Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

A man with Aids said he would have been dead two years ago had Diana not touched him; a three-year-old visited by Diana while in a coma had a miraculous recovery and has now left his best teddy outside Kensington Palace; a nine-year-old treated for heart disease said that Diana had visited her ten times and had offered to do the family’s washing if they’d just drop it round at the Palace. For some, a world without the Saint was too much to bear: there were reports of at least two “Diana-related” suicides.

No one could doubt the sincerity of the people’s reaction. But their sincerity did not make it any less repellent. The supposedly reserved, bloodless Brits had, like the Princess, swallowed wholesale the vocabulary of American Oprahfied psychobabble, a depressing enough prospect. But they had fused it with the brutish vulgarity of modern British mass culture to create a truly horrible mutant: aggressive empathy. Their message to their Sovereign was in essence: If you can’t come out and feel our pain, we’ll come in and give you some of your own to feel.

Mark Steyn

Quote of the day - Melanie Morgan

Strange as it may seem, some of the best things about this country have been our enemies.

Melanie Morgan

Quote of the day - Atlanta Journal-Constitution [Michael Vick]

"As much as he loves football, [Michael] Vick loves dogs."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution [from a 2002 puff piece] [h/t ESPN]

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

At least in Indochina, those who got it so horribly wrong – the Kerrys and Fondas and all the rest – could claim they had no idea of what would follow.

To do it all over again in the full knowledge of what followed would turn an aberration into a pattern of behavior. And as the Sirik Mataks of Baghdad face the choice between staying and dying or exile and embittered evenings in the new Iraqi émigré restaurants of London and Los Angeles, who will be America's allies in the years ahead?

Marl Steyn - August 25, 2007

Quote of the day - Michelle Malkin

Repeat after me: Sovereign Nation or Sanctuary Nation–It’s your choice.

Michelle Malkin

Quote of the day - Pam Geller

The world is turned on its ear and nothing means what its supposed to mean anymore. Islam has destroyed the words -- peace, charity, justice .....even "freedom" in the Koran "hurriyya" translates into "freedom as perfect slavery"... Forget everything you think you know and learn everything.

Pamela Geller

New York City ties record for August temperature.

Today New York City tied a record for the coldest August day since records were kept:

Don't forget to bundle up if you're headed out in New York City today. After all, it is August 21.

The city along with the rest of the tri-state region is feeling the chilly effect of a cold front sweeping through the region, accompanied by cool rain showers.

Tuesday's high temperature in Central Park was just 59 degrees. The normal high for today is 82 degrees. The normal low is 67.

"This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.

In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911.

Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.

WCBSTV

While I normally don't like anecdotal evidence, much of the MSM/DNC global warming theory is based on the argument that it is hot in certain parts of the country right now.

Previous - Winter of 2007.

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.

Mark Steyn - 8-18-07

American Thinker; MSM/DNC scandals; itemized list

American Thinker has posted an itemized list of MSM/DNC scandals from the past few years. Great job [even though I like my list better.]

The author asks the right questions also:

These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?

In a good number of these cases, the errors were caught by non-journalists, sometimes communicating over the internet.

If it is "too good to be true", or just too politically correct to be true, take it with a grain of salt - several grains, apparently, if from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, CNN or Reuters.

The Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize just ain't all they're cracked up to be.

If this is the visible part of the iceberg, just how big is the iceberg?

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

All the Democrats' most dearly beloved anti-war/anti-Bush heroes invariably end up in the Teresa Heinz Kerry wing of the nut-house.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran [Katherine Graham]

Katherine Graham








The death of Katharine Graham, publisher of the
WASHINGTON POST, was bound to test the nation's capital's
capacity for fulsome praise. And to be sure, obsequies
have seldom been so obsequious. Kay Graham, a hostess
rather than a journalist, was the very personification of
the Establishment. Well, someone has to be, and we can't
hold that against her. But her eulogists insisted on
turning the grande dame into a rebel: she had "no sacred
cows," she "inspired" younger women by her example, she
"shook the establishment," she was even, according to the
ancient doyen of Washington courtiers, Arthur Schlesinger
Jr., "a quiet revolutionary." Yes, just like that old
Bastille-stormer Queen Victoria. Meaning no disrespect,
the surest proof of Mrs. Graham's mediocrity is that
nobody hated her.

Joe Sobran - 2001

Quote of the day - Will Durant

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Will Durant

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but, when it comes to global warming, the experts prefer to stick the thermometer where the sun don't shine.

Mark Steyn - 8-12-07

Quote of the day - Cicero

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Garet Garrett - Blue Wound

After months of idleness, I have begun contributing again to my other blog - The Garet Garrett Blog. I am reviewing Garrett's first novel - The Blue Wound.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

In their latest demonstration of how much they love the troops, liberals have produced yet another anti-war hoax.

Ann Coulter - August 8, 2007 - commenting on the New Republic's Baghdad Diarist hoax.

Quote of the day - Garet Garrett - Blue Wound

A city is like a giant hanging by the umbilical cord. Its belly is outside of itself, at a distance, in the keeping of others. Cut it off from its belly and it surrenders or dies. As the first city was so the last one is. No city endures.

Garet Garrett - The Blue Wound.

Quote of the day - Daily Herald (Illinois)

"The Democrats, however, mostly ducked the hypothetical question of what they'd do as president if they pulled the U.S. out of Iraq and al-Qaida took over. . . "

Daily Herald - reporting on Democrat "debate" at Soldier Field in Chicago - 8-8-07

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Spring is here, and baseball has come back
to Washington, D.C., in more ways than one: The city
again has a major-league baseball team and Congress has
held hearings on steroid abuse. It's clear that all the
slugging records of recent years are highly dubious, and
the sport will never be the same.

Joe Sobran - Spring 2005

Quote of the day - Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

Milton Friedman

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn [Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz]

How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"?

Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St Peter's on the same Tuesday morning.

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?

. . . . . .

Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors – in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment.

Mark Steyn - August 5, 2007

Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz H/T Answers.com

Quote of the day - Cicero

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the children. They care about government teachers and other government bureaucrats — grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd.

Ann Coulter - August 1, 2007

Quote of the day - Russet Shadows

If the war on terror is just a bumper sticker, then why do liberals have so many bumper stickers on their cars? Is hating Bush just a bumper sticker too?

Russet Shadows