Pete's Journal

Well, wasn't terrible.  Balanced budget?  Cut earmarks in half?  Hahahaha like we conservatives were sleeping the last 6 years.  Good rousing stuff when Dubs finally got around to foreign policy, but come on!  Give me something to hang my hat on, man!  Alright alright, you've got a Congress full of schizo Democrats to contend with, but really... you've completely screwed up your Iraq policy, don't lose sight of the ball!  The Long War and all that.

I'm fortunate enough to be watching this on FOX (praise be to satellite) - not because they've got, what, better camera angles?, but they point out the silliness of a lot of the pols on both sides of the aisle.  Harkin loving Bush's nonsense on ethanol?  Gee, you'd think Tom Harkin was from Iowa or something and couldn't wait to start hoovering up yet more gajillions in subsidies.  Odd little gnome-cum-presidential gadfly Dennis Kucinich apparently doing a full circuit around the exiting Bush to get as much tv facetime as possible?

Will get back to y'all with a more fleshed out response of my own once I've read the transcript.

Hmmmmmm.... a Blue Dog giving the Dem response... curiouser and curiouser.  Are the Dems pandering like I suspect, or is Comrade Pelosi less representative of Dem policy than I fear?

"Not a precipitous withdrawal... but an immediate shift"... jeeze, here's more of that wicked Democrat nuance.  AHHHHHH!!  Class warfare horseshit!  The New York TImes will be loving this.

But citing Roosevelt (Teddy, the good Roose) and Eisenhower... talk about misappropriation of funds.

Do Americans really buy into this hyper-choreographed circus year after year?  And if they do, well, the state of [their] union is strong, to quote America's first black president, Clinton 42.  230-odd years and counting.

Important things like Australian Open to watch - stay tuned.

Here he is leaping to his BFF's defence when the WaPo's Chris Cillizza has the temerity to point out the, um, inconvenient truth.

And here Matthews get all flustered defending his dream lover from the uppity wife, wondering if she "busts his balls" like this at home.  Hush, woman!

Check out the maniacal Matthews laugh about ten seconds in.

Leading to "What happened to the Stepford wives? The good old days?”

The "fricking hiss" is just gravy.

For a pretty commonsensical opinion on the Baker-Hamilton Commission's abject surrender to Iran and Syria, skip all the geriatrics on the commission and see this blog post by a 24-year old sergeant in the US reserves, T.F. Boggs, back in-country from his second tour of Iraq.

Kerry and Rangel are probably convinced he's halfway retarded, being a soldier and all, but Boggs is as flummoxed by the recommendations as I am:

The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant “Death to America” and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorists supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism! If I am the only one who finds something wrong with that then please let me know because right now I feel like I am the only person who feels this way.

Mark Steyn has received some mail from somebody who claims to be from Toronto, despite the 514 area code in his phone number.  Really, whoever heard of a French anti-Semite??

Also, your name implies that you are Jewish. Whether or not you are is irrelevant, but that because your names sounds Jewish, you have no credibility when you speak about Christianity or the Christian world, which, in case you did not get my point, robs you of credibility.

The writer, Troy Marquis (his website has mysteriously disappeared, but the pageholder is here), claims to be both a writer and a critic, "providing high quality English text" and "critiquing writing for elements of style, diction, grammar, and clarity".

We also find out that Marquis is a pompous, arrogant jackass:

I am sorry though, that your writing is amateurish and lacks any basis in scholarship. In fact, your title has nothing to do with your article and your article reads more like Simulacra and Simulations by Jean Baudrillard (if you do not know who he is you can go on wikipedia).

Who has quite a way with those elements of style, diction, grammar, and clarity:

You come across like someone running around in a circle screaming inarticulably.

And you want to be my writer?  In a lovely bit of irony, Troy "You Sound Like a Jew" Marquis manages to misspell proofread.

Troy's prototype Jewdar went meshugeh when he said "Steyn"


UPDATE:  Kathy Shaidle has an amusing followup email from not-quite-kosher Troy.

The undead are on the march in Minnesota, and have discovered the awesome power of the US nuisance-lawsuit system!

"The lawsuit alleges one of the officers heatedly swore he didn't care about the zombies' constitutional rights and that he was going to teach the undead a lesson. The suit also says the zombies were forced to lurch around in the back of a police van because of willfully sudden stops and starts by a police driver, and that one of the zombies' prosthetic leg was taken away while in jail, forcing the zombie to use a wheelchair.

None of the zombies required medical attention."


Member of Zombie GLBT Socialist (Marxist-Leninist) Collective videotapes evidence of repression at the hands of Zombiphobic public for use in future court action.  Rev. Jesse Jackson not shown.

UPDATE:  Lest anyone doubt the truly terrifying nature of the Zombie attack, full use of the American "justice" system, here's a fine example of the damage that can be wrought:

Total loser woman sues: Not enough avocado in my guacamole!