BCS Controversy

There is a lot of anti-BCS ranting going on and a very funny example of this referencing WWII can be found here.

While funny, it is flawed and playoff utopians that think abandoning the BCS are merely fooling themselves. Here is the proper analogy to WWII...


WWII ENDS: U.S. SET TO FACE SOVIET UNION IN “COLD WAR” MATCHUP BUT AXIS FANS CALLING FOR EIGHT NATION PLAYOFF
By Darren Guerra staff writer

Last week the United States knocked Japan out of WWII with a long range aerial attack the likes the world has never seen. The American leader Truman said, “I knew if we through a bomb against their defense it would work; I just didn’t realize how devastating it would be…Japan just wasn’t prepared for our attack. They never knew what hit them.” Now that the U.S. has scored decisive victories against Italy, Germany, and Japan consecutively, it is poised for a one on one showdown for world dominance with the Soviet Union emerging as the winner in the East.

However what was expected to be a showdown between the world’s two remaining superpowers has become embroiled in controversy. Citizens in Germany, Italy, Japan, and even Great Britain, France, and Belgium are pushing for an eight nation playoff to determine world dominance. “It isn’t fair that the two most powerful nations get to square off in the Cold War! I mean with a second chance we might have developed the bomb first!” responded a German leader as he pounded his fist on the podium. There does indeed seem to be a growing world consensus that including more nations in the final showdown would be more inclusive and more interesting.

Some Italian leaders have pointed out that it isn’t fair that the larger more prosperous nations always seem to produce better armies. While, Italy’s strength of schedule has been called into question for their road win against Ethopia, it hasn’t stopped them from complaining about not getting a chance at being ranked number one.

Germany on the other hand has faced some tough opponents such as Great Britain and Russia but they too have taken criticism for scheduling Belgium, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France. “Sure France let us walk right into Paris, but they used to be a formidable power, I remember a Napoleon fella who did some damage a few years back that should count for something!” fumed a German spokesman. Japanese leaders were hopeful that a playoff could be instituted thereby resurrecting their chances at world domination. A German source said that Chancellor Hitler was not issuing statements because his “mind was blown” at the unfairness. Similarly, Italy’s Mussolini was reportedly tied up and unavailable for comment, but Italian sympathies surely favored a playoff.

Truman continued to make the case for the U.S. v. Soviet matchup, “We have worked hard to get where we are, we have beaten the best, why should we open the process up now to nations who clearly have weak schedules and have suffered devastating defeats? Where is the fairness in that? Would our boys have fought so hard at Anzio, Normandy, the Ardennes, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa had we known that it wouldn’t count for anything in the end? I don’t think so. The two strongest nations will face each other and that is the way it should be.” Truman’s arguments only seemed to anger German, Italian, and Japanese fans all the more. Axis fans say they will never rest until they get a playoff. Story developing…
Labels: College Football

Mark Steyn Cracks me up...Don't buy the Obama Hype

While this is Steyn's take on Obama's acceptance speech in June it is still very timely and hilarious...

"The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor."

...

A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine – John Gross of Quebec – sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign:

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

I thought this was so cute, I posted it on the Web at National Review. Whereupon one of those Internetty-type things happened, and three links and a Google search later the line was being attributed not to my correspondent but to Sen. Obama, and a few weeks after that I started getting e-mails from reporters from Florida to Oregon, asking if I could recall at which campaign stop the senator, in fact, uttered these words. And I'd patiently write back and explain that they're John Gross' words, and that not even Barack would be dumb enough to say such a thing in public. Yet last week his demand in his victory speech that we "come together to remake this great nation" came awful close.

...

Marc Ambinder is right. Obama's rhetoric is in a different "emotional register" from John McCain's. It's in a different "emotional register" from every U.S. president – not just the Coolidges but the Kennedys, too. Nothing in Obama's resume suggests he's the man to remake America and heal the planet. Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years.

Yet at the same time as he's being stunned by the corruption and anti-Americanism of those closest to him, Obama's convinced that just by jetting into Tehran and Pyongyang he can get to know America's enemies and persuade them to hew to the straight and narrow. No doubt if it all goes belly-up, and Iran winds up nuking Tel Aviv, President Obama will put on his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face and announce solemnly that "this isn't the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."

Every time I hear an Obama speech, I start to giggle. But millions of voters don't. And, if Chris Matthews and the tingly-legged media get their way and drag Obama across the finish line this November, the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

Read the rest here...

Video of Aborted Babies? Not a Chance

Here is a piece by a respected professor and friend Dr. Dennis McNutt. There are times you have to cut through all the polite euphemisms and show the stark truth for what it is. Please read it is important.

Dear Family and Friends,

Where are the videos of babies being left to die without love or
medical care because they were born alive from a botched abortion?
Lacking full-color video with sound we are left to discuss such acts
only in words, but that insulates us from the moral horror of what is
being done. An illustration of this would be to consider studying the
Holocaust but not being allowed to see movies of the death camps.
That would be much more sterile.

