It was the Joooooooooos!

Cynthia McKinney and her goons blame the usual suspects for her loss yesterday. 

OTB has the video from Hannity and Colmes here

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I HOPE this means what I think it means!

Reuters: 1 hour, 25 minutes ago

Peaceful succession under way in Cuba: official

Cuba has set in motion a peaceful political succession, dashing U.S. government expectations of chaos following Fidel Castro's hand-over of power to his brother, a leading Cuban intellectual and government member, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, said on Monday.

"They (the U.S. government) had not expected that a peaceful succession was possible. A peaceful succession has taken place in Cuba," Fernandez Retamar said at a news conference.

The writer and member of the Council of State was the first government official to say a succession under Raul Castro was in motion after Fidel Castro relinquished power a week ago following gastric surgery.

Stay tuned.  As always, Babalu has the latest.
h/t Smash

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Is today the day?

Late to the story as usual, but evidently cagastro has passed the keys to Cuba "temporarily" to his brother Raul....

Miami is in an uproar (live streaming video at the link) at the possibility that the chicken lollipop is about to shuffle off the mortal coil.

Val has a good round-up of the details

As usual, check with Babalu for the latest on this story.

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Hey Kofi, WTF?

The lovely Phoenix brings it to Kofi Annan.  Both Barrels.

"Seriously, man! Did you smoke your breakfast, or are you seriously this stupid? It seems to me a foolish thing to do to set up your outpost so close to an outpost of one of the engaged parties. More specifically, it seems beyond foolish - stupid really - to set up that outpost nearer to the likely loser in the fight in terms of technological bang-for-the-buck, if you know what I mean."

There's even more.  Read the whole thing.

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el 26 de julio

On 26 de julio, 1953, fidel cagastro and his band of commie idiots led a raid on one of the largest military garrisons in Cuba.

Nearly everything went wrong, the rebels were out numbered, part of the weapons caravan got lost on the way, and more than 2/3 of the rebels were killed or captured.  Several of them ran for it, including the original coward, cagastro.

Oh, and BTW, he WAS captured.  Inept pig that he is, he was found in the jungle shortly afterward and arrested.  cagastro was in fact sentenced to death, but in a head-scratching moment worthy of Dr. Evil and his foul-tempered sea bass, Batista pardoned him in 1955.

Kinda ironic that such a stunning defeat serves as the namesake of the movement that brought cagastro to power, no?

So today is the day that Cuba celebrates her "glorious" revolucion.  The banners and music displayed today continuing the web of lies that turned a humbling defeat into the rallying point of a damned revolution.  Because the truth, in Cuba, depends on your point of view.

For the Cubanos, a proud and once prosperous people, it is a day to pretend their want and hunger are absent, and for cagastro and his cronies, a day to ignore the facade crumbling around them.

For more info on the battle of 26 julio , go here.

For more thoughts on what this day means to Cubans, both in Cuba and elsewhere, try any of these wonderful Cuban bloggers:
El Conductor
Ziva
Marc
Alfredo
Killcastro
Val Prieto

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Quote of the Year!

"See, the irony is what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive),"-- President Bush in what he thought were private remarks to UK PM Tony Blair

Did I mention how much I love our President? and Mr. Blair, too?

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More News you can Use

A fantastic damn fisking by Ken of it comes in pints? regarding estate taxes and the lunatics who think that they are both useful and only for the rich.

Believe me, he knows a lot about the subject, from personal experience.....

Here's Ken's money shot....
After laying out the current law regarding estate exemptions through 2010, he says:

"this piece never mentions that in 2011 the exemption goes back to $1 million (and the top tax rate goes to 50%). Think about how much land prices (both home and farm) have increased in recent years. Think about how many people have IRAs and similar vehicles. How many of those estates will be valued at over $1 million five years from now? A lot of people who don't consider themselves rich are going to be very unpleasantly surprised." (emphasis mine)

Even if you don't know much about the Estate Tax issue, drop by and read what Ken has to say. It's quite an education.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 03:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Gee, what a surprise.

