Out of office message

The Great El-ahrairah will be out of the office for the next 10 days. In my absence, the Cap'n will be filling in as resident John Kerry basher.

Kerry's four points of surrender

John "War Hero" Kerry has outlined his four points for surrendering US foreign policy and national security to the French. They are:

- New alliances with foreign countries;

We are already a part of NATO, so I guess that means that he wants the US to join the EU so that both the French and the Germans can have veto power over our national security and economy.

- An updated military to meet terrorist threats;

When he was in the Senate, he voted regularly against the weapon systems that were used last year to destroy Saddam Hussein. Now he wants to update the military to undo the years of damge that he did to the military. Maybe he should be blamed for Abu Ghraib.

- The use of diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and "the appeal of our values and ideas" to keep the country safe;

This idea comes straight from the Barney School of Diplomacy ("I love you, you love me"). Throughout history, diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and "the appeal of our values and ideas" have done nothing to prevent wars. What prevents wars is the threat of total and utter destruction being visited on the heads of the attacking parties. All during the Cold War, what kept the US safe was our often articulated willingness to "go nuke" with the Soviet Union if they should have attacked Western Europe. Diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and "the appeal of our values and ideas" did nothing to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was the might of the US war machine.

- Freedom from dependence on oil from the Middle East.

To be free from Middle East Oil, where is John the War Hero going to go to replace the oil that we are currently consuming? Conservation? That only works to a point, but we will still need to replace all those barrels of Middle Eastern Oil. Can you say Alaska? Oops, Alaska is off-limits to the robber-baron oil companies, ergo, I guess we will still be buying our oil from the Middle East.

As always, John the War Hero offers nice sound bites, but nothing substantial. He wants to "talk the talk", but he can't "walk the walk". Every time he opens his mouth just shows what a train wreck he would be as president. He could even be worse than the biggest idiot of our time, Jimmy Cah-tah. Remember, if you love the US and want the US to stay free, vote for President Bush. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for the destruction of the United States.

Saruman has found a Wormtongue

Former Marine General and Pompous Windbag Anthony Zinni has convinced author Tom Clancy to join him in his quest to topple the Evil Donald Rumsfeld. Clancy reportedly now believes the war was a mistake, and blames it on (who else) the Defense Department. Instapundit and others are concerned, and the Great Professor rhetorically asks if Bush can "afford to lose the Clancy fan vote".

Actually, Clancy is the one who should be worried. His fan base is made up mostly of men who have served in the military and who are far more patriotic than the general population (like myself and El-ahrairah). That includes many men who are currently on the ground in Iraq and who are far better informed about what is going on there than either Clancy or Zinni. The real question should be, "Can Clancy afford to associate with the anti-war crowd?" The answer is a resounding "NO".

And Clancy really should beware of hitching himself to Zinni, who clearly has a personal axe to grind. As the American Thinker points out, some of Zinni's statements about prominent Administration "neocons" have an uncomfortable whiff of anti-Semitism about them. Zinni believes toppling Saddam was not worth the price and that we are destined to fail. His fatalism contrasts starkly with the improving conditions in Iraq. Zinni's criticism is somewhat akin to a retired general taking Eisenhower to task for the high casualties of "Operation Overlord" just a few weeks before V-E day.

In my opinion, Clancy has spent far too much time with Pentagon insiders. He is so enamored with intrigue and the trappings of power that he has lost perspective of what is really important. I know this Clancy reader isn't going to buy his new book, and it's doubtful I'll buy any others. I have only a limited amount of spending money; I'm not going to waste it on pessimistic, politically-motivated screeds.

Can you say "Skanky Crack Ho"?

I knew you could.

Don't look for this latest incident to cause the clueless feminist harpies of the National Organization for Women to reassess their support for Ms. Rowland. And that's fine with me: If they want to have an insufferable, irresponsible trailer-trash druggie for their abortion poster girl, more power to them. They didn't really care about Ms. Rowland or her kids anyway; she was just a convenient source of publicity.

