Maureen Dowd, yes that Maureen Dowd, has a brother Kevin who, in an email to his friends, wrote:

"Now, just as four years ago, I breathe a huge sigh of relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked deck. No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in their attempt to influence the outcome of an election. ... He never complained, just systematically set about delivering the same consistent message. You may remember that four years ago, I felt physically ill watching the Democrats try to legislate their way to the presidency. ...

A very big thank you to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Al Franken and Jon Stewart for your involvement. You certainly energized the base. Now, please have the courage of your convictions and leave the country.

To Bob Shrum - Cut your fee.

To Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart and Paul Begala - You don't seem quite as smart without a great candidate.

To The New York Times and The Washington Post - If Bush and Reagan were so stupid, how did they both go four for four in elections involving two of our biggest states and the presidency without your endorsement?

We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.' They are people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out. They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silent prayer and the words 'under God' are offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed to use them. ... My wife and I picked our sons' schools based on three criteria: 1) moral values 2) discipline 3) religious maintenance - in that order. We have spent an obscene amount of money doing this and never regretted a penny. Last week on the news, I heard that the Montgomery County school board voted to include a class with a 10th-grade girl demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber and a study of the homosexual lifestyle. The vote was 6-0. I feel better about the money all the time.

To Dan Rather - Good luck in your retirement.

To Gavin Newsom - Thanks for all of the great shots of the San Francisco couples embracing their mates at City Hall in direct defiance of the law.

To P. Diddy - 'Vote or Die' might need a little work.

To John Edwards - Thanks for being there.

To my friends - only 1,460 days until the next election. Stay vigilant. The Democrats, CBS, the NY Times and the Post may think Hillary is the perfect antidote for all those 'stupid' voters out there."

"Now, just as four years ago, I breathe a huge sigh of relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked deck. No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in their attempt to influence the outcome of an election. ... He never complained, just systematically set about delivering the same consistent message. You may remember that four years ago, I felt physically ill watching the Democrats try to legislate their way to the presidency. ... A very big thank you to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Al Franken and Jon Stewart for your involvement. You certainly energized the base. Now, please have the courage of your convictions and leave the country. To Bob Shrum - Cut your fee. To Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart and Paul Begala - You don't seem quite as smart without a great candidate. To The New York Times and The Washington Post - If Bush and Reagan were so stupid, how did they both go four for four in elections involving two of our biggest states and the presidency without your endorsement? We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.' They are people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out. They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silent prayer and the words 'under God' are offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed to use them. ... My wife and I picked our sons' schools based on three criteria: 1) moral values 2) discipline 3) religious maintenance - in that order. We have spent an obscene amount of money doing this and never regretted a penny. Last week on the news, I heard that the Montgomery County school board voted to include a class with a 10th-grade girl demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber and a study of the homosexual lifestyle. The vote was 6-0. I feel better about the money all the time. To Dan Rather - Good luck in your retirement. To Gavin Newsom - Thanks for all of the great shots of the San Francisco couples embracing their mates at City Hall in direct defiance of the law. To P. Diddy - 'Vote or Die' might need a little work. To John Edwards - Thanks for being there. To my friends - only 1,460 days until the next election. Stay vigilant. The Democrats, CBS, the NY Times and the Post may think Hillary is the perfect antidote for all those 'stupid' voters out there."

Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them. As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm. Cpl Mitchell told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound. When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting. There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines. It is incredibly humbling to walk among such men. They fought as hard as any Marines in history and deserve to be remembered as such. The enemy they fought burrowed into houses and fired through mouse holes cut in walls, lured them into houses rigged with explosives and detonated the houses on pursuing Marines, and actually hid behind surrender flags only to engage the Marines with small arms fire once they perceived that the Marines had let their guard down. I know of several instances where near dead enemy rolled grenades out on Marines who were preparing to render them aid. It was a fight to the finish in every sense and the Marines delivered.

"As a CBS News correspondent in the early '80s, I worked with Rather and have known him for more than 20 years. Listen to me: There is no way on this Earth that he would have knowingly used fake documents on any story. It may be true that Rather did not vet the information supplied to him by producers, but few anchor people do. They are dependent on other journalists, and this is a huge flaw in the system. Dan Rather is guilty of not being skeptical enough about a story that was politically loaded. "

Dan Rather did not get what he deserved in this case. He made a mistake, as we all do, but he is not a dishonest man. Unfair freedom of speech did him in. This is not your grandfather's country anymore.

