The Kerry Press Conference

Well, he spoke. What does it mean? He is living in the past. I think some of these politicians do not realize that the Internet has a very long memory.

He fails to realize that we have all heard his comments. He was not taken our of context.

He learned the wrong lesson from how he handled the Swift Boat veterans and their efforts to block him from the White House. He chose to ignore them. He thinks he should come out swinging now, which he failed to do then. I am sure some misguided fool advised him to "fight" back. A few people might be persuaded by this shabby performance, but then they probably suffer from BDS anyway. (I have met one.)

Kerry's True Colors:
Arrogant
Elitist
Smug
Rude

More colors:

John Kerry, Criminal

Just as Fonda’s critics turned out to have been correct about their gut feelings regarding her treasonable actions in North Vietnam, so, too, Kerry’s critics—who feel strongly that his trip violated the law, without quite knowing why—are correct.

The explanation of Kerry’s criminal behavior in Paris is some thirty-four years overdue.

Our major premise—the legal one—is that one federal statute makes it a crime for American citizens to have “intercourse” with the “enemy,” while another federal statute similarly prohibits “intercourse” with “any foreign government.”

Our minor premise—the factual one—is that John Kerry confessed to engaging in exactly that proscribed conduct.

Therefore, John Kerry is a criminal.

Kerry’s Logan Act

Then on Tuesday, during his grilling of Dr. Condoleezza Rice at her confirmation hearing, Kerry repeated the story, but peppered in an assertion that Arab nations wanted in, as well.

"Every Arab leader I asked, do you want Iraq to fail, says no. Do you think you will be served if there's a civil war? They say no. Do you believe that failure is a threat to the region and to the stability of the world? Yes; same with the European leaders. But each of them feel that they have offered more assistance, more effort to be involved, want to be part of a playing field that's more cooperative, and yet they feel rebuffed."

Bear in mind this was not an official trip to Europe and the Middle East. Kerry was not visiting as a representative of the United States Government. He was in no way commissioned by the executive branch to negotiate alliances with foreign countries. So what was he doing there? In an e-mail to 3 million political supporters in which he also calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Kerry said, "After several months consumed by the campaign trail, I wanted to make contact with our soldiers on the ground there."

In short, his trip was, essentially, a very public vacation. One in which Kerry seems to have run afoul of the Logan Act, which reads:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

Kerry, Bush

Thank you John Kerry for assuring a Republican win in November

Michelle Malkin: The MSM is AWOL
Hot Air: John Kerry on America’s lazy, uneducated military; Update: McCain demands apology
Newsbusters: John F. Kerry Thinks US Soldiers Are Uneducated

Unbelievable. He has done it again. First, our troops were terrorizing women and children. Now, they are stupid.

Does he have ANY clue how much these people have to know to do their jobs? How much training is required? These men and women are not grunts, but highly skilled and trained individuals. How do I know? As a contractor, I worked on a team that was developing the training for Apache helicopter maintainers. To fly and maintain JUST those machines, not to mention the vast amount of highly technical planes, ships, submarines, weapons, that require advanced skills to use and maintain boggles the mind that a Senator and former presidential candidate and he cannot grasp this basic fact?

He wanted to be the Commander-in-Chief?

Kerry, Bush

Air America Bankrupted, by George!

Air America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. They vow to valiantly remain on the airwaves in case somebody accidentally tunes in, but I fear it’s only a matter of time before they hang up their microphones for good. It is truly a sad day for Free Speech in this country.

Air America was a vital educational resource, so it should have been completely taxpayer-funded instead of forced to compete for listeners on the open market. Once again, the GOP has used capitalism to silence the lone liberal voice in the conservative-dominated radio wilderness. Now all we progressives have left to counter the Right-Wing Noise Machine is ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, TBS, NPR, CNN, BBC, HBO, HSN, MTV, VH1, Showtime, The Abortion Channel, Gore TV, Reuters, The Associated Press, Time Magazine, Newsweek......

Go read the rest. It's a hoot!
Humor, Bush

Thank you Crimsonfisted

Here we go, I am about to open a can of worms but I am really looking forward to hearing and reading some replies....As the holiday season will be upon us shortly(life goes by so fast) Should we really be complaining about the "Christmas Tree," the Star of David, Menorah and such? As far as I believe it is a free country under God. (and there are complaints about that, too.) With life being so short wouldn't it be easier to help one another learn to be more tolerant of others beliefs, and not force our beliefs on those that differ from ours? What would Sunday dinner conversation be like if we all agreed on everything and knew every thing? Crimsonfisted thank you so much for the welcome....

A big welcome to a new contributor!

Let me welcome aboard a new contributor to WhatAMaroon - Whiteknuckles!

Hoo Rah!

WhiteKnuckles is my oldest (meaning in length of time known, not age!) and our families go waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back together.

Whiteknuckles will provide a nice balance to my (admittedly) ultra conservative opinions and writes with a wonderful prose style.

I hope you enjoy this addition to WhatAMaroon as much as I do.