It was all about abortion. "Supporting women" was just a sound bite.

Al has come back from the dead

Former vice-president, Al Gore, who was thought to be dead from his performance during the 2000 election, has finally come back from the dead and showed that he still needs his Lithium.

The Great El-ahrairah only has to say that: The previous administration that Al Gore was a part of gave us the problems of Iraq, Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. For him to criticize the President now because he is trying to clean up the Clinton/Gore mess shows just how much of a hypocrite he actually is. If Clinton was more interested in chasing terrorists instead of chasing interns during his presidency, maybe Al Gore would have been elected instead of Bush, BUT, due to the antics of Clinton, Al Gore lost the election and the world and the US is better off for that. I shudder to think what would have been the US response to the attacks on 9/11 if Al Gore had been president. One thing is for sure, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda would still be in power in Afghanistan, Saddam would still be thumbing his nose at the UN and the Russians and French would still be getting kickbacks from the UN Oil-for-Fraud program since liberals don't have the "balls" to stand up for anything that doesn't involve gay marriage, abortion or blaming the US first.

A Local Boy Makes The Big Time

Waaayy back when Captain Holly was in college (mid 80's), I used to play pickup hockey on Friday nights at the old Hygiea Iceland rink in Salt Lake City. It was a cheaply built, smaller-than-regulation place with chain-link fencing instead of glass on the boards. You paid something like $4.00 for a couple of hours playing time (shows how desperate Utah hockey players were for ice time in those lean years).

I remember there was a skinny kid named Konowalchuk who, despite being only about 13 years old, could skate circles around everyone else on the ice. Well, the skinny kid has grown up and now plays for the Washington Capitals of the NHL. He was just named again to the US team roster for the World Cup of Hockey tournament this fall.

If you liked the 2002 Olympic Hockey tournament (the level and intensity of play, not the result) don't miss this year's World Cup of Hockey. The US is the defending champion (having won the last tournament in 1996) and every team from the eight participating countries (with the exception of Germany) is loaded with NHL talent. These are the best players in the world, and it will be the best hockey you will ever see. Don't miss it!

15 kids, is that all?

Here's something that made the news. A woman in Ar-Kan-Sas has given birth to her fifteenth child. I guess this is a big deal in the rest of the US, but in Utah, it's old news. Utah is known for it's large families. In fact, if memory serves me right, when I was growing up, there was a family a few blocks over from us who had 18 kids. Hey, Cap'n, did I get that number right?

See, nothing abnormal here.

According to Reuters by way of Yahoo!, families being "raised" by lesbian mothers is a growing phenomenon. The story goes on to describe the children as normal and well-adjusted with no social problems, etc., with the unspoken theme being that there should be no reason why two lesbians who love each other should not be allowed to marry, if not for them, at least "for the children". Interesting how since the children in question are, at this time, for all intents and purposes "normal", this should be proof that two women can raise a family just as equally, if not better, than a man and a woman.

Unfortunately, the people pushing this "utopian" version of life in a gay household fail to take into account one glaring problem, for children to grow and develope normally, they need both a mail and female presence in the home. Thanks to no-fault divorce and the federal government's welfare system, a generation of poor children grew up in homes without a male role model. The result were young men who had no respect for autority since there was none in the home and who turned to crime and drugs. Two lesbians raising children are not going to instill any more respect for authority in boys than one woman. No matter how many books written by childless psycologists say, without a strong male influence in the home to teach boys respect for authority, they will walk all over the mother or "mothers".

Here is another problem that lesbian parents have "conviently" forgotten. No matter how much they "think" that they know about men, they can never really teach a boy what he knows to be a man. It is ludicrous to believe as such, just like it would be for the Great El-ahrairah to think that he could answer every question that a daughter would have about becoming a woman. Since I was a 13-year old boy once (no, I wasn't a rabbit), I know exactly what questions my son has about life and can talk to him on a level that his mother can only dream about. Boys are also more physical and more aggressive. Women can be aggessive at times, but every day? When I went to see my son last month in France after not having seen him for 2 and 1/2 years, do you think we sat around and talked about our feelings? No, we picked up where we left off, exchanging "manly" arm slugs for hours, laughing at stupid jokes that only men can understand and generally just goofing off like two men without a female influence.

