From Runcorn, UK

I am blogging to you today from Runcorn, UK. I left Atlanta on Sunday night and arrived in Manchester on Monday morning. It is the same thing I did when I went to Amsterdam a couple of months ago. The good thing about flying over seas with my company is that I get to go first class. You couldn’t ask for a more comfortable (remember we’re talking about an airplane) seat with plenty of leg room.

My prayers go out to all of the people directly (and indirectly) affected by Hurricane Katrina. I am a little out of touch over here, although there has been quite a bit of coverage on Sky News, but the last count I heard was 55 dead with plenty still missing. Please pray for them all.

When I arrived here I was pretty much free the rest of Monday, so I took the train over to Liverpool. I went to a place called The Beatles Story, which is basically a Beatles Museum. It was way too cool!! I was in there for about 3 hours and it felt like it was about 20 minutes. Monday also happened to be a “banker’s holiday” and they were having a 3 day festival in the streets of Liverpool. I didn’t know there was a festival until I left the museum. The streets were empty when I got there, I guess because it was raining. When I got out of the museum, it was sunny and crowded. I could barely walk in the streets without getting pushed or run into. It was quite fun.

My co-workers that I am working with over here took me out to eat in the town of Chester last night. It is an old Roman town which is evident by the wall built around the old part of the city. They gave me a tour, which was wonderfully interesting, and then took me to a quaint little Italian place with good wine, good food and good company.

It is time to get back to work now. I will try to write more tonight if time permits. I am not sure what is on the schedule for this evening, but the day’s schedule is pretty ambitious.

As Long as I'm on My Soapbox

Oil. The nations across the globe use a lot of it. There is a lot of it. From most accounts, given the population growth and anticipating the world use of the black stuff, we have enough for another 200 - 250 years of massive oil usage.

I have two quick points:

1) President George W. Bush invaded Iraq for the oil supply. I live in Georgia, which historically has the lowest price for gasoline per gallon in the continental United States. Yesterday I paid $2.58 per gallon to fill my car. I can't tell you how happy I am that those Iraqi oil supplies were brought here illegally for my great benefit at the gas pump!

2) I don't remember who said it, but it was someone much smarter than me who has actually done studies on oil and it's impact on the economy. He says that we have ample supplies of the stuff within our own reach. Basically we need to get back into the business of safe offshore drilling, building more refineries (we haven't built a new one since the 70's) and look into, again, safe oil exploration in ANWR. He (and I will try to find his name) has a basic philosophy:

Find it, Drill it, Refine it, Burn it. I like this guy!!

The Left Needs a New Mantra

Maybe it's because of the whole dabacle down in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan, although I don't want to give her credit for anything, but it seems we have a renewed interest from the politicians on the left, and that includes Hagel, that we need to get out of Iraq and we need an exit strategy.

Whether the new draft of an Iraqi constitution will get the Sunni's support or not, I don't know, but there is, and always has been an exit strategy by the Bush white house. It's not a long sentence and the words aren't too big, so even a hard left, vitriolic spewing left winger should be able to read and comprehend the concept. Are you ready? It's called winning. That is the exit strategy and it drives the left nuts. There are two reasons for this. One, they don't remember what winning is like (oh that's right, W stole the elections both times...dragging a larger majority in both houses along with him). Two, and this goes back to the Vietnam era radicals led by John "three scratches and your out" Kerry and his buddy Ted "Chapequidic" Kennedy. Simply put, these people don't want America to win. They are the headliners of the "Blame America first" campaign. If the United States of America is out in front on any issue the world over, you can count on these people, and their allies (Michael Moore, George Soros, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Boxer, etc...) to trash this president and this country. It's pathetic and these people need to start being voted out of office.

The Iraqi constitution will be ratified in October, and they will hold elections for a permanent parliament in December. Concurrently, the Iraqi's will be taking more and more of the security measures in their country on themselves. That is as it should be. Will there be hiccups (no, that isn't a slam at Kennedy) along the way? Yes. They are called growing pains. Will the U.S. need to keep a presence there? Probably. But there will be a steady decrease in terrorist attacks as the Iraqi's grow more and more tired of seeing their innocent men, women and children slaughtered. As this happens, there will be a steady decrease in the amount of U.S. and coalition troops that will be necessary in the region.

Winning is the one and only exit strategy that we should be considering. Thank God the elections went the way they did here at home.

The Post has Journalistic Integrity?

In this article the Washington Post has stated it is reneging on a pledge to offer free advertising for an event organized by the Defense Department to memorialize the victims of 9/11.

