Sharia law row…The Archy in trouble?

Sir John Winston Howard?

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard may be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

This is an honour which has been slightly diminished over time, but the knighting of John Howard would truly restore the credibility of knighthood.

Source: Daily Telegraph.

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UPDATE:  Just one example of the true class and grace which makes John Winston Howard a candidate for knighthood.

The longest drive…courtesy J.M.

It’s a long and awful trip from Trenton to Toronto in a limousine or a hearse carrying a loved one or a comrade-in-arms. But this is what those who make that terrible trip see out the windows of their vehicles.

The Torch

In defense of Ohio

Here is a heartwarming story from Michelle Malkin about how one young Marine was treated in Columbus, Ohio. Way to go, Ohioans. You did me proud.

Beware, people.

Someone spoofed my nick and put up a fraudulent post. I’ve deleted it, but if they did it once they can do it again, not only to me.

A soldier’s reflections.

Admittedly, Johnny Rico is only a fictional soldier. He was the main character of STARSHIP TROOPERS, originally a novel by Robert Heinlein and made into an excellent movie about ten years ago.

This line didn’t make it into the movie, but at one point Rico muses that “correct morals arise from knowing what man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be”.

How the ranks of the unemployed will swell if that idea ever becomes popular…

I’m green, and my conscience is clean.

Sorry, it’s not quite so simple as that.

Listen to this program, broadcast 10/02/08 on ABC’s Background Briefing.

Greenwashing

The reference to the Papal indulgences could hardly be more appropriate.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007…Senate Democrats Back Hussein Obama’s Declaration That Border Security Has Nothing To Do With Homeland Security.

Barack Hussein Obama

It has not been a good week for Barack Obama. The first term Senator of Illinois and chief thorn in the side of Hillary Clinton on her ascendance to the presidency tripped on a YouTube question in the Democratic debate a couple of nights ago by declaring that no dictator is above meeting with, regardless of the situation, raising the eyebrows of even some of the Beltway punditry. He tripped again today.

Obama found himself in the usually mundane role of Senate chair this afternoon while the Republicans used procedure to tie the Democrats in knots once again. And when put in the position to make a ruling, he gave the Democrats a short-term win, but a long-term loss on the immigration debate. He very well have given critics of his presidential campaign more fodder.

Feckless majority leader Harry Reid had a homeland security appropriations bill on the floor for debate, and thought the day was going to go rather smoothly, until the Republicans showed him up once again by offering an amendment to tie border security elements of the immigration bill to it.

Townhall.com Audio of Senator Hussein Obama

Read more at Hugh Hewitt Townhall

Obama Hits McCain, Clinton in Maine. Barack Hussein Obama, is starting to really piss me off

BANGOR, Me. (AP) – Democrat Barack Obama said he is better positioned to change Washington and to end the Iraq war if elected president in an unusually spirited critique of rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain on SaturdayBefore 7,000 people in Bangor, Me., Obama said McCain—the likely Republican nominee—”*wants to fight a 100-year war” in Iraq. It was a reference to the Arizona senator’s remarks that some U.S. troops may be in Iraq a century from now.

* NO, obama McCain wants to fight “A 100-year war”, against some of your birth right people.

He also criticized McCain for initially voting against President Bush’s major tax cuts and later embracing them. And he mocked McCain’s attacks on pork barrel spending, saying, “it was his party” under the Bush administration “that passed the biggest increase in pork barrel spending” in history. Unlike his earlier stop Saturday at a Bangor diner, Obama directly criticized Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination. The Maine caucus is on Sunday.Clinton, a New York senator, and her backers have suggested he “has not been in Washington long enough” and is naive and untested, Obama told the capacity crowd, as another 3,000 stood outside on a chilly day. The audience cheered and hooted in derision.

Anti-war sentiments run high in Maine, and the Illinois senator drew some of the loudest applause when he noted that he opposed the Iraq invasion from the start, and vowed to bring U.S. troops home promptly if elected.

Maine? Wasn’t that a God Damn Battleship that blew up? Do we REALLY have a friggin State, called Maine?

Suggestion…Deed the bastard to Canada!

Breitbart

Remember this middle name, people…….Hussein.

Lionel Richie – Dancing On The Ceiling…If this is a replay…tough darts…LOL.

Used Car Pitchman…Would you buy a car from this guy?…Shit Yes…lol.

