You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show,, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I’ll welcome American Thinker’s News Editor Ed Lasky to the second chair as we interview National Review’s political correspondent David Freddoso whose best selling book The Case Against Barack Obama has gotten praise far and wide for its clarity and excellent documentation.

The show will air from 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Bill Frist wasn’t around to resuscitate but at least the comatose patient has a pulse.

Performing a somewhat juvenile but nevertheless immensely satisfying politlcal theater, House Republicans staged what one wag on the Hill called a “Guerilla Congress” as the Democrats adjourned for the summer recess.

No sooner had Pelosi railroaded the sine die adjournment through on a voice vote, GOP leaders began to complain about the fact that the Congress was adjourning without voting on removing restrctions on offshore drilling. What followed could end up rallying the depressed and dispirited party, making them a little more competitive in the fall.

Even though it is a totally useless gesture, it cheered my heart when I read this piece in Politico about how House Republicans are still on the floor 2 hours and counting after the Democrats adjourned for vacation:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones have been turned on as well.

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one is witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left.

Since the House is officially in adjournment, Capitol Police were sent to the press gallery and told to kick reporters out. Quickly, Roy Blount of MO went up to the gallery and agreed to be interviewed – just so that the press could stick around and watch the show.

And what a show it is turning out to be:

Update 3 – Democrats just turned out the lights again. Republicans cheered.
Update 4 – Republican leaders just sent out a notice looking for a bullhorn and leadership aides are trying to corral all the members who are still in town to come speak on the floor and sustain this one-sided debate.
Also, Republicans can thank Shadegg for turning on the microphones the first time. Apparently, the fiesty Arizona conservative started typing random codes into the chamber’s public address system and accidentally typed the correct code, allowing Republicans brief access to the microphone before it was turned off again.
“I love this,” Shadegg told reporters up in the press gallery afterward. “Congress can be so boring…This is a kick.”

Meanwhile, Dem staffers are beside themselves with rage.

Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker’s Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers.
“You’re not covering this, are you?” complaing one senior Democratic aide. Another called the Republicans “morons” for staying on the floor.

Visitors – mostly staffers from Republican offices – are filling up the seats normally taken by House members and cheering lustily as each Congressman digs in and pummels the Democrats:

Uodate 5 – Republicans are literally hugging each other on the House floor. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), not normally known as an distinguished orator, just gave a rousing speech, accusing Democrats of stifling dissent. He referenced President John Quincy Adams, who returned as a House member after being defeated in his bid for re-election as president. Waving his arms and yelling, Manzullo brought the crowd (including a lot of staff shipped in by GOP leaders to fill up the place), and he left the floor to hugs from his colleagues. You don’t see that up here every day.
Update 6 – Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. He stood on the other side of the chaber and listed all of the GOP bills that the Dems killed.

He then said “I am a Democrat and here is my energy plan” and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around he house floor with the sign while the crowd cheered.

Nobody in the country can see this little show. The press is covering it probably only to make the GOP look bad later. And let’s face it – it won’t do a damn bit of good as far as shaming the Democrats into coming back and voting on lifting offshore drilling restrictions.

But as political theater, it is a First Class show. And I guess it also proves that the Republicans have a little fight in them after all.

This post originally appears in The American Thinker

I know I’m bucking a trend here but there has to be a reason Petreaus and Odinero are dead set against initiating a timeline for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, something they told the messiah to his face yesterday.

Are they Bushbots who simply don’t recognize the overpowering genius of our future savior?

Maybe they’re war lovers and get off at the sight of dead Americans?

Perhaps they’re “Manchurian Candidate” jihadists who want America to stay in Iraq so their friends can kill more of our troops?

Or maybe – just maybe – they know a helluva lot more about what’s going on in Iraq than anyone else in the American government (including a wet behind the ears junior senator from Illinois) and have a view of how best to end this thing shaped by experience and not by what might play well on the hustings.

I am very happy that Nouri al-Maliki has embraced Barack Obama’s 16 month timeline as a template for getting us out of Iraq. It also gladdens my heart that Obama says that 16 months “isn’t set in stone” and that if conditions warrant it, he will adjust.

But what else would you expect these gentlemen to say? As I pointed out yesterday, of course Maliki loves the idea of Obama’s timeline. Once initiated, he gets to control the withdrawal of American forces. The little Iranian loving Shia Sh*t must love that. If things start getting rough again, all he has to do is cry for help and Obama and the American Army come running. It won’t be Obama slowing or stopping the withdrawal that’s for sure. He will have most of the Democratic party on his neck to prevent that. And unless Maliki agrees to a slowdown or halt to the drawdown, it won’t happen. Hence, Obama is in a trap of his own making.

