The Recovering Democrat

Sensenbrenner: Congressmen Are Above The Law

2006-05-31T08:22:00.000-05:00

More on the search of Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol Hill Office from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department yesterday vigorously defended the recent weekend raid of Rep. William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill office as part of a bribery investigation, asserting that the Democratic lawmaker attempted to hide documents from FBI agents while they were searching his New Orleans home last August.

The government questioned in a 34-page motion filed in U.S. District Court here whether it could have obtained all the materials it had sought in a subpoena if it had not launched the surprise raid on Jefferson's congressional office May 20. According to the government filing, an FBI agent caught Jefferson slipping documents into a blue bag in the living room of his New Orleans home during a search.

"It is my belief that when Congressman Jefferson placed documents into the blue bag, he was attempting to conceal documents that were relevant to the investigation," FBI agent Stacey E. Kent of New Orleans stated in an affidavit that was part of the government's court submission. The document was filed in response to Jefferson's lawsuit demanding that the government return to him documents seized during the raid on his Capitol Hill office 11 days ago.

Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's attorney, said he would refrain from commenting pending further review of the government's documents. Meanwhile, the recent FBI raid spurred new tensions between Congress and the administration, as a House committee chairman vowed to interrogate top Justice Department officials.

Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said he wants Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to appear "up here to tell us how they reached the conclusion" to conduct the raid, which Sensenbrenner called "profoundly disturbing" on constitutional grounds. The chairman also said that his committee "will be working promptly" to draft legislation that would clearly prohibit wide-ranging searches of lawmakers' offices by federal officials pursuing criminal cases.

Sensenbrenner if a fucking idiot, and quite frankly, I am ashamed to say that he is a member of the Republican Party.

For as much of a pathetic exuse for a political party as the Democrats may be, the Democrats should have no problem in the midterm elections - the Republicans are doing as much as they possibly can to hand over the House and Senate to them.

This asshole goes even farther than Hastert did (at least Hastert tried to rely on an existing constitutional provision to support his ridiculous assertion that Congressional offices are "no-search zones"). Not only does he ludicrously claim that there was a constitutional violation, but instead, he also vows to have his committee draft legislation to officially and explicitly make Congressional offices off limits to law enforcement personnel.

I have an idea. Rather than working on such legislation, why not try to actually work on the nation's business? You know - solving the judiciary problems that your committee should be working on??

Why not just come out and say that Congressmen are above the law? Let's stop tap dancing around the issue. Because, after all, that is what this is about... make no mistake about it.

Too Many White Musicians

2006-05-31T08:12:00.000-05:00

Jabari Asim's column in the Washington Post criticizes National Review's list of the top 50 conservative rock songs of all time:

WASHINGTON -- If "American Idol" didn't completely satisfy your appetite for gimmickry, you might consider turning to National Review. A recent issue offers its handy list of the top 50 conservative rock songs of all time.

The list is intended to be provocative because rock is often considered a focal point of progressive sentiments. What I found far more striking, however, was the relative whiteness of the artists. Exactly when did rock 'n' roll, once the province of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, become so white? The only black band listed is Living Colour, whose "Cult of Personality" is less a praise song to conservatism than a blast at egotistical leadership of any political stripe.

The National Review list suggests that blacks have become little more than a footnote to a cultural phenomenon they are largely responsible for creating -- or, more plausibly, that black conservatives rarely express themselves via rock songwriting.

This passage points out the relative hypocrisy in discussions of race. Mr. Asim, who is black, essentially laments that the list contains a disproportionate number of "white" musicians. Can you imagine the uproar if, for instance, Mr. Asim were white and had instead lamented the inclusion of so many "black" musicians?

WaPo: Uproar Over FBI's Search of Jefferson's Office Is Overblown

2006-05-25T08:32:00.000-05:00

In an editorial today, the Washington Post gets it right:
THE UPROAR over the FBI's search of Rep. William J. Jefferson's congressional office is understandable but overblown. A demand yesterday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the Justice Department return the papers it seized goes way too far. Constitutional provisions designed to protect lawmakers from fear of political retribution, such as the speech-and-debate clause, counsel restraint and caution in circumstances such as these. They do not transform congressional offices into taxpayer-funded sanctuaries.

No one wants to have FBI agents pawing through lawmakers' files. Prosecutors and agents need to exhaust other avenues of obtaining evidence before doing so. If a search is required, they must take care not to trample on lawmakers' privileged activities

It's not yet possible to make determinations about whether these principles were followed in the apparently unprecedented search of Mr. Jefferson's office. But the material for which agents searched had been under subpoena for eight months; Mr. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, resisted complying. Under those circumstances, seeking judicial approval for a search warrant is more reasonable. And while the "Saturday night raid," as Mr. Hastert called it, sounds melodramatic, it's less disruptive than having FBI agents in the House during normal business hours.

Mr. Jefferson was, according to the search warrant affidavit, caught with cold, hard cash: Agents videotaped him taking $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor working undercover and then found $90,000 of it in his freezer. This was no fishing expedition.

Congress is not, nor should it be deemed to be "above the law". Moreover, Congressional offices should not be deemed to be "no search zones". Otherwise, can you imagine the lawlessness and corruption that would ensue?? It would make the Abrahamoff scandal look trivial.

If any one of us had refused to comply with a subpoena, we would be in jail. Yet, Jefferson was allowed to ignore his subpoena for over eight months?? Makes little sense to me.

Come to think of it... can you imagine what Congress would say if someone ignored a Congressional Subpoena?? They would find the person in contempt of Congress and have him put in jail.

These assholes can subpoena any executive branch employee to be present for days of ridiculous hearings on any subject or investigation that the Congressmen may deem appropriate. Of course, given their new found respect for separation of powers, I think that Congress would understand if a President refused to allow his subordinates to appear before Congress for "hearings".

Just a thought.

Madonna: Jesus Wouldn't Mind My Stunt

2006-05-25T08:21:00.000-05:00

This is interesting:

Pop superstar Madonna has hit back at criticisms the crucifixion stunt on her Confessions tour is disrespectful to Christians, arguing her motives are honorable.

The singer sparked a religious backlash on the first night of her Confessions tour in Los Angeles when she mounted a 20-foot-high mirrored crucifix and sang "Live to Tell."

But the 47-year-old claims the iconic image was only employed to spur audience members to donate to her AIDS relief charities.

She tells the New York Daily News, "I don't think Jesus would be mad at me and the message I'm trying to send.

"Jesus taught that we should love thy neighbor."

Accompanying the stunt were images of Third World poverty, which were flashed across huge video screens at the venue, and a reminder that 12 million African children are now orphans because AIDS has killed their parents.

Look, I am not a Christian, so I will leave it to others to argue over whether it was offensive or should have been done. However, I really, really am not sure what the connection is between third world AIDS and a millionaire pop singer pretending to crucify herself on a stage... anyone out there help me figure this one out???

Dixie Chicks Blast "The View"

2006-05-25T08:14:00.000-05:00

This is funny:

Country trio The Dixie Chicks have infuriated the hosts of TV talk show "The View," after claiming they were "above" appearing on the show.

The band is very selective about which programs they appear on to promote their new album, Taking the Long Way, and say they hope to emulate their musical and political hero Bruce Springsteen.

In an interview with Time magazine, frontwoman Natalie Maines says her new motto is, "What would Bruce Springsteen do?"

Band member Emily Robison adds, "Not that we're of that caliber, but would Bruce Springsteen do 'The View'?"

After reading the article, angry "View" co-host Joy Behar ripped up the offending interview live on air Tuesday, declaring, "They're ... not doing ... 'The View.'

"It's one thing to diss the (George W.) Bush administration, it's treason to diss 'The View.'"

The show's moderator Meredith Vieira fumed, "We are furious. This is obnoxious, obnoxious.

"We started these girls -- back in 1998, they couldn't get arrested. We were one of the first national shows to give them a platform, because they deserve a platform -- they are incredibly talented performers."

Maybe I was wrong about the Dixie Chicks. I wouldn't want to appear on the View either!

Seriously, though...Sorry ladies, but you are not even close to Bruce Springsteen. You are supposedly on a "come back" after having self-destructed your career a few years ago. One would think that you might welcome the exposure that this national T.V. show would offer. Just a thought.

Gregg Easterbrook Takes On "An Inconvenient Truth"

2006-05-25T07:20:00.000-05:00

This is interesting:

An Inconvenient Truth comes to the right conclusions about the seriousness of global warming; plus we ought to be grateful these days for anything earnest at the cineplex. But the film flirts with double standards. Laurie David, doyenne of Rodeo Drive environs, is one of the producers. As Eric Alterman noted in the Atlantic, David "reviles owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable, a private jet." For David to fly in a private jet from Los Angeles to Washington would burn about as much petroleum as driving a Hummer for a year; if she flew back in the private jet, that's two Hummer-years. Gore's movie takes shots at Republicans and the oil industry, but by the most amazing coincidence says nothing about the poor example set by conspicuous consumers among the Hollywood elite. Broadly, An Inconvenient Truth denounces consumerism, yet asks of its audience no specific sacrifice. "What I look for is signs we are really changing our way of life, and I don't see it," Gore intones with his signature sigh. As he says this, we see him at an airport checking in to board a jet, where he whips out his laptop. If "really changing our way of life" is imperative, what's Gore doing getting on a jetliner? Jets number among the most resource-intensive objects in the world.

This raises the troubling fault of An Inconvenient Truth: its carelessness about moral argument. Gore says accumulation of greenhouse gases "is a moral issue, it is deeply unethical." Wouldn't deprivation also be unethical? Some fossil fuel use is maddening waste; most has raised living standards. The era of fossil energy must now give way to an era of clean energy. But the last century's headlong consumption of oil, coal, and gas has raised living standards throughout the world; driven malnourishment to an all-time low, according to the latest U.N. estimates; doubled global life expectancy; pushed most rates of disease into decline; and made possible Gore's airline seat and MacBook, which he doesn't seem to find unethical. The former vice president clicks up a viewgraph showing the human population has grown more during his lifetime than in all previous history combined. He looks at the viewgraph with aversion, as if embarrassed by humanity's proliferation. Population growth is a fantastic achievement—though one that engenders problems we must fix, including inequality and greenhouse gases. Gore wants to have it that the greener-than-thou crowd is saintly, while the producers of cars, power, food, fiber, roads, and roofs are appalling. That is, he posits a simplified good versus a simplified evil. Just like a movie!

Dixie Chicks Want No Part Of Country Music

2006-05-24T09:15:00.000-05:00

From CNN.Com:

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Billboard) -- Disappointing airplay for the first two singles from the new album by the Dixie Chicks exposes a deep -- and seemingly growing -- rift between the trio and the country radio market that helped turn the group into superstars.

"Taking the Long Way," due out May 23, is the band's first album since singer Natalie Maines sparked a major controversy in 2003 by declaring that she was ashamed to hail from the same state as fellow Texan President George W. Bush. Radio boycotts ensued, and many fans abandoned the band.

The first single, "Not Ready to Make Nice," peaked at No. 36 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, beginning its descent after just seven weeks. The second single, "Everybody Knows," is now at No. 50, down two places in its fourth week.
Not Ready to Make Nice" performed only slightly better at adult contemporary radio, peaking at No. 32 on the AC chart and falling off after six weeks.

From the beginning of the album rollout, the Dixie Chicks were eager that their songs be worked to radio formats beyond country. The album was produced by rock veteran Rick Rubin, whose credits include the Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down and Johnny Cash.

By picking the defiant "Not Ready" as the first single, they've reopened a wound that was particularly deep for country radio fans, and left many country programmers with the burning question: Why on earth would the band choose to do this?

After hearing the album, WKIS Miami program director Bob Barnett says he was "excited about the opportunity to introduce some great Chicks music to the listeners." But the group's decision to come with "Not Ready" as the lead single left him "stunned, especially in light of the fact that, when asked, programmers and consultants that listened to the project were virtually unanimous in saying we should put the politics behind us and concentrate on all this other great music we were hearing."

KUBL/KKAT Salt Lake City PD Ed Hill criticizes the song's "self-indulgent and selfish lyrics."

Barnett played the song for a week, but pulled it after listeners called to say it sounded like the Chicks were "gloating" or "rubbing our noses in it," he reports. "We didn't need to pick at the scab any longer."

He and other country programmers were upset that the group chose to launch its new album with a single that rehashed all the angst of three years ago.

Of course, Natalie Maines has said that this is all according to the Dixie Chicks' plans:

The Dixie Chicks and reps from their label, Columbia Records, declined to participate in this story. But -- at least as far as Maines is concerned -- the drop-off at country radio was part of its plan.

Maines was quoted in late January on EW.com, before the single went to country radio, saying: "For me to be in country music to begin with was not who I was ... I would be cheating myself ... to go back to something that I don't wholeheartedly believe in. So I'm pretty much done. They've shown their true colors. I like lots of country music, but as far as the industry and everything that happened ... I couldn't want to be farther away from that."

Maines also said, "I don't want people to think that me not wanting to be part of country music is any sort of revenge. It is not. It is totally me being who I am, and not wanting to compromise myself and hate my life."

At KNCI Sacramento, California, the Chicks' music weathered the 2003 controversy only to be pulled as a result of Maines' new Entertainment Weekly comments, coupled with poor scores in local music tests.

"When an artist says that they don't want to be a part of that industry, it made our decision a no-brainer," program director Mark Evans says. "There are too many talented new artists dying to have a song played on country radio, so I'd rather give one of them a shot."

Yeah right. On second thought, maybe it is part of their plan and they are really, really stupid.

The Dixie Chicks, who are unquestionably a very talented band, are also unquestionably a country music band. There is no other way to look at it. Sorry, but slide guitar, the fiddle and banjo are not prominently used in any other musical genre. While the Dixie Chicks did enjoy some cross-genre success with their music being played on "pop" radio stations as well as "country" radio stations, anyone that has listened to their music will tell you - they are, at their core, a country music band.

The Dixie Chicks may enjoy some support from non-country music fans that may allow them to sustain themselves, however, will those fans be there for the long haul? Or, will the Dixie Chicks be forced to transform themselves into a band that they are not?

I am used to musicians and actors being liberals and espousing views that are not similar to my own. As such, her comments, while I felt they were in poor taste and classless, did not really bother me too much. However, I can understand how they might have affected others. I can understand the anger.

As a previous fan, I have listened to their new album and it really didn't do too much for me. Maybe it will grow on me, but I am not holding my breath. Their new single, Not Ready To Make Nice, showed a real, immature contempt and anger that did nothing but leave me rolling my eyes.

According to Dixie Chick Martie McGuire, the Dixie Chicks don't need country music fans - they want what they perceive are "cool fans":

"I'd rather have a small following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith," Maguire said. "We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

Why insult your fanbase? Many Dixie Chick fans are, at heart, country music fans. Why insult the people in your industry? Because, they are stupid.

The Dixie Chicks may continue to do well on iTunes, but that is not going to sustain them for very long. Radio play was instrumental in bringing them to millions and ensuring their cross-genre success.

No matter how the "left" wants to spin this issue, however, this is not a "free speech" issue. Everyone - even the Dixie Chicks - has every right to speak their mind and to pontificate as to their political views (no matter whether they are right, wrong or ignorant) without fear of governmental interference or punishment. However, what happened to the Dixie Chicks is not governmental interference or punishment - there is no governmental action that is infringing on their ability to speak.

Rather, this is a free market issue. The Dixie Chicks have the right to say they hate President Bush and country music fans - but their is no corresponding right that guarantees that, by doing so, there will be no economic ramifications. The Dixie Chicks must consciously understand that, by espousing their political views, country music fans, who do not share or support their views, may choose not buy their music or attend their concerts and country music stations may exercise their right not to play the Dixie Chicks' music on their radio station.

Congressional Hypocrisy

2006-05-24T08:24:00.000-05:00

Democratic Congressman William Jefferson's office on Capitol Hill was searched by the FBI in connection with the bribery case being made against him.

At a very odd time to practice bipartisanship, several Republican Congressman challenge the FBI's ability to search Representative Jefferson's office:

Displaying bipartisanship for one of their own, House Republican leaders are expressing concern that the FBI's search of the Capitol office of Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson crossed the constitutional boundary between the White House and Congress. Tuesday, House Majority Leader John Boehner called the weekend raid "the Justice Department's invasion of the legislative branch" and predicted the issue would "end up across the street at the Supreme Court." Read all about the ramifications of the raid — which one blogger calls "The Shot Heard 'Round The Hill" — from The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Hill.

Bullshit.

The FBI had every right to search his office. I need not get into a real constitutional analysis, because, quite frankly, there really is no serious separation of powers issue.

However, let's look at this from a common sense standpoint. What these assholes are alleging is that no executive branch agency (i.e., no FBI, no SEC, no ATF, no DEA, etc.) officers may search a Congressional office. Congress is corrupt now. Can you imagine what it would be like if law enforcement agencies could not enforce our laws there? Bribery over the table. Congressional brothel? Drug dealing on the floor? Sky's the limit!