V-22 Osprey Tilt-Rotor Aircraft Proves its Mettle in Iraq

In a rare-for-CNN positive story out of Iraq, we learn that the US Marine Corps – Oooyah! – V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft has been performing marvelously for over 2,000 hours of logged mission deployments.

You may remember several stories of catastrophic failures of this aircraft in the testing program that resulted in the deaths of some test crews. Back then, the “it’ll never work!” brigade of nattering nabobs of negativism at CNN and other MSM news outlets used to regularly send me into rages that had me yelling at my TV.

Both my dad and step-dad were USAF pilots, and my step-dad was a test pilot right after WW II. It’s a miracle he survived some of the bizarre craft he was tasked to test. His stories used to have me digging my fingers into the chair arms.

Aside: Pretty cool story there. Beefdad and step-dad were best buds in WW II, and I knew step-dad since I was born: I called him “Uncle Joe” all my life. Beefdad and step-dad’s wife died within six months of each other back in ’86, so Beefmom and “Uncle Joe” got married. Probably not many people outside of West Virginia and Arkansas have ever heard their mom say, “Your uncle Joe and I are getting married!” LOL! Anyway…

This is a first generation aircraft of a totally new design, and the drive gear is, “wicked pissah complicated,” as they say in Boston. So, these failures, while tragic, were not entirely unforeseeable. It pisses me off that our society has become so risk-averse that chestless pseudo-males in the MSM are able to cry, “the sky is falling!” with impunity every time something goes wrong… and a significant persentage of people actually listen to them.

This is exploration and pushing the envelope, you pansy-as fucktards! Brave men might die doing this, but it doesn’t mean failure unless we let it mean failure!”

So, it’s nice to see that the good ol’ US of A still has the stick-to-it-iveness to follow through on a project like this and force it to work. That’s what “The Right Fucking Stuff” is, right there.

Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown…He says urban exercises scare people..Wait, wait the best part is yet to come…Ready? Mayor’s name IS….Carty Finkbeiner.

Wonder what Max would say? He came from Toledo.

Staff Sgt. Andre Davis talks to his commanding officer as he leaves the Madison Building after Mayor Carty Finkbeiner requested that the Marines leave the downtown location.

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave. Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive. “The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman. “He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area.”

Finkbeiner

So after a brief stop at a friendly base in Perrysburg Township, the Marines by early evening were back on their way home to Grand Rapids. “I wish they would have told us this four hours ago,” Staff Sgt. Andre Davis said. Sergeant Davis, who traveled ahead of the five-bus convoy, stepped from his vehicle into downtown about 3:20 p.m. and was told by a city employee that the mayor wanted him and his soldiers packed up and out by 6 p.m. Members of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines have trained periodically in downtown Toledo since at least 2004 and most recently in May, 2006. Past exercises have involved mock gun fights, ambushes, and the firing of blank ammunition.

The Toledo Blade

via

Instapundit

All I am Saying, is Give Diplomacy a Chance

I believe in diplomacy – tons and tons of diplomacy – but not diplomats.

New Zealand’s ‘Anti-Smacking’ Laws: This Will Stop Child Abuse How?

New Zealand’s Family First party has been collecting horrific stories of parents who have fallen afoul of NZ’s “No Smacking” laws. These laws are representative of the kind of thinking it takes to be a Lefty. In reaction to a shocking number of very serious child abuse cases where children have been burned with cigarettes, thrown against walls, tied up for days or weeks at a time, and otherwise grievously assaulted or killed, they decided to outlaw — smacking (spanking, for our American friends).

Of course grievously assaulting or murdering a child was already illegal in New Zealand, but in their rush to be seen to be “taking decisive action,” they have happily conflated responsible discipline with real abuse and are turning ordinary responsible parents from well-functioning families into criminals and are distracting resources from rescuing children in real danger toward investigating parents dobbed in for the flimsiest of reasons.

Now I personally do not fully support the Family First party’s whole platform, but I am very pleased that they are campaigning against this law and have taken the time to collect reports and personal testimonies to demonstrate how dangerous a Nanny State Government can be.

It’s not just that they are criminalising good, loving parents, but that in the rush to be “seen” to be doing something, they still haven’t done anything about the real problem.

To those of us in countries already suffering from varying degrees of Government interference in everyday law-abiding citizens’ lives, don’t let’s go further down this path.

