Peaceful Nuclear Power, Huh?

Another place where Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter worked his magic is Iran. Iran has insisted all along that its nuclear ambitions were entirely peaceful. But, the mullahs have now been forced to admit that they've pursued information on nuclear bomb fabrication from Pakistan.

Do you think Iran would have knuckled under to pressure from John Kerry?

A Gratuitous Dig

Right in the middle of this Associated Press story about the lastest suicide car bombing in Iraq, there's this little line: " It was one of the deadliest insurgent attacks since President Bush declared the end of major fighting in May 2003."

What liberal media were we talking about now?

Nature and Nurture In Science

If I ever need advice on how to invest my money, or whether I should get a fixed or adjustable rater mortgage, I'll ask an economist. However, I will not ask an economist if men and women are born different. But some economists simply won't wait to be asked.

The current debate on women and their scientific abilities has missed the central point that scientists are made, not born, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Monday.

The authors, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas chief economist W. Michael Cox and Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economist Richard Alm, wrote that scientific knowledge requires years of education, and what matters are the choices and opportunities open to young women at universities.

"Clearly, debating whether women are intellectually equipped for sciences makes little sense. Women themselves have already settled the issue, one degree at a time," the authors said.

Impossible To Satisfy

If there was any doubt that environmentalists will settle for nothing less than a return to a primitive society, this should settle matters.

"Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam, says Philip Fearnside from Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus."

And, we know what environmentalist wackos think about nuclear. Get ready to huddle around cave fires.

Is Liberalism Dead?

John Leo notes that, if liberals are performing autopsies on their ideology then, it must be dead.

If Hillary Clinton is fleeing the cooling corpse, well........

And There's This

"When politicians like HRC [Hillary Clinton] start flocking to Iraq to bask in the light of its success, then you know that the corner has been turned," a reader of his blog wrote to Austin Bay.

Iraqi Security Close, Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Are we closer to fully securing Iraq? Jack Kelly thinks so.

There are about 50-60 attacks a day on coalition forces, about half the pre-Fallujah level. Almost all are within the Sunni Triangle, and most are ineffective. "Most of these are ambush-style attacks that result in no casualties," noted StrategyPage.com.

The news media report the attacks, but tend not to report, as StrategyPage does, that "dozens, sometimes over a hundred, of the attackers, or suspects, are arrested every day."

"The nine election day suicide bombers averaged about three victims each, a strike rate so bad that Allah might soon start rationing the virgins to show his displeasure," Kelly quotes Joe Harnden of the British magazine, The Spectator.

[Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division] has heard so many similar stories that he created an Iraqi version of the "Darwin Awards." Created in 1993 by a student at Stanford University, the Darwin awards commemorate those who "contribute to our gene pool by removing themselves from it in a really stupid way."

This story sort of confirms it.

"Why Not Here?"

Like dominos, Islamic tyrannies are teetering and are about to fall. Ordinary people, yearning to breath free, are demanding a say in who rules them and how.

Simply "getting Osama" would never have ended Islamic terrorism. The roots of Islamic rage had to be janked out of the ground, and those root are not Western oppression or Israel. Islamic misery and squalor are self-inflicted, by tyrants like Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, Iranian ayatollahs, Yasir Arafat, Bahir Assad and Hosni Mubarak.

Shove them aside (or kill them), give the people freedom and prosperity, and they'll have no reason to hate anyone.

Like Putting Silk Stockings On A Pig

Kofi Annan is trying to kiss up to the United States. Forced to confess that the UN is corrupt, he's trying to make a few book keeping changes that he thinks will make the United States happy.

He's missing the point. The problem with the UN isn't just that it's monetarily corrupt - it's morally corrupt. This is an organization that has placed communist China, Cuba, and Zimbabwe on human right commission and once kicked the United States off its human rights commission to make room for Sudan. Yes, that Sudan, the one that is now committing genocide.

And speaking of Sudanese genocide, the UN excused itself from having to do anything about genocide in the Sudan by saying that it wasn't actually genocide, just some sort of unfortunate misbehavior.

The UN doesn't need new book keepers. It needs to go. And it should be replaced by a coaltion of civilized democratic nations that are willing to defend democracy and civilations against the barbarian hoards.

Europe Bows Before Reality

European lefties are grudgingly confessing that Bush may be right after all.