In an interview with ABC’s Nightline last night, Obama hedged when describing his meeting with Petreaus:

TM: “And then we sat down with [BO] to talk about what has become an open disagreement between military commanders here and Obama, over his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month timetable. Did General Petraeus talk about military concerns about your timetable?”

BO: “You know, I would characterize the concerns differently. I don’t think that they’re deep concerns about the notion of a pullout per se. There are deep concerns about, from their perspective, a timetable that doesn’t take into account what they anticipate might be some sort of changing conditions. And this is what I mean when I say we play different roles. My job is to think about the national security interests as a whole, and to have to weigh and balance risks, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Their job is just to get the job done here. And I completely understand that.”

Moran: “But the difference is real. Commanders here want withdrawals to be based on conditions on the ground. Obama emphasizes his timetable, but he insists he would remain flexible. I’m going to try to pin you down on this ”

Obama: “Here let me say this, though, Terry, because, you know, what I will refuse to do, and I think that, you know ”

Moran: “How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

Obama: “Well, then if I don’t get it right, then you can ask it again.”

Moran: “All right.”

Obama: “Is to get boxed in into what I consider two false choices, which is either I have a rigid timeline of such and such a date, come hell or high water, we’ve gotten our combat troops out, and I am blind to anything that happens in the intervening six months or 16 months. Or, alternatively, I am completely deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground says, which is what George Bush says he’s doing, in which case I’m not doing my job as commander-in-chief.”

Terry should have been a little more persistent and not allowed Obama to set up the “either or” strawmen. No one is saying the choice is that severe. What Terry asked was why not withdraw the troops based on security conditions rather than what by definition is a much more arbitrary proposition? Also, unlike withdrawing based on the reality of what is happening in Iraq, the timeline would, almost by definition, take on a life of its own. It would be added to the metrics for judging success or failure. It would be caught up in the debate over Iraq at home. Who’s to say that with a drastically increased Democratic majority that Obama’s Democratic friends wouldn’t just pull the plug and ignore conditions on the ground? They were willing to do it before he was elected, why not now?

Yes let’s start coming home. If Maliki thinks the Iraqi army can stand up for themselves, bully for him. I happen to think from here on out, it is what happens in the Council of Representatives and the provincial councils that will matter more than what happens with our troops. The Iraqis have to create their own rules to live by and while we can advise them and encourage them, there is precious little left for our troops to do except act as trainers and facilitators for the Iraqi army. And we don’t need 135,000 troops for that.

McCain is making a huge mistake in still trying to prove Obama was wrong about the surge. He should be fighting for the adoption of Petreaus’s views on the matter and not hand control of the withdrawal over to the Iraqis as Obama wishes to do. But it’s clear the Republican’s campaign was caught hard off balance on this and they have yet to recover. It’s an open question if they ever will.

The media will continue to portray Obama as the second coming of George Marshall while ignoring his continued flip flops on his position. Last summer, as an example, Obama said he didn’t think the threat of genocide was a good enough reason to stay in Iraq. Yesterday, he changed his mind 180 degrees by stating that renewed sectarian violence would be reason enough to halt the withdrawal of American forces and skew his precious timeline.

And then there’s the extraordinary fact I highlighted a couple of days ago. After calling the war a “failure” and demanding the removal of our troops at the height of sectarian violence and al-Qaeda attacks which would almost certainly have led to a disaster for American arms and interests, Obama now cooly claims he is for “victory” in Iraq – now that the war is won:

When asked if he is committed to winning the war in Iraq, Obama said, “I don’t think we have any choice. We have to win the broader war against terror that threatens America and its interests. I think that Iraq is one front on that war, but I think the central front is in Afghanistan and in the border regions of Pakistan.”

Not only is he a johnny-come-lately to the idea of “victory” in Iraq – a word not uttered by a Democrat for years except in a mocking tone – he also acknowledges (finally) that Iraq is part of the war on terror when his party actually ran on a platform in 2006 saying exactly the opposite!

It seems pretty clear that Obama is signaling to his sycophants that it’s OK to be bullish about Iraq now. All that stuff we’ve been saying for 6 years about Iraq should be forgotten, swept under the rug, and we should adopt a new paradigm; of course we wanted to win all along. All that talk about withdrawal was just a smokescreen, we really didn’t mean it.

Wanna bet he’s going to get away with it – clean?

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
(An actual adult named Mark Morford who presumably wrote this on a weekend pass from an insane asylum)

I put it to my fellow bloggers; who would you really prefer having as president for the next four years?