Some guys (you didn't expect women to come up with an idea like this, did you?) have come up with a way for you to shoot game like black buck antelope in Texas using your computer. You can even get a DVD of the kill. All for a mere $150. Now, along with porn on the internet, you will have to protect your malleable rug rat from gunning down real animals. It doesn't require much of an imagination to see where this could possibly eventually lead.

Update:Now you can shoot JFK instead of poor, defenseless critters. Relax, it is just a game and JFK is John Fitzgerald Kennedy and not the famous, former Swiftboat veteran JFK who, by the way, ran for president.

Heterorrhina macleayi

Location: Philippines

Size:3 cm

You will be entranced by Poul Beckmann's extraordinary photos of beautiful insects like the one above.

I Stumbled across the NASA picture of the day website today. The picture above is an example of what you can discover by doing some heavy duty surfing on the website. WARNING: The Surfin General has found that surfin' can be hazardous to the amount of time you have to do something constructive with the hours allotted to your life each day.

Enjoy.

Duck blogging.

A beautiful male wood duck that I photographed at the Florida Aquarium, Tampa, FL. Wood ducks are the only native perching North American duck species. They have sharp claws for climbing on wood. A female call sounds like "hoo-eek" which means "yo, dude!" in duck talk.

David Gorsline gives us a lot of interesting facts about Wood Ducks such as this: Like many Anatidae species, the Wood Duck is a non-obligate intraspecific brood parasite. A female may lay some or all of her eggs in the nest of another Wood Duck, to be incubated by the other duck. "Dump-nest" clutches of up to 50 eggs can result.

A. C. Bent writes in 1923:

No duck is so expert as the wood duck in threading its way through the interlacing branches of the forest, at which its skill has been compared with that of the passenger pigeon. I have stood on the shore of a woodland pond in the darkening twilight of a summer evening and watched these ducks come in to roost; on swift and silent wings they would glide like meteors through the tree tops, twisting, turning, and dodging, until it was almost too dark for me to see them.

More stuff about the Wood Duck at Birdzilla.

I love stuff like this. It is from the 12th Annual New York City CANstruction Competition at the New York Design Center. This particular entry won only an Honorable Mention award.

If you live in or are visiting NYC go see it. Admission is just one can of food.

Read Joe Siegel's favorable movie review of the new movie, Polar Express.

Now read Manohla Dargis's negative movie review in the New York Times. Was this person off their meds that day or just a sicko? Dargis compared one scene to Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrance, Santa's bag of toys to a scrotum, a toy factory to a munitions factory. Really? This is kind of garbage is what I think of when I use the term "vain intellectual".

Update:Rush Limbaugh played a montage of reports from the MSM concerning Gonzales's appointment. This is Campbell Brown of NBC News, David Gregory and Dan Abrams of NBC, ABC's John Cochran, Shep Smith at Fox, Bill Plante of CBS, and CNN reporters Ed Henry, John King, and Suzanne Malveaux:

BROWN: Gonzales was responsible for the Bush administration's most controversial decisions involving the treatment of prisoners. That opened the way for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

GREGORY: That legal judgment paved the way for prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

ABRAMS: The advice Gonzales has given the administration for the treatment of prisoners captured in Afghanistan and Iraq...

COCHRAN: ...Gonzales defended the detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, that the memo created the atmosphere which led to later abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

SMITH: He defended detaining, uh, certain terror suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.

PLANTE: Specifically the memos he wrote about the Geneva Convention and how it applied specifically to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and also at Guantanamo Bay...

HENRY: Gonzales authored legal memos allowing the administration to deny Geneva Convention protections to some detainees in the war on terror.

MALVEAUX: Gonzales may face some challenges, a kind of environment that created that Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

KING: The man who offered legal justifications for interrogation techniques that critics insist are torture.

I recently waited 3 months until a gas grill was marked down on an end-of-season clearance then asked how many of them the store had to determine the likelihood of further markdowns and bought the thing on Senior Citizen's Day at 10% off their marked down price. A total savings of nearly $60 on a $270 purchase when taxes are included. Best Buy would have earmarked me as a persona non grata in about 3 nanoseconds after that purchase hit their computers. That would make me extremely happy.

Zell Miller said in his speech to the Republican Convention in Boston this past summer:

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home. For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

... if American liberals are such emotional weaklings that they go all to pieces over the loss of elections, thank goodness we don't have to rely on them to fight a war.

