I went hiking with the family today and my mom instigated a heated discussion about media bias and whether or not Laura Bush used to be a drunk (apparently my aunt heard about the Kitty Kelley book). Things got a little too intense though so we dropped it. Although I still don't understand my aunt's reaction to me telling her about the UN scandals (she had no reaction) and her insistence on talking about Abu-Gharib. I guess the MSM has her =\ It's sad how that can happen even to intelligent, rational people.

So it's the day before Thanksgiving and it's just us three girls in the office today, a Russian, a Greek and a Chinese girl...sounds like the plot to a porno or something doesn't it hehe. But no! We're good Republican girls so we're just sitting here chatting about what kind of wrapping paper to use on the gifts from the company to our donors and surfing the internet.

I've been meaning to write something about the UN's various recent scandals...The whole thing makes me so sick, which is probably the reaction of everyone who's actually heard about this stuff. Oddly (or perhaps not-so-oddly) at BBC.com all the Congo-related articles that are linked on the front page or the Africa page are about how the UN is trying to help the poor Congolese...no mention of how that help is contingent upon sex with the young refugee girls who are basically running away from one evil into the arms of the wolf dressed as a sheep. Also, when I searched united+nations+sexual+harassment on CNN.com, the first article that pops up is about Bill O'Reilly. Oooookay.

Anyway, beyond how disgusting the media bias is (which you can read more about here), it's really time to rethink the UN and its role in the world.

The sad perversions of peacekeepers raping women and children from the very populations they were dispatched to protect, and promotions allegedly being levied for sex by none other than the organisation's principal anti-corruption official, are only indicative of a more systematic culture of corruption, in which the son of Annan's chief of staff Iqbal Riza was hired to work for the United Nations in clear violation of nepotism rules, in an incident for which Riza was never held accountable. The affair of the organisation's corruption czar also represented the second time in two weeks, point out employees, that U.N. management refused to take action against a senior official accused of harassment: U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers being exonerated earlier this month of allegations of sexually harassing an American woman working in his agency. Furthermore, the investigation continues into the Oil-for-Food scandal, in which senior U.N. officials accepted bribes in exchange for diverting funds meant as aid for impoverished Iraqis directly to former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein. In a bureaucracy which has been as isolated as the United Nations from ordinary mechanisms of accountability, one begins to sadly suspect that in the present scandals we might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.
From OxBlog

Oops, I lost my train of thought...lunchtime and all ><

Given the situation, was the marine right to kill the guy? Absolutely. This isn't an episode of "Cops." It's a war and if you're not sure of the enemy's intentions, you don't give him the benefit of the doubt, you kill him.

It really bothers me when civilians (like me) pretend to understand combat situations and what our men and women who are actually out there fighting think and feel in these situations. I was watching O'Reilly interview the Human Rights Watch guy Kenneth Roth and now I'm too mad to write anymore on the subject.

Larry of wrightclick.com has a more articulate post related to the same subject matter...

Also, on Wednesday night I went out with some of Paul's pledge bros and somehow got into a political discussion (that I really did not want to have). His pledge bro J would not leave me alone and insisted on using brilliant arguments like "Bush is dumb, you're brainwashed." I ignored him for as long as I could, knowing that there was no point in arguing with someone who uses those sorts of arguments, until finally I said two things: 1) It's pretty condescending of you to label entire geographical regions of the United States as "dumb" based on the one thing you know about them: who they voted for, and 2) Say what you want because in the end we took the White House, the House, the Senate and we've got three Supreme Court Justices coming our way. What's left to say?

That shut him up for about three minutes, and then he went back to calling me names and assuming I hate gay people. The most annoying part was when he said to me "Are you religious?" To which, my first reaction was "Yes" even though I haven't attended church regularly in about six years, I curse when I feel like it, I support civil unions and "choice" during the first trimester of pregnancy...Anyway, I wanted to punch him in his smug little face when he gave me this "oh, so you're one of those religious nuts, no wonder" look. Even though he seemed like a nice enough guy once we were off the topic of politics, he landed himself on my shit-list for that look. Talk about condescending. Hmph.

Found this excellent article called Those liberal geniuses through Small Town Veteran. I don't see why liberals can't get it through their heads that they'll never win if they continue to write huge portions of the electorate off as "dumb" instead of trying to figure out the real reasons they were rejected by Middle America.

