Some comments on seeing the movie...

Read these before you see the movie. Read 'em again after you've seen it.
Ace of Spades HQ: "Flight 93 Review, From A Commenter
I'm witholding his name right now, as I haven't gotten permission to post this. I imagine he doesn't mind if it's posted, or even if I use his name; I'll give him attribution when he says it's okay.
It sounds grim, but absolutely necessary to see."

USA National Gas Temperature Map

USA National Gas Temperature Map

Jeepers, this map kinda shows that living in a "blue" state has its cost in gas prices. Wonder why....

I saw the movie "United 93" today....

I was prepared to cry, so I went alone to the theatre. I was also expecting to be angry, as I was on 9-11 and still am. But "United 93" made me neither sad nor angry. I was proud. Proud of the heroic men and women of flight United 93. Proud of the air traffic controllers. Proud of how this movie embodies the American spirit. See this excellent and very intense movie and be proud of these 21st century minutemen and women.
TCS Daily - Too Soon to Forget: "And so the last point: Is it 'too soon' for this movie? For the answer to that question I will yield to David Beamer, father of Todd, who says, 'Is it too soon to remember? It's too soon to forget.' "

Those who would advise us that it's "too soon" are of the same cut as Neville Chamberlain, Jimmy Carter and the Vichy French. While we must remember and honor all of the true heros of this gallant war against evil, we must forever focus on those whose singular goal in life is to see our civilization and our children perish. Never forget.

Read this review to see....

... how defeatists and appeasers really think.
The problem with the United 93 films. By RonRosenbaum: "
Universal's United 93
But is the fable of Flight 93 the recompense that it's been built up to be? Does what happened on Flight 93 represent a triumph of the human spirit, a microcosmic model and portent of the ultimate victory of enlightenment civilization over theocratic savagery, as the prerelease publicity about the new film insists? Or is the story of United Flight 93 a different kind of portent, not "the DNA of our times," but rather the RIP?
The "fable of Flight 93"? What level of denial has this skunk sunk to?

Feds take $.46 and Exxon takes $.28

Media Research Center Home Page: "The networks hyperventilated about ExxonMobil's $8.4 billion first quarter profits and ABC chose not to report that government taxes far exceed oil company earnings for a $3 gallon of gas, 46 cents goes to the taxman and 28 cents to Exxon. "
Would it hurt the MSM to put things in perspective?
Yeah right....

.... a one state recession."

TheRealMichigan finds this gem. The disgusting fact is the Michigan media refuses to report the facts. It's up to the bloggers, I guess.
Reality - More Dismal Economic Statistics for Michigan: "What Recovery?

'Michigan ranks 48th among the states for economic momentum, 46th for personal income growth and 49th for employment growth, with a 0.5 percent decline in jobs between January 2005 and January 2006.
...
'Michigan stands almost alone among the states in terms of its economic problems,' said Michael LaFaive of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland think tank. 'We are experiencing a one-state recession.''
-The Bay City Times: April 26, 2006
Hopefully people are beginning to wake up to the fact that this is a Michigan problem the responsibility for which rests with the Governor and not Bush, China, CAFTA, NAFTA, or whatever else Granholm tries to shift the blame to. "

Stand and never yield!

So many heros on that day. I'm seeing "United 93" today at 12:45 PM. I'll see it alone. I think it'll be easier to hide my tears.... and my anger..... and my resolve.

BLACKFIVE: Never Yield: "We should never forget the heroism of September 11th.
Never yield.
I'm going to experience United 93 tomorrow. I've been to Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I've been to the cliffs of Point du Hoc where the Rangers climbed to begin the end of the Nazis. I've walked the battlegrounds of the Bulge, Gettysburg, Ardennes, Bunker Hill, the Alamo, and Massada. Not all places were last stands, but they certainly were places of defiance and courage. Someday, I'll make a trip out to a field in Pennsylvania...
I don't imagine that I'll want to fly too soon after seeing United 93. I don't imagine that I'll feel better for awhile after either...
However, I'm glad that Hollywood finally made a movie about Flight 93. Are they making a buck off of my cathartic reaction? Sure. But I've got a need to go see this movie. So do many of you. One of my favorite pubs in Chicago had a plaque for Todd Beamer right by the front door. Customers, mostly firefighters and cops, would touch it gently as they entered and exited. It said 'Let's Roll.'
How many of you have wondered if you'd have had the courage of the passengers of Flight 93? I know I have thought about it....

