the TOWN HALL weblog

I got two whole predictions right last year, so I am feeling cocky.
It doesn’t matter who wins the men’s event at Nationals, NBC’s coverage will be propping Evan Lysacek and Scott Hamilton will get out the slow motion to prove that Evan should have won.  Hamilton makes money off of Lysacek and that is all [...]

It is worth having the world as we know it come crashing around us to be able to read prose like this from Victor Davis Hanson.  http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTdmZGJkZDViYTFlZTE0NDczZjNiM2E3NjNjODI5ZDY=  There are so many wonderful quotes to slowly loll around your brain I couldn’t possible pick them all out.  This is one of my favorites:
Without a blink, we went back to [...]

Contemplating Jane Austen’s ability to make the good girl more compelling than the bad, I see the real reason our modern age keeps bringing out new Jane Austen movies every decade.  That the bad girl dominates our age is so obvious I am not even going to bother providing evidence.   Where else can you find [...]

Re-reading Mansfield Park and contemplating Mary Crawford.  She is the only one of Jane Austen’s villainesses who can compete with the heroine.  She is the only one of Austen’s bad girls that almost steals the hero from the heroine.  Why is Mary Crawford so much more interesting than Caroline Bingley.  More importantly why is it, [...]

Instapundit http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/64652/ and NRO http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/29/triangulating-scarlett-johansson/ have both posted again about their hopes for a war winning Obama Administration.   Despite the best that Caroline Glick http://marlettsmith.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/12/glick-on-obama-israel-and-the-endgame/ and Melanie Phillips  http://marlettsmith.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/01/throwing-water-on-conservative-quixotes/ have done to try and bring war supporters back to reality, the delusion continues that Obama is now a hawk.   What all the Obama Quixote seem to miss is that it [...]

Absolutely must reading over at Powerline where a real scientist dicsussed the pseudo-science of global warming.  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/12/022412.php   I found this the most interesting line: 
I agree with Dick Lindzen that the AGW nonsense is generated by government funding of science. If a guy agrees with AGW, then he can get a government contract. If he is [...]

Just a few days ago I called for a new Judah Maccabee to free Israel from Palestinian terror http://marlettsmith.com/blog/index.php/2008/12/23/chanukah-musings/  Now the IDF has launched an attack on Hamas. 
Well in that case I call for a new Adam Smith to teach the California state legislators that you can’t tax if you drive the tax base away.  [...]

The Anchoress links to this story about our troops bringing Christmas to the children of Iraq.  If this doesn’t bring a lump to your throat you need to be visited by Three Spirits. 
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/24/video-troops-need-you/
The men and women of our armed forces have made my son’s Christmas safer and brought happiness to children on the other side [...]

The Greeks weren’t so bad.  They didn’t blow up Bat Mitzvahs or smash in the skulls of little girls.  All they wanted was the Jews to give up all that God oogedy, boogedy stuff.  And after all most American Jews have gladly embraced what the Greeks wanted without a single death threat.  
The Greeks just wanted obedience, they [...]

Long before the arrival of the BurkeanSon I wondered how to manage the great holiday gift-fest that strikes American children every December.  I watched, often with horror, as sweet little cherubs turned into greedy, present obsessed monsters every December 25.   Even the children who were polite and grateful in the face of the present overload were [...]

Jonah Goldberg gets one point very right in this post http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2U3MjUxMTc3NmMyZTY2NzkyNTY1Y2I5NWM3NWE4ZmU  one of the reasons we have big government is because people in the here and now aren’t paying for it.  If the people demanding bigger and better and more government programs today actually had to pay for them in the here and now, overnight we [...]

In order to please the fans of gay penguins, some poor Mother Penguin had her eggs stolen and given to two penguins who want the privilege of fatherhood without the responsibility of committing to a female.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1094977/Gay-penguins-expelled-zoo-colony-stealing-eggs-given-look-following-animal-rights-protest.html  My heart goes out to the poor lady penguin, labeled a “poor mother” so two gay penguins can [...]

Nothing like blasting, freezing winds to make you think about Al Gore.  The perfectly, pretentiously politically correct folks I know love that Al Gore “cares about the environment.”  Which is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.  Gore cares about the environment the way P.T. Barnum cared about his circus [...]

The buckets of rain that are flooding the dried up drought ridden fields of Southern California is accompanied by icy blasts of wind.  Usually rain is a mild affair around here, it is often warmer during rain storms than during droughts.  But this storm is from the arctic and it is cold with snow levels [...]

So Obama’s National Security Adviser wants to invade Israel.  http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1208/glick121208.php3  Will even that be enough to shame the 87% of American Jews who voted for him?  Somehow I don’t think so.  I get the feeling that the world has decided the canary in the coal mine has to die.  And the canarie’s relations in the [...]

An Oregon soldier recieves a medal for saving lives from a crazed gunman in Oregon.  http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2008/12/08/news/doc493d63388bdd5884382812.txt?redirect=y
We need men like Sgt. Palmer always, everywhere.

Generally speaking I don’t get many of the stories of our heroes from the MSM and the big wire services.  It is usually local papers that pay tribute to a soldier from their area.  Such as this story of Army Capt. Nick Countouriotis  receiving the Bronze Star.   http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20081208/news/812080313&tc=yahoo  We should shout these stories from the [...]