Dubya and Jimmy Carter

Check out this article: "Former Hostages Allege Iran's New President Was Captor". My own opinion is that the picture of the captor, placed next to the photo of the new Iranian president taken at about the same time, shows two different people. But wouldn't it be interesting if they are the same person?

Just think how different our recent history would have been if George W. Bush had been President when the hostages were taken in 1979, instead of Jimmah Carter. I bet the helicopters wouldn't have broken down, at the very least.

Peggy Noonan's Direct Hit

Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for President Reagan, and now a columnist for the Wall Street Journal has published a new opinion piece "Conceit of Government" that is simply breathtaking. It targets the outsized egos of Senator Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and "America's two most famous political grifters" Bill and Hillary Clinton. Obama recently compared himself favorably with Abraham Lincoln. Bill Frist's self regard isn't quite as outsized, although it's pretty impressive. And then Noonan took aim at our favorite former President and the junior Senator from New York, the world's smartest person. This column was a masterpiece. It wasn't a display of exquisite, fine fencing, finishing with the victims impaled on stiletto blades. Rather, it was one of the best political bludgeonings with a 2x4 board with a nail in the end that I can recall having ever read. Whew!

Karl Rove's Direct Hit

It seems the Dems are a bit put out by Karl Rove's observations about their behavior concerning the ongoing war on terror. It brings to light a problem that dogs the loyal opposition: the persistent perception that they are guilty of sedition against the war as a result of their hysterical hatred of President Bush. Dubya cleaned their clocks in both the 2002 and 2004 elections exactly because of this and yet they continue. News reports yesterday indicated that Gen. Abizaid told Senate Dems the perception is growing among the troops in Iraq that they are not being backed by Congress. As a result, morale is beginning to decline. Achievement of objectives in the war is not only undermined by low morale but it is also easy to imagine that US casualties could be caused by reduced aggressiveness in suppressing the insurgency. Casualties that otherwise would not have happened. The behavior of the core of the Democrat party leadership (i.e., Dean, Kennedy, Durbin, Leahy, Clinton, Moveon.org) is distressing. But at what point does Democrat behavior leave the category of anti-Bush and become anti-American?

Update: Check out WindsOfChange.net for some examples. Kudos to Instapundit.

I'm attending a conference in Miami and you're not

To conclude this somewhat lengthy hiatus from maintaining my blog, I am currently attending a conference at Florida Internatinal University in Miami. The campus is pretty, with lots and lots of greenery. Unfortunately it has been rainy all week but I like Miami anyway. You can tell I grew up in the desert southwest of the United States by watching my reaction to the greenery in Maryland (even now) and the ubiquitous water in Florida. I'm not kidding: the drainage ditches are full of water and there are ponds all over the FIU campus. I even saw what was apparently a waterway cleaning boat this morning as the bus was taking us from the hotel to campus. It looked like it had a scoop on the front, much like garbage trucks have. I'm still trying to figure out how it might be used because there was no cargo area in the back into which the scooper might deposit branches and other detritus that might be clogging the drainage. Maybe it is used to simply remove the refuse from choke points and deposit it on the shore?