Yet, these assholes can subpoena any executive branch employee to be present for days of ridiculous hearings on any subject or investigation that the Congressmen may deem appropriate. So, its o.k. for Congress to investigate the Executive Branch, but the Executive Branch cannot investigate Congress? Yeah, that makes sense.

The Real Lies

2006-05-24T08:14:00.000-05:00

Read all of this column by Pat Wehner at OpinionJournal.com, which completely debunks several of the Democrats' big lies.

With respect to the Democratic "lie" that Bush lied to get us into the Iraq War:

The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.

Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."

Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

Or, how about the Democrats' lie that the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find that Iraq was a threat:

The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments. Earlier this year, Mr. Gore charged that "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House . . . found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." Sen. Kennedy charged that the administration "put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis." This myth is shattered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Among the findings: "The committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so." Silberman-Robb concluded the same, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." What the report did find is that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "riddled with errors"; "most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policy makers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war."

The mainstream media, which is essentially a lap dog for the Democratic Party, has chosen to not challenge the Democrats when they make such outrageous attempts to revise history. They should be ashamed. Serious journalists, my ass...

As for the Democrats, it shows that they are more serious about playing politics than either defending our country or, what the hell, being honest.

Read it all.

Democratic "Culture of Corruption"? - Part V

2006-05-22T07:59:00.000-05:00

This is interesting:

A congressman under investigation for bribery was caught on videotape accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded, according to a court document released Sunday. Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer.
At one audiotaped meeting, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa.

As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might receive, the congressman "began laughing and said, 'All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking, as if the FBI is watching,'" according to the affidavit. ...

As for the $100,000, the government says Jefferson got the money in a leather briefcase last July 30 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington. The plan was for the lawmaker to use the cash to bribe a high-ranking Nigerian official — the name is blacked out in the court document — to ensure the success of a business deal in that country, the affidavit said.

All but $10,000 was recovered on Aug. 3 when the FBI searched Jefferson's home in Washington. The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil...

Two of Jefferson's associates have pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges in federal court in Alexandria. One, businessman Vernon Jackson of Louisville, Ky., admitted paying more than $400,000 in bribes to the lawmaker in exchange for his help securing business deals for Jackson's telecommunications company in Nigeria and other African countries.

The new details about the case emerged after federal agents searched Jefferson's congressional office on Capitol Hill Saturday night and Sunday. The nearly 100-page affidavit for a search warrant, made public Sunday with large portions blacked out, spells out much of the evidence so far.

The document includes excerpts of conversations between Jefferson and an unidentified business executive from northern Virginia. She agreed to wear a wire after she approached the FBI with complaints that Jefferson and an associate had ripped her off in a business deal.

Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, contended that the prosecutors' disclosure was "part of a public relations agenda and an attempt to embarrass Congressman Jefferson. The affidavit itself is just one side of the story which has not been tested in court," Trout said in a statement.

The affidavit says Jefferson is caught on videotape at the Ritz-Carlton as he takes a reddish-brown briefcase from the trunk of the informant's car, slips it into a cloth bag, puts the bag into his 1990 Lincoln Town Car and drives away.

The $100 bills in the suitcase had the same serial numbers as those found in Jefferson's freezer...

But, according to the Democrats, it is only Republicans that are corrupt....I am soooooo confused.

Neil Young's Sales Not Doing Well

2006-05-18T08:05:00.000-05:00

Neil Young's anti-Bush album is not doing too well in stores:

Funk-rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers topped the U.S. charts for the first time in its 22-year history on Wednesday, while Neil Young's tirade against President Bush failed to do much for his sales.

The veteran Canadian rocker's "Living With War" opened at No. 15 with sales of 60,000 units in the week ended May 14, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. His last album, "Prairie Wind," started at No. 11 last September with 72,000 copies sold its first week.

John Murtha Slanders U.S. Troops

2006-05-18T07:40:00.000-05:00

From Expose the Left:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let me ask you Mr. Murtha to give us some details about that. Draw us a picture of what happened at Haditha.

REP. JOHN “JACK” MURTHA: Well, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. One Marine was killed and the Marines just said we’re going to take care – we don’t know who the enemy is, the pressure was too much on them, so they went into houses and they actually killed civilians. And, and –

MATTHEWS:—was this My Lai? Was this a case of – when you say cold blood Congressman, a lot of people think you’re basically saying you got some civilians sitting in a room around a field and they’re executed.

MURTA: That’s exactly it.
This is fairly irresponsible. The investigation into this particular incident is still on going.

It is one thing to disagree with the war, or seek our withdrawal. But, to allege that our soldiers are no better than crazed killers is beyond the pale. If the investigation proves that a soldier acted in such a manner, then fine... condemn him. But, can't he just wait for the facts??? I would expect this sort of behavior out of the kids at DailyKos or Democratic Underground, but not a U.S. Congressman.

And the Democrats wonder why the military vote for Republicans....

Jodie Foster Piles On

2006-05-17T09:12:00.000-05:00

Jodie Foster, who was invited to give a commencement speach, took the opportunity to speak her mind about the Bush Administration:

The U.S. "squandered" the goodwill and sympathy other nations offered after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Foster said. She also criticized officials for the "disastrous and shameful" handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Yawn.

A Look At The Liberal Movement

2006-05-17T08:31:00.000-05:00

An interesting post from the Environmental Republican:

Hitchens is rightfully appalled that the left he was once a central figure of has disintegrated to an anti-American/anti-democracy group that will cozy up to the most ruthless of dictators and become said dictators apologists. You can rattle them off, Chavez, Castro, Milosevic, Hussein and Hezbollah. They are all supported by todays sorry excuse for an ideology that was once intelligent and thoughtful but is now reactionary and debased....While I don't profess to being a liberal--far from it actually--the right side of the blogosphere is closer to the liberal movement of the middle part of the last century than todays "progressive movement" is. While we are pointing out daily the abuses wrought on the people of Darfur, China, Iran and in the past Rwanda, "progressives" are writing made-up stories about Karl Rove indictments and praising Hezbollah as Noam Chomsky did last week.

If Bill Clinton had freed 50-million people from barbarous oppression as Bush did, we would've given him the praise he deserved (instead he bombed the Iraqi nation for the duration of the impeachment trial and stopped the day the trial did). These people were subject to rape, stoning of homosexuals and imprisonment for uttering a bad word about their "leaders" even in the privacy of their homes. Sadly, todays left can't bring themselves to applaud the freedom they now have. Instead they point out the lack of electricity or count the American military dead with glee. (Update: a great example of how these people think can be found here via this site who, again, linked with glee.)

How did the true liberal movement digress to the grotesque state they now have become?

There is no argument that would suffice in protecting wanton criminals who rule through brutality and fear.

The neo-liberals in this country--out of shame most likely--defend the tyrannical dictators by comparing them to Bush and in some circumstances saying that Bush is worse. Who could be so intellectually dishonest as to even conceive of that analogy?

Great post, but even better point - what happened to the Democrats?

The Democratic Party that I knew (and was previously a member of) was the party of human rights. It was the Democrats who were most vocal about torture and death dealt by cruel dictators in far away places. It was the Democrats who were most passionate about providing assistance to our fellow human beings. It was the Democrats who passed the Iraqi Liberation Act (thereby making regime change in Iraq an official U.S. governmental policy). The Democratic Party that I knew was not the party of isolationists that they would seem to be today.

College Professor Quits Over Condi Rice

2006-05-13T06:12:00.000-05:00

Steve Almond has quit his job as an adjunct professor English at Boston College for a fairly bizarre reason. Evidently, Condi Rice is giving the commencement address:

He chose to quit by "open letter" in the Boston Globe:

An open letter to William P. Leahy, SJ, president of Boston College.
DEAR Father Leahy,

I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.

I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar...

...I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays such flagrant disregard for both.

I would like to apologize to my students and prospective students. I would also urge them to investigate the words and actions of Rice, and to exercise their own First Amendment rights at her speech.

My first reaction? This guy must be independently wealthy. Who else would quit a job over such little provocation.

Why not have her speak? This woman, whether or not you agree with her political views, is incredibly intelligent and has accomplished much in a very short time. I personally find her fascinating.

My favorite part? His exortation to his students to "exercise their own First Amendment rights at [Condi Rice's] speech". In other words, the students should shout her down and be disrespectful while she speaks. What about Condi Rice's right to freedom of speech? What about those who would like to hear her speak? What ever happened to college being a "marketplace of ideas"?

What is he teaching his former students? He is teaching them to not respect the viewpoints of others. He is teaching them that the only views that matter are those that you agree with. College sure has changed.

One of the most often touted rationales for college's use of affirmative action is "diversity" of viewpoints and experiences. Yet, it appears that if you are a Republican, you deserve not to be heard...

You know, it wasn't too long ago that the idea of an African-American Secretary of State was unthinkable. It wasn't too long ago that the idea of an African-American commencement speaker was unimaginable. We, as a country, should be proud that our society has become more integrated and racism - while it still exists - has diminished greatly.

The funny thing is that, if Condi Rice was a Democrat and some idiot professor decided to quit because she was going to give an address at Boston College, the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney and others with so much invested in race-baiting would have tripped over eachother to be the first to proclaim that this professor was nothing more than a racist. I doubt we will hear a word from them.

Patrick Kennedy DUI Cover-Up? Another Interesting Update

2006-05-13T06:03:00.000-05:00

This is getting even more interesting....:

Capitol police in Washington, D.C., investigating U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s early-morning car wreck have been told by witnesses that the Rhode Island congressman was at a Capitol Hill bar before the crash, the Herald has learned.

A source close to the probe said witnesses have told detectives that Kennedy was at the Hawk & Dove before he slammed his Ford Mustang into a security barrier near the U.S. Capitol. The source added that cops are continuing to seek evidence to confirm that Kennedy was at the watering hole.

The Herald reported last week that a Hawk & Dove hostess said the 38-year-old pol is a frequent customer and was drinking in the bar before the May 4 crash. Kennedy has denied he was drinking, blaming the accident on a cocktail of prescription painkillers and sleeping pills. He has since checked into a Minnesota rehab.

A Kennedy spokeswoman declined comment. A Capitol police spokeswoman also refused comment, citing the ongoing probe.

The crash sparked a furor within the Capitol Police Department after angry patrol officers said higher-ranking cops blocked them from giving Kennedy a sobriety test. Police union head Lou Cannon said two watch commanders on duty the night of the crash have been transferred.

A police report on the 2:45 a.m. crash cited alcohol as a factor, describing Kennedy as slurring his speech, being “unsure” on his feet and having red and watery eyes.

Kennedy told cops he was on his way to a House vote, even though Congress had adjourned three hours earlier.

The source said detectives are still trying to track down a woman who Kennedy claims he was with before the crash.

Anyone that actually believes he was "sleep-driving" should have their heads examined. Either they are incredibly naive, a Democrat trying to "spin control" or actively in the Kennedy payroll. There is no doubt in my mind that he was driving under the influence and, upon being stopped by police, was the beneficiary of a police cover-up.

On a side note, it is disconcerting that the police have been unable to track down the woman. Chappaquidick Part II?

Howard Dean: Anti-Gay Marriage?

2006-05-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

This is too funny:
Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean has contradicted his party's platform and infuriated gay rights advocates by saying the party's platform states "marriage is between a man and a woman."

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean, appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network, erroneously stated that the party's 2004 platform says 'marriage is between a man and a woman.' Christian conservative Pat Robertson is host of the program.

"The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman," Dean said May 10 during a "700 Club" program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

Democrats Clash On Spending Strategy

2006-05-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

More trouble in paradise:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have clashed angrily in recent days in a dispute about how the party should spend its money in advance of this fall's midterm elections.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who is leading the party's effort to regain majority status in the House, stormed out of Dean's office several days ago leaving a trail of expletives, according to Democrats familiar with the session.
The blowup highlights a long-standing tension that has pitted Democratic congressional leaders, who are focused on their best opportunities for electoral gains this fall, against Dean and many state party chairmen, who believe that the party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up -- even in states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds.

Emanuel's fury, Democratic officials said, was over his concern that Dean's DNC is spending its money too freely and too early in the election cycle -- a "burn rate" that some strategists fear will leave the party unable to help candidates compete on equal terms with Republicans this fall.

Emanuel declined to talk about his meeting with Dean but was blunt about his concern that the DNC is not managing its resources wisely.

"This is a historic opportunity, and we can't squander it," Emanuel said.

Although Dean has proved to be a more impressive fundraiser than some skeptical Democrats once thought -- the DNC has taken in $74 million since the start of this election cycle in 2005 -- he has also been a prolific spender. Disclosure forms for the first quarter of this year showed the party with about $10 million in cash on hand. The Republican National Committee, by contrast, has raised just under $142 million this cycle and has about $43 million on hand.

Anyone that has read this website knows my thoughts on Howard Dean - they never should have made them the leader of the DNC. This is yet another clear example of his incompetence. The Democrats got what they deserve.

Good News From Iraq

2006-05-11T07:54:00.000-05:00

This is interesting:

In one document as released by the U.S., an unidentified al-Qaeda member writes that the influence and power of Iraq's Shiite majority cannot be taken lightly, especially in Baghdad, "particularly when the power of the ministries of Interior and Defense is given to them, compared to the power of the mujahedeen" in the city.

The document says that the Baghdad cells are capable of only "hit and run" operations, leading the public to conclude that "the Shiites are stronger in Baghdad and nearer to controlling it, while the mujahedeen . . . are not considered more than a daily annoyance to the Shiite government." . . .

The strategy document complains that "the strength of the brothers in Baghdad" is based mostly on car bombs and "groups of assassins lacking any organized military capabilities."

The writer complains that the Americans and the Iraqi government forces "were able to absorb our painful blows," raise new recruits and "take control of Baghdad as well as other areas, one after the other."

"This is why every year is worse than the previous year, as far as the mujahedeen's control and influence over Baghdad," the document said.
I doubt that this will be in the New York Times.

Liberals Attack Richard Cohen

2006-05-10T08:35:00.000-05:00

Last week, Richard Cohen wrote about how he though (and I agreed) that Stephen Colbert's jokes about President Bush at the White House Correspondent's Dinner were not funny and somewhat rude.

Well, the left did not take kindly to it. Evidently, Mr. Cohen experienced what he termed to be a "digital lynch mob":

Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face") and ended with Ron ("Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER") who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius....
Usually, the subject line said it all. Some were friendly and agreed that Colbert had not been funny. Most, though, were in what we shall call disagreement. Fine. I said the man wasn't funny and not funny has a bullying quality to it; others (including some of my friends) said he was funny. But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was -- as was most of the press, I found out -- George W. Bush's lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap.

It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever "it" may be. All in all, I was -- I am, and I guess I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation.

What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly "American Idol" numbers. Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column.

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.

I am no Cohen fan, but he makes some good points.

I certainly do not have even .00005% of the circulation that Richard Cohen does, but when I wrote that I agreed with his column, I, of course, experienced similar "wrath" of angry Democrats through comments on this blog as well as through e-mail in my hotmail account.

For what its worth, I like Stephen Colbert - especially his Daily Show work. I just think that this particular performance fell flat. Rather than acknowledge that different people may have differing opinions, I was told that I "have no sense of humor". As proof, one particular reader told me to conduct a "Google" search to find out that the consensus was 50-1 that he was funny. Real genius.

Look, many of the people who believe that Colbert's routine was funny, are those with a visceral dislike for President Bush. People are entitled to their opinion as to President Bush, but I wonder - was some of the instant support for Colbert merely support for another anti-Bush person? Maybe so.

What Cohen, a liberal columnist, is now "experiencing" is what I have been writing about for over a year - the nastiness of political discourse in this country and the radicalization of the American left.

When I first started this blog, my intent was to start a discussion as to what I saw as a disappointing trend in the Democratic party. A party of ideas, which I had belonged to for the entirety of my "political life", had become devoid of substance and had to devolved into the anti-Bush party. Rather than pushing legitimate progressive ideas, their platform was defined as the opposite of whatever Bush was doing.

So, the "discussion" has yet to occur. Another reason for my last "sabbatical" from blogging.

Democrats: We Will Launch Investigations, But We Are Not Out To Impeach Bush

2006-05-08T08:10:00.000-05:00

This is very reassuring (sarcasm intended):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats will launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration if they take control of Congress in November but are not out to impeach President George W. Bush, a top Democrat said on Sunday.

House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would hold hearings on the use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war and investigate the high price of energy and prescription drugs if they win the extra 15 seats they need for a House majority in the mid-term elections.

But Pelosi denied Republican claims that her party would move quickly to impeach Bush.

