sisu

"WMD was never the issue"

"But for the great majority of Iraqis WMD was never the issue. We don’t understand the criticism of your Prime Minister. All we wanted was to be free," said "the woman who helped swing the vote at the Labour conference over pulling troops out of Iraq today," reports the Scotsman [via InstaPundit]:

Shanaz Rashid -- whose husband is a minister in the interim Iraqi government -- was earlier given a standing ovation when she made an emotional appeal not to pull troops out.

Close to tears, she told party activists that many friends had perished under Saddam Hussein and she had kissed the ground with joy on arriving back at Baghdad after the war. She praised the Prime Minister [Tony Blair] for "standing up" to Saddam and liberating the country.

Asked later if she considered Labour members naive about the situation for Iraqis, she said: "Yes I do think so. They don’t know the reality of their lives.

"They haven’t lived through Saddam. They don’t know what we’ve been through."

"The victory was widely expected after a deal was struck with unions to back an alternative motion saying troops should stay as long as Iraq wants," reports the BBC. Fascinatingly, the Tories -- the loyal opposition -- seem to be taking their cue from our own disloyal opposition on this side of the Atlantic, as in Bush/Blair Lied™:

Meanwhile away from the conference centre Tory leader Michael Howard went on the offensive and for the first time accused Mr Blair of lying over the build-up to war.

"I don't think that's the only thing they were lied to about . . . but Iraq is the great catalyst for the loss of trust in the government."

The prime minister later responded to the Tory leader's remarks saying: "I just find it contemptible because he supported the war."

We guess the Tory leader supported the war before he stopped supporting it. At the same time, UK Independence Party euro MP Gerard Batten was channeling that snide American reporter -- blogged here -- who shamelessly put his own bias on display last week by asking John Kerry "Is he [Iraqi PM Allawi] living in the same fantasy land as the President?":

"I think he's a fantasist who lives in a world where if he wants something to be true and he believes it, then for him it is and the rest of us are expected to go along with it."

It would seem that beyond the rhetoric, opposition to the war isn't necessarily a left vs. right kind of thing so much as an out-of-power vs. in-power struggle?

Is this a lemon?

Tiny and Baby on supper watch.

Just after these pictures were snapped yesterday, the Pentax Optio 450 froze up with the lens still telephoto'd out. We packed the little rascal up for its second trip in less than a year to Boulder, Colorado for service. Hm. One would expect greater reliability from Pentax. Is this a lemon? To fill in, we dashed off to Office Max and purchased a lesser but suitable interim digital camera, the HP Photosmart 735.

There you go again, Mr. Kerry

"John Kerry is not able to take a principled position and is the wrong choice to guide America through this critical time," said Rudy Giuliani Monday, unveiling the Bush-Cheney '04 "Debate Briefing Book for Senator Kerry," available online here.

From Bush-Cheney '04 comes a Waffles BS Detector for your blog:

Track the debates on your personal Web site or blog with a Live Debate Facts feed from Bush-Cheney '04. Each time John Kerry says something false or inaccurate during the debates, the live feed will be updated instantly with the facts.

The debate feed is available in two sizes that fit easily into your web site or blog. Just copy and paste a single line of code to your site, and your readers will be updated instantly with breaking debate facts.

We've got ours installed over in the right column about midway down. 'Have also installed a link to Bill Hobbs's Voter Fraud Project (just above Live Debate Facts feed).

Here's how the Waffles BS Detector works, as explained in today's New York Daily News:

Like a good straight man, John Kerry gave Team Bush another opening yesterday when he tried to explain his now-infamous line that he voted for a military spending bill after he voted against it. "I had one of those inarticulate moments, late in the evening when I was dead-tired in the primaries, and I didn't say something very clearly," Kerry said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

By the time the next commercial came up, Bush campaign aides determined the comment was made at a noontime rally in West Virginia and were preparing their latest zinger.

"Perhaps his watch was on Paris time," the Republican National Committee mocked.

Voter Fraud Central is open for business

While Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter tries to frighten black Floridians with whole-cloth stories of disenfranchisement," Soros-funded "grassroots" fellow travelers are doing something concrete about voter fraud: signing up non-existent citizens around the nation.

"As Hugh Hewitt says, If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat, but they will try to cheat. You can help stop them," writes Bill Hobbs of Hobbs Online [via InstaPundit], who's setting up Voter Fraud Central for news reports and blog posts that turn the spotlight on incidences of election fraud and attempted election fraud:

I have set up a special GMail account for this project, voterfraud-at-gmail.com.

If you spot a story about election fraud, please send an email to that email address. The email should include the source of the story, the date the story ran, the Internet link and a brief summary. Bloggers, if you have blogged a story about election fraud, please send me the link.

We've sent along our post re Cleveland unplain dealing from the other day: "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level"

Here's another way to forestall cheating by making sure it's not close. Today is Wictory Wednesday, when hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to donate to an important Republican Senate campaign. This week we're looking North to Alaska, where incumbent Lisa Murkoski is in a tight race with former Democrat Tony Knowles. PoliPundit explains:

The race is tight only because Knowles claims to be a "moderate." You know what that means, don’t you? If he gets to the Senate, he’ll raise your taxes, cut defense spending, block President Bush’s judicial nominations, hug Michael Moore and run for re-election every 6 years as a "moderate."

Don’t let this happen! We don’t need one more “moderate” Democrat in the US Senate for the next 30 years. You can help Murkowski by donating to her campaign today.

It's so cozy in the rain

Tiny sits out the last soggy gasp of former Hurricane Jeanne in The Little House.

