But we all know Andrew Sullivan will wallow in insanity for the rest of his natural-borne days.

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A dirty little secret of mine is a love of mixed martial arts. Right now, the biggest star in the biggest MMA promotion is heavyweight titleholder Brock Lesnar of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

At 6'3" and 265 lbs of ripped muscle, the 32-year old former NCAA wrestling champion is arguably one of the most dangerous MAA fighters in the world today, and yet his career may be jeopardy... and at least one person is blaming his health problems on Canadian health care:

Brock Lesnar's chiropractor blames the Canadian medical system for failing to manage the UFC fighter's mystery illness after he collapsed here last week.

"His symptoms became severe while in Canada, which because of their health care system made it difficult to manage. And at this point it's a possibility that it could jeopardize his career," chiropractor Larry Novotny told KSAX-TV news in Alexandria, MN, according to the network's website.

Yeah, I know... an unknown chiropractor in Minnesota isn't exactly House (though he may be as qualified to comment on the quality of Canadian health care as Hugh Laurie).

But let us accept for the moment the possibility that Novotny is correct.

If a highly-conditioned professional athlete at the top of his game could see his health and career threatened by the inadequacies of socialized medicine, what would it do to those of us who aren't in that kind of shape?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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What did you expect, folks? Leftists love this stuff:

Americans who are troubled by the decision to send alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial will feel better about it when he's put to death, President Barack Obama said Tuesday.

During a round of network television interviews conducted during Obama's visit to China, the president was asked about those who find it offensive that Mohammed will receive all the rights normally accorded to U.S. citizens when they are charged with a crime.

"I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him," Obama told NBC's Chuck Todd.

When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn't trying to dictate the result.

Bull. Crap.

The Administration is only holding these civil trials in New York because his Justice Department assures him that these show trials are merely a formality. Obama has every intention of using the body of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a podium from which he will no doubt trumpet his toughness in the war on terror, even as he finds a way to tuck his tail between his legs and scamper home from fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban without finishing the job.

Barack Obama doesn't care about justice. He cares about appearances. He'll have his show trials and the execution of these five, even as he leaves another 75 to rot in prison with no intention of bringing the to trial. KSM deserves no better and no different than his peers. There is no obligation to bring any of them to trial, and indefinite detention or even summary execution of terrorists is perfectly legal.

Unfortunately for Mohammed, his admitted show trial makes for better optics for our President's planned retreats.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:54 AM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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This observation from Tom Maguire has haunted me since last night.

As he told us last Friday, Eric Holder wants to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian courts because he (mostly) attacked civilians, while the attackers of the USS Cole will be sent to a military tribunal. The Dallas Morning News explained:

There is no contradiction here: military courts for attacks on the military, civilian courts for attacks on civilians.

OMG. And if the next batch of terrorists are clever enough to attack an elementary school will they be tried in juvenile court?

How bizarre is Holder's logic? First, why give more rights and more protections to a terrorists who targets civilians? Secondly, the court ought to be determined by the nature of the defendant, not the nature of the victims - if KSM is an enemy combatant he deserves a military tribunal regardless of who he was crafty enough to target.

I've long disagreed with the underlying ideology of the Obama Administration, which is based upon the philosophies of those men who replaced his father in his life. Radical left-wing ideologies like those the President learned from his mentors—Frank Marshall Davis (communist), Bill Ayers (Marxist), Jeremiah Wright (racist black liberation theology, Marxism), etc—have never led to anything other than misery for the wretches that survive it.

But Obama and his subordinates compound the errors of these diseased ideologies by adopting another failed ideology, one that acts as if the open warfare of Islamic fascism is a civilian law enforcement problem. That flawed thinking already led to horrors of 9/11. Why are our President and Attorney General so dimwitted that they desire to repeat those mistakes and put the lives of Americans at greater risk?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:35 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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After yesterday's report attempting to portray a militia group as borderline terrorists, CNN's Jim Acosta used today's report to try to portray the founder of the group as also being an unfit parent.

