Quarter.

Erotic dancers and strippers are entertaining crowds of police, firefighters and military personnel instead of the usual audiences of drunken conventioneers and tourists in Bourbon Street's Deja Vu club, which reopened this week.

It's the first strip joint to resume business, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck in the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States.

"It's nice to get back to work, and all these men need some entertainment," Dawn Beasley, 27, a dancer at the club, said on Tuesday night. "They haven't seen anybody but their buddies for two weeks."

The crowd hooted and hollered as women peeled off their tops and gyrated, as customers tucked tips into their G-strings.

Interviewed by a reporter for the local TV station, Abby over at Baby Dolls said she had seen many clients using their debit cards. She had nothing but praise for this exercise in government largesse. “A lot of customers have been coming in from Louisiana and they’ve been real happy about the $1.75 beers and they’re really nice.” It was only fair, she added that they should get a little publicly funded help. “You lost your whole house, then, why not?” she said. “You might want some beer in a strip club. There are a lot of guys out there that like to do that.”

Posted by: Rusty at 02:16 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 478 words, total size 3 kb.

Be careful don't step on the bo.........

ABCNEWS.

A pickup truck carrying masked Islamic militants and homemade rockets blew up at a Hamas rally Friday, killing at least 10 Palestinians, including children, and wounding 85, hospital doctors and witnesses said

Uh, Can you say Natural Selection?

Posted by: Howie at 01:00 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

Hello America, I'm Larry King. My guest tonight is President Bush who is with us to talk about emergency preparedness and the federal government.

Mr. President, I noticed that the federal agencies have managed to respond much more quickly to Hurricane Rita than they did to Hurricane Katrina. Is that because they learned their lessons during Katrina? Or is it possibly because of the firing of Michael Brown?

President Bush: Well, Larry, I really don't think it's either. We just wanted to get there faster this time. After all, I can't let all those innocent people get killed right there in my home state. I might decide to run for Governor again.

King: So you're saying that you have more sympathy for the people caught in Hurricane Rita?

President Bush: Why heck yes. Didn't you hear my interview with Wolf Blitzer? And not only did we manage to get rid of all the Negroes, but did you know that New Orleans was filled with fornicators? That's a biblical word for people having sex. And according to my buddy Jerry, we can't let people do that. As a matter of fact, I'm going down to Florida next week to have a talk with my brother about why he evacuated all those homosexhuals from the Keys. Why he let the perfect opportunity to rid his state of most of the rif-raf slip straight through his fingers. more...

Posted by: Drew at 12:23 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 741 words, total size 4 kb.

A man was arrested today at the Manchester, U.K., airport under Britain's new tougher anti-terrorism laws. Reports are conflicting at this point as to the exact circumstances of his arrest. This report claims the man was 'Asian', which in England usually indicates some one from the subcontinent--Pakistan or Indian.

[Image: AP]

Fox News reports that the man was arrested for acting suspiciously and apparently resisting the quesioning--a stun gun had to be used to subdue the man (hat tip Confederate Yankee for e-mailing me):

According to SKY News, a man was seen acting suspiciously at the airport, and was subsequently approached by authorities, who used a stun gun to arrest him after he resisted.

Army bomb units were then called in to investigate the suitcase, and the BBC reported that a controlled explosion was carried out.

Greater Manchester Police said the man had been seen acting suspiciously in the area where aircraft were parked.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that a man with a suitcase had been seen walking under an aircraft.

A man was arrested by police today after he ran through a security post at Manchester Airport and got within 60 metres of an aircraft.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 260 words, total size 2 kb.

Roy Hallums will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Here is some of what he says in the interview, from a CBS Press release (thanks to Tall Glass of Milk):

I didn't like the videos going out," says Hallums, "because I knew my family would probably see them and I hated for my daughters to see me in that situation," he tells Stahl.

His captors also sought his family's telephone numbers to ask for a ransom, says Hallums, putting a pistol barrel in his mouth and threatening to kill him. "I knew if I gave them the number, they would call them and ask for moneyÂ…and I didn't want [my family] to deal with a call like that."