"The Germany Reagan was traveling in, much like today's Germany, was very skeptical of the American president and his foreign policy," Der Spiegel writes. "When Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate--and the Berlin Wall--and demanded that Gorbachev 'tear down this Wall,' he was lampooned the next day on the editorial pages. He is a dreamer, wrote commentators. . . . But history has shown that it wasn't Reagan who was the dreamer as he voiced his demand. Rather, it was German politicans who were lacking in imagination--a group who in 1987 couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany."

Ward Churchill, Plagiarist and Thug

Ward Churchill has now been busted for a flagrant plagiarism. And, he's on tape taking a swing at a newsman.

And, you can watch the video.

Condi Rice, Superstar

Can you imagine Hillary Clinton in this picture?

This picture made the front page of the Washington Post yesterday. And, the Post has a story about Condoleezza Rice's fashion choices.

"Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual."

We Are Not Who We Were

Sixty years ago this past Thursday, the First Battalion of the 28th Marines raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of that event is among the most memorable ever taken and has been immortalized in bronze as the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, DC. The moment will stand forever as a symbol of American indomitability, and as an emblem of America’s greatest generation.
In a cruel way, the event was also a hoax, as a long and bloody fight for control of the island still confronted those Marines. It required the remainder of February and most of March before the United States was in full control of Iwo Jima. By the end of the 38-day battle, fully one third of all of the Americans who landed on the beaches fell as casualties, including 6825 dead. The 22,000 man Japanese garrison perished almost to the last man.
In its own way, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue two years ago was a similar moment. As jubilant Iraqis cheered, an American tank retriever pulled the abomination down. Liberated Iraqis spat on Saddam’s likeness and battered it with the soles of their shoes. Like the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the image will always be remembered as a symbol of victory. And just as was the case at Iwo Jima, there was still a lot of fighting and dying yet to be done.
In both Iwo Jima and Iraq, the enemy offered little initial resistance. In both cases, he chose not to meet us head to head, where our superior force would certainly prevail. Instead the enemy all but invited us onto his turf, where he believed he could win a protracted war of wills.
The Marines at Iwo Jima were a part of our greatest generation. The fighting men in Iraq are the finest of their generation and are every bit the equal of the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, or the servicemen who fought in any other theater of World War II.
But we cannot call this generation the equal of that one. What makes America different this day is not that her finest are less than the finest of earlier generations. Rather it is the quality or lack thereof, of the people whom our finest are defending.
Aside from his own father, there really was nobody like Ted Kennedy in World War II. Like father, like son, Ted Kennedy actually seems energized by every enemy success. Sixty years ago, no one like Michael Moore would have been invited to sit alongside a former president in the VIP booth at the national convention of a prominent political party. He would have suffered unanimous ostracism.
The terrorists came within about 50,000 Ohio votes of winning their victory last November, and it’s still not clear if the small majority of Americans will continue to stand resolute against the terrorists and their defeatist allies here. Traditional patriotism has become unfashionable among the social elite. Too many of those who support our mission feel they must do so quietly, so as to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of their friends.
We have become so muddled and squishy as a nation that, when some New York firemen raised a flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center, what should have been an occasion for Americans to rally around turned into a tribal squabble. The image of three firefighters raising that flag recalled Mount Suribachi so vividly that a statue was ordered. But efforts to create that memorial statue were halted because all three firemen in the photo were white. Political correctness came into conflict with historical correctness. It seemed that nobody could bear the thought of a statue with three people of pallor. The historically improved statue was to have one white, one black and one Hispanic. Why no Asian or Pacific Islanders, indigenous Americans or Arab-Americans were included escapes me. Why not add a few women? Why not hundreds, if not thousands of flag raisers so that every race, creed, sex and sexual orientation can be represented?
The Japanese strategy at Iwo Jima and later at Okinawa, was to break the will of the American public by making victory indigestibly costly. As it turned out, the Japanese were visionaries. They saw America, as it would be in the 21st century.

Dems Going Ballistic Over New Book

It's curious to me how differently Democrats and Republicans react to the same stimuli. Last year numerous authors poured out stacks of scandalous anti-Bush books and Bush simply ignored them.

But, when a book comes out that is critical of Democrats, any Democrat, they go nuts. That's the case with the latest book by James Corsi: Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians.

Of course, what has them upset is the book's claim that it was Democratic politicians who facilitated Iran's nuclear ambitions. It's likely that the book is crackpot stuff, but what interests me is the extravagent reaction of the Democrats.