You Are Most Like George W. Bush

So what if you're not exactly popular? You still rule the free world. And while you may be quite conservative now, you knew how to party back in the day!

h/t Ronnie RayGun

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Cue Marilyn Monroe....

...but only because I think he'd get a kick out of a sexy, busty blonde cooing Happy Birthday, Mister President....

July 6 is President Bush's 60th birthday, and I wish him many more.

I am truly thankful that W is our President.  The Anchoress explains it better than I ever could.

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Irony of the day

Lifted wholesale from Insty:

AL GORE WON'T ENDORSE JOE LIEBERMAN. Comment: "I guess Lieberman would have been good enough to run the government if something bad happened to Gore. But he's not obviously the best qualified to be the junior senator from Connecticut, even though he had the same job when Gore tapped him in 2000."

Wow.  Either being POTUS has lower requirements than I thought, or Algore has just reinvented the internet...  Who needs Algore anyway?  I love Joe, and I'd vote for him in a heartbeat!

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Cluck off, Chickie!

Last week, the Dixie Chicks ruffled a few feathers when singer Natalie Maines dismissed her ENTIRE fan base, saying,

"I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith," she told Time. "We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

This week, she's back, and served up her other foot for another tasty meal:

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."--emphasis mine, ed.

No wonder the Clucks are having a hard time selling out arenas in places like Memphis, Indianapolis, and Fresno.  Yeah, their album debuted at #1, but anyone in the biz will tell you that album sales mean nothing to the artist.  They make all of their money touring.  Cancelling concerts is bad  news on the pocketbook.  Especially the new Louis Vuitton ones, right, Natalie?

All the snark aside, I'd like to remind Ms. Maines and her colleagues that the SINGLE, ONLY, UNIQUE, UNITARY, etc. reason that she has this soapbox, that she's made all the money in her bank account, that she can fly to France or the UK whenever she wants and spout off about this country is that she is a CITIZEN OF THE US.

Don't love your country, Natalie, it's ok.   Really, The rest of us could give a shit.  But don't tell us we're stupid for caring.  Don't tell us that you like your life and then spit in the face of those people who have died or sacrificed much so that you can live the way you do.

Why should people care about patriotism, Natalie?  Well, because patriotism created this country, it sacrificed to preserve out way of life, and continues to do so over and over again every day.  Patriotism is why you can stand on your soapbox and denounce the President.  Patriotism is why you speak English, not German or Japanese.  Patriotism provides you with the security to go about your business and raise your children as you see fit.

The truth is, see, that in the long run, it is the patriot whose contributions will matter.  The small effort of each individual to preserve and prolong the grand experiment in democracy started more than 200 years ago by another group of patriots whose motives were questioned by ignorant fools like you.  Your contributions, your songs, your rabble rousing, your chicken feet tatoos; they'll all be gone with the proverbial wind.  But this country, and the patriots who protect her, will still be here.

What was the most popular song/singer of 1776?  You don't know?  Well, in 2206 I can assure you the same answer will be spoken in response to "Who were the Dixie Chicks?"

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:05 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Spin it!

Two headlines, same story:

1) "Bush May Meet Vow To Halve The Deficit Three Years Early" --Investors Business Daily

2) "Bush Deficit Reduction Plan Falls Off-Schedule." -- Guess who (acc. to Insty, but I can't find the headline anywhere on their site anymore)

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I'm dreaming of a white Fitzmas.....

A holiday that will never be...

Suck it, conspiracy moonbats, Rove didn't break the law, and hence WILL NOT BE CHARGED in the CIA leak case.

Why on earth would the President want to bury good news about Rove under his trip to Baghdad?


The day just keeps getting better.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 02:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Did they or didn't they?

Much buzz in the b'sphere over whether or not Zarqawi may have been "assaulted" by US troops when they recovered his still-smoking, almost-dead carcass.

To paraphrase Bob Uecker's classic line from Major League, "Who gives a sh*t?  [he]'s gone."

Posted by: caltechgirl at 07:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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An Inconvenient Truth

Life's a bitch, War is Hell, and commitments are hard to keep.  We all know this, yet so many people believe that if we simply ignore these  truths, they might just go away.

