Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas, Transatlantic sessions

H/T: lgf

Evel Knievel has passed away in Clearwater, Fla. at age 69.

“America’s Legendary Daredevil” — Smithsonian Institution

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: “Made $60 million, spent 61. …Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. … Had $3 million in the bank, though.” — AP

The Leftoids in Washington are hopeless and Kyle-Anne Shiver in American Thinker lays out a solid case to prove it. Here’s a sample:

… Lest anyone has forgotten, on October 11, 2002, the United States Congress passed a Joint Resolution authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq. Much has been made of the WMD raison d’etre, and how upon the fall of Baghdad, the caches of weapons actually found, did not seem to be all that they had been purported to be.

Congress’ Joint Resolution listed a full 23 “Whereas” reasons to go to war and remove Sadam Hussein from power, and only 5 of those reasons even mention Weapons of Mass Destruction. Yet, if you have been listening to mainstream news outlets for the past 4 years, as they hash and re-hash the lack, or disappearance of all those WMD’s, you’ve probably heard nary a mention of the other 18 reasons our Congress listed. Congress even listed fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq in the tenth “Whereas”:

“Whereas members of Al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the U.S., its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.”

Its a terrific essay; one that she calls, Who Has Betrayed Whom?, and her summary of Gen. Petraeus’ effectiveness in Iraq is compelling and interesting.

This is a repeat of part of the previous post. It may give casual visitors two chances to help!

For many years North Carolina has been in the forefront of importing illegal immigrants into the state to work tobacco, vegetable, diary and tree farms. State Democrats have proudly hauled slaves in by bus, stopping off at “backwoods” DMV offices to see they get Drivers Licenses before reaching their destination.

Here’s a short video explaining NC’s problem:
Illegal Immigrants Allowed Into NC Colleges by Mike Easley

And here are two short editorials to help explain:
• North Carolina community colleges stand at a tricky intersection.
• Congress and the White House will need to solve the illegal immigrant problem eventually.

The links and the Cavuto video demonstrate that NC is continuing to encourage illegal immigration even though Gov. Spitzer of NY got his ears pinned back when he tried the same tactics to register illegal aliens to vote. In addition to a continuation of NC’s policy of finding ways around the law to give Drivers Licenses to illegal aliens (Motor Voter automatic registration), the rascals have now decided to let illegals utilize the state’s taxpayer funded Community College system as well.

We need help to blast these arrogant creeps once and for all!

Please help flood the lines, by phone and/or by E-mail:

Contact #1

NC Democrat Governor Mike Easley’s Offices
You may contact the Governor’s Office by sending a letter to Governor Easley, by e-mailing the Governor’s Office
or by calling the Governor’s Office at:
1-800-662-7952 valid in North Carolina only
(919)733-4240, or (919)733-5811.

Contact #2

NC Democrat Senate Majority President Marc Basnight’s Office
Phone: (919) 733-6854
Email: Marcb@ncleg.net

Contact #3

NC Democrat House Majority Speaker Joe Hackney’s Office
(919) 733-3451
joeh@ncleg.net

Contact #4

Also Call the Presidential Campaign of NC Dem John Edwards to ask

“I want to know John Edwards position on his home state’s decision to admit illegal aliens into community colleges?”

Contact John Edwards for President

Phone: (919) 636-3131
Fax: (919) 967-3644
Mailing Address:
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Or via
johnedwards.com

I wish I could give you contact information for some Republicans and/or Independents but, unfortunately, the state legislature has been under the iron fist of Democrats since the Civil War.

Here’s a story from AliPAC with comments from The Eagle Forum.

After years of aggressively importing illegal immigrants into North Carolina to work tobacco and vegetable farms down East, the rogues suddenly discovered that families of cheap laborers present a challenge to the state’s educational improvement aspirations. — I think its called “unintended consequences.” — Now the movers and shakers in Raleigh have devised a new plan: To avoid the adverse effects of plummeting test scores in the state’s high schools and colleges, they will simply eliminate the tests and blame the whole mess on George Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program.

But elimination of tests is only a stunt to avoid bad publicity. The scoundrels fully intend to continue the importation of slave labor and they fully expect North Carolina taxpayers to foot the bill to get the uneducated through the system with diplomas and degrees to signify that all’s well in the Tar Heel state.

North Carolina community colleges stand at a tricky intersection.

Congress and the White House will need to solve the illegal immigrant problem eventually.

