BETTER = NO HELMET NECESSARY

Although you will still have to circle the Airport for an hour due to mortar fire. 

Something Nice For A Friday

Mr Dan and I visited The Chicago Botanical gardens last Saturday (there was a big bulb sale). I am a big fan of Japanese Gardens. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timing is everything and, predictably, we never pick optimal time to visit. 

Austin Power!

A Friday morning shout out to regular GT12 commenter Alex who's new blog has some great stuff on it. Austin TX resident Alex, whose nom-de-net is 'Unwired', has taken the time to think through recent administration attacks on the constitution as well as exploring what it means to be named 'Tony Perkins'.

Check it out here

Headline Of Hope

From the New York Times today:

Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers

“I’m looking at the data,” said Ron Luce, who organized the meetings and founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, “and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we’re losing.”

...Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual “hooking up” approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.

Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their “Biblical values” by avoiding casual sex, risqué music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.

Or ir could just be that kids are smarter than we give them credit for being.

Probably not though. Read it all here

Olberman Today

I know, I know. Even I worry that he's dancing close to the bottomless pool on the other side of the shark...

But we here gave him GT12 honor's before any other blog realized what he was doing. He's our guy and, well, he was pretty good today.

The President of the United States — unbowed, undeterred, and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: The Democrats.

It defies belief that this President and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any President of this nation.

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats, now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the President who made things up?
In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity, to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size, and party.

We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.

But the premise of a President who comes across as a compulsive liar — is nothing less than terrifying.

We May Be Learning

Maybe the best Dem campaign this year:

"I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."-- Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN), quoted by ABC News, deflecting criticism that he "parties with Playboy Playmates."

Biggest Loser

 

The Passion of the Hastert:

"I think the base has to realize after awhile, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."

"If it's members of my staff, or they didn't do the job, we will act appropriately. If it's somebody else's staff, they ought to act appropriately as well." -

House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.

"The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss."

From Time:

Two-thirds of Americans aware of the congressional-page sex scandal believe Republican leaders tried to cover it up — and one quarter of them say the affair makes them less likely to vote for G.O.P. candidates in their districts come November....

The poll suggests the Foley affair may have dented Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in November. Among the registered voters who were polled, 54% said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, compared with 39% who favored the Republican — a margin that has jumped by 11 points from a similar poll conducted in June....

Almost 80% of respondents were aware of the scandal, and only 16% approve of the Republicans' handling of it....

Only 38% of respondents in the TIME poll now support President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, down from 42% three months ago.

Almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war, while 54% believe he "deliberately misled" Americans in making his case for war — a figure that has increased by 6 points over the past year.President Bush's overall approval rating, according to TIME's poll, now stands at just 36%, down from 38% in August.

The Smartest Man In America

Flees Child Porn charges via Thailand.
Gets in similar trouble with the Thai's.
Gets's America to have the Thai's Drop The Charges, fly him home first class all the while starring in the most compelling travesty of manipulated media all year.
After a few weeks, California drops the original charges against him.

I want this guy running the war on terror. 

Barack to Roll?

From Political Wire...

Is Obama Ready to Run?

Jonathan Alter says a 2008
presidential campaign bid by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
might not be as far-fetched as some think. In fact,
while there are plenty of personal reasons not to run
-- he has young children -- his advisers think there
are no political reasons not to make the race.

The Obama campaign right now was described to me as a
concept rather than a plan. The concept is that Obama
is a positive, aspirational figure who appeals to a
yearning in the country for a unifying, almost
spiritual vision that moves beyond the tired arguments
of left versus right. At a more prosaic level, the
concept would call for a massive
black-voter-registration campaign in the South while
continuing his crossover appeal to moderate white
voters. On the Iraq war, the critical issue for
Democratic primary voters, Obama is perfectly
positioned. He opposed the war from the beginning,
with an articulate denunciation of the Bush policy as
a distraction from the war on terror. In other words,
he was four years ahead of the curve. By contrast,
John Edwards is in the uncomfortable position of
having said he was wrong to support the war. Hillary
Clinton is even worse off. She has yet to acknowledge
the obvious: that if she knew then what she knows now,
she would have voted against the war instead of for
it. If both Obama and Clinton run, he would quickly
best her on this issue, which all of her early money
would do little to counteract.

Now Or Never

From Political Wire. The key sentence is the last one.

It Takes a Sex Scandal

Howard Fineman: "An Iraq war that has cost us nearly half trillion dollars -- and the good will of the world -- might not have done it. Runaway federal spending that allowed the national debt to reach $8.5 trillion might not have done it. George Bush's low approval ratings, the lack of comprehensive immigration reform, the historical pattern of an anti-incumbent 'six-year itch' in presidencies, the cascade of stories about administration ineptitude and dissembling and congressional financial and lobbying corruption -- none of these issues seemed destined to end the Republicans' 12-year reign in Congress.""Then came the Foley Scandal.

If the Democrats can't take the Hill now, they deserve to go the way of the Whigs."

Spin Off

Boy, talk about your sleight-of-hand 

A Winning Team

Brownie. Bushie, Foley