"I said we'd be having hearings on the war, we'd have hearings. But I don't see us going to a place of impeachment," Pelosi said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press. "Investigation does not equate to impeachment. Investigation is the requirement of Congress. It is about checks and balances."

Rather than having hearings on the Iraq War or President Bush, wouldn't Congress' time be better utilized by holding hearings on new legislation to make America better?

Why the obsession with pre-war intelligence? The answer is twofold. First, The Democrats want to bring down President Bush, who they largely view as a greater enemy than Osama Bin Laden. Moreover, they continue to re-fight this issue because the Democrats want to re-write history. The Democrats, who largely supported military intervention in Iraq in 2003, want Americans to now believe that the Democrats were duped into supporting military intervention.

See, this is why the Democrats have not controlled Congress for many years. The Democrats continue to be fixated upon bringing down George Bush as opposed to implementing a new legislative agenda.

Regardless, maybe the Republicans should listen to this as a "wake-up" call. Do you really want to spend the next 2 years fighting Congressional inquiries that amount to little more than attempts to create scandals? No matter how much of a disappointment the Bush administration has been (whether it be disagreements with their handling of immigration, judical appointments, the prosecution of the war, etc.), Republicans need to focus on maintaining their Congressional majority.

Update: Nancy Pelosi will not rule out impeachment:

Democratic leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned investigations, "You never know where it leads to."

A Muslim Sorority

2006-05-08T07:55:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

Greek letters gleamed from a satin banner hanging at the front of the room, sequins flashed on little purses, and one woman holding a gold brochure blushed crimson, trying to explain why she liked the idea of this new group. Another widened dark eyes lined with kohl, watching everyone closely.

Tasmim Anwar smiled and said, with a little gush, "I am such a sorority type of girl."

And -- long before the first Gamma Gamma Chi rush in Maryland was over -- a student had politely interrupted to ask if they could break for maghrib , a sunset prayer. The women, draped in dark scarves, knelt to praise Allah in a hallway at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Forget everything you thought you knew about Greek life. These women came curious about a new kind of sorority, one that could change stereotypes of Muslim women, one based on Islamic beliefs: no drinking, no socializing with men...

So they came to this new kind of rush, some covered head to toe in dark abayas , some with scarves pinned carefully around their heads and strappy four-inch heels, some with hair loose and jeans tight. Like so many Americans, most of these women don't fit into any easy cultural niche; they've been blending and balancing all their lives.

And some wondered aloud whether this most American of college traditions might be too tricky to pull off.

"I'm curious to see how that will be, that balance," Anwar said.

Like most Greek organizations, Gamma Gamma Chi wouldn't turn people away just because they're different -- it would be open to non-Muslims as well -- and it would have social events for women.

But no drinking, clubbing or hooking up.

Not sure how this will work. There are no Muslim fraternities and they are not allowed to socialize with men, so no exchanges would be possible. They do not drink, so no parties. Sounds like a real good time....er, not. But, to each its own.

Iran - A "Crucial Test" For the United Nations

2006-05-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

Newsday's editorial today opines that Iran will be a "crucial test" for the United Nations:

In addition to the obvious need to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program, the diplomatic effort now going on at the United Nations will be an important, even crucial, test for that body itself. If the Security Council cannot enforce its own findings, its value will be severely diminished.

The coordinated push by the United States and the European Union for a Security Council resolution to punish Iran with international trade sanctions faces stiff opposition by two veto-bearing council members: Russia and China. The draft resolution, generated by Britain and France with strong U.S. backing, began to circulate earlier this week. This level of U.S.-European cooperation hasn't been seen since the end of the Cold War.

But unless, by whatever diplomatic pressure Washington and the EU can summon up, Moscow and Beijing are persuaded to go along with the resolution or at least abstain from voting against it, Iran will be free to do as it pleases. If that happens, the UN will have been proved impotent to act collectively in its primary function, maintaining the world's security. In that there would be echoes of the failed League of Nations.

The U.N. already took this particular test on several occasions, and each time it has failed miserably. Need some examples? How about the 14 U.N. resolutions on Iraq WMD's, which were ignored and never enforced by the U.N.? How about Darfur? That matter has been hopelessly deadlocked in the Security Council. How about Bosnia? The U.N. wouldn't do anything, so NATO was forced to act. I could go on and on...., but I am sure that you get the point. The composition of the Security Council has ensured that the U.N. has only intervened in two conflicts since its inception.

At most, the only action that the U.N. will ever take are the imposition of economic sanctions...which, of course are rarely effective. Not to mention that the corruption within the U.N. virtually guarantees that they will be circumvented(See the Oil for Food Scandal).

The U.N. is the League of Nations.

Another Take on the Moussaoui Verdict

2006-05-05T08:26:00.000-05:00

An interesting column from Daniel Henninger at Opinionjournal.com:

Defenders of Moussaoui's life sentence say he will "rot in prison." Perhaps in a better world Zacarias Moussaoui would share a cell with Hannibal Lecter. But if our moral betters aren't going to let Saddam's torturers rot in Abu Ghraib, if they aren't going to let the CIA's most important al Qaeda captives rot in "secret" foreign prisons, they certainly aren't going to let Moussaoui rot in Florence, Colo. He will be treated more than well.

Not to mention the Moussaoui trial itself. We arrive at the end of these interminable trial circuses of procedural delay and then claim "the system works" and "justice" has been done. No, it has done damage to the normal idea of justice. He saw the game early on and made a mockery of it. Moussaoui achieved a two-year delay in his trial by demanding to interview al Qaeda detainees. But our moral betters insist that the whole lot of Guantanamo detainees be given access to this same system of justice. They would diminish and crush it.

The odds were strong, as Moussaoui's lawyers knew and the government's should have known, that 9 of 12 jurors would vote that Moussaoui's childhood was "dysfunctional" and "mitigating." This is the therapeutic vocabulary that the West has developed to explain anything in the years from the postwar period to, say, September 11.

For quite awhile after September 11, we were a people united in the war on terror. By now we have let the adrenal pleasures of political fighting over the presidency dissipate the difficult emotions of staying united against a real enemy. The war in Iraq has contributed, but you can't lay it all off on Iraq. The ambiguity of the Moussaoui jury is a portent. See "United 93." It is very difficult. It should be.

Good point.

Charles Krauthammer: The Holocaust Part II

2006-05-05T07:59:00.000-05:00

Charles Krauthammer has an important column in today's Washington Post:

For 2,000 years, Jews found protection in dispersion -- protection not for individual communities, which were routinely persecuted and massacred, but protection for the Jewish people as a whole. Decimated here, they could survive there. They could be persecuted in Spain and find refuge in Constantinople. They could be massacred in the Rhineland during the Crusades or in the Ukraine during the Khmelnytsky Insurrection of 1648-49 and yet survive in the rest of Europe.

Hitler put an end to that illusion. He demonstrated that modern anti-Semitism married to modern technology -- railroads, disciplined bureaucracies, gas chambers that kill with industrial efficiency -- could take a scattered people and "concentrate" them for annihilation.

The establishment of Israel was a Jewish declaration to a world that had allowed the Holocaust to happen -- after Hitler had made his intentions perfectly clear -- that the Jews would henceforth resort to self-protection and self-reliance. And so they have, building a Jewish army, the first in 2,000 years, that prevailed in three great wars of survival (1948-49, 1967 and 1973).

But in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration -- putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work.

His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders' pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be "eliminated by one storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised.
Read it all.

Patrick Kennedy Cover-Up - Update

2006-05-05T07:49:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

"Following the last series of votes on Wednesday evening, I returned to my home on Capitol Hill and took the prescribed amount" of the two medications, the 38-year-old congressman said.

"Sometime around 2:45 a.m., I drove the few blocks to the Capitol Complex believing I needed to vote," the statement continued. "Apparently, I was disoriented from the medication. . . . At no time before the incident did I consume any alcohol."

Kennedy, a six-term congressman, said that Capitol Police officers told him to park his Ford Mustang and drove him home. "At no time did I ask for any special consideration," the statement said. "I simply complied with what the officers asked me to do

Medication? Really?! That's a good one. Even if this were true, which I am highly skeptical of, he had no business driving after taking Ambien - it's a sleeping pill!!! He still made the decision to drive a motor vehicle after taking drugs that diminished his ability and capacity to do so... Moreover, I believe that you can still be guilty of DUI in most jurisdictions if you are under the influence of a drug as opposed to alcohol. Anyone know what the law is in D.C.?

Looks like I am not the only one expressing skepticism:

Lou Cannon, president of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, expressed skepticism.

"The timeliness of the statement says everything," he said. "It took up to 10 o'clock," or 19 hours after the 2:50 a.m. incident, to offer the expanded explanation.
Good point.

Patrick Kennedy DUI Cover-Up?

2006-05-05T07:28:00.000-05:00

Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy may have had some help covering up what should have been a DUI:

Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had had no alcohol before the accident.

Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports.

"I was involved in a traffic accident last night at First and C Street SE near the U.S. Capitol," Kennedy said in a written statement released by his office. "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident. I will fully cooperate with the Capitol Police in whatever investigation they choose to undertake."

Kennedy appeared to be intoxicated when he crashed his car into a barrier on Capitol Hill early Thursday morning, said Louis P. Cannon, president of the Washington chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Cannon, who was not there, said the officers involved in the accident were instructed by an official "above the rank of patrolman" to take Kennedy home.

No sobriety tests were conducted at the scene....
A letter written by a Capitol Police officer to Acting Chief Christopher McGaffin said Kennedy appeared to be staggering when he left the vehicle after the crash about 3 a.m. The letter was first reported by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

Kennedy said he was late for a vote, officer Greg Baird said in the letter to McGaffin. Baird is acting chairman of the Capitol Hill chapter of the FOP police union. The last vote of the night had occurred almost six hours earlier.

Kennedy, the son of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his staff declined to discuss any further details of the accident. The congressman took part in House votes Thursday.

Capitol Police did not immediately return phone calls for comment. They issued a one-line statement saying they were investigating a traffic violation that occurred early in the morning at that location.

Baird wrote McGaffin that two sergeants who responded to the accident conferred with the watch commander and were ordered to leave the scene.

He said that after the officers left, Capitol Police officials gave Kennedy a ride home.

Kennedy spent time at a drug rehabilitation clinic before he went to Providence College. He has been open about mental health issues, including being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

So, the guy was staggering, appeared drunk and was lying about a non-existent House vote, but the police didn't perform field sobriety tests or arrest him on suspicion of driving under the influence?? I guess there are advantages to being a Kennedy...

There should be a full investigation into this matter.

Howard Dean Fires Gay Outreach Advisor

2006-05-04T09:08:00.000-05:00

Howard Dean has fired his party's gay outreach advisor:

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party's gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock's domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.

Dean immediately hired gay former Democratic Party operative Brian Bond to replace Hitchcock, according to DNC spokesperson Karen Finney, who called Bond a "proven leader."

Bond served from 1996 to 2003 as executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a bipartisan national group that raises money and provides training to help elect openly gay candidates to public office.

"It was not retaliation," Finney said of Hitchcock's dismissal. "It was decided we needed a change. We decided to hire a proven leader."

Hitchcock declined comment Tuesday night except to confirm that Dean informed him May 2 through a surrogate that he had been terminated. He said he was considering consulting an attorney to decide whether to contest the firing.

"This is retaliation, plain and simple," said Yandura. "This shows what they think about domestic partners."

Yandura said Tuesday night that Dean was using Hitchcock as a "scapegoat" for problems of Dean's own making.

"All I did was ask questions about what the party and Dean are doing about its GLBT constituency, Yandura said. "I have yet to see any answers."

Hitchcock's dismissal came after Yaundura created a stir among party activists, both gay and straight, by sending an open letter on April 20 to gay Democrats criticizing Dean and the party for not getting involved in state ballot measures seeking to ban gay marriage.
Personally, I think Yaundura's criticism is fair and likely correct.

Richard Cohen: "Stephen Colbert Was Not Funny"

2006-05-04T09:01:00.000-05:00

Richard Cohen was not amused with Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner:

The commentary, though, is also what I do, and it will make the point that Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Colbert made jokes about Bush's approval rating, which hovers in the middle 30s. He made jokes about Bush's intelligence, mockingly comparing it to his own. "We're not some brainiacs on nerd patrol," he said. Boy, that's funny.

Colbert took a swipe at Bush's Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said. He referred to the recent staff changes at the White House, chiding the media for supposedly repeating the cliche "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" when he would have put it differently: "This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg." A mixed metaphor, and lame as can be.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

I am not a member of the White House Correspondents' Association, and I have not attended its dinner in years (I watched this year's on C-SPAN). The gala is an essentially harmless event that requires the presence of one man, the president. If presidents started not to show up, the organization would have to transform itself into a burial association. But presidents come and suffer through a ritual that most of them find mildly painful, not to mention boring. Whatever the case, they are guests. They don't have to be there -- and if I were Bush, next year I would not. Spring is a marvelous time to be at Camp David.

I agree.

NY Daily News: Moussaoui Verdict Is An Abomination

2006-05-04T08:56:00.000-05:00

The New York Daily News is not happy with the Moussaoui verdict:
Zacarias Moussaoui will live. This is not justice. This is an abomination. This is a reprieve from hell for a soul who deserves an eternity in flames no less intense than the infernos that brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

That Moussaoui will suffer the tortures of damnation after a life in prison is of no comfort. No matter how entombed in concrete and steel he is, Moussaoui will breathe the air that Al Qaeda denied to almost 3,000 murder victims. Until, to his everlasting surprise, he is greeted not by willing virgins but by a vengeful maker.

It is deeply dispiriting that an American jury yesterday failed to impose the death penalty on a terrorist who came to the United States with plans to hijack a jetliner and fly it into the Capitol or the White House - and who knew that other conspirators were planning to hit the twin towers. Those facts alone justified capital punishment.
I agree.

Peggy Noonan on the Moussaoui Verdict

2006-05-04T08:43:00.000-05:00

Peggy Noonan is upset with the Moussaoui verdict:

I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.

It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.

If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?

And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?

James Lileks on Gas Taxes

2006-05-04T08:11:00.000-05:00

Yet, another classic from James Lileks:

Nothing better exemplifies the world-turned-upside-down madness than the response to the gas "crisis." If the GOP was intent on educating the public, it would explain obscure concepts like "supply" and "demand" and how this big country called "Chi-na" has been sopping up more liquefied dinosaurs than usual. Also, we don't build enough refineries, and thanks to the greenies we can't drill anywhere Steven Spielberg might see the rig from his house. And he has houses everywhere. But who cares? Man up, ya crybabies! We're Americans. Let's go poke holes in Mother Nature's noggin and hoover up some light sweet crude so we don't have to rehash this drivel next year.

The actual GOP response? Hundred-dollar rebates. Cash money, friend, just for drivin'. We feel your pain: Here, have some money we borrowed from someone else. How's your Starbucks bill looking this week? Caramel mocha lattes add up, we know, and perhaps we can spot you a twenty (as long as you'll agree you're addicted to caffeine) and let Congress mandate 25 percent ethanol in your morning cup.

Rebates! If there's anything that exemplifies the nanny-state mentality, it's driving up the federal armored car and pitchforking sawbucks out the back. For a moment the nation braced for the Democratic response — if it had been true to form, the rebates would have been twice the size, adjusted for income, paid for with a tax on those chrome fish emblems Christians like to stick on their cars, printed on recycled paper with soy ink and introduced at a press conference featuring a leading liberal strategic theorist like Susan Sarandon, who would use the opportunity to complain that Karl Rove has been giving her movies one star on Amazon.com review sites.

As it happens, the Democrats saw a nice issue left on the ground, picked it up and gave it a close look: hmm. Tax relief. Crazy, but it just might work. And so we had the Republicans throwing money at the problem, and the Democrats proposing a moratorium on gas taxes. You almost expected Bill Frist to propose alternate fuels based on embryo stem cells.

Howard Dean: Voters Are Morons

2006-05-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

Indiana has enacted a law which requires the use of a photo I.D. in order to vote. This makes sense to me, and quite frankly, should be acceptable to anyone concerned about preventing voter fraud (e.g., voting multiple times, voting as deceased individuals).

However, Howard Dean believes this law is merely another Republican attempt to disenfranchise the poor, minority, elderly, rural, disabled and student voters:

To: National Desk

WASHINGTON, May 2 /U.S. Newswire/ — Voters across Indiana headed to the polls today for the first time since the state's voter I.D. law took effect. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement:

"Indiana voters today became the first in the country to head to the polls and confront Republican efforts to use unfair voter identification laws to keep legitimate voters from casting their ballots. I applaud Hoosiers who headed to the polls today in the face of an unfair law that disproportionately prevents poor, minority, elderly, rural, disabled and student voters from being able to exercise their most fundamental right as Americans-the right to vote.

