Monthly Archives: July 2006

Never Forget

Someone sent this to Allahpundit, who then posted it at Hot Air. Go see it once. Never forget.

Giant Gnome

This is a giant gnome we saw at the Big Foot store on the Redwood Highway (101). We also saw one of these in someone’s yard along the Russian River in the Sonoma Valley, but I didn’t get a picture of that one.

GIANT GNOME.JPG

Back

We got back from the trip on Tuesday, completely exhausted. Our flight had been cancelled and we had to get another one, on which the passengers were packed like sardines. We did get to see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown on the flight.

My left ear failed to clear after the descent into San Francisco when we arrived on the 12th and my left tonsil has been killing me ever since. Yesterday was the first time I was able to look down my throat with a flashlight and lo and behold my left tonsil is covered with large white spots! I went to the doctor who did a throat swab. The swab was negative for strep, but they will send it to the lab to be cultured anyway just to make sure. If it is strep, they’ll call me and let me know to pick up some antibiotics. Otherwise it’s just pharyngitis which is doctor speak for “sore throat”. He gave me some vicodin for night time to help with the pain so I can sleep. Fun, fun, fun.

Otherwise we did have a lot of fun on the trip. I am posting a few photos below and they are in thumbnail version so downloading the page won’t be a bother for those on dial up. Just click a photo caption to see a larger version.

Radio Equalizer readers here for the “anti-Bush weirdness” that Brian refers to: please see the post below this one or click here.

Really Big Redwood on the Avenue of the Giants:
big tree
Carson Mansion in Eureka, the most photographed building in California:
Carson Mansion
Drive Thru Tree, I’ve left a person in for perspective. We had a rental convertible PT Cruiser and felt like we only just squeezed through. We would not have been able to get through with our Yukon XL. No way, no how:
Drive Thru Tree
The ocean off of Humboldt Bay:
Ocean
A little weirdness in Willits (talk about stuck in the sixties):
Small weirdness in Willits

Not Really Surprised

I am in San Francisco after all…
bush sidewalk.jpg
I took this as we were walking around looking for dinner on Wednesday evening.

Today we’re going to drive up the coast to Redwood Country. We’ll be back in San Francisco on Sunday evening just in time for our Alcatraz tour!

Plame Game

Brit Hume just announced that Robert Novak announced that he got Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s Who’s Who entry.

Novak has been informed by Fitzgerald’s office that his part of the investigation is complete and now Novak can talk. He has been silent on this at Fitzgerald’s request.

Hume will interview Novak tomorrow on Special Report.

The US Has To Be Nice

so others will like us…

On June 30th on Fox News’ Dayside program, they were discussing the NYT’s “release” of the SWIFT story and SCOTUS’ ruling in Hamdan. The guests were Kristen Powers (Democratic Strategist) and John Leboutillier (Former NY Congressman currently of Newsmax). I couldn’t believe what he said.

At one point they were discussing Gitmo and a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll that showed that 43% of respondents thought it was fair to hold detainees without charging them and 44% who thought it was not fair. Mr. Leboutillier’s comment was as follows:

Well Mike, you know, my view on it is, I think we all believe in a system of how to charge criminals – and these are criminals. And there’s something un-American about taking people, not trying them and just locking them up wherever. Now the worry I have is – next week, next month, next year – what if some American soldiers are taken – by some terrorist group – or some country – and they don’t charge them, they don’t give them back, they just say. “Ah, we’re keeping them for as long as we want.” We have lost our ability to say, “you’re wrong for doing this.”

I hadn’t posted on it yet because I was busy with other things for the last 11 days. Big weekend was coming up, final week of my current class, planning a trip to San Francisco that we leave for tomorrow.

I’m sorry. When I first heard this, I TiVo’d it because I needed to have it so I could transcribe it. The quote seemed so very outlandish to me. And this is a Republican saying this. The first thing I thought back on June 30th had to do with his “worry” about

… next week, next month, next year – what if some American soldiers are taken – by some terrorist group – or some country – and they don’t charge them, they don’t give them back, they just say. “Ah, we’re keeping them for as long as we want.” …

What about Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker? Their bodies were found not 10 days before.

Now, just yesterday, the terrorists have released video of the horrors that they have perpetrated upon our brave soldiers. Rusty at The Jawa Report has the video.

We’ve been nice Mr. Leboutillier. Terrorists aren’t nice. They never will be nice. Even if we let every single detainee, held anywhere, go. Right now. Terrorists would still terrorize. Even if we left Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Terrorists would still terrorize.

That was the first thought. The second thought was criminals?. These people aren’t criminals. They’re terrorists.

A New Low in Trolling

Jeff at Protein Wisdom (his site is down after an apparent DOS attack) was on the receiving end of some pretty grotesque trolling done by a Psych Professor at the U. of Arizona, which targeted Jeff’s infant child. Michelle Malkin has all the details.

Apparently she has resigned. Her quasi-apology is accompanied by this pathetic attempt to distance herself from her own actions:

Protein Wisdom has been down since this all started so it is not possible to see all the comments and everything that led up to this. People are posting snippets of what I posted that have been embellished with references to french kissing and other things I didn’t say.

When and if protein wisdom comes on line again, it will be hard to tell what Jeff added or deleted to the transcript.

Funny thing though, I was actually visitng the site when some of her comments were made (you’ll see a comment by Jeff1999 when the site comes back up). Sorry Dr. Frish, but I, and many other folks who visited the site, were there before the site went down and can attest to the vile comments you made, including your insinuations of Jeff tongue kissing his own child.

Update: link to the actual post here.

Jeff’s comment here:

“but I have no intention of snuffing the mofo’s chillen myself”

you know your in a bit of a legal bind when you have to issue a clarifying statment that you DON’T plan on killing someones child.

Thanks for clearing that up professor.
Posted by jeff1999 | permalink
on 07/07 at 12:13 AM

MSM Covering the Wilting Trees

If reality doesn’t assist in the war against Bush, simply ignore it. That’s been the MSM’s method of reporting since Bush took office, well one of the methods. The media has been portraying our economy as “sagging”, “sluggish”, “slowing” for years now. They’ll cover every individual facet of negativity they can find and report it ad nauseum. How many times have you seen gas prices highlighted in the news? They take any tree in the forest they can find which shows things are bad, but what they won’t do is report on the forest itself, at least not honestly.

The fact is, America is going through one of its greatest periods of economic growth in its history. Check out Kudlow’s recent article: Employment, which under the Clinton administration appeared to be the hallmark of economic health, is at historically high levels. Growth has been astounding. Most importantly, the economic expansion reveals an underlying trend of flexibility. When one area retracts, others rebound.

But rather than reporting on a healthy and vibrant forest, the media will report on whatever wilting trees it can find in order to create the impression that Bush’s policies are failing.

The problem for old media is that I just read an article that completely belies its preferred storyline. And then I passed it on to you folks through this blog.

UPDATE: Right on cue is the NYT headline: “Jobs Data Indicates Economy is Slowing”.

Slowing? The MSM skips right past the fact that it was/is fast and moves right into slowing. Just to put this in persepctive: the fact that the recent US economic growth was equal to China’s entire economic output ISN’T newsworthy, but that fact that it may be slowing (which given its torrential pace, a slowing down period was certain to come about) IS newsworthy.

mm-5