So we need such videos to help us during this electoral season. Should
one start circulating, or if protestors should carry photos of these
babies on their signs, the pro-abortion activists would be outraged.
They wish to deny us the terrible truth of what they advocate!

Where is Obama in all this?

As a lover of transparency, he should be eager for us to have the full
facts of his position, and the video also.

We all find it difficult to separate the facts from the dubious claims
shouted by political partisans on both the left and the right during
this campaign season. I wanted to find out the undisputed facts of
Barak Obama's position on whether children born alive after an
abortion should be allowed to die, or should be loved and given full
medical care. His opponents charge that he voted against a bill
protecting such babies while he was an Illinois state senator. He
argues that his actions are being maliciously distorted.

To filter out facts from partisan rhetoric, I first went to Senator
Obama's own website to read his statement and arguments on the issue
and for a record of his actual votes on this legislation in Illinois.
See:

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/08/19/fact_check_born_alive_1.php

I found this sentence in his opening statement: "But the recent
attacks on Senator Obama that allege he would allow babies born alive
to die are outrageous lies." Yet only four sentences later we find
this sentence. "Obama voted against these laws in Illinois because
they were clear attempts to undermine Roe v. Wade."

The attacks are not only lies, but "outrageous lies." But if it looks
like a fact, and walks like a fact. . . . .

Reading a but further we find a paragraph explaining his votes against
other "Born Alive" bills. In paragraph #6 appears this sentence from
one of the bills, "Also provides that a live child born as a result of
an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and that all
reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice shall be
taken to preserve the life and health of the child." He voted against
this language.

Later we find this sentence, "Obama Voted Against Two Born Alive
Bills, With Almost a Quarter of the Senate, Saying They Would Be
Struck Down." So he agrees that he did vote against the Illinois
legislation, but gives reasons for dong so.

Hardly outrageous lies. Even if reasons are given to explain the
facts, the facts stand.

Four paragraphs later Obama states that he voted
"present" (effectively a "no" vote according to the rules of the
Illinois Senate) on another "Born Alive" bill which stated, ". . .
that a live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully
recognized as a human person and that all reasonable measures
consistent with good medical practice shall be taken to preserve the
life and health of the child." Please note the identical language of
the two bills, which I have highlighted in blue.

To balance the perspective of Obama's website, I then looked for some
public right-to-life organization that would lose public credibility
if it played fast and lose with the facts in the matter.

(If this becomes too long, please be sure to read my summary at the
bottom of this message.)

The following text comes from the website of the Illinois Federation
For Right to Life. See their link at:

http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/index.html

__________________________

"Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it's
never been more important to protect a woman's right to choose....Throughout my
career, I'vebeen a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have
consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and
NARAL Pro-Choice America."

-Senator Barack Obama

Barack Obama is a co-sponsor of the "Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA), a bill that would nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion, including the types now permitted by the Supreme Court, such as parental notification laws and waiting periods. It would also make partial-birth abortion legal again. While in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama voted against legislation that prohibited taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for abortion. His campaign has stated that he "does not support" the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion through the Medicaid program.



Barack Obama voted to block a bill to require an abortionist to notify a parent before performing an abortion on a minor who lives in another state. Barack Obama voted against an amendment to allow states to provide federally subsidized health care insurance for an unborn child (within the SCHIP program). The amendment would have written explicit language into the SCHIP statute to guarantee that a covered child "includes, at the option of a State, an unborn child." The amendment further defined "unborn child" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."



Senator Barack Obama

Record on Abortion

Barack Obama sharply criticized the Supreme
Court for its 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision
upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He
said, "I strongly disagree with today's Supreme
Court ruling...I am extremely concerned that this
ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact
further measures to restrict a woman's right to
choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court
justices will look for other opportunities to erode
Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and
a matter of equal rights for women."

While a member of the Illinois State Senate,
Barack Obama opposed the proposed "Born-Alive
Infants Protection Act" (BAIPA). The measure
was very similar to the federal BAIPA, which
President Bush signed into law in 2002. Obama
opposed the legislation for three straight
legislative sessions and twice spoke against the
bill on the Senate floor. He voted against the bill
twice in committee and once on the Senate floor.
Both laws were intended to provide protection for
babies who survived abortions equal to protection
received by babies who are spontaneously born
prematurely.

Since his election to the Senate in 2004, Barack
Obama has compiled a 0% voting record on pro-
life issues scored by the National Right to Life
Committee. By contrast, he has a 100% rating
from NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Please copy and distribute freely.
512 10th Street NW Washington, DC 20004
www.nrlc.org
national Right to Life
____________________________________

I will try to summarize Senator Obama's position briefly, clearly and
fairly, even if starkly: he is willing to let defenseless babies die a
horrible death because he feels that doing so would dignify them and
accord them constitutional rights that might be affirmed eventually by
the U.S. Supreme Court.

