Mark Bossingham

The IOC unbans Iraq athletes

THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC Committee, a typically corrupt multinational organization, has unbanned Iraqi Olympic athletes according to this AP story. Read on, the punchline is a jaw-dropper. Wait for it.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland - The International Olympic Committee ruled Tuesday that Iraq could participate in the Beijing games, reversing itself after Baghdad pledged to ensure the independence of its national Olympics panel.
The decision followed last-minute talks between Iraqi officials and the IOC ahead of Wednesday's deadline to submit competitors' names for track and field events. The Olympics begin Aug. 8.
Iraq's National Olympic Committee was dissolved by the Baghdad government in May, prompting the IOC to suspend the Mideast country from the Olympics for political interference.
The IOC had insisted the old committee be reinstated even though four members were kidnapped two years ago. Their fates remain unknown.

Big Island flower

The Democrat's 13-percent approval-rate Congress

HERE'S A funny bumper sticker (if you aren't Nancy Pelosi or a lunatic) courtesy of the Tennessee Republican Party.

Hell freezes over—AP reports the news

MY JAW dropped when I saw the following headline and lead from The Associated Press, a "news" service devoted to exclusively advocating left-wing causes. How did this slip by? A dollar to a donut says this will be reworked for a upcoming write-through. Let's memorialize it before it disappears. It, of course, is reporting on the speech referenced in the previous post.

McCain rejects 'audacity of hopelessness' for Iraq
DENVER - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for "the audacity of hopelessness" in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been withdrawn as his rival advocated.

Obamster failed real-time test; would have surrendered

VIA THE Powerline blog, here are some handy excerpts from a McCain speech that demonstrate the incompetence of The Messiah's decision making process. In the real world you simply don't get do-overs. We can only thank God he wasn't in a position to implement his policy. We can only pray to God he never will be.

Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

Seattle, Mariners: Nuts to go

I RECENTLY laughed at the Mariners' plans for a recyclable grocery bag night promotion. A lame idea by a lame team in a lame city. To hang on to their title as the most PC team in baseball, and to cater to Seattle's neo-hippie population, management has now announced a plan to kick a baseball institution out Safeco Field. Two sections today, the rest of the park tomorrow ... So, how long can those flab-inducing garlic fries last? Regardless, the team, knowing that winning is held in deep suspicion by the denizens of the city, continues to lose.

Hilarious Obamster article from Time of London

GERARD BAKER is causing quite a stir with this article on The Messiah. Reads it all, if it doesn't make you laugh you need professional help a pulse or both.

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Washington Post hammers the Obamster

HARDLY AN enlistee in the Great Right-Wing Smear Machine, the editorial writers at the Washington Post expose the "eccentric" Messiah. Emphasis mine.

Yet Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Tokyo Construction Week 3

DIGGING A HOLE. This will eventually hold a huge piling to keep the building from toppling over in an earthquake. They are just getting started. They will dig a zillion of these things.

The Obamster in Berlin

JUST LISTENED to Barack The Obama's Berlin performance. Strange. I simply can't believe he thinks as highly of himself as he seems to. Self-made comparisons to Reagan and JFK are a bit premature for a Chicago political hack. This is easily the first election in which I am certain even I would make a better president. I could go on, but I will let others take the time to dissect his self-aggrandizing nonsense. Particularly galling was his Democratic-Party-Candidate compulsion to apologize for America. Thanks but, no, I don't need you saying your sorry to an economic cripple that has started to two world wars, slaughtered 6 million European Jews, and is unable to fulfill its most basic international commitments. Why in God's name do we still have troops there? If The Messiah has a hard on for pulling troops out of somewhere, Germany and Korea would be better places to start than Iraq.