Hallums was kept in a crawlspace below a farmhouse for most of the 10 months, a space he estimates at 9 feet by 11 feet and just over 4 feet high. At times there were several other hostages. "Most at any time is about nine people....You've got nine people and their breath and humidity, just living with nine people you don't know," recalls Hallums. He was blindfolded and bound the entire time.

A civilian contractor who was kept in a stifling crawl space by his Iraqi abductors for more than 10 months was beaten before being forced to make videos slamming President Bush for being indifferent to hostages, he says in his first interview since his rescue.

For past coverage, visit the Roy Hallums Archive.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:26 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 289 words, total size 2 kb.

I just wanted to clarify my earlier post, so that people don't get the idea that "those people" are all in the same category. I got another call from an elderly black woman who said that she had registered for financial assistance under her old address because she had been told to do so by the call agent. Apparently her old address was the one on her driver's license. She was eligible for assistance under her new address, but her call wasn't to apply for assistance again. She just wanted to correct her record in case the person living at her old address might be prevented from applying for aid because of the double count. She gained nothing from the call. She was simply concerned about someone else, and about fairness.

There are also a lot of people in the "affected area" who would be in pretty dire straits were it not for the Red Cross assistance. It's not as though there's much of a functioning economy there, and believe it or not landlords are ejecting people onto the street if they don't pay their rent on time. There are others with acute medical problems. One woman had a dental problem that had become abscessed because the dentist she went to wouldn't treat her until he had been paid in advance. We arranged to pay her bill through a local Red Cross chapter, but the abscess had already advanced nearly to the point of becoming systemic. Yet this dentist just couldn't bring himself to do any pro bono work. I'm afraid I don't understand that language very well either.

Also, the main reason Red Cross doesn't have any Service Centers in Louisiana is that the state and local governments refuse to invite us in. They don't want to "look bad" because they can't provide their citizens all the services they need, even though... you know, they can't. We have feeding centers and shelters, but no Service Centers to dispense financial assistance in Louisiana, although there are Centers in Mississippi and Alabama. This fact drives people in Louisiana nuts, because they think it's our fault we're not in their state.

Selfishness and goodwill both have many faces.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Posted by: Demosophist at 11:14 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 379 words, total size 2 kb.

I listened to George Galloway on Michael Medved's show the other day. While he seemed indignant when Medved was about to accuse him of antisemetism (which Medved never got around to doing) it is clear the Galloway, and many on the Left are, in fact, antisemites. He kept obsessing about 'Israeli publications' and went on and on about Sharon's Zionism--without ever mentioning that Zionism has historically been a Leftist movement and that Israel's wars with its neighbors have invariably been led by Labour. Zionism, then, is not a right-wing movement.

George Galloway is an antisemite, plain and simple.

One does not need to believe in the 'Final Solution' to be an antisemite. The core of antisemetism is not 'hatred of Jews', rather, it is the belief that Jews are responsible for the ills of the world. Read Mein Kampf and it becomes apparent that Hitler actually believed in a Jewish conspiracy. Speaking of the Social Democratic Press of his time Hitler writes:

From publishers on down, they were all Jews.

Galloway may not wish the final solution, but at his core he hates the thought of Jews with any amount of power. Jews are fine, if they know their place.

There is another way in which world wide antisemetism raises its ugly head: the double standard. Jews are expected to be paragons of virtue.

Every. Single. One.

When a single Jew commits an act of terrorism, for instance, the state of Israel is blamed--even when Israel arrests the man and there are mass protests against him. At the same time, when a Muslim commits an act of terrorism in Palestine, and the Palestinian Authority does not act against him, and there are mass rallies to support him, the world turns the other way or worse--condemns Israel as the 'root problem'.

The world's antisemetism has an inverse corollary: the soft bigotry of low expectations from Muslims. Muslims, it is believed, are incapable of acting like civilized human beings.

