X-MARINE

He who studies history shall know the future for all things come full circle.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Scarface

With the newest nomination to the Supreme Court of Judge Samuel Alito now comes the leftwing vitriol over his conservative credentials. For some odd reason its okay for leftwing Presidents like Clinton to nominate their ideological cousins to the Supreme Court but its not allowed for Republican Presidents.

From the Washington Post:

...Bush selected a long-standing New Jersey judge with an extensive record of conservative rulings on abortion, federalism, discrimination and religion in public spaces. If confirmed to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the swing vote in recent years, Alito seems likely to shift the court to the right.

Conservative leaders who helped force Miers to pull out Thursday rejoiced at the selection, seeing in Alito the philosophical equivalent of Justice Antonin Scalia. Liberal groups moved instantly onto a war footing and accused Bush of bowing to the most extreme elements of his party. The intensity of the response instantly put Alito at the center of what seems to be the political confirmation battle that both sides have been gearing up to fight for more than a decade.

The typical leftwing response however, is to tear down your opponent with name calling and insults such as when the Democrat Party Chairman Howard Dean faxed "talking points" to the major media about their reaction to the nomination of Judge Alito they went so far as to denigrate his Italian heritage and actually insinuated that he allowed an Italian mobster to get off Scot-free when he ruled on a case a number of years ago. Then of course there is the insulting and bigoted charge that he can't be on the Supreme Court because he is a "white-male" and a conservative one to boot.

Conservative leaders who helped force Miers to pull out Thursday rejoiced at the selection, seeing in Alito the philosophical equivalent of Justice Antonin Scalia. Liberal groups moved instantly onto a war footing and accused Bush of bowing to the most extreme elements of his party. The intensity of the response instantly put Alito at the center of what seems to be the political confirmation battle that both sides have been gearing up to fight for more than a decade.

"After insisting that Harriet Miers shouldn't even get a hearing because she couldn't prove she was extreme enough, the far right has now forced the president to choose a nominee that they think has views as extreme as their own," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Reid, who had encouraged Bush to pick Miers, said the Senate would have to investigate whether Alito "is too radical for the American people" and complained of another white male nominee. "President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club," Reid said.

So basically, the qualified and eminent Judge Alito cannot sit on the highest court of the land because he is "white", "far-right", and "Italian". But wait there is more, did I mention he is Catholic?

If confirmed as the nation's 110th justice, Alito would join a nine-member court that has one woman and one black justice. Alito would be the second Italian American, after Scalia, and its fifth Catholic, joining two Jews, a Protestant and an Episcopalian.

In some ways, Alito, 55, appears to be everything Miers was not. She was a corporate lawyer who studied at Southern Methodist University and broke gender barriers in Texas; Alito earned degrees from Princeton and Yale universities and served in President Ronald Reagan's Justice Department and as U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

The hearings for his nomination have been pushed back to January of '06. Just enough time to rev up the leftwing propaganda machine and cut him up like any good ole Italian mobster might do in a Hollywood movie. By the way, I approve of President Bush's choice just in case you wanted to know.

Thursday, October 27, 2005


A Landing Signalman Enlisted (LSE) directs an HH-60H Seahawk helicopter, assigned to the "Dragon Slayers" of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Eleven (HS-11), to a landing spot on the flight deck aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65).
www.navy.mil

Hail to the Chief

Hurricane Harriet has now been downgraded to a tropical storm. With the withdrawal last night of Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers, I immediately gave a huge sigh of relief. President Bush has been battered by too many hurricanes in the past few months and now I sense an immediate coalescing of conservative forces around the President.

Moderates will denounce the conservative rejection of the Miers nomination, but frankly we conservatives saved President Bush much angst from all the liablities that came with Harriet Miers such as her past Texas lottery position as well as her quite evident and apparent lack of credentials to be a Supreme Court Justice. I know, there are few qualifications and the President may pick whom he chooses, however, we are on Red Alert as far as the Supreme Court is concerned and not just "anyone" can fill these positions. We want heavy hitters and more specifically, conservative heavy hitters. And they are out there, but it will take courage to nominate them considering the media/elite/liberal triumvirate of criticism and carping that will take its toll on the most stallwart of jurists.