An old, plodding, boring, war horse and hero John McCain whose followers are so vanilla that their idea of a wild time is deliberately jamming the ball return at the bowling alley with empty bottles of Nehi on Saturday night.

Or would you rather be able to write about Barack Obama and his fellow Lightworkers as they save the planet, protect the universe, and make America safe for snake oil salesmen once again.

Judging by Mr. Morford’s eye popping idiocy, the next 4 years are either going to be the most monumental in the history of the human race – or at least since another Lightworker trod the earth for 3 years a couple of milenia ago – or we’re all going to be so imbued with the Obama spirit that whatever the neophyte does will be seen as proof of his godlike gifts.

Seriously, now. Don’t you look forward to commenting on stuff like this?

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

“High vibration integrity?” I always wondered why women swooned at his speeches. Turns out its not the heat or, the ambient temperature we’re talking about. Rather it’s Obama the sex toy that is getting all these women hot and bothered.

Might I suggest, ladies, sticking to your pocket rockets and resist going for “the big one” with Obama? After all, with Obama all you get is one speed not to mention a complete lack of penetrating ideas. And the guy couldn’t find the “G” – or any other kind of Spot – to save his life.

(I will be available for free consultations on “Achieving bliss without Obama” immediately following the publishing of this article.)

See how much more fun we’re having and the guy isn’t even elected yet? I challenge you to find anything sexual about John McCain at all. Listening to McCain speak does not remind anyone of “powerful luminosity” or “vibrations” of any kind – sexual or otherwise. Rather, McCain’s speeches are like a combination of Metamucil and Sominex – regular and predictable with softening agents to help everything come out okay along with a singular ability to induce drowsiness. Face it; if McCain somehow manages to win, the next four years are going to be the equivalent of playing checkers and listening to Perry Como records at your grandmother’s house.

Not so if our wunderkind wins the election.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former ‘60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain’t gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae – or no antennae at all – to all those who just don’t understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama’s aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

No parody, no satirical screed can do justice to this kind of slam bang, out of your mind stupidity. It would be hugely frightening if it weren’t so extraordinarily funny. Is this what the left has been reduced to in America? Taking a candidate with literally no experience doing anything (except getting people riled up at the “system”) – a man with no record of achievement save a run at the state senate where he used electoral tomfoolery to get his opponents kicked off the ballot and a run at the US senate where his GOP challenger self destructed over a messy divorce made public by his allies in the media?

It is because of his lack of a record, lack of accomplishments, lack of anything anyone would consider attributes even the worst president should have that the left feels the only way to get people to vote for Obama is to turn him into a secular super-prophet or demigod. It is the equivalent of a sleight-of-hand card trick. Pay no attention to the magicians hands as he deals from the bottom of the deck only to come up with ace after ace.

We are asked to suspend judgement, suspend, logic, suspend belief itself and pretend that Obama is the next step in human evolution. I don’t have a feel for how many of his supporters are swallowing this tripe but judging by the kinds of comments I get here and see on other sites, the number has to be in the millions. It is a full blown Cult of Personality that will make Bushbots seem intelligent by comparison. This is the kind of personal movement that would get serious about pushing for a constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits.

Then again, with guys like this shilling for Obama, it may be easier to paint him as the leader of some kind of nutcase brigade:

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there’s something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn’t assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It’s because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

The “JFK legacy” has not lasted at all. It is gone – if it was ever there in the first place. This “peacemaker” sent 16,000 troops to Viet Nam, tried to kill Castro, threatened to annihilate the planet over Cuba, and was otherwise one of the most bellicose presidents in US history. Only the marvelous PR talents of the Kennedy family entourage – including Arthur Schlessinger and Ted Sorenson – turned a mediocre, weak president into some kind of liberal lion standing up for peace (by bombing Vietnamese) and civil rights (while allowing the Freedom Riders to get beaten bloody down south and only introduced legislation after better men than him forced it upon him).

The Kennedy legacy of tax cutting and big defense increases never seems to get mentioned by liberals when talking about him. But that’s alright – we’re headed for an “evolutionary burp” with Obama. And beyond everything else, we are promised that things like magic, the occult, and remote viewing are possible as long as you are one of “[t]hose attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things.” Far be it for me to stick with simply the “literal meaning of things” when so much more – like Obama’s magical evolutionary burps – can be made transparent as long as you’re in the right frame of mind – or take the required hallucinogen.

The candidate himself will be entertaining enough for any 10 bloggers to never run out of things to write.

But it is Obama’s slavish devotees and their breathless belief in his otherworldliness and out and out Deity that is going to make the next 4 years the most productive in the history of blogging.