I joined the Marine Corps a long time ago so I could go into battle, if necessary, with people who would not run when things got tough, so it disturbs me to see so many people on the left quitting and running from their responsibility as a political party. I think that they are deciding to fight with the proven least effective weapon in their arsenal, hate. This country needs a good, strong opposition party that can keep the majority honest and can come up with reasonable proposals and ideas that will make our country better. A party full of haters, whiners, and quitters doesn't help America at all.

C.J. Giles, a freshman that we are going to love, has the quote of the night: "Overall, I do think we could have played a little better." C.J., you guys scored ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN POINTS and shot SIXTY-THREE percent!! It can't get much better than that unless you play against a high school team. It is going to be an interesting year for Jayhawk fans.

Kinsley seems to arrogantly assert that because his values do not impose on me then his values are somehow 'better' than mine. Are his values better than mine if they happen to include for some reason known only to Michael Kinsley randomly killing ill children in a hospital in China? I cannot conceive of how that murderous event might directly impose on me just as I cannot conceive of how an unknown woman killing her unborn child would directly impose on me but my value system finds them both of the activities to be unacceptable.

Michael Kinsley is an arrogant elitist SOB who thinks that because he considers himself, as do most liberal intellectuals, open-minded and unwilling to draw a line in the sand when it comes to repugnant human behavior because he can excuse it based on whether the behavior personally imposes on him or not he is somehow better than some of us. If that is not elitism I do not know what is.

Kinsley could have used this same flawed argument to justify standing silent as Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Surely that would have not been a direct imposition on him either. Unless he was a European Jew at the time. But, I imagine Kinsley would say, that is different.

No, Kevin, Kinsley doesn't make a good point. What he says is disgusting.

In a very brief statement Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said Arafat

"will not be buried in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists."

The debacle in Somalia is a model for these fighters and I feel that it was their hope was to kill enough Americans and Iraqis and burn enough cars and buildings every day for the benefit of the media that the American people would elect someone who would give in and leave so that they could forcibly take control of Iraq. Now that they are faced with four more years of someone committed to giving democracy a chance in Iraq and destroying them they may give up.

Of course, we have the UN trying to help the insurgent/terrorists by asking the US and Iraqis to be nice.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a letter to President Bush disclosed Friday, warned that an assault on Fallujah "would be very disruptive of Iraq's political transition." "Persuading elements who are currently alienated from, or skeptical about, the transition process to compete politically is key to creating a political and security context that will inspire confidence among all Iraqis," Annan wrote.

Update: The Captain weighs in on Annan's letter.

Update: A Marine's letter to his Dad. (tip: INDC Journal)

It is hilariously funny when a British newspaper calls 59,000,000 Americans stupid for voting for President Bush. And it is pathetic when a liberal author in an article called, I kid you not, Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue writes some pretty hate-filled stuff.

This is an example of what Hollywood Democrats think of Republicans and whisper amongst themselves and this, it is safe to say, will never be the start of a intelligent dialogue:

Smiley says in her article that Republicans are full of ignorance and bloodlust, full of original sin and have a taste for violence, are greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority, slug people from behind, abdicate all critical thinking, think that they are among the chosen, do not want to be told what to do, prefer to be ignorant, are virtually unteachable, are big capitalists who have no morals, have the habit of virulent racism, are predatory and resentful, are amoral, avaricious, and arrogant, love to cheat and intimidate, and they are borne of hubris and hatred.

In addition, Ms Smiley throws in a weird reference to Quantrill's raid in Lawrence, KS in 1862 as some sort of irrational example of how violence-prone red staters are. She seems to forget that Quantrill was a pro-slavery fanatic while it is generally accepted that President Lincoln freed the slaves and was a Republican or maybe I am one of those ignorant people she is talking about.

I guess if Smiley thinks that Republicans are all these things then the corollary is that Democrats are not. It will be hard for Democrats and Republicans to come together to make this a better country if we have people on one side writing things like this.

Update: The Volokh Conspiracy discusses.

Update: RedState laughs at Jane Smiley. We all do.

Update: Everyone joins in the fun. Sensing, Simon, Wretchard, and Bob on Confederate Yankee who fisks Smiley's Quantrill error. A great post on the Belmont Club by Dymphna just about sums everything up for us. Smiley is down for the count.