Evidently, Mr. Dean must believe that the poor, the minorities, the elderly, the rural, the disabled and the student voters are too stupid to get a photo I.D. There really is no other explanation. Really. How hard is it to get a photo I.D.?

Hat Tip: Blogs for Bush

George Clooney and Darfur

2006-05-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

From Austin Bay:

Note to actor, celebrity dissident and bon vivant George Clooney: Don't get a moral high from the puff-piece media's bravura reviews of your soliloquy at last week's "Save Darfur" rally in Washington. Your international education remains grievously inadequate and incomplete.

A glitterati actor advocating military action in a very hard and chaotic corner of our planet should consider the following details.

Yes, the dictatorship repeatedly launched genocidal attacks on tribal rebels. Indeed, the dictator exploited tribal rivalries to attack dissident bases and split opposition leadership. The dictatorship murdered men, women and children by the hundreds of thousands, despite objections by the United States, Great Britain and the United Nations. The dictatorship fueled its war with billions in petrodollars, while tens of thousands of children and elderly citizens lacked basic medical care
True, most of the regime's victims are Muslims. Russia, China and France played ambiguous political roles, because of financial interests in the region. And deplore this sad fact: Efforts made by international military forces to protect the vulnerable ethnic groups from the regime's depredations were limited and insufficient.

The dictatorship maintained contact with terrorist organizations. In retrospect, the dictatorship may not have produced weapons of mass destruction -- but as the secretary of defense said, given the regime's track record for mass murder and terror, he'd still order the attack.

I have just described Sudan. For readers who may not know the geography and demography, a terrible genocide directed by the Sudanese government is occurring in Sudan's western Darfur region. George Clooney essentially wants the United States and United Nations to invade Darfur to stop the genocide.

However, I've also sketched Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Clooney and his clan object to the coalition war in Iraq.

Hypocritical? Inexcusably hypocritical, but all too typical of the Hollywood left and their elite media pals.

The parallels between Sudan and Iraq are striking and informative. Substitute Sudan's Darfurian tribes for Iraqi Shias and Kurds. The international forces in Darfur are hapless African Union peacekeepers, who spend their time trying to avoid ambushes. In Iraq, the United States and Great Britain tried to protect the Kurd north and Shia south with air patrols -- it didn't work. Saddam's terror contacts among secular and sectarian terrorists were numerous. Sudan harbored Osama bin Laden. As for the WMD, recall the Clinton administration's strike on the Khartoum pharmaceuticals plant suspected of producing nerve gas. Former Clinton SecDef Bill Cohen still defends the attack. He didn't want to run the risk that terrorists would acquire WMD from a rogue tyranny. The Bush administration didn't want to run that risk with Iraq....It's not that I don't think Darfur demands international action. It does. I do not come to that conclusion lightly, for I began writing about Darfur in February 2003 at StrategyPage.com -- well before Darfur broke as a cause celebre. (The Feb. 26, 2003, report notes that the Sudanese government had armed Arabized tribal militias, and now Darfur's "rebel" Zaghawa and Fur tribes were fighting back.)

Russia and China, however, block U.N. action in Darfur. NATO could provide troops, but watch the reaction when "U.S. and European colonialists" invade sovereign Sudan -- that's assuming Clooney convinces France and Germany to participate. Al-Qaida will show up -- bin Laden promised that last week -- so expect a hard slog.

He makes some really good points.

Look, I often criticize celebrities that get involved in politics and pretend to be "experts" on whatever cause that they have chosen to champion. I do, admittedly, get irritated by celebrities that believe experience in television or movies makes them more intellectual or intelligent than those leading the country.

I do believe that, in this particular situation, George Clooney is using his celebrity for a good cause - to provide publicity to a very horrible situation (quite frankly, it is about time - the slaughter in Darfur has been going on for years.)

However, by now, it is clear that "world opinion" or "bad publicity" is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur. George Clooney's efforts, unfortunately, are going to amount to nothing.

So, what are the other options? Negotiations? Not going to work. Military action? Sorry, but George Clooney has been telling us for four years that military action is not justified in Iraq (a country in which human rights atrocities were committed on a daily basis), so why should he now favor military action in another part of the world for a similar reason?

Well, George Clooney will never be forced to confront this hypocrisy. Military action is very unlikely.

The U.N. is reluctant to classify the situation as a genocide and the matter is hopelessly deadlocked in the U.N. Security Council. No country has indicated a real willingness to commit troops and intervene militarily.

Should the U.S. intervene? Yes. Will the U.S. intervene. Not likely.

The Democrat's reaction to the Iraq war has essentially guaranteed that the Bush administration will not likely intervene. Since March of 2003, the Democrats have created an environment that would discourage any further military intervention. The Democrats have worked hard to turn U.S. public opinion against military interventions and toward isolationism. Quite frankly, they have been pretty successful at doing so.

The anti-war liberals (the majority of the Democratic party - or at least the most vocal) would never get behind a military intervention in Darfur - or would they? For the last four years we have been told that war is the ultimate evil and that the ends (freeing people from oppression) are not justified by the means. After all, Saddam Hussein was responsible for the torture and deaths of millions of people. Yet, the anti-war liberals will never acknowledge that the invasion was justified on that basis alone. Rather, they have attempted to argue that Bush somehow lied about WMD's to get us into Iraq and, as a result, the entire operation should have never occurred - regardless of the side benefit of freeing millions from tyranny and oppression.

We have been told by the Democrats, including George Clooney, that the U.S. cannot be the world's policeman, that democracies are not workable in the third world and that we cannot solve all of the world's problems - so why bother?

For four long years, I have listened to lecturing from Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and Cindy Sheehan that the casualties we have suffered in Iraq (which are light by any honest historical analysis or comparison to other historical conflicts of similar nature) are too heavy, not justified and warrant our immediate withdrawal. If we intervened in Darfur, it is very likely we would suffer similar casualties. Would the Democrats complain and criticize the administration for getting us into an "unwinnable war" or a "quagmire" in Darfur?

If the Democrats do support an intervention in Darfur for humanitarian reasons, then the Democrats would need to explain the inherent contradiction with their position on Iraq.

Democrats and Family

2006-05-03T07:52:00.000-05:00

An interesting column from Caitlin Flanagan at Time.com:

But despite all that, there is apparently no room for me in the Democratic Party. In fact, I have spent much of the past week on a forced march to the G.O.P. And the bayonet at my back isn't in the hands of the Republicans; the Democrats are the bullyboys. Such lions of the left as Barbara Ehrenreich, the writers at Salon and much of the Upper West Side of Manhattan have made it abundantly clear to me that I ought to start packing my bags. I'm not leaving, but sometimes I wonder: When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?

Here's why they're after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can't stand, and I'm not cowering in the closet because of it. I'm out, and I'm proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly "traditional" family. I'm in charge of the house and the kids, my husband is in charge of the finances and the car maintenance, and we all go to church every Sunday. . . .

Most of the 60 million people who voted against George W. Bush have lifestyles more like mine than the Democratic Party would like to admit. Most of us aren't the Hollywood elite or the nontraditional family. Many of us do what I do, which is go to church on Sunday, work hard and value my marriage. ... The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the '60s--civil rights, women's liberation, gay inclusion--we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues--paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.

And now here we are, living in a country with a political and economic agenda we deplore, losing election after election and wondering why.

Death In the Family

2006-04-28T18:11:00.000-05:00

My grandmother passed away, so I am off to Missouri for the funeral (at least part I of the funeral) and will not be back in town until late Monday night (for the second part of the funeral). Posting will likely resume on Tuesday.

Will Kerry Run in 2008?

2006-04-28T07:41:00.000-05:00

Some Democrats are very wary that John Kerry may run again in 2008. From Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe:

The signs that John Kerry is going to run for president in 2008 are rising faster than the pollen count. There was the requisite New York Times op-ed -- How many days late? How many dollars short? -- on getting out of Iraq. There was the Globe op-ed that preceded the speech supporting war dissenters at Faneuil Hall to an audience of groupies yelling ''Run" and ''2008." There was Ted Kennedy's remark, ''If he runs, I'm supporting him."

And then there was his op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader defending New Hampshire's place as first-in-the-nation primary. A true profile in courage.

All of this leads me to blurt out: ''Stop him before he kills (the Democrats' chances) again."

LOL

The "Stagnant Economy" Myth

2006-04-27T07:38:00.000-05:00

More good economic news:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - New home sales posted the biggest jump in 13 years in March, but sales got a boost as builders cut prices to cope with higher mortgage rates and a growing backlog of houses on the market.

The government reported new homes sold at an annual rate of 1.21 million homes in March, up 13.8 percent from a revised 1.07 million pace in February. That easily topped forecasts for a 1.1 million pace from economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The jump, the biggest since a 16 percent rise in April 1993, came even as mortgage rates hit an average 6.32 percent last month for 30-year fixed-rate loans, according to Freddie Mac, up from 6.25 percent in February.

The mortgage rate was the second-highest for any month since 2002. Rates have risen further since, climbing to 6.53 percent in the most recent weekly survey.

With rising mortgage rates driving up the cost of financing home purchases, most economists have been looking for the real estate market to cool off in 2006 after several years of record sales.

But economist Bob Brusca said last month's drop in new home prices is a sign that the market for new homes isn't nearly as strong as the jump in sales would suggest.

Democrat Tire Slashers Get Jail Time

2006-04-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

During the 2004 election, there were many reported instances of actual voter intimidation commited by Democrats against Republicans. In one of the more publicized instances, 25 vans, which were rented by the Republican Party to take voters to polling places, were vandalized by having their tires slashed.

Justice was served:

Tossing aside a plea agreement that called for probation, Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Michael Brennan sentenced four Democratic Party workers today to jail for slashing the tires of 25 vans rented by Republicans to take voters to polls for the 2004 presidential election.

Calling the vandalism more than harmless hijinks, Brennan admonished the four men, including the sons of two prominent Milwaukee politicians, for disenfranchising voters. The judge said he had received letters from Milwaukee County citizens upset over the crime.

"They see you tampering with something they consider sacred and that's the ballot box," Brennan said during a two-hour sentencing this morning.

Michael Pratt, 33, and Lewis Caldwell, 29, were each sentenced to six months in jail while Lavelle Mohammad, 36, got five months and Sowande Omokunde, 26, got four months. Each was also fined $1,000. They will be eligible for work release and were allowed to surrender to begin their sentences within two weeks.

Pratt is the son of former Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt and Omokunde is the son of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)....At the time of the pleas, Assistant District Attorney David Feiss said that if the defendants collectively paid $5,317.45 restitution by their sentencing Wednesday - which they did - he would recommend they all get probation. Misdemeanor property damage carries a possible maximum penalty of nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

But Brennan said stiffer punishment was needed.

"This case has to be an example of what happens if you interfere in voters' rights," Brennan said.

Good to see that this was no slap on the wrist...

More College Campus Stupidity

2006-04-26T08:39:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Bruin:

In order to ride a high horse for any considerable length of time without getting sore, you need a fancy saddle. A group of righteous high horse hobbyists on campus has chosen the accusation of murder as theirs.

The student group Coke-Free Campus wants to ban Coca-Cola products from UCLA because some of the casualties of the ongoing civil war in Colombia have allegedly included union leaders and Coca-Cola factory workers.

Economically, Coke has no incentive to have employees murdered by guerrillas. No workers, no Coke: no-brainer. Legally, they have been acquitted of any responsibility by two judicial inquiries. So why the persecution?....For now, private corporations are subject to the political realities of whatever government they operate under. How are they expected to provide protection in a war-ravaged country such as Colombia?
Read it all. Too funny.

Joe Wilson

2006-04-26T08:14:00.000-05:00

Normally, I wouldn't pay too much attention to a lying media whore like Joe Wilson. But, Wuzzadem has a hilarious post that left me laughing out loud. Check it out here.

Senator Feingold's PAC Makes Anti-Bush Ad With Baseless Accusation

2006-04-25T17:58:00.000-05:00

From FactCheck.Org:

Sen. Russ Feingold's leadership PAC sponsored an Internet video making an unfounded suggestion that President Bush is being urged to eavesdrop "on anybody who has the nerve to disagree with [him] - court order or not."

A Feingold spokesman says the ad is a parody. Funny or not, it makes an accusation for which there's no evidence.

Feingold himself says in the video that "our country hasn't stood for this kind of abuse of power in 200 years." We think he's forgetting such things as FDR's forced internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans in World War II, and Lincoln's summary jailings of Confederate sympathizers.
Classic.

Leaks and Hypocrisy

2006-04-25T17:30:00.000-05:00

Check out Michelle Malkin's latest "Vent" over at HotAir.com.

She does a really good job of pointing out the Democrats' hypocrisy when it comes to condemning or approving of leaks.

Islamists and Gays

2006-04-25T08:37:00.000-05:00

From Gay Patriot:

The Iranian government is executing gay and bisexual men under the cover of rape and kidnapping charges, according to a major new investigation by Simon Forbes of the UK-based gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage!

Mr Forbes’s nine-month investigation, published today by OutRage!, is based on information gathered from sources inside Iran. His research reveals:

- Lynchings by Iran’s security forces, and ‘honour killings’ by families in the south western province of Khuzestan

-Secret hangings in prison

- The method of hanging is designed to cause slow, agonising strangulation

- Internet entrapment of gay Iranians using foreign-based online gay dating agencies

- A pattern of framing gay people on charges of kidnap, rape and paedophilia, as the following five sample cases suggest:

- The Gorgan case where two men were publicly hanged for Lavaat (sodomy) in November 2005

- Details of the Kermanshah case where three men were hanged in prison in November 2005 for sodomy that was alleged to have taken the form of the kidnap and rape of a younger male

- The Arak case of two men sentenced to death for sodomy in August 2005, which also involved the alleged kidnap and rape of a younger male, the son of an officer

- Two cases of public execution for sodomy in Mashhad in December 2004 and July 2005 that involved suspiciously similar charges

- Claims of rape are sometimes made to save the family’s honour or to save the passive partner from execution, and are part of an Iranian government propaganda offensive to scapegoat and demonise gay people

- Comparisons with Saudi Arabia, where it is also suggested that bogus rape charges are levelled against gay men

- Hypocrisy of the mullah’s attitudes towards the abuse of young girls, the rape of both males and females in custody, and widespread sodomy in religious colleges

Absolutely disgusting. Kind of makes Pat Robertson and his ilk look tolerant. Yet, when I talk with my cousins, who are lesbians, George Bush and the Republicans (who they view as all members of the religious right - not true, but they will never admit it) are the only real threat to gays and lesbians.

Once again, one would think that gays and lesbians, as a group, would, at least, acknowledge that they share a common enemy in Islamists...

Bill Maher: America is "Wallowing" on 9/11

2006-04-24T09:24:00.000-05:00

Bill Maher and Heather Higgins had an interesting exchange on the April 21, 2006 edition of Real Time. Bill Maher wants America to move on and not "wallow" on the memories of 9/11:

MAHER: They replayed the 9/11 calls from that day, they showed films of people jumping—
HIGGINS:—but they’re horrific, even if read them—
MAHER:—I know, but we remember that day, why did the jury need to see? I think everybody on the jury remembers 9/11. Why did we have to introduce this emotionalism? Because we are, we love to wallow in this country. We are—
HIGGINS:—I couldn’t disagree with you more.

MAHER: Really?

HIGGINS: I think there has become a completely absence of remembering.

MAHER: What?!?

HIGGINS: Yes.

MAHER: There’s been a complete absence of change.

HIGGINS: No.

MAHER: There’s been plenty of remembering.

HIGGINS: No. There’s not much remembering. There’s no remembering with visuals, there’s no—
MAHER:—You’ve got to be kidding?

HIGGINS: It’s been 4-and-a-half years and we’re finally getting a US flight 92 movie out.

MAHER: Right and they showed a screening and people yelled “too soon, too soon”.

HIGGINS: That was the upper west side, but for the rest of us—

MAHER:—when white people are yelling at the screen that’s something.

[laughter]

HIGGINS: I was there on 9/11. I was three days away from the World Trade Center and I saw all sorts of shit that no body has seen on television because they won’t show it. It’s really, really hideous and it makes it extremely personal. And I think understanding what happened in that cockpit and on that plane is something we should be celebrating as Americans. These are heroes and I think it’s directly relevant—

MAHER:—This is a trial, not an episode of Oprah, it is a trial. What does it have to do with the trial of this man [Moussaoui]?

HIGGINS: Because when you have a murder, the victim’s death is relevant to the trial and these are a lot of people who died who deserved the credit of being remembered.

MAHER: It’s just stoking the emotional pot.

Hat Tip: Expose the Left.

I am sure that the families of the approx. 3,000 killed on that day would like nothing more than to stop "wallowing" and forget their pain. Maybe Maher could show them how to accomplish that.

The left would like nothing more than for the American public to forget that 9/11 ever happened. Otherwise, the American public will continue to consider national security an important issue when they go to the polls... and vote Republican.

