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Bush in Vietnam

Posted by Michael on Friday, November 17, 2006 5:14:08 PM
That's one heck of a picture.

Photo

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Re: Think before you vote

Posted by Michael on Friday, November 17, 2006 12:51:55 PM
I was very pleased today to find in my email box a snarky reply to my column, Think before you vote. While sarcastic and condescending, I was excited about what it meant. I'm finally in the serious political game.

Hopefully, these angry letters to the editor will keep coming and build up my reputation. Who knows? Maybe they'll give me a guest column here at Townhall (fingers crossed).
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The Extremist Agenda

Posted by Michael on Friday, November 17, 2006 11:25:55 AM
It's great that we're finally seeing the BS propoganda that infects the Middle East's state media. The Glenn Beck special "The Extremist Agenda"  has been Tubed.



If you're intrigued by it, make sure you watch the South African documentary,  Obsession.


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Al Jazeera International

Posted by Michael on Thursday, November 16, 2006 6:10:50 PM
If you haven't checked out the Al Jazeera English site lately, you should. Since the launch of Al Jazeera International (finally), their english site has been cleaned up quite a bit. I'd say it definitely looks better than CNN's current layout.

An American distributor is yet to pick up Al Jazeera International, and I'm not sure if one will. It'd be a pretty risky investment, and it's hard to know if the advertisers would be there for it. Unlike CNN, though, they let you stream the channel for free off their site.

Go watch them for yourself. If there's one thing that many can agree on, it's that most of us have gotten our opinions of what Al Jazeera is second hand. Seeing it straight from the source should add some clarity.
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Milton Friedman dies at 94

Posted by Michael on Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:17:17 PM
 

The icon of libertarians and economists passes.
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The 2006 Weblog awards

Posted by Michael on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 8:14:57 AM
I participated in the 2006 Weblog Awards, and recommend you do also. They have a plethora of different categories, and I only put my two cents in for a few of them. Here's some I recommended:

Best Blog: Hot Air

I don't even have to explain this one. Just go to Hotair.com and you'll see why it's the best on the web.

Best Liberal Blog: Christopher Hitchens Watch

Christopher Hitchens Watch is one of the most reliable and lively blogs out there. The blog is meant to be a constant rebuttal of the work of the prolific pundit Hitchens, who writes Slate and Vanity Fair, among others. Ironically, CHW is updated more frequently than Hitch's own site. If you're looking for Hitch's latest commentary, it's the place to go.

Best Humor Blog: Scatbug's Scatterings

I could have easily put this one in the running for best conservative blog, but I didn't. Jack Egel is brilliant and hilarious, and he has law enforcement connections. Those connections have managed to get him off the records meetings between Kim Jong Il and Barack Obama, interviews with Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama's job interviews.

Best Centrist Blog: Me

I put Deschamps Blog up as the best centrist blog, seeing as I regularly differ with the more conservative readers of my blog. I can not be called a liberal because of my support for the war on terror and my support for free markets, but I regularly differ on issues such as stem cell research and the death penalty.
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A need for a cataclysm?

Posted by Michael on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:18:50 PM
As I sit here in the middle of a packed Seattle cafe, I should be studying geology. I have a quiz tomorrow and it's pretty important that I do well on it. However, I got started to reading some of Dean Barnett's commentary on Hugh Hewitt's blog and you can imagine how that resulted. Barnett is great even when I disagree him, a sure sign of an addictive writer. I'd probably rank him behind Hitch and then Steyn in my favorites.

Yesterday, he wrote "It's the Jihad, stupid," an article that started with the Iraq Study Group but soon went into the popularity of jihadism throughout the Muslim world. Not enough can be said about this. It's unfortunate that many of the key races in this past election got stuck on which candidate or PAC might be racist or sexually suggestive lines in books written about South Asia.

Here's part of Barnett's article:

I call on looking-for-work politicians like Rick Santorum, Chris Chocola and New Gingrich who understand the threat to take this message to every Podunk little TV station and eager Elks Lodge that will host them. Progress here will be measured in inches, not miles. But if we do this right, we can make sure the Republican presidential primary revolves around this issue and that it gets a good airing for the first time. They should also be reaching out to potential allies in the Islamic world who are as appalled by the Jihadist menace as we are.

