Livin' In America

The French have said "no" to the EU Constitution.

All they've done is guarantee they won't get any more chances to vote on the EU.

As their new overlords in Brussels put it "we have confidence that once again we will find the means to move the European Union forward".

I remember Ireland after the Irish electorate rejected the Nice treaty. The Government immediately started a propaganda campaign that likened a second "no" vote to a loaded gun pointed at a head. In a country that's had a Marxist-Leninist insurgency going for 30+ years, that was pretty emotive imagery. In any event, not wanting to be sent to bed again without its supper (look for "Jonathan Wilson, Dublin") the morons in the electorate got it right the second time round, and the Irish Government busied itself with finding ways to change the Irish Constitution without having to go to the (manifestly untrustworthy) voters.

And that's the way in Europe: national elites deciding how the hoi polloi will live. The French, poor bastards, just got their last vote on Europe. From now on, their only option will be 1848 all over again.

Let's see. In the news today. Hmm.....

Well, the runaway bride is facing criminal charges. Even Australians want to know about this one.

There's a murder suspect threatening suicide by jumping from the top of a crane on Peachtree.

Some guy just got five years in jail after his buddy was decapitated when they were driving home drunk. The guy who's going to jail never noticed the decapitation. For some reason, this brings to mind the Irish phrase "Wouldja look at the cut of yer man?"

And, of course, a female FuCo deputy left her loaded pistol in a public restroom at the Juvenile Justice Center.

Now, in defense of the Greater Atlanta Metro Area, I have to say that the guy hanging from the crane is a Florida native. Nothing to do with us. Nosireee.

Baptists speak out on the issue of Korans in the Crapper.

In other news, Christians are no longer welcome in Bethlehem.

Tie-breaker? Christians haven't been rioting and killing in the streets.

And which of us hasn't been here?

Oh, those crazy Brazilians!







(It's supposed to be a sun setting behind a pagoda. You pervert.)

Fulton County DA, Paul Howard, is a complete boob. A loser. A waste of space. He has his job because a black politician in FuCo can only lose his job if caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

He's left the streets unsafe. In the wake of Ray Lewis, Buckhead is turning into another Beiruit. This sort of thuggery only happens because the thugs think they can get away with it. Now the courthouse is unsafe, and people are abandoning ship. Hi guys, welcome to the real world.

Yesterday's metro section of Al Jazeera Constitution had Paul Howard saying that the departure of the entire staff wouldn't interrupt the smooth flow of cases through the FuCo justice system. Well, yes. As long as by "smooth flow" you understand "constipation". Or "making a rap video parole".

O tempora! O mores!

No wonder Vernon "Crackers Out!" Jones has such a huge police posse around him at all times.

This is what you get when the race card is played in your elections.

So, what do Jews do?

So, the Christian nuts in Cobb County are losing their stickers.

While a lot of people are happy to see this happen, for me it's just one more piece of evidence that Government schools will eventually become useless and unused.

Here's the deal: this week it's lunatics in Cobb freaking over the theory of evolution. Next week it's going to be muslims suing to have their cosmology treated as science. Then it'll be the Germans and the Japanese complaining about the treatment of WWII in the history textbooks. Which will get the Jews going. I'm sure the pharaonic types are getting ready to file a suit demanding that mathematics be taught in base 12. Which will have the modern day Aztecs demanding base 60. And in this completely value-free, politically-correct era, who can say them nay?

When all the warring factions have had their way, everyone will have left Government schools for better forms of education. Or, at least, forms that actually work.

So, the Senate Democrats are going to let the judges go forward.

I just love this paragraph from CNN:

"Unable to garner the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster -- a form of extended debate that has been part of Senate rules since the early 19th century -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, has put into motion what some call the 'nuclear option.'"

"Part of Senate rules since the early 19th century". I just love that phrasing. Filibustering used to mean that you talked and talked and talked, and refused to yield the floor. Think Huey Long, or Strom Thurmond. I haven't seen any extended speeches. I have seen Democrats refuse to allow cloture votes. What we're seeing now is a completely new innovation, not something out of the ealy 19th century.