As if

Cassandra of Villainous Company also nails it:

"If only we could go back to the good old days, when there was no news coming out of Iraq and we didn't have to confront the horror. When we could tell ourselves, even if it wasn't true, that our hands were clean.

I hope one of these smart people, who are so disturbed over our "failures" in Iraq and Afghanistan can tell me what they propose to do when we pull out? What do they think will happen? Why do they think a small minority of Iraqis are planting bombs and practicing terrorism against their fellow Muslims - innocent civilians - in order to prevent a democratic government from being formed?

The insurgents, too, long for the good old days. And right now, we are the only thing standing between them and their heart's desire. And that's an Inconvenient Truth we all too often forget when the media is parading an endless stream of sensationalized stories about Abu Ghuraib and Haditha before our eyes."

It's long, but well worth it. Read the whole thing!

Posted by: caltechgirl at 07:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Intellectual Left

In an essay looking at the vitriol directed by the moonbats at Jeff Goldstein, Ace nails the core reason why the left is so unhinged:

"The left, to a man, considers itself to be educated and enlightened. It matters not how little actual schooling a particlular leftist may have had, nor how unintelligent the person might be. They all consider themselves intellectuals of sorts. If they dropped out of college after one semester, they just think of themselves as autodidacts whose genius could not be stimulated by the ossified and bourgeois teaching of the academy....

This conceit, usually wholly undeserved, of practically every leftist in the world is what makes leftism so intoxicating for the intellectually insecure, and what makes leftists so easily led and manipulated. It's an attractive doctrine for those who wish to conceive of themselves as intellectual and brilliant, for it provides an instant short-cut to the equivalent of an MIT education. If you simply believe these things we tell you to believe, you are one of Us, one of the Intellectually Elite, one of the Cultural Vanguard. Just as giving oneself to Christ, and believing in His power, and accepting the need for and gift of His redemption, instantly makes one "saved" and enters one's name in the Book of the Heaven, so too does accepting leftist tropes and core beliefs make one one of the Secular Elect.

Now, the things the left wants you to believe are not easy to believe. It's hard to believe that, for example, taxing work and investment will not reduce work and investment (especially when one simultaneously believes that taxing the use of gasoline or other energy will reduce the use of gasoline or other energy). Nevertheless, while it may be difficult to believe these things, it's certainly easier to simply give in and believe these things than to, say, earn a Ph. D. in literary theory or semiotics or even something stupid like science or engineering.

So, if one wants to conceive of oneself as an intellectual, one can either actually become an intellectual -- which frankly takes a lot of work and reading, much of it terribly boring -- or one can simply believe what Noam Chomsky tells one....

Leftism, and liberalism, and progressivism, and etc-ism. are not merely simple politics for most of these people. Their politics to them are a core part of their identity, and, more importantly, a central support propping up their egos. They are enlightened because they believe these things; someone who does not believe these things, and yet who, superficially at least, appears to be about as smart as they might be, represents a threat to their egos. The foundation upon which a crucial structure of their sense of self-worth is undermined if they discover that there may be people who can pass as normal and intelligent and yet do not believe as they do.

If one is smart, then one believes in progressivism.

If one believes in progressivism, then one is smart.

Those are the two assumptions that prop up their sense of self worth, and they are refuted by examples of smart people who don't believe in progressivism.

And because there is a great deal of personal psychological investment in progressivism, they react intemperately to rejections of it. It's not merely a tax cut that's being debated; it's their very sense of importance that's being attacked. It's not merely gay marriage which is being argued against; it's their value as human beings that is being uncouthly denigrated."

Emphasis mine.  I couldn't just excerpt a few sentences...  Now, for that rant: more...

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Heil Ahmedinejad!

Sick. Just fucking sick.

h/t Jawa Howie

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Just an incubator?

New Federal guidlines ask health care professionals to treat all women capable of conceiving a baby as "pre-pregnant" from menarche through menopause.

"Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control."

All women, huh?

