One of the few things I miss about television since I gave up my set was watching R. Lee Ermry make watermelons explode on The History Channel. On  his “Mail Call” series and a number of special programs, the Gunnery Sgt.’s favorite pastime is trying out all sorts of firearms from flintlocks to the latest rifles being evaluated as possible replacements for the M16. And his favorite target is the watermelon. Gunny just loves to make watermelons explode. So do I.

But you don’t have to shoot watermelons to make them explode. I’m talking here of a different kind of watermelon than the variety that are the old Marine’s victims of choice. My target is the environmentalist watermelon - green on the outside and pink on the inside. Yes sir, those watermelons are even more fun when their heads explode than the garden variety. There are several ways to make them go “splat.” If you’re going to a New Year’s Eve party tonight, single out a watermelon and go to work on him. He should be easy to find. He will be loudly proclaiming the superiority of his Toyota Prius over every other car on the road.

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When the IAF struck back after Israel finally said “enough” to Qassam rocket and mortar fire from Hamas, the first thought America’s terrorist-loving “peace activists” had was to load up a ship full of medical supplies for the oppressed and misunderstood terrorists and set sail for the Gaza Strip. Aboard was former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who never misses an opportunity to pay back her major campaign donors of the jihadist persuasion. McKinney is known to be no friend of Israel, but it’s not her fault, as she was just raised that way.

As Jon Lewis of WSB radio reported, the Ship of Fools had no permission from the Israelis to dock in Gaza. The ship, named the Dignity, encountered the Israeli Navy in international waters, and what happened next depends on who you want to believe. The Dignity’s captain says he was ordered to turn around by Israeli officials, who accused him of carrying out terrorist activities. The ship returned to Cyprus for repairs.

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Vacationing in Hawaii, President-elect Barack Obama dropped in on the Kaneche Bay U.S. Marine base to say hello last night, and the reception he received from the Leathernecks was… cool. ABC’s Jake Tapper reported:

As Obama entered the room, it was absent of the regular fanfare of cheering and clapping. The diners were polite, staying seated at their respective tables and waited for the president-elect to come to them to stand up.

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals(PETA) seems to have a beef with Gov. Sarah Palin. The organization recently posted an online game on its website which urges users to “help make the holidays safe for animals by fighting back against notorious animal abusers.” Lovers of warm and furry critters who visit the site can cast stones… well, virtual snowballs, at least, at a vrtual Palin, who is depicted in the game wearing a bikini and a fur coat. Whoever designed the game obviously has some sexual issues and a vivid imagination.

PETA’s president Ingrid Newkirk received a telephone call from someone who claimed to be from Gov. Palin’s office, threatening her organization with a lawsuit if the game was not removed from the group’s website. A series of e-mail exchanges between Newkirk and Palin spokesman Bill McAllister ensued.

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It’s just a simple gift, and not even a new one. In fact, it’s even been passed around some. I had to borrow it myself to share it with you. But sometimes the best gifts are ones that many can share in.

Go ahead, pass it around some more. Share it with all that you think might appreciate it.  Merry Christmas, and please remember our troops in your prayers.

- JP

Is President Bush a right wing extremist, as Al Gore charged, or is he the socialist Bristol baby conspiracy theorist Andrew Sullivan implied and conspiracy theorist at large Lew Rockwell insists?

The answer is neither, of course. But the president has surely taken a beating from both sides of political center over his two terms in the White House. Ed Gillespie explodes some of the myths from both left and right about the Bush record in an op-ed for RealClearPolitics.com.

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If the United States is going to achieve a surge-style victory in Afghanistan, it cannot depend on what was once its most reliable ally for help. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many U.S. commanders on the ground have expressed doubts that Britain has the political will to fight.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s move to withdraw British troops from southern Iraq and his demonstrated lack of will to deploy extra troops to Afghanistan in the numbers required by NATO commander Gen. John Craddock has the Americans believing that the PM has given in to a strong anti-war sentiment among Britons. Craddock specifically needs more British troops in the Afghan province of Helmland, where the Taliban are mounting a strong insurgency. Instead of the 3,000 additional British troops that were planned for, Brown so far has only committed to send 300.

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Two reporters who covered former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the campaign have landed a contract to write a book about her. Scott Conroy of CBS News and Shushannah Walshe from Fox have signed with publishing house PublicAffairs to produce the book, which has the working title of Sarah from Alaska.

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The debate over Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications for a seat in the U.S. Senate is getting louder, and the number of side arguments over the way JFK’s daughter and Alaska’s governor have been evaluated in their respective quests for higher public office are increasing. Sweet Caroline’s supporters say she deserves her shot at the Hillary Clinton chair. Sarah Barracuda’s troops point to the rank hypocrisy of those who give Ms. Kennedy a free pass after having savaged Gov. Palin.

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg argues that Sarah Palin earned her job as Governor of Alaska through her own hard work and dedication, and he decries the viciousness of the personal attacks that were made on her and her family after she was nominated by John McCain and approved by the delegates to the Republican National Convention as the party’s 2008 vice presidential candidate. He says that Caroline Kennedy hasn’t earned a Senate seat:

Simply, the Kennedy clan is no priestly caste, serving as the conscience of the nation, and its progeny do not deserve eternal deference.

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Shell Oil wanted to drill in the Beaufort Sea region of the Artic Ocean and submitted its drilling plan with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which analyzed the company’s exploratory plan, determined that it would have minimal impact on marine mammals and eskimo subsistence activities and issued its approval in February 2007. But several environmental groups, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the North Slope Borough (county) filed suit to stop the oil company. The matter was litigated all the way up to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month vacated approval of the plan by the MMS…

…and remanded the plan to the agency for an enhanced environmental assessment or, “as necessary,” an environmental impact statement.