The Post backed out of the agreement after critics said the event, scheduled to take place four years after the attacks that hit New York and Washington and resulted in the crash of a commercial airliner over western Pennsylvania, would have a pro-war slant and that support of the event by the newspaper would compromise the Post's journalistic integrity.

First of all, the Washington Post and integrity should never be used in the same sentence. What they mean by integrity is that if goes against their left wing "fever swamp" ideology.

There's more.

"The Post has a code of conduct that says employees should avoid a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Rick Ehrmann, a Local representative for the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. "In this case The Post was sponsoring the Pentagon's Freedom Walk, which ties the attack on Sept. 11 to the Iraq war, and of course, The Post's reporters have proven ... that there is no connection between the two, that that link is false."

So the Post's conflict of interest guidelines don't have a problem with a union employee (I wonder who they supported in the last election) speaking for them. I believe that the September 11th Commission found that there was a link between Saddam and Al-Qaida, and there is certainly a link between Al-Qaida and September 11, 2001. Also, the Freedom Walk is just that. The far left fringe is pitching a fit about is that Clint Black is scheduled to sing at the end of the event. He happens to have a song that is titled I Raq and I Roll. Thus proof positive in their eyes that the pentagon is politicizing this event.

Get a life guys. It's just a song. I respectfully agree to disagree with people who are against this war. And I believe you can be against the war and still be a patriot. But according to the Washington Post you can't be a patriot and participate in the Freedom Walk and support our troops in their effort to liberate 25 million iraqi's. That is crossing the line of the hard left bias of the Washington Post.

Something I never heard before

This from the Opinion Journal Online;

In September 2002, when Democrats first blocked Justice Priscilla Owen from a circuit court nomination over a Texas Supreme Court ruling that upheld a parental notice law, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah put it this way:

I fear the opposition to Justice Owen from the abortion lobby is not at all about abortion rights, because abortion rights are not affected by a mere notice statute. The opposition to Justice Owen is not really about abortion rights, it is about abortion profits. Simply put, the abortion industry is opposed to parental notice laws because parental notice laws place a hurdle between them and the profits from the abortion clients--not the girls who come to them but the adult men who pay for these abortions. These adult men, whose average age rises the younger the girl is, are eager not to be disclosed to parents, sometimes living down the street. . . . At nearly one million abortions per year, the abortion industry is as big as any corporate interest that lobbies in Washington. They not only ignore the rights of parents, they also protect sexual offenders and statutory rapists.

Very disturbing.

Read the whole editorial here.

Bolton

Let me weigh in quickly on the appointment of John Bolton to be U.N. Ambassador. Senator John "did I tell you I'm a war hero" Kerry has been reported as saying that the president has the right to make a recess appointment, but that this was the wrong choice.

Now, obviously he is entitled to his opinion, but there is just one thing I would like to remind him of, as well as the rest of the swamp fever crowd on the far left. You lost the election, and you lost seats in the house as well as the senate! Elections matter and there are consequences to them. If you had won you would be allowed to pick some fruit cake from the fringes of the leftern hemisphere. It appears though, that the American public has chosen to be a bit more conservative than your dying party is willing to admit.

President Bush has won two elections to the nations top office and has the right to make his picks for ambassador and court nominees. As a matter of fact, he owes it to the people who put him and the republican party in power.

John Kerry said that Bolton has come before the senate twice and lost both times. That is not exactly true. John Bolton was never given a fair up or down vote, and even when there was a vote, he won by a majority. If the democrats continue to stonewall everything that comes before them simply because it is backed by President Bush, they will find themselves trying to dig out of a hole for years to come. The majority of the American people backed this president, and in turn we back what he backs.

They just don't listen

When President Bush says he can't talk about an ongoing investigation, as in the case of the Joe "I can't tell the truth" Wilson debacle, why don't the democr....um, I mean the media listen to him. Byron York has a short blurb at NRO of yet another reporter trying to get the president to talk about something he clearly isn't going to talk about. And people say republicans are hard-headed.

It's in his blood

Don Goldwater, former presidential candidate and five term Senator from Arizona barry Goldwater's nephew, has announced that he is running for Governor of Arizona in the 2006 race. He intends to defeat first term democratic Governor Janet Napolitano.

"The state is headed in the wrong direction," said the 50-year-old candidate. "We must return to the basic principles of limited government, individual liberty and economic freedom."

I wish him better luck than his uncle had against LBJ.