This article by Mark Helprin is so dead-on, so close to my own thinking, that I can only say Bravo. I can also push it on both friends and foes alike as to the stakes and scope of the war we are engaged in.

It also clarifies why this presidential election is one of the most momentous in our history. George W. Bush may not be the best man for the job, but he at least understands that we are at war and is willing to prosecute that war. John F. Kerry seems to think of the whole matter as some kind of criminal enterprise which should be prosecuted by agents of the UN. It's not even a difficult choice; there is no choice at all.


- posted by Monty @ 10:42 AM

 
This story comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who followed the Iraq story after Saddam ejected the weapons inspectors. It's clear to anyone with half a brain: he wanted WMDs very badly, he was trying to get them, and would have gotten them eventually had we not invaded.

It is my personal belief that he had stocks of checmical and biological weapons, and that these stocks were spirited away to Syria in the days before the war. Should Syria ever find itself hosting a large contingent of American military forces (ahem!), it'll be interesting to see if any of their chem/bio weapons have Iraqi markings.

- posted by Monty @ 9:56 AM

 
You know, I love baseball. During the summer months, I'll take in a game any old place: high school games, Babe Ruth, Little League, Northwoods League (which is pretty damned good), even peewee games.

Which is why crap like this just convinces me all over again that MLB is a waste. That league is filled with overpaid prima donnas whose steroid-laden brains cannot comprehend the damage they are doing to the league. And you know what? I wouldn't shed a tear if the MLB went out of business entirely. It's long since devolved into a boring hitting-derby.

I'll stick with the dedicated amateaurs who have a sincere love of the game. The MLB can die for all of me.

- posted by Monty @ 1:34 PM

 
Never forget.
- posted by Monty @ 8:01 AM

 
The Most Holy One is still following RatherGate. I'm getting pretty bored by this whole story by now -- the documents are pretty obviously forgeries -- but I find myself pretty proud to be among the population of geeks who are not only typesetting experts, but some of whom actually have working examples of the hardware in question. All hail the geeks!
- posted by Monty @ 6:00 PM

 
Wah-hah-hah-ha!

(Side note: I frigging hate that Clippy character, and it's the first thing I turn off whenever I install Microsoft Word. That said, this is still pretty funny.)

- posted by Monty @ 10:00 AM

 
You know, given what has emerged recently about the "newly discovered" documents about W.'s Guard service, this column by Paul Krugman seems...ill-advised. (NYT link , reg. required.)

Dan Rather is probably huddled in a little ball in his bedroom right now, crying and sucking his thumb.

Major props to the guys who broke the story: FreeRepublic, PowerLine, Little Green Footballs, and INDCJournal.

- posted by Monty @ 8:18 AM

 
Man, this is strange. It looks like some of the "smoking gun" memos on Bush's guard service were forged. I don't care about the subject matter much -- Bush's guard service is old hat -- but the continuing meltdown of the American media continues apace.

The moral: we weren't kidding with the "we fact-check your ass" thing. When you deal with bloggers, you're dealing with thousands of geeks who live to nitpick, research, and extrapolate.

It's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.
- posted by Monty @ 2:35 PM

 
Apparrently, Teraaaayyyza Heinz-Kerry feels that only an idiot would oppose John Kerry's proposed Health Plan. That woman is a walking, talking train-wreck. The Kerry campaign ought to just ship her off to France until November: the French would love her, the Kerry campaign could only benefit, and the American public wouldn't have to deal with her.

So do us a solid and invite her over for an extended stay, President Chirac. Then we might be more inclinded to let a certain recent unpleasantness go with no further recriminations.
- posted by Monty @ 1:21 PM

 
So the whole "Department of Wellness" thing turns out to be Teraaaayyyyza's idea after all. I can't say I'm surprised.
- posted by Monty @ 10:46 AM

 
Now that blogger seems to have regained it's sanity (for the time being)....

While George W. Bush is chasing down terrorists who want to kill us, what is John Kerry's priority? Why, creating a Department of Wellness. That sound you heard was the sound of millions of Republicans slapping their heads in disbelief.

- posted by Monty @ 8:45 AM

 
Okay, goddammit, this is the end. I've had it with Blogger. I've just lost two long posts due to some glitch in Blogger, and this isn't the first time. I've had it.

- posted by Monty @ 11:30 AM

 
Jonah Goldberg has this piece up at Townhall. It's basically a meditation on the liberal confusion as to why Americans are so darned conservative. The upshot is that liberals assume that the great lumpen proles are simply too stupid to understand the issues.

I see this a lot, actually. Many liberals begin arguments by assuming their opponents are wrong, deluded, or simply too dumb to understand the question. Thus their interest is not to explain their position to you, but rather to convince you how and why you are wrong. It is not a disagreement between gentlemen of goodwill; it is a teacher taking a dimwitted student to task. It's a tendency among the liberal left that's always rubbed me the wrong way, and it gets more and more irritating with every year that goes by. It's one of the main reasons I was tending Republican even before 9/11.

There is a word for many liberals these days, and that word is dilettante. They are amateurs, sunny-day people who cannot bear to look into the darkness. They approach the world with an a priori understanding already formulated, a liberal script already prepared, and will not let unpleasant facts color their judgements.

Just look at the ridiculous contortions they put themselves through when discussing the murdering savages in Beslan. As Daniel Pipes has noted, they use every euphemism in the book except the accurate one: Islamic terrorist.

The American left has become dangerously unmoored from reality, and it's not a sudden journey, either. It's been happening for a long time. They have allowed themselves to become so rotten with po-mo multi-culti nonsense that they are unable to see anything clearly anymore. The Democratic party has been thoroughly corrupted with this rot, and in my opinion cannot be salvaged. I sincerely hope that George W. Bush not only wins, but wins so decisively that the mandate cannot be denied. I hope the Republican victory is so overwhelming that the Democratic party as we know it finally has the will to purge this poison from its system.

We need two robust political parties in America. The problem is that we have one serious party (the Republicans) who believe that we are at war, and one (the Democrats) who honestly think the biggest issue facing America is gay marriage or health care policy.

These people cannot be trusted with America's national security.
- posted by Monty @ 11:03 AM