It would be a mistake to nominate a different moderate or liberal. President Bush must now nominate a conservative who will be tough as nails come time to sit before the Judiciary Committee on November 7th. Let this be the beginning of healing between the President and the conservative base that made his Presidency a reality in 2000 and 2004. Long live the President.


Lt. Col. Doug Gabram, commander of 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, completes a preflight check on his AH-64D Longbow Apache helicopter prior to a mission from Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq. www.army.mil

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Of Dimes and Nickels

Republicans - Cut Taxes.
Democrats - Raise Taxes.

Republicans - Maintain/Increase Spending.
Democrats - Massive/Mandatory Spending Increases.

Republicans - Pay for spending by borrowing.
Democrats - Pay for spending by raising taxes.

Republicans - accuse the other side of raising taxes - which is true.
Democrats - accuse the other side of deficit spending - which is true.

Which political party will assume the mantel of true fiscal conservation? Which party will be the first to actually cut SPENDING? Are we entering a new era of American politics where socialism is compeltely repudiated by our two-party system? Or will it be more of the same?

Only time will tell.

Monday, October 24, 2005


GOES E/W Satellite composite image provided by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, Calif., showing the status of Hurricane Wilma at 4:00 am EST, Oct. 24, 2005. Wilma, a dangerous category three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale, has maximum sustained winds near 125 mph with higher gusts.
www.defenselink.mil

Sunday, October 16, 2005


Members of the U.S. Marine Corps Honor Guard march in formation during the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute and Armed Force Hail ceremony at Fort Myer, Va., Sept. 30, 2005. The ceremony honored the nation's two highest ranking military officers, U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers and U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace. www.defenselink.mil


Soldiers from the 720th Military Police Battalion, 151st Field Artillery Regiment, encounter insurgents at al-Madain near Baghdad. www.army.mil

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Media Is Lieing; People Are Dieing

Why is the old media which comprises the traditional newspapers, magazines and broadcast news outlets both network and cable so incredibly liberal and unabashed so? Yes, they constantly deny they're subjective and take great offense at being called "liberal" but we all know that most of today's media are party-line Democrats and pretty much work pro-bono for the Democrat Party. How and when will this paradigm ever shift or change in favor of "truth" and "objectivity"? Can it change and should it change?

News by paper has been since the advent of moving type the primary means of political discourse for hundreds of years. Newspapers in America were always considered to be subjective since the founding of this country in that a certain paper would take a stand for or against a certain candidate or position and run storys and news items that could make or break their position and person of choice as they see it. If you wanted candidate-A to be the next leader or representative you would purchase Newspaper-A that supported that candidate. If you wanted candidate-B to be your leader then you purchased Newspaper-B that supported that candidate and so forth. Never were these newspaper outlets considered "objective" or "neutral" in their reporting.

Sometime in the early Twentieth Century, however, newspapers took on the cult of "respectibility". They supposedly became "objective" and anything they said was taken as "truth". The people no longer considered newspapers as "political organs" of the parties represented in Congress but became a power unto themselves not connected, at least in an official capacity, the political party or "issues" they reported in their publications. No doubt the advent of radio in the 1920's and then television in the 1950's coalesced the way to report news into a force to be reckoned with and gave newspapers additional outlets to form public opinion via radio and television. Thus, by the end of World War II, a new organism emerged to became known as the "Media". Newspapers, radio and television were the outlets and inlets to the world and to politics both on a local and national level. The media was a power unto themselves and attacted individuals who wanted to weild power not confined by the constitutional limits of office.

Since Vietnam, the media has returned to its original position of supporting one party while systematicaly attacking the other party. Of course, I speak of the media supporting the Democrat Party while trying to take-down the Republican Party. These days they are even more desparate to get the Democrat Party back into majority status as the Republican Party themselves has outflanked them with the "new" media of talk radio, internet and blogosphere.

Thus, the media is doing everything in their power to hype-up a bad story, tone-down a good story and pretty much take everything out of context for Republicans. The current War on Terror is a case in point as the media continually reports only the dead from Iraq. With no apparent good news coming out of Iraq and with Democrats in office beating their chests by saying this is "George Bush's Vietnam" then you know that something is afoot here.

The Hurricane Katrina coverage was an absolute disgrace as far as "objective" reporting goes. Every Republican from the President on down was taken out of context regarding the federal response to this terrible storm. The mayor and governor of Louisiana are the ones to take blame for the complete lack of coordination and break-down of command & control on a local and state level that resulted in the Katrina disaster. Yet, when President Bush said he would take any responsiblity for any Federal responses that may have caused any problems, the media immediately ran with their own talking points and said the President took responsibility for the ENTIRE disaster.

