Airstrike kills al-Qaida operative in Iraq

Positive news from the American media about the war in Iraq is rare, so when I come across an example of it, I feel compelled to pass it on. MSNBC News Service reports that coalition forces believe they have killed an al-Qaida operative named Abu Islam and several of his associates in airstrikes near the Syrian border.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9126948/

Hurricane Katrina: thank God PA only gets thunderstorms from it

I am shocked by the disasters caused by hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is underwater. Hundreds are feared dead in Mississippi. As of Monday night, more than 37,000 people were reportedly in American Red Cross shelters along the Gulf Coast.

Those of us who live in Philadelphia, PA are among the lucky ones. This area is only expected to get thunderstorms as a result of Katrina. The price of gasoline is also expected to skyrocket as a result of Katrina, but what else is new? I feel fortunate to live where I do. Although no geographical region is likely to be completely free of natural disasters, the northeastern section of the United States suffers few of them compared to other parts of the country. I have relatives who live in Boca Raton, Florida, who have survived numerous hurricanes, including this one. They say they plan to move north again someday soon. I hope they do.

Sadly, liberals feel a need to politicize this tragic situation. Some are blaming it on Bush, or on global warming, or on Bush and global warming. Look at this article:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372179,00.html

This doesn't surprise me. It calls to mind a straight-faced conversation I had with a co-worker about a year ago, when hurricanes were ravaging Florida shortly before the 2004 presidential election. My co-worker said, with apparent seriousness, that hurricanes in Florida were a "sign that the election in Florida better be done right this time". He is one of those liberals who believe that Florida governor Jeb Bush rigged the 2000 election to ensure his brother's victory. I asked him, "What are you saying? That it is a message from God?" He defensively said, "No, man, I ain't talkin' about no religion!" Mentioning God's name to a liberal is like showing a crucifix to a vampire. Anyway, I asked him where the "sign" could be coming from. Mother Nature? Mother Earth? In a whiny tone of voice, he told me, "Come on! Y'all can't joke about that!" Evidently, he couldn't define what supernatural forces were punishing Floridians for not handing the presidency to Al Gore. Later in the day, he whined that our manager was messing something up. I replied, "Yep. It must be because of what happened in Florida four years ago." Again, he exclaimed, "Come on! Y'all can't joke about that!"

Oh, yes I can.

Poverty Rate Rises to 12.7 Percent, Census says

The AP article is here:

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBDZH1F0DE.html

At least the Census Bureau clearly states how it defines poverty. According to the article:

The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For instance, a family of four with two children was considered living in poverty if income was $19,157 or less. For a family of two with no children, it was $12,649. For a person 65 and over living alone, it was 9,060.

Understood. When I was younger, I understood "poverty" to mean that someone living in that state barely had enough food, clothing, and shelter to get by. Now, many people who are classified as living in poverty in America not only have those things, but also have cars, two color TVs, VHS/DVD players, cell phones, etc. There will always be people who are classified as living in poverty. But the U.S. has the wealthiest poor people in the world. People in third world countries who have to constantly worry about where their next meal will come from are people who are truly poor.

One ultra-liberal co-worker of mine likes to say that by the end of the Bush administration, there will be no middle class, only rich people and poor people. Of course, this makes no sense, but at least one co-worker seemed to agree with him. Both of them consider themselves to be poor. But according to the definitions quoted above, neither of these people fall into the poverty category. They simply like to portray themselves as poor, so they can whine about not having everything they want. Welcome to the real world; most people don't have everything they want! Sometimes I think Philadelphia liberals think that other people live the way TV characters live. They need to see pictures of people living and starving in third world countries to see what real poverty looks like. They don't know how good we have it.

Stephanopoulos Urged Foreign Assassination

Pat Robertson recently caused a storm of controversy by suggesting that the U.S. should consider conducting a covert assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But Newsmax points out that former Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos called for a similar policy in a Newsweek column in 1997, and no outrage was expressed. Who did he say should be assassinated? Saddam Hussein. Here is the article:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/8/24/122804.shtml?et=y

Let's look at a few of the quotes. Stephanopoulos said:

"We've exhausted other efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate in its effect than massive bombing raids that will inevitably kill innocent civilians."

We now know that getting Saddam was easier said than done. The real world is not like a James Bond movie. Our troops were unable to find him until about six months after invasion and occupation of Iraq. When he was captured, he was found in a "spiderhole" in a little shack. He didn't exactly fight to the death, like his two sons did. Which brings me to my next point: if we had been able to take out Saddam cleanly and neatly, it would probably have put his son Uday in power. And he was even more barbaric than his father. Next quote:

"What's unlawful - and unpopular with the allies - is not necessarily immoral."