I’ve written here many times of how Winston Churchill spent the 1930’s as a back bencher doing everything in his power to convince his countrymen of the threat posed by Nazi Germany. It took a cataclysm for Great Britain to finally agree with him, but at least he tried. And when his hour finally came, he saved his country.

Now, didn't we already have that cataclysm on September 11, 2001? I will concede that I'm young, and was (and may still be) very stupid. I thought that terrorism was a result of bad US policy just like any good liberal.

But after seeing the planes hit the towers and the many attacks throughout the world, from Spain to India, how can politicians not be hollering about this at the top of their lungs?
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Reichert prevails

Posted by Michael on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 3:40:10 PM
It was a bit delayed, but Dave Reichert has emerged victorious in the Washington State 8th District Congressional race.

The bitter liberal reaction.
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Dems may say NO to border fence

Posted by Michael on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:08:56 AM
It all seems so simple to me. Build a pathway to citizenship for the hardworking people that are already here, and build a fence to fend off illegal immigrants and potential terrorists.

If you voted to punish the Republicans, however, we may be even further off from that development than we were before:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- The incoming U.S. Congress will review the law mandating 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and may seek to scrap the plan altogether.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters this week that he expected to "re-visit" the issue when he becomes chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in the 110th Congress, which has a Democratic Party majority.


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It's a tough running for the next House Minority Leader

Posted by Michael on Monday, November 13, 2006 9:28:32 AM
From Laura Ingraham:

Who should be the next House Minority Leader?

Answer Percent
Rep. Mike Pence
52%
Borat
41%
Rep. John Boehner
7%


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Looking forward

Posted by Michael on Monday, November 13, 2006 7:36:36 AM
In regards to Tuesday's election, Jed Babbin said it best on Friday's Hugh Hewitt Show: "That's past. Let's look to the future."

I worked for John Kerry and his 2004 presidential campaign. I know what it was like after he lost in 2004, and the conspiracies and paranoia that enveloped left-leaning media after his defeat. If you were to listen to Air America Radio, you would hear hosts talking about Ohio being "stolen" and voting machines rigging the elections as if it was fact. They even wrote books about it, expecting the same thing to happen in 2006. They really believed that garbage.

Now since the Dems now have the majority in the House and the Senate, all one has to do is listen to conservative talk radio, go to the blogs, or go right here at Townhall.com to see that none of that is present on the right. We certainly could. Conspiracies are a very good way to keep yourself from accepting what is right in front of you.

Hell, a known leftist leader who openly hates President Bush is currently suspected of having ties to a software company involved in voting systems:

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

That's not the problem, though. And we know it. The Republican Party has had a falling out with parts of its base and with moderates. It's not all doom and gloom, since we have good men like Lieberman and Webb among the Democrats, who may annoy the Pelosis, Murthas and McDermotts of the party with their hawkishness. But it wasn't them that won, it was the Republicans that lost.

The GOP needs to look at what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again in 2008. I may not fall in to the Republican platform on many issues. I'm strongly opposed to the death penalty, for instance. However, I know that it is those that describe themselves as "conservative" in the United States that have any credibility in the fight against militant Islam. I'm not even sure that Speaker Pelosi acknowledges that radical Islam is at war with the entire western world.
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The Deschamps Blog

Posted by Michael on Monday, November 13, 2006 7:02:27 AM
Hmmm...It seems like Rolling Thunder Blog didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to. I was excited at first, with five contributors on board, but the enthusiasm seemed to die down pretty quickly. I started it because I thought a different forum would be more accessible. Townhall.com requires alot of information in order to comment, but then again it's much more networked and just about every post has a comment from an outside reader.

I'm not sure what direction I should go in right now. I've grown really attached to the Deschamps Blog here at Townhall and I don't think I'd abandon it ever. Also, with the effort to try to get my dad's works available to the masses, using the family namesake (Deschamps) seems like a better idea from a marketting standpoint.