Trying to come up with something original to blog about can be a real pain. That’s why many bloggers follow the lead of one of the bigger sites and write about the news of the day with their own special take on what’s happening.

But if you want to blog about something that hardly anyone in the MSM or the internet is writing about, might I suggest you write something about John McCain?

The poor fellow is, for all intents and purposes, being ignored. Now admittedly, the Democratic race (such as it is) holds out a lot more promise of being interesting on any given day. You just never know, for instance, what radical in Obama’s background is going to jump up and say something totally outrageous. After all, the guy has more leftist nuts associated with him than are found at a convention of Communist squirrels. And if you stick a microphone within 10 feet of Bill Clinton, you’re bound to hear something interesting, quotable, and off the wall – three attributes that are guaranteed to generate “controversy.”

Rarely have I seen the media in such lockstep. Each ginned up episode of outrage (as in the press releases from each camp always beginning “Senator Clinton’s outrageous statement…” or “Senator Clinton is outraged at Senator Obama’s statement…”) is dutifully and faithfully reported as if most people actually care about these things. Then to make matters worse, the gaffe or statement is parsed to death, milking every last drop of make believe as if there was something gravely important in it.

And then we are treated to the inevitable “apology” – a less than heartfelt but nevertheless entertaining interlude where we can watch the candidate squirm like a child only recently trained to use the commode . There have been more apologies made by both candidates in this race than a liberal speaking at a convention of oppressed minorities. In fact, perhaps we can just get the historical controversy out of the way and call this campaign the “I’m sorry as hell” election.

Obama’s sorry he hangs around with blatant bigots and anti-American fruitcakes. Hillary is sorry she has to be so mean to Obama but she wants to win so there you are.

And McCain? The GOP candidate is in a rather awkward position. If he tried to apologize for all of Bush’s mistakes, errors in judgement, blunders, misstatements, and outright incompetence, we’d have to pass a Constitutional amendment giving McCain a third term just so that he has time to get it all in.

Failing that, McCain could apologize for nothing and pretend he’s not a Republican – not much of a stretch for the Maverick but a hard sell to the voter nonetheless. There’s the matter of the GOP Convention he is going to have to show up for if he wants to be on the ticket in the fall. At the very least, he has to give an acceptance speech. Knowing McCain’s limitations on the stump, the GOP better hope that the networks are re-running American Gladiator and episodes of 2 and a Half Men. Otherwise, they will be lucky to top Keith Olbermann in the ratings.

But this is McCain’s major problem. Frankly, he’s boring. No one wants to write about an old man with white hair who wants to be in Iraq for 100 years. Or, at least that’s the spin we’re getting from the media.

But truth be told, McCain is, if not a bore, not Mr. Pizazz on the stump. His rhetoric doesn’t soar like Reagan’s. He doesn’t dramatically bite his lower lip when speaking like Clinton. He doesn’t screech like Hillary. And he doesn’t whine like Obama. He is vanilla in an age of pistachio.

And this election cycle, vanilla just might be enough to get the job done. We have been cursed to live in interesting times. So much action packed history has taken place over the last 7 years that we’ve got enough material for a Hollywood epic and at least 3 sequels. Barack Obama offers “change” and the conventional wisdom says that this is going to be enough to carry him to the White House. I say, not so fast. There are different kinds of “change” after all. And suppose the kind of boring, non-premium vanilla ice cream kind of change offered by John McCain is what the people truly want?

Obama doesn’t promise peace and tranquility. How can he when his kind of “change” will necessitate huge battles in Washington against entrenched interests and constant war with Republicans. Obama has never worked with the GOP leadership on anything so the idea that he can bring about meaningful reform is silly. His term in office will be one, long unbroken series of skirmishes, ambushes, and conflicts with everyone – including Democrats on occasion.

On the other hand, McCain has worked with the Democrats on a variety of issues. His kind of leadership promises if not peace, at least a certain respite from some of the partisan wars of the last 7 years. It just may be that this scenario is much more palatable to the American people than the Obama script. At the very least, it will make him competitive in November.

That’s because I predict that by election day, the American people will have grown weary of the exciting Mr. Obama. We really don’t want a rock star for president. Rock stars. as we all know, come with a lot of baggage. The long line of political and religious radicals trailing out behind Mr. Obama as he reaches the finish line in November may, in the end, simply make him too much of a risk for the voter when it comes to choosing a president.

McCain, in the classic tortoise-hare confrontation, will remain steady, uninspiring, and boring – a perfect combination for the majority of white, middle class, middle aged Americans who will be doing most of the voting in November. They don’t want milquetoast. Nor do they want some Gargantua on steroids. They want peace. They want quiet. They want time for the last 8 years to settle in their stomachs before moving on.

