In trying to comprehend the mass kidnapping in Iraq a few days ago, where educators were rounded up by terrorists wearing police uniforms, the apparent helplessness of the victims struck me. Haven’t the Iraqi people seen enough of this kind of stuff to know when they’re in danger of becoming a victim? When will they, or will they, have their Todd Beamer moment and say, no, you’re not doing that to us and fight back?
All posts by Ross
S.F. Board Of Education Gives JROTC The Boot
As a followup to this post, warning of the upcoming vote by the school board in San Francisco to keep or stop the JROTC program. San Francisco ‘values’ prevailed by a 4-2 vote. In their infinite wisdom, they chose to deprive their kids of the opportunity by killing the program. What a shame. Anyone heard Nancy Pelosi speak to this?
More on this at Michelle Malkin’s blog.
Citizenship Test, The Missing Questions
Debbie Schlussel has found the lost questions from the US citizenship test. These are the questions that should be asked. Here’s number one for example.
1. If a woman doesn’t want to cover her hair with a headscarf, she should be:
a) allowed to do as she pleases.
b) stoned to death, after being buried up to the neck in dirt. The woman exposed her sexy hair to men who are not her husband, so she is clearly a whore unworthy of life.
c) forced to watch PBS specials and the “ladies” of “The View.” Wearing a do-rag on my head is like way totally cool. Means I don’t have to wash or do my hair.
Iran Will Help In Iraq, Help Take It Over
Coming direct from Fantasyland comes a Christian Science Monitor story entitled ‘Can Iran help stabilize Iraq?‘  Only if Tinkerbell will wave her magic wand. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his own mission, which he has made crystal clear many times.Â
Stuff like . . . ‘Death to the Great Satan’ comes to mind, and, oh yeah, Israel ought to be wiped off the map, and we’re a nuclear nation so get over it, I need a nuclear bomb to protect myself from the Great Satan, and I’ll train, fund, and supply al Qaeda so they can do their deeds in Iraq, and, Hezbollah, my shadow army, is showing those Jews what bombs and missiles and explosive vests can do with some help from my buds in Syria and Lebanon, and make way for the twelfth Imam, the end is near.
Yeah, Ahmadinejad, that’s the guy who will voluntarily stop all those things from happening. He’ll just give up everything he has been ranting about for years if we’ll only offer him a cup of coffee and a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Maybe a one on one with Oprah would tilt the balance in our favor? All that speculation is not only fantasy, it is ignoring all that Mahmoud has done and is currently doing. The tip-off is this ridiculous goal. . .
Bringing Iran – and Syria – into a regional process to stabilize Iraq is being touted both by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, the US commission studying options that both Republicans and Democrats hope will provide a framework for facesaving change in Iraq. (emphasis added)
Iran and Syria are part of the problem in Iraq and in the region. This apparent goal for a face-saving anything is a haunt from the Vietnam war. It’s political-speak for surrender. It means we will ‘leave’ if you ‘say’ you will help. They have it bass ackwards. It’s the Iranian terrorist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that needs a face job rather than face saving. Scott (Peterson), take your head out of the sand man.
Class-Action Lawyers See Rubles in Russia
Big opportunities for bottom feeders in Russia, that could make the gold rush of the 19th century look like peanuts. Qualifying for the most ridiculous item of the day. . .
Russian lawyers heralded the dawn of a western-style compensation culture yesterday after a woman who drank copious quantities of Coca Cola every day for five years successfully sued the company for giving her insomnia and heartburn.
Martinez RNC Chair
I don’t see any new direction here. After fumbling the ball on immigration weeks before the mid-term election, the RNC is setting itself up for a repeat with Martinez. For me a new direction would be someone like Michael Steele.
FoxNews link: Sen. Mel Martinez to Replace Mehlman as RNC Chairman
Air America Off The Air, It’s Rich Democrats’ Fault
Seems the only people who don’t understand business dynamics are the Air America investors. The ‘start broadcasting and they will come’ business plan is the ultimate business risk. They ignored or misread the amount of ‘public demand’ for their kind of program message. But what is worse than that is that they expected rich democrats to help finance them. That was their first clue that not enough people would want to hear them to make it successful.
In November 2005, founder Sheldon Drobny writes . . .
As I wrote in my book, Road to Air America, Anita and I were initially encouraged about raising the necessary funds for the network. Bill Clinton and Al Gore gave us amazing contacts in Hollywood, Washington, and New York and we visited with almost all of the important rich liberals either directly or through their gate keepers. To our surprise, we did not get a single dollar from any of these people. So we had only our own money and some of our traditional investors to start up Air America Radio. We ultimately had to sell the company reluctantly in November, 2003 because we could not raise the 40-50 million dollars necessary to complete the funding.
The next twelve months included radio stations dropping them. Not enough advertising revenue for stations to carry them. Some stations were paid to carry their program. How’s that for a business model? That was their second clue of impending disaster.
Then came bankruptcy last month with 97 affiliates. Today they have 92, after losing Madison, Wisconsin, New Orleans, Huntington, WV, and Binghamton, NY and apparently one other somewhere.
Of course there is a conspiracy theory to AAR’s troubles. Investor Terry Kelly suggests . . .