Now, Hollywood needs to get off their dead asses and make one about Col. (ret) Rick Rescorla. He saved 2,700 hundred people on September 11th - a friend among them. My little brother was on the phone with his Morgan trading partner when they were evacuated. For two days, we didn't know that he made it out of the building...because of Rescorla.
One of the last things that Morgan employees heard as they were evacuated was Rick singing:
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
Stand and never yield!
So, in order to remember the heroism on September 11th, I'm going to see United 93 tomorrow.
Never forget, stand and never yield.

Kinda late to get this out, don't ya think?

There are no feminists on a sinking ship: "The broom in the Duke Lacrosse
Before we let the accuser sweep the damning inconsistency in her claim, the lack of DNA evidence, under the rug with the assertion that she was only raped by a broom, not the Lacrosse players, I must ask one question, what exactly were the DNA samples the Duke team were asked to submit supposed to be compared with if no physical intercourse took place???????????"
What was the DA looking for? And why didn't he "leak" it at first?

The economic logic the pols don't want us to know

Betsy's Page: " If you need more explanation of gas prices and how deceptive and dumb politicians are, read Thomas Sowell today. "

I'm not sure what's worse, their ignorance/power or the damage they do to our country as they scurry off to their summer homes in their private jets and limousines.

Do as we say, not as we do.......

The American Princess notes this bit of democrat hypocrisy.
The American Princess: Congress On The Case: "Congress On The Case
You know, that LHS gets, like, 20 miles to the gallon."
And it gets the worst EPA Air Pollution Score of any Chrysler car!

More moral guidance from our betters in Hollywood

OpinionJournal - Taste: "Michael Medved once pointed out that G- and PG-rated movies tend to make more money than R-rated ones. But that's not good news for everyone apparently. According to a study due out next week, kiddy flicks routinely poison the minds of their tiny viewers by relegating female characters to minority status in terms of both numbers and power. This report comes from the See Jane program, founded by actress Geena Davis, and it shows that 'G movies give boys a D' by 'portraying males as dominant, disconnected and dangerous.' Unlike Ms. Davis's R-rated 'Thelma and Louise,' it seems, where men were all those things, but the women gunned them down and then triumphed by killing themselves. "

Wow! Clooney saves Darfur on PerkieKatieToday.....

... and now this brilliance.
OpinionJournal - Extra: "King Kong is my hero. He's big, muscular, sensitive, a terrific actor--and he's not real. "
....Ms. Anderson, an actress, is honorary chair of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Thank God we have Hollywood to show us the way we should all live....

Noooooooo!!!!!!!

Not the greatest novel of our time!!!!!!! Nooooooooo.......
Variety.com - Lionsgate shrugging: "Ayn Rand's most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the bigscreen after years of false starts.
Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to 'Atlas Shrugged' from Howard and Karen Baldwin ('Ray'), who will produce with John Aglialoro.
As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt."
Maybe not so bad after all. Coulda been Babs Streisand and Alec Baldwin........

Begining to sound like a hobby....

BREITBART.COM - Duke Lacrosse Accuser Made Previous Report: "The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14.
Authorities in nearby Creedmoor said Thursday that none of the men named in the decade-old report was ever charged but they didn't have details why. "
Let me get this straight. This "victim" was raped in the past and now decides to go to a house late at night, filled with drunk lacrosse men, drunk on her own, dressed like a prostitute, recently bruised and now doesn't want to testify? Heck, in America, if you've got no assets you can sue darn near anyone......and still get a book deal......

Fuel facts!

Popular Mechanics - Crunching The Numbers On Alternative Fuels
The answers are here.
Doesn't the MSM have Google?