Welcome!

why I have whiteknuckles

Ok So I am new to this, that is one reason I have white knuckles...I am enjoying life and along for the ride....But the real reason I have white knuckles is from sitting back and watching a majority of our young Americans...No belief in God, No responsibility and God knows No Respect. Where on God's green earth are we headed without God responsibility and respect? Gimme Gimme Gimme and right now might I add. Hand it over do what has to be done in a minute or less. When will people realize the world doesn't revolve around them and it isn't McDonalds????

OK, What is wrong with NY transit?

From Drudge:

Girls' room his, too

Men who live as women can now legally use women's rest rooms in New York's transit system under an unprecedented deal revealed yesterday.
....
"I would not like that," said Gloria David, a retiree from Connecticut. "I have nothing against gay men or drag queens, but they can use the men's room. I just don't want to go to the bathroom next to a man."

One rider feared predators might dress as women and lurk in the women's room. [emphasis mine]

I have no doubt of this. Dateline on (ugh MSNBC ugh guh) has a segment Catch a Predator. Why should I think that the transit bathrooms would be any safer than a predatory man coming into MY home thinking there is a 12 year old child (boy OR girl) there alone?
Safety, NY

A bit more about the veil.........

From This is London online:

Female students at a new Islamic school will be made to wear head scarves regardless of their religion, it was revealed yesterday.

From Dr Sanity's article "A Religion Of Narcissistic Entitlement And Borderline Behavior", she quotes Ann Applebaum in the Washington Post

..at a much simpler level, surely it is also true that the full-faced veil -- the niqab, burqa or chador -- causes such deep reactions in the West not so much because of its political or religious symbolism but because it is extremely impolite. Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child -- or even an adult -- a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.

Truer words were never spoken. Dr Sanity continues with her own analysis:

Let's face it. These Islamic narcissists don't want to be tolerated by the society they live in and free to practice their religion even in the most multiculturally sensitive nations; they want the society or nation they live in to completely submit to their values and religious practices and to acknowledge their obvious superiority--or else.

My take? Dr Sanity verbalizes what I could not. The veil and these other "accoutrements" are indeed symbols of superiority and, in my opinino, do not lead to piety. Yvonne Ridley says as much. Although I do not see the link for the report on Hannity and Colmes from the woman who was suspended from British Airways for wearing a one inch cross over her cravat on her uniform because it is against the uniform policy, whereas Muslims can wear their masks headgear, and so can the Hindus. Only Christians and Jews are targeted in this manner, to remove their religious symbols. (When I find the link to H& C, I will provide it.)

I do not like the sound of Amerabia, nor of dhimmitude, nor of jizya, nor of burkas.

America Alone indeed.

Islam, politics, War

October 23 1983

Anniversary of Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing

Little Green Footballs reminds us.

Memorial Site


Islam, politics, memorial

Follow-up questions for Byron Calame and the Times' Bush-bashing allies

From Michelle Malkin:

She is really all over this:

"Now, I have a follow-up question, which I have e-mailed to Mr. Calame. His e-mail address is public@nytimes.com. As I noted yesterday, Calame's lame rationalization for his blindness is that the Bush administration engaged in "vicious" attacks on the Times:

I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.

What, exactly, is Calame referring to when he criticizes "vicious criticism?" Yesterday, I hyperlinked a June 27, 2006 Washington Post story on the Bush administration's response after the Times blabbed about the banking surveillance program. Let's take a closer look:"

Read it all. She examines how the left and right reacted to this betrayal by the NY Times and all the visciousness comes from, you guessed it, the left. Big surprise.

The press may be free, but it is not above the law.

NY Times, politics

What She Needs is a Good Stoning

From Gates of Vienna
I was reading Gates of Vienna and came across this piece. The following are selections from that article:

'A schoolgirl at the Jean Mermoz college [secondary school] in the eighth district of Lyon was pelted with a hail of stones on Wednesday morning in a playground where she was eating a snack. The theory that the act was related to the non-observance of Ramadan has been confirmed by the prosecutor in Lyon on the strength of the earliest results of the investigation.

The forum said the girl was Christian, but the newspaper story seems to imply that she was Muslim and had raised the ire of her persecutors by appearing to be breaking the dietary laws re Ramadan. Perhaps she could wear some sign which would allow others to know that she is menstruating so they wouldn't stone her. No shame in that for an adolescent girl, right?

However, here is what this sane Muslim (safely out of Saudi Arabia) thinks about the fundamentalists in his native country who have spread their poisonous message world wide:

[It is] the full spectrum of institutionalized insanity that the House of Saud and their friends with long beards have created.


That “full spectrum” includes stoning a kid for eating. Jesus would’ve suggested that before they pick up a rock they examine their own souls to see if they were without sin…an admonition that probably doesn’t make sense in a tribal, warrior culture burdened with shame.

Gates of Vienna is the only place to get this kind of information I have found. This is not the first of this kind of horror I have seen documented here. The case of the pregnant girl who was chased and the boys tried to kill the baby inside her. She crawled for help. This is just over the top for me. Starving children for "religion"?

