See LSU for more details.

I was reading up on Ken Schram's commentaries and I ran across two he did about Manuel Jesus Cordova.  In them, he detailed the story of this guys deportation and how the conservatives were essentially cold hearted bastards.

While his comments are grossly over generalized, he is essentially correct.  It is the anti illegal immigration people, which is not exclusively conservatives who are being a bit short sighted, but besides that, though it galls me, I agree with him.

The story starts in Mexico where Manual began his trek to enter the USA illegally.  After walking for two days he came across a 9 year old boy.  The boy, Christopher Buztheitner, had been in a car accident where his mother was killed.  Stranded, he was wandering looking for help when it found him, in the form of Manuel.

Manuel had a choice.  He was a relatively short walk to freedom, and he could have left the boy, who could have died.

We don't quite know what to make of Christopher Hitchens' account of his recent "cosmetic makeover" at a West Coast Spa. Vanity Fair devotes many online pages to a blow by blow description of our second favorite grumbly, bearish Brit's attempt to stop smoking while shaving and showering, to swap out his proverbial British teeth for American ones to go with his newly acquired US citizenship, as well as what spa food he chewed with the old British ones. Eventually he goes in for a Brazilian form of hair removal upon his nether regions that would be disallowed if practiced on detainees in Guantanamo. But with his new Burt Lancaster-style gnashers he is able to silently grin and bear it.  (More …)

This Christmas was my daughter's first "real" Christmas.  No she is not a baby, she is 17 and a senior in High School.

The reason I say it is her first one, is that this year she is working and decided to buy presents for all of our family herself, and in doing so, she went all out.  And it was a joy to behold.

First some history.

Throughout Kayla's early years, times were somewhat hard.  I was military, recently divorced and remarried, and frankly we had little money for many years.

Kayla never lost her holiday spirit, and always took great delight in Christmas, even when there were only a few presents under the tree.

Well, while the Archibishop of Canterbury may be trying to “dumb down” christianity, the Archbishop of Wales seems to be on track:

In his Christmas message, the archbishop said: “Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous.”

The archbishop said “atheistic fundamentalism” was a new phenomenon.

He said it advocated that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance, and that some view the faith as “superstitious nonsense”.

As well as leading to Christmas being called “Winterval,” the archbishop said “virulent, almost irrational” attacks on Christianity led to hospitals removing all Christian symbols from their chapels, and schools refusing to allow children to send Christmas cards with a Christian message.

He also said it led to things like “airlines refusing staff the freedom to wear a cross round their necks” - a reference to the row in which British Airways (BA) suspended an employee who insisted on wearing a cross necklace.

As always, it seems, my pick for President is not my first choice, but is the lesser of all the other evils.  I have not had a candidate that I whole heartedly supported since Reagan - and I didn’t even support him in his first run; he earned my respect and support during that term.

Of the Republican front runners, I can still see myself supporting Rudy or Romney, though I have reservations about each.  I think that Rudy is finding that being America’s Mayor is not the same thing as being President would be, and I honestly think he is losing the “fire in his belly” for the run.  Don’t get me wrong - I still believe that he could take the race if he wanted it, and do a great job.  I just don’t think that in his heart of hearts he really wants it.  He’d be a tremendous Attorney General or FBI director, though.

This is like electing a pop star president of their own fan club.  Big Shock. 

Not content with telling kids Santa was going to die, now he is the head cheese for the biggest waster of tax payer money in western Washington.  I am speaking of the Light Rail project that was billions overbudget before it broke ground, does nothing to relive traffic problems, and doesnt go where the people need it to.

And as Greg is a HUGE fan of transit and wasting money, this should mean lots of new taxes and even more waste.

Hoorrah!

This is just one more reason to oppose Sound Transit.

Mayor voted to lead Sound Transit board

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was unanimously elected chairman of the Sound Transit board for a two-year term.

Nickels, 52, is a longtime advocate of the light rail system the agency is building.

I believe that one reason for my decline in posting over the last few months, besides time constraints due to business, is that so many things that I want to say, have already been said, and far more eloquently, by others.  Case in point is a Two-fer from Big Lizards last week:

“The Courage to Do Nothing”

And here’s a nice round-up of forbidden knowledge from the Republicans in the Senate, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK, 100%), ranking member (and former chairman) of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW). Inhofe is a national treasure, one of the few Republicans not only willing to stand up against the greedy socialists at the UN (many Republicans do that), but also willing to put in the time to educate himself on the actual science involved.

Indebted to Younghusband at Coming Anarchy for pointing out this piece by Robert Kaplan in a recent issue of the American Interest:

Cut One:

It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military. Obvious as this is, we seem to have forgotten it.

Cut Two:

When pleasure and convenience become values in and of themselves, false ends displace necessary means. It is as Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz said: While a good society should certainly never want to go to war, it must always be prepared to do so. But a society will not fight for what it believes, if all it believes is that it should never have to fight.

Cut Three: