Buckley & Reagan: Qualities of Conservative Greatness

Bruce Walker at The American Thinker has written a column about the two men who most epitomized the conservative movement in America.

Walker:

Buckley, a deeply religious man, realized that all political problems are ultimately moral problems, and all moral problems ultimately religious problems. The attempt to expunge God from politics, therefore, was the first step toward totalitarianism and the sort moldy social jelly that it Europe today.

Reagan also put God above all else. Buckley and Reagan, however, were not the sort of political-religious leaders like Huckabee. Neither man would have said a word about Romney's Mormonism. The God of Buckley and Reagan had very long arms. It was a God that Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Christians each recognized well. This God was concerned about unborn children, but just as concerned about souls trapped in the Gulag.

Walker concludes:

Buckley and Reagan were men of great gifts, but it was not their gifts alone that made them great. What made them great was certainty of moral purpose and absolute fearlessness in defending without equivocation what they knew was right. Nations always need such men. America particularly needs such men now.

CFL Bulbs are not the environmental savior we are told

Mrs. Klockarman has been on a personal crusade the past several years trying to tell anyone who would listen that CFL bulbs are not what they are cracked up to be. Why? Because, if you break one of these cute little swirly bulbs you'll likely need a haz-mat crew to clean one up - because they've got mercury in them. Don't believe me about the haz-mat crew? I'm not joking.

The FDC has never been able to figure out the left's fixation on these crappy bulbs. The light from CFL's is poor (just like a regular fluorescent bulb), and they have mercury in them. Fluorescent light can also cause depression, and judging from the studies that the liberals are generally more depressed then conservatives (see FDC post here) there must be a connection with those the folks on the left using CFL's. Makes sense to me.

Thomas Lifson, at The American Thinker, writes today, that perhaps the left is finally starting to realize that CFL's just have a whole different set of problems than incandescent bulbs.

Another turning point in Iraq

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's extended his Mahdi Army's cease-fire another six months on Friday (Rick Moran, links to the story and comments at The American Thinker). The importance of this should not be overlooked, although it largely has been by the MSM.

It's not that Mookie's militia is lying low waiting for the Americans to leave, so that can spring up afterwards to ignite another round of sectarian violence. It's not that he's doing it for us, or for the greater good of the Iraqi people. He's doing it because he does not have a choice. It would be political suicide (and maybe literal suicide too) for Mookie to end the cease-fire at this point.

It appears at this point, that the majority of the Iraqi people have turned the page as a group, and have seen a brighter tomorrow with more freedom and prosperity, and less killing.

Cheers.

Who Killed Imad Mughniyah?

It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that it got done.

Mughniyah was the worst terrorist that most of us had never heard of by name, but you'd have to be hiding in a cave for the past 25 or so years to not be familar with his resume. To wit:

- The 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers who died in the 1983 truck bombings in Beirut along with 63 civilians, including 17 Americans, who died in the simultaneous bombing of the U.S. embassy there.
- Robert Stethem, the Navy diver whose beaten body was left on the tarmac during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
- William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the mid-1980s.
- Twenty-nine people who died in the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires and 85 more killed in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Center in BA.

According to the American Thinker's Brett McCrea:

"This is equivalent to killing Bin Laden....If Mughniyah is indeed dead and Israel is held responsible, the clock is ticking. Hezb'allah will retaliate for this. Bank on it. If history provides any benchmark, look for a spectacular event in the very near future. As stated in my previous pieces, Hezb'allah has extensive contingency plans for this sort of occurrence and can put "steel on target" in short order."

Kudos to whoever did it.