Dr Sanity sums up the shame culture in the article: Shame, The Arab Psyche, and Islam

Children who live with constant hostility and criticism learn to defend against the bad feelings and shame within; and to externalize blame onto others. Projection and paranoia, which are both external assignments of blame, are psychological defenses against shame.

Often this excessive shame is dealt with by humiliating someone perceived as weaker or more worthless than the shamed person (e.g., the family pet, women, Gays, or outside groups serve this function for both individuals and cultures).


Guilt is an emotion that rises after a transgression of one's own or cultural values. Guilt is about actions or behavior; while shame is about the self. There is an important psychological difference in saying to someone that their behavior is bad; as contrasted with saying that they are bad. The former leads to guilt; the latter to shame.

The purpose of guilt is to stop behavior that violates a self, family or societal standard. Guilt keeps score on excesses or deficits of behavior deemed undesirable and is expressed in regret and remorse.

And this all dovetails nicely into the recent piece on the mask veil
How much of a moron can I be?

In Islam, superiority is achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.

Well, I think that idiot notion has been debunked pretty well, through the links here and at many other sources. And is "superiority" the goal of any religion? Not mine.

islam, politics

The Islam Conundrum

Suggested Reading at The American Thinker by Amil Imani

The contempt for free inquiry is encapsulated in the statement of Muhammad,

“Al-elmo noghtatan katharoho al-jaheloon”—Knowledge is only one dot, expanded by the ignorant.

...
There is no reason to believe that Muslims have inferior intelligence. Their state of existence is strictly a function of the doctrine of Islam: a doctrine of nihilism, ignorance, and violence that denigrates this life and fixes the starry eye of the faithful on the next life. A case in point is the Islamic madressehs in places like Pakistan. Never mind the girls. Girls are not in the calculus—women are incidental in Islam. Consider boys. Millions of young boys are enrolled in madressehs—religious boarding schools—learning very little beside memorizing and reciting the Quran. This is a case of total submission: Islam at its best, as championed by the oil-money-flushed Saudi patrons of the Wahabi sect.

This got me thinking of the 60 questions article. Two questions from the list:

Koran 5:116, represents Christians as worshipping Mary which is a historical error. Given the fact that the pagan Arabs did worship Mary’s idol in the Kaba, and that history records no group of Christians had ever worshiped Mary at this time, my question is would you please name the sect of Christians who worshiped Mary at the time of Muhammad?

Acts 19:23-41 mentions a religion that worshipped the great goddess Artemis and her meteorite which fell down from heaven. Taking note that this religion centered around a meteorite, my question is: is it possible that this is a pagan corruption of the Black Stone and meteorite that fell at the foot of Adam and that at the time of Christ the Black Stone was actually in Ephesus Asia minor?

NY Times Co. 3Q Profit Plunges 39%, Belo Also Down

hmmmm, and what was I saying, just the other day?

Thanks to the always dependable Right Wing Howler for that bit of news to wake up to this am.

The New York Times Co. reported Thursday that its third-quarter 2006 profit from continuing operations plunged 39.2% on costs related to its job cuts and a loss on its sale of its 50% stake in the Discovery Times Channel.

...Newsprint expense decreased 2.2% in the third quarter, with 11.1% of the decrease attributable to lower consumption, partially offset by an 8.9% price increase.


...Circulation revenues were down 1.3%, which the company attributed mainly to weakness at the New England Media Group.

NY Times, politics

Welcome the new blog! - the weekly newsletter

Let's welcome a new blogger to the list! (I have been asking for this for a long time - FINALLY)

Welcome aboard!

March 2001: Iraqi IIS Wants To Attack American Assets

From The Anchoress who links to the following article on the Captain's Quarters

Many of us who live in New York have not forgotten that on 9/12/01 the only consulate not flying their flag at half-staff was Iraq’s.

And then from the Captain's Quarters:

Obviously, the terror missions could not be conducted under the color of Iraqi military or get traced back to them, otherwise the American forces -- especially under George Bush -- would almost certainly attack Iraq with everything we could muster. Saddam would also not be able to rely on his clandestine partners on the Security Council to wield their vetoes, as even France and Russia would have to acknowledge the right of the US to defend itself once Saddam initiated this kind of attack. So how would he hide the nationality and identity of these volunteers? He would have to "launder" them through another organization, one that would not necessarily immediately point back to Iraq -- like al-Qaeda.

That doesn't prove in a legal sense that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. It does show that they wanted to inspire others to attack American interests, and again that they actively recruited for these missions in their own military. That amounts to a policy to conduct a proxy war against the US, both at home and abroad, certainly a good cause for the US to pre-empt it.

Well, well, well. Go read it all.
Iraq, politics, Bush

Iranian Shells Land in Kurdish Villages in Northern Iraq, Killing 2

From the NY Times on Aug 20:

Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.

This is from the NY Times Select (gotta pay online now, and sign up, because readership is, oh , I don't know, DOWN) but I heard the original comments from Glenn Beck on his show, that Iran was shelling Iraq, and that the news was buried on page 8 of the NY Times. Gee, wonder why we haven't heard more about this? Can't imagine why!

Islam, politics, Iran