We Win, They Lose
The Wit and Wisdom of Three Guys Named Brent, Mark and Mike
Monday, January 28, 2008
Interesting Article?
This abstract looks pretty interesting.
Title: The Religion Clauses and the “Really New” Federalism
President Hinckley has Died
What a great man. He will be missed.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
This is unbelievable...
I was in Detroit for an arbitration the other day, and of course received my free hotel copy of USA Today. It carried an article from the Associated Press, by a reporter named Bradley Brooks. The article told a story of how three Iraqi soldiers sacrificed their own lives, and probably saved many others, by throwing themselves on a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest. True courage and self-sacrifice, that. Very admirable.
What is not so admirable is the AP's insistence (still) on referring to terrorists in Iraq as "insurgents." This was much commented on long ago, when the media first adopted the term, and has mostly passed into the realm of those things we all just ignore now. But in this instance, the term stood out. Check out this quote from the article:
Sortly before the bomber struck the Army Day festivities, about two dozen Iraqi soldiers demonstrated for unity in Iraq. The troops, their AK-47 rifles raised in the air, chanted pro-army slogans and a common anti-insurgent taunt: "Where are the terrorists today?"
These soldiers must be idiots. Don't they know that their slogan (being "anti-insurgent") is incorrect? Why is such an incorrect slogan so "common"? It should be "Where are the insurgents today?"
Boy, you would have thought the AP had made that clear by now...
On the other hand, perhaps the AP has got it wrong. It seems the Iraqis believe the so-called "insurgents" are more properly labeled as terrorists. The question is, why doesn't the AP?
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Key Moment in Last Night's Debate (For Me)
SEN. MCCAIN: -- have sued -- have sued the pharmaceutical companies because of overcharging of millions of dollars of Medicaid costs to their patients. How should that -- how could that happen? How could pharmaceutical companies be able to cover up the cost to the point where nobody knows? Why shouldn't we be able to reimport drugs from Canada? It's because of the power of the pharmaceutical companies. And we should have people -- pharmaceutical companies competing to take care of our Medicare and Medicaid patients.
MR. : Okay, don't leave me.
MR. ROMNEY: Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys. I --
SEN. MCCAIN: Well, they are.
MR. ROMNEY: No, actually they're trying to create products to make us well and make us better, and they're doing the work of the free market. And are there excesses? I'm sure there are, and we should go after excesses. But they're an important industry to this country.
What does McCain mean, "well, they are"? What an absolute moron. He sounds like a Democrat, ripping into businesses that are creating jobs.
Geez...
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Two articles on abortion...
the first declares that "abortion isn't a religious issue," as if that declaration can be made - who says? If someone believes it a part of their religion to oppose (or support) abortion, why can't it be a religious issue for that person? How can anyone declare otherwise? But my main point in linking to the article is to show you how poorly a very famous intellectual can argue his case. Gary Wills comes across like a high schooler in a debate class.
The second article says that abortion is a non issue. I don't have time to comment on it, just wanted to link.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
That's a good question...
Another reason to go see Bella - the producer. From Lifenews.com comes this:
When a movie that promotes morality and decency succeeds at the box office, Hollywood's elite critics squirm in their seats and trash the film with the hope of denying further success. For Sean Wolfington, the producer of Bella, that's what's happening again with a film that has garnered wide acclaim from pro-life advocates.
Bella opened to a limited national release in just 31 cities and 165 theaters with the hope of strong ticket sales and a larger national audience.
The movie succeeded beyond the major players expectations -- it had the second-highest per-theater sales last weekend as it took in $1.3 million and about $8,000 per venue.
"Bella ranked number two in box office sales, second only to Saw IV, yet some elitist critics are attacking Bella for its positive portrayal of life, family, and friendship -- calling it 'unrealistic and cliche,'" Wolfington told Lifenews.com in an email.
Wolfington lamented the lavish attention given to another film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a flick about two men who kill their parents. Critics have hailed it as a "realistic portrayal of the human condition."
At the same time, one critic went after Bella saying, "Ends like a TV show, and everyone has learned a neat little lesson. Phooey."
That leaves Wolfington questioning the entire premise behind the movie business.
"Why are they against people learning a lesson? Why are they against people being inspired? Why don't they want to see humanity portrayed in a positive light?" he asks.
"I do not know the answer to these questions but we hope to light a candle rather than to curse the darkness," Wolfington said.
He said the fact that 92 percent of the critics gave Before the Devil a nearly unanimous thumbs up and that 64 percent gave Bella a thumbs down goes against his entire principle behind making movies.
"I got into the movie business after finding out that the Columbine massacre was inspired by a film the murderers watched over and over, 'Natural Born Killers,' which got rave reviews when it came out," Wolfington said.
Go see it - take a friend.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Bella opens
Bella opened in select theatres last night, I will try to see it tonight. You should do the same.
Reminds me of OJ's search for the "real killer..."
Don't know how much any of you have followed the sorry Scott Beauchamp affair, but here's the latest Powerline installment on the mess. It documents the New Republic's latest "update" on their diligent search to corroborate their story slandering our troops. Not impressed.
UPDATE: Read this from Confederate Yankee.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Constitution Day
Not that you'll see any mention of it in the mainstream press, but today is the anniversary of the day on which the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution and sent it to the Congress of the Confederation, and the Convention officially adjourned. I found this piece, which ends:
When the Constitutional Convention assembled on the morning of September 17, 1787, the completed document was read aloud to the delegates for one last time. Thereupon Benjamin Franklin, the eighty-one-year-old patriarch of the group, rose to speak. He declared his support for the new Constitution—"with all its faults, if they are such"—because he thought a new government was necessary for the young nation. Franklin continued:
I doubt too whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies. . . . Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.
As the delegates came forward, one at a time, to sign their names to the final document, Madison recorded Franklin's final comment, just before the Constitutional Convention was dissolved. Referring to the sun painted on the back of Washington's chair, Franklin said that he had
often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.
"The business being thus closed," George Washington recorded in his private diary, the delegates proceeded to City Tavern, where they
dined together and took a cordial leave of each other; after which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed. . . .
Steyn Gets It
Read Mark Steyn's article, "Survival Instinct Slippage." As always, hilarious, and dead on. The key graph:
Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and 20s? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick cultural relativism nothing is any better or any worse than anything else. If people are "mean and nasty" to us, it's only because we didn't sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them. In such a world a certain percentage of the youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.
Another good piece, making somewhat the same point is this one, by Thomas Krannawitter:
The keystone of multiculturalism is the hypothesis that what ordinary people believe is "true" is nothing but their own cultural prejudice. The real test of multicultural education is whether one has freed one's mind from the trappings of one's culture—especially if one's culture happens to be, like American culture, more powerful and prosperous than others. Celebrating foreign cultures and rejecting America are two sides of the same multicultural coin; it is the way American multiculturalists demonstrate their own multicultural sophistication to each other. From their perspective, the most anti-American Americans are the most educated because they are the most multicultural Americans.
Multiculturalists fail to understand, however, that America is more than mere culture or tradition. America's foundation is much firmer: the self-evident truth that every human being possesses equal rights by nature, the very premise of constitutional government by consent and the free society the multiculturalist enjoys. An American multiculturalist might woo and wow fellow multiculturalists by denouncing America- [Professor Ward] Churchill, for example, might besmirch fallen Americans as "little Eichmanns"—but he dares to speak that way only in the free U. S., where he quickly ducks for cover under the Constitution's protection of free speech.
