mbecker908's blog

Posted at 6:44pm on Jun. 23, 2008 A Good Example for GWB to Follow...

By mbecker908

Encounter Books is a publisher of conservative books. As with all publishers, they send their new offerings to the various prominent news outlets who do book reviews. Note the snippet from the announcement Encounter published today [note: at the time this blog was published there seems to be a problem with the specific link to the announcement, thus I've provided a link to their homepage.]...

I have long been aghast at The New York Times’s treatment of conservative books. By and large, it oscillates between utter neglect and ostentatious contempt. This is frustrating for authors, who have been taught that a review in the Times is the literary, or at least the commercial, equivalent of entry into the Promised Land.

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Posted at 1:25pm on Jun. 15, 2008 An Incredible Father's Day Gift...

By mbecker908

Hat tip to the guys at Powerline.

A man in Tonawanda, NY received an incredible gift from a stranger. Some folks were cleaning out their attic and found a yellowed news clipping of a story from WWII. A young Marine on Iwo Jima had written home to his father. The story is about that letter. The young Marine was the man's father.

I've requested permission to reprint the whole article which is quoted below. The author is Lou Michael, a staff reporter for the Buffalo News and the original article can be found here.

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Posted at 2:45pm on Apr. 21, 2008 It's time to pull out. Now...

By mbecker908

I've decided that we can't stop the violence. It's time to stop fooling ourselves and pull out. The article in today's Washington Times finally pushed me over the edge.

An epidemic of gunfire rattled the city during the weekend, with at least 32 people shot and six killed.

SIX dead. THIRTY-TWO shot. The handwriting is clearly on the wall.

I don't know why civilized people would expect the animals in Chicago to want to live in civilized society anyway. And those numbers are for Chicago, not Baghdad. I'm still very hopeful about Iraq.

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Posted at 4:26pm on Apr. 18, 2008 Phoenix NewTimes Offensive Green Cover...

By mbecker908

OK, so Time magazine puts up a completely tasteless cover comparing the "Green Wave" to the Marines battle for Iwo Jima. Those of you who know me know I've been sedated since I saw that and it's taken me a while to get to the point where I could type this.

Anyway, I go out today and lo and behold! I find a copy of the Phoenix NewTimes. For those of you not familiar with the Valley of the Sun, the NewTimes is the free, far left rag in town. They do, on occasion, do some excellent reporting, mixed in with their criticism of Sheriff Joe, BusHitler, etc. Today, they went off the charts. Page one looks like this...

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Posted at 7:48pm on Mar. 2, 2008 Some Retired Generals Might Not Be Buffoons... [UPDATE]

By mbecker908

But if you evaluate the ones who "speak out" on even a semi-regular basis, you couldn't prove it to me.

Wes Clark was on parade today in a blogger's conference call. From Byron York at The Corner...

In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain's service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There's no issue there. He's a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn't give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

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Posted at 11:18am on Mar. 1, 2008 To Hussein or not to Hussein...

By mbecker908

All this flap about Sen Obama's middle name is about to cost us the election. The people who seem to insist on using his middle name are, frankly, stupid and totally ignorant of three decades of political history.

The basic fact is very simple and easy to demonstrate: When conservatives & Republicans stick to issues that effect national security and constitutional governance, we win. When we get sidetracked by anthing else - whether we're right or not - we lose.

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Posted at 4:56pm on Feb. 21, 2008 NYT... What's that "click" noise?

By mbecker908

When you step on a buried land mine it doesn't go boom. It goes "click" and arms. When you step off the mine, THEN it goes boom.

HT to Rich Lowrey at NRO...

One of the "money quotes" from the Times story on McCain is this...

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.

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Posted at 1:24pm on Feb. 21, 2008 Ron Paul takes himself out of future debates...

By mbecker908

That's right, RonPaul™ has declared that he won't be in any future debates.

Ahhh, for his congressional seat, not Presidential.

Check out his response to a question at a townhall meeting on the subject.

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Posted at 4:22pm on Feb. 19, 2008 Interesting Developments in Texas...

By mbecker908

Can you say...

Chris Peden

With a HT to Instapundit, from Roger Simon at Pajamas Media

While pursuing his thus far quixotic quest for the presidency, Congressman [Ron] Paul has fallen behind by over ten points in the polls (43-32) in the fight for the Republican nomination in the Texas 14th to challenger Chris Peden, according to internal polls from both campaigns, which Pajamas Media was told were quite similar. Peden is a 43-year old CPA and city councilman from Friendswood, Texas. The primary takes place on March 4.

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Posted at 7:03pm on Feb. 15, 2008 Real Progress In Iraq!

By mbecker908

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Posted at 1:26pm on Feb. 14, 2008 Judicial Activism Part ummmmmmmm Zillion?

By mbecker908

This is a family site and I hope this blog doesn't violate the posting rules, but then again, we've sort of survived Slick Willie and knee pad jokes.

This, however, is no joke. This is about what the judiciary in the US and state legislatures are spending their time and our money on. There are two competing cases that have been decided at the appellate level. The first, at the Eleventh Court of Appeals was found in favor of the State of Alabama and the second, at the Fifth Court of Appeals, was found in favor of the plaintiff v. the State of Texas. The issue was exactly the same in both cases, so it would appear that the issue will be headed to the US Supreme Court. I can't wait.

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Posted at 1:48pm on Feb. 6, 2008 A Conservative. And a Winning Moment in History.

By mbecker908

Ronald Reagan NEVER lost his vision for freedom. Of all of his speeches, perhaps none drew a line in the sand as did this speech in Berlin.

I'm old enough to remember The Wall being built. I remember newspaper headlines about people being killed while they tried to get over/around/under The Wall. I'm also old enough to remember that most of the world thought Communism would forever be with us, and many who thought it was simply another way of approaching economics and governance.

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Posted at 1:07pm on Feb. 6, 2008 The latest on housing...

By mbecker908

I've been blogging about the mortgage and housing markets over the last few months. I've been making a couple of points consistently (at least I've been trying)...

1. With respect to mortgage defaults, the subprime "crisis" of last year was just the tip of the iceberg. Prime ARMs started to adjust last year and are picking up steam through this year and into next year, and Option ARMs, loans that give the borrower the opportunity to make a less-than-interest-only payment where their mortgage balance goes up each month, will start to adjust late this year and into year.

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Posted at 8:44pm on Feb. 5, 2008 Thanks Senator McCain...

By mbecker908

As a reminder that nobody needs, John McCain authored legislation to outlaw "torture" including waterboarding. He's been very outspoken on the subject for the last couple of years.

According to Associated Press today, the Democrats (you know, John McCain's friends in the Senate) have their panties in wad over the testimony of Gen. Michael Hayden...

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Posted at 7:14pm on Jan. 30, 2008 Thoughts on housing...

By mbecker908

There's lots of caterwalling about the mortgage market and the housing market. Realtors seem to be willing to grasp at any straw looking for hopeful signs that 2008 will be a "turnaround year" for housing.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong.

A quick history. Starting in the late '90's, fueled by an unholy alliance of things, real estate prices took off like a Saturn 5. The price increases were generally met with a chorus of silliness that revolved around the idea that real estate investing was the ultimate in security because "nobody's making more land!" The market topped out in 2005 and has been on a slide since then.

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