Ted Rall, Unhinged

Ted Rall is coming apart at the seems. Just one more cockroach who cannot stand having a light shined on him I suppose.

Follow The Money

Ward Churchill has actually done America a public service, by exposing how closely allied the supposedly moonbat left is with mainstream liberalism.

"Churchill adapted his essay into a book, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” which earned honorable mention for a human rights award from the Gustavus Myers Center in Boston—the third time the group had so honored the embattled professor.

At first blush, the Gustavus Myers Center could seem like a wacky, far-left ivory tower creation. Receiving honorable mention for its 2003 award, for example, was a picture book of “classic” gay erotica. Witness the group’s own description of the book: “Pencil, ink and chalk drawings claiming an erotic past as extremely important for notions of identity and community.”

Careful examination, however, reveals that the Myers Center is anything but fringe. Listed on its website as “sponsors” (a term that is not defined) are mainstream liberal organizations such as the NAACP, the Urban League, the Center for Democratic Renewal, and the United Church of Christ.

And the foundations that fund the Myers Center’s sponsors are key financial backers of the American left, such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Public Welfare Foundation (which contributed to the anti-Bush America’s Coming Together)."

A Great New Blogger!

Peggy Noonan joins the blogosphere. And does a does a damned fine job in her first effort. She gets it.

Save Your Money CBS. Call Maurice Hinchey

Maurice Hinchey should call CBS and tell them who's behind the fake National Guard memos.
CBS is less certain than he is and has actually hired a private eye to discover who bamboozled Dan Rather.

"On Sept. 20 of last year, CBS announced that it was employing an independent panel to investigate how 60 Minutes Wednesday had ended up relying on shaky-looking memos in its segment about President Bush’s past service in the Texas Air National Guard. The investigators, CBS said, would "determine what errors occurred in the preparation of the report and what actions need to be taken."

Five days later, CBS launched another inquiry into the memo scandal. The network hired a private investigator named Erik T. Rigler, a former F.B.I. agent and Navy aviator, to track down the source of the troublesome documents."

Will Madelleine Albright Claim We Had Him All Along?

Will Howard Dean claim that the capture was politically timed?
Whatever, the word is that we are very, very close to capturing that terrorist piece of shit, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"They came very close to capturing him," one of the Kurdish officials said. "They had never been this close previously, and it means that the new intelligence they're gathering is much better than before."

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not say where and when the raids took place.

Al-Zarqawi's close calls are one sign that his militant network in Iraq has sustained serious losses and may be unraveling. Since early this month, Iraqi and U.S. forces have carried out a series of little-noticed raids in Baghdad, Mosul and other areas that led to the killing or capture of at least eight al-Zarqawi operatives.

The recent arrests followed the capture of one of al-Zarqawi's top lieutenants, Abu Omar al-Kurdi, in a Jan. 15 raid in Baghdad. Al-Kurdi has provided detailed information about his boss' movements, hiding places and communication methods, according to the intelligence officials.

"Al-Kurdi opened the door to more arrests," one of the officials said. "He has given valuable intelligence about security arrangements for al-Zarqawi and others in the terrorist network."

Moonbat Hinchey, In His Own Words

From CNN's Inside Politics (scroll down)

Note toward the end, when he declares that it's very responsible of him to make unsubstantiated charges.

WOODRUFF: As we reported a little while ago in our blog segment, the Internet is abuzz with reaction to comments by New York Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey. The congressman over the weekend shared his views about the now disputed CBS News report about President Bush's Air National Guard service. Representative Maurice Hinchey is with me now, he joins us from Albany, New York.

Congressman Hinchey, what exactly did you say on Saturday at this town meeting in Ithaca?

REP. MAURICE HINCHEY (D), NEW YORK: Well, Judy, what I said came in response to a question from one of my constituents. There were about 100 people there. And they asked some questions about media manipulation. They were concerned about the issue of Armstrong Williams, for example, people being hired by this administration to pretend that they were giving objective news and information but were really putting forth the point of view of the administration rather than doing it objectively. And also the issue with Mr. Gannon, who was admitted to the White House press corps but who was not a legitimate press person, and was there just to throw softballs to the president.

