My god

Another judge has taken it upon himself to prevent the free exercise of religion (and patriotism...yes, liberals, I question yours...every day). Somehow taking away the right to voluntarily (no one was forced) to recite the pledge of allegiance upholds the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

I can tell you how this judged screwed the pooch, can anyone tell me how voluntary recitation of the pledge equals a congressional establishment of religion? How the voluntary recitation of the pledge prohibits the free exercise of religion?

I know, logic has no place in liberalism, but taking away the right to recite the pledge is abridging the right to freely exercise religion. The religion clause of the first amendment has been perverted by the courts at all levels. I urge every patriotic American to instruct their children to recite the pledge loudly at school every day.

Katrina's death toll around 200 so far

The number will climb, but I suspect that heatwaves in France kill far more people than Katrina did.

European smugness in Katrina's wake

In the aftermath of Katrina, many nations have offered the US aid. Here is a good piece on the smugness that has accompanied many of the offers from Europe. Americans do not smugly give aid. We are too good for that. We do so with an open heart.

The author calls it schizophrenia, but I believe it is more accurate to say Europeans have an inferiority complex when it comes to America (obviously, otherwise they wouldn't constantly prattle on about our shortcomings).

I would like to note, in an example of how not to be Eurotrashy, Iraqi soldiers have donated to victims of Katrina.

Iraqi Col. Abbas Fadhil, Iraqi base commander, presented the money to U.S. Col. Paul D. Linkenhoker, Taji Coalition base commander, at a Sept. 5 staff meeting.

“We are all brothers,” said Abbas. “When one suffers tragedy, we all suffer their pain.”

The amount of money is small in American dollars - roughly $680 - but it represents a huge act of compassion from Iraqi soldiers to their American counterparts, said U.S. Army Maj. Michael Goyne.

This is the spirit in which America gives aid. With our shared history, it should be the same from Europe. For shame.

Yahoo complicit in Chinese human rights violations

Yahoo Inc. gave information to the Chinese government that was later used to convict someone for passing on state secrets. What did the man, Shi Tao, pass on? A government censorship order it would seem. A ten year jail sentence was handed out. What if it had been a death sentence (China has executed people for stealing gas before)? Yahoo gives the "just following orders" defense. If Yahoo must comply with the Chinese government in this manner to do business in China, the price of doing business in China is too high. Until they become an open society, companies should not do business with them. I will never knowingly make use of Yahoo again.

Meanwhile, the world looks the other way. History repeats.

Why Muslims have a bad image, pt 2

Read through this bit of idiotic paranoia. While you are at it, look at this pathetic crapola. I used to think no one could top Democrats for crackpottery. Then again, these guys would probably be Democrats if they were American.

Thanks tolgf for this information.

I support a commission

I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of non-partisan commission set up to look at the Hurricane preparedness and response. It can't like the 9/11 Commisssion which was stacked with demagogues.

I support it because if it is objective, I believe it will essentially come to the same conclusions as this guy.

The beat goes on

More quotes from those representing the pee in the gene pool.

Labels don't help

Jesse Jackson is charging racism on the part of the President, and suggesting that is the reason for the slow response.

I would guess things would have gone much faster if thugs hadn't shot at rescue workers. We saw this immediate action and then we saw it come to a crawl because of armed thugs. We saw helicopters grounded because of snipers.

The city must be forcefully demilitarized, even as innocent victims literally starve. What has happened over the past week is an embarrassment to New Orleans—and to America.

I tend to agree.

A question for the mayor of N.O.

Drudgereport is wondering why the mayor didn't use these buses for the mandatory evacuation.

Funding cuts caused this problem??

Not likely.

Indeed, if editorial writers had a comment to make it was to say something about the levees.

And why not? The levees broke, didn't they? That's what helped mess up the rescue effort, didn't it? And there were cuts in federal help, weren't there?

The answers to all these questions are yes. But, the fact is, they miss an important point, which The New York Times editorialists might have discovered had they read their own news story by Andrew Revkin and Christopher Drew. The reporters quoted Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, about how surprising it was that the break in the levee was "a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," he told them. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feet thick."

Worse for the editorial writers were statements by the chief engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen Carl Strock: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case. Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place."

The reason: the funding would only have completed an upgrade of the levees to a protect against a level 3 hurricane. Katrina was a level 4 plus.

And the reasons for this goes back decades.

Roundup of liberal thuggery

Arthur Chrenkoff has a list of liberal exploitation of Katrina. If only it were hard to believe that the left-wing looney bin of the world would exploit such a tragedy for political gain. Here's a sample of liberal compassion:

(From The Bradblog)

So why was I thinking of starting a movement against giving aid to the stricken areas?

Because these are red states. They voted for Bush. These ninnies obviously wanted these policies, and they deserve to live with the consequences of their votes.

A large part of me still believes that many of these W-worshipping numbskulls deserve to suffer and to die. They brought it on themselves. Let them look to Jayzuss for aid: It's time they stopped leeching off the more productive blue staters...

But then (to paraphrase the old song) I thought I'd better think it out again.

Many of the victims, the ones who have suffered the most, are poor. The hardest hit were the blue state folk living among the red state maniacs. New Orleans, we should note, went heavily for Kerry.

And that's why we must help. Although it was very tempting to say otherwise.

But let us make one thing clear: We WILL politicize this issue.

The Republicans did not shirk from making political use of 9/11, and we should not shirk from reminding the country that Bush turned what should have been a mere problem into Ragnarok.

Conservatives may accuse us of lacking taste if we use this sad occasion to point out sadder facts of political life. Cable news pundits will try to pretend that now is not the time for partisan politics.

If they say that, screw 'em.

If the Bush-voters want Californians and New Yorkers and other blue staters to fork over dough, then they damn well had better take our words as well. Republican policies caused this catastrophe. Force them to hear that message -- again and again. That message is the price of the charity they now demand.

I donated to New Yorkers after 9/11 without hesitation. Issues of race, class, religion, or voting habits never entered into the consideration. I could say the same if a major earthquake struck California. We are always there to help when they need it. Terrorist scumbags believe that anyone of differing ideology are worth less than nothing, and are to be hated. Read the previous quote and decide for yourself if there are any parallels.

And by the way, Republican policies didn't cause this disaster, a fucking hurricane did.

NOTE: Follow the link and you will see he was "misquoted out of context." What he really meant to say was:

I'm not going to post the piece I started to write.

My original reaction to the Katrina catastrophe was going to be: "NOT ONE DIME."

For an hour or so, I contemplated the idea of turning it into a crusade: No-one in the blue states (where the money is) should give one dime of aid to the victims of this hurricane, which devastated Bush-friendly regions.

Why did I flirt with such a callous attitude?

Because it should be obvious to all that this tragedy was not just an act of God. Dubya and his diety conspired to transform mere disaster into an unprecedented mega-catastrophe.

Scientists warn us to expect more Katrinas. Global warming -- the existence of which W would prefer to rationalize away -- caused the temperature of the sea's surface to rise in the Gulf of Mexico, thereby transforming what should have been a manageable hurricane into a monster.

The National Guard was off in Iraq stealing oil -- and everything else in that nation -- all to benefit Haliburton and the oil companies. They could have been in N.O. earlier, building levies, overseeing evacuation.

Oh, nevermind. You don't look like a heartless, brainless, elitist hack, after all.

I will defer to junkscience.com to refute the juvenile "it is all global warming" nonsense.