For centuries, the best way to raise children is with the influence of a mother and a father. Humans have been having children for millenia. If there had been a better way to raise children, don't you think we would have found it before now? I'm an engineer and one of my rules of thumb is "Don't fix what ain't broken". Saddling children with the equivalent of a divorced home because two women want to play house is stupid and will only hurt the children in the long run and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

Fighting the good fight

Some people believe that there are ulterior motives behind Mitt Romney's stand against gay marriage in Massachusetts, like a run for the Senate or the Presidency, etc. These people may be right, BUT, his stand could be for the simple reason that gay marriage is wrong.

I have said this before but, I will restate it. There are times when an elected offcial needs to reach into his pocket and find "a pair", stand up and say, "<Insert social ill du jour here> is wrong and I will do everything that is in my power to combat <insert favorite social ill here>" even if the polls show that the majority of your constituents are against you. Mitt knows what is right and what is wrong. Gay marriage is wrong, plain and simple, and he has taken a stand against it. It may cost him the guv-nah-ship in Massachusetts, but in the long run, what is more important, kissing up to the Kerrys/Kennedys of the world so that they can backstab you later, or standing up for decency and what is right. I applaud what Mitt is doing in Massachusetts and if he becomes the point man in the debate over same-sex marriage, well, like we say in Utah, he was chosen by the Lord for this very task.

And I always thought it was a curse.

Gay marriage supporters are really getting desperate to find something good in this debate. Now we are being told that divorce is a benefit of gay marriage. The next thing that I'll read is that AIDS is a "benefit" of sexual relations. To use the "Oprah"-ized language of today, since I'm a "divorce survivor", I never knew that divorce was considered a benefit of marriage. In fact, I always thought that it was one of the worse things to happen in marriage, especially when children are involved, but, I guess I was mistaken. See, the gay marriage debate is good for something. It has taught me that getting bent over and being treated like scum in divorce court is something that every husband/father/man can look forward to and darn it, wouldn't you know, I missed out on the party when it happened to me. Rats!

There is no joy in Moud-ville

Unfortunately for the French, their rugby fortunes since the SIx Nations Cup have gone downhill. First Montferrand, the rugby club from Clermont-Ferrand lost the European Challenge Cup to London Harlequins and now Toulouse, last year's European Rugby Cup winners, lost their title to London Wasps. For the un-inititated, the European Rugby Cup is the rugby version of soccer's Champion's League where the best rugby teams in Europe compete. The European Challenge Cup is the rugby version of soccer's UEFA Cup, i.e., a contest where the teams that were not good enough for the European Rugby Cup still get to play against each other for something. Il n'y a pas de joie a Moud-Ville.

Lord Stanley's Cup

I just got done watching the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Phith-a-delphia Flyers 2-1 to win game seven and go to the Stanley Cup finals against Calgary. I was kind of pulling for Philly to win since spent about 4 to 5 months of one year out there and watched a lot of Flyers games during the Bobby Clarke era in the old Spectrum ("The Home of Rocky"). But, hey, Tampa Bay has the current NHL "Old Fart", Dave Andreychuk, on their team, so, I don't know who the Cap'n will root for, but I'll predict that Tampa Bay will beat Calgary in six games.

Life imitates art?

It seems that US drivers are not the only ones who "can't drive 55". The Italian police have decided to that is it time to bring out the "big guns" in the never-ending struggle of speeder vs. law enforcement and have taken delivery of a Lamborghini to help them patrol the highways of Italy. The car will be used on the 400 kms Salerno-to-Reggio Calabria highway in southern Italy. Having driven over this stretch of "highway", I can tell you that just like out west in the US, it's a long, long, boring stretch of road, intermittently broken up by endless roadwork which just beckons you to "put the hammer down" and see just how fast your Fiat Panda is capable of driving. Kind of like driving from Provo, Utah to Los Angeles in a Ford Festiva. Anyway, now that there will be this Lamborghini patrolling the roads, a la Sheriff J.W. Pepper from "Live and Let Die", driving from Reggio to Salerno won't be all that boring with the possibility that you could actually get a glimpse of this car as it blows you off the road at 192 mph. Wow! Now if they would only mount machine guns under the headlights and rocket launchers in the back. That would be really cool!!!!