The media's obvious alliance with the enemies of the President and the Republican Party has entirely moved them into the corner of the Democrat Party. Sadly, the Democrat Party themselves would rather take sides on the War on Terror in some vain hope that the enemies of America in conjunction with their agenda will somehow dethrone this President and his party. By showing an entirely 100% negative side of Iraq and by taking the words of the most powerful man in the world out of context, then our enemies are energized to continue their war against us and the American People whose son's and daughter's fight overseas are betrayed by a media that wants to use their "children" as pawns in this great propaganda war being fought not just for the defense of America but of Western civilization.

Saturday, October 08, 2005


A Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter kicks up sand as it makes its way along the Gulf of Tadjoura, Djibouti. www.navy.mil


U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Chuck Hipple cleans his weapon on a Stryker vehicle prior to providing an overwatch for U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines searching for weapons caches and insurgents east of the Syrian border by the Euphrates River in Iraq, Oct. 1, 2005. www.defenselink.mil

Friday, October 07, 2005

May I Be Frank?

Harriet Miers.... No! No! A thousand times No! Why are we on the right so over the top on this latest nomination? How many Republican Presidents that were supposedly "conservative" themselves given us "conservative" Justices only to turn around and find out that those very Justices are quite liberal? Too many I might add. Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 have all given us stinkers! This court should have been truly conservative a long, long time ago. Instead, like a bad dream that keeps repeating itself, Bush 43 is giving us another liberal in conservative clothing. His defenders say this is different and that we should "trust" him. Oh really? Wrong answer! I may trust President Bush but I don't trust Harriet Miers.

In the past, Republican President's could bamboozle the right because the media would not expose their nominations for the liberal inclinations that those Justices might by hiding. However, we are in a different era. This is the era of the Blogosphere! The power of the Blogosphere is now being felt by this White House over this outragious and silly nomination. The Blogosphere will expose Harriet Miers for who she really is. Its only a matter of time. The Blogosphere is a two-edged sword that Democrats to their own demise have tried to ignore but is it the turn of Republicans to feel the full wrath and might of this medium?

The die is cast. With every day coming closer to her apparent coronation to the Supreme Court the more the conservative-base will turn against this President. If she turns out to be what conservatives fear she will be, this President is through. The Republican Party will suffer for their lack of vision from the Presidency, to the House, to the Senate come 2006 and 2008.

You can't blame the Gang of 14 moderates for the President's strategy. Damn the Gang of 14, Full Speed Ahead! We conservatives have compromised for decades waiting for the Republican Party to deliver. We will not wait any longer.

Monday, October 03, 2005


A pilot assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Nine (VX-9), looks out the canopy of his F/A-18F Super Hornet as he conducts a low pop-up maneuver above the south end of Panamint Valley near China Lake, Calif. The aircraft was performing tests on the Shared Reconnaissance Pod System (SHARPS) prior to fleet-wide dissemination. www.navy.mil

Sunday, October 02, 2005


Kenyan army Pvt. Bernard Wangila, military policeman, salutes the American flag after lowering it during the welcoming ceremonies at the Stony-Athi Range in Nairobi, Kenya, Sept. 18, 2005. U.S., Dutch and French service members from Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa are participating in the East African Armed Forces Rifle Championship in Nairobi. www.defenselink.mil


U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpls. Graham Goodman, Jimmy Nettavong and Steven Jacobs, all members of the Provisional Security Company, compete in a firing drill during the East African Armed Forces Rifle Championship held at Stony-Athi Range in Nairobi, Kenya, Sept. 23, 2005. www.defenselink.mil

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Third Rome Revival

One of the wild cards in international relations in the world today is Russia. What are her strategic goals and where will it lead her? The only communist nation to give up Marxism (eastern europe doesn't count because communism was militarily imposed on them by the Red Army during WWII) and ironically was the birthplace of the communist revolution and was the cockpit of Marxist/Leninist policy and direction over China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Central and Southern Africa and tiny Grenada. First Gorbachev then Yeltsin and now Vladmir Putin, the Russian nation has now metamorphasized into a Psuedo-Czarist state with a majority of ex-communist apparatchiks currently steering her into an unknown horizon that I believe will find itself in direct opposition to the Islamic Jihad slowly making itself known on her southern borders.