By the way, Maher does show his complete lack of understanding of the judicial process and criminal trials. The Zacharias Moussaoui trial is now in the penalty phase and, as such, the testimonials of victims and the families of the victims is highly relevant as to the impact that Moussaoui's actions have had on them. The jury is attempting to determine whether or not his crimes were heinous enough to justify the most serious of our criminal punishments.

Civillian Control of the Military

2006-04-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

Former President, Gerald Ford, weighs in on Rumsfeld:

Ford, 92, said the decision on keeping Rumsfeld is the president's alone. "Allowing retired generals to dictate our country's policies and its leadership would be a dangerous precedent that would severely undermine our country's long tradition of civilian control of the military," Ford said.

"It would discourage civilian leaders at the (Defense) Department from having frank and candid exchanges with military officers. And, today, at a time of war, such an effort sends exactly the wrong message both to our troops deployed abroad and to our enemies who are watching for any signs of weakness or self-doubt."

Hat Tip: Blogs for Bush.

I am not a big fan of Ford, but he is right. It is good to get the opinions of these generals (who better to ask than those with first hand knowledge of the work of the Defense Secretary), however, basing the decision solely on their opinions would set a very bad precendent.

Moreover, it is nice to see a former President not actively attempting to undermine the sitting government (e.g, Carter, Clinton).

This Just In: John McCain is a Republican!!!

2006-04-22T18:18:00.000-05:00

Some in the media are in shock that their beloved "maverick" John McCain is actually trying to gain support from actual Republicans:

As if we needed more convincing that Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) is courting the Republican establishment that scorned him in the 2000 presidential race, an invite to a May fundraiser for his Straight Talk America PAC in Dallas found its way to the Fix inbox this afternoon.

The May 15 event is two-tiered: a 5:30 p.m. reception will be held at the home of Cinda and Tom Hicks and will be followed by a 7 p.m. dinner at the home of Rita and Bill Clements. The special guest for the night will be Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. (Mehlman has been very careful about not taking sides in the 2008 nomination fight and we have been assured nothing should be read into his agreeing to be part of this event.)

Even so, the list of Republican heavy hitters on the host committee shows the depth of work that McCain (and his political guru John Weaver) have done over the past few years to woo deep-pocketed supporters of President George W. Bush.

It is newsworthy in the sense that it can be seen as McCain beginning to build a war chest for the 2008 campaign. Sounds like smart politics to me. I just find it funny that some in the media are surprised at his targets for donors.

Democratic "Culture of Corruption"

2006-04-22T18:11:00.000-05:00

Contrary to what the Democrats will have you belive, corruption is rampant in both parties. Need another example? Here you go:

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.) stepped down temporarily from his post as ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself in the process.

As recently as Thursday, Mollohan, a 12-term lawmaker, had said he would not step aside, but he bowed to pressure yesterday from House Democratic leaders eager to pursue their campaign against what they call a "culture of corruption" in the Republican Party.

Truly priceless. Democrats are still eager to pursue their campaign against the "culture of corruption" in the Republican Party - even when it is more than evident that their own house is not in order... They don't want to divert the public's attention away from the Republicans, so they try to play down their own corruption. Hypocrisy.

In the Name of Religious Sensitivity...

2006-04-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

This is somewhat amusing:

JAIL bosses are rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca.

Thousands of pounds of taxpayers money are being spent to ensure lags are not offended. The Islamic religion prohibits Muslims from facing or turning their backs on the Kiblah — the direction of prayer — when they visit the lav. Muslim lags claimed they have had to sit sideways on prison WCs. But after pressure from faith leaders the Home Office has agreed to turn the existing toilets 90 degrees at HMP Brixton in London.

Gay Superheroes

2006-04-20T16:18:00.000-05:00

Yeah, this is exactly what comic geeks want to see:

British actor SIR IAN MCKELLEN complained on the set of upcoming sequel X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, because he wanted his character MAGNETO to have some gay sex scenes. THE LORD OF THE RINGS star, who has been openly gay since 1988, insists a homoerotic sub-plot would have enhanced the movie. MCKellen tells Empire magazine, "He hasn't been given a love line, which I think is a pity. It would be wonderful if the camera hovered over Magneto's bed, to discover him making love to Professor X." However, MCKellen admits he needed camera trickery to help him match Magneto's muscular physique. He adds, "I'd like to see him at the gym, because in the comics he has the most amazing body. I'm the slimline version of Magneto, but of course, these days you could morph my body into something really fantastic."

Liberals at Indymedia Attempt To "Intimidate" Right Wing Bloggers

2006-04-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

Good grief. Check this out.

Evidently, Indymedia is encouraging its readers to stalk and/or harm certain rightwing bloggers including Stephen Green, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, Jeff Goldstein, Rusty Shackleford, etc. by posting their addresses and phone numbers.

Indymedia encourages its readers to "do your best to be 'nice' to all of these reichwingers", but then notes that they can use "maps.google.com to find their phone numbers and maps".

Absolutely disgusting. Can you blame me for taking a vacation from politics?

Indymedia is upset because Michelle Malkin posted a press release from some college students that were trying to get military recuriters off campus. The press release evidently included the addresses and phone numbers of the college students. More background here.

My two cents: if the students did not want their personal information disseminated to the public, why would they include it on a press release? For that matter, if they did not want the information published, why send it to members of the press? Obviously, a screw up by the students.

When people have to resport to threats and intimidation to discourage opposing view points, it is a sure sign that they have already lost the debate and are now resorting to the only device they have left - thuggery.

According to Stephen, many of the addresses are fortunately wrong. So, not only do they have no class, but they are also clueless.

End of Sabbatical

2006-04-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

I have not published on this blog since December.

There has been no illness, no family emergencies and no other "legitimate excuses" (other than paying more attention to my work and family) for "ignoring" this blog or my "blogging duties".

To be honest, I had been incredibly busy and found that (a) the blog was taking a significant amount of my time every day - time which I desperately needed for work and (b) I was essentially "burning out".

I really enjoy blogging, yet I have been frustrated with the direction that this blog has taken and struggling with the direction I want to take on a going forward basis. Initially, I had limited this blog to being an essentially "political blog". . . i.e., a place for me to comment on and/or discuss politics. As politics have taken a much more dramatic turn towards hostility (on both sides), I became more and more disillusioned and tired of politics.

I have grown very tired of constantly re-arguing the same points with some of my more liberal readers (the alleged "Bush lie" and whether there is a "Republican culture of corruption").

As I have mentioned prevously ad nauseum, Bush may have been an advocate for war and may have viewed the available intelligence with a bias towards war, but clearly, he did not lie when presenting his case to the American people. As any leader would, Bush looked at the available intelligence, formed his own conclusions, decided on a foreign policy and then went forward to sell that foreign policy to his constituents. No President, other than maybe Bill Clinton (who I voted for twice), would have his foreign policy decided by polls.

Is there a "Republican culture of corruption"? No. There is an "American culture of corruption" that includes both Republicans and Democrats politicians. We can argue about the Abrahamoff scandal and which party benefited from Mr. Abrahamoff's efforts or we can argue about the proliferation of 527's and whether they are abuses of the campaign finance laws, but really, what would be the benefit? If you are concerned about corruption - as any American should be - then fine. Let's discuss how to make politicians more accountable. Under the "leadership" of Howard Dean, however, the Democrats have ignored an opportunity to make necessary reforms and instead made it a "Republican" issue, thus taking the focus off corruption in American politics and placing the Republicans on the defensive (all the while ignoring the corruption within the Democratic ranks). By doing so, the Democrats may have made temporary gains in public opinion polls, however, they have lost any chance of finding a bipartisan solution to America's problem. Moreover, by trying to sell the corruption issue as a Republican-only problem, the Democrats have shown, once again, true contempt or lack of respect for the American electorate. Most Americans recognize the hypocrisy. As such, Dean's crusade against "Republican corruption" has not gained any real traction.

I hate hypocrisy. I know I am not alone.

Anyways, back to the issue at hand. I have decided to continue blogging. However, I have not yet decided what direction I will take on a "going forward" basis. I will likely not limit my posts to politics only. Moreover, I have found that the blogs I enjoy the most are those that do not treat everything so serious and actually possess a sense of humor. Who knows.

I will begin regularly posting this weekend after I give it some more thought.

Thanks for all of your patience.

James Lileks on Hollywood

2005-12-23T07:27:00.000-06:00

A great post from James Lileks:

Setting: the office of B., a Hollywood producer. A writer we shall call “K.” enters.

B: Loved the script, powerful and timely. I know your agent has gone over the changes – we swapped out the Muslim terrorists for Mormon Nazis, and instead of trying to set off a nuke in New York they’re to assassinate a new Supreme Court nominee who’s pro-choice. Streisand is totally on board for the role and everyone smells Oscar. Anyway. There’s this scene here at the Department of Central Security – is that real?

K: It’s a composite.

B: Right, right, super-secret stuff. I see lots of monitors on the walls and really dim lighting and James Earl Jones grabbing phones and barking stuff like “Get me our man in Beirut,” right? Except in this case it would be, I don’t know, Beirutah, ‘cause they’re Mormons. Hah! Work that in. Anyway. It’s on page 35. The hero – we changed the ex-SpecOps guy to a dis charged transsexual Navy sniper whose pregnant daughter was raped by a GI who came back from Iraq all bent. We kept the name, though. Anyway. She’s watching this board where they track outgoing calls, catches a call going from a known terrorist in Washington to another terrorist cell in Hamburg, and she picks up and listens. Don’t get my wrong, I have the highest respect for your talent, but, uh, don’t you think this is a little far fetched?

K: Which part?

B: You expect audiences to accept they’ll just tap a call without a court order? We want them to like these guys.

K: (Scowling) Well, if the movie had to wait for the warrant they would have never stopped the bombing plot in the last reel, so unless you want them sitting around playing sudoko –

B: My wife loves that game! She’s addicted!

K: I’ll arrange an intervention. Look, I researched this. The president can order a tap if Bad Guy A in Kansas calls Bad Guy B in Wackostan with details on tonight’s bombing. Why worry about that? This town makes 200 cop movies a year and the closest you get to Miranda, let alone a warrant, is saying “you have the right to remain dead” after shooting a suspect. C’mon. This is what people want. It makes them feel better to think there’s smart people sitting around a dark room plugged into satellites, intercepting plans by sleeper cells and saboteurs to destroy America. It’s something they expect the government to do.

B: I know, I know, but what if we went “Munich” on this one here, showed the emotional toll of all this? Say the call was innocent. Hey Bob, how you doing, howza wife and kids. And then we pick up the story ten years later where the government is tapping everyone’s phones and the hero realizes, my God or Buddha or whatever, I am responsible for this. It’s like that old saying, first they came for the library records under the Patriot Act and I said nothing, because I didn’t use the library, and so on. You know?

K: So the former Marine intelligent officer fighting Islamic terrorism is now a transgendered Buddhist so concerned about the effect of no-warrant intercepts she lets Barbara Streisand get assassinated.

B: Well, we’ll send out the last act to some script doctors, but yeah. Basically. These are different times.

K: You make it sound like you’d end Casablanca with an arrest warrant for Claude Rains because he shot the Nazi.

B: Hey, things were different then. That was war.

K: And this isn’t?

(Producer looks out the window)

B: I don’t see anything on fire. Do you?

An Interesting Take On Steven Spielberg's Munich

2005-12-23T07:19:00.000-06:00

Another take on Steven Spielberg's Munich:

Soon after watching an advance screening of Steven Spielberg's new film, "Munich," journalist Aaron Klein could barely conceal his amusement.

"In the beginning it said it was inspired by real events — I think that's the understatement of the year," Klein said about Spielberg's film, a recounting of the Israeli response to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. "It's much more than 'inspired' — it's invented!"

The film, which appears in theaters this week, has already drawn a good deal of criticism from Israelis and defenders of Israel who say that Spielberg relied too heavily on a widely discredited book about the Olympics and their aftermath by George Jonas titled "Vengeance." But Klein, a reporter for Time, can speak about the issue with the authority born of just having authored his own, exhaustively researched book about it, "Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response."

Unlike Spielberg, Klein went directly to the Mossad and military intelligence officers who were involved in the reprisals, and ended up speaking with more than 50 of them. What results is a gripping play-by-play of each shadowy maneuver by the famed Caesarea unit of the Mossad, as they sneak up on terrorists in their hotel rooms and bedrooms snuffing them out one after another and then slipping away into the night. The narrative is considerably different from the one offered by Spielberg.

"He's an artist," Klein told the Forward. "He's a great director and I really appreciate him for that. But... the true story is far from what you see in the movie." ... It is with his telling of the attack's aftermath, though, that Klein version begins seriously to depart from Spielberg's. As Klein began talking with former Mossad officers, he said, he quickly realized the holes in Jonas's book, whose central theme is that Mossad operations were driven by a desire to avenge the Munich deaths. Interviews led Klein to a different conclusion, he said. Revenge was a factor in planning the Caesarea operations, but it was much less important than calculations about how much of a threat a specific target would be in the future. In the end, Klein's research showed that two of the Munich plot masterminds were never hunted by the Mossad aggressively and one is still alive today...

"I grew up with this myth of revenge," Klein told the Forward. "It was amazing for me to find out it was almost not true at all."

On a smaller scale, Klein said he discovered that Israeli agents never bought intelligence from French citizens, as Jonas asserts and Spielberg accepts. And the Mossad agents whom Klein interviewed admitted to none of the soul searching found at the heart of Spielberg's film.

Greg Gutfield - A Note To Tookie Supporters

2005-12-22T08:22:00.000-06:00

Another great post from Greg Gutfield (a/k/a the only readable columnist on the Huffington Post):
We know the death penalty is racist. I just hope death penalty opponents ARE NOT - and will rally their support behind caucasian crime king Clarence Ray Allen. His execution date of Jan. 17 comes after his 76th birthday. Sure, Allen was convicted of arranging the murder in 1974 of his son's girlfriend, Mary Sue Kitts, who was a witness against him in a burglary case.

While serving life at Folsom for Kitts' murder, he paid another inmate, Billy Ray Hamilton to kill eight people who testified against him. Hamilton managed to kill a few- but we don't need all that information now. It happened a long time ago and Clarence is really old.

The point: You can still impress girls at swanky parties by campaigning to save other death row inmates - even the non-black ones who didn't write children's books!

Just say this:

"Clarence Ray Allen is very old, and suffering from a complicated stew of age-related diseases. It would be an outrage to execute a man in this state. In a way, Mr. Allen is suffering MORE than his victims -- their deaths by his hands prevented them from suffering the kind of health problems Clarence is now experiencing in death row. If anything, Mr. Allen is kind of a martyr. Not unlike Tookie. "

Then add:

"Mr. Allen just had angioplasty and the stress of an execution could damage an already fragile heart."

You'll be, like, totally in!
Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Allen has the same appeal as Tookie did...

Things Could Be Worse

2005-12-22T08:09:00.000-06:00

Tired of anti-American rants by liberals? Check out Beautiful Atrocities for a more optimistic view of life in the United States:

America is a many-faceted cesspool: a rogue state (Andrew Sullivan), a gay dungeon master (Jesse Jackson), morally repugnant & not worth fighting for (Cindy Sheehan), a police state (Rep. Ron Paul), passionately racist (Susan Sontag), ignorant (Michael Moore), the torture & political murder capital of the world (Noam Chomsky), a dumb puppy with big teeth (Johnny Depp), insulting (Janeane Garofalo) & a nightmare of hysteria, ignorance, stupidity, & belligerence (Harold Pinter).
However, it could be worse. We could, for example, be living on Jupiter's moon Io, where geysers spew sulfur 300 miles high, so you can imagine the stink. Frenchmen on Io would be insufferable, sulfur-farting surrender monkeys . Also, we would have to learn to live without many things we take for granted, like oxygen & Desperate Housewives.

Priceless. Absolutely, priceless....

A Look At the Past Year

2005-12-22T08:07:00.000-06:00

Check out the Environmental Republican's "Year In Pictures". Very well done.

The Saddam Trial

2005-12-22T07:41:00.000-06:00

From the Washington Post:

Hussein Claims Abuse at Hands of U.S. Captors
Witnesses at Trial Describe 1982 Killings and Torture

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 22, 2005; 7:12 AM

BAGHDAD, Dec. 22 -- Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants Thursday restated accusations that they were physically abused in U.S. custody, called American denials of the beatings "lies," and accused the court of undermining its legitimacy by preventing outbursts from the defense from being aired on television.

During a raucous session of the trial for crimes against humanity, a pair of witnesses shrouded by curtains to conceal their identities testified about killings and torture inflicted upon the people of Dujail, a town north of Baghdad where more than 140 people were allegedly killed after a failed assassination attempt on Hussein in 1982.

