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Name: The Hermit Crab
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A Few Comments on Comments

After an increasingly tiresome exchange with a commentor (whom I decline to name), I think I need to lay down a few rules regarding comments:

Democrat-underground-style comments will be ignored.  So will absurd misuse of words like programmed, brainwashed, and other common (and commonly abused) words.  On this site, words mean what they are supposed to mean, and not what they have been twisted into.  No obscenities or crudities will be responded to.  Parliamentarily acceptable language only, please.
 
Personal insults will also not be responded to.  The insulters name will be noted, and all further comments from the same source will be ignored.  Do not flatter yourself that you have bested me in debate.  Insults are not debate, and will not be bothered with here.  This is no low-rent Huffington Post-ish site; this is TownHall.com.  Readers of your tiresome billingsgate will see you for the bore that you are.  Don't embarrass yourself.
 
Honest disagreement addressed in polite fashion will be responded to, if I have the time.  Being a married man with a full-time job, I scarcely have time to write my own posts.  I apologize in advance to anyone who posts a comment of a non-abusive nature that I do not respond to.  I mean no offence to you.
 
Extra information and factual corrections will always be accepted with gratitude.  Please note the word "actual".  The opinions expressed on this website are my own unless otherwise noted, and I reserve the right to make my own judgements on people and events.  It is the same right that you possess.
 
I have received some very nice comments as well as the boorish ones.  I thank those who commented in such a graceful way.  To my delight, my first comment came from a military veteran.  My thanks to you especially.
 
I do not receive "talking point memos" from the Republican Party, or from anyone else for that matter.  Nor do I want to.  I write what I think, when I think it right and convenient to write it.
 
Further clarifications as necessary.  I hope they won't be.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Tags: Comments.  
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Accumulated QuickNotes

Once again I'm short of (lunch)time, so let's dispose of the quick stuff:
 
We of the internet or talk radio public are familiar with the "tinfoil-hat brigades"; those wacky people who are convinced that the government's satellites are reading their minds, or at least they are whenever the brigadier is not wearing his protective tinfoil hat.  I find it amusing that the people in our society who are most worried about the government reading their thoughts are the most likely to be having no  thoughts worth reading.
 
 
 
Bitter Irony Department:  The main office for the Welfare Department in Sullivan County, NY is in the town of Liberty.  (If you don't see the irony, you need to learn more about the deleterious effects of the welfare system.)
 
 
 
I've seen several conservative authors who I respect lamenting the recent awarding of the multi-billion dallar tanker plane contract to EADS (the military wing of Aerbus) and its American partner, Northrup Grumman.  They fell that that good all-American firm, Boeing, should have received the contract so as to keep the American defense industry American.  Apart from the fact that Northrup-Grumman is just as all-American as Boeing is (the Grumman Hellcat is my favorite carrier plane of World War II), maybe Boeing might have had a better shot at the contract if they hadn't tried to defraud the government the last time 'round.  That dirty deal (which resulted in a few prison sentences) was shot down (I love military puns) by Senator John McCain.  For this he deserves our thanks.  Thieves never like a good watchdog, though, for obvious reasons...
 
 
 
Just think – if Juanita Broderick’s husband had shot her rapist the way many honorable men would have, we would have been spared 16 years and counting of the Clinton contagion. Mull that over for awhile.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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13 Minutes...

... is all I have, so I'll dispose of some short notes.
 
 
 
Books have been written about the failures of our education system (I own a few of them), but speaking as an operator who can only communicate with our customers via speech, one deficiency which exasperates me daily is that so few Americans know how to contextualize.  This is the ability to work out what an unfamiliar word means from its context -- the other words in the sentence.  This is a skill I learned in elementary school.  A person calls Directory Assistance, and I get the call.  I ask them for the city and state their request is in, and they tell me.  As required by my employers, I then ask "What listing, please?"  A distressingly high percentage of my callers have no idea what I mean by "listing".  They won't even stop to try to figure out what I'm asking them for.  I often want to ask callers "Who does your thinking for you when you're not talking to me?", but this is verbotten.
 
Did you work out what "verbotten" means?  Class?  Class??
 
 
 
On my old website, which vanished when the service provider folded, I expressed my concern that so many of the incoming Democratic chairmen were old, bitter partisans who had been festering in Congress for 25 years and more in some cases.  Just one example for now:  John Conyers, who I think heads the House Judiciary Committee (I haven't time to check right now), is investigating whether President Bush can be impeached -- AFTER HE LEAVES OFFICE.  He says he'll use all of the executive branch records that will be opened to the committee after a Democrat takes the Oval Office. 
 