Those links will show that NC is taking up where Gov. Spitzer of NY left off. In addition to continuing NC’s policy of finding ways around the law to give Drivers Licenses to illegal aliens, the rascals have decided to let them utilize the state’s taxpayer funded Community College system as well.

Here’s a short video explaining NC’s problem:
Illegal Immigrants Allowed Into NC Colleges by Mike Easley

We need your help!

Call and E-mail the following

Call #1

NC Democrat Governor Mike Easley’s Offices
You may contact the Governor’s Office by sending a letter to Governor Easley, by e-mailing the Governor’s Office
or by calling the Governor’s Office at:
1-800-662-7952 valid in North Carolina only
(919)733-4240, or (919)733-5811.

Call #2

NC Democrat Senate Majority President Marc Basnight’s Office
Phone: (919) 733-6854
Email: Marcb@ncleg.net

Call #3

NC Democrat House Majority Speaker Joe Hackney’s Office
(919) 733-3451
joeh@ncleg.net

Call #4

Also Call the Presidential Campaign of NC Dem John Edwards to ask

“I want to know John Edwards position on his home state’s decision to admit illegal aliens into community colleges?”

Contact John Edwards for President

Phone: (919) 636-3131
Fax: (919) 967-3644
Mailing Address:
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Or via
johnedwards.com

A gentleman’s gentleman. A civil civil servant.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Longtime Congressman Henry Hyde has died at the age of 83. The office of House Republican Leader John Boehner confirmed his death today.

The Illinois Republican steered the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and championed government restrictions on the funding of abortions during a decades-long House career.

Hyde had represented his suburban Chicago district for 32 years before retiring last year.

He’d been recovering in a Wheaton hospital after heart surgery and couldn’t make the trip to Washington, D.C. earlier this month when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

That honor is the nation’s highest civilian award and recognizes contributions in science, the arts literature and the cause of peace and freedom.

UPDATED — For clarity and added note at bottom.

The CNN GOP presidential debates:

Tonight I had to take out the trash and straighten a closet so I missed the farce the media passes off as “debate.”

A little past 9:30 my nephew called and strongly encouraged me to tune in. He said this one was really, really different, even worthwhile. I relented and told him I’d call back after the thing ended, but I didn’t have to wait that long.

I flipped over just in time to see Anderson Cooper, who is gay, introduce a question (via video) from a retired general gay activist who is an executive in Hillary’s campaign. Then Cooper introduced the general in person because he just happened to also be in the audience. The retired general gay activist Hillary campaign executive wanted to know why the GOP candidates think our military isn’t “professional” enough to tolerate gays and lesbians who openly flaunt their sexuality. Nobody corrected the sleazy bastard’s implication to remind him that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy currently in effect was implemented 15 years ago by President Bill Clinton and was the brainchild of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) who was Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time. — But I degress.

Duncan Hunter mishandled the lie/accusation by talking about clashes of culture. That gave Cooper an opportunity to enter the debate and promote his personal agenda. Huckabee and Romney tried to join the fray but by then Cooper was in control and he elbowed everybody else aside and ended the segment by allowing the retired general gay activist Hillary campaign executive time for a long speech about GOP intolerance.

I’ll leave it to your imagination to decide whose idea it was to plant the guy in the audience and to go out of their way to make it look like it was a legitimate part of the pre-announced format.

I changed channels, called my nephew and said, “See.”

BTW: I see that AoSHQ also noticed the retired general gay activist Hillary campaign executive was a plant.

I done told you, and told you, Republicans are dumber than dirt.

UPDATE:
Scott @ Power Line writes about the ambush but I’m a little disappointed in his take. He claims CNN didn’t do a background check on the retired general gay activist Hillary campaign executive (Keith Kerr). BS! CNN and Anderson Cooper knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

UPDATE II:
Stephen Green’s take is the same as mine. The ambush — in fact the whole farce — was contrived by CNN to embarrass the Republican candidates and, by association, the GOP.

UPDATE III:
I saw this morning on Fox & Friends that Anderson Cooper claims he and CNN didn’t know that Keith Kerr is a gay activist Hillary campaign executive. Anderson Cooper is a f–king liar!

UPDATE IV:
Paul @ Power Line has a new post that quotes fomer federal prosecutor Bill Otis as believing, as I do, that the whole charade last night was a set up by CNN and Cooper designed to embarrass and ridicule the GOP candidates. Otis even thinnks Hillary was behind the plan. And Scott has now concluded that the circus was pre-planned.