Will this kind of change be more palatable than Obama’s?

I will make an hour long appearance on The Kathleen Dunne Show on Wisconsin Public Radio beginning at 11:00 AM Eastern (10:00 AM Central). The topic is “Will Obama Survive Reverend Wright’s Remarks?”

There will also be a discussion of the 2008 race for president.

You can access a live on line stream of the broadcast here.

If you believe the crackdown by Chinese authorities on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tibet that have killed as many as 100 and injured dozens more are the result of the oppressive and thuggish nature of the Communist government, you’re wrong.

At least, according to the Chinese government:

China accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of orchestrating the recent anti-government riots in Tibet in a bid to mar the Beijing Olympics and overthrow the area’s communist leaders.

The accusations came as Tibetan areas were swarming with troops and closed to scrutiny from the outside world. With foreign media banned, information barely trickled out of the Tibetan capital Lhasa and other far-flung communities.

The Chinese government was attempting to fill the information vacuum with its own message, saying through official media that formerly restive areas were under control. It accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of trying to harm China’s image ahead of the summer games.

That Lama guy is one fantastic magician. It’s amazing how he can “orchestrate” the beating, clubbing, and shooting, of his own followers by Chinese police.

“The evil motive of the Dalai clique is to stir up troubles at a sensitive time and deliberately make it bigger and even cause bloodshed so as to damage the Beijing Olympics,” said the Tibet Times, calling it “a life-and-death struggle between ourselves and the enemy.”

The attack on the Dalai Lama — who advocates non-violence and denies being behind the March 14 riots in Lhasa — is an attempt to further demonize him in the eyes of the Chinese public, which is strongly supportive of the Olympics.

Most of those injured and killed in the original protests in Llahsa were monks. And we know all about those bloodthirsty, safron eating, sand sculpturing religious fanatics. How dare they march peacefully to commemorate the Chinese crackdown of 1959. What were they trying to prove? That the Chinese government are a bunch of goons?

Yep:

“The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,” said the People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

China raised its death toll by six, to 22, with its official Xinhua News Agency reporting Saturday that the charred remains of an 8-month-old boy and four adults were pulled from a garage burned down in Lhasa last Sunday — two days after the city erupted in anti-Chinese rioting. The Dalai Lama’s exiled government says 99 Tibetans have been killed, 80 in Lhasa, 19 in Gansu province.

The violence has become a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it has been hoping to use to bolster its international image.

The “rioting” was a direct response to police beating and clubbing thousands of monks who were marching and chanting peacefully. There is also quite a bit of resentment that has been building up against the ethnic Han Chinese who dominate the economic and political landscape of Tibet. Native Tibetans are second class citizens in their own country.

Not all westerners are blaming China. Where else but the New York Times would we find the victim being blamed because their tactics are putting pressure on the thugs:

It has been clear since the mid-1990s that the popular internationalization of the Tibet issue has had no positive effect on the Beijing government. The leadership is not amenable to “moral pressure,” over the Olympics or anything else, particularly by the nations that invaded Iraq.

The Dalai Lama should have closed down the Hollywood strategy a decade ago and focused on back-channel diplomacy with Beijing. He should have publicly renounced the claim to a so-called Greater Tibet, which demands territory that was never under the control of the Lhasa government. Sending his envoys to talk about talks with the Chinese while simultaneously encouraging the global pro-Tibet lobby has achieved nothing.

When Beijing attacks the “Dalai clique,” it is referring to the various groups that make Chinese leaders lose face each time they visit a Western country. The International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington, is now a more powerful and effective force on global opinion than the Dalai Lama’s outfit in northern India. The European and American pro-Tibet organizations are the tail that wags the dog of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

I can’t begin to tell you how upset I am with the Chinese losing face because they murder protestors.

And it isn’t just the Times, it is the curious detatchment of the Bush State Department which seemingly is sending the signal “Can’t you handle this problem with a little less noise?”

China’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet is having powerful political reverberations in Washington, where the White House is weighing how far to go in condemning the Chinese government, even as it defends President Bush’s decision to attend the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.

In the meantime, the presidential candidates are speaking out, as is the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. On Friday, Ms. Pelosi visited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, at his headquarters in Dharamsala, India — and poked a finger in the eye of Beijing.

Rather than a poke in the eye, the Bush State Department delivers a nudge in the ribs and a wink. The President wants that photo-op with other world leaders who will similarly ignore the beastly treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese government so that the games can go on unimpeded by any silly, moralistic issues like killing demonstrators.

