Say Anything Blog

I don’t want to hear another word about Tom Cruise and Katy Holmes’ small furry baby. I don’t want to hear about Tomkat...period. In fact, when I hear the odious nickname “Tomkat” on any newscast it sends me scrambling for the remote while questioning the parentage of whatever talking head uttered it. It’s not news. It’s Hollywood gossip and why the news media keep stuffing Tomkat down our throats is beyond me.

I don’t care that Michael Richards had a melt down and is now pathetically grovelling to anyone who will listen about how sorry he is. It was interesting for about a millisecond but for some reason the story goes on and on. And on. And on.

I don’t have the resources to do this but I’d like to know just how much TV air time - on real newscasts - has been used on this non-story in the past few days.

I don’t care that Brittany Spears and her husband du-jour Kevin Federline are divorcing. Anybody who marries someone who actually calls himself “K-Fed” deserves whatever she gets. And I don’t care if Brittany dropped her kid on his head. Besides the non-news aspect of it I suspect, based on her marrying “K-Fed”, that she was dropped on her head, too, and relatively speaking she turned out almost all right. I don’t even care if there is a much ballyhooed Brittany and K-Fed sex tape out there somewhere. If I wanted trailer-park porn I’d buy some. I don’t need to be told all about it on cable and broadcast news. Besides, apart from the above mentioned Tomkat I don’t know of anyone who would care to see the more intimate side of K-Fed.

I don’t care if Madonna bought herself a kid while playing keep-up-with-the-Jolies. I don’t care what she has to say about it. Come to think of it, I don’t care what she has to say about, well, anything. Really. And speaking of the Jolies, I don’t care if they buy themselves a dozen kids from assorted countries. I just wish they’d shut up about it. Okay, okay, you’re doing a good thing. Just...do it. And shut up. Oh, and that whole Brangelina nickname thing. Whoever came up with that should be dragged behind a car right beside whatever idiot came up with “Tomkat.” And the very next legitimate newscaster who uses either name should be right there with them with a sign pinned to their chest saying simply, “Sorry.”

Being a news junkie I watch the various news programs with what generally amounts to a good degree of interest. And about every night I have to squirm through a dissertation on one or another of the Hollywood misfit’s latest traumas. I wish they’d get my above point....IT’S NOT NEWS! It’s gossip. Stop it. Leave that stuff to E! Or Oprah or whoever. Touch on it if you like but then MOVE ON!

Message to Hollywood. Shut up and entertain me. That’s what you’re paid for. Message to the news media. Stop with the gossip already. I don’t want to hear about those Hollywood buffoons.

Unless Tomkat and K-Fed run off together and open up a little antique shop in San Francisco, that is. That would be worth about a minute of my time. Then...move on, please.

By J.R. Dunn, in The American Thinker:

Things are getting positively biblical in the War on Terror’s African front.
According to Agence France Presse, Ethiopia is about to attack the Somali Islamists single-handed, on their own hook, and with assistance from nobody. On Thursday Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the Ethiopian parliament that the Islamists represented “a clear threat to Ethiopia” and that the government had “completed the preparations” for full-scale war. The Islamists, who triggered the crisis by declaring Jihad on the Ethiopians, have (of all possible moves) turned to the United States for mediation.