Bear with me

Matt of MartiniPundit sends along some awesome pictures from a friend of the USS Honolulu SSN718 (a Los Angeles class attack sub), which "recently spotted some bears when she surfaced in the Arctic Circle."

She never said a word

Emmy of Emmy's New Weblog deleted us from her blogroll today. She was the first ever to blogroll us and will be forever treasured in our heart. A young gal in Belgium. We had nothing in common but our love cats. Feeling wicked bad about it. She never said a word. We think it was something too personal we said in a comment on her site. 'Will never comment ever ever again on any blog. It has been our downfall. Goodbye, dear lovely girl.

Update: Hissy fit over. Can you say melodramatic and all-about-me?

Luna altissima

Full Harvest Moon framed by compound leaves of Ailanthus altissima (Tree of Heaven) from the front porch around three o'clock this morning

We caught the Full Harvest Moon just in time before it disappeared behind gathering clouds this morning. The Farmers Almanac explains:

This is the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. In two years out of three, the Harvest Moon comes in September, but in some years it occurs in October. At the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of this Moon. Usually the full Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the Moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice, the chief Indian staples, are now ready for gathering.

An interesting apparent discrepancy until we read the fine print (EDT vs EST): The U.S. Naval Observatory says Full Moon for our location is today at 9:09 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, while the Farmers Almanac puts it at 8:09 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Greenwichmeantime.com explains:

In most states in the USA, Daylight-Saving Time (DST) is observed, where the time is shifted forward by 1 hour to EDT, which is 4 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT-4).

After the Summer months Eastern Time is shifted back by 1 hour to US Eastern Standard Time (EST) or (GMT-5).

Our head is spinning. Okay. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) = Daylight-Saving Time (DST), right?

Victoria's Secret faux wrap dress in fluid matte jersey. Lace flutter sleeves and center ruching detail. Empire waist and A-line shape.

It would make a lovely "little black dress" con brio, don't you think?

And of these, the greatest is love

You want tears in your eyes? Marine Corps Mom Connie's prayers are answered: "My Marine, my son."

We had been going to blog some of the Iraqi bloggers' thoughts [via David J. Schuler of Dean's World's Carnival of the Liberated], some achingly torn yet hopeful, others angry and Bush bashing, but we were caught up short by something ever so much closer to home, a Marine Corps Mom's thoughts and worries and tremulous joys as her own beloved child was returning home on leave. We are only an American woman, after all. But even so, let's listen in to what some of the Iraqis themselves are saying:

It is not just now but in the old days of the regime also. Fear has been the weapon and method of these people," writes Iraqi blogger Alaa of The Mesopotamian:

They are roaming the streets and attacking at a fearful rate. Imagine two or three car bombings per day; this is too much. This is not just terrorism; it is a frenzy of hate and mass murder . . . Of course the ones who are doing this now are the same, the same old operatives; past masters at intimidation and terrorism.

By deposing Saddam, we were all hopeful that the days of fear would be over. But cruelly, it was not to be so. We are being treated with new forms of torture, and new kinds of horror. It was not just Saddam, but whole tribes and hordes of sick vampires. Saddam was removed and captured but the hordes and tribes are still there, let loose and now without even a Saddam to control them. They are running wild, unchecked and uncontrollable. God have mercy upon us. At these times the vision of the early Christians thrown to the lions comes to mind; the defenseless men, women and children clinging to each other while the Romans (in this case the Arabs), watched with sadistic pleasure the grisly spectacle from their comfortable seats in the amphitheatre. But the Christian faith was not defeated; soon afterwards it was triumphant all over the Western World . . . it was pagan Rome that died and Christianity that lived and conquered the world. Faith proved to be the more potent weapon.

And so it shall be here, so it shall be here, God’s willing, and in God we trust.

Other Iraqi bloggers, like Riverbend, blame not the thugs and terrorists but the US for their troubles. While we can't imagine the horror of living under constant bombardment and wouldn't dream of judging another's reaction in that respect, her arguments and even her exact word choices -- can you say "rosy scenario"? -- echo our own Democratic party's talking points:

I was channel-surfing yesterday evening -- trying to find something interesting to watch. I flipped vaguely to Al-Arabia, and Bush's inane smile suddenly flashed across the screen. Now, normally, as soon as I see his face, I instantly change channels and try to find something that doesn't make me quite as angry. This time, I stopped to watch as Allawi's pudgy person came into view. It's always quite a scene -- Bush with one of the alleged leaders of the New Iraq.

Ali of Iraq the Model, on the other hand, turns to his own religion for guidance, suggesting fellow Muslims "look at the words of the Koran as a beginning not a limit":

They are just broad lines that we can start from without fear and without restrictions, and they believe so also because the most frequent command in the Koran is, "THINK"; think and look around you and question everything.

We really believe that all religions are one and that they all come from the same source, so why fight and why quarrel? And I don't mean this in the same superficial way we always hear from clerics who just want to sound moderate. It's that we can, and should, have our own ways in praying and communicating with our creator and it's not anyone else's business.

We know on which side of all these arguments we come down. Three unseen guests attend: Faith, hope and love, and of these, the greatest is love. 'Remember that from our childhood Unitarian church sermons -- before the Unitarian church went off the leftoid deep end.

Cat and mousepad game

Photoshop sketch of possible Mind of Mog mousepad design

Mind of Mog, The Mother of All Cat Bloggers, is talking kitty mousepads and coffee mugs. So many gorgeous and striking images to choose from.

And speaking of cats -- we always do -- the Carnival of the Cats #27 is up at This Blog is Full of Crap.