May God help us all. . . and those little human beings

Please double check me at the links above to see if I have been fair
with these sources.

Please feel free to circulate this widely.


Dennis McNutt
dmcnutt1@sbcglobal.net

Dinesh D'Souza on America

9-11

Tiananmen Square, 1989

Man in the Arena

Great McCain ad...

Homage to the Noble, the Fallen...

You simply must read this piece by Christopher Hitchens on a local Irvine soldier named Mark Daily. It is simply in a word--moving--and it captures the bittersweet nature of a just cause that can only be won with the spilt blood of men whose glorious life is shortened by their courage, and sense of duty to a noble cause. There is something sublime yet painful in the example of men like Mark Daily, an example that seems to defy words...although Hitchens does an impressive job of coming close to capturing the complex brew of sadness and admiration in his prose. I may have my beef with Hitchens and his recent rants against religion, but I cannot accuse the man of not having a soul and a keen sense of morality, even if we disagree on the origins and nature of both. I believe in giving a man his due, and so I will give it to Hitchens, just as he has exceedingly given Mark Daily his due as well. Enjoy.


I was having an oppressively normal morning a few months ago, flicking through the banality of quotidian e-mail traffic, when I idly clicked on a message from a friend headed "Seen This?" The attached item turned out to be a very well-written story by Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times. It described the death, in Mosul, Iraq, of a young soldier from Irvine, California, named Mark Jennings Daily, and the unusual degree of emotion that his community was undergoing as a consequence. The emotion derived from a very moving statement that the boy had left behind, stating his reasons for having become a volunteer and bravely facing the prospect that his words might have to be read posthumously. In a way, the story was almost too perfect: this handsome lad had been born on the Fourth of July, was a registered Democrat and self-described agnostic, a U.C.L.A. honors graduate, and during his college days had fairly decided reservations about the war in Iraq. I read on, and actually printed the story out, and was turning a page when I saw the following:

"Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … "

I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze. I certainly felt a very deep pang of cold dismay....

...

Everything that Mark wrote was imbued with a great spirit of humor and tough-mindedness. Here's an excerpt from his "Why I Joined" statement:

Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).… Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics.

And here's something from one of his last letters home:

I was having a conversation with a Kurdish man in the city of Dahok (by myself and completely safe) discussing whether or not the insurgents could be viewed as "freedom fighters" or "misguided anti-capitalists." Shaking his head as I attempted to articulate what can only be described as pathetic apologetics, he cut me off and said "the difference between insurgents and American soldiers is that they get paid to take life—to murder, and you get paid to save lives." He looked at me in such a way that made me feel like he was looking through me, into all the moral insecurity that living in a free nation will instill in you. He "oversimplified" the issue, or at least that is what college professors would accuse him of doing.

...


Read the rest of this piece in Vanity Fair...

I would also encourage you to visit Mark Daily's myspace account and read his reasons for serving yourself...

The Banality of Evil

This post is borrowed from my friend Pastorious over at CUANAS. In current times you have the President of Iran claiming he will destroy Isreal with Nuclear weapons, but somehow people just don't believe he will do it. He doesn't look that evil, the Iranians are a rational people, they are simply playing power politics, nothing more...well the pictures at the site linked here show that evil often comes in the guise of regular people. Banal just means, "common" or "unoriginal" you don't need evil to appear with devilish horns breathing fire...often it just looks like the poeple linked below...
See it Here

Liberal Hero JFK Clearly Uncompassionate...

Here is JFK on Tax Cuts...does he sound like the current Republican Party or the current Democratic Party? While is an icon of the Dems they fail to understand the simple logic of a low tax growing economy and the way it "raises all boats." I don't know if the problem is economic illiteracy or simplistic compassion. Trust me the very poor will do much better in a thriving economy. There will be more jobs for them, more tax dollars, and more private charity...

I MISS REAGAN

This is a segment of Reagan's speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater's presidency in 1964.

It is a truly masterful speech. It has been called the "A Time for Choosing Speech." This is a key portion of the speech dealing with foreign policy in a coldwar context but set in the current context with current images.

Enjoy...

Oil and Foreign Policy

Here is a good piece by Victor Davis Hanson:


With the gruesome killing of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Putin's Russia stands accused of poisoning yet another critic.Meanwhile, Syria continues to mastermind the murders of Lebanese democrats. Israeli-free Gaza is as violent as ever. Hezbollah is busy replenishing its stock of Iranian missiles. The theocracy in Iran keeps promising an end to Israel. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is slowly strangling democracy in Latin America in a manner that an impoverished Fidel Castro never could.And then, of course, there's Afghanistan and Iraq.It's easy to think that all of this violent instability across the globe is unconnected. But, in fact, in one way or another, oil and its huge profits are at the bottom of a lot of it...

Read the rest