Free Republic

First vanity - the link is to a hillarious Bush impersonator at a comedy club with Jeff Foxworthy and others.

Since some muslims seem to be upset about the cartoons let's party to ease the tensions!

Original: What you get to work with:

Snorkeling Boat Captain Helps Scare Shark Away From Kayakers MAKENA, Maui, Hawaii -- A visitor from Minnesota had a frightening encounter with a shark on Maui on Wednesday. The shark encounter happened between the Molokini Crater and Makena off the Maui coast in the morning. Dan Lankheit, 57, was kayaking with a friend when he said a huge shark nudged his kayak and wouldn't stop following him. Lankheit and his friend, Bob, were kayaking halfway between Molokini Crater and Makena when the shark appeared. "I felt something and looked down and this shark brushed my kayak," Lankheit said. Lankheit said...

Tuesday night at the Boston Market on East Bay Drive in Clearwater: Guys behind the counter are slinging Chuck Norris jokes. "You know what kind of furniture Chuck Norris has in his house?" says Matt Kindred, 18. "Bowflex." Matt tells another: "Chuck Norris never blinks his eyes. Never." Behind him, manager Richard Moody, 22, echoes: "Never!" Matt executes a pirouette and whips a finger at countermate Evan Heebner, 19. Evan tells the one about how Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. "Too bad Chuck Norris never cries," Evan says. "Ooooh, good one," everyone says. * * * Teenagers all across the...

NEW YORK - Kanye West, with a crown of thorns atop his head, poses as Jesus Christ on the cover of the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. The outspoken rapper defends his brash attitude inside the magazine's pages, on newsstands Friday. He is also pictured posing as Muhammad Ali. "In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts," he says. "You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?" West also says his hit song "Gold Digger" was the best song last year and that...

<p>Investigative reporter and talk show host Mark Morano (CNSNEWS and Rightalk.com) who broke the Murtha "fake but accurate" medals story appears on Howie Kurtz/CNN and scores one for the good guys!</p>

I supported the Iraq war as, with reservations, I still do. Its opponents have a great deal of self-justification to do, all the more as the details of Saddam Hussein's iniquities unfold in the Baghdad courtroom where he is being tried. A true Machiavellian would use the trial to argue, however, that the West's mistake was to make an enemy of Saddam when he could have been a useful ally. Indeed, during the 1980s, when he was fighting a war almost to the death against Iran, he was a useful ally. How useful, at this time when Iran has blatantly...

Fear and Complexity The Independent Institute San Francisco, CA November 15, 2005 by Michael Crichton  Is this really the end of the world?  Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods? No, we simply live on an active planet.  Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half of them every year, or three every minute. A Richter 5 quake every six hours, a major quake every 3 weeks. A quake as destructive as the one in Pakistan every 8 months.  It’s nothing new, it’s right on schedule. At any moment there are 1,500 electrical storms on the planet. A tornado touches down every six...

SLIDELL, La. - A Louisiana man who stayed home when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast spent his time during the storm capturing video of the destruction. Kennard Jackley of Slidell is retired from the Merchant Marines and spent his life out at sea. He has never evacuated during a hurricane and stayed behind for this one, although he did send his wife to Texas. He captured home video of the waters of Lake Pontchartrain as they rose outside and ended up sending him to the second story of his home. Jackley estimates that Katrina did about $50,000 of damage...

Malaysia to investigate "Bigfoot" From: Agence France-Presse   December 29, 2005   MALAYSIA'S wildlife department says it will investigate claims that man-like "Bigfoot" beasts are roaming the jungles of southern Johor state. Newspapers have this week aired stories of sightings of the legendary creatures, and photographs of a giant footprint left near a jungle swamp. The director of the wildlife department's Biodiversity Conservation Division, Siti Hawa Yatim, said they would examine the prints, which reportedly measure up to 45 centimetres). "We are going to check first if the case is a true one," Siti Hawa said. She said officials...

Speech to the Claremont Institute earlier this month. So far, Steyn is still being introduced...

1. DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted part you were drying. 2. WIRE WHEEL: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the work bench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, "Ouch..." 3. ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning steel pop rivets in their holes until you...

Everyone knows by now that Pissant is not an expert, like MaximusofTexas, when it comes to movie reviews. The main problem of course is that Pissant has generally avoided anything that Hollywood has produced in the last 20 years. Fortuantely, most of the cinematic classics were made well before this self-imposed boycott started. So now, I will list the definitive "most powerful moments". They may be sad, scary, heartwarming, patriotic, etc. Top 7 Most Powerful Moments in Cinema History7. The Deerhunter- Russian Roulette POW scene --The actors in the Deerhunter, particularly DeNiro and Cristopher Walken make it seem incredibly real....

Like, I am sure, many other believers in what this country has been trying to do in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, I have found my thoughts returning in the past year to something that Tom Paine, writing at an especially dark moment of the American Revolution, said about such times. They are, he memorably wrote, "the times that try men's souls," the times in which "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" become so disheartened that they "shrink from the service of [their] country." But Paine did not limit his anguished derision to former supporters of the...

Look what I found!! Source: History Forum If World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this. *Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.* *Eisenhower has joined the game.* *paTTon has joined the game.* *Churchill has joined the game.* *benny-tow has joined the game.* *T0J0 has joined the game.* *Roosevelt has joined the game.* *Stalin has joined the game.* *deGaulle has joined the game.* Roosevelt: hey sup T0J0: y0 Stalin: hi Churchill: hi Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks! paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks T0JO: lol Roosevelt: o...

Herewith, admittedly from the safety of the glorious nation called The United States of America, far from Ar-Ramadi, a few respectful thoughts about the war in Iraq: 1.) Conducting the war against al-Qaeda and the terrorists is a major drain on the energies of this administration. It would be a major drain on the energies of any administration. For Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to be further draining the energies of the administration with his perjury indictment of Scooter Libby would be a matter for the most urgent concern if the charges against Libby were serious. But since by common consent of...

In recent weeks, by claiming that President Bush lied us into the Iraq war, many on the Left have restarted their efforts to rewrite history. But this revisionism isn’t new. In the midst of the 2004 Presidential election, the cries were just as loud. The Bush Administration is finally pushing back, and many conservative bloggers are asking their readers to Google Clinton, Iraq, 1998 for all the information they need. Last fall, The American Enterprise debunked many of these same urban legends. Urban Legends About the Iraq War Urban Legend: The Bush Administration in general, and the Vice President and...

How To Lose A War: The Sequel By Oliver North November 18, 2005 Since October of 2001, our FOX News "War Stories" unit has been documenting the remarkable young Americans fighting the Global War on Terror. We have covered thousands of them on the decks of ships in the Persian Gulf, on combat patrols in the shadow of the Hindu Kush, in gunfights along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates and gone to hospitals in Iraq, Germany and the U.S. with the wounded. Throughout, there has been a common bond among these "warriors of Sept. 11" -- a steadfast...

November 21, 2005 -- QUIT. It's that simple. There are plenty of more complex ways to lose a war, but none as reliable as just giving up. Increasingly, quitting looks like the new American Way of War. No matter how great your team, you can't win the game if you walk off the field at half-time. That's precisely what the Democratic Party wants America to do in Iraq. Forget the fact that we've made remarkable progress under daunting conditions: The Dems are looking to throw the game just to embarrass the Bush administration. Forget about the consequences. Disregard the immediate...