Somewhere, someone has got to have a backbone and speak a little truth to the powers in Beijing. Bit given China’s up and coming status as a world player, it seems no one wants to take the chance of offending the Commissars lest they retaliate by downgrading your hotel accommodations.

The United States number one ally in the War on Terror appears ready to negotiate with the terrorists in Pakistan and clear the way for what will almost certainly be an entirely different relationship between the government and the Taliban-AQ forces in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

This should be an interesting test of President Bush’s “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” foreign policy:

Speaking in separate interviews, the leaders of Pakistan’s new government coalition — Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N — tried to strike a more independent stance from Washington and repackage the conflict in a more palatable way for Pakistanis.

They said they were determined to set a different course from that of President Musharraf, who has received generous military financial help of more than $10 billion from Washington for his support.

“We are dealing with our own people,” said Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister in the 1990s. “We will deal with them very sensibly. And when you have a problem in your own family, you don’t kill your own family. You sit and talk. After all, Britain also got the solution of the problem of Ireland. So what’s the harm in conducting negotiations?”

Mr. Zardari said: “Obviously what they have been doing for the last eight years has not been working. Even a fool knows that.”

The war against the insurgents has to be redefined, he said, as “Pakistan’s war” for a public that has come to resent the conflict as being pushed on the country as part of an American agenda. It should be dealt with by talks and the use of a beefed-up police force rather than the army, he said.

Like Musharraf before them, the new Pakistani government is coming to the realization that surrendering to the Taliban and AQ is a lot easier and more popular than fighting them. By allowing the tribes backing the Taliban virtual autonomy in the border areas with Afghanistan, they will stop the suicide bombings that have been plauging major cities like Peshwar for the last few months. This will be especially interesting considering that the individual responsible for most of those bombings has been fingered by the US and Scotland Yard investigators as behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhuttto:

Neither Mr. Zardari nor Mr. Sharif was specific about whom among the militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas they favored talking to. Nor was it clear what kind of formula or quid pro quo the two political leaders had in mind for the talks.

Mr. Sharif, whose Islamic religious background is conservative, refused to say whether he would negotiate with Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader whom the government blames for many if not most of the recent suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan.

American and Pakistani terrorism experts have said they believe that Mr. Mehsud was behind the assassination of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in December, and that he works in tandem with Al Qaeda. “Nobody gave me any presentation on this subject,” Mr. Sharif said.

Asked whom the negotiations would be held with, Mr. Sharif replied: “With all the concerned elements. I don’t think guns and bullets have so far produced any positive results.”

If the negotiations hold true to form, there will be several fig leaf agreements that will forbid the Taliban from using the tribal areas as a base to launch attacks against Afghanistan as well as strictures against foreign fighters operating in the area.

Perhaps this time, the terrorists will throw in a bridge in Brooklyn and see if the government will buy it.

Such agreements will almost certainly buy some time for the Pakistani government – just as they did for Musharraf – as the political leaders will seek to curry favor with the anti-American population by ostensibly distancing themselves from Washington.

Meanwhile, it may doom Afghanistan. The United States has been begging NATO to commit more combat troops to Afghanistan to help the beleaguered Canadians in Kandahar province who are facing the brunt of Taliban incursions. That will change if agreements in the NWFP with Taliban backed tribes are negotiated. If Pakistan were to withdraw troops from the border area and replace them with the ill trained Frontier Militia, the Taliban will have little trouble opening another front in Afghanistan farther north:

For instance, one element of the stepped-up American aid effort is a $400 million plan to train the Frontier Corps, an underfinanced paramilitary force that is used to patrol the border with Afghanistan.

Mr. Sharif said he had heard about the plan, expected to begin in October, but had no details.

Mr. Zardari favored employing such a force over relying on the army, which he said was the “wrong instrument” to use against the militants. “We need to use the police force,” he said. “They had few guns, made in 1952. You have to upgrade them. You have got to give them modern technology, and they will stand better than anybody else.”

Mr. Sharif, who is regarded as a nationalist — he gave the go-ahead for the explosion of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb in 1998 — said he was not in favor of foreign aid. “I think frankly we should rely less on aid,” he said. “It makes us, you see, lazy. We should generate our own resources.”

The US saw the paramilitaries the same way they viewed the Sunni Awakening in Iraq; as a way for the young men of the tribes who are currently being hired to fight by the Taliban to be employed instead in defense of the Pakistani government. That may still be an option for the government but I would place little faith in their desire or ability to interdict the Taliban’s infiltration into Afghanistan.