One more reason to vote McCain in November, my fellow conservatives.
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Moderate vs. Radical "Palestinians"

Since education is what we're about here at the Crab, I thought I would help anyone who is confused by the difference between "moderate 'Palestinians'" (such as Fatah) and "radical'Palestinians'" (like Hamas) to understand the difference.  It is actually far more simple than TV news makes it out to be.  Moderate "Palestinians" want to kill all of the Jews eventually; radical "Palestinians" want to kill them right now.
 
That's about it.
 
(Please note:  the term "Palestinians" always appears in quotation marks in the Crab because there are actually no such people.  The term "Palestinian" was invented after the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948, in an attempt to de-legitimize the new country -- after the attempt to massacre the new Israelis failed, of course.  Since these people are simply Arabs, I refuse to give them the false name of "Palestinians".  Think "Sudeten Germans, for a historic parallel.)
Tags: Hamas   Fatah  
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New York State of Embarrassment

This can be an embarrassing state to live in, as well as an expensive one.  Both of these are taxing in different ways.  I won't cover the tax issue of the moment this moment (I'm not angry enough), but I just want to comment on a couple of recent NY embarrassments.
 
Our newly ex-governor Eliot Spitzer has been all over the news for many reasons, starting with the exposure of his involvement with a prostitution ring that he laundered mega-bucks to for...er...something you would have thought would have been available at home, although if his private persona is as abrasive as his public, maybe it wasn't available, and who could blame Mrs. Spitzer?  Finally, some papers are doing what the Wall Street Journal (God bless 'em) has done for years and exposing his abuses of power, both as Governor and before that as Attorney General of New York.  This is welcome, although if it had been done before maybe we wouldn't have elected this pervert thug as Governor in 2006.  What I haven't seen is anyone mention that in his coercive tactics as Attorney General (usually targeting prominent, innocent men), he was emulating one of the most power-abusing prosecutors in American history, Lawrence Walsh.
 
Walsh, of course, was the Special Prosecutor who was appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan and Bush I administrations.  His job was not to produce truth or justice; it was to produce a Democrat President in 1993.  His favorite tactic was to threaten innocent administration figures with a dozen or more indictments, which he knew would not stand up in court.  He would tell the victim that he knew that they would be acquitted, but that the cost of defending themselves from the false charges would bankrupt their families, so they had better plead guilty to a few of the false charges to avoid having to pay to defend against the many.  (Elliot Abrams wrote a moving account of having been a Walsh target in Undue Process.  Ignore the leftist review Amazon chose to publish.)
 
This of course, is prosecutorial malpractice on stilts, but as Walsh and Spitzer learned, the press will let you use anything short of the rack to obtain guilty pleas, as long as you target someone the media wishes harm to. 
 
 
 
The other brief point of emabrrassment I want to mention is the latest contretemps of our carpetbagger Senator, Hillary "Bill's moral compass" Clinton.  Much has been made about her lying about her visit to Bosnia as First Lady (snipers, etc.)  Most of us have known for 16 years or so that Hillary is no less a congenital liar than Bill is; what amuses me is that people are actually saying that we need to elect Hillary Clinton as President to replace President George W. Bush, who has been lying to us for eight years (which isn't true, by the way, but that's another topic for another day).  Maybe they mean that President Bush hasn't been lying enough...
 
 
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Ann Coulter on Obama's Revolting Speech

One of the reasons I love Ann Coulter is that she has the courage to speak the plain sound sense that so many others decline to speak for fear of criticism.  For example, on the repulsive Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she wrote:
 
"We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered."
 
To read her Mar 19 column on Barack Obama's arrogant speech (and you should), go here.
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Obama and the Common Man

At a campaign appearance a few weeks ago, Michelle Obama complained that she and her husband the candidate were having trouble finding the money to pay for their children's piano lessons.  In the last year for which data is available, she and Barack reported income of approximately $480,000.  Maybe if they didn't insist on renting a concert hall for their kids to practice in, it would be easier.
 
