The Land of Ozz

The democrats would have you believe that Dick Durbin’s recent comments comparing our troops to Nazis is equal to Rove’s comments comparing the differences in how conservative and liberals responded to the 9/11 attacks. Michelle Malkin offers an explanation of the democrat’s equation: DEMS WANT TO PLAY ROVE=DURBIN. The correct equation is Durbin = Lott. That would be where the Democrats join in the call for the resignation of their own party member the way the Republicans joined in to ask for Lott to step down.

My favorite radio talk show host has helped me come to the equation of Rove > Durbin = Lott. Glenn Beck has challenged Dick Durbin to a offer a real apology and resign. Here you can see the count down timer that Glenn is running on his web site to show how long it has been since Durbin offered his non-apology apology. Here is a link to the actual audio from the Glenn Beck show.

You can read more reactions on Rove and Durbin here, here, here, and here.

The WorldNetDaily ran a story tonight about an MSNBC online poll. The poll shows that 94% of the respondents voted yes when asked if they thought that President Bush misled the nation in order to go to war in Iraq.

The WorldNetDaily did not show reference to the fine print clearly posted on the survey with a link to more detailed information on the inaccuracies of online voluntary polling. MSNBC News tells About our Live Votes and surveys right at the bottom of the survey results.

Who in the heck is up watching MSNBC this time of the night anyway? WorldNetDaily reported approximately 6,000 responses to the poll at 10:05PM ET. This posting was put together three hours later and the count was up by another 10,000 to over 16,000 voters. At this hour most of the nation is asleep except for me and at least a few thousand folks on the West Coast watching MSNBC while surfing. That said, I can see that this poll could be accurate given the predominately liberal West Coast. That is considering that there are probably not more than 960 (6% of 16K) Bush supporters on the West Coast anyway. Of course I am joking.

All joking aside, I was beginning to trust some of the WorldNetDaily content. After all they do say in their mission statement which is quoted on their about page that they are, “…a guardian of liberty, an exponent of truth and justice, an uncompromising disseminator of news.” It looks like they are at least compromising a little bit of the truth by not giving the whole truth in that this survey is very likely to be inaccurate. The MSNBC poll and survey disclaimer page uses an example of a poll taken on the subject of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal where there was a 40% difference when compared to another poll on the same subject.

The WorldNetDaily story can be found here.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was the guest speaker at Santa Monica Community College yesterday where the audience included some very rude protestors. The college is reported to primarily enroll lower income students and has recently raised tuition due to budget cuts under Gov. Schwarzenegger’s short time in office. The governor is also pushing for a special election for a ballot that would give some unions the short end of the stick if it passes.

The speech yesterday was not well received by some in the audience including some of the faculty. There were some very rude gestures from some members of the audience holding up signs and booing as the governor spoke.

This type of activity from those who disagree with Gov. Schwarzenegger was done in poor taste in the wrong forum. This was a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the graduates. This was not a time to grind an ax over political disagreements.

These bully tactics from those opposing Gov. Schwarzenegger will not gain respect from conservatives. If they can’t come up with a better answer to complex problems they resort to bashing those who do have a plan. Governor Schwarzenegger is doing what he thinks is best for the state of California. Those who believe his ideas are wrong should gather their friends and visit the polls on November 8th. These tactics of booing and protesting will not gain the respect of people who are looking for answers. What will gain their respect is another good idea.

Well, is it really a hot seat? Sen. Lindsay Graham(R) is the senior of two fairly junior senators from my home state of South Carolina. There are reports floating around about the fallout of Sen. Graham’s involvement in the recent compromise to get judicial nominees confirmed.

The GOP Bloggers’ Mark Noonam published a story here about “The Wages of Compromise” where he quotes the AP as making it sound like S.C. republicans are ready to replace Graham in the next election. Well, this is no more than the MSM trying to make you think that a good republican senator is straying to the left. I do not believe that for a second. I do believe that the recent compromise was not the best thing that has happened for conservatives in Washington lately. That said, I am not upset enough about it to call the republican headquarters and whine like the AP story reports that other conservatives are doing. I know plenty of hard core republicans in S.C. and none have mentioned a movement against republican headquarters.

I think that Sen. Graham has to pick his battles and this is one that will ultimately be won by conservatives whether a big deal was cut or not. I believe Senator Graham is smart enough to realize that fact. The reality is that the war over judicial nominees will be won, but as much as I or any other conservative may not like it, this battle had to be sacrificed to get things rolling.

I do not know Senator Graham personally, but I know people that I trust who do know him. I believe he is much like Governor Mark Sanford. I look at both men as conservatives first and republicans second. Neither of these men has a problem holding someone’s feet to the fire no matter which side of the isle they sit on. I like this about both of them and I will vote for both of them again given what I have seen so far.

The political radio shows yesterday were filled with news from the Take Back America Conference where Howard Dean promoted what he thinks are the three big openings for the democrats to make a move. Two of his ideas were related to voting procedures and the other was on making pensions portable. You can here is from the horses mouth by playing a video at Take Back America 2005: The Conference for America’s Future. I have more thoughts on this pension portability idea and I will write more later on that.

I am not convinced that the democrats are doing anything but falling in a death spiral. How can they survive? Well, they can move a little closer to the moderates. The GOP Bloggers give a spill on The “Progressive” Dillema. The real dilemma is how quick can they replace Dean if they want a prayer of a chance in the 2008 election.