The interesting thing here is the fact that Ethiopia, though one of the remotest and most isolated nations on earth (it was considered a candidate for the mythical lost kingdom of Prester John during the late medieval period), played a serious role in both of the long wars of the 20th century – the battles against fascism and communism.
In 1935 Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in order to fulfill his grandiose vision of a modern Roman empire, along with avenging the 1895 defeat at Adowa, where the Ethiopians annihilated an invading Italian army. With the help of poison gas and carpet bombing, he succeeded in a swift campaign that scattered Ethiopia’s peasant army and forced Emperor Haile Selassie to flee the country.
Nearly forty years later Ethiopia became the first of many nations to fall to communism’s final surge of conquest when in 1974 the government was overthrown by a Marxist clique led by army officer Mengistu Mariam. The emperor, by then a very old man, was murdered in his bed. The regime went on to kill another million and a half Ethiopians over the next decade.
In neither case did the world at large do much of anything in response. In 1935, the League of Nations expelled Italy, but no more. In 1974, the world neither noticed nor cared.
But in both cases, Ethiopia was a harbinger of coming defeat for the ideologies. Mussolini, until 1935, was widely considered a great man, his fascism a kind of magic formula for solving the problems of a modern economy. After Ethiopia, he was an international pariah, left with nowhere to turn but Hitler’s Germany. When war came, Ethiopia was in 1940 the first nation liberated from fascism.
In the 1970s, the takeover of Ethiopia marked the start of the dramatic expansion of communist influence that led in turn to overextension and collapse. The Soviets wasted massive amounts of resources fighting wars and propping up regimes across southern and central Africa, Central America, and Asia. When the West rebounded in the 1980s, the Soviets were caught short, and never did recover before the historical curtain fell in 1989.

Read the whole thing.

It looks like little Ethopia is braver and more courageous than the entire American Left, the Dem Party and the MSM.  They realize the threat of Islamofascism and are willing to fight for their freedom from the threat of it.

Posted by Al Brown in NewsBusters:

Reports of burning mosques, like this one from Reuters remain unconfirmed, and may have been fabricated by Sunni militants.

Also, sensationalized accounts of Sunnis being dragged from prayer and burned alive by rampaging Shiites are unconfirmed, and all appear to come from the same source, police Captain Jamil Hussein, whose entire career appears to be issuing statements about Shia violence against Sunnis. Curt at Flopping Aces has researched Hussein and found a remarkable number of atrocity stories for which he is the source.

Curt also reports that he has received an email from CENTCOM that is very skeptical of the media accounts:

We are checking with the Iraqi Government to verify that Capt. Jamil Hussein is a legitimate Iraqi Government spokesperson. We haven’t heard back yet. Unfortunately, people posing as government officials often do call the media to make statements.

From the Multi-National Force’s Iraqi Freedom website:

BAGHDAD — Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood…

...An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.

This is all uncomfortably reminiscent of the Reutersgate/fauxtography scandal during the Israeli/Hezbollah war, and once again brings into question just how much Western news agencies have compromised their integrity by depending on unvetted local stringers and sources.

If these incidents were embellished, as they now seem to be, they show a frightening level of sophistication about Western media. The stories all broke toward the end of the weekly news cycle so that even if they are eventually corrected, they will have at least the weekend to sink into the American psyche.

Developing…

By printing this stuff without vetting it, our MSM is complicit in the terrorist strategy being used in Iraq to defeat us by other than military means.

Calls for calm as crowd stones Iraqi PM

Angry fellow Shi’ites stoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s motorcade in a Shi’ite stronghold of Baghdad on Sunday in a display of fury over a devastating car bomb that tore through their area.

Maliki was visiting the Sadr City slum to pay respects to some of the 202 victims of last week’s devastating bombing.

“It’s all your fault!” one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a hostile crowd began to surge around the premier and then jeered as his armored convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony.

Looks like his own Shi’ite people are turning against him.  If that is the case it’s just a matter of time before he is gone because obviously the Sunnis want to get rid of him.

Some humor, but my apologies in advance to anyone this might offend. It's just too bizarre to ignore. I just had to post it. I think I need help.
Somebody had a bad day:

Police seeking owner of penis

Monday, November 20, 2006

Police in South Africa are trying to trace the owner of a severed penis which was found lying on the ground in a village.

The penis, which was not attached to anybody, was found on the ground outside a house in the small village of Masoyi, in the Mpumalanga region of eastern South Africa.

The police were called by the man who found the penis, which was not his penis, last Friday morning.

According to local police Superintendent Benjamin Mtsholi Bhembe, the man saw an unusual object on the ground outside the house he was taking care of.

‘On closer inspection, he realised that it was a man’s private part,’ said Bhembe.

Initial police investigations around the neighbourhood – which we imagine involved knocking on people’s doors and asking ‘ have you lost your penis?’ – proved unsuccessful.