Charles Johnson made a similar point yesterday:

IÂ’m reading this again, and wondering where the hell is the worldÂ’s outrage about this? Newsweek prints a false rumor that a Koran was dunked in a toilet, and the entire planet goes nuts. Hamas announces that theyÂ’re going to turn a Jewish house of worship into a memorial to mass murder ... and the silence is absolutely deafening.

The fact that the world EXPECTS Muslims to go nuts and run amok in a violent rampage based on a RUMOR about a Koran being flushed down a toilet, AND that the world says NOTHING when Muslims torch and descecrate synagogues and then publicly announces that they'ee gonna turn them into a museum glorifying genocide, PROVES that most people are CONVINCED that most Muslims are uncontrollably violent, racist gencodial maniacs. They've come to expect the worst from Muslims.

Let us not fall victim to this soft bigotry against Muslims. We should not hold them to a higher standard than we hold ourselves, but neither should we hold them to a lower standard.

UPDATE: More on George Galloway's possible perjury before the U.S. Senate here.

Posted by: Rusty at 09:02 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 612 words, total size 4 kb.

The landfall point has become well defined this morning.

The good news is that the traffic situation has appeared to have improved. I dug through a few traffic cams in Houston and didn't notice the sea of red lights like I've seen the past two mornings. This map shows vast improvements:

According to Fox News this morning the oil industry has popped smoke from the region. They are out of there and for good reason too:

AT 4 AM CDT...0900Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE RITA WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 26.8 NORTH...LONGITUDE 91.0 WEST OR ABOUT 290 MILES SOUTHEAST OF GALVESTON TEXAS AND ABOUT 250 MILES SOUTHEAST OF CAMERON LOUISIANA.

RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH...AND THIS GENERAL MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE CORE OF RITA WILL BE APPROACHING THE SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND UPPER TEXAS COASTS LATE TODAY OR TONIGHT.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 140 MPH...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. RITA IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE.

May God bless the Gulf Coast.

Originally Posted at

Posted by: Chris Short at 05:59 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 185 words, total size 2 kb.

(Sacramento, California) In the ongoing three-year probe of the alleged Lodi, California, Islamic terrorist cell, five people have been implicated and, of those, three have been deported for immigration violations and two are being held in federal custody without bail.

Last month, 47-year-old Islamic cleric Muhammad Adil Khan and his son were deported for overstaying their visas. On Wednesday of this week, 39-year-old Islamic cleric Shabbir Ahmed was deported for the same reason. The three were deported without being charged with any crimes, however, the government alleged that they intended to set up a terror training camp in Lodi. It's noteworthy that both Ahmed and Khan are allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

The two being held in custody, charged with lying to federal agents, are 23-year-old Hamid Hayat and his father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat. In a development yesterday resulting from a federal grand jury hearing, prosecutors charged Hamid Hayat with providing material support to terrorists.

From MercuryNews.com:

The federal indictment alleged that Hamid Hayat, 23, provided material support and resources for carrying out international acts of terror between March 2003 and June 4, 2005, when he was arrested days after returning to the United States from Pakistan. Hayat faces multiple charges for which the combined maximum sentence is 31 years in prison.

"Today's charge centers around the fact that Hamid Hayat attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2004, returned to this country with the intent of committing jihad against America, and by doing so provided material support to terrorists," U.S. attorney McGregor Scott said.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 03:56 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 494 words, total size 4 kb.

I was having my midnight meal earlier and sat down to watch TV while I was eating. The Weather Channel was on a commercial break as was Fox News. I decided to put it on CNN and there was a nice graphic showing projected path and strength data for Hurricane Rita. Turns out the weather expert was being interviewed by none other than Larry King. Larry King is a journalist and rumors are abound about how much of a jerk he is but the only thing I have against him is that his show is on CNN.

I wasn't really paying attention to what Larry King was saying; I was studying the map. Then out of nowhere Larry King says something to the weather expert that's being questioned that really got my attention:

I thought mountains stop a hurricane. I don't see any mountains there.

Yes, Larry; mountains will stop a hurricane but it certainly isn't the only thing that will stop a hurricane. This is for you Larry King.