(For any liberals who may have wandered here and read the above, this is a joke.  So is the idea that Barack and Michelle represent the middle class and/or the common man and woman.)
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Another Lesson of the Raving Rev Kerfuffle

(Thanks to James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com for the word "kerfuffle")
 
I don't think enough attention has been paid to one aspect of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright brouhaha.  I wish more people would talk about the harm the raving rev has been doing, not to Barack Obama's presidential prospects, but to his entire flock.  It is said that in majority-black areas, much respect is given to the words and deeds of their local ministers.  In many, perhaps most cases this is deserved and a positive influence on the community.  However, the great respect tendered brings with it tremendous potential for the doing of great harm.  When a man of the cloth peddles moonbat conspiracy theories and racial resentments bordering on hatred (or insanity), he is far more likely to have a baneful effect than all of the David Dukes and Cynthia McKinneys of the world.  The instinct of many parishioners is to trust their priest or reverend (I certainly trust my parish priest -- our deacon, not so much).  Rev. Wright has shamefully, scandalously abused the trust of his congregation by his wild and irresponsible statements.
 
By the way, does anyone know what theological school gave this racist loon his degree?  I'd like to know what school offers a major in theology, with a minor in America-hatred and racism.  Then again, there may well be many of those in today's America...
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Sick and Tired

The Crab has been home from work with some baffling ailment that keeps him from sleeping, living without headaches and other pains, and enjoying life generally.  He also has been too sick and tired to update his blogsite, for which I apologize.  However, there are a few thoughts I'd like to touch on while I convalesce.
 
 
 
I watched President Bush deliver a speech at the Department of Defense today.  It was a fine speech, well-written and well-delivered.  He reminded us of what Saddam's Iraq was really like, and of the horrors that our ousting of his regime put a stop to.  The speech was well-received, and rightly so.  It occured to me that on the too-rare times that I actually watch President Bush deliver a speech, or even a prepared statement at some event or other, he invariably performs well.  Sure, he may mispronounce a word or two, but who doesn't?  I heard Rush Limbaugh mispronounce a word as I was typing this, which he swiftly corrected, as the President does.  So where does the ridicule of the President as a poor speaker come from?
 
A hint comes from an Ann Coulter column I read not too long ago, in which she points out a mystery.  VP Dan Quayle was the butt of countless jokes based on a seemingly endless lists of malaprops and verbal bloopers.  Yet, in an era when the President and Vice President are stalked by flocks of cameramen and film crews seemingly everywhere save the bedroom and the bathroom, there exists no film footage of the gaffes.  Do you remember actually seeing any of these Quayle moments?  I'll bet you don't -- you just took the reporters' word for it.    (There is actual footage of Al Gore, then-Vice President of the United States of America, being unable to identify busts of the Founding Fathers at Monticello, but almost the only place you can see it is at Rush Limbaugh's website. Yet Gore is the "Goracle".)
 
Could it be that the reason you are told that the President is such a poor, near-incoherent speaker is that that's what the MSM wants you to believe?  They know few of us watch speeches these days.  We shouldn't make it so easy for them to fool us.
 
 
 
My respect for Sen. John McCain went up today.  He went to Israel today, and virtually the first place he went was to Sderot, which has attained some mournful fame as one of the prime targets of Hizbollah rockets and morter fire coming from terrorists opposed to the continued existence of the State of Israel.  It took real courage to go to Sderot, and I emphasize the word "real".  I could keep writing on this, but it would be an insult to your intelligence.  Compare McCain's courage to the "courage" of Obama or Clinton (take your pick), and draw your own conclusions.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Seems There Was More...

... than a few trysts in Eliot's nest (there are too many possibilities for puns here for me to pass them all up).  My wife told me this morning that NY Governor Eliot Spitzer had already resigned and, of course, hastened to point out to me that my prediction of a long, ugly fight had gone up in smoke.  I don't mind.  If all it took to get rid of that pompous poseur of an elected official was a little embarrassment for me, I will take it and consider myself a benefactor of mankind.  This is a technique I learned from my father.  Predict the worst that could happen, and then smile happily when things turn out better than you predicted.  Besides, when I made the prediction, I had not heard that there was a pattern of misbehaviour here going back six years.  That would have made any attempts to hold on to his office immeasurably more difficult.  I suspect that his lawyer and his family had something to do with his decision to resign today.  I wonder what Time Magazine thinks of their "Crusader of the Year" now...
 
(Of course, it is possible that Time Magazine will go back and plant false evidence in the record about this.  They've done it before.  At the end of 1987, they declared that Rep. Lee Hamilton, partisan hack co-chair of the committee investigating Iran-Contra, had reversed the tide of public opinion flowing on favor of Oliver North with one sharp day of cross-examination.  It never happened.  After two days of testimony, North's approval rating was 67%.  After the week of testimony had ended, it was still 67%.  Time was droppinjg hallucinogens in the well of truth for future drinkers to imbibe.)
 