Lee Miracle may run training exercises for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia once a month in a rural area outside of Flint, but he's just as busy at home. He and his wife Katrina have eight kids, and there are more than 20 guns in the house. This explains why Lee refers to the family as "Lee and Kate plus eight plus a gun rack."

Make that several gun racks. The Miracle children are very much growing up in the militia. They take part in militia training exercises, including the weapons training.

We were there when 13-year-old Megan fired off her shotgun, but even the couple's six-year-old has had her share of target practice.

CNN's dimwitted followers obediently go where they are led, all but wetting themselves in the comments. One reader professes shock and outrage that a family has both children and guns in the same house, declaring that "somebody should do something" about that. The next poster down rhetorically asks if there is any difference between the militias and the Ku Klux Klan. It is tough to discern whether they feel having guns or belonging to the Klan would be more distasteful.

The hit job CNN did on the Miracle family was as easy as it is predictable.

They crafted both the text of the blog entry and tone of the video to inspire shock that young women and girls in the family are being taught to shoot firearms.

Being CNN, they never mention the fact that these young ladies are adequately supervised, use both the proper eye and ear protection, and in the one instance they broadcast, use a single-shot, preferred by many for training young and new shooters. In other words, the Miracle children exhibit the tells of youth taught how to act responsibly around firearms. That the women are as empowered to use firearms for their defense as are the males somehow doesn't excite the pseudo-feminist leanings of the CNN staff.

Those things don't fit CNN's narrative, you see.

It's much better to play up a caricature and beat down a strawman. Why waste time trying to discover why increasing number of people have determined that our federal government too incompetent, corrupt, and power-mad to trust?

After all, it's only news.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:42 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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If there is any justice, this will work out to be a life sentence.

A federal appeals court has ordered leftist Manhattan civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart to surrender and begin serving her sentence immediately on her 2005 conviction for shuttling messages from imprisoned terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.

Stewart, 70, has been free on bail pending appeal since her 2005 conviction for using her status as Abdel-Rahman's lawyer to violate federal rules barring him from communicating from his high-security imprisonment, and her 2006 sentence to 28 months in jail by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl.

A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Tuesday morning's ruling, not only affirmed Stewart's conviction and ordered her to prison immediately, but remanded the case to Koeltl to consider whether she should get a harsher sentence.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:01 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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While the Obama Administration and the media continue to try to demonize God-fearing, Constitution-respecting Americans as potential domestic terrorists, groups of thugs closely tied to the left wing of the Democratic Party continue to violently attack those who disagree with their militant drive towards socialism.

Here is the latest attack, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

So far thugs from ANSWER, MoveOn.org, and SEIU have threatened or intimidated thousands of attendees to town hall meetings and protests, and have physically assaulted and maimed unarmed citizens with little or no provocation.

The Obama Justice Department headed by Eric Holder?

Dead silent.

h/t Michelle Malkin

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:59 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Remember how Democrats and the media kept telling you that the Obamacare health care rationing scheme passed by Nancy Pelosi's House didn't have death panels that would decide who lives and who dies?

They lied.

As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.

Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."

On that last score, he's right. Prominent health economist Alain Enthoven has likened a global budget to "bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don't see the faces of the people you kill."

Liberals are trying to hide behind a fig leaf by attempting to say there are no death panels because no individual cases are brought up, reviewed, and dismissed. Instead, they envision an emotionally distant genocide, where unelected appointees will summarily dictate how much money is spent to combat a specific illness or condition. Once that money is spent, Americans who have those conditions will not get their health care ration. They will suffer, and they will die, while racking up private debit attempting to save their own lives. It will be worse than what we have now, while forcing the nation every closer to bankruptcy.

Lovely.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:40 PM | Comments (32) | Add Comment
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There are two constants we can expect from the ABC News blog The Blotter.

They will report in great detail on stories involving the criminal use of a firearm.

They will invariably get significant details grossly wrong.