There will be many defenders of Pakistan’s new policy here in the United States. After all, talking with the enemy is always preferable to shooting at him, right? And the negotiations may very well accomplish what the government seeks to achieve – a respite from the bombings and less opposition to the government in the tribal areas.

To try and see this as anything less than a total, unmitigated disaster for the United States is to practice self delusion. This too, will probably sit well with those in the US who see any setback for the Bush Administration in a positive light.

But the agreements signed by President Musharraf in the Waziristans in the last 3 years have proven to be little more than green lights for the Taliban to send as many fighters across the border into Afghanistan as they believe necessary to carry out operations against NATO forces. And the strictures against al-Qaeda foreign fighters leaving Pakistan were honored in the breach.

The immediate problem will be Afghanistan. But in the long term, any agreement signed by the government will only strengthen the extremists and bring them closer to Osama Bin Laden’s goal of taking over the Pakistani government – a government that possesses the ultimate weapon against cartoons that insult Islam and those who publish them.

OFF TO THE DEATH CAMPS

We already knew the Chinese government were a bunch of freedom denying, liberty hating, collectivist scumbag Communist sons of bitches. But it is still shocking to realize how deep their cruelty truly goes.

For years, the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the infanticide of female children – a direct result of the forced “one child per family” (OCPF) that the benighted savages in Beijing forced upon the populace. A sample of “scientific socialism” at work:

The one-child policy is criticized as violating basic human rights. Many are concerned with the practices used to implement this policy. China has been meeting its population requirements through bribery, coercion, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and possibly infanticide, with most reports coming from rural areas.[attribution needed]

Some examples include:

1. a former administrator of a Chinese Planned Birth Control Office had stated his experience of execution forced abortion on a 9 month pregnant woman. [31]

2. A former Chinese population control administrator named Gao Xiao Duan testified before a United States House subcommittee in 1998, regarding her participation in forced sterilizations and abortions.[32]

3. A 2001 report exposed in Guangdong a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilisations was set for Huaiji County in the same year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. The effort included using portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages.

Earlier reports also show that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort by injection of saline solution.[33] Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute announced that the One child policy is “an ongoing genocide”. He argued that free market capitalism will solve the overpopulation and overconsumption problems of developing nations. [34]

Whether Moore is correct is not the point. The problem is with an ideology that sees life as a statistic rather than a precious entity, born with the right to life, liberty, and other natural rights that the Chinese government neither celebrates nor acknowledges.

It is easy to oppress when you’ve lost your humanity.

So it should come as absolutely no surprise that this same government that sees nothing wrong with parents murdering their own children (until international pressure forced them to do something about it in 2001), should see the problem of controlling the feline population in such beastly and inhumane terms:

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.

Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females – were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.

China’s leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus – in 2003.

Even if you despise cats – and I know that there are many of you out there – you cannot help but be struck dumb with outrage over this completely unnecessary, draconian, and positively medieval method of controlling the cat population. Any western nation could have helped the Chinese with this problem and it could have been done much more humanely and without the government using deliberate scare tactics to jack up the citizenry and turn them against cats.

When I wrote of the medieval methods used against cats by the Chinese I was not using allegory. Whipping up a frenzy of emotion against cats was a favorite ploy of the church in the middle ages. In something of a delicious irony (from the cat’s perspective) when our ancestors had killed off most of the cats in Europe, invading rats overran the continent. They bore fleas that carried bubonic plague that killed of a third of its population. In their frenzy to burn witches and murder their “familiars,” Europeans were unwittingly sealing their doom by eliminating their only salvation against the plague carrying rats – cats.

But the Chinese efforts at eliminating cats are not just being done for health reasons. These Communist bozos are so intent on making a good impression for the Olympics this year that they don’t want a bunch of stray cats wandering around the venues:

But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.

Polluting factories in and around the city are being ordered to shut down or relocate during the Games to ease Beijing’s choking smog and drivers are allowed out on to the roads only three times a week.

Fares on the city’s underground network have been cut to just two yuan (14p) for any journey – a six-fold reduction on some routes – to keep people off buses, and beggars and street sleepers are being moved to out-of-town camps or given train fares back to their home provinces.

Meanwhile, taxi drivers have been made to attend lessons in how to greet passengers politely in English and a city-wide courtesy campaign has been launched to teach Beijing’s notoriously dour and grumpy citizens how to smile and be pleasant to foreigners.

The cull of Beijing’s estimated 500,000 cat population is certain to provoke international outrage as it comes just over a year after the Chinese were criticised for rounding up and killing stray dogs across the country.

I apologize to you dog lovers out there. If I had known of that barbarism, I would have been just as outraged I assure you.