Authorities are urging the penis’s owner to come forward. If you have lost you penis, you are advised to contact your nearest South African police station.

I didn’t make this up. Actually, I couldn’t make this up. One of my warped co-workers found it at: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=25932&in_page_id=2

Written by JB Williams

When opinion is accepted as fact, perception soon becomes reality, at least for those who share these opinions and cling to the resulting perceptions. Herein lies the reason for the division in America today and unless we make a concerted effort to separate perception from reality, opinion from fact, fiction from truth, that division will continue.

How is it that an individual can read the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and see the word “of” as relates freedom of press, speech, or redress, yet the word “from” as relates only to religion?

How does one reason that we can have freedom “of” anything we are to be free “from”? Only a lawyer could make this case, but then, it is their function in life to defend the indefensible, make an argument where no case exists. In other words, replace reality with perception… (See O.J. trial)

How does one read the Fourth Amendment strictly addressing Illegal Search and Seizure, and gleam from it a Constitutional Right to abortion?

How is it possible that people, even Christians, can look at American history, and not know the foundational principles our nation was built upon?

Only by replacing realty with a preferred perception, are these things possible.

(more...)

“Those who say we cannot put a price tag on the value of life should not complain about the high price of prescription drugs that keep them alive.”

GOP MOVES RIGHT

A sign that Republican membership in the House has moved right came when the 13 new GOP congressmen elected three of its four class officers who had been backed by the conservative Club for Growth.

They included Bill Sali of Idaho as class president, Adrian Smith of Nebraska as Policy Committee representative and Doug Lamborn of Colorado as representative to the whip. The fourth officer is Kevin McCarthy of California as Steering Committee member.

A footnote: The 13 newcomers constitute the smallest Republican freshman class in many years. The 41 freshman Democrats will pick their officers later.

I don’t know much about the other three, but Adrian Smith is a “Real Deal” Conservative. I had a chance to meet him last fall while I was representing The Leadership Institute in Nebraska and Adrian is also an LI Grad so it is nice to see some fellow LI’ers making it to leadership positions is nice.

As a independent conservative, I don’t tie my political hopes to mere party label. That said, the Republican party typically does a better job of addressing more of my core concerns than the Democratic party does.

Since the election I’ve heard a singular refrain: “Democrats didn’t win, the Republicans beat themselves.”

Well, hornswabble and hogwash. Let’s be clear: the Republicans most definitely did lose, and they lost because the Democrats were able to paint them with a broad brush…the Republicans supplied them with the paint.

The way out of the wilderness for the Republicans isn’t to sink into denial, it’s to face up the reality of what happened. If the Republicans want to spring back, they can ill afford to alow the Democrats to define the national narrative.

So heres the idea, we all have books we have have read just sitting around.  Instead of letting them collect dust, list them and swap them.  (Each side will pay their own shipping just to simplify things.)  Honor system is in effect.  If you rip anyone off your name will be drug through the mud here on SayAnything.

I will get it started.  Feel free to list what you have with your email address.

(more...)

New York Times

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

How do you smuggle oil?  More importantly how do you smuggle enough oil to make sizable amounts of cash?

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says that $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

Figures.  When you deal with people who are used to corruption, that is all you will ever get.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

Maybe the Democrats will raise their taxes! 

Even taking the higher figure of $200 million, the group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war, with American, Iraqi and other coalition forces fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

So they admit there is really no story here.

According to an unsourced study, fully 90% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Discuss amongst yourselves…

I grew up in Rural North Dakota. I spent a lot of time on my back with a telescope. John Redlin and I would lay on a blanket in his back yard. I later would often find myself out on a hill near Ranch 2 at midnite looking up. Sometimes it would be clear as a bell in winter. The nearest yard light would be 2 miles away. The stars would be so bright, you could see the color differences between them.

It was more than just pedantic identification. To see the milky way streak across the sky and know that I was seeing billions of suns with planets on them gave me a sense of awe I carry to this day. How could I not believe in God seeing this. Paul the Apostle wrote of this in Romans 1:20 (NKJV) that,

““For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. . .”