Whether the subject is Mexico's drug cartels, items restricted by the 1994 Crime Bill, or basic descriptions of guns used in massacres, Ros and ABC News are predictably incompetent, and their streak continued today as they try to discuss some of the weaponry purchased by Fort Hood Jihaidi, Major Nidal Hasan:

Right next door to the strip club is the gun store, Guns Galore, where authorities say Hasan bought his semi-automatic pistol and bullets and in the weeks before the shooting, 13 extra ammunition clips that could hold up to 30 bullets each.

As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of modern firearms will tell you, modern handguns do not use clips. They use magazines, and yes there is a distinctive difference between a single piece of spring steel that holds a group of cartridges together (a clip) and an enclosed, spring-loaded mechanical device that encloses and protects cartridges an actively feeds them into a firearm's chamber (a magazine).

Then there is the fact that one cannot readily buy a 30-round magazine for the Five-SeveN pistol as ABC tries to claim.

Precisely two magazines are available with the Five-seveN, a 10-round magazine for states that restrict the number of cartridges a civilian's handgun can carry, and the standard 20-round magazine that the weapon was designed to accept. No one makes a 30-round magazine for the Five-seveN, though CMMG has a 10-round extension one can purchase separately and install to the base of the factory 20-round magazines. There are no reports that Hasan actually purchased such extensions, much less used them in his attack.

But that sort of inaccuracy is par for the course for a propagandist far more interested in pushing a political agenda than actually reporting the facts, and Ross is quite consistent in framing stories in such a way to give gun control groups an edge.

After all, who needs facts?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:21 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 The "clips" vs "mags" thing i can almost accept, that's just idiotic popular culture. but the 30 vs 20 round thing is pretty lame. Next its going to be a 200 round drum?

Posted by: John at November 16, 2009 01:39 PM (mAp1o)

2 Yeah, and the silly folks also think it was a nearly 6 inch diam. barrel. All they need is some square backed bullets and they'd be all set.

Posted by: brando at November 16, 2009 03:46 PM (IPGju)

3 Well the "clips vs magazines" thing is generational as well. As one who trained and carried the M1 Garand, I often find myself reverting to "clips" when I really mean Magazines. Of course the dimwit at ABC wouldn't know anything about that, and is likely just repeating whatever the anti-gun crowd has provided him as a "press release". That intellectual laziness continually pops up in the press, as they take, verbatim, the "facts" from the anti-gun groups and repeat it as fact.

Posted by: Jim at November 16, 2009 03:59 PM (WacVk)

4 "After all, who needs facts?" The above describes perfectly the liberal mindset: Facts? We don't need no Steenking Facts! Afterall, facts simply get in the way of what they believe.

Posted by: firefirefire at November 17, 2009 06:33 AM (tbYJ7)

5 The best definition I've read is "Clips load magazines". So wouldn't that make it "clips feed magazines, magazines feed guns"?

Posted by: Veeshir at November 17, 2009 04:05 PM (110Vq)

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A constant theme of the political left since the election of Barack Obama has been that militias are forming, and gosh-dern it, they're going to lynch somebody or blow something up, just you wait and see. These stories are almost always canned, trotted out and rehashed to rally Obama supporters after he has done something particularly stupid, with the most recent incident caused by Obama subserviently bowing to a foreign head of state.

CNN is running such a canned story as their top story right now on CNN.com, and left wing Raw Story predictably parrots their claim, recalling a dubious report from Mark Potok, the official source for reports on radical hate groups according to the left wing intelligensia. That Potok has to make such claims to justify his paycheck is never questioned.

And yet despite all the fear-mongering led by Potok's need for fundraising and the media's desire to buck-up their floundering President, the various militias have consistently disappointed the media. They've welcomed the press with open arms as they did the CNN crew and have been unwilling to bomb buildings or rob banks or engage in any of the other behavior so many left-wing extremist groups did from the late 1960s through the 1980s and up until the recent activities of left wing radicals.