Cases: Examples of parents who have been reported as a result of the anti-smacking law (Family First, New Zealand)

I Love Dick

Er, The Vice President of The United States, Dick Cheney, that is. Yesterday, our veep signed an amicus curiae brief supporting an individual right to arm bears bear arms under the Second Amendment to the US Constitution to the Supreme Court.

“On behalf of four million NRA members and 80 million American gun owners, we would like to thank Vice President Dick Cheney for his strong support of the individual rights view of the Second Amendment. Today, in his capacity as President of the United States Senate, Vice President Cheney signed on to the congressional amicus curiae brief affirming the individual rights view of the Second Amendment. As Americans, we are grateful and fortunate to have a friend of freedom in the Vice President.

Led by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), bi-partisan majorities of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives – in fact, the largest number of co-signers of a congressional amicus brief in American history – filed a strong brief in support of the individual rights view. 55 members of the Senate and 250 members of the House co-signed this brief along with the Vice President of the United States. This landmark brief argues that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual, fundamental right to Keep and Bear Arms; that any infringement on this right should be subject to the highest level of constitutional scrutiny; that D.C.’s categorical ban on handguns and self-defense in the home is unreasonable and unconstitutional under any level of review; and therefore, that the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in this case should be upheld.

We would also like to thank the other parties who are filing briefs in support of freedom, including other pro-Second Amendment individuals and organizations, as well as an overwhelming majority of state attorneys general.

The NRA stated in its brief filed yesterday that “In adopting the Second Amendment, the Framers guaranteed an individual right to keep and bear arms for private purposes, not a collective right to keep and bear arms only in connection with state militia service.” We remain hopeful that justice, freedom and the will of our founding fathers will prevail at our nation’s High Court.”

Dick: Fuck yeah!

Again with my litany of complaints against lawyers, only a lawyer could make this complicated. The Second Amendment reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Obvious to non-lawyers – people with functional brains and a proper moral compass – “the people” are the citizens – as in, “We The Fucking People” – and the idea was to keep the citizens of the individual States armed to prevent tyranny by the Federal government.

keep 1 have or retain possession of. Oxford Dictionary

bear 1 carry. Oxford Dictionary

arms 1 weapons and ammunition. Oxford Dictionary

So simple a ten-year-old can understand it… unless that ten-year-old has had the misfortune of being indoctrinated and brainwashed by a law school… or raised by libtard relativist parents.

As I like to say, politicians are only responsive to a citizenry they rightly and genuinely fear, and the only citizenry they fear consists of individuals who are armed to the point that they can band together to successfully resist the federal government.

Being armed is a basic, fundamental, God-given human right: The disciples of The Lamb of God were armed with small swords with blades of approximately 14″ inches in length – the name for that small weapon escapes me at the moment – and it was just such a small arm that was used to strike the Roman soldier’s ear off in the Garden of Gethsemane: Ancient Israel was a dangerous place with robbers and bandits all over the place.

The most succinct expression of this political power in the hands of “the people” was stated by Aristotle, and is translated into English thusly:

“The true measure of a people’s freedom is whether they are armed or not.”

Ari rocked!

I’ve been NRA since Jr. NRA circa 1970, and was a competitive shooter at 50′ indoor, where I rose to the rank of Sharpshooter, Bar IV. My uncle is an NRA Endowment Member, who calls Charlton Heston “Charlie” and always sits at Wayne La Pierre’s table at NRA events. In other words, I was raised properly.

I really, really want a Barrett .50!

2007 Deakin Lecture: Former Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough

I am taking the liberty of storing a complete copy of the 2007 Alfred Deakin Lecture given by former Federal Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough here.

As our Aussie readers know, Mal Brough had only just started making inroads into taking practical measures to do something about the endemic violence, child sex abuse and “rivers of grog” which are ruining so many Aboriginal communities in Australia. He gave this speech in October 2007, and he was voted out of office in November 2007. Now, the Left is back in charge and we are back to purely symbolic measures.

I want to reprint his speech here because shortly after Labor came to power, this speech disappeared from all Government-sponsored web sites. It just recently reappeared, and I want a place where I can reference it if it disappears again. In my opinion, it should be required reading for anyone who wants to comment on Indigenous affairs in Australia today.

UPDATE:  14 February 2007.  Mal Brough on the new “lost generation.”