Is it any wonder that the mainstream media's reputation continues to sink, and contempt for it continues to rise?

Fox News, that bastion of right wing exremism, shows its puckish sense of humor:

"Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada welcomed the agreement — although he hastened to say he remains opposed to some of the nominees who will now likely take seats on the appeals court.

'We have sent President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the radical right of the Republican party an undeniable message ... the abuse of power will not be tolerated.'"

Fold. Like. A. Cheap. Suit.


UPDATE: The Democrats have only agreed to let three judges through. They reserve the right to start their "filibuster" again if they deam any judicial nominee "extraordinary." In other words, the Democrats took this to the edge, and then slipped away when they knew they would lose. They certainly know power better than the Republicans.

Or do they? I mean, what we have here is a bit of asymmetrical warfare. The Democrats can always depend on a fawning, lickspittle press to cover for them, while the Republicans can't. If you're a Republican, you have to act like an adult, knowing that your actions will be judged in the harshest light by those who write the first drafts of history. If you're a Democrat, well, free pass.

So. I don't know. I think that having given once, further gives will be easier. I give this to the Republicans by a split hair. The Democrats have had to let some nominees through, so they've learned a bit of helplessness. The Republicans can always fight this again. And they will. Over the Supreme Court. Soon.

Must... have....


UPDATE: I guess I *could* build my own...

Oddly enough, I didn't feel like blogging for a while after the Pope died.

I say "oddly enough" because I've not been to confession or communion in about three decades, and the last time I was at mass was about ten years ago.

Yes, my name is Patrick, I'm from Ireland, and I'm a lapsed Catholic.

I thought about it, and the real reason I stopped blogging was that I was actually grieving his death. There wasn't anything religious about it. I was mourning the man.

When I was growing up, Soviet Communism appeared to be ascendent. They had Eastern Europe, eleven timezones of Russia, much of Africa, and were starting to make moves into Central and South America. Viet Nam had ended badly, and Jimmy Carter was gutting the military before sending Spec Ops guys to die in Iran. Chrysler was not selling crappy cars and begging for a government bailout.

I started seeing hope with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. She went immediately to work on the unions, putting the worst of Britain's left to flight, and making possible the party led by Tony Blair. Red Ken's the most extreme of Britain's current crop of elected leftists, and he looks like a teddy bear when compared to Arthur Scargill.

Later on that year the Pope visited Poland. This gave Solidarity the shot in the arm it needed to really take off. By 1982 Jaruzelski was imposing martial law, just to keep some level of control on the country. In the meantime, the KGB had had a go at the Pope, arranging for a proxy to shoot him in St Peter's square.

In 1980 I went to work in the US for the summer. When I returned, people asked who I thought would win the US Presidential election that November. "Reagan", I replied. It was obvious. It was like a feeling in the air: Carter had screwed up massively, again and again, and it was time for him to go.

Reagan's election, the return of the hostages from Iran, the US military buildup that began soon after his election were heartening to me.

So, by 1980 you had in place the three leaders who would end the cold war: Thatcher to keep Reagan from going wobbly, the Pope to give Reagan moral purpose, and Reagan to spend the money and deploy the troops. You could see just see "Tear Down this Wall" on the horizon.

In 1983, we had Grenada, and for the first time in decades the Societs were thrown back. Next it was Daniel Ortega's turn. A muscular application of the Monroe doctrine, if I ever saw one.

I joined the US military in late 1984, and served through 1991.

Not to recount the history, but those three leaders, with the help of God and a few Marines, brought down an ideology that had been a scourge on the world.

By last month Reagan was dead, Thatcher is fragile. And the Pope had died.

I don't know how else to put it but to say that a giant of history was gone and, remembering what he'd done, all I could do was shut up for a while and remember the remarkable achievements of a life well-lived.