And perhaps it is with a certain degree of irony that the other militia story in the news today comes from the NY Times own Times Traveler Blog, recalling a story from a century ago where militiamen saved the life of an African-American that an Illinois mob had decided to lynch:

The guile of police and deputy sheriffs, and then the arrival of the militia forces, prevented the Cairo, Ill., mob yesterday from seizing a second African-American, Arthur Alexander, after it lynched Will James a day earlier. Alexander "was clothed in a policeman's uniform and was thus taken safely through the city to the county jail. Word had gone ahead that he had been captured, and members of the mob were looking for the officers who had him in charge, but the disguise was not penetrated. It was well along in the morning before the knowledge spread that Alexander was in the jail. A crowd gathered then, and might have taken the negro out, but by this time the call had gone out for Company K, the local militia body, and the rioters were awed. Before they could get up the courage to act the guardsmen had gathered and a squad was sent to the jail. Part of the company also guarded the homes of Major Parsons and Sheriff Davis, who had been threatened with violence. These men seemed determined to do their duty and the mob took no chances. Meanwhile special trains were hurrying to the city the troops ordered out by Gov. Deneen. The Carbondale company arrived at daybreak, and others came in rapidly, so that by early afternoon eleven companies, comprising 800 men, were on duty at points where they might be needed. Saloons, which had kept open all night in defiance of the Mayor and the police, were closed tight and kept closed, and crowds were kept moving. It was decided late in the afternoon that Alexander should be taken to some point where there was no mob feeling. He was escorted from the jail to a special train on the Illinois Central Railroad by seven companies of militia."

The Times article is unclear of the nature of the militia, and whether it was comprised of the National Guard or the state militias that were still common during that era. But you can rest assured the current Times wouldn't cover that eventuality if it occurred today.

It doesn't fit the narrative.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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ABC News has an article up noting that six in ten Americans see Sarah Palin as being unqualified for President. That's saying a lot.

Palin was on the Wasilla, AK city council from 1992-96, was mayor of Wasilla from 1996-2002, chaired the AK Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003-2004 until she resigned in protest over the lack of ethics of other Republicans on the commission. Palin then became Alaska's governor from 2006 until her 2009 resignation.

By comparison, our current President spent three uneventful terms in the Illinois state senate before winning a U.S. Senate seat, where he managed to compile a voting record to the left of even declared socialist Bernie Sanders. He never held a private sector or elected executive position in his entire life prior to the Presidency, and his one piddling "executive experience" with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was an unmitigated failure.

So when Americans are polled about Palin, what are they really responding to?

Are they responding to the media's unflattering portrayal of her, or could they be responding not to just Palin's own perceived inadequacies, but also out of regret now that they see the consequences of electing someone was even less qualified than she was for the office?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:09 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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As we've seen in the various videos released thus far, ACORN seems completely fine with the idea of trafficking children for the purposes of pedophile prostitution. We can only assume that Mario Andrette McNeill and Antoinette Nicole Davis are looking to not just join the group, but shoot for senior management positions.

The two are presently under arrest for kidnapping, and human trafficking and child abuse involving prostitution.

The victim is Davis' own five year-old daughter, Shaniya.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It seems that he will never learn:

How low will the new American president go for the world's royalty?

This photo will get Democrat President Obama a lot of approving nods in Japan this weekend, especially among the older generation of Japanese who still pay attention to the royal family living in its downtown castle. Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference to a superior.

And that's the problem.

As a matter of protocol, American President's should not bow to other world leaders that are their equals. To adopt a subservient role is not acceptable as a matter of protocol, and is demeaning to the office he holds. The fact that he's done this before only exacerbates the problem.

I'm do not doubt other American Presidents have made fabulous faux pas of protocol, but I don't recall one who has ever done it so frequently, so early into office.

I guess we should simply be thankful that we he arose, he didn't give a chintzy, thoughtless gift...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:38 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
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Psalm 109:8

It was sent to me like that via email. Straight up it's pretty amusing, though the larger context of the entire Psalm it is a bit strong to apply to the President... to put it mildly.