Notice how the headline reads "Hussein Claims Abuse at Hands of U.S. Captors" while the subheadline reads "Witnesses at Trial Describe 1982 Killings and Torture"? Shouldn't the headline be about the testimony concerning the 1982 killings and torture? Why focus on the rants of Saddam Hussein?

Patriot Act Is Extended....Temporarily

2005-12-22T07:39:00.000-06:00

From the Washington Post:

A much-debated domestic surveillance law won a reprieve last night when senators agreed to continue it for six months to allow House and Senate negotiators to resume efforts next year to rewrite it for the longer term.

Some top Democratic and Republican senators said they were confident the House would agree to the compromise to prevent major provisions of the USA Patriot Act from expiring on Dec. 31. The Senate approved the extension on a voice vote.
This is good news. We have avoided a repeat of 9/11 for over 4 years now...due in large part to the Patriot Act.

George Clooney - A Neocon?

2005-12-22T07:31:00.000-06:00

An interesting analysis of George Clooney's movies from "Faces from the front".

So what is the Foreign Policy of George Clooney's movies?

It rejects Realism and maintaining the status quo. At one point it advocates the use of force to topple Saddam. It excortiates the optomism of getting Iranian Mullahs to accept liberty without force. It blames Realism for the malaise in the Gulf region by squealching those who would upset the status quo in favor of reform.

The foreign policy of Archie Gates and Robert Barnes could be implemented unilaterally and by force. It would not seek to maintain the status quo. It would export liberty, economic freedom and democracy or allow and encourage liberty, freedom and democracy, even if it may lead to unpredicatbility in the short.

The foreign policy of Clooney's charachters in Three Kings and Syriana is actually very similar to the one he and Hollywood often denigrate--neoconservativism.
Read it all.

Hollywood Sympathetic To Terrorists

2005-12-22T07:21:00.000-06:00

From Yahoo News:

Hollywood is showing a new side of terrorism.

And it's a human one.

To the dismay of some critics, several films are offering humanizing portraits of extremists, including suicide bombers:

•Paradise Now tells the story of two men recruited for a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. The film, which opened in October, received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign picture and has taken in about $1 million domestically.

•Syriana, the George Clooney political drama that opened Nov. 23, paints a sympathetic portrait of a young man recruited into a radical Islamic group planning an attack on a U.S. oil firm. The movie has taken in about $23 million and earned two Golden Globe nominations.

•Sleeper Cell, a 10-hour Showtime miniseries that began Dec. 4, is about an al-Qaeda-like group planning an attack in Los Angeles.

•Munich, which opens Friday, is Steven Spielberg's examination of the 1972 Olympics massacre and offers the perspective of both Israeli soldiers and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Clooney, who produced Syriana, says the trend stems largely from growing American displeasure with the Iraq war.

"I've been called a traitor for questioning the war," he says. "But more people are beginning to look critically at what our government is doing, who we're fighting. And that's the most patriotic thing you can do."

Syriana, for example, "simply doesn't want to paint things in black and white, because the world isn't that way," Clooney says. "The world is complicated, and good movies try to show that."

But some film observers, including critic Michael Medved, say the films are less concerned with artistic integrity than with demonstrating Hollywood liberalism.

"The entertainment industry very clearly tilts to the left," he says. "And the left has been skeptical of the current war on terror."

Randy Roberts, a professor of history at Purdue University, says the motivations could be simpler. Studios may be trying to capitalize on anti-war sentiment.

"Hollywood is a business," he says. "They are good at gauging when the luster is off. Maybe they ... want to try to do something new to make more money."

But will they? None of the films has yet caught fire with the public.

Maybe, the films have not "caught fire with the public" because the public doesn't have its collective head up its ass like Hollywood does. The American public understands that suicide bombers are not heroes or sympathetic characters. Suicide bombers are mass murderers.

A Critique of Syriana

2005-12-16T09:44:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I saw Syriana with a few friends last Friday. My initial reaction was that it was not a very good movie. However, I have delayed posting any real substantive commentary on Syriana because I wanted some time to further reflect upon the movie and the messages presented therein. After all, I do believe that Syriana attempts to tackle some very important and highly relevant issues.

IMPORTANT: SPOILER ALERT. If you want to see this movie, then you may not want to read any further. Notwithstanding, come back after you have done so and let me know if you concur.

Why didn’t I like Syriana?

1. The characters were completely underdeveloped. This may be primarily due to the fact that the movie tracks many different “main” characters and several different interwoven story lines. As a result, you really have to listen closely to uncover any history or background on a given character. Nonetheless, I had no real reason to care for any of the characters (other than, of course, Matt Damon's character - what father could ever not feel his pain?). Why was Bob a hero? Clearly, you could sense the director's view that this was, in fact, the main hero of the story. However, when I go to a movie, I like to be able to come to that judgment on my own. I just didn't feel like rooting for anyone.

2. It was essentially TRAFFIC 2: BIG OIL. I realize that Syriana and Traffic were made by the same people. However, who likes watching the same movie? While I enjoyed Traffic and found it to be a very compelling movie, Syriana was presented in the exact same manner as Traffic. I kept being reminded of Traffic. For example, the use of interwoven story lines of several main characters. It was certainly exciting and revolutionary technique - now, it feels like re-hashing the same format. How about trying something new?

3. The movie came across as nothing more than a left-wing conspiracy theory. I mean really. For this movie to be believable, you have to believe that oil companies run our government and direct our foreign policy. While oil companies may have considerable influence, I have been unable to turn off my cynicism that keeps screaming - that is way too simplistic.

4. The idea that the CIA or the military is used to do the bidding of private oil companies was a bit too much to swallow.

5. According to Syriana, it is the United States and the oil companies that stand in the way of true democratic reform. Evidently, there are plenty of young heirs to Middle Eastern thrones that want to establish democracy, to provide freedom to their people, to establish women's rights and to enrich their subjects. Unfortunately, the evil United States kills such heirs before they can take power. While the United States does have a sordid past that includes supporting dictators when it was convenient to do so, the movie goes a bit too far. For example, the United States did support Saddam in his war with Iran. However, Iran was not then nor is it now a flagship for Arab democracy. Iran has been run by a brutal theocratic/authoritarian regime. Of course, we did support the Shah of Iran. However, the alternative was Khomeini, who was no civil libertarian either. So, the film essentially takes the United States' history and turns it on its head. Rather than merely portraying the United States support of Middle East dictators as the problem (which, clearly, it is a problem), the movie goes one step too far to argue that the United States has actually intervened to stop democratic reform.

Last time I checked, however, the United States has been in the business of exporting democracy to the Middle East. Iraq is the perfect example. Yet, I am sure that the United States intervention in Iraq, which freed over 24,000,000 people from a brutal dictatorship, will receive no credit by this filmmaker or any of his left wing fans. That is somewhat hypocritical, isn't it?? I guess democracy in the Middle East is good, unless, of course, the United States is responsible for bringing the democracy to Middle East

The movie totally ignores or downplays the fact that democracy is not spreading to Middle Eastern countries because such countries are, in fact, run by authoritarian groups, monarchies and theocrats - none of which are likely to relinquish their power any time soon. While U.S. support of these rulers may not be too helpful to the cause of democratic reform, aren't the existent of these rulers barriers too?

6. According to Syriana, unemployment leads to terrorism. The film portrays a group of Pakistani oil field workers being laid off from their work when a Chinese company buys the oil field in which they are working. After visiting a madrassa, two of these oil field workers are lured into a short-lived career as suicide bombers. The film's focus on economics as opposed to religious fanatacism is disappointing. The despair that is associated with unemployment and poverty may, in fact, play a role in some terrorist's entrance into the world of religious fanaticism. It is religious fanatacism, however, that leads to Islamic terrorism. The film downplays the role of religious fanatacism in favor of an economical explanation. Last time I checked, Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi or Atta (and his gang of 19) were certainly not impoverished or from poor families.

7. In Syriana, the two young terrorists are essentially portrayed as sympathetic characters. Their suicide is portrayed heroically.

8. The terrorist group Hezzbolah is portrayed as a group of good samaritans that intervenes to assist an American CIA agent. Yeah, that would really happen...

9. The Iranian government is considered to be an enemy (true enough, although, the movie never explains why), but the Committee to Liberate Iran is viewed as a shadowy organization that is dangerous because it wants to overthrow the Iranian government. That makes little sense.

10. The movie dwelled on the alleged problem of corruption in government and our oil corporations, yet gave us no real hope that such corruption could ever be overcome.

11. The movie portrays the CIA as entirely incompetent (o.k., that may not be too far off) and unsupportive of its agents. George Clooney's character is sent on missions that appear to have very little value or importance - just to get him out of the office (evidently, his character writes a lot of memos). When the mission backfires, his character is disavowed. But, the film doesn't stop there. Rather, the CIA sicks the FBI on Clooney's character. Sorry, but I cannot imagine the FBI would really take the time to investigate an alleged attempted murder by an American CIA agent oversees when it is an attempted murder of an Iranian national on foreign soil. Jurisdictional issues, aren't there?

12. One of the central premises of the movie is that corruption is bad. Bribing foreign officials is, in fact, against the law. Yet, it is somehow o.k. for George Clooney's character to threaten to kill the head of a law firm and his family?

13. Iraq disproves the central theme of Syriana - i.e., that our foreign policy is based centrally open opening up oil markets for our oil companies. If our foreign policy was, in fact, so driven by the needs of our oil companies, then why in the world did we place an embargo on Iraq for over a decade? Why did we place sanctions on Iraq for so long? It would have clearly been in the oil companies' best interests to be permitted to freely trade and do business with the Saddam controlled Iraq. Yet, the United States government made it illegal.

14. The inclusion of Benet Holliday's father, the alcoholic, adds nothing to the movie. Maybe, it adds some humanity to Holliday by showing he has "real world problems". But, it certainly has little, if nothing, to do with the plot.

15. The tragedy that befalls Matt Damon's character was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary. At one point, it is insinuated that Matt Damon's company gets a lucrative consulting contract because the Arab Prince feels sorry for Damon. It is this consulting contract, which the filmmaker clearly disdains and uses to somehow show that Damon's character is either greedy or has sold out his principles. Is Damon's character supposed to turn the contract down on principle? If so, what is the principle? I really don't get it. Clearly, the death of the son of Damon's character was an unfortunate accident.

16. Contrary to what many have written, I did not find it too hard to follow. At the end of the day, I felt somewhat bored.This is not your ordinary everyday spy thriller. There is little, if any, action. Most of the intrigue takes place in spoken dialogue (if you can call it that - most of the speaking between the characters consists of, essentially, the characters making speeches).

Sunni Insurgents Suspend Attacks For Iraqi Elections

2005-12-15T08:27:00.000-06:00

From the Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- Iraqi voters turned out in force countrywide Thursday to elect a parliament to remake their troubled nation, with Sunni-led Iraqi insurgent movements suspending attacks for a day so that Sunni Arabs could vote en masse for the first time.

The voting appeared to split along sectarian lines as expected, with many Sunni voters in the Sunni-dominated far west saying they were voting for Sunni candidates. Long lines were reported among Sunnis, most of whom boycotted elections earlier this year or were frightened away by threats.

There were no boycotts this time and some insurgents were providing security at some polling places. In Ramadi, for example, guerrillas of the Iraqi Islamic Army movement took up positions in some neighborhoods, promising to protect voters from any attacks by foreign fighters.

Hamas Threatens To Increase Attacks If Israel Attacks Iran

2005-12-15T08:19:00.000-06:00

Hamas has threatened to increase attacks on Israel if Israel attacks Iran:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Palestinian militant group Hamas will step up its attacks on Israeli targets if the Jewish state attacks its key ally in the region, Iran, Hamas chief-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said on Thursday.

"If Israel attacks Iran then Hamas will widen and increase its confrontation of Israelis inside Palestine," Meshaal told reporters in Tehran, where he has held three days of talks with top political and security officials.

The United States and Israel accuse Iran of arming and funding militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Iran says it only gives moral support to the Palestinian groups.

Meshaal also backed Iran's disputed nuclear program, which the United States and the European Union fear is to acquire nuclear bomb. Iran denies having any atomic arms ambitions.

"If we assume that Iran has a military nuclear program, what is wrong with that when Israel and others have them?," said Meshaal, whose remarks were translated from Arabic into Farsi.

Israeli officials have warned they could try to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities in the same way that Israel bombed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran has said it will retaliate if attacked.
Hamas is already dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so this comes as no surprise.

Iranian President - Holocaust Denier and Rabid Anti-Semite

2005-12-15T08:09:00.000-06:00

This just in: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "President" (or is dictator the appropriate title?) is a holocaust denier and rabid anti-semite:

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh attack against Israel, describing the Holocaust as a "myth" and saying the Jewish state should be moved to Europe or North America. "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," the outspoken president said in a speech carried live on state television.

"If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody criticises the myth of the massacre of Jew, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream," he said.

"Our proposal is this: give a piece of your land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska so they (the Jews) can create their own state," said Ahmadinejad, who was speaking to thousands of people in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

Anyone, who questions whether the Holocaust occured, is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly anti-Semitic.

It is looking more and more like Israel will, once again, be in the position of having to act against a rougue Arab state's nuclear ability because the world is too cowardly to do so. What other choice will they have? This guy has already called for wiping the State of Israel off the face of the Earth...with nuclear weapons, he can do so... Iran, in my opinion, is far more dangerous than North Korea will ever be under its current regime...

At one point in time, I thought that President Bush or America would intervene militarily, if necessary, to prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. However, I now have very strong doubts.

New Democratic Strategy: Community

2005-12-13T08:24:00.000-06:00

For months, I have been complaining about the Democrats' lack of a political strategy and overall lack of vision. Well, the Democrats have a new strategy:

To hear Democrats tell it, an anxious and isolated public craves a sense of national community and would galvanize behind a leader who asks people to sacrifice for the greater good.

"There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in," [Senator John] Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, told delegates at a weekend convention of Florida Democrats.

"Americans don't want to believe that they are out there on an island all alone," the former North Carolina senator said.

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean has commissioned confidential polling and analysis that suggest candidates in 2006 and 2008 should frame their policies — and attacks on Republicans — around the context of community.

It seems to be the emerging message from a party that has been bereft of one.

This is all they came up with? I would love to see the results of polling on this one.

So, let's assume that the Democrats are correct - Americans long for a sense of community and togetherness with fellow Americans. If that is the case, then does that mean that the Democrats will not spend so much time attacking Republicans, criticizing the President (and all his supporters), criticizing the efforts of our troops in combat, focusing on each and every American failure, or focusing on each and every American case of misconduct as if it were the greatest atrocity the world has ever seen(e.g., Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay)? Hopefully, so...

Hope that the consultants, who developed this strategy, are not too highly paid. They certainly didn't earn the money they likely received.

Syriana Sucks

2005-12-12T09:38:00.000-06:00

My friends and I saw Syriana on Friday.

While the cinematography and the acting were great (George Clooney and Matt Damon are two of my favorite actors and each gave a great performance in their respective roles), the film suffered from many flaws in the script and the overall pace. It portrayed Americans and American intelligence in a very, very bad light. Not to mention, of course, that it offered a real misunderstanding of islamic terrorism and tended to oversimplify the problems in the Middle East (according to the film, Big Oil is the root of all Middle East problems).

Put simply, it was a huge disappointment from both a political perspective and a movie fan perspective.

I have to get back to work as my conference call is ending. However, I will post more about why I really did not like this movie.

The Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2005

2005-12-12T09:22:00.000-06:00

Right Wing News offers a list of the 40 most obnoxious quotes of 2005. Check it out.

Here are a few of my favorites:

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for..." -- Howard Dean

"The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar." -- Helen Thomas

"And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not ... Iraqis should be doing that." -- John Kerry slams the troops again

"I felt like a n*gger." -- Ralph Nader on his run at the presidency in 2004.
"(The) idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." -- Howard Dean

"For those of you who do, as a matter of principle, oppose war in any form, the idea of supporting a conscientious objector who's already been inducted [and] in his combat service in Iraq might have a certain appeal. But let me ask you this: Would you render the same support to someone who hadn't conscientiously objected, but rather instead rolled a grenade under their line officer in order to neutralize the combat capacity of their unit?" -- University Professor Ward Churchill on supporting soldiers who frag their officers

"Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our "support" for blindly following orders?" -- Ted Rall

"Real freedom will come when [U.S.] soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors." -- Warren County Community College adjunct English professor, John Daly

Liberals unhinged... not a pretty sight.

Comparing Different Time Periods In American History

2005-12-12T09:16:00.000-06:00

This is interesting:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Terrorist attacks, a war in Iraq and natural disasters aren’t so bad compared to other tough times in America’s past, from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War, history professors say.

Asked to compare eight difficult periods of the nation’s history, 46 percent of the 354 professors who responded to a nationwide survey agreed the current era was the least trying. The Civil War, 55 percent said, was the toughest.