It is a good day when you can wake up and read about someone who has changed their way of thinking due to the observation of good deeds. There are plenty of good things going on around the world and people are noticing. There are also people who insist on tearing others down for their own gain no matter what the cost. The best philosophy in my opinion is to tell what you are going to do rather than to tell how badly others have done it.

I ran across some comments posted yesterday by Mark Tapscott. Mark comments on the Keith Thompson’s story that posted on yesterday’s San Francisco Times web site where Keith announces his departure form the liberal left.

On the other hand, yesterday was not without news from the left. The Washington Times ran a story on Howard Dean that ended with a quote that summarizes the view from the left. If the left can’t come up with a better idea then they will just have to make fun of the moral values of the Republicans in order to win the next election.

“The Schiavo case will probably be the turning point about our ability to make our case to Americans about the incredible invasiveness of Republicans when it comes to making personal, private decisions,” Mr. Dean said.

Mr. Dean….Excuse me Mr. Dean! The whole point of the Republican’s involvement in this case was to put the private decision in the hands of the family of this woman. This woman’s life was in the hands of a man who had deserted her for another woman. Terri Schiavo’s husband had a conflict of interest. He had no business making decisions for Terri after he left her for another woman. The personal decision belonged to her parents and not in the hands of her unfaithful husband. This seems to be a recurring theme for the Democratic Party. Let’s see, you are actually saying that you support those guys who can’t keep a marriage promise to the ones they are suppose to care for the most. I am glad I am not a Democrat.

The Quran is to the Muslims as the Bible is to Christians. Well, almost. The major difference is that most Christians would not run out in the street and start killing people if they heard from a magazine article that some foreign military officials were flushing pages from the Bible down the toilet. True or not the story was published. I have not read the story from Newsweek and I probably will not. Newsweek is something I read for comical entertainment while waiting to see a doctor. Others that I find amusing are parenting magazines that run the “let’s keep our children happy at any cost” stories. These magazines are great examples of I believe is a big problem in our country today. Too many people are worried too much about pleasing other people by telling them what they want to hear and they have stopped worrying about doing the right thing.

I listen to talk radio quite a bit. One of my favorite shows is the Glenn Beck Program. Glenn has folks respond to Newsweek’s recent incorrect story on the treatment of the Quran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Well, it may have been incorrect, or maybe not. There is a CNN story saying that the Red Cross Warned U.S. over Quran with no specific references to Quran mistreatment.

The bottom line is that the Quran probably is mistreated at times. There are people in the US military and other government agencies that break the rules. You can make all the policies you want on how the Quran should be handled, but that does not guarantee that all people will follow these rules and polices. That should not be news to anyone.

There are wackos wearing uniforms in our military. Why do you think they have two man control on nuclear weapons? I worked on nukes for over five years in the Air Force. No single person was ever allowed access to missile silos. That is because the military knows that there are wackos that might take advantage of the opportunity if given unmonitored access to a nuclear missile silo.

I agree with the former Marine who called into the Glenn Beck Program on Monday. He said that he went through interrogation training in the military. He was kept from urinating for a long period of time before his trainers took him and other trainees to a pit. The bottom of that pit was covered by an American flag. The trainees urinated on the flag. They were able to do so because they viewed the flag in that pit as a piece of cloth. The flag has a meaning, but it is just a colored piece of cloth. They were not disgracing their country by what they did. I do not like to see the flag burned or even touch the ground, but I am not going to spill my guts to the enemy because the flag was defaced or destroyed.

I feel similar about the Bible. It is a book. It is ink and paper. Pressing a bunch of trees into paper and plastering ink on the pages does not make that paper sacred. Heck, the Bible in on the Internet. Does that make the Internet sacred? NO! What it represents is sacred, but the book itself is not. I know people that would argue with me on this one. I was raised to respect the Bible. I was taught not to put other things on top of the Bible. I still practice these beliefs as much as possible. I would not spill secrets as a result of the enemy flushing it down the toilet. The Muslims might spill their secrets as a result of the Quran being flushed. They don’t think like us.

The problem is that Muslims do not view things the way Christians do. We have a pastor at our church that has immediate family members who are Muslims. He says that Muslims take care of you if they like you and the will kill you if they hate you.

I am sure that Newsweek would not have run this story if they thought it would cause riots that would kill people. I am not sure that the riots were solely in response to the Newsweek report. For all I know this may be a case of my unconfirmed story is bigger than yours. The kansascity.com story did not cause riots. These riots would have happened for some other reason if it were not for this Newsweek story.

Weather the Quran was flushed, burned, or chewed by a wacko military member or a legitimate interrogator does not matter. I believe that it is entirely possible that it did happen at some point. I would even support flushing a book if it were effective at extracting information from the terrorist captives that can save American lives no matter what is written on the pages of the book. Muslims Riot Over Spelling of ‘Quran’ in U.S. Media indicates that the reason for the riots may not be because of the flushing of the Quran, but because of the spelling of the word Quran.

Other interesting views from:

Patrick Ruffini - A Test for Liberals
Conservative Outpost - Newsweek lied…people died
Right Wing News - The Newsweek “Qu�ran In The Toilet” Fiasco? It’s Just Another Karl Rove Conspiracy!
Black Five - Haven’t Read Newsweek Since May 26th, 2003