What else would you expect?

This just in from the Department of Big Surprises. Michael Moore's "documentary", Farenheit 911, won the prize for best picture at the Cannes Film Festival. Many, many months back when I first learned that he would be showing this film at Cannes, I said that it would win the best film award, not because it was the best film, but because it was critical of President Bush. This film could have been a cheesy 8-mm home movie of stick figures done by a high-school audio-video class and it still would have movie critics gushing over it as "ground-breaking cinematic work". If Bush wins re-election, the chances will be 100% that we will see this film in the Oscars. If Kerry wins the election, I believe there is an 80% chance if only because the liberal anti-christ, George Bush, will no longer be in office and the Bush-haters in the world will need something else as their object of loathing. As for if it will win the Oscar, going on past experience, I believe it will be a shoo-in for the Oscar in the documentary category since there isn't a category for trash masquerading as movies. Remember, you heard it here first.

Comments

Bigwig, Cap'n Holly et al,

The Great EL-ahrairah went into the setting for the blog and changed the comments from "Registered Users Only" to "Anyone". It seems to work since I was able to anonymously generate a comment for the Cap'n last post (I didn't post it. I thought a blog entry would be better). So, all you n'er-do-wells in the big Internet Uni-farce can start posting comments about how I'm much more intelligent than my gun-totin' brother.

P.S. And don't make fun of my publik skool ed-u-kay-shun. It wuz/iz the bestest ed-u-kay-shun that moeny kun bye.

Comments on comments

In the process of making a comment correcting El-ahrairah's habitually-poor grammar and spelling, I became aware of the fact that one must sign in before leaving comments.

So that's the reason why no one is leaving comments! Here I was, thinking no one was reading, when the reality was they couldn't comment.

So, for you teeming masses out there who just can't wait to tell me I'm full of crap, I will find out how to get the comments opened up. Be patient.

Why do I oppose hate-crime laws?

This is why.

So in Seattle a person can legally be compelled to accept and celebrate homosexuality and gay marriage. It doesn't surprise me; stuff like this has been going on across the border in Canada for years. It was inevitable it would eventually diffuse southward and find a receptive audience among the closet totalitarians that run most large American cities.

What surprises me is the odd passivity of religious conservatives in the face of this blatant assault on religious freedom. Most simply shrug their shoulders, or solemnly intone that this is a sign of the "last days". Fighting back seems to be their last option, and even that they tend to do rather clumsily. It usually takes the form of complaining to their elected officials, most of whom could care less in non-election years, and couldn't muster the political courage to repeal such laws anyway (for some silly reason, most evangelicals still believe that the institutions of government and society are on their side).

No, there's a more effective option. Now that Seattle has decreed businesses cannot discriminate even if it is against their beliefs, every evangelical congregation in NW Washington should find a copy of the Seattle "pink pages", pick out a gay-oriented printer, go in groups of two or three, and request the printer make posters that say "Jesus is Lord" or "Homosexuality is an abomination". When the printer refuses, file a complaint with the city. After dealing with several hundred of such complaints, city officials might be more amenable to changing the ordinance.

Of course it would not be pretty. And it might require years of litigation to eliminate the ordinance. But it would be far more effective than doing nothing, which is what most religious conservatives are wont to do when facing attack from the gay Left.