Always good to view current events in light of historical context. As an amateur historian, I tend to agree with the results of the survey.

Well, not everyone agreed with the survey. I guess that the current times are worse if you are a 20 year old liberal arts student at a private university:

Kristina Hicks, 20, a Siena junior, said that while it’s true most of today’s Americans have not had to sacrifice like previous generations did, she disagrees with the poll’s findings.

‘‘I definitely think today is one of most trying times,’’ she said. ‘‘When I read about things like 9/11 and the war in Iraq in textbooks, it doesn’t actually portray the whole picture of what happened.’’

Good News From Iraq

2005-12-12T08:52:00.000-06:00

If this ABC News Poll is accurate, Iraqi's are more positive about Iraq's future than the Democrats in America:

Dec. 12, 2005 — Surprising levels of optimism prevail in Iraq with living conditions improved, security more a national worry than a local one, and expectations for the future high. But views of the country's situation overall are far less positive, and there are vast differences in views among Iraqi groups — a study in contrasts between increasingly disaffected Sunni areas and vastly more positive Shiite and Kurdish provinces.

An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.

Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004.

Nonetheless, nationally, security is seen as the most pressing problem by far; 57 percent identify it as the country's top priority. Economic improvements are helping the public mood.

Average household incomes have soared by 60 percent in the last 20 months (to $263 a month), 70 percent of Iraqis rate their own economic situation positively, and consumer goods are sweeping the country. In early 2004, 6 percent of Iraqi households had cell phones; now it's 62 percent. Ownership of satellite dishes has nearly tripled, and many more families now own air conditioners (58 percent, up from 44 percent), cars, washing machines and kitchen appliances

Who would know better? The people in Iraq or Howard Dean?

Fourth Quarter Blues

2005-12-12T08:37:00.000-06:00

Each and every year it does not fail...my fourth quarter is always insanely busy.

As an attorney, I work in a rather intense customer service environment. Most, if not all, of my clients are "Type A" personalities and tend to have unrealistic expectations as to what can be accomplished in an hour, a day, or a week. These clients do not focus upon the amount of work involved . Rather, they tend to focus upon the end result - i.e., they number of transactions to be completed prior to the end of the year so that they can earn their bonus. Too bad they were not focusing on that for the other 9 months of the year.

It is the price I must pay to earn their business, I guess... So, I tend to work an insane amount of hours at the end of the year- regardless of the personal cost.

Anyways, I bring this up because it has seriously cut into the amount of time that I have for blogging. At this point, I am stuck blogging whenever I get a free minute (e.g., a long, long conference call or lunch time).

I have not given up blogging yet... it just seems like it!

Football: Gary Barnett To Be Fired

2005-12-08T08:44:00.000-06:00

It appears that the head coach for Colorado University, Gary Barnett, will be fired (although, the AD has yet to inform him of the decision).

From the Denver Post:

Boulder - Gary Barnett is on his way out as the University of Colorado's football coach.

A source close to contract negotiations between Barnett and CU indicated Tuesday that Barnett will not be retained as coach of the Buffaloes. Although there is no timeline for an announcement, CU athletic director Mike Bohn, who returns to Boulder today from meetings in New York, plans to talk to Barnett soon.

Barnett, whose record is 49-38 after seven seasons at CU, could not be reached for comment. A call to Barnett's lawyer, John Rodman, was not returned.

Colorado's poor finish was the breaking point, the source said. A month ago, Barnett was on solid footing in his search for a contract extension. Consecutive losses to Iowa State, Nebraska and Texas by a combined score of 130-22 placed a large amount of doubt on whether an extension would still be offered.

I am a huge football fan. I love college football.

However, am I the only one that finds it very ironic, if not moronic, that Gary Barnett is not being fired because of a recruiting scandal that involved parties with paid strippers for recruits and allegations of sexual harrassment by Barnett and rape by Colorado players/recruits from seven different women during recruiting parties? Rather, he is being fired because his teams were humiliated by Nebraska and Texas on the playing field?

While I am glad Colorado has finally come to its senses, I do have to say "why now if not then?" Colorado University's priorities are clearly misplaced.

Angry Alien Productions: A Christmas Story

2005-12-08T08:42:00.000-06:00

You have to check out this 30-second recreation of "A Christmas Story" (in my book, the best Christmas movie ever - of course, take that with a grain of salt - I am Jewish after all and have a different perspective on what Christmas movies should be like....)

The Dilbert Blog

2005-12-08T08:34:00.000-06:00

My favorite cartoonist, Scott Adams, has his own blog: The Dilbert Blog!!!.

Check out this post:

Yet another “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” has been killed, this time by a rocket attack from an unmanned drone. There are a lot of jobs that I wouldn’t want, and “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” is right at the top. But I can tell you for sure that if I ever got that job, the first thing I’d do is narc out one of the top two guys so I could move up a notch. Apparently one of the perks of being in the top two is having a really, really good hiding place. The number 3 through 10 leadership guys are pretty much scurrying between mud huts and looking at the sky a lot.

I know that war is Hell and all that, but I have to think that the guy who fired the rocket by remote control loves his job. I have an image of him sitting in an air conditioned headquarters someplace, feet up on the desk, a bag of Cheetohs on one side, a Budweiser on the other, staring at his computer screen. It’s about 1 am and everyone else is asleep. The order comes through on e-mail saying something like “Blow up mud hut #4,7855.” So he takes a break from playing Doom and plugs that number into the GPS system and soon his drone is hovering over said mud hut, missiles ready to go.

Maybe it’s just a “guy thing” but the idea of blowing up a mud hut by remote controlled drone sounds like the most fun thing I can think of. And if the number 3 al-Qaida leader happens to be inside, that’s a bonus. It certainly makes your story sound less nerdy afterwards.

I find it interesting that the guy with the best job in the world gets to blow up the guy with the worst job in the world. That’s really rubbing it in. But I guess it’s not so different from a CEO downsizing the auditing department. It’s one of those recurring themes in life.

Steven Spielberg's Munich: Moral Equivalency At Its Most Outrageous

2005-12-08T08:15:00.000-06:00

Steven Spielberg's latest project is a movie based upon the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes by the PLO and the Israeli efforts to track down and kill the PLO terrorists responsible.

This trailer would suggest that the central theme of "Munich" will be that when good guys kill bad guys, the good guys become the bad guys (or are at least as bad as the bad guys).

There is a difference. The PLO chose to murder innocent civillians for no other reason than they were Jews representing Israel in the Olympics. The Mossad, who was charged with finding and eliminating those responsible, were on a mission to ensure that those responsible could never hurt another innocent person again and to otherwise discourage further terrorist attacks. Let's make no mistake - if the Mossad did not eliminate those terrorists, they would have engaged in further terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish people. Does Spielberg not understand this? More innocents would have died. Also, it should not be forgotten or downplayed that if it not been for the PLO's actions, the Mossad would not have undertaken this particular operation.

Any movie that tries to equate the actions of the PLO and the Mossad is nothing more than disgusting moral equivalency, if you ask me.

Code Pink Takes On GI Joe

2005-12-08T08:06:00.000-06:00

Code Pink is now harrassing Christmas shoppers by urging them to avoid buying "war toys":

WAR IS NOT FUN & GAMES!!!
Every holiday season manufactures prey on our children with pro-war propaganda disguised as innocent toys. Don’t let your child be a victim of G.I. Joe! As you’re out buying holiday gifts, make a point this year to show little ones that war is not game. Set an example for the children in your life and use the opportunity to teach them non-violence.
I guess if you are unsuccessful at putting an end to a real war, then a campaign to stop pretend wars is more their speed...

Actually, I was on the fence as to whether my son needed any further presents for Hanukkah. Now, I am determined to buy him the Millenium Falcon and loads of additional "Star Wars" paraphanelia.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Bolton Criticizes Security Council For Failure To Condemn Attacks

2005-12-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, shows why he is exactly the right person for the job:

Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations has criticized the Security Council for failing to condemn the latest terrorist attack in Israel.

The envoy singled out Algeria for blocking a U.S. drafted statement.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton issued a statement Tuesday unequivocally condemning the bomb attack in the Israeli town of Netanya that killed at least five people. The unusual action came after a U.S. attempt to have the statement issued by the Security Council was rejected.

Diplomats attending the meeting say several Council members raised concerns about language in the U.S.-drafted document. Ambassador Bolton, however, blamed Algeria for quashing the measure by objecting to a passage urging Syria to close offices of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claims responsibility for the attack. “Other governments had questions about particular language. We were perfectly prepared to engage in discussions about constructive suggestions, but Algeria categorically refused to name Syria and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” he said.

The U.S. envoy later read the text of the statement to reporters, and lashed out at the Council for what he called “failing to speak the truth”.

He said “you have to speak up in response to these terrorist attacks. It’s a great shame that the Security Council couldn’t speak to this terrorist attack in Netanya, but if the Council won’t speak, the United States will.”

A Really Good Cause

2005-12-07T20:30:00.000-06:00

The Environmental Republican today seeks your aid in helping get needed supplies to American troops.

More information can be found here. This is a very, very worthy cause - regardless of your feelings on George Bush or whether you believe the Iraqi War was justified. I strongly urge my readers to participate.

No National Consensus On Iraq

2005-12-07T09:16:00.000-06:00

From Dick Morris:

After a newspaper ran Mark Twain's obituary, the story goes, he protested that the reports of his death had been "greatly exaggerated"; so, too, the media accounts of an emerging national consensus against the War in Iraq are considerably at variance with what Americans are actually thinking.

The most recent Fox News poll, completed Nov. 30, suggests that while half of Americans would like to see a schedule for withdrawal of U.S. troops, a majority feel the war has done good things — and a larger majority feel that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when Bush told us there were.

By 52 percent to 27 percent, Americans believe that "the world would be worse off if the U.S. military had not taken action in Iraq and Saddam Hussein were still in power." By 59-20, they feel Iraq would've been worse off if we hadn't acted.

Asked what they believe about WMDs in Iraq, 61 percent said there were still such weapons there or that there had been WMDs in the country but that they were destroyed or moved. Only 28 percent agree that Iraq had no WMDs.

These data show that Americans are still largely in sympathy with our objectives in Iraq and accepting of our reasons for entering the war — two good reasons for the Democrats not to overplay their hand in opposing it.

The irony of this war is that the normal definitions of words do not really apply. "Success," for example, does not mean military victory on the battlefield, but a political victory in creating a stable, democratic, elected government in Iraq that can wage its own war and protect itself against terrorists. For America, "peace" does not mean the end of fighting, it just means that an Iraqi government will be battling its own terrorists with less and less American intervention or support.

Similarly, "defeat" does not mean that the terrorists prevail militarily — but that they force a political decision to withdraw American troops before the Iraqi government and military can take over the task of self-defense.

Mel Gibson To Film Holocaust Movie

2005-12-07T08:09:00.000-06:00

This is unbelievable.

From the same man who unapologetically portrayed the Jews as the killer of Christ in "The Passion of the Christ":

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 6 - Mel Gibson, whose "The Passion of the Christ" was assailed by critics as an anti-Semitic passion play - and whose father has been on record as a Holocaust denier - has a new project under way: a nonfiction miniseries about the Holocaust.

Mr. Gibson's television production company is developing a four-hour miniseries for ABC based on the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbors hid her from the Nazis but who lost several relatives in concentration camps.

It is not expected that Mr. Gibson will act in the miniseries, nor is it certain yet that his name, rather than his company's, will be publicly attached to the final product, according to several people involved in developing it. Nor is it guaranteed yet that the project will be completed and broadcast.

But Quinn Taylor, ABC's senior vice president in charge of movies for television, acknowledged that the attention-getting value of having Mr. Gibson attached to a Holocaust project was a factor.

"Controversy's publicity, and vice versa," Mr. Taylor said.

This cannot bode well...

Howard Dean - the United States Will Lose The Iraq War

2005-12-06T07:46:00.000-06:00

It's official. Howard Dean declares that the United States will lose the Iraq War and that our forces should be immediately withdrawn:

(SAN ANTONIO) -- Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.
Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

Dean says the Democrat position on the war is 'coalescing,' and is likely to include several proposals.

"I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years," Dean said. "Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job there and its a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get the target off the backs of American troops.

Dean didn't specify which country the US forces would deploy to, but he said he would like to see the entire process completed within two years. He said the Democrat proposal is not a 'withdrawal,' but rather a 'strategic redeployment' of U.S. forces.

What an asshole. What an idiot.

A few thoughts:

Good to see that the Democrats' position on the war will be announced soon...it has only taken almost three years. My confidence in the Democrats handling of national security is pretty much non-existent.

Every time Howard Dean opens his mouth, he makes it more than evident that he has no idea what he is talking about, nor does he have any concern as to the implications of the policy he is suggesting.

Moreover, it is clear he hasn't thought through his comments. He announces that we cannot win the war against Al Quaeda and the Bathists in Iraq, so the U.S. should immediately withdraw and re-deploy. Re-deploy to where? To fight Al Quaeda in Afghanistan (even though the majority of Al Quaeda operatives now appear to be fighting the U.S. in Iraq). But, didn't he just say that we couldn't defeat these same forces?

So, we should fight Zarqawi, who is in Iraq, by withdrawing from Iraq to a friendly neighboring country? That makes no sense. If you want to destroy an enemy, you usually have to go to where the enemy is to engage that enemy. Moreover, if the Democrat's argument is correct that Iraq became a terrorist battleground because of our presence, don't you risk turning that "friendly" neighboring country into the next Iraq?

On a side note, if you are a Democrat, aren't you at all concerned about losing the military vote?

Howard Dean then goes on to compare the Administration's handling of pre-war intelligence as another Watergate scandal... alleging that Bush lied, mislead and supposedly forgot to give the Senate intelligence that disproved the case for war... of course, without providing evidence to suggest that Bush knew there were no WMD's and ignoring the bipartisan commissions that have proven Bush did not mislead the Senate.

Blogging Vacation

2005-12-05T08:47:00.000-06:00

Blogging will be light this week, yet again.... the fourth quarter is very crazy for me, and alas, I have to reasses my priorities..

Democratic Revisionist History - Part V

2005-12-01T08:32:00.000-06:00

The Village Voice has posted Hillary Clinton's letter to constituents in which she claims that she voted for the war because she was duped. Here is my favorite excerpt:

In October 2002, I voted for the resolution to authorize the Administration to use force in Iraq. I voted for it on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Maybe she is confusing the Bush Administration with the Clinton Administration:

"(Iraq) admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability — notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production." -— Text of President Clinton's address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff, Feb. 17, 1998

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998

Well, isn't it funny that Ms. Clinton, herself, before the Iraq War vote was absolutely 100% certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?

Now, I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people....It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." Hillary Clinton's speech in support of Senate Joint Resolution 45 (i.e., the Resolution authorizing the Iraq War).

Hmmm.... isn't it fair to say that Ms. Clinton was hyping intelligence or pushing the case for war? Isn't it fair to say that Ms. Clinton's speech on the Senate floor may have swayed others?

My major problem with Hillary Clinton's "explanation" for her Iraq War vote is that she fails to take responsibility or otherwise own her vote. Rather than saying, we were all mistaken, she seems to be saying that she would not have voted for war if it had not been for the "assurances" of the Bush administration that such WMD's were present in Iraq.

So, her defense is that she is easily manipulated????? And, this woman wants us to believe she is qualified to be President of the United States???? Sorry, but a true leader would put more thought into such important issues as war than merely relying on the "assurances" of others. If my leader decides to go to war, that leader must act decisively and fight to win. Most importantly, a true leader would take responsibility for their actions-even the mistakes.

Her argument assumes that the Bush administration was in possession of evidence that was exculpatory to Saddam Hussein and did not reveal it to Congress or that the Bush administration "cherry picked" intelligence that it gave to Congress. As Michael Barone wrote, this argument is absolutely wrong:

Bush, Cheney and the administration have the truth on their side. Exhaustive and authoritative examinations of the prewar intelligence, by the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004, by the Silberman-Robb Commission in 2005 and by the British commission headed by Lord Butler, have established that U.S. intelligence agencies, and the intelligence organizations of leading countries like Britain, France and Germany, believed that Saddam Hussein's regime was in possession of or developing weapons of mass destruction -- chemical and biological weapons, which the regime had used before, and nuclear weapons, which it was working on in the 1980s.

To the charges that Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence, the commission co-chaired by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb found that the intelligence available to Bush but not to Congress was even more alarming than the intelligence Congress had.

The Silberman-Robb panel also concluded, after a detailed investigation, that in no instance did Bush administration authorities pressure intelligence officials to alter their findings.
Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.
But Bush didn't lie about it.