When all the post-election furor finally dies down, maybe some of those liberal geniuses will figure out that the Republican victory is attributable, in great measure, to the colossal arrogance of them and their kind. Those liberal geniuses tried to cram something rotten down the throats of the American people and got the whole smelly lump regurgitated right back in their laps. So, will any of those liberal geniuses learn anything from this embarrassing political disgorgement?

I woke up the next morning at around 8:00am, with the good news that President Bush had been re-elected. What a good way to end a really long, but really fun night. I learned that night that Republicans can party just like anyone else. Any image I had about Republicans being sheltered and innocent was shattered that night. Yes, believe it or not, us G.O.P. folks are just like you... except our guy won and yours lost.

Ha-ha!

Amen to that =)

All I really have to say in response is that while he raises issues that definitely do need to be addressed, he also forgets that Nazi Germany was not pacified the day the Allies set foot in Berlin. For a decade after the war was "won" there were still attacks carried out in Europe by leftover Nazi "insurgents." It has been about two and a half years since our troops first set foot in Iraq. If the liberals of today were reporting about the reconstruction efforts in Europe would they have said then what they're saying today?

And then, of course, there's Maureen Dowd who has gone completely off the deep end since the President Bush was re-elected.

Then there's this article, which I'm glad our troops out there at the frontlines in Fallujah can't read. I swear, it's like the loony liberal media has completely forgotten about the fact that we are currently fighting a war. Our troops are, right at this very moment, sacrificing so much and in some cases their lives, for their country and for freedom.

And then you get assholes like this Fred Kaplan character basically saying their mission in Fallujah is nothing more than a "shot in the dark," that it is essentially meaningless. So what makes this glorified reporter, a qualified military analyst? Why does he know better than our commanders and our troops? It's so obvious to this brilliant journalist that Fallujah is useless, so why has that same conclusion escaped our military men and women, who are by the way the best at what they do?

Thank God for the new media. That's all I have to say.

I ordered a special dinner from Maine to celebrate Paul finishing his midterms (and it also just happens to be our three month anniversary) and the fact that I want lobster. The little critters arrived in a state of shock at my office this morning and are now sitting in my mini-fridge at the apartment. I'm making Paul cook them because although I have no problem eating them I really don't want to find out if they scream or not, or watch them try to climb out of the pot or something. I can't even bear to look at them while they're still alive actually because they look like giant bugs. I also got us filet mignon and scallops wrapped in bacon =) Ugh so hungry.

Many people will point out that Bush has enjoyed advantages that most people never dream of -- inherited wealth, a famous family name, unbelievable connections and multiple second chances. But while those are legitimate critiques, the reality is that FDR's sons never won the presidency; there never was a David Eisenhower administration; and Ronald Reagan's kids have never inspired much political fear.


Others will write that Karl Rove deserves much or all of the credit. But do you really believe that you can beat former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry just by being a "puppet"? Sure, Rove helps -- as all savvy advisers do. Remember Dick Morris, Lee Atwater and Michael Deaver?


Politics is as much about the person as it is about the process. It is a tough, intense game, and the candidate has to be up to the fight. If not, he will eventually fail -- if not against Richards, then against Gore; if not against Gore, then against Kerry.

Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.


Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.


I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills' church (which was the originator of the counter-Enlightenment and then the patron of fascism in Europe) as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States, and the sponsor of the cruel "annulment" of Joe Kennedy's and John Kerry's first marriages). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.


But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.


So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO-described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).


One probably should not rest too much on the similarity between Bin Laden's last video and the newly available DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. I would only say that, if Bin Laden had issued a tape that with equal fealty followed the playbook of Karl Rove (and do please by all means cross yourself at the mention of this unholy name), it might have garnered some more attention. The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the "Pet Goat" episode on the day of hell, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans. (For some reason, unknown to me at any rate, he did not attack the President for allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of American airspace.)


George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he - and the U.S. armed forces - have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?


Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.