And then the issue of the CBS Dan Rather event came up, and I said that there were false documents or documents which were falsified and presented as being accurate and there was a question as to where those documents came from. And in the context of the discussion I suggested that -- my theory was that I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the White House political operation, headed up by Karl Rove.

WOODRUFF: Well, I'm reading here a transcript of what you said, you said: "I have my own beliefs about how that happened. It originated with Karl Rove in my belief in the White House." What do you know that you base that on?

HINCHEY: Well, I think there's a great deal of circumstantial information and factual information. Mr. Rove, for example, has been involved in a host of political dirty tricks that are traceable back -- all the way back to the 1970s, '80s, '90s, right on up to the present. The way in which he treated Senator McCain, for example, in the context of the 2000 election.

So it doesn't take an awful lot of imagination if you're thinking about who it is that might have produced these false documents to try to mislead people in this very cynical way. It would take someone very brilliant, very cynical, very Machiavellian, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with the name of Karl Rove as a possibility of having done that.

WOODRUFF: But, at this point, it is just imagination, is that correct?

HINCHEY: It's a possibility, yes. It's a possibility based upon circumstantial evidence and the history of his behavior over the course of several decades. WOODRUFF: Well, you know, there was an independent panel that CBS asked to look into this -- you know, to look into how CBS got these documents, what went wrong with the story that appears on "60 MINUTES." They were not able to conclude where these documents came from. They said, finally, they weren't even able to determine whether these documents were authentic or whether they were forged. So my question is, how are you in a position to know more than they or others who have investigated this now?

HINCHEY: Well, Judy, no one has come to any conclusions and that's the unfortunate thing. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to get to the bottom of the whole business of manipulating the media that has gone on in the context of this administration.

I think that that's critically important. The essence of this democracy is really at stake. If people sitting back in their living rooms can't rely upon the information they're getting over the news channel or over the radio, then very important aspects of this Democratic system become eroded.

So, we need to get to the bottom of it, that's the point here. I'm quite surprised, frankly, that this has gotten all the attention that it has, but in a way I'm grateful that it has because it's important for us to be concerned about these things. Manipulating the media in this kind of a cynical way is antithetical to what we stand for as a nation, we need to find out who did it.

WOODRUFF: But some would say, listening to what you said and hearing your acknowledgment that you don't have any proof, that it's irresponsible or -- let me ask you, do you think it's responsible for you to say this without evidence?

HINCHEY: I think it's very responsible of me to speculate about where this manipulation is coming from. Yes. I think it's important to speculate about it, I think it's important to discuss it and I think it's important to try to stimulate the investigative agencies to look into this.

Unfortunately, the Congress is not doing its job. There are -- this is something that ought to be investigated by the Congress of the United States. But this Congress is not doing its job. It's not standing up for the American people the way it should. And, as a consequence, there is a certain amount of frustration out there and that frustration was voiced by the people who attended the meeting that I held last Saturday.

WOODRUFF: We're going to have to leave it there, Congressman Maurice Hinchey. And again, we did try to reach the White House to get their comment on all of this, we were not able to get a comment from them.

Poor Larry Summers

First, Larry Summers gets in trouble for suggesting to the great Cornell West that he might try working for his paycheck, then he speaks truth to power and the left is calling for his head.

Although no call came for a vote of "no confidence," which some faculty members have suggested might occur at a future meeting, physics professor Daniel S. Fisher asked for Summers's resignation.

"For the good of Harvard, Lawrence Summers must resign, or the corporation, for the good of Harvard, must fire him," said Fisher, referring to Harvard's governing board, the Crimson reported. "We cannot wait for irreparable harm to come to Harvard."

A License To Speak Freely

College campuses have never been the bastion of free expression and the exchange of ideas that they are supposed to be. Only certain ideas are permitted on the college campus.
But rarely has there ever been a starker contrast between the ideal and the reality than is on display today with the disparate treatment of Ward Churchill and Larry Summmers.

Many Harvard professors are leading an academic insurrection against Summers, lobbying for a vote of no-confidence. On February 15, professors ripped into Summers at a one-sided meeting to discuss his comments. Summers has been forced to largely back down from his statements, writing a letter to the Harvard faculty in which he explains, “if I could turn back the clock, I would have spoken differently on matters so complex . . . . I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields.”

Meanwhile, Ward Churchill, who should not only be fired for his statements but expelled from the country, has found the hearts of many in liberal academia. Deans and professors from all over the country have pledged their support. Ignorant college students who cite the First Amendment without ever having read it back Churchill all the way.