Really? What is unpopular with the allies is not necessarily immoral? He should explain this to Iraq war critics. And, finally, Stephanopoulos is quoted as saying that killing Saddam would make Clinton "a huge winner if it succeeded." Aha! The real motivation comes out. In fact, I believe that was Clinton's motivation when he bombed Iraq in December 1998, the same month that he was impeached by the House of Representatives. Clinton needed to prove that he was still The Man.

Willow Grove Air Base is closing, but one unit remains?

The Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Horsham, PA is getting the axe as the Pentagon reshuffles national guard units. But Governor Ed Rendell has succeeded at keeping one unit. The federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission denied the Pentagon's request to deactivate the 111th Fighter Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, which is the primary unit on the base. Here's an MSN News story on the subject:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9087954/

In other words, the 111th Fighter Wing will remain, but the aircraft won't. And no one knows what the unit's mission will be. Confused? Me too. The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Senator Rick Santorum (R, Pa.) as saying:

"Willow Grove is a disappointment. They are losing the aircraft, but keeping the unit. That is something we will have to get to work on. The unit has to find a mission. There is hope for Willow Grove, thanks to the unit."

Good luck. It is probably safe to assume that the annual Willow Grove air show that takes place every summer will no longer take place. That may not be a bad thing. One year, a pilot died when he lost control of a plane and it crashed in a field. It's a good thing it didn't land in a residential area.

Gas Station Workers Face Angry Customers

The AP article is here:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/26/D8C7BBRO0.html

I am not surprised in the least by this. I worked in retail for several years, and it never ceased to amaze me how utterly ignorant and shortsighted some people are. Anyone who has ever had a job -- private sector or otherwise -- out to have enough sense to know that the person working behind the counter at a gas station does not control the prices. Do you really suppose that these people don't realize that gas prices are high everywhere? And do they think that yelling at a gas station employee is going to help the situation in any way?

One part of this AP article really jumps off the page. Bruce Hutton, professor of marketing at the University of Denver, says that there is a sense of entitlement among consumers today.

Yes! How true that is! I'm glad someone said it. For one thing, consumers are used to being pampered by retailers who practice a "customer's always right" policy and try to please them in any way to stay competitive.

But another type of entitlement attitude is fostered by liberal propaganda. Many people I speak to blame George W. Bush for high gas prices. What makes them think that the U.S. president controls the price of gasoline? Liberal propaganda. When gas prices were low in the late '90's, many people (including the media) credited Bill Clinton for that convenience. No one could explain how he had anything to do with it, but they seemed to believe it. When gas prices began to rise dramatically during the last year of the Clinton administration, Al Gore demagogued the situation in his 2000 presidential campaign. He accused U.S. oil companies of "gouging" consumers, and promised to make them stop if he was elected president. Of course, he was vice president at the time. And Bill Clinton, the man who allegedly kept the gas prices low in the years leading up to that, was still president. So if there was any type of quick-fix solution to the oil-pricing problem, they could have done it before they left office.

But this thought doesn't seem to occur to liberals. Ever since Bush was elected in late 2000, I have heard liberals blame him for high energy prices (yes, they seem to believe he started causing the problem before he was even inaugurated). Just the other week, a co-worker of mine claimed that Clinton was the greatest president because (among other things Clinton had nothing to do with) gas was cheap during his presidency. I'll cut this particular co-worker some slack, because he is only 21 years old, so he has a short historical memory and has been brainwashed by liberal propaganda, in school and elsewhere. But an alarming number of older people express the same sentiment. I refuse to believe that they really don't know better. I think they are simply willing to forget everything they know, just for the sake of criticizing Bush and praising Clinton. Ever since the Clinton administration, when liberals excused everything their president did, I have made the unsettling observation that liberals have increasingly become prisoners of their ideology.

Armed Forces Recruitment Exceeds Targets

Here's a story you're not hearing from the mainstream media. Ralph Peters from the New York Post reports this:

Every one of the Army's 10 divisions — its key combat organizations — has exceeded its re-enlistment goal for the year to date. Those with the most intense experience in Iraq have the best rates. The 1st Cavalry Division is at 136 percent of its target, the 3rd Infantry Division at 117 percent.

What about first-time enlistment rates, since that was the issue last spring? The Army is running at 108 percent of its needs. Guess not every young American despises his or her country and our president.