I know very little of the soon-to-be-governor, Lt. Governor David Paterson (we New Yorkers tend to forget we HAVE a Lieutenant Governor), other than the fact that he is legally blind.  This shouldn't be seen as a problem, but rather as progress.  Better a Governor who is legally blind than a Governor who is morally blind and blinded by ambition.  We will view the change with cautious optimism.  In the meantime, we can wait for "Kristen" to get her pictorial in Playboy.
 
 
 
 
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Why Spitzer Won't Go Gracefully -- Continued

I forgot something in yesterday's post -- another indication of why King Eliot I won't leave quietly.  If you remember, Governor Steamroller attempted to make it possible for illegal aliens to get NYS driver's licenses last year.  Now, he's not the only idiot to come up with that idea.  What was uniquely Spitzerian is the way he simply tried to ram the proposal through -- no consultations, no warnings, no discussion.  He only backed down when county clerks across the state declared that they would not comply with his decree, and by the way, Governor, we don't have government by decree in New York State.  It took the rebellion of the vast majority of New Yorkers and their elected representatives to stop his arrogant plan.
 
That's Eliot Spitzer, and that's why he won't leave unless someone shoves him onto the plank and saws it off behind him.
 
Tags: spitzer  
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Why the Spitzer News Didn't Shock Me

It's been all over the news today that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been connected to a very-high-priced prostitution ring, and that his job may be in jeopardy.  Many people expect him to resign.  Quite a few observers have expressed shock (if not awe) at the news.  This old crab is unshocked in the extreme.  In fact, the whole course of Spitzer's career in state office could well have prepared us for this news.  Real journalists will be tackling this issue for days or weeks to come, so I'll confine myself to my personal reactions and observations.
 
Shame on you, New York State Republican-majority Senate!  If you had passed the governor's budget, he wouldn't have had to pay a prostitute.  He'd have been doing "that" to the New York taxpayers, instead.
 
It's no surprise to me that Eliot abused his office in this fashion.  He had already abused his office in trying to politically destroy Republican Majority leader Joseph Bruno through leaking concocted charges of corruption and abuse of state facilities to friendly (to Spitzer) media outlets.  He abused his power routinely in his years as state Attorney General.  Several media talkers said today that Spitzer had made his reputation by "rooting out Wall Street corruption".  He had done nothing of the kind.  He made his name by threatening popular "villains" (high-salaried CEOs and the like) with prosecution for acts that actually weren't even crimes.  His grandstanding press conferences and public statements were applauded by the sort of simpletons in the media and elsewhere who think that all CEOs are evil, and all high salaries in the business world are somehow theft.  When opposed by those whom he had chosen to ruin with false charges, he often turned to brute intimidation.  To quote from a 2006 article by Kymberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal (perhaps the only major newspaper to expose the thuggish Spitzer methods):
 
Former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead wrote on this page in December that after he'd published an op-ed criticizing Mr. Spitzer, the AG had called him to say: "Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done."
 
Year after year, Eliot Spitzer abused the powers of his offices, for instance when he tried to put the crisis-pregnancy centers of New York State out of business -- just because his backers in the pro-abortion camp asked him to.  The fact that the centers had committed no crimes hardly slowed AG Shyster down.  Year after year, he got away with it.  Why should anyone be surprised that he grew to believe that he was invulnerable?
 
I listened to the Steamroller (his self-given monicker)(policical pun intended) giving his brief statement on the radio today.  I noticed immediately that he did not say that he had betrayed the people of New York State.  This I found very significant.  Eliot, I'm sure, paid close attention to the way in which President Clinton (a former Attorney General himself) survived his own sex scandal.  I predict that Governor Spitzer will not resign soon, or willingly.  I'm sure that in his egotistical little steam engine of a heart, he has convinced himself that the state simply can't spare him.  He will not get out unless he is forced out.  It's his "it's only about sex" moment in the sun.  Keep in mind -- extra-marital affairs can be a resume enhancement for a Democrat.  Mafioso Don Eliot may convince himself that he's closer to the White House now.  Never underestimate the capacity for self-delusion of the megalomaniacal politician.
 
