Sunday Afternoon Cigar

Another Rocky Patel Sun Grown burst into flames today. The arson investigators are on the job!

Update 8pm:

Found this through a haze of smoke. Enjoy! (UT: LGF). (update 10.3 - orig video pulled from YouTube. Here is a link to another, lower quality, version):

Also, sorry to see Cox & Forkum taking their final bow. Go to their site to get their latest, and last, book.

Is it a flag...

...or is it a list of the goals they've committed to in their first term?

Seen at Townhall:

Sunday Afternoon Cigar

Karl's Weekend Reading

James Taranto discusses the media's coverage of the recent anti-war protest in Washington DC in his Monday Best of the Web post, and includes these thoughts:

The Times gives away the game when it says, in its lead paragraph, that the event "evoked the angry spirit of the Vietnam era protests of more than three decades ago." But that era's protests drew huge numbers of people, many of them young men who didn't want to get drafted and young women who didn't want the supply of men curtailed by the draft.

Many of those baby boomers grew up to be journalists, and many of them wish to keep alive the idea that their motives back then were idealistic rather than selfish. So it's no wonder that the press describes today's Potemkin "antiwar" movement as if it were the real thing.

Many of those boomers also became professors at California State University in Northridge (CSUN), both James' and Karl's alma-mater.


Karl Rove outlines the conservative solution to the so-called health-care crisis in Tuesday's WSJ: "Republicans can win on health care".


Did Israel bomb the s**t out of Syria on September 6? Possibly the greatest story never told... until Bret Stephens reviews the evidence in his Tuesday WSJ editorial: "Osirak II?"

What's beyond question is that something big went down on Sept. 6. Israeli sources had been telling me for months that their air force was intensively war-gaming attack scenarios against Syria; I assumed this was in anticipation of a second round of fighting with Hezbollah. On the morning of the raid, Israeli combat brigades in the northern Golan Heights went on high alert, reinforced by elite Maglan commando units. Most telling has been Israel's blanket censorship of the story--unprecedented in the experience of even the most veteran Israeli reporters--which has also been extended to its ordinarily hypertalkative politicians. In a country of open secrets, this is, for once, a closed one.

Symbolism - Cold War Style

Found at Townhall:

Karl's Weekend Reading

Gregory L. White and Andrew Osborn, from the WSJ, explain Putin's latest political moves to retain influence after his term ends in "Putin Shake-Up Aims to Preserve Policies and Influence". [$$]

The WSJ editorial board follows with some thoughts, including one of an early Zubkov resignation followed by a Putin return in "Putinology".

And Ann Coulter, at Townhall, reviews the complaints from the left in an Iraq timeline, showing how grasping for straws is now the policy of America's second largest political body in "From the Halls of Malibu to the Shores of Kennedy".

It's been the same naysaying from these people since before we even invaded Iraq -- despite the fact that their representatives in Congress voted in favor of that war.

Karl's Weekend Reading

Eara Levant at the Calgary Sun summarizes the new Putin Russia in his article, "Putin Longing for USSR Importance"

Under Putin, civil liberties have been restricted, independent newspapers and TV stations have been shut down, outspoken businessmen have been arrested or exiled, and others -- including journalists and political troublemakers -- have been killed, as was Alexander Litvenenko, a former KGB agent who became a critic of Putin. He was assassinated in London with radioactive poison, KGB-style.

Even heads of state are not exempt.

When Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president, ran an anti-Moscow campaign, he was poisoned, KGB-style, with dioxin that turned that man's once-handsome face into a pock-marked scar, and almost killed him.

---
Life expectancy for Russian men is an appalling 59 years; there are now more abortions than live births in Russia.

Ann Coulter is firing on all cylinders again in her Townhall piece this week, "Cruising While Republican".

And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

Liberals have no idea what they think about homosexuality, which is why their arguments are completely contradictory. They gay-bait Republicans with abandon -- and then turn around and complain about homophobia.

They call Larry Craig a "deviant" based on accusations that he attempted to solicit sex in a public bathroom -- and then ferociously attack efforts to prevent people from having sex in public bathrooms.

Fight For Victory Tour

Move America Forward starts their 15 day cross-country caravan today in Carson City, Nevada. We hope to see them when they come through Los Angeles tomorrow afternoon.

Here is a link to their schedule.

Karl's Weekend Reading

Lets start the three-day weekend off right!

You know it is election season when liberals start caring about the poor. Robert Rector at NRO offers some hard-to-swallow facts about America's "poor" in his Monday article, "Poor Politics: Edwards Poor "Plague" Examined".

46 percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Larry Kudlow reviews the $127 BILLION spent on the Katrina recover ($425,000 per resident), and the differing philosophies, left vs. right, of disaster recovery in his Thursday Townhall article, "The Big Easy's Billion Dollar Boondoggle".

Think of this: The idea of using federal money to rebuild cities is the quintessential liberal vision. And given the dreadful results in New Orleans, we can say that the government's $127 billion check represents the quintessential failure of that liberal vision. Hillary Clinton calls this sort of reckless spending "government investment." And that's just what's in store for America if she wins the White House next year.

Remember President Reagan's line during the 1980 campaign about how LBJ fought a big-government spending war against poverty, and poverty won? Well think of all this Katrina spending as the Great Society Redux. And it failed. I suppose the current Bush administration would like to label this "compassionate conservatism." But guess what? That failed, too.

Right from the start, New Orleans should have been turned into a tax-free enterprise zone.

Kimberley A. Strassel has a must-read for every GOP candidate - for president, congress, and dog catcher. "What Women Want" is THE conservative approach, tailored to women. As always, Kimberly makes it simple. Lets see if anybody is listening...

Most married women are second-earners. That means their income is added to that of their husband's, and thus taxed at his highest marginal rate. So the married woman working as a secretary keeps less of her paycheck than the single woman who does the exact same job. This is the ultimate in "inequality," yet Democrats constantly promote the very tax code that punishes married working women.

You go, Kimberley!

Friday Night Cigar

Nothing goes better than starting a three-day weekend with a fine cigar. Tonight's cigar: A Rocky Patel Olde World Reserve. Like the Anniversary cigar earlier this week, the OWR is a nice smoke, but doesn't rise to the level of our favorites. Which is good, because its expensive.

For the guys out there, a question. Do you find yourself hesitating before walking into a men's restroom these days? Comments are open.