Be Careful What You Ask For

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The New York Times et al thought they had the Bush Administration by the short and curlies over this bogus Valerie Plame affair. But, it's journalists who are getting jugged.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST


"After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a CIA operative to the columnist Robert Novak. Mr. Ashcroft turned the inquiry over to his deputy, who quickly appointed a special counsel."

In the recent annals of press freedom, there are few more regrettable sentences than those two from a December 31, 2003, editorial in the New York Times.

Stop Me Before I Rape or Rob Again!

The first step toward rehabilitation is to admit that you have a problem. Kofi Annan has done that, but I doubt his sincerity.

"In the past year I have read many attacks on the United Nations--quite a few, but by no means all, in the pages of this newspaper."

Exposing criminal activity is an attack?

"That pains me, because I have served the U.N. all my life. I have done, and am still doing, everything I can to correct its imperfections, and to improve and strengthen it. And I believe profoundly in the importance of that task, because a strong U.N. is of vital importance to humanity."

That's rewriting history. You did everything you could to obstruct investigations. That's doing everything you can to "correct its imperfections?"

Finish the fisking yourself.

But What About The Popcorn Board And The Honey Subsidy?

You might not know this, but your tax dollars have been subidizing Orville Redenbacher. Yes, for decades you have underwritten the nation's popcorn industry - and its honey industry. The honey subsidy goes back to World War II, when the US needed bees' wax for water proofing. I have no idea of the origins of the popcorn board.

Anyway, George Bush's new budget eliminates many ridiculous expenditures, although I don't know if popcorn and honey survived.

He Must Have Been Getting Ronery

Only a couple of days after declaring that he was done talking, North Korean madman Kim Jong Il now says he's ready to resume negotiations.

"We will go the negotiating table any time if there are mature conditions for the six-party talks thanks to the concerted efforts of the parties concerned in the future, he said, expressing hope that the United States would show trustworthy sincerity and move," the government-run Korean Central News Agency said, referring to Kim.

Can we just vaporize the little shit and get this over with?

It's Bush's Fault

I just knew that somebody was going to blame Hunter Thompson's suicide on the reelection of George Bush.

"He was depressed about the state of society," said Loren Jenkins, foreign editor for National Public Radio in Washington.
A vehement opponent of President Bush, Mr. Thompson, 67, "was feeling maudlin about the current conservatism sweeping the country," Mr. Jenkins said. "He felt he'd had a long run, trying to create a freer society in the '60s and '70s and he felt it had all been closed down."

Nothing, absoulutely nothing is beneath a liberal.

Dr. Evil (Karl Rove) Exposed!

US representative Maurice Hinchey (Democrat, NY) has uncovered a devious plot. He sees the fingerprints of Karl Rove all over the CBS, Bush National Guard fiasco that brought down Dan Rather.

He has no evidence, and that is what proves Hinchey's genius. He saw straight through the plot without needing any evidence. What brilliance!

But if Karl Rove is so smart that he can twist an entire network around his finger, doesn't he deserve to be running the world?

Fearing And Loathing No More

Hunter S. Thompson, who originated the "gonzo journalsm" so popular now in such places as CBS committed suicide yesterday.

He lived in his imagination, and when that wasn't enough, he turned to drugs. And, I suppose, when that wasn't enough, he put a bullet through his head.

Being In The UN Just Isn't Any Fun Anymore

You can't steal anymore. You can't rape anymore. And now, you can't even get a little off your subordinates anymore.

The complainant, an American, said Mr. Lubbers had groped her as she was leaving his office in Geneva after a meeting late in 2003.
London's Independent said Friday that she had accused him of grabbing her and thrusting his groin into her buttocks and holding her in that position.
Mr. Lubbers, who denies the accusation, was quoted by the newspaper as saying, "This is made up. I think it must have just grown in her mind."
"I ushered the woman out of the room with my hand on her back and that is all. ... You might call it familiar, but certainly not sexual harassment."

Yes, But Was He Once A Gay Prostitute?

A Chinese man can blow up balloons through his ear.
Really!

But, is that what really matters?

Were They Really Raised By Wolves Too?

Was Rome really founded by Romulus and Remus after all?

Salivating Morons, Neo-McCarthyites

Bloggers have been called a lot of things lately since supposedly forcing the resignation of former CNN head honcho Eason Jordan. Our demands for the truth from Jordan was characterized as a witch hunt.

