THE GREAT CAT SOAP OPERA

Auntie Raymona, the “family” cat expert says she thinks felines may just go through a ‘scared’ stage around 4-6 months.  Miss Piggy is out and about a little more today.  I think part of the problem is Rumsfeld bullying her.  Let’s be honest here.  We are dealing with a five month old feline diva!  Little Joe has stayed away from everyone for about three months.  She surfaced the other day and is now the life of the party.  Evidently there could be something to this kitten withdrawal thing.  Yikes…Mommy Cat is getting ready to dive bomb a moth that is flying around the ceiling fan above my writing table.  This isn’t going to be good.

 

Well, do I ever agree with this one.  Childless women are happier. 

Let me count the ways:

1.       No college fund

2.       No late night arrests

3.       No teen pregnancy

4.       No abusive boy or girlfriend to deal with

5.       No drama queen or king

6.       No back to school spending

7.       No teenage car insurance

8.       No teenage car wrecks

9.       No teenage post-wreck insurance

10.    No teenage cell bill

11.    No teens – no trauma

12.    No memories of dirty diapers

13.    No back-talk

14.    No one stealing your Ipod

15.    No kids on the computer

16.    No stinky athletic shoes

17.    No eating machine decimating refrigerater

18.    No piles of dirty laundry

19.    No spring break worries

20.    No drugs

21.    No drinking (unless it is me)

22.    No attitude problems

23.    No European Vacation to pay for!

24.    Just look at my sister’s stress!

25.    The Best Part – I have all that money to spend on myself!

 

 

As much as I do like Rudy Giuliani, I can’t help but enjoy the fact that his favorite baseball team is experiencing  their time of woe.   They had a great run of it.  So have the Braves. We all know the Yank’s woes look even worse because the Mets (my 3rd favorite team) are having a very good year.  Okay, I think it is a hot!   You can’t have a great run forever.  What goes around comes around, especially in baseball.  That’s the magnificent beauty of the game.  Look at my Reds of the 1970’s and early to mid-1980’s, they produced some of the best teams ever.  The ’75 & ’76 Reds were arguably the best ever.  I would pit them against the ’29 & ’61 Yanks any day of the week.  But, for the past twenty years they have been dismal, basically an embarrassment.  I don’t ever think they are going to redeem themselves until they let MY MAN Johnny manage, instead of doing play by play.  The thing is, no team can win all of the time.  I’m just glad the Yanks are discovering that great law of nature!

 

The attacks by Ron Paul supporters continue.  Check out Flopping Aces for the latest.

 

Will Giuliani split the GOP because crybaby conservatives who can’t have their own way are going to stay home and not vote, or will go for a third party?  The voice of doom strikes again.   Basically this proves everything I’ve been saying about conservatives.

“…Cultural conservatives may account for as much as 40 percent of the GOP primary vote, and Perkins warns they're not party loyalists. "The emerging generation doesn't have a special affinity for the Republican Party," he says. "They came into politics out of a concern for the preservation of human life, and they will never put that aside."…”

 President Bush is the perfect example of practicing what Christ teaches.  Jimmy Carter has been slamming him.  Drudge has the headline Bush Is the Worst.  

 

The White House fired back today.

Practicing the command to do good to those who abuse us,  President George W. Bush turns on Carter, saying, “

“…2077-05-20) — Just a day after former President Jimmy Carter told reporters that the Bush administration is “the worst in history” the current White House resident called Mr. Carter “the best former president ever.” “I know that President Carter and I have had our differences,” said Mr. Bush, “But I think most Americans will agree with me that he’s a terrific ex-president. Things have never been better since Jimmy Carter left office.”  Mr. Bush pointed to an array of improvements, including a stable growing economy, lower taxes, reduced inflation and unemployment and increased American strength and preparedness — all of which he associated with Mr. Carter’s years as a former president. “I think history will judge President Carter’s post-White House tenure favorably,” said Mr. Bush, “As a former president, Mr. Carter has overseen the nation’s longest period of expansion and growth in opportunity.”…”

Front Page Mag is featuring the Dick Morris column about the absence of Thompson (Fred) and Newt on the primary stage.  I think the reason neither one reason neither one has announced is even though they would be the beloved of conservatives, I don’t think either one can pull the nomination.  I just have the feeling that the ultra conservative may be losing his/her throat hold on the party.