“I find it puzzling as to the timing given the election results,” said Terry Kelly, one of the founding members of the Air America network and a longtime Madison businessman. “There is no business reason that is apparent to me (for the change), therefore, one wonders what the real reasons may be.”
I’m not in the broadcasting business, but I do play a radio. Seems to me that being 11th in your market would suffice for a business decision to drop them. Back in January 2004 I figured that Air America Radio would be nothing more than a mouth organ for the left, instead of a viable business. Last year Sheldon Drobney and this year Terry Kelly bares that out.
On Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006, Kelly said . . .
“It’s shocking to me, as a good progressive Democrat, the lack of support from wealthy Democrats. That’s the main reason why the company is in financial difficulty,” Kelly said. “I do not know if our efforts will be successful to re- capitalize the company, but I certainly hope so.”
No Terry, the main reason is that not enough people want to hear you. And here is why.
Economics 101 would suggest a correlation between no credibility and no money. Business 101 would suggest having a product doesn’t mean anyone will buy it.
San Francisco Values, Jr. ROTC At Risk
The San Francisco Board of Education will vote tomorrow on whether to keep the JROTC programs in their schools. The decision would affect 1600 students. Mission Impossible: Get Nancy Pelosi to publicly answer how she would vote if she were on the board.
The San Francisco Board of Education is scheduled to vote Tuesday on ending the JROTC program. Let the trustees know your views. Their e-mail addresses are:
— Norman Yee, president: yeen@sfusd.edu
— Sarah Lipson, vice president: slipson@sfusd.edu
— Eddie Y. Chin: echin@sfusd.edu
— Dan Kelly: dkelly@sfusd.edu
— Eric Mar: emar@sfusd.edu
— Mark Sanchez: msanchez@sfusd.edu
— Jill Wynns: jwynns@sfusd.edu
Note: For the meeting agenda, go to http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/
Islamofascists Just Love Africa
All the pundits and politicians who think that leaving Iraq before Iraq can take care of themselves, should look at what the terrorists are doing in Africa, where they prey on weak governments, take them over, and breed. Breed rape, mass murder, and more who will do the same. Although they have territory, they don’t have a lot of cash.
The situation is Somalia is bad, but no where near as bad as Iraq will be if the terrorists were to be left to dominate there.Â
Terrorists need money to do what they do. If they had control of Iraq’s natural resources, their oil, then the terrorists would have a constant and huge cash flow. Why, I bet they could buy whatever Russia, France, China, Iran, or North Korea have to sell. To say that the Iraq war is all about oil is obfuscating the point. It’s about oil as a money source for terrorists. It’s about oil for a money source for the people who own it, the Iraqi people. It’s NOT about oil for Bush, Cheney, and Halliburton.  Duh!
Disclaimer: The link is to a New York Times article so it’s truthfulness should be weighed against what you already know about Somalia and The New York Times.
Disclaimer: CNN International link on Sudan may not be the whole story either. CNN has admitted to not publishing news favorable to the United States (Saddam’s Iraq) and in publishing terrorist propaganda videos. It’s truthfulness should be weighed against what you already know about Sudan and CNN.
al-Reuters: Al Qaeda seeking nuclear kit for attacks
Eat The Rich, Shoot The Messenger
Responding to a local editorial taking shots at Rush Limbaugh and spineless politicians afraid to say what they truly believe. . .
You are right in so many ways, especially in the way politicians are afraid to say what they really believe else they’ll never get elected, but wrong about Rush ‘shilling’ for republicans. But you can’t know that if you listen to Rush’s critics instead of Rush.
Rush has been a huge critic of Bush and republicans in Washington when they deserve it. But when push comes to shove, in the long run, you have to choose. Rush chooses free enterprise, freedom, capitalism, and competition, limited government, controlled spending, and the belief that, by and large, the American people know best what to do with their money than ‘the government.’ In that context, republicans have been his choice. Democrats, by and large, think that government is the solution to all our problems, and the American people are not smart enough to manage themselves and need government to be their parents. To call that shilling does more to attack the messenger instead of the message, which is another tenet of the democrat party that Rush brings to light. You’re proving his point on that one.
If you listen to Rush with some regularity, you would know that there wasn’t a bigger critic of Bush when it comes to Bush’s wandering from conservative principles. From constitutional matters such as the failed McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance ‘Reform’ bill, to energy matters, to out-of-control spending, to letting his judicial nominees rot on the vine. Rush makes the point that Bush is not conservative in some ways. Shills don’t do that.
And since when is being ‘rich’ a bad thing? I assume you feel that way by this paragraph. You write:
“Here’s a rich, powerful commentator who has been bashing Democrats and pushing Republicans like it was the last chance to save mankind — and now it turns out he really didn’t mean it.”
A big problem with the left in Washington and newsrooms in this country is how the successful become targets to be brought down, instead of examples of how people can be successful if they make the right choices in life and have the freedom to make the right choices in business. Remember how the Clinton administration wanted to sue the pants off of Bill Gates in the 90’s for being so successful that it was ‘unfair?’ They wanted to split his company up into smaller less successful entities. Ask AT&T what happened to them, and how that fiasco has finally ended up.
If you can take the selective success-envy out of the debate, you might be able to get down to what really matters. Are not commentators like Mike Papantonio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also rich? The fact that they have not been successful (Air America Radio & The Ring of Fire) is because of the choices they make. The free-market speaks for itself.