It's a pity that more reporters didn't provide honest reporting on this squalid bully when he was abusing his Attorney General's post.  Then perhaps, even in a moron-majority state like New York, we might have been spared the embarrassment of a sort of Bill Clinton in reverse in the Governor's Mansion.  Bill Clinton broke his marriage vows, and then his oath(s) of office.  Beware, ladies.  If you trust a man who cheats on his promises to others, he's a cheat.  Period.
 
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My Friend Tony

In a previous post, I mentioned my friend Tony.  I was thinking of him today.  Tony is currently attempting to become a honest, conservative/libertarian lawyer.  I wish he would include becoming a Democrat in his plans.  Then he'd be trying to become an honest, conservative/libertarian Democrat lawyer.  Tony will then have become perhaps the first man I've ever heard of to have made himself statistically impossible.
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Cuba's Stalin?

Some of the same idiots who have been lying to us about Fidel Castro all of these years seem to have started lying about his brother and successor Raul.  They claim that he may be a liberalizing factor in the Cuban dictatorship.  It seems more likely that he will be Stalin to Fidel Castro's Lenin.  Here comes the new boss, the same as the old boss.  For reasons for my pessimism (apart from my crabby nature, that is), read this article by Humberto Fontova.
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Random Observations

Democratic frontrunner (by a nose) Sen. Barack Obama said in a debate that the greatest mistake he's made as a senator was his vote to allow Terri Schiavo's family to continue their efforts to save her life.  This is staggering.  Of all of the votes he's cast (and to me, the vote to select Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader would seem a five-alarm blunder), THIS is the one he regrets?  This is of a piece with his stance on life issues generally (he opposes partial-birth abortion bans, and even born-alive infant protection laws -- after all, he's already safely born), but still appalling in what it says about his soul.  I fully intend on supporting the Terri Schindler Sciavo Foundation when next I can give to charity, and I will inform Obama with a note like the following:
 
Dear Senator,
 
I read with interest of your statement that the one vote you've cast in the Senate that you regret was the vote to allow Terri Schiavo's family to continue to attempt via the legal system to keep her alive.  A donation in your "honor" has been made to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, the money to be used to preserve the lives of others who find themselves in the position that poor Terri was in. 
 
May our country be spared from the horror and embarrassment of having a moral cretin like yourself occupying the Oval Office.  One Bill Clinton was enough!
 
 
 
Every once in a while I find myself wishing that President Bush was at the liberty to speak bluntly to those on whom subtlety is wasted.  The United Nations is preparing (at great expense, naturally) for Durban II, which promises to be much the same as Durban I, the infamous "human rights" conference most notable for the fact that the conferees seemed to only be able to detect racism and human-rights violations in Israel and in the United States.  Presumably the UN has been attempting to get the US to pony up billions of taxpayer dollars to support another round of Israel bashing, with a heaping helping of anti-Americanism as a bonus.  I would love to see President Bush reply by publicly announcing that he is gratified that they thought of him, and that the next time he wishes to sponsor a Nazi festival, he will let them know.
 
 
 
I am getting a little discouraged with our public conservatives again.  At a time when the economy is sluggish, job losses are rising, and high oil costs are a large part of the problem, why are so many of our "best and brightest" talking up liberal talking points like "flex-fuel vehicles", "alternative biofuels", and so forth?  There is a simpler solution.  They knew it a few years ago, but they seem to have forgotten, so let me shout it out:
 
Drill in ANWR!
 
They know that the drilling can be done environmentally safely.  They know that only a small part of the most desolate area of that howling wilderness would be used, and that only during the worst part of the year, when even the native wildlife high-tails it for less inhospitable climes.  This is the time to push the lying environmentalist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the in) out of the way and do what's best for the country.  Just because the Democrats roll over for these idiots doesn't mean we have to!
 
 
 
Some very generous people have told me that they think I'm a genius.  I am nothing of the kind.  I'm just a man who has read a lot, pondered a bit, and retained a fair slice of what I've read.  That is not genius.  At any rate, I think many if not most people haves flashes of genius.  The late William F. Buckley was a full-time genius.  We will miss him.
 
 
 
I've read that Senators Russell Feingold and Harry Reid have introduced still more bills to force withdrawal and defeat in Iraq.  (A very good article on this may be found here. )  Sometimes I think of President Bush as Kid Gleason, the manager of the 1919 White Sox, better known to history as the "Black Sox".  The President is doing his best to strategize his (and our) way to victory, and several key players on our team our doing their damnedest (sp?) to throw the series (and the war on terror is a series -- a long one).
 
I'll develop this thought soon, if I remember to... 
 
 
 
 
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