The Army Reserve is a tougher sell, given that it takes men and women away from their families and careers on short notice. Well, Reserve recruitment stands at 102 percent of requirements.

And then there's the Army National Guard. We've been told for two years that the Guard was in free-fall. Really? Guard recruitment and retention comes out to 106 percent of its requirements as of June 30.

Good news, isn't it? But don't expect to hear it from the mainstream press. They only want to report that recruitment is down.

Here's an amusing Terrell Owens-related website that I thought you might enjoy:

http://www.foryouto.com/pages/1/index.htm

Woman Surrenders in Pa. Hit-and-Run Death

Here's a Philadelphia story making national headlines. A restaurant owner surrendered in the hit-and-run death of a teenage girl, two months after acknowledging her car was involved in the accident:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2005/aug/23/082304884.html

I'm glad she has surrendered to the authorities. I don't know quite enough about the case to presume guilt on her part, but toward the end of the article it states that the woman closed her restaurant and went to stay with her parents in the Miami area. Authorities then asked her to return to Philadelphia and surrender her passport, fearing that she might flee to her native Venezuela. If she had fled the country, it definitely would have made her seem guilty. It would have brought to mind another Philly resident named Ira Einhorn...

I live in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am proud to live in the birthplace of our great nation. But sometimes I think America's founding fathers may be turning in their graves over what this city has become. Philadelphia is a very liberal city, probably the bluest part of the blue state of Pennsylvania. Our mayor John Street has been called one of America's worst mayors by TIME magazine. He was reelected in 2003 for a second term due to (some say) sympathy by voters over a federal corruption probe. Philadelphia made national news on election day 2004, when poll watchers found nearly 2000 votes for John Kerry already entered into voting machines before voting began. Philadelphia is believed to have a high number of "graveyard voters", meaning that fraudulent votes are often cast in the names of dead people. I could go on about the city's troubles. One that stands out is the city's murder rate, which has risen sharply while murder rates have fallen in many other American cities.

As you may have guessed, I am a political conservative. In my city, that seems to be a rare thing. Approximately three-fourths of the city's registered voters are Democrats. If I voice a conservative viewpoint among friends and co-workers, they often appear to be shocked, as if they've never met a conservative in their lives. Maybe they haven't. In his best-selling book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News , Bernard Goldberg observed:

Too many news people, especially the ones at worldwide headquarters in New York, where all the big decisions are made, basically talk to other people just like themselves. What the journalist John Podhoretz said about New Yorkers in general is especially true of the New York media elite in particular: they "can easily go through life never meeting anybody who has a thought different from their own".

Farfetched? Just think back to that famous observation by the New Yorker 's otherwise brilliant film critic Pauline Kael, who in 1972 couldn't figure out how Richard Nixon had won the presidency.

"I can't believe it!" she said. "I don't know a single person who voted for him!" Nixon carried forty-nine states to McGovern's one, for God's sake -- and she wasn't kidding!

I am familiar with this sort of liberal outburst. Many of my acquaintances were shocked that George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. After all, their hatred of the man was mirrored in the mainstream media. And most people they associated with (except me) probably held similar views of the president as well. At least two of my co-workers told me repeatedly for four years that Bush would not be reelected, because his 2000 victory was simply the result of a rigged election in Florida and everyone they knew hated his guts. Imagine their surprise the day after the election! They thought everyone thought like them; they had no idea that the people they associated with did not represent the entire American population.

Philadelphia may not be as liberal a city as New York. Then again, maybe it could be; New York City has elected Republican mayors -- though not necessarily conservative ones -- since 1993. That could never happen in Philadelphia, because too many people in the city regard Republicans (to paraphrase the liberal Hollywood actress Julia Roberts) as repugnant reptiles. But what Goldberg and Podhoretz observed about elite New York liberals also applies to many of their Philadelphia counterparts. On the rare occasion they meet someone who disagrees with them -- for example, me -- they look at that person like he has five heads.

This blog is my way of venting my occasional frustration with the far-left mentalities that I encounter in my everyday Philadelphia life. So many people that I associate with believe the most outrageous conspiracy theories imaginable. Their hatred of George W. Bush often crosses the line into hatred of America itself, although I don't think they realize they cross that line. I know that the majority of my fellow Americans do not subscribe to these leftist ideologies, but I'm not sure that my fellow Philadelphians know this. In the near future I will begin telling my anecdotes about being a conservative in Philadelphia.