From politics (moderates who lean to the right) to Pogo (drools during poker stare) to rants (Whatcha expect from savvy, sassy sexagenarians?) to raves (Have you had your kudo today?) -- we never take ourselves too seriously.
We do, however, reserve the right to slaughter an occasional sacred cow. And in case we fail to mention it -- we will never forget....
Mitt Romney elevated his position among candidates this week by proposing to appoint an at-large ambassador to monitor nuclear trafficking and to suggest that selling nuclear materials should be equated with genocide and war crimes.
Republican Mitt Romney would appoint an ambassador-at-large to prevent nuclear terror if elected president, arguing that avoiding a terrorist attack with unsecured nuclear weapons should take on heightened urgency in the United States. The Republican candidate, in a speech planned for Thursday night at Yeshiva University in New York, says such a person would have the authority and resources to cross agency and departmental boundaries, ensuring nonproliferation strategies are coordinated at home and abroad. "Further, I would promote an international initiative to develop a new body of international law that would make nuclear trafficking a crime against humanity, on a par with genocide and war crimes," according to a text of Romney's remarks provided to The Associated Press. "By allowing for universal jurisdiction, charges can be brought up in any court preventing traffickers from hiding in complicit or weak countries." Romney says the acts of black marketeers trying to sell so-called loose nukes "should not be dismissed with the kind of nonchalance that accompanies routine violations of the law." Details of the speech emerged Wednesday, the same day a rival GOP candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, formally launched his presidential campaign with a speech in early voting New Hampshire. The Romney speech is part of an ongoing effort by the former Massachusetts governor, who has only served four years in elective office, to outline his foreign policy views. He has made several overseas trips, including one-day visits to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In his planned remarks at Yeshiva, a 7,000-student research university rooted in the traditions of Jewish law and life, Romney chides former President Carter for suggesting a security fence in Israel prevents peace in the Middle East. Carter, a Democrat, shared the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for, among other international efforts, helping negotiate a peace settlement between Israel and Egypt. "What Jimmy Carter fails to understand is what so many fail to understand: Whether it is Hamas or Hezbollah or al Qaeda, there is an overarching goal among the violent jihadists that transcends borders and boundaries," Romney says. "That goal is to replace all modern Islamic states with a caliphate, to destroy Israel, to cause the collapse of the West and the United States, and to conquer the world." Israel began building the barrier in 2002, saying the complex of concrete walls, razor wire and trenches was intended to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israel. The Palestinians say the barrier, which dips into the West Bank in many areas to include Jewish settlements on the Israeli side, is an Israeli land grab that locks them up in enclaves, robbing them of a future state. The barrier, designed to stretch 430 miles, is about two-thirds complete.
FROM Hyscience .... A compelling post and open letter to Joe Lieberman:
Our country is divided today in a manner not seen since the Civil War. Rogue far-left fanatics, socialists and anarchists, and all those who despise and hate America and would wish it dissolved and replaced by a Marxist multi-culturalist commune of relativistic moral values where all depravities are permissible and the only allegiance is to one's self, and answering not to the will of the American people, but to a "Socialist, Secularist 'Internationale' World Order," have taken over the Democratic Party!
Perverting public opinion with an unrelenting campaign of propaganda in the face of public apathy and complacency, much as the Nazis did in the elections of 1933 in Germany that brought Adolf Hitler to power, the Democrats managed to marginally win elections in 2006 , in some cases winning local elections by merely a few hundreds or a few thousands of votes in constituencies of millions of people, and abrogate the reigns of power from the silent majority!
As a result, in these most dark and dismal times in our nation's history - and even as we are engaged in a savage 'War on Terror' for the very survival of our nation against a fanatical, barbarous, and determined enemy sworn to our destruction and that of our form of self-government and our way of life; an enemy that values death more than life and has no compunctions or constraints, even enthusiastically using their bomb-strapped children as weapons of terror and mass destruction; indoctrinating them from their cradle to hate and murder us, and that use 12 year-old boys heinously decapitating a human being in front of a camera as propaganda as we have recently seen - we see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat traitors trying to put in place a "Shadow Government," and trying to set up their own "Foreign Policy" and negotiate our surrender with our enemies in defiance of the State Department's Official Foreign Policy, the policies of the President and his Administration, and in blatant betrayal of our troops dying in the battlefield and of our country; now claiming, as has "Al-Qaeda" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (pun intended), that "the war is lost" while working feverishly to undermine our troops, deny them the very bullets to fight with for their survival, and achieve our total and humiliating defeat in Iraq at the expense of our brave young men and women in the battlefield!