“…Thompson, cashing in on his star power from playing DA Arthur Branch on "Law and Order," makes conservative mouths water. Some see him as a reincarnation of actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan. But Thompson's record in the Senate, and his genial manner, suggest a take-it-easy mentality that may be inadequate for the rigors of a campaign against the Clinton machine. Thompson is doing himself no good by his indecision . The longer he stays out and teases conservatives with occasional appearances to keep his name in speculation, the more he feeds concerns that he lacks the fire in the belly or the energy to compete and win With Gingrich, neither energy nor toughness is the issue. But his arrogant refusal to consider jumping in before this fall makes it likely that he would be left waging a futile crusade against a well-funded and entrenched Giuliani. Unless Newt gets going now, he'll never raise the cash needed to campaign throughout the country leading up to the early primaries - which are shaping up as make-or-break. Meanwhile, he is freezing the action among conservatives by hinting at a candidacy, such as when he said on Monday that there was a "great possibility" that he would run…”.

Freedom Eden has a great take on Thompson (Fred).  I agree!

 

Blogs for Bush’s Mark Noonan has an interesting thought on Immigration that coincides with my own.  If it is on the campaign burner for 2008, and the Dems kill it, then the GOP has tried to do something and the Dems killed it.  It then becomes a very good GOP campaign issue, no one actually needs to accomplish anything, and the status of the quo is maintained.  

 

Pelosi is very much against the bill, probably because the AFL-CIO is so against it. I find this fascinating.  What our blessed little conservative anti immigration people refuse to acknowledge is the fact that their precious Border Patrol is a very strict AFL-CIO Union Shop!  They are AFL-CIO union flunkies.  The BP does not like this proposal.  Their President, TJ Bonner is nothing but a union hack!

 

Any other time, conservatives would not touch a union hack like this with a ten foot poll.  Strange bedfellows, indeed.  Captain Ed has reservations about the bill.

So do I, but for entirely different reasons. I agree about some of the background checks.  I haven’t turned on the bill.  I think it is the best thing we are probably going to get.  Wizbang has perhaps the best commentary I’ve seen on the subject. MY RANT FOR THE DAY

Why Now?

I keep going back to one point.  We are having a huge problem with MS-13.     Why on earth isn’t the BP, ICE, FBI, etc. targeting them instead of migrant workers.  If there is every going to be a terror connection with Hispanic migration it will be through MS-13.

But – no one is touching it.  Why? 

  “The face of organized crime in the United States is indeed changing, but what is occurring now with the Mara Salvatrucha is not a new phenomenon but rather part of an identifiable cycle in the realm of criminal groups. Since the 1800s, the impoverished inner cities of the United States have been fertile breeding grounds for tough, violent criminal gangs. Latin "maras" (the word "mara" is Spanish for "gang") are merely the latest in a long line of immigrant gangs -- including Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Italian and, more recently, Vietnamese and Russian -- to spring up in American slums. It is important to understand that the widely discussed Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is a product of this American gang culture and not, as it is sometimes portrayed, a Central American export. 


Though most street gangs eventually fade into obscurity, some are able to mature over time into sophisticated organized crime syndicates -- entities with a much longer lifespan and a greater reach than average gangs. These organized crime syndicates can become powerful and dangerous, especially if they are not aggressively checked by law enforcement. MS-13 appears to be making the transition, at this point, from a loosely organized gang to a highly organized crime syndicate….