There were times when we lived north of Fargo that at 3AM the northern lights would be so bright you could almost see your shadow. It would seem as if you could actually hear them. They would humm. The telephone and power lines seemed to pick up the noise of them and reflect them.

I say this because I just looked at some pictures I want to show you from the Hubble telescope. I think the lack of faith in God exists because other lesser lights have dimmed our capacity to see the majesty that is the heavens. No wonder David wrote of what they saw at night with such eloquence:

““The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands."” (Psalm 19:1)

““O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Thy name in all the earth, Who hast displayed Thy splendor above the heavens! “

“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou has ordained;”

“O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is Thy name in all the earth!”

(Psalm 8:1,3,9)

““Thy heavens, the work of the Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou has ordained”

“Thou dost make him [man] to rule over the works of Thy hands, Thou has put all things under his feet"” (Psalms 8:3,6).

And Moses warns people to understand that God created these things and that we are not to worship them but worship God. The beauty of the stars are a gift, a heritage to us.

““And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage” (Deuteronomy 4:19).

So, with that understanding, take a look at the pictures. When your breath is taken away and you stand in awe, remember your and their creator are ONE.

And say Thank You.

How was this a good idea?

It’s novel, I’ll give them that. Loading Granny down with explosives so she could blast her way into the headlines as their latest political statement is somewhat of a departure from the norm. But - that’s all it was. A political statement, a headline grabber.

The IDF saw her coming and because she was "acting suspiciously" they tossed a stun grenade at her. She then pulled the cord or pushed the button and blew herself to pieces before she could kill anyone else.

Why did this happen? How did it happen?

Strapping that old lady up with high explosives and sending her toward IDF soldiers had absolutely no military benefit. It gave no one any kind of tactical advantage. It was simply a cynical and murderous exercise in public relations.

Whoever was behind this actually had her make a martyr video in which she stands, holding an assault rifle and looking absurd, and says that she “hopes God accepts this.” She doesn’t look like a jihadi. She looks like someone’s grandma with a gun.

What kind of minds are at work here? The people who put together things like this are absolutely some of the most twisted people this world has ever known. But an even better question than asking what kind of animal would put something like this together is, why can’t their victims, the ones who end up loaded down with exposives and walking into a cafe on a sunny afternoon to kill people who’ve never done anything to them, why can’t they see they’re being used?

Their lives don’t mean anything at all to the con man manipulators who talk them into matrydom. Neither does their martydom, for that matter.They are nothing to these people.

There is no humanity in their puppet-masters. All they are to them are tomorrow’s newspaper article.

One of the maniacs who orchestrated this murder -and it was murder whether she set off the expolsives or not - was actually quoted as saying that they had told the Israelis that they would surprise them, and this was part of the surprise.

Well, I’m not surprised. At this point no sub-human act, no matter how brutal, those followers of the Religion of Peace perpetrate would surprise me. No horror is beneath them.

The old lady’s family buried the pieces of her yesterday. Consistent with the cultural insanity and collective mental illness that is now Islam they actually said to a sympathetic press how proud they were of her.

They’re being used too. And the radical Islamists couldn’t be happier about it.

Interesting Trivia: Both Nancy Palosi and John Conyers voted in favor of impeaching Alcee Hastings, who was indeed impeached by a Democratic CONTROLLED House.

Learn more and be the judge, ..

If they consider the issue at all, Americans probably expect the person in charge of overseeing their nation’s spies to be smart, insightful and thorough—but above all else, he or she must be able to keep a secret. As the debate builds over who will next lead the House intelligence committee, at least one conservative publication has asked whether the Democrats’ presumptive pick, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), has whispered secrets that ruined federal investigations.

 

Here’s Conyers elequent statment in regards to why he thought Hastings was guilty.”>Here’s Conyers great spoken statment in regards to why he thought Hastings was guilty”>Here’s Conyers great spoken statment in regards to why he thought Hastings was guilty.