That is why I would like to take this opportunity to hold Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to his word for the sake of our troops and the very survival of our nation. Thus I write the following open letter to Senator Joe Lieberman:
Dear Senator Lieberman,
In this most crucial time in our nation's history, and even as our troops lie in harm's way while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid does everything in his power not only to encourage Al-Qaeda and our enemies, telling them that "the war in Iraq is lost," but doing everything in his power to ensure and achieve said defeat at any cost - even at the expense of the blood of our Servicemen by denying them the very bullets with which to defend themselves - I besiege you Senator Lieberman to keep your word and switch sides and become a Republican, in the dire necessity of wresting power, and the Senate Majority Leadership, from Reid and his defeatist Democratic ilk.
Those of us concerned for Israel also realize, from the actions of Senator Reid, House Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Murtha, and their Democratic cohorts now in power in Congress, that it doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that they would leave Israel to its fate, were Israel to have need of us surrounded by a sea of hostile enemies as it is, with as much enthusiasm as they now work to achieve our defeat and for us to cut-and-run in Iraq, have tried to appease Syrian dictator Al-Assad in flagrant violation of established State Department and Administration policy, and keep making overtures of appeasement to a hostile Iran fueling the insurgency in Iraq and defiant of the world community in its dogged insistence on developing nuclear weapons!
All of us concerned about our troops and our achieving victory in Iraq, with the safety and survival not only of Israel but our own as well, and with the direction our country is taking under this present Democratic leadership - with the resulting dire consequences not only adversely affecting our nation's future, but verily the consequent course of history and the future of the world and Western Civilization - see it as imperative that we take the reigns of power from their hands... and only you can do it, Senator Lieberman!
I would like to remind you, that though you become a Republican out of the present exigencies we face as a nation, that at heart you will always be a Democrat in the proud tradition of FDR, Truman, and Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, that it is the Democrats who repudiated you and made you run as an Independent in 2006 because you were not enough of a "leftist" and a "defeatist" for their tastes, and that it is this Democratic Party hijacked by the far-left, the peaceniks, anarchists, and other fringe groups, which has left you and betrayed you, much as it has America's traditional conservative Democrats!
America is at a crossroads, Senator Lieberman, it faces one of its darkest hours even as our troops in the battlefield are being used as "political pawns," at the risk of their safety and their lives, by such power mongering, unscrupulous, demagogues as Senator Reid, and or betrayed by Democratic leftist ideologues in Congress! The fate of our nation, of Israel, and of Western Civilization hangs on the balance. The Islamofacist terrorist enemy must be defeated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever it rears its ugly head of intolerance, oppression, and death, or we let it fester at our peril. It will come knocking at our door once again, much as it did on 9/11!
The time is now, Senator Lieberman! Fulfill your promise, and your commitment to our troops in the field, switch Parties now, become a Republican, end the impasse about the war funding, and wrest the Leadership of the Senate from infamous Harry Reid, the Democrats, and America's enemies!
Our future is in your hands!
Sincerely,
AR
I would prompt all who are concerned for the safety of our troops and for the future of America, and that wish that once and for all Senator Lieberman would come to the rescue of our troops and our nation by becoming a Republican, thus removing the Senate Majority from the Democrats and the Senate Leadership from nefarious Harry Reid, to please urge him to do so!
Let us flood his offices with calls, faxes, letters, and e-mails, urging him to have the courage to fulfill his promise, switch Parties, and wrest the power of the Senate from Reid's hands!
Here are Senator Lieberman's addresses and numbers:
Washington, DC Office 706 Hart Office Building Washington, DC 20510 (202) 224-4041 Voice (202) 224-9750 Fax
Connecticut Office One Constitution Plaza 7th Floor Hartford, CT 06103 (860) 549-8463 Voice (800) 225-5605 In CT (860) 549-8478 Fax
You can e-mail Senator Lieberman from his official website at: http://lieberman.senate.gov/
For our troops!!!
If Sen. Lieberman chooses NOT to switch to the Republican party, my hope remains that he at least caucus with the Republicans.
Associates over at DewDropInn have rolled up the welcome mat for Harry Reid. They don't want Harry dropping in. I'll take it one step further.
Drop out, Harry.
Resign as Senate Majority Leader.
Of course, he won't. And with his control over his home-district, few if any there have the might to mount a recall.
The best and only bet to get rid of the leader of the surrender-crats is for Independent Joe Lieberman to either switch parties or to caucus with the Republicans.
Repubs might sweeten the offer by electing him Senate Majority Leader. He'd be a good counter to Nancy (what happened to my 100-day dream) Pelosi.
