Links and Minifeatures 11 13 Monday

RINO Sightings



Carnival of Personal Finance



Carnival of the Capitalists Recommended: Gongol (report card on economic credentials of likely 2008 presidential candidates)



Carnival of real Estate recommended: Blue Roof (the power of reputation). Maury Properties (the limitations of on-line evaluations)

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T-shirt turns air guitar into music



Okay, I see the attraction for certain people, but on those occasions I actually played air guitar I was glad nobody could hear the results of me torturing some poor instrument.



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Lebanon crisis reignites wider 'cold war'



Letting places like Lebanon fester, as we have done for the last twenty years, merely makes the damage worse.



Lebanese Government OKs Hariri Tribunal



Hariri was the former Prime Minister assassinated upon Syrian orders a while back.



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Prognosis not good for bipartisanship: Pelosi supports Murtha for majority leader Hoyer, the current minority whip, worked hard on the campaign trail getting moderate Democrats elected. Furthermore, while a Democratic partisan, he has been at least reasonable in his opposition to the Bush Administration. Murtha has nothing to recommend him except his blanket opposition to the Bush Administration on Iraq, an opposition which has led him into multiple misrepresentations, and even flat out lies, and the fact that he's a political ally of Pelosi's. While you're at it, run "Murtha Abscam" through a search engine or two. Were it not for the fact that Democratic partisans control the media, he would have been out of Congress over twenty years ago. Along with Robert Byrd (and to be fair, Ted Stevens and Bud Schuster), he's a poster child for the "culture of corruption" that the Democrats said they wanted to change. Except that the only change is that they really want is control of the lion's share of the spoils.



Extreme Partisan: check. Completely corrupt: check. Has had any sense of integrity or fair play he may once have possessed surgically removed: check. Yeah, Murtha's got it all. I said a few days ago that if the Democrats play partisan games like in 1986 or 1997, the spanking the Republicans got this year will look like a mild case of voter disapproval compares to what happens to the Democrats in 2008, and it looks like the Democrats are already doing their best to insure that it happens.



Bush stands by his man for U.N. envoy



John Bolton has done more for this country in the UN the past year than all our other UN Ambassadors combined. Failing to confirm him would be criminally stupid.



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Moonbats to the left of me, Wingnuts to my right: Calif. suspect in threats due in court.



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Bush calls for Global Isolation of Iran. Oh, he's so unilateral:

"If they continue to move forward with the program, there has to be a consequence," Bush said. "And a good place to start is working together to isolate the country. And my hope is, is that there are rational people inside the government that recognize isolation is not in their country's interest."

Of course, Russia, China and France all wield UN Security Council vetoes. I'd actually like to see France's taken away and given to Japan, as that would be more representative of the real world.



In case anybody is unaware, if Iran carries through on its repeated threats to nuke Israel, the fallout patterns will make a large portion of the Middle East uninhabitable, and quite likely a significant portion of the Balkans, not to mention Egypt. If Israel nukes Iran in retialiation, the Turks, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and of course the Afghans are all in potential fall out zones. Not to mention provinces of Russia and China. You'd think the leadership of those countries would have the intelligence to realize what Iran getting atomic weapons would mean. But judging by the evidence, they don't.



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Right Wing News interviews Mark Steyn (via Instapundit)





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Michelle Malkin on a Bangladeshi moderate Moslem and his likely fate.



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Asymmetrical Information on what a national health care plan would almost certainly look like. No thanks.



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Out of time! It does look like the Project VALOUR IT exceeded its goals, and so there will be an additional 225 laptops for wounded veterans unable to use their hands. Thank you to anyone reading this who donated.