So, why hasn't the press been bothered by the real witchhunt - the pursuit of conservative journalist, Jeff Gannon (aka James Dale Guckert). Now that's a witch hunt.

Gannon's crime was that he asked a softball question of George Bush at a press conference. This put the MSM on his tail. What they discovered was the he was once a gay prostitute.

Gee, that would get you elected to Congress in some states, but apparently, if you're a journalist with some conservative leanings, you're disqualified.

Anyway, Jeff Gannon, who was trying to turn his life around, has been forced by press hounding to quit his job as a reporter for the Talon News Service. In the MSM, it's a greater crime to be a conservative than a liar.

Death Bed Conversion

To appreciate the shallowness of the Democratic Party these days, one only has to read Eleanor Clift's piece explaning how to win elections again, Democrats will have to start faking religious faith.

"I talked to him [Howard Dean] over the holidays," [author Jim] Wallis says. Both men are regulars at Renaissance, the New Year’s gathering of intellectuals and politicians pioneered by the Clintons. "I explained Job wasn't in the New Testament. He was grateful for that advice, and he won't make that mistake again.

The worst thing is being inauthentic, Wallis continued, and that's how Dean appeared when he called upon Job as evidence of his religiosity, and got him in the wrong Testament. "If you're motivated by religious values, let it shine through," says Wallis. But if you’re not, don’t be a phony. Dean was raised as an Episcopalian, and more recently has attended a Universalist church in Vermont. His wife is Jewish. Like most New Englanders, he is not accustomed to discussing his religious faith in a political context. "Dean talks about community and that's a value," Wallis says to reassure the crowd that the new Democratic leader can hold his own. "So let's hope for the best with Howard Dean."

And so, Dean needs to start pretending better.

Oh, and by the way, there's nothing especially religious about attending a Universalist church.

No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

Victor David Hansen's latest must read.

Part II here.

America will prevail for as long as we have men like this.

Supersize Everyone, Especially the Babes

I was in Las Vegas recently on business. No! Really! I don’t even like gambling! And one afternoon I was walking through the MGM Grand on my way to a meeting at the Convention Center. There may be even more to it, but what I saw in the ten minutes or so that I required to traverse the building was a casino, a bar, several restaurants, a hotel and a shopping mall.

Anyway, as I walked through the shopping mall section, I noticed a very sexy little nightgown hanging on a mannequin in the display window of one of the shops. But it was not really the nightgown that caught my eye. It was the sign next to the nightgown. The nightgown itself was a pink, frilly, gauzy little thing clearly meant to be alluring. But the sign read, “available in plus sizes.”

Plus sizes? How plus? And more importantly, why?

I was working my way through a fairly large crowd. And so I thought that I had a fairly representative sample for drawing conclusions about what proportion of the population might look at home in such a garment. I didn’t see anyone who could hope to squeeze into that outfit.

And so, I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before similar nightgowns that the average American could fit into were put on display, and the sign next to it would read, “available in minus sizes.”

I bring this up, because Washington State University is once again recognizing National Eating Disorders Awareness Week by telling women that it’s okay to be a “plus size.” This is known as “body esteem.”

The obvious goal of WSU’s “Women’s Body Image Support Group” is to convince women that it’s more important that they focus their thoughts upon feeling good about being fat than trying to lose the weight. The group tries to convince women that the body ideal portrayed in the mass media is an unworthy goal and that they should not feel ashamed by being chubby.

I fear that the group has already enjoyed too much success in that arena, judging by all the heavy set girls who parade around wearing low cut pants and shirts that fail to cover their belly button. It’s not a pretty sight.

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is a promotion of the National Eating Disorders Association. The NEDA website reveals that the group is worried about such dietary disturbances as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, along with a few other associated problems. But, not listed as a problem anywhere on the site is the most lethal eating disorder of all – overeating. In fact, as far as I can discern, the website almost encourages overeating.

Last year, deaths attributable to obesity nearly overtook smoking as the leading cause of premature death in America. By the same token, the number of women who succumbed to anorexia was a few dozen.

Nevertheless, such disorders as anorexia are the focus because it and similar disorders are supposedly the result of pressure applied by society, in other words, men. And the last thing any woman should want to do is to live her life according to what men want.