What a man.

I just got my DeKalb County property tax assessment. Ouch.

Back in 1997 DeKalb County voters voted in a 1% increase in the sales tax in order to roll back property taxes. Got that? We were willing to pay an extra percent in the sales tax to get property tax relief.

Of course, our elected officials couldn't be satisfied. Having conned a majority of the voters into the sales tax increase, they've been raising property taxes as well.

I think the motto of DeKalb County governmnent has to be something along the lines of "Quick! While They're Distracted!"

God! You just have to pity the Congressional Democrats.

They've spent what poltical capital they had in a vain attempt to prevent the President from getting the judges he wants. That and the Bolton fiasco. Mind you, in that one they were well supported by Voinovich. He definitely inspires one to bray "Jayzus! What an eejit!" Tired of all this stupidity, and considering his chances in 2008, Frist is about to change the rules so that a simple majority will be able to end a debate.

So, they won't be able to stop all this going forward, and they're about to lose the faux-filibuster power they used to have. From now on, if they want to hold things up, they'll have to pull a Strom.

Oh, for the day that Senator Clinton squats on CSPAN!

The biggest irony? They lost this power trying to stop something almost nobody cares about.

They used to be able to pick their battles for maximum effectiveness. No more. They're unhinged, and becoming more so. I look forward to years more of lunatic rhetoric. Though, I do hope that Senator Reid gets beyond schoolyard taunts.

Last week I attended a meeting of some bloggers in Atlanta.

It was an interesting get-together. There were a few professional journalists, a few businessmen, Mrs. Livininamerica, and a couple of shit-stirrers. Me, for example.

The discussion went a number of directions. One that stuck in my head was the journalistic criticism of bloggers as having no editors, nor fact-checkers. Another was the journalistic defense that most predictions about the end of the MSM (mainstream media) compared the best of blogging with the worst of journalism.

This week we find that for all its editors, all its fact-checkers, all its professionalism, NEWSWEEK lied and people died.

In case you don't know, a NEWSWEEK reporter by the name of Michael Isikoff reported that a soldier interrogating a muslim captive tried to soften up the prisoner by flushing a Koran down a toilet.

Shocking stuff. And untrue, as it happens. The story's been withdrawn, but the damage has been done. Still, I'm sure Isikoff will have the runner up prize of being the toast of the Upper West Side this summer, before being hustled off to well-deserved obscurity.

Here's a man considered one of our finest journalists, with oodles of fact-checkers and editors at his command, rushing a Ratheresque story into print and starting riots in Kabul. Riots that caused a large number of deaths. With more to come, I'm sure. Some beheadings of American kidnappees. That sort of thing.

Ah, The Religion of Peace (TM). Ah, the fact-checking, editing, and professionalism.

Oh, and there's more. On the way into work I heard professional journalist and Clinton flack, Eleanor Clift, offer the defense that the story was published after it had been run by a "Senior Pentagon Official" who didn't object. I suppose that's an example of fact checking. Oh my!

It's not the Koran that went in the toilet on this occasion.

I'm convinced this was driven by Isikoff's hatred of the President, and this incident brings to mind another idea that's been kicking around in the back of my head.

After the US invaded Iraq, one reason offered was that it'd draw Islamofascists from all over the Middle East. Better to have them die under American guns in Iraq than to have them pilot American airliners into skyscrapers. The flypaper argument, it was called.

What I find interesting is that it drew out more than the lunatics in the Middle East. It drew out Harry Reid, Dan Rather, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, MoveOn.org, George Soros, and so many more. You know, the hate-America-first, America-is-to-blame-for-all-evil-in-the-world, Chomskyite left.

And the longer Bush is in power, the more rabid the left becomes. The more unhinged it becomes, the more it slips. The more it slips, the more it is discredited. Like Isikoff.

I'm not too interested in any more arguments about fact-checkers and editors.


UPDATE: I posted it before, but here's the movie at the end of the MSM universe.