Our Congressional image and integrity may just depend on Joe Lieberman. In a response to Reid's "We've lost" declaration, Lieberman countered:
"This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is 'lost.'
"With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid's statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.
"Al Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. They are trying to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in an effort to reignite sectarian fighting and drive us to retreat from Iraq.
"The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes -- abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week's atrocities -- or whether we stand united to fight them.
"This is exactly the wrong time to conclude that we have lost the war in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed. Instead, we should provide General Petraeus and his troops with the time and the resources to succeed. We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."
Do what's right for America and our troops, Joe. At least caucus with the Republicans and put defeatists in the Senate minority.
Seldom do I use profanity online -- much less begin a post with it. But had those bastards from the Phelps ministry (Westboro Baptist Church people from Topeka, Kansas) gained access to any of the Virginia Tech funerals, I'd have taken vacation-time to stand in their way. Who are they? What do they do?
If you've never heard of this angry group of people, they believe that random acts of violence, killings, and even the deaths of American soldiers in the war are a result of God's wrath over homosexuality. They've repeatedly stated that innocent murder victims deserved their fate. They routinely hold picket signs outside the churches of funerals that say things like, "Your son is rotting in Hell" and "Thank God for IEDs" and "Your daughter deserved to die." One of them told me today that they were already making signs for the Virginia Tech funerals that would have said, "Hokies in Hell" (hokie is the Va Tech mascot). Many of these "church leaders" are lawyers and are experts at local ordinances that they use in their favor to hold their protests.
The Patriot Guard, a national coalition of motorcyclists, have blocked their access to families and processions at military funerals. There is no organized group to block them at civilian funerals, however.
Except for what Michael Gallagher did when they attempted to picket the funerals of the Amish children slain in PA.
Gallagher has again offered radio time in lieu of protesting at the Virginia Tech funerals.
You may recall that when they were planning to protest outside the funerals of the slain Amish children in Pennsylvania, I offered an hour of airtime on my radio show to Westboro Baptist Church in exchange for their written promise to stay out of Pennsylvania and leave those grieving families alone. They accepted my offer and were guests on my show for an hour. When I found out that they were planning to hold protests outside the Virginia Tech victims funerals, I've made the decision to offer them more airtime. On Tuesday, April 24, Shirley Phelps-Roper and other members of Westboro Baptist Church will be my in-studio guests for the entire program. They have formally announced that they are canceling all of their scheduled protests for the Virginia Tech shooting victims funerals as a result of receiving this invitation to be on my show.
IMO, these false "fringe" christians are the epitome of the fundamentalist, tunnel-visioned hypocrites who use religion to promote their distorted interpretations of the Bible.
I recently sent an email to the head of Patriot Guard to inquire if there were affiliated motorcyclist groups who might be able to intercede on the behalf of non-military families. There are none organized at this time. Too bad.
In the interim --- thanks to Mike Gallagher for trading air-time for protest-time with these idiots.
If Mike's radio program is broadcast in your area ----- and if it's a call-in ---- please take the time to call and express your (respectful) disapproval of the tactics used by this fringe, homophobic anti-Christian group.
What a sad reflection on our media and on society in general, if we allow the image of a deranged, cold, heartless killer become the focus of the travesty that occurred on April 16, 2007.
I don't want to hear the bastard (in the words of our media) "speaking from the grave" he maliciously dug for himself and 32 innocents. There is a special place in hell for him --- may the torment he allegedly felt in life be quadrupled a million times in the darkest, loneliest corner in hell.
Instead -- let the voices of the innocents be a guiding light toward federalizing acts of violence toward citizens AND legislating -- not the sale of legal guns -- but the requirements for purchasing legal guns.
**** Let no person convicted of any crime of violence (felony or misdemeanor) -- including stalking and/or harassment -- be eligible to legally purchase a gun.
**** Let no person who has been confined to a mental health facility, either voluntarily or involuntarily, be eligible to legally purchase a gun.
**** Let any person who procures, sells or provides (legally or illegally), an ineligible person a gun or weapon of injury, be charged with a federal offense.
**** Let any person who is aware that a person ineligible to possess a gun or weapon of injury is in possession of such weapon, be liable for aiding and abetting the ineligible person.
If we do nothing else, let us write this law in the memory of the victims.
And let the students, the staff of Virginia Tech and the state of Virginia be the leaders in drafting this law.
What a sad reflection on our media and on society in general, if we allow the image of a deranged, cold, heartless killer become the focus of the travesty that occurred on April 16, 2007.