I have soooo many problems with this one:

First: We should encourage EVERYONE to be as healthy as possible.  Men and women alike.  FOR THEIR OWN WELL BEING.

Second:  I find this utterly demeaning.  As if the SOLE purpose of my body is to carry around my uterus and anything that ends up growing inside it.

Third, and related:  So, basically you're saying that if I choose not to have children or I can't have children, I should be preparing my body to have kids anyway?  That's insulting on so many levels I don't have room here to go into it.  I can just see some poor soul fighting infertility, finally resigning herself to being unable to bear children, and then being told by some twit doctor that she should take prenatal vites and avoid smoking for the sake of her potential children.....

h/t ilyka, who also uses a 4-letter word.

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How Moonbat Dipshits Get Elected...

From an email from CaltechMom (who broke her foot yesterday....)

Caution! These people Vote

A guy bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: "Free to good home. You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were too un-trusting of this deal. It looked to good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: "Fridge for sale $50". The next day someone stole it.
These people Vote!
===============================================================
While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was North because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, "Does the sun rise in the North?" When my brother explained that the sun rises in the East, (and has for sometime), she shook her head and said, "Oh, I don't keep up with that stuff"...
She ALSO votes!
===============================================================
I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, "The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." He responded, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, "Pacific."
He ALSO votes!
===============================================================
My colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one of the administrative assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the shore. She drove down in a convertible, but "didn't think she'd get sunburned because the car was moving".
She ALSO votes!
===============================================================
My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car. It's designed to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped. She keeps it in the trunk. .
My sister ALSO votes!
===============================================================
My friends and I were on a beer run and noticed that the cases were discounted 10%. Since it was a big party, we bought 2 cases. The cashier multiplied 2 times 10% and gave us a 20% discount.
He ALSO votes!
===============================================================
I was hanging out with a friend when we saw a woman with a nose ring attached to an earring by a chain. My friend said, "Wouldn't the chain rip out every time she turned her head?" I explained that a person's nose and ear remain the same distance apart no matter which way the head is turned.
My friend ALSO votes!
===============================================================
I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area. So I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. "Now," she asked me, "has your plane arrived yet?"
SHE ALSO votes!
===============================================================
To those who understand ~ No explanation is necessary.
For those who don't understand ~ No explanation is possible

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Hell Officially Frozen Over!

I agree with something said on Kos and Atrios....
From this article:

"Sitting in the oncology ward at Children's National Medical Center on Jan. 19, retired Adm. Joe Sestak and his wife, Susan, awaited the doctors' verdict about the condition of their 5-year-old daughter, Alexandra.

She had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last summer and given three to nine months to live. The Sestaks lived for four months in the ward. They watched as their daughter survived three surgeries, and as she endured chemotherapy.

But that winter day, doctors told the Sestaks that Alexandra had done remarkably well and that, although the cancer could reemerge, she could resume living like a healthy girl.

Relieved and grateful, Sestak, who retired as a three-star admiral Jan. 1, after 31 years in the Navy, began thinking about what he wanted to do next.

...

"He's running because he has a personal ax to grind with the Navy leadership," [Rep. Curt] Weldon [(R), PA] said. "When you treat people like dirt, that's an issue."

Weldon [also] attacked Sestak's decision to continue owning a home in Virginia while only renting in Pennsylvania and questioned why Sestak did not move back to Pennsylvania when he was working at the Pentagon. Weldon commutes from Pennsylvania each day.

Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital. Sestak said that as soon as doctors give his daughter the all-clear, he'll buy in Pennsylvania."[emphasis mine - Ed.]

Jesus, you don't attack a man for where he chooses to treat his five year-old daughter's cancer!  That is BEYOND the pale.

No, I'm not going to link to Kos or Atrios, I don't need the trolls.  You can find the links here.

The thing is, both sides do this and I am F***ING tired of it.  There's no reason to deal these kind of low blows.  Toot your own horn, explain why your opponent's policy platform is wrong, and let it go at that.  That should give the voters plenty of reasons to make their decision.

Or maybe there's just nothing worthwhile to say.  In which case, my mother taught me to shut up.

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