You might ask are there no cat lovers in China? Of course there are. Here’s an example of what they are up against:

Animal welfare groups in China are already protesting, but their members fear punishment from the authorities.

Officials say people can adopt animals from the 12 cat pounds set up around the city, but welfare groups say they are almost impossible to get inside and believe few cats survive.

One cat lovers’ group negotiated the release of 30 pets from one of the compounds in Shahe, north-west Beijing, but said they were in such a pitiful condition that half of them died within days of their release.

“These cats are being left to die. It is very

It gets worse.

“People don’t want to keep cats in Beijing any more so they abandon them or send them to the compounds.

“When we went inside, we saw about 70 cats being kept in cages stacked one on top of the other in two tiny rooms.

“Disease spreads quickly among them and they die slowly in agony and distress. The government won’t even do the cats the kindness of giving them lethal injections when they become sick. They just wait for them to die.

“It is the abandoned pets that suffer the most and die the soonest. They relied so much on their owners that they can’t cope with the new environment.

“Most refuse to eat or drink and get sick more quickly than the feral cats.”

Ms Yan’s group has now been denied access to the pounds. “We do not believe any of the cats that go in there survive,” she said. “They are like death camps.”

If you are a cat lover, the more you read of this article in the Daily Mail the more you will feel like organizing a military expedition to free the animals from their confinement.

The cat lovers are up against the cruelest of human institutions; dead ass communist bureaucracy. They have begged the government to offer cut rate spaying and neutering all to no avail. Indeed, the government has mandated spaying and neutering but few can afford the 200 yuan pricetag. (Most American cities and towns also require spaying and neutering but with many clinics offering cut rate or installment payment plans it is relatively easy to comply with the laws.) Couple that with a dearth of no-kill shelters or shelters of any kind and you have the makings of this man made holocaust.

I do not dispute the necessity to control the feline and canine populations – especially in big cities. And I might point out that our own efforts in this regard are not always the model of humane behavior. But we have made a vast improvement from even just 10 years ago. Controlling the feral cat population in US big cities now includes a wide range of actions including “trap, neuter, and release” as opposed to simply trapping and killing the animals.

Feral cats tend to congregate in the same area when the food supply is reliable. These “colonies” are made possible by legions of cat lovers across the country who volunteer to watch and care for their charges. New arrivals are immediately caught and, usually in cooperation with a kindly vet, fixed for free or a nominal cost. The colony manager also watches for outbreaks of disease and tries and keep track of any predations the cats might engage in – especially against birds. Kittens are removed from the colony and sent to adoption centers.

Such managed colonies could never occur in China, however. The movement began at the grass roots and demanded that government support them. If you start demanding anything from government in China, you will most likely end up in prison.

No matter. There are more humane ways to kill the animals than simply not feeding them and allowing them to die horribly. But to the Chinese bureaucrats intent on projecting a squeaky clean image to the rest of the world for the olympics, there is only a problem that needs to be solved as quickly and cheaply as possible.

May they rot and then burn in hell.

Conversation overheard this morning while Zsu-Zsu and I were drinking coffee and reading the paper.

ME: Hey! Looks like we missed “International Womens Day” yesterday.

SHE: (Sniffs) Didn’t miss anything.

ME: Really? Aren’t you even the least bit interested in the worldwide struggle for women’s rights?

SHE: I’m much more interested in you taking out the garbage this morning.

ME: But don’t you realize that billions of women around the world are being oppressed?

SHE: I’d settle for you making me dinner every once and a while.

ME: Are you telling me you feel no solidarity with your sisters who marched in the streets yesterday to improve the lot of women the world over?

SHE: Nope. Too busy shaving my legs.

ME: I’m surprised at you. This is a day that’s been celebrated since 1908. According to the IWD website: “IWD is now an official holiday in Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.”

SHE: Heh. Just what we need. Another day that you forget to give me a card and flowers.

ME: No, you don’t get it. This is serious stuff. IWD could be called “Feminists Day.” Many from a younger generation feel that ‘all the battles have been won for women’ while many feminists from the 1970’s know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women’s education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

SHE: Pass the sugar, would ya?

ME: Doesn’t it concern you that the battle isn’t over, that the dominant white patriarchy is still oppressing your sisters here in the United States.

SHE: If you knew my sisters, you’d agree they need a little oppressing. Seriously, Ricky, what the hell brought on all this nonsense?

HE: I thought it would be an interesting way to introduce this hilarious video.

SHE: You and that blog, Rick…TO THE MOON…

UPDATE

Mostly unrelated to International Womens Day but perhaps one of the best sketches in years by Saturday Night Live, this video of the “3:00 AM Phone Call” is destined to be a classic.