Celebrity hypocricy! A redundant phrase?

Deb outs these sleezy self promoters.
Debbie Schlussel: "Years ago, I wrote about Oprah Winfrey's refusal to do anything about what is happening in Sudan.
Well, yesterday, she finally did--along with her friends, renowned African scholars and foreign policy experts Angelina Jolie and George Clooney.
But it is too little, too late. And their timing is by design. It fits in well with their political agenda. You see, now there are no Christians left in Arab Muslim Sudan. They've all been mass murdered (after torture, gang rape, and forced conversion to Islam). So, now, it is finally okay for these vapid celebs to display their phony concern."
Read the whole disgusting story.

Starting to smell funny at Hope college.....

Society (and the police) are supposed to simply accept any accusation of this "senior" who appears to be making a career out of accusations?
Alleged hate crime victim talks about incident: "Burns, a Hope College senior, speaks about homophobia and hate crimes on campus. He decided to go to police after speaking with a Dean and a number of professors. Police have now asked him to take a lie detector test. He initially agreed, but was later advised not to do so.
'I was kinda offended,' says Burns of being asked to take a polygraph.
'It suggests they (police) don't believe the persons story,' says noted defense attorney Chris Yates of Willey Chamberlain and Yates LLP.

It's against the law to even ask?
24 Hour News 8 learned it is actually a crime - a misdemeanor - for a law enforcement officer to ask an alleged victim of a sex crime to take a polygraph. But there is no law or rule when it comes to alleged hate crimes.

'If they can discredit you, then they're gonna do so,' says Burns.
Burns will graduate with a double major in a few days, and he plans to continue to lecture about hate crimes - something he now has firsthand knowledge of.

Sounds kinda grim for the GOPers.

1976!

Instapundit.com -: "REPUBLICANS ARE SAGGING IN THE POLLS: Maybe, in part, it's because Harry Reid is doing better than Bill Frist in fighting pork?
Here's the kind of response that's getting from former GOP supporters: 'Okay, real conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians, stay home. Just...stay home in 2006. Or - what the hell - vote for a Democrat. We have to wake up the Stupid Party, before it completely merges itself into the Republicrat Statist Party.'
I think that a GOP disaster is now officially looming.
posted at 08:44 AM by Glenn Reynolds"
Predicting an election 6 months in advance is like predicting anything 6 months in advance, worthless.

What a rip off!

I don't own an Ipod. Read this before you get one yourself.
The F-Stop Blues: Replace Your Ipod Mini Battery: "You can go either of two ways to replace your Ipod battery: have Apple replace your battery for you for $99 or you can do it yourself for $29. Not one being afraid of a little diy repair, I signed up to replace it myself. I got the replacement battery through Laptops for Less for $29 that included a screwdriver and directions. "

A culture of corruption!

R.I. Democrat drops out of Senate race: "Matt Brown, Rhode Island's secretary of state, abandoned his bid Wednesday for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by Sen. Lincoln Chafee after questions surfaced over his fundraising practices."
Startin' to see a pattern here?

About time!

DeVos calls for capping sales tax on gasoline: "As gasoline prices hover around $3 a gallon, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos says it's time to cap the sales tax charged on gasoline."

High energy costs? Blame democrats!

The hypocrisy of the left astounds.
Kennedy faces fight on Cape Wind - The Boston Globe: "As record oil prices turn attention to the need for renewable fuels, momentum is building in Congress to buck Senator Edward M. Kennedy's bid to block the proposed Cape Cod wind energy project, potentially reviving efforts to construct the sprawling windmill farm in Nantucket Sound.
The chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee said yesterday that when the bill Kennedy backs that would effectively halt the wind farm comes up for a vote in the Senate, they will object on procedural grounds. They say they'll argue that a renewable energy project shouldn't be lumped in with a bill governing the Coast Guard."

A culture of corruption!

Where have we heard that phrase lately.....
Stabenow campaign corrects finance records - Boston.com: "Sen. Debbie Stabenow's campaign has corrected her campaign finance reports to show that some donations from 2002 and 2003 came from an Indian tribe then represented by now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, not an individual as she reported at the time."