No more money for homeless gays

Gay groups are condemning an FDA ruling that will prevent gay men from making anonymous "donations" at the local sperm bank. The FDA states that these rules are extensions of procedures currently in place for the donation of blood and organs, BUT, of course, the gay lobby is crying "Foul" (what else would you expect?). They blame this on AIDS and President Bush's unrelenting "war on homosexuals" (I thought he was at war with terrorists), but since "gay sex" is not what the human body was naturally built for, gays are subsceptable to other very nasty forms of sexually transmitted diseases. If you were a woman who was going to be impregnated by a donor sperm at a sperm bank, wouldn't you want to make sure that the donor was generally free from disease? I would hope so! So, yet another example how the selfish desires of a few place the health and welfare of the many at risk.

And they want to turn Iraq over to these guys?

Here's something to think about when the "Turn Iraq over to the UN" crowd opens their mouths: In April 2003, an internal UN audit already was ringing the alarm bells of fraud in the Iraq Oil-for-Fraud, oops, -Food program. Of course, Kofi the Appeaser says that he never saw the report (hard to see anything with your head up Jacques Chirac's rear-end). If you think about what he is saying, either he is completely incompetent (a distinct possiblity given the reputation of the UN) or he is lying (which he probably is). Anyway, the Kofi has put together an independent panel headed by Paul Volker to look into this problem (and find some way to blame it on Bush). Can you say "whitewash"? So, whenever John "Surrender to Iraq" Kerry talks about the UN taking over in Iraq, I guess he wants in on his "cut" of the action.

Quit yer bitchin'!

I already blogged on this before when all the posts for the Warren at the old site where lost, but I feel the need to do it again. Gas prices in Utah have hit $2.00 per gallon. The only thing I have to say is "Quit yer bitchin'!" Over here in the land of Euro-weenie socialism, unleaded gas runs around 1.15 Euro per liter. For all the non-metric types out there, a liter is equal to about a quart, ergo, four liters is approximately equal to one gallon. With unleaded gas running around 1.15 Euros per liter, a gallon of unlead over here costs 4.60 Euros. With the dollar sitting at about $1.20 per Euro, that means that a gallon of unleaded over here costs a whopping $5.52 per gallon. So, until a gallon of unleaded hits anywhere near to what I pay over here, don't come whining to me.

French trip report

The Great El-ahrairah is back again from yet another invasion of France. We wanted to go to London from Calais to Dover, but after seeing the ferry prices and how long it would take, we decided to drive down the coast from Calais to Le Havre and eventually ended up in Normandy. Since the 60th anniversary of the invasion is coming up, the veterans are already starting their pilgrimages. We went to Pegasus Bridge and to the American Cemetery in Normandy and drove along the Sword (British) and Juno (Canadian) invasion beaches.

One of the things that struck me was that 60 years ago, the Canadian military was large enough that they could field a whole Canadian Army. For the uninitiated, an army is composed of from 2 to 3 army corps. Each corps has 2 to 3 divisions, each division has 2 to 3 regiments, each regiment has 2 to 3 battalions, each battalion has 3 companies, etc. In all, an army had about 100,000 troops. Today, the Canadian military has problems even keeping a battalion deployed, so we see what 60 years of pacifism has done.

At Pegasus Bridge, there was a group of English tourists that we were able to tag along with and learn a bit more about why the Brits decided to take the bridge. The bridge is actually a drawbridge and taking it prevented the Germans from attacking the British flank.

At the American Normandy Cemetery, there were bus-loads of French school children walking around trying to practice their English by saying “Hello, hello”, to any passerby that they happened to see. As such, we didn’t stay all that long since it didn’t seem that much like a cemetery and more like Disneyland.

As I explained to my wife, the reason why I wanted to go back to the American Cemetery was because the men buried there would have been about the same age as my father if they had lived. They died so that I and countless generations of Americans could live in freedom. While I was there, I saw the cover of a French news magazine lamenting about how the qualities that pushed Americans to liberate France 60 years ago have been trampled by President Bush. They “suggested” that President Bush should be “uninvited”. Again, it’s sad to see what 60 years of pacifism has done to the French. When I was a missionary in France, we would joke about how the mighty French war machine would hold out for three days and then give up to save the country’s art treasures. It’s too bad that a county’s art treasures are more important than freedom.