Further Proof That The Lessons of 9/11 Have Been Forgotten

2005-12-01T08:27:00.000-06:00

The TSA is going to allow passengers to carry sharp objects on airplanes:

WASHINGTON - Airport security screeners are reportedly going to let passengers bring sharp objects on board airplanes again. Today's Washington Post says the Transportation Security Administration plans to announce security changes Friday. Sources quoted by the paper say the new rules will allow things like scissors in carry-on bags. The reasoning is that such items are no longer regarded as the greatest threat to airline security. Homeland Security Department officials are said to be more concerned about preventing suicide bomb attacks at airports. Officials want screeners to focus more on finding things that can explode rather than things that are sharp.

The Post reports the newly relaxed rules would allow scissors under four inches long and tools shorter than seven inches.

TSA spokeswoman says the new initiatives will be positive for both security and customer service.

Idiotic. Completely and utterly idiotic.

Democrats and National Security

2005-12-01T08:19:00.000-06:00

Max Boot has an interesting column exploring why most Americans do not trust Democrats on national security issues:

Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the Democrats had finally kicked the post-Vietnam, peace-at-any-price syndrome. Before the invasion of Iraq, leading Democrats sounded hawkish in demanding action to deal with what Kerry called the "particularly grievous threat" posed by Saddam Hussein. But it seems that they only wanted to do something if the cost would be minuscule. Now that the war has turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated, the Democrats want to run up the white flag.

They are offering two excuses for their loss of will. First, they claim they were "misled into war" by a duplicitous administration. But it wasn't George W. Bush who said, "I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons [of mass destruction] again." It was Bill Clinton on Dec. 16, 1998. As this example indicates, the warnings issued by Bush were virtually identical to those of his Democratic predecessor.

The Democrats' other excuse is that they never imagined that Bush would bollix up post-invasion planning as badly as he did. It's true that the president blundered, but it's not as if things usually go smoothly in the chaos of conflict. In any case, it's doubtful that the war would have been a cakewalk even if we had been better prepared. The Baathists and their jihadist allies were planning a ruthless terrorist campaign even before U.S. troops entered Iraq. Their calculation was that if they killed enough American soldiers, the American public would demand a pullout.

So far the terrorists' plan seems to be working. Even most Republican senators are demanding a withdrawal strategy. But it is the Democrats who are stampeding toward the exits. Apparently the death of about 2,100 soldiers over the course of almost three years is more than they can bear. Good thing these were not the same Democrats who were running the country in 1944, or else they would have pulled out of France after the loss of 5,000 Allied servicemen on D-day.

The Democratic mindset — cakewalk or cut and run — has already had parlous consequences. It is the reason why President Clinton did not take meaningful action against Al Qaeda in the 1990s. He figured that a serious military response — an invasion of Afghanistan or even a covert campaign to aid the Northern Alliance — would run steep risks, like body bags coming home. So he limited himself to flinging a few cruise missiles at empty buildings, leading our enemies to think that we were, in Osama bin Laden's words, a "paper tiger" that could be attacked with impunity. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq today, aside from sparking a Balkans-style civil war in which hundreds of thousands might die, would confirm this baleful impression and encourage Islamo-fascists to step up their predations.

MoveOn.org Coverup

2005-12-01T08:10:00.000-06:00

James Taranto, in yesterday's "Best of the Web" posted on Opinion Journal, has more information on MoveOn.org's decision to pull an anti-Iraq War ad that attempted to pass off images of British troops as American troops. It appears that MoveOn.org altered the scene in a still shot posted on its web site to make the error less obvious.

MoveOn.org Pulls Anti-Iraq False/Misleading Ad

2005-12-01T08:02:00.000-06:00

MoveOn.org pulled an ad, which demanded an immediated pullout from Iraq, from circulation. Why? MoveOn.org cannot tell the difference between American and British Troops:

The liberal political group MoveOn.org has yanked a video ad from its website after being criticized for using images of British soldiers to represent Americans in Iraq. The 30-second ad, which also began running on CNN and cable stations during the Thanksgiving weekend, stated that "150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq" this holiday season.

But the ad showed soldiers who were "not wearing U.S. uniforms," according to a Pentagon spokesman who was interviewed by Cybercast News Service Wednesday, approximately two hours before the Internet version of the ad was pulled from the MoveOn.org website.

"Some folks won't be home this holiday season," the 30-second spot declared before showing a video pan of a group of soldiers getting military rations. The narrator then stated that "150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq."

Todd Vician, a spokesman with the U.S. Defense Department, told Cybercast News Service after viewing the ad that none of the men featured in the photograph was wearing U.S. uniforms. "We don't have that style of desert camouflage," he said.

Vician noted that combat fatigues worn by the Marines and the Army have "a pixilated design," and Air Force BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) have a different pattern than the uniforms shown in the spot.

In addition to the men wearing foreign uniforms, Vician stated that he had never seen U.S. soldiers using meal containers like those shown in the ad.

FARENHEIT 1861

2005-12-01T07:23:00.000-06:00

You have to check this movie out.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades.

Cindy Sheehan's Book Signing Party Is A Bust

2005-11-29T08:20:00.000-06:00

Cindy Sheehan's book-signing was a bust:

While book-signings for political figures like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity often feature long lines and people waiting for hours, the scene at Cindy Sheehan's book-signing yesterday near President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch was a much more lonely affair. Photographs published by wire services including the Associated Press and Reuters depict a lonely "Peace Mom" in a virtually empty tent awaiting those seeking her autograph on her new book, "Not One More Mother's Child."

I cannot imagine why no one would show up... after all, she is soooo relevant and has such a way with words(sarcasm intended).

Joe Lieberman Understands

2005-11-29T08:06:00.000-06:00

Joe Lieberman:
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn. . . .

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
Indeed.

Now, if he could just get the rest of his party to understand....

Ted Rall Insults Iraq War Vets

2005-11-29T07:40:00.000-06:00

Ted Rall is officially one of the biggest idiots allowed to publish "editorial" cartoons.

The following is a cartoon, which he published regarding the "sex life of Iraq War vets". I found the cartoon while on Yahoo news.

I understand that Ted Rall is anti-war. I understand that Ted Rall is a radical leftist. However, I had no idea that he hated our troops so much(primarily, because I only read his cartoons if I happen to do so inadvertently).

Someone, who makes his living by exercising his First Amendment rights, should understand that he would not have the right to publish such disgusting crap if it were not for these same troops that he insults.

Wal-Mart - The Evil Empire?

2005-11-28T08:59:00.000-06:00

Interesting column in the Washington Post on Wal-Mart:

There's a comic side to the anti-Wal-Mart campaign brewing in Maryland and across the country. Only by summoning up the most naive view of corporate behavior can the critics be shocked -- shocked! -- by the giant retailer's machinations. Wal-Mart is plotting to contain health costs! But isn't that what every company does in the face of medical inflation? Wal-Mart has a war room to defend its image! Well, yeah, it's up against a hostile campaign featuring billboards, newspaper ads and a critical documentary movie. Wal-Mart aims to enrich shareholders and put rivals out of business! Hello? What business doesn't do that?

Wal-Mart's critics allege that the retailer is bad for poor Americans. This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is "a progressive success story." Furman advised John "Benedict Arnold" Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart's products....Companies like Wal-Mart are not run by saints. They can treat workers and competitors roughly. They may be poor stewards of the environment. When they break the law they must be punished. Wal-Mart is at the center of the globalized, technology-driven economy that's radically increased American inequality, so it's not surprising that it has critics. But globalization and business innovation are nonetheless the engines of progress; and if that sounds too abstract, think of the $200 billion-plus that Wal-Mart consumers gain annually. If critics prevent the firm from opening new branches, they will prevent ordinary families from sharing in those gains. Poor Americans will be chief among the casualties.

Good column. Read it all.

Critics of Wal-Mart typically lament the introduction of the "Big Box" stores into small communities. Yet, how often do you hear this charge when the company constructing the Big Box superstore is a Best Buy, Target, Compusave, etc.

Much of the anti-Wal-Mart hysteria has come from the unions. In fact, the unions typically finance a large portion of the anti-Wal-Mart campaigns in local communities across the country. This is likely a fact that most Americans don't understand or appreciate.

The unions have every right to fight Wal-Mart coming into their respective communities. After all, a non-union store means less opportunities for their members. Yet, let's at least be honest about where much of the opposition and financing of such opposition is coming from.

This being said, I personally believe that Wal-Mart should have the right to build its stores. Competition is a good thing ... Capitalism demands it.

Why not have documentaries and studies done on the affect of unions on America's productivity, the increased cost of doing business with union employees, union intimidation, decreased employment opportunities due to high cost of hiring more employees in union shops and how unions have forced some companies out of business? If it is fair to look at the social cost of Wal-Marts, why not look at the social cost of unions as well?

At the end of the day, the most ironical thing is that many of the people who decry the construction of Wal-Mart stores have no problem shopping there once the stores are constructed.

Mark Steyn on Political Correctness At the Movies

2005-11-28T08:46:00.000-06:00

Mark Steyn made some interesting observations on how "political correctness" has infected movies:

The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. Already, 85 percent of Hollywood's business comes from home entertainment — DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the ''Looney Tunes Golden Collection.'' Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we're not meant to find funny: ''Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,'' she tells us sternly. ''These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today'' — unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg's most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There's a gag for the ages.

I don't know what Whoopi's making such a meal about. It's true you don't see many positive images of people of color on ''Looney Tunes,'' but then the images of people of non-color aren't terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don't think about hitting the "Next" button and skipping to the cartoons: You can't; you gotta sit through it.

A Hollywood that's ashamed of one of its few universally acknowledged genuine artistic achievements is hardly likely to come up with any new artistic achievements. As the instant deflation of that Whoopi cushion reminds us, the movies are now so constrained by political correctness the very act of storytelling is itself endangered. That's something slightly more ominous than the feeble limousine liberalism many conservatives blame for the alleged box-office slump. Say what you like about those Hollywood writers of the '30s and '40s, but they were serious lefties. Their successors are mostly poseurs loudly trumpeting their courageous ''dissent'' while paralyzed into inanity. This year's Sean Penn thriller, ''The Interpreter,'' was originally about Muslim terrorists blowing up a bus in New York. So, naturally, Hollywood called rewrite. And instead the bus got blown up by African terrorists from the little-known republic of Matobo. ''We didn't want to encumber the film in politics in any way,'' said Kevin Misher, the producer.

But being so perversely ''non-political'' is itself a political act. If there were a dozen movies in which Tom Cruise kicked al-Qaida butt across the Hindu Kush, it would be reasonable to say, ''Hey, we'd rather deal with Matoban terrorism for a change.'' But, when every movie goes out of its way to avoid being ''encumbered,'' it starts to look like a pathology. And by the time Hollywood released this summer's ''Stealth,'' some studio exec must have panicked that, what with all this Bono/Live8 debt-relief business, it might look a bit Afrophobic to have any more Matoban terrorists. So ''Stealth'' was a high-tech action thriller about USAF pilots zapping about the skies in which the bad guy is the plane.

That's right: An unmanned computer-flown plane goes rogue and starts attacking things. The money shot is — stop me if this rings a vague bell — a big downtown skyscraper with a jet heading toward it. Only there are no terrorists aboard the jet. The jet itself is the terrorist.

This is the pitiful state Hollywood's been reduced to. Safer not to have any bad guys. Let's make the plane the bad guy. No wonder it's 20th century Britlit — ''Harry Potter,'' ''Lord of the Rings,'' ''Narnia'' — keeping those Monday morning numbers up. It's Hollywood's yarn-spinning that's really out of focus, and in the end even home entertainment revenue won't save a storytelling business that no longer knows how to tell any.

Indeed.

I will never, ever forgive Hollywood for re-writing the screenplay based upon Tom Clancy's novel "The Sum Of All Fears". In the book, the enemy was Palestinian terrorists. In the movie, the enemy became Neo-Nazi terrorists. Yeah, the threat of Neo-Nazi terrorism is so tremendous.... and, Hollywood wonders why the American public no longer finds Hollywood to be very relevant.

David Brooks On The Media And Iraq

2005-11-28T08:16:00.000-06:00

An interesting observation from David Brooks:

Second, why aren't there more stories about war heroes like Christopher Ieva? The casual courage he and his men displayed is awe-inspiring, but most Americans couldn't name a single hero from this war. That's because despite all the amazing things people are achieving in Iraq, we don't tell their stories back here. That's partly because in the post-Vietnam era many Americans - especially those who dominate the culture - are uncomfortable with military valor. That's partly because some people don't want this war to seem like a heroic enterprise. And it's partly because many Americans are aloof from this whole conflict, and couldn't tell you a thing about Operations Matador and Steel Curtain and the other major offensives.

Unfortunately, the media is stuck in "Vietnam mode". While I am sure that many in the mainstream media would relish the political black eye that a failure in Iraq would cause the Republicans, I am not going to go as far to say that the media wants us to lose the Iraq War. However, it would be easy to deduce that the majority of the mainstream media want to relive the media's role in ending the Vietnam War.

Bruce Willis To Make An Iraq War Movie Based On Michael Yon's Writings

2005-11-28T08:01:00.000-06:00

This is very interesting:

ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.

The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”.

Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.

“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.

He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.

Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. “What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,” the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.”

Good for Bruce. It is good to know that not everyone in Tinseltown is a deranged leftist.

Iraq - Civillian Casualty Myths Exposed

2005-11-28T07:55:00.000-06:00

Logic Times does an excellent job of de-bunking the left's allegations of 100,000 civillian deaths in Iraq. Read it all.

Salute To A Dedicated Employee

2005-11-28T07:13:00.000-06:00

I am somewhat of a workaholic, but this guy has me beat:

A Saudi employee working as a supervisor in Unaizah municipality recently retired after 44 years of service without taking a single day off, Al-Watan reported. The employee told Al-Watan that he did not need a day off or take any sick leave or yearly holiday. Employees working with him and his supervisor confirmed that the man was so dedicated to his work that he came to work even when he was sick!

I used to think that I worked a lot!

CNN and Vice President Cheney

2005-11-28T07:09:00.000-06:00

A political statement from CNN?

From Drudge Report:

At 11:04:45 AM ET Monday CNN was airing Vice President Dick Cheney's speech live from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington -- when a large black 'X' repeatedly flashed over the vice president's face!The 'X' over Cheney's face appeared each time less than a second, creating an odd subliminal effect.As this DRUDGE REPORT screen capture reveals, while one 'X' flashed over Cheney's face CNN ran a headline at the bottom of its screen: "CHENEY: I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS WRONG TO CRITICIZE."One top White House source expressed concern about what was aired over CNN."Is someone in Atlanta trying to tell us something?" A CNN spokesman did not return repeated calls late Monday night.

My message to CNN: stick with "reporting" the news.

Update: CNN has issued a statement indicating that this was, in fact, a technical glitch.
Update:

From Drudge:

CNN OPERATOR FIRED AFTER SUGGESTING 'X' OVER CHENEY WAS 'FREE SPEECH'

A CNN switchboard operator was fired over the holiday -- after the operator claimed the 'X' placed over Vice President's Dick Cheney's face was "free speech!"

"We did it just to make a point. Tell them to stop lying, Bush and Cheney," the CNN operator said to a caller. "Bring our soldiers home."

The caller initially phoned the network to complain about the all-news channel flashing an "X' over Cheney as he gave an address live from Washington.

"Was it not freedom of speech? Yes or No?" the CNN operator explained.

"If you don't like it, don't watch."

Laurie Goldberg, Senior Vice President for Public Relations with CNN, said in a release:

"A Turner switchboard operator was fired today after we were alerted to a conversation the operator had with a caller in which the operator lost his temper and expressed his personal views -- behavior that was totally inappropriate. His comments did not reflect the views of CNN. We are reaching out to the caller and expressing our deep regret to her and apologizing that she did not get the courtesy entitled to her. "

I would likely side with CNN on this one. Maybe it was a bit of wishful thinking on the CNN employee's part.

Majority of Americans View Democratic Criticism of Iraq War As Partisan Politics

2005-11-27T16:12:00.000-06:00

This is an interesting poll:

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale. . . .

Just three of 10 adults accept that Democrats are leveling criticism because they believe this will help U.S. efforts in Iraq. A majority believes the motive is really to "gain a partisan political advantage."

Palestinian Authority Admits That Former Jewish Communities Now Used As Terrorist Camps

2005-11-25T10:30:00.000-06:00

This was obvious:

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian Authority admitted in an official document published that today parts of Gush Katif, the former Jewish communities of Gaza, are now "training camps" for terror groups.

In an exclusive story last week, WND reported Hamas has turned Neve Dekalim, the former capital of Gush Katif, into a "martyrs training camp," and has used the territory to fire rockets into Israel.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef yesterday toured Gaza's former Jewish communities and detailed a PA plan to bring security to the area. Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August, the land that comprised Gush Katif has been the scene of regular internal Palestinian clashes.

Looks like the Gaza pullout was a "great success". Yes, sarcasm was intended.