 

…Many of the recent reports on MS-13 focus on the violence associated with the group. But as a review of gang history shows, MS-13 is no more violent than organized crime groups of the past -- such as Chicago's Cardinelli Gang, which conducted more than 800 bombings from 1915 to 1918, killing more than 20 people and wounding hundreds. MS-13 attacks against rivals like the Calle 18 are no more brazen than the wars between the Five Points and the Monk Eastman gangs in New York or the Chicago gang wars of the 1920s, which led to the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. When it comes to street gangs, violence is simply part of the package.

Beyond their proclivity for violence and penchant for bestowing colorful nicknames on members, there are numerous parallels between the New York street gangs of the early 1900s and today's maras. Perhaps the most important of these is the ability to expand operations beyond their place of origin to other parts of the United States and back to members' home countries.

Members of the Five Points Gang went on to control organized crime activity in Chicago, Las Vegas, Havana and elsewhere. In the mid-1950s, after being deported to Sicily from the United States, Lucky Luciano helped bring the American style of organization to the Sicilian Mafia and reportedly was even responsible for forging an alliance between the Sicilians and the Corsican Mafia -- the so-called "French Connection." Similarly, MS-13 has been able to establish operational nodes not only across the United States but also throughout Central America and in Mexico and Canada as well….”

When you hear all this discussion about illegals and their criminal activity, while the Minutemen are using the idea of eminent MS-13 attacks as an excuse to lock and load, they actually degrade the problem by turning MS-13 into a farce rather than the danger that it is.  MS-13 amounts to a tremendous criminal problem, causing prison over-crowding here and in El Salvador, where it originated.

 

The anti-immigration crowd uses the possibility of a connection between MS-13 and Al Qaeda.  They also bring up the possibility that MS-13 could smuggle terrorists across our unsecured border.

 “…Many reports have claimed that MS-13 somehow has entered into an alliance with al Qaeda, though we believe there are too many ideological and practical obstacles for an actual al Qaeda/MS-13 confederation ever to be established. For one thing, MS-13 is a criminal organization dedicated to making money, and helping al Qaeda would bring unnecessary attention to its members -- putting a big dent in the bottom line. Doing business with al Qaeda would simply be bad business. Of course, al Qaeda could make use of MS-13's human-smuggling network to try to cross operatives into the United States. In that case, MS-13 might enter into a simple business transaction without knowing that its client is a terrorist organization….”

What all this means is we can take another excuse the hard-liners use against illegal migrants off their list.  MS-13 is going to be a problem for years to come.  From what I gather they are evolving in such a way as to take the place of the La Cosa Nostra if possible.  They pose no greater threat to the country that Tony Soprano.  Fifty years from now there will be a HBO series about MS-13 in the Sopranos mode.

 

Back to our dear Minutemen.  It seems that their much hyped fraud.   In fact, see what Aztlan had to say about it. It made all the web sites.  People were hysterical that the poor little defenseless Minutemen were going to be picked off like flies by the big bad MS-13 snipers.   But – as I have proven time and time again, you can’t separate the Minutemen from the White Supremacists.  The beauty of all of this is I am not alone.  Anyone who has a couple of hours to spare and an open mind can do the same thing, the way Joe Killian did on his blog.

 

As a matter of fact, I believe the MS-13 HOAX came from the same place all the other hystarical cries that either Gilchrist or Simcox are going to meet with horrific fate worse than death violence.  I think the threates are Minuteman based scams to drum up traffic and support.  Trust me, threats are the best way to get press coverage.  It is a tried and true, old school political trick to drum up attention, police support, public interest, and mega press coverage. 

A MINI RANT

The Profane McCain

I thought it might be interesting to see how various sources handled the McCain-Cronyn bout.  NewsMax blames it all on McCain.   Not to fear, though.  NewsMax is declaring Romney the new Reagan, flip-flopping lies and all.    Then NewsMax is pushing “What’s Inside McCain’s Head”   The WoPost has their version, including a reminder that conservatives thought it ‘cute’ when the VP used the same word when dealing with Patrick Leahy a few years back.  Why is it that McCain is bad if he used the “F-bomb” but Cheney is cute when he uses it?  I thought conservatives were not hypocrites!    Check Malkin’s column about the incident when it occurred.     BTW, I agree with Malkin on the use of that word.  I detest it.  I think it is offensive, crude, ignorant, and is just plain nasty.  The use of it shows no creativity, and a definite vocabulary deficit.