Originally Posted at

Posted by: Chris Short at 03:19 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 189 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm working at a Red Cross call center and got a couple of calls today that I found upsetting. They struck me the same way Patrick McGoohan's character in The Prisoner must have felt when he drank a mug of ale and, just as he was draining the last few dregs, the words "You have been poisoned" appeared on the bottom of the tankard. The first of these incidents involved a call from a girl who said her brother had been dropped off in some Texas coastal city by the crew of the boat he had been a seaman on, and the people who were supposed to pick him up to evacuate him away from the dock didn't show. I spent about half an hour attempting to track down telephone numbers for state and private services in Texas who her brother might be able to contact to get a ride out of the city, but the problem was that she hadn't talked to him in well over an hour, and for all we knew he'd alreadly been evacuated. She said that she'd talked to the State Police who had refused to help. Anyway, it was clear that she wasn't satisfied with what I was able to do, so I asked her whether she expected the Red Cross to launch a helicopter to rescue her brother. This was my best imitation of the Jack Nicholson character in As Good As It Gets, so I expected at least a little break in the solemnity, but from her outraged response it was clear that I had inadverntently hit upon exactly what she expected. She called me every name she could think of and then suggested that I needed to think about what I'd have thought had it been one of my family who was stranded. Then she hung up before giving me time to say that my sister had already been through Rita.

more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 02:05 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 781 words, total size 4 kb.

Just received an e-mail from my friends at Take Back the Memorial regarding a poll at New York NewsDay. The poll asks:

Freedom Center backers say it will help people understand 9/11 sacrifices. VictimsÂ’ families say controversy surrounding the museum will dishonor the dead. Do you think it belongs at the WTC site?

Do the 9/11 families a favor and vote no when you get a chance.

Posted by: Chris Short at 01:17 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 77 words, total size 1 kb.

There are things worse than losing a loved one in war, although that may be hard to imagine. Victory gives meaning to the death of a loved one. Their death becomes sacrifice when something noble is built out of the ashes of war.

The great tragedy that was Vietnam was that so many died. And for what? To see South Vietnam fall to a Stalinist dictatorship, hundreds of thousands rounded up for re-education, and the spread of communism (or worse) in Southeast Asia. The vanity of their deaths cannot be laid at the feet of the soldiers they fought with. No, we are to blame.

There is an unwritten pact between soldier and citizen in a democratic nation. The soldier puts his life at risk and the citizen supports the soldier and his mission and gives him whatever tools are necessary to win it. Whatever remains of what was once referred to as 'the glory of war' is still found in victory. The purpose of war is still to win. more...

Posted by: Rusty at 10:55 AM | Comments (28) | Add Comment
Post contains 639 words, total size 4 kb.

The following are a list of resources for those in the Galveston or Houston area. They include an evacuation map, weather information, traffic conditions map, traffic cams, and other live webcams. Expect the webcams to go off air as wind speed increases. more...

Posted by: Rusty at 10:26 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 152 words, total size 2 kb.

(Mosul, Iraq) Another Iraqi journalist has been killed, bringing the total number of murdered journalists to over 40 since counting began in March 2003.

From AlertNet.org:

A journalist from Radio Nineveh was gunned down on Wednesday night in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. Hospital and police sources said Ahlam Younnis was driving in a car with her husband, who was also killed, and her son, who was wounded in the attack.

These were brave people murdered by criminals. Yet the mainstream media (MSM) continue to characterize these heinous crimes as valueless deaths by sanitized 'insurgents.' Where's the outrage? These people were journalists! Civilians doing their jobs! And, all along, the MSM ignore the horrible crimes and avoid attaching responsibility to any group other than the nebulous ill-defined 'insurgency.' more...

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 10:15 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 309 words, total size 2 kb.

It seems that Air America is in real trouble now. Ladies and Gentlemen The Jawa Report will be taking predictions on just how long they will last. Post your prediction below. First prize will be your choice of an original R5D4 or Death Star Droid action figure. No you canÂ’t have Yoda, Luke, Power Droid or the original Darth Vader carrying case they are mine all mine. more...

Posted by: Howie at 09:11 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 118 words, total size 1 kb.