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I guess they'll quietly drop this from the narrative.

Two law enforcement officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said investigators were trying to determine whether Bill Sparkman committed suicide but altered the scene to make it look like a homicide, allowing his son to collect.

Life insurance policies typically do not cover suicides within a certain time period after the policy begins.

Sad, in so many ways.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Another member admits to widespread voter fraud.

The ties between ACORN, the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and the Obama Administration is starting to sound like the largest incident of racketeering in American history.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:30 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Via Breitbart:

The Chinese have learned English from his speeches and celebrated the way he rolls up his sleeves. Now President Barack Obama is finally coming, and he's being greeted with "Oba Mao" T-shirts and a statue of him that bursts into flames.

Don't get excited, folks... though he flees the country as much as possible, President Britney always come back eventually.

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Obama needs one for the bus.

Thump thump:

White House Counsel Greg Craig is expected to announce as early as Friday that he plans to step down from his post following a rocky tenure, people familiar with the matter said.

Craig, the top lawyer at the White House and a close aide to President Barack Obama, has helped lead the administration's efforts on several national-security policies that initially enjoyed popular support but have since become liabilities for Obama.

These include the planned closure of the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the release of Bush administration-era national-security documents.

Craig's departure has been widely expected since the summer. He came under criticism from inside the administration and in Congress for a perceived failure to manage the political issues that have originated from Obama's decision to close Guantanamo, according to officials in the administration and in Congress.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:09 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Scratch a progressive, and uncover a Stalinist ready to fill the gulags.

You know what the difference is between Bill Ayers wanting to put Americans in concentration camps for believing in capitalism, and Nancy Pelosi wanting to put you in prison for not buying government-rationed insurance?

Not a damn thing, except Pelosi's threat carries with it the appearance of occurring under the color of law.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:02 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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Barack Obama knows nothing of military strategy or tactics, doesn't understand counterinsurgency, and holds a barely-disguised contempt for the military. I guess it shouldn't be surprising, then, that the President has rejected all options for winning the war in Afghanistan presented to him:

After months of deliberating, President Obama opted not to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The Obama Administration sat silently by and enabled what most believe to be a fraudulent reelection of Karzai, and now wants to use his reelection as an excuse? That's like watching an arsonist douse a house in gasoline, only to complain later about the smoldering rubble being a blight on the neighborhood.

Karzai is a starwman, and a pathetic one at that. On two separate occasions in recent we've noted a remarkable counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan that bypasses Karzai's corrupt central government altogether, and works with the real arbiters of power in Afghani society, the tribes. One Tribe at a Time (PDF) is a blueprint for winning the Afghan war, and with a smaller footprint to boot.

The Administration could easily adopt this plan, but refuses to consider it an an option. Considering it removes their self-inflicted strawman of an ineffectual and corrupt central government that largely doesn't exist outside of Kabul.

Jim Hanson, retired SF operator and Director of the Warrior Legacy Institute, notes:

He has already had the advice of his entire military chain of command with a near unanimous call for for reinforcements to move to the strategy that won in Iraq. We have watched as he has heard from the deep wisdom of Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel. We have seen him dither and quibble and show a completely ineffectual and uncommitted face to our enemies and the rest of the world. Now months after his hand-picked commander has told him the situation is bad and getting worse, our troops in the field fight and die without the support of their Commander in Chief. He sent 21,000 more brave men and women there and now they are flappin' in the breeze. How can a squad leader look his men in the eyes and tell them to saddle up and head out on a patrol, perhaps to be the last to die for a cause their President no longer believes in?

Quite clearly, Barack Obama has decided against winning the war in Afghanistan, showing his long history of claiming that the Afghan war is the right war, and the war we must win, to be a bald-faced lie he repeated to get into office.

He is steeling himself for surrender, hunting for excuses to fail. And the rubes that believed he was anything other than a self-loathing defeatist have nobody but themselves to blame for electing him.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:08 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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