The spirit of Sgt. York lives on

Marine Makes Insurgents Pay the Price

During the battle, the designated marksman single handedly thwarted a company-sized enemy RPG and machinegun ambush by reportedly killing 20 enemy fighters with his devastatingly accurate precision fire. He selflessly exposed himself time and again to intense enemy fire during a critical point in the eight-hour battle for Shewan in order to kill any enemy combatants who attempted to engage or maneuver on the Marines in the kill zone. What made his actions even more impressive was the fact that he didn’t miss any shots, despite the enemies’ rounds impacting within a foot of his fighting position.

“I was in my own little world,” the young corporal said. “I wasn’t even aware of a lot of the rounds impacting near my position, because I was concentrating so hard on making sure my rounds were on target.”

Perhaps someone can explain this to me

Right after the 9/11 attacks, Ann Coulter wrote an over the top column that called for vigorous action against the terrorists and their supporters. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

That was too much for National Review and the magazine eventually stopped running Coulter's column.

In Coulter's defense, her rant was written in the immediate aftermath of an atrocity and Coulter lost friends in the attack.

Nonetheless, Naional Review felt compelled to distance itself from Coulter for her insulting attacks on Muslims. Perfectly defensible.

Now, fast forward seven years. There is no terrorist attack, but the Republicans lose a hard fought election. One Kathleen Parker writes a series of columns attacking social conservatives and Evangelical Christians.

Somehow, Parker remains in good standing with National Review. They still run her column despite its bigotry towards the very conservatives that NR presumes to lead.

A flawed business model

The local fish wrap ran this column on Saturday:

REPUBLICANS HOLD GREAT LURE FOR THE DUMB

I'd expect to read this sort of thing in a free alt weekly or in a leftist paper in a liberal city like Madison, Wisconsin.

It's a shock, though, to read it in the paper that ostensibly "serves" Cumberland county. McCain, afterall, carried this area with nearly 60% of the vote.

What kind of business thinks that insulting the majority of their customers is the way to grow its business?

The other victim in Dallas

Forty-five years ago Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President John F. Kennedy and wounded Texas Governor John Connolly. Two days later, Oswald was shot down by Jack Ruby.

There was one other murder victim connected to the assassination and he is often overlooked. Oswald shot police officer J.D. Tippit about an hour after he murdered Kennedy.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the Dallas PD is issuing a medallion honoring Tippit.

Dale K. Myers wrote the definitive book on the Tippit murder (With Malice, now sadly out of print.) He has a must read post up at his blog:

With Malice: The Tippit Murder 45 Years Later

I blogged about the aftermath of the Tippit shooting here:

History worth reclaiming

Jonestown: 30 Years Later

Thirty years ago Jim Jones and his henchmen murdered 900 American citizens. The mass murder marked the first time that most Americans heard of the Peoples Temple. But there was a back story. It is long and sordid and does no credit to the media in San Francisco nor to the Democratic powerbrokers of that city.

This web site does an outstanding job with that back story and fills in this important history.

Jonestown Apologists Alert

UPDATE: This post at the Flynn Files is also worth a look.

Blogger doing the work the MSM won't do

This post by Patterico is just outstanding:

What the L.A. Times Never Told You About an Inmate Who Was Close to Chuck Philips

Pop culture interlude

Ace has a nice review of The Strangers. I especially liked this from the post:

Yes, as some point out in the comments, this is pretty much an 80 minute long commercial for owning a shotgun... and taking an NRA self-defense course so you don't do stupid things with it.

I was somewhat interested in the movie when it came out-- mostly because it claimed to be "based on real events." When that turned out to be the usual lying Hollywood hype, i took a pass.

I'm not a big fan of the slasher/serial killer horror genre. It's partly a matter of philosophy, part cultural inherence.

A college friend once summed up the moral of the Friday the 13th series as "you can't kill the boogie man." At the time that struck me as an accurate assessment which meant the movies were profoundly nihilistic.

The glorification of sadism is repugnant, and, in itself, is a deal-breaker. These movies also have little appeal because i find it impossible to identify with the victims and their contrived helplessness. The "plots" require too much suspension of belief for any student of Col. Jeff Cooper.

Can't kill the boogie man? Yes we can!

Now there is hope you can believe in.

Howie Kurtz still a weasel

Kurtz: No Mainstream Media Outlet Published Trig Trutherism Until McCain Brought It Up. Oh Really???

Proposition 8, Mormons, and why the death of “serious journalism” does not matter

I do not live in California, so I did not follow the campaign for Proposition 8 (the Marriage Amendment). The resulting protests, however, did catch my attention.