There's also a sister site that I've been working on for nearly half a year but never fully launched. I know, I have a lot of sites. It has the same name as this one.
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Chavez Watch: Chavez calls for Bush to be executed

Posted by Michael on Monday, November 13, 2006 5:01:14 AM
The image “http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/djorion86/0102070081600.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I'll be sure to cross post this over at Rolling Thunder Blog as soon as I have the chance, it's just too priceless.

Hugo Chavez has gone full-circle in his anti-Bush diatribes, saying that the President deserves execution more so than the oppressive dictator Saddam Hussein:

In a speech Tuesday, Chávez criticized the decision of an Iraqi court to sentence former dictator Saddam Hussein to the death penalty. ‘’If sentencing is to be done,'’ Chávez said, “the first one to be given the most severe sentence this planet has to offer should be the president of the United States, if we’re talking about genocidal presidents.'’

He also goes on to say the 9/11 attacks were "self-inflicted." I don't know if that means we did it to ourselves (the Loose Change folks) or that we brought it about through our foreign policy (virtually the entire Left). Seeing as Chavez is a Chomsky fan, I'd probably guess the latter.

Seeing as a huge gob of my posts has resulted in Hugo Chavez themed stories, I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to start a Hugo Chavez Watch.
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Obsession

Posted by Michael on Sunday, November 12, 2006 8:12:23 PM
If you haven't seen Obsession yet, you need to. It's a fantastic documentary. Someone's posted the film on YouTube, so go watch it. It's definitely worth your time.


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Will someone please give Christopher Hitchens his own show?

Posted by Michael on Sunday, November 12, 2006 8:58:00 AM
Will someone please give Christopher Hitchens his own show?

The man is fabulous, no matter if you're agreeing with what he's saying at one point or not.

Exhibit 1: Hitchens' classic appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. Hitchens may not be a stand up comedian, but he stumps the simplistic Maher while manipulating the show's audience with little effort.


Exhibit 2: Hitchens' appearance on Chris Matthews. The loudmouthed Matthews asks a question about why Democrats and Hitch goes on to give an explanation of the origin of the term "Tory" and other insults taken into use by those they were aimed at, including "impressionist," "que*r," "f@ggot" and, yes, even "nigg*r."


Next up is his appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. The transcript is available on Hewitt's Townhall site. This one gets a bit nasty, with Hewitt calling Hitch a bigot after he insults Harry Reid, the incoming Senate majority leader it would seem, by calling Reid's faith "a cult:"

HH: Now what do you think about Nancy Pelosi?

CH: I don't really think about her. She doesn't make one think, particularly.

HH: And so, what do you think of Harry Reid?

CH: Oh, God. I mean, I just don't...where do we find such men?

HH: (laughing)

CH: A Mormon mediocrity, and extraordinary, sort of reactionary, nullity.

HH: Now isn't that bigoted to say a Mormon mediocrity, Christopher Hitchens?

CH: No, no. I'm always in favor of pointing out which cult people belong to.

HH: You see, I think that is very, very harsh and offensive, but I will allow the Mormon listeners to call you on that.

CH: No, he's a Smithite, for Heaven's sake. I mean, he believes that some idiot found gold plates buried in the ground.

HH: But it is religious bigotry to call that out. And do you make similar comments...

CH: No, it's not me who says he's a Mormon. Excuse me, it's he who says it.

HH: I know that, but I still think...

CH: I say that anyone who believes that stuff is an idiot.

HH: I know you believe that, but isn't it sort of randomly bigoted to bring that out and throw it onto the table?

CH: Not at all, no. It's essential to point out...

HH: I disagree.

CH: Especially at a time when people are always saying it's the Republican Party that's run by religious crackpots and nutbags. And it's very important to point out these people have a big foothold in the Democratic Party, too.

HH: I think that's terribly religiously bigoted. I think that is up there with, like, saying about Jesse Jackson that he's African-American in the course of commenting on him.

CH: Well, I don't really see how he could keep that a secret, how one could...

Now please tell me you didn't laugh out loud while you read that. Hitch, agree with him on this or that or not, is far more entertaining than Matthews, Olbermann, Jon Stewart, O'Reilly, Hannity or any of them and quite smarter. He has no trouble confronting adversaries, be it George Galloway or Henry Kissinger. And he has the controversy factor that could bring in the ratings.

So, why not give the man a show?

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