So instead I'm going to blather on about my life for a bit...Actually there is very little to say...things with Paul are sailing on smoothly, I never thought I could find someone who matches me so perfectly in almost every way. I thought I was happy before but after really analyzing the relationships I've realized that I was always just settling. Settling for being somewhat happy because it never even occured to me that I could be all-the-way happy. But that's not something I'm going to worry about anymore =)

Let's see...speaking of my hunny, Comerica has been calling him pretty relentlessly and they even set up his internship interview on Saturday because he has class Monday through Friday. So it sounds like they really want him, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway because when he does get it I'll get to see him around 3 more days a week then I do right now =)

Taz seems to finally be losing the pouch of fat that hangs from her tummy. She was being really bitchy about the diet at first but I think she's gotten used to her bowl being empty most of the time now.

Other than that absolutely nothing is new. Work is slow cause the elections are over, although I have a feeling this is just a short breather until we start gearing up for 2006.

Okay, I won't bore you anymore =) There really are a lot of comments I want to make about a number of things but I'm (obviously) not feeling very articulate right now, so again it will have to wait.

Please read it!

I was having this discussion with a Democrat friend of mine this morning, he claimed that in fact the people from the red states definitely are rednecks because he's "been there." Well, I too have been "there" and I have relatives who live in "fly-over country" and guess what? They're just as smart and thoughtful and intelligent as we are here in California. One of my "hillbilly redneck" uncles from Ohio has been a country doctor (obgyn) for most of his adult life and has even set up a free clinic for those without health insurance. My cousin Darwin, who grew up in Tennesse and settled in Ohio where he went to college (yes he actually went to college, incredible isn't it for one of those hillbilly rednecks), is a pharmacist and is now back in school getting his masters in psychology. Oh yeah, and he voted for Bush.

It really pisses me off that the left can be so condescending simply because a majority of Americans told them to kiss off. Not only did we re-elect the President by a larger margin than even Clinton managed to rack up against Dole in 1996 (and with the largest voter turnout since the 60's...which supposedly would favor the Demos), we solidified our position in both the House and the Senate. And, then of course there is the icing on the cake: Daschle's loss to Thune in SD. It seems to me that America has spoken loud and clear and it isn't what the lefties of this nation wanted to hear. What is so wrong with Americans wanting their leader to have strong moral convinctions? To believe in right and wrong and to lead with those values in mind? As much as the left wants to pretend there are no absolute rights and wrongs, we all know in our heart of hearts that is not true.

And as for those claiming it was only the "scare tactics" of Republicans that propelled the President to victory...who was it out there claiming that if President Bush were re-elected there would be a draft? Who was out there telling senior citizens President Bush would take away their social security checks and there would be a "surprise" privatization of Social Security (some surprise considering President Bush layed out his plan for SS various times during the campaign)...was it Republican or Democratic headquarters that were vandalized, robbed and shot at?

I just thought it was really interesting that the party of love and peace and unity and respect immediately takes to calling those who have voted them out of power all these really insulting names. You lost. Deal with it. Think about why you lost in terms of YOU not who you can blame for the loss. The Republican Party has moved more and more towards the mainstream - which is why we're taking more and more senate and congressional seats. Most of the people I know who voted for Bush may think abortion is wrong but at the same time they don't believe the government necessarily has the right to interfere at all stages of pregnancy. Similarly while many (not all) are against gay marriage, very few are against giving homosexuals equal rights through civil unions. Not that I want to see Democrats in power, but here's a little tip if you want to start winning back some seats...stop pushing far-left-wing agendas. Stop idolizing propaganda spewing machines like Michael Moore. Start thinking about American values and American public opinion instead of what the French want us to do.

Obviously you on the left are doing something wrong (unless you really want to persist with this "well we can't do anything else because Americans are just dumb" line of thinking). Unless you want to just give up and move to Canada or Europe (which seems to be a popular idea on the lefty blogs/comments sections). But you know if that's what you really want, who am I to stop you? Heheh...

Yay, I've successfully killed an hour. Twenty minutes to go.

But I'm glad we don't have to worry about that! WE WON!!

By the way, my theory on the exit polls is probably that a lot of conservatives couldn't get to the polls until after work...Just a hunch =)

I need some liquor in me now. No wonder political people are such alcoholics.

All night I kept having this dream that we were only down by 1% in California and I kept harrassing all my friends who are Bush supporters to go vote. I kinda knew it was a dream in the back of my mind though hehe. Would be nice though wouldn't it =) Anyway...back to FoxNews now...

VICTORY 2004!