 

What all this tells me is that the Christian Coalition money is going to be put behind Romney.

 

Freedom Eden puts it into perspective.

AllahPundit at HotAir  brings up the point that the reason McCain was so angry was the fact the Cornyn backed the bill, helped negociate the bill, then pulled out at the last minute, to denounce the bill he helped write.

 

 Katherine Jean Lopez at NRO has additional information, but right now, after her embrace of the tawdrier supporters of anti-immigration, I don’t consider her an ‘unbiased’ source.  She has an ax to grind. (Okay, so do I, but I try to be intellectually honest).

 

I have been Googling most of the afternoon on this one.  The bottom line here, is aside from both liberal an conservative blogs having a blast with this one, no other ‘news’ source is dengrating McCain the way NewsMax is.  “Try McCain Goes Nuts Off Senate Floor.”   Even World Net Daily is leaving the incident alone.  Instead, they are going after Lindsey with the headline, “Graham Booed for Defending Amnesty Bill”   WND forgot to mention that Lindsey was cheered when he mentioned Iraq.  

 “…The crowd at South Carolina’s Republican convention cheered Saturday when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney criticized a new immigration proposal and booed U.S. Sen Lindsey Graham when he defended it. The immigration compromise between key senators and the White House was in the forefront at the convention as more than 1,000 delegates and Republican activists gathered. Many in the crowd wore stickers with “Senate amnesty bill” crossed out. They cheered as presidential candidate Romney told them: “One simple rule: No amnesty.” During his speech and before his remarks, Romney said a proposed new visa for immigrants amounts to amnesty if it can be renewed indefinitely. “If that’s not a form of amnesty, I don’t know what is,” Romney said. “I think we should not call it the ‘Z visa,’ we should call it the ‘A visa’ because it’s amnesty and that’s what it stands for.” And the crowd booed Graham, R-S.C., when he said he had worked with U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., on the immigration legislation.“It’s  the best bill I think we can get to President Bush,” Graham said as some in the crowd shouted “No!”Graham was cheered earlier in his speech when he talked about the war in Iraq.

 

  “Immigration got booed,” Graham said afterward. “It’s an emotional topic. People are mad.” Graham and South Carolina’s other U.S. senator, Jim DeMint, are on opposite sides on both immigration and the GOP presidential race. DeMint is supporting Romney and does not like the immigration bill. Graham backs Sen. John McCain. DeMint told the crowd that supporters were trying to “ram an immigration bill down America’s throat” and said if it allows permanent residency of illegal immigrants, it should be called amnesty. Graham said opponents like DeMint are being inaccurate when they say the bill provides amnesty because it requires immigrants to serve a probationary period and pay fines…” 

A DIRTY RASMUSSEN POLL

World Net Daily  also going after the President, linking to a WashTimes hit piece, “ Illegal Bill Sinks Bush Approval” posted on the 20th, today.  That has given them time to do a quickie poll, not that I see one mentioned. They quote the new Rasmussen Poll, that is basically a hit.
“…The national telephone survey of 1,500 Adults was conducted by Rasmussen Reports over the past three nights. Margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Methodology.”

 

Once upon a time Rasmussen was the most accurate of pollsters, but evidently, in order to appease the Richard Vaigure – William Greene faction, I believe Rasmussen has sold out.  There is not even a break down of Dem v. GOP in the poll, which was taken on Thurs, Fri, and Sat night.  This is a good time for higher liberal marks.  On the other hand, McCain is pulling a 51% favorable rating.  What is even more fascinating about the poll is this…”The national telephone survey of 800 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports May 7-8, 2007. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. (see Methodology)”

 

Now my question is this.  If Rasmussen can use a clean poll of “likely voters” for the primary poll, why not use “likely voters” to track GWB’s ratings?