The oil company, after investing $2.2 Billion in the federal oil leases alone, had already decided last June to abandon its plans to drill in the Beaufort, because the Ninth had ruled that Shell could not conduct drilling operations while the court was deliberating the case.

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The LA Times’ Andrew Malcolm seems a bit perturbed that Sarah Palin apprently stole a TIME magazine Person of the Year runner-up award from former Vice President Al Gore. In his post on the Times’ Top of the Ticket blog today, Malcom’s lede is:

Completely ignoring Al Gore because he’d already won the world’s other top two prizes — the Nobel and Oscar — and pretty well rested on his warming climate laurels this year, Time magazine has chosen Alaska’s Republican Gov. Sarah Palin as a runner-up Person of the Year.

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As John McCain’s running mate in the election of 2008, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was the GOP sacrificial lamb. McCain never really had a chance of winning the White House. Bamboozeled by Barack Obama into accepting public money for his campaign, the Arizona senator was outspent seven to one by the Democrat, who had agreed to also take public funding, but in the first of what would become a series of broken promises, opted to raise money for his campaign the unfettered way. McCain was also distrusted by the conservatives of his party, a group which makes up the lion’s share of its base. The third strike against McCain came from the media which once loved him, but jilted the Republican for a younger, more dynamic and more attractive suitor - Barack Obama.

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When things get tough, what kind of budget decisions do governors make? That depends on the governor, his or her governing philosophy and what those philosophies have done for their respective states.

In New York state, Gov. David Patterson wants the taxpayers to do the heavy lifting. His proposed $121 Billion budget for the coming year would increase state spending by 1.1 percent ($1.3 Billion) and impose 88 new taxes and fees. That’s a tax increase for every key on a piano.

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Disgraced Democrat former senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, before he disgraced himself, was fond of saying that there were two Americas. There are also two worlds, or at least two. There are actually many worlds, most of them invented by liberals who are long on fantasies and feelings but short on facts. But let’s just consider two of all the possible worlds. One world is the Real World, where facts support claims and the world is subject to the laws of physics, biology, geology, etc. The other world is Carol’s World.

Carol’s World exists in the mind of Carol Forster, a retired mental health counselor who helps to run a small-town newspaper. Carol’s World is subject to the laws of junk science and green idealism. In Carol’s World, it is perfectly acceptable, if not mandatory, to attack dynamic, conservative young leaders such as Governors Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, even if Carol can’t quite get her facts straight to use as weapons against them. In Carol’s World, Carol can write all the nonsense her little heart desires, and she can have it published on websites like DigitalJournal.com without worrying about such pesky matters as accuracy.

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Today on ABC’s This Week, when asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether he would support Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin if she runs for president, Sen. John McCain punted:

“Oh no. Listen I have the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family and it was a great joy to know them,” McCain said. “She invigorated our campaign and she was just down in Georgia and she invigorated their campaign.”

“But I can’t say something like that,” McCain said, “We’ve got some great other young governors… Pawlenty, Huntsman.”

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Thursday morning at a Chicago news conference, president-elect Obama expressed his confidence that no Representative of his did any bargaining with Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois to fill Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. He also promised to provide a list of contacts between members of his transition team and the office of the disgraced governor:

“I’ve asked my team to gather the facts of any contacts with the governor’s office about this vacancy so that we can share them with you over the next few days.”

Now that it has been revealed that the man Obama has designated to be his top aide, chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, had multiple conversations with the Blagojevich administration about possible Senate replacements for Obama, says Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin, “there is added urgency” for Team Obama to produce its list.

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Pastor Larry Kroon says a fire broke out Friday night at the Wasilla Bible Church while a small group of women were there working on crafts. Thanks to the church’s fire alarm, they were able to safely leave the building, and the sprinkler system prevented the fire from spreading beyond offices and classrooms.

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Sam Fox has a Long Island auto dealership which sells Cadillacs, Saabs and Hummers. Let me rephrase that - those are the brands his dealership is authorized to sell. He’s not selling many vehicles these days. You don’t have to try to imagine his frustration because he has let it be known. Mr. Fox has written an op-ed which appears in today’s edition of the New York Post.

His outrage is over the manner in which the media has covered Detroit’s current problems. Mr Fox makes some good points. The press is always saying that the problem is that people don’t want to buy the cars that American automakers produce. The truth is that many do. As the dealer points out, General Motors has sold one-fourth of the cars American consumers have purchased over the past several years. Add Ford and Chrysler to the mix, and Detroit accounts for almost half of the new cars sold domestically. While that mix is way down from where it once was (GM used to have a 65% share of the American car market), a lot of Americans still like the American automotive product, even if its final assembly point is somewhere in Canada or Mexico.

That should be no surprise. Some of the models the Big 3 are making are the best cars they have ever built. As Mr. Fox says, The Cadillac CTS is a world-class luxury sport sedan. Ford’s Fusion is a match for the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, and it has better handling than either. The top performing vehicles in recent crash tests were not the products of Mercedes Benz or Toyota, but those of Ford and Volvo (which is owned by Ford). The Big 3 has made great gains in the quality of the cars it builds.

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No, I’m not talking about the bunch of Corruptocrats in Chicago (this time, at least), but the bunch of mostly Republicans who mismanaged the McCain campain.

According to reports here and here from Fox5 in Washington, DC, the station purchased two Blackberry units from the McCain campaign. The organization had announced in an e-mail to staffers that it was selling off computers, office equipment and other items as it winds down operations.

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Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, the object of increased media attention (see here and here), complained this morning that he wouldn’t go to his job in the transition team office. Emmanuel said he was staying inside the house to duck the gaggle of reporters anxious to ask him if he had contact with disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, about the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama’s election.

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