You can see an example of this not so extreme, for Democrats, attitude on a website called PunkVoter. Evidently these people think that all young voters respond to the attitudes behind diatribes like this

"Senator Kerry said [Wednesday] that now we need to come together and heal as a nation. F*** that. There's no f****** way I am going to come together with these homophobic, flag-waving, god-fearing, gun-toting, uneducated, isolationist, ethnocentric REDNECKS."

Nader Supporters Blame Electoral Defeat On Bush, Kerry

WASHINGTON, DC — Supporters of presidential candidate Ralph Nader blamed his defeat Tuesday on George W. Bush and John Kerry, claiming that the two candidates "ate up" his share of the electoral votes. "This election was stolen out from under Mr. Nader by Bush and Kerry, who diverted his votes to the right and the left," Nader campaign manager Theresa Amato said. "It's an outrage. If Nader were the only candidate, he would be president right now." In his concession speech, Nader characterized Bush and Kerry as spoilers.

News of this outrage is from the Onion.

Democrats will soon be condemning President Bush's limiting the stem cell research that could have saved Yassar. They will point out that if Kerry had been elected Arafat would have jumped out of that hospital bed and murdered a school bus load of Isreali kids just like in the old days.

It's been a -- it's been a fantastic experience campaigning the country. You've seen it from one -- perspective, I've seen it from another. I saw you standing there at the last, final rally in Texas, to my right over there. I was observing you observe, and you saw the energy. And there was just something uplifting about people showing up at 11:00 p.m. at night, expressing their support and their prayers and their friendship. It's a marvelous experience to campaign across the country.

As a political pessimist I had my doubts that the President could overcome the overwhelming negative attacks from the media andother Kerry supporters. It seemed unending and there was no way to fight back. That rally bouyed my spirits immensely and I knew that the President was going to win from that moment on.

The New York Times failing to get John Kerry elected now starts touting its next candidate.

For the Moment, Mrs. Clinton Looks Like the Candidate to Beat

Speculation stories are free advertising and the Hillary camp will fuel those with tepid denials for a year or so. What Clinton operatives and closet supporters will want to do is marginalize all possible opposition like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson so Hillary does not have to expose herself to fierce primary battles that would severly wound her and waste precious money.

Look for the drip-drip-drip of Hillary for President stories that will turn slowly into a flood in a year or two. Queen Hillary will be triumphantly be crowned the nominee with Bill at her side and Hollywood leftist whine and cheese crowd, the fawning media, the NASCAR-hating intelligentsia, and the wacko feminists groveling at her feet.

Update: The New York Times reports this:

Hillary Clinton. The speculators at InTrade have already made her the favorite (John Edwards is a distant second) for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, and they are giving the Democrats a better-than-even chance of regaining the White House.

The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.

Update: Interesting discussion of this report at the The Volokh Conspiracy.

Update: Redstate has some good recommendations about how we can help head off Specter's election as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Let's do something. As Redstate says "the President deserves a Judiciary Chairman who represents the values of the Republican Party". Personally I am emailing Senator Frist and my two Senators, McCain and Kyl. Senator Kyl is on the committee.

Update:The Volokh Conspiracy does a good job of discussing Judiciary Committee strategies.

Update:Senator Specter sounds like he is recanting yesterday's warning to President Bush but is he? The fist appears to be still in the iron glove as far as I am concerned.

Update:The National Review Online captured the essence of the complaint with Senator Specter's calculated dictum.

For the social conservatives who just elected Republicans to office for the very purpose of getting sound judges confirmed, Specter's elevation would not just be a symbolic slap in the face but an actual betrayal.

Update:Whoa momma! There is an Anti-Specter website up and running called www.notspecter.com that literally came out of nowhere in a day or so. It gives all the details on how to oppose Specter's election to the Chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee. It is sponsored by RedState.org. Check it out.

All parties have crazy people in them. There are people who are so viciously partisan that they'll say and do anything solely for partisan political advantage. It's not unique to either party. The Democratic Party has to get their crazy people off the front porch.

I honestly believe the party has strayed from those roots. The voices the party heard were the shrill voices, the Michael Moores and the Whoopi Goldbergs. They refused to listen to us when we pleaded for a voice in the party, a voice to be heard about issues like abortion, cultural values, and, yes, national defense, the moral case for war, etc. We got no hearing, only the epithet that folks like me were stupid (interstingly I have an undergraduate degree in linguistics and a masters in theology), ignorant, and a neo-nazi or a fanatic to boot.