No wonder the MSM doesn't report this!

They don't know the significance of the difference between 1 in 10 and 1 in 16. I'm not joking.
Why The Pump Isn't More Painful - Forbes.com: "According to the Bureau of Economic Affairs ( see chart here), American consumer spending on energy as a fraction of total personal consumption has declined considerably since 1980. Whereas 25 years ago, one in every ten consumer dollars was spent on energy, today it's one in every 16. In other words, what it takes to heat and cool our homes and drive to and from our jobs and vacation destinations is relatively less costly than it was then. "
Well, plus it's less of a "STORY" if they report that things are better than most think. Of course, most think things are bad because the drive by media distorts the truth every day. Bummer.....

More Duke Lacrosse abuse

Betsy's Page: "The Durham District Attorney now wants to play hardball by pressuring all the members of the team who attended the party and had a previous citation for misdemeanors such as underage drinking or public urination. They had had deferrals of their prosecution for these misdemeanors on the understanding that they had to stay out of trouble for six months or a year. Now, the DA says that, by attending a party where there was drinking going on, they have violated that requirement and can be prosecuted for the original misdemeanor. Is this really how Durham voters want the DA's office to spend its time, prosecuting these kids? Or is it payback for the defense attorney filing a motion a couple of days ago for more information on the alleged victim? Or is it the DA's way to try to twist a few arms to get some kids to flip on their teammates and start changing their stories? "
Time will tell but this is continuing to look like desperation on the part of the "candidate" DA.

CBS News?!!!!!

Amazing article coming from the Editorial Director of CBS News. Pretty good.
'We Know What's Best For You' - CBS News: "The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne this week. Dionne was arguing with a fellow liberal who wrote what the Democrats need to do is destroy today's 'radical individualism' and replace it with 'a politics of a 'common good.' That's fine, Dionne said, but we need to hear 'more about self-interest, rightly understood.'
That phrase made me cringe. It still does.
'Self-interest, rightly understood' is a fancy-pants way of saying, 'I know what is in your interest better than you do.' It is, in my view, a politically stupid and morally diseased position. Democrats, by temperament, are slightly more susceptible to it than Republicans.
I do not mean to condemn Dionne for a phrase. But I will. It reminded me of something written on the very first page of a book that lots of Democrats think is absolutely brilliant, 'What's the Matter with Kansas' by Thomas Frank.
In the third paragraph of his book, Frank writes: 'People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about.' That, too, is a fancy-pants way of saying: 'I know what is in your interest better than you do.' "

Free speach liberals on campus.

Anti-Coke protesters logic falls flat: "One student began the rally by announcing the group's intent to silence Coke's representatives. He told everyone that when the time came for the representatives to speak in their defense at the meeting inside, he would signal for all to scream and holler.
'You can't speak here,' he yelled. 'It's our school and we'll tell you when to speak.' "
Same old thuggish tactics from the left, this time at UCLA.

Railroad!

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Law or Lynch Law?: "A lineup should include not only people suspected of a crime but also other people, so that it tests whether the accuser or witness can tell the difference, and is therefore credible. But the stripper who claimed to have been raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team was presented with a lineup consisting exclusively of photographs of members of the lacrosse team."
I hadn't read or heard about this anywhere else. Wonder why.
Read it all.

Porky gets one day reprieve.

Seaboard pork plant to close for immigration rally: "Seaboard Corp. said it will close its Guymon, Oklahoma, pork plant on Monday to allow workers to attend rallies planned for that day in support of immigration reform, the company said.
The plant has a daily hog slaughter capacity of about 16,000 head, the company said.
On Tuesday, Cargill Inc. said its five beef plants and two hog plants will be closed on Monday for the rallies."
I'm wonderin' just what kind of "immigration reform" they're talkin' about. Is that the new code word for "amnesty for illegals"?

Holy post office, Batman!

Tom McMahon: Another Great Idea: The Jayne Mansfield 44-Cent Stamp
"But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"