Other than that, I haven’t been following what has been going on over in Iraq. I did hear about the roadside bomb that had nerve gas in it. Of course, no much has been said about this in the media, but then what would you expect. This would have proved President Bush right, so this will be conveniently forgotten.

Gay marriage also did happen in Massachusetts. The count down is on as to when Utah will be forced to accept these “sham” marriages. I have already given my thoughts on this in the previous warren. I guess we’ll see how this shakes out.

Changing warrens

I, the Great El-ahairah, have moved from my previous warren to this new warren and find it adequate for my needs. I'll have the Cap'n round up some n'er-do-wells and bring my bagage in.

What are they not saying?

Just finished skimming the websites for Fox News, CNN, CBS, ABC, and MSNBC. They have alot of stories about the conviction of the Abu Ghraib guard and General Abizaid's testimony. Most are also screaming about a US helicopter attack on an Iraqi wedding party, even though it's not clear yet exactly what happened.

But nary a peep about the recent WMD find. Strange.

Bias in the media? Naaaahhh, couldn't be this obvious, could it?

Could it?

Join the Boycott!!

Kim du Toit has yet another example of Heartless Corporate America valuing profits above their employee's lives. In this case, a deliveryman who successfully defended himself against a would-be robber was fired by Pizza Hut for not handing over the money and begging for mercy, as specified by company policy.

Of course, this means war, and Kim du Toit is organizing a boycott of Pizza Hut. Captain Holly is more than willing to join in, since I never liked Pizza Hut anyway, and I certainly won't go there now. And I'll do my part and spread the word to my reader(s).*

Mr. du Toit has a link to Pizza Hut's corporate offices. Make sure you leave a polite but firm message telling them you disagree with their policy and that you will get your pizza from Domino's or *shudder* Little Caesar's until it changes.

*Okay, okay, I know Kim du Toit averages more hits in 5 minutes than I do in a day, but hey, I can at least pretend I'm helping.

The new Warren is comfortable and dry

After checking out the new place, I have to say I like it. Blogger is alot more simple and user-friendly than Moveable Type. And no shining wires anywhere.

That said, I cannot help but wonder what happened to my friend Blackavar and my brother El-ahrairah. They do not seem to have made the transition. Perhaps some elil picked them off. Perhaps this was just a scheme by Bigwig to break up the Warren. Or perhaps it's like a bad '50s SciFi movie, where I'm posting in an alternate dimension, and everyone else is wondering where I went, and they can all see me, but I can't see them.

Of course, I can get away with posting silly tripe like this because I can now see how many page views each post has had. My tally so far: 0

To quote Pink Floyd: Is there anybody out there?

Just thinking it over

Long-time readers of Captain Holly (all two of you, and you know who you are) are no doubt wondering when the Cap'n will provide his insight on the recent marriages in Massachusetts.

Have no fear, I am not ignoring them. But I'm not sure what I can say now that I haven't already said before. And this issue certainly isn't going away before the election, as John Kerry will find out, much to his regret.

There will be plenty of blogging on my part on this issue in the coming months. So enjoy the respite.

And the Darwin Award winner is:

This kid.

I'm not terribly surprised that he's a junior in a publik hi-skool. Not that teenagers in private schools are any more responsible, but I would expect them to understand chemistry much better. If the publik skools teach chemistry the way they teach reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, then it's a wonder more kids don't try this every year.

Let the goalpost-moving begin!

I obviously have set up the new account successfully.

In what is the biggest news of the day, real, live, WMDs were found in Iraq. Not only were they found, they were used against US troops.

But it won't make any difference to the Left's fanatical BusHitler crowd. They weren't convinced when every intelligence agency said Saddam had WMDs, they weren't convinced when Iraqi defectors provided evidence of WMD programs, they weren't convinced when David Kay found proof of Iraqi defiance of UN resolutions.

They won't be convinced by actual WMD, either.

Don't believe me? Go to Democratic Underground, and just read the comments.

The truth is just too inconvenient. (link via Smash)