If the Islamic Jihad justifies their attacks on the West for revenge of the "Crusades" by the Franks and the Catholic Church then how much more will the Islamic Jihad rationalize their war on Russia? Much more so. Russia is nearly hated as much by the Moslems as Israel and has historical roots that no good Mohammedan can ignore. Russia has three characteristics that stands it apart from her Western and Israeli counterpart: (1) She is Slavic (2) she is Eastern Orthodox and (3) she has constantly waged war on Moslems be they Turks, Afghans, Iranians or central eurasians throughout Russian history.

From Wikipedia:

The Russo-Turkish Wars were a series of 10 wars fought between the Russian Empire and the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Their conflict during World War I is often counted as the 11th.

Most of the time, the wars were fought over control of the Crimea, the Black Sea, or the Balkans. It was one of the longest conflicts in European history, spanning 241 years, far longer than the Hundred Years War between England and France. On average, only 19 years of peace separated two open conflicts between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Russo-Turkish wars were one of the main causes for the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

And even more from Wikipedia:

Within decades after the Fall of Constantinople to Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on May 29, 1453, some were nominating Moscow as the "Third Rome", or new "New Rome". Stirrings of this sentiment began during the reign of Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow who had married Sophia Paleiologue. Sophia was a niece of Constantine XI, the last Eastern Roman Emporer and Ivan could claim to be the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire.

The idea crystallized with a panegyric letter composed by the Russian monk Filofei in 1510 to their son Grand Duke Vasilli III, which proclaimed, "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will not be a fourth. No one will replace your Christian Tsardom!"
It should be noted that, contrary to the common misconception, Filofei
explicitly identifies Third Rome with Russia (the country) rather than with Moscow (the city).


Since Roman princesses had married Tsars of Moscow, and, since Russia
had become, with the fall of Byzantium, the most powerful Orthodox Christian state, the Tsars were thought of as succeeding the Byzantine Emporer as the rightful ruler of the (Christian) world. The word "tsar," like kaiser, is derived from the word "caesar".

Grand Duke Ivan IV was proclaimed the first Russian Tsar on January 16, 1457. On November 2, 1721 Peter I restyled himself as "Emporer and Autocrat of All Russia". The new title was supposed to reflect both the traditional claims of his predecessors and his success in establishing Imperial Russia as a new European power.

This "Muscovite Third Romism" persisted into the October Revolution, beginning of the Bolshevik era in the Soviet Union. At the time Nikolai Bydarev wrote, "Instead of the Third Rome in Russia, the Third International was achieved and many of the features of the Third Rome pass over to the Third International." Some scholars have seen Muscovite Third Romism as the Russian equivalent of the United States' Manifest Destiny, and other concepts used to rationalize imperialism.

So now in the 21st Century we see a very interesting and historic creature arising in the world that harkens back to the glory days of Czarist Russia perhaps even as far back as Byzantium. We have the modern accutrements of civilization to soften our most barbaric inclinations but the old wounds of war and reprisal hidden by time still remind us that some things stir beyond our control and make them felt in the conciousness of this current generation of humanity.

From Yahoo News:

Historic Russian admiral Fyodor Ushakov -- a hero of Russia's wars against Turkey and Napoleon Bonaparte -- was designated the patron saint of nuclear-armed, long-distance Russian bombers by the Orthodox Church.

Russian Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, carried a reliquary and an icon of the admiral, who was canonised in 2004, into the Moscow chapel of the Russian Air Force's 37th Air Army in Moscow, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency said Monday.

"I am sure he will become your intermediary as you fulfil your responsible duties to the fatherland in the long-range air force," the patriarch said.

"His strong faith helped Saint Fyodor Ushakov in all his battles," the religious leader said, reminding his audience that the famous admiral of the 18th and 19th centuries never lost a battle.

Fyodor Ushakov distinguished himself in numerous naval battles in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, most notably in the Russo-Turkish war between 1787 and 1791.

Ushakov's canonisation as a saint in 2004 follows a strong tradition in Russia of close relations between the Orthodox Church and the state, which was revived after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yes indeed, some wounds never heal. They periodically break open to reveal the festering animosity that brings nations to the brink of war and to world war itself.