The targets of choice for the gay marriage side are the Mormon Church and the state of Utah. They are the perfect villains because they are mostly white, conservative, and outsiders. There is no danger of the kind of internecine unpleasantness that bubbled up when exit polls revealed that African-Americans voted 2-1 against gay marriage.

If any group has a right to say, “Dude, get over it” when it comes to traditional marriage, it is the Mormons. They, after all, had to renounce polygamy as the price of Utah’s admission into the Union. Before they changed their doctrine, state and federal governments used their police powers to stamp out the practice of plural wives.

A few renegade sects have refused to buckle under to Caesar on this political definition of marriage. As we saw recently in Texas, Caesar remains willing to use SWAT teams to enforce its view of appropriate family structures.

Blaming outsiders for Prop 8’s defeat is the sort of weak joke that politics often affords us. After the 2006 election, The Atlantic ran an article detailing how wealthy gay activists in Colorado and California had used their money to defeat anti-gay marriage politicians across the nation. Their biggest coup was beating Rick Santorum here in Pennsylvania.

No one on the Left seemed perturbed that outsider money was influencing local elections when the shoe was on the other foot.

I have not seen this reversal mentioned in any of the post-election news reports. Instead, journalists have allowed the anti-Prop 8 protesters to frame the story as one of outsiders mucking around in California elections.

That is, they let the pro-gay marriage side avoid politically dangerous recriminations and undermine the legitimacy of the democratic vote in California.

This is just one more reason not to worry about “the looming death of serious journalism.” If “serious reporters” at respectable MSM papers do not read and remember what their fellow “serious journalists” write, why should we in the great unwashed pay attention to any of them?

On Veterans Day

This blogger's post to her father is a must read.

White Cliffs of Dover

Still whitewashing Ayers and Dohrn

Now it is the New Yorker. Ronald Radosh dismantles their feeble "arguments" here.

See also:

The whitewashing of Ayers and Dohrn

”They are Marines, they aren’t going to run”

A fitting story to mark the 233d birthday of the Marine Corps.

Are values voters a liability for the GOP?

Good article on the subject:

Antisocial Conservatives

See also:

Unintended consequences

Question for the anti-Delay Republicans

UPDATE: Ace makes a lot of sense here.

I'm thinking this isn't exactly a scientific instrument

You Are 20% Yankee, 80% Dixie

You're completely Dixie all the way. You've possibly never even met a Yankee!

Are You a Yankee or Dixie?

HT: Miriam's Ideas

An outstanding analysis

GOP Defeat and the 'New Tone'

Credit where due

What is the source of the bizarre co-dependent relationship conservatives have with George Bush?

Another huge drag was the deep unpopularity of the incumbent Republican President. Let us not deal in cheap shots. George Bush is a good man who did a lot of good things. But he never seemed to understand that an essential role of leadership is communicating to the country and persuading it as to where we need to go and why.

Ferrara worries that blaming Bush for the loss is a "cheap shot." Yet he then goes on to note that Republicans were doomed by the inept handling of the September financial crisis and the failure to secure victory in Iraq. It is not a cheap shot to note that both of those were 100% GWB productions.

And lest i be accused of Monday Morning Quarterbacking, i wrote this two and a half years ago:

If you look at Lifson's examples, that same tendency is apparent; Bush's loyalty has been to "his people"-White House staffers, cabinet officers, etc. He shows very little loyalty, sympathy, or understanding for the broader coalition he leads-Republicans, conservatives, the military. He too often treats them as pawns whose only role is to obey the decisions he has made. He was willing to embarrass Senate Republicans by nominating Miers to the Supreme Court, he is willing undercut the Republican House on immigration, he panders on gas prices and was wobbly on the rights of gun owners. He is a wartime president who passes out Medals of Freedom to Muhammad Ali and neocon polemicists.

In sum, I see more reasons for pessimism than Lifson. The last couple of years of any administration are difficult. The habits of mind that GWB formed at HBS might make his especially difficult.

Wow. I can't belive that this is not a bigger issue in Pennsylvania

Obama will bankrupt the coal industry

Oh, yeah. This is the first we've heard of it. Like the man says-- the MSM is so far in the tank "they need scuba gear."

UPDATE: The story led the 11.00 pm news on the Harrisburg stations last night. We'll see what today brings.

Jerry Pournelle on polls and the election

Despair is a sin, and often a mistake. The polls do not record the "refused to respond" which in my judgment is a much larger category than any admit -- it includes me, five times so far this year since I'm home to answer the phone more than many people are -- and I suspect that more McCain people refuse to respond than the trendier Obama enthusiasts.

RTWT