Yesterday all pro DB Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins died as the result of a gunshot wound suffered during an attempted break-in to his Miami, Florida home. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends but we know our feeble words cannot ease their agony.

This may be poor timing but it needs to be said: If I were among Taylor’s loved ones I would be highly offended by an editorial in today’s Washington Post. It flagrantly illustrates how far editors are willing to go in using political correctness to avoid substance and truth.

Notice the glaring omission in the sham agony column:

A unique loss, but also another casualty of a tragic epidemic.

A CONFIDANT of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor rightly called his death yesterday ridiculous and unnecessary. Mr. Taylor was fatally shot in his Miami home by an intruder under circumstances that are still being sorted out by police. He had a background of problems, but it’s unwise to speculate or make judgments. Here was a 24-year-old, a father to a baby girl and a beloved son who was seemingly coming into his own as a man as well as a football player. We join with Redskins fans in expressing condolences to his family and team.

In death, Mr. Taylor is set apart by celebrity and by the thousands who will mourn him. Tragically, though, in other ways, his slaying cannot be described as uncommon. Mr. Taylor — young, black, male — is the archetypal murder victim in America today. In the larger epidemic of violence, society’s nonchalance too often allows young black men to become faceless statistics.

A black man between the ages of 18 and 24 is more than eight times as likely as a white man of the same age group to be murdered. Nearly half of the nation’s murder victims in 2005 were black, and the number of black men who are slain is on the rise. Isn’t it a matter of public health that the most likely cause of death for an African American male between the ages of 15 and 35 is homicide? The grim fact of black vulnerability to violence is well known in Washington, where last year’s homicide total already has been surpassed this year. To date, 170 people have been killed in the District, and half-year data show that nine out of 10 were black. Half were between 18 and 34 years old.

The police alone can’t end this epidemic. “What’s it going to take?” Ronald Moten, co-founder of D.C.’s Peaceoholics, asked as he discussed Mr. Taylor’s death. “I’m a fan, and he’s my brother, and so it’s sad for me . . . even sadder is that I don’t see the same response to the same things happening every day.”

It wouldn’t cost WaPo any money to add a simple fact so the issue would be fully presented: Most of those killings of young black men are committed by other blacks and that’s the crux of the matter.

It would be far more productive for WaPo to encourage America’s black community to stop wasting energy supporting parasitic bloodsuckers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and join with society as a whole to put a stop to the carnage. A first step would be to stop the anti-police donnybrooks that erupt every time a young black male is arrested. There may be isolated cases of injustice but pouring into the streets to convince young blacks that police departments are their enemy is not a solution, its part of the problem.

The problem is systemic within the black community but it needs all of us to remediate.

Today the son-of-Ted network (CNN) is rejoicing: Although bad events in Iraq have diminished considerably, the station came up with a short video to help fulfill its only discernible mission of trashing everything related to law and order and national security.

The tape is from a Utah police officer’s dash-cam and shows the officer using his taser on a motorist pulled over for speeding. CNN had the ‘poor innocent’ driver on and allowed him to make his case about a “trigger happy” cop shooting him down while his six-month pregnant wife and child were in his car. — [Remember Bubba's defense: It's all about sex? Well, this guy wants to turn his tasering case into speeding, his pregnant wife, and his child.]

The only thing wrong with the victim‘s sniveling is that the video clip looped continuously as he talked and anybody capable of separating truth from fiction could see that he’s just another arrogant nihilist.

The clip begins with the officer talking to the driver seated in the driver’s seat of his vehicle and then obviously taking the driver’s registration and license. The officer then turns and heads to the cruiser. The motorist leaps from his car and gets right up behind the cop. The cop rushes ahead to place the items from his hands onto the hood of the police car. He turns to confront the guy. The driver doesn’t slow down and starts to argue still coming toward the cop. The officer circles to his right, draws his taser and points it at the motorist’s chest. The motorist turns back towards his own car and takes a step in that direction but then turns again and starts back towards the cop. The officer did the only sensible thing and zapped him. The guy’s wife then shows she has her own mental issues: She jumps out of the passenger side of their car and rushes toward the officer. He turns half around while carefully watching her husband on the ground and points the taser gun in her direction. She stops. He motions her back to her car. She figures it out and obeys the officer.

If the loving wife will talk to her mentally challenged husband and explain that he’s obligated to stay in his car when he’s pulled over, he can avoid such indignities in the future. But sadly, now that he knows CNN will glorify his mis-conduct he may get shot with a real gun the next time.