Americans have grown so comfortable with their fat, that department store circulars routinely portray overweight models. Airlines have had to cut down on the baggage they will permit to accommodate bigger passengers. The amount of food energy required just to maintain the excess weight that Americans lug around could supply the electricity requirements of most major east coast cities if it could be burned in power plants.

Liberals blame pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies for rising health care costs, but the biggest reason for the nation’s skyrocketing medical bills is obesity.

To encourage women to feel good about their blubber is no less irresponsible than encouraging cigarette smoking.

And why shouldn’t we treat obesity like smoking? Smokers are treated like lepers these days. They are made to feel like outcasts. Would anyone in their right minds try to convince smokers that they should feel good about their habit, or that they should rise above society’s expectations for them?

Of course we wouldn’t.

Shaming smokers into quitting is a central element in the anti-tobacco drive. And, it’s working. Smoking is less and less common every year. It wouldn’t hurt if more Americans were ashamed of being overweight.

60th. Anniversary of Iwo Jima

Please read Edward Colimore's "Memory strands of Iwo Jima"

Compare America of then with America of today. Our soldiers are every bit as good. And roughly half the nation still supports our country in time of war. But, the media is almost unanimously anti-American.

The image of the the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi is now iconic, and was made so by a media that loved America. There have been similar images since 9/11, but they are largely suppressed by the media because showing them would inspire "jingoist nationalism," which is another word for patriotism.

Speaking Truth To Power

Harvard University president Larry Summers learned the perils of that.

"[Larry Summers] theorized that a "much higher fraction of married men" than married women were willing to work 80-hour weeks to attain "high powered" jobs. He said racial and sex discrimination needed to be "absolutely, vigorously" combated, yet he argued that bias could not entirely explain the lack of diversity in the sciences. At that point, the Harvard leader suggested he believed that the innate aptitude of women was a factor behind their low numbers in the sciences and engineering.

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Dr. Summers said, according to the transcript.

"I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them," he added.

Over and over in the transcript, he made clear that he might be wrong in his theories, and he challenged researchers to study his propositions.

He also urged research on "the quality of marginal hires" to the faculty when efforts to diversify are under way. How many of these hires, he asked, have "turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search?" Or are "plausible compromises" that are not unreasonable additions to the faculty? And "how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards"?

And, for this, the left wants his head. Once again, science must be corrupted to conform to lefist ideology.

Scientific Corruption

There was once a time when science pursued truth. Today, at least in the realm of global cllimate change, science is judged on its political correctness.

Despoiler Of The Planet

On the day after the Kyoto Treaty took effect, it's worth noting which country presents the greatest threat to the environment - China.

China burns 40% more coal than the US, eats more meat, and is consuming rainforest at an alarming rate.

Or, Maybe Men And Women Are Just Different

Liberals clawing each other's eyes out.

Salivating Moron

Peggy Noonan nails it!

The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don't have a serious case of freedom envy.
The bloggers have that freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM doesn't. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.

Democrats Attempt A Gay Smear Of Republicans

Now that the election has passed, Democrats feel no obligation to hide their truly ugliness. Here, Democrats are attempted to paint the Republican party as some sort of homosexual cabal.

Bush is accused of having a homosexual affair with the ambassador to Poland, Whitehouse press secretary Scott McClellan is accused of frequenting gay bars, and RNC chairman Ken Mehlman is also accused of homosexuality.

These should all be merits to a Democrat, but if you read this, you'll the tone is pure hate.

Somebody Call Larry Summers

Of course, all the evidence in the world wouldn't help Larry Summers. The truth is what the keeper of political correctness say it is. But, here's more evidence that men and women are different.

How To Be A Weapons Inspector

Apparently, Joseph Wilson was actually pretty good, as weapons inpectors go. Joseph Wilson (wife of Valerie Plame) was sent to Niger to look for evidence that Iraq had tried to purchase "yellow cake" uranium ore.

In his own words, he spent most of his time there sitting on a veranda drinking sweet tea.

Now we learn that UN weapons inspector spent most of their time getting hammered.

"UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday."

Foreigners Not For Kerry

John Kerry's best demographic in the last election was citizens of other other country. Kerry won France in a landslide.

But, there are exceptions to that rule, those who are yearning to breathe free - like the Iranians.

The BBC world service website recently released the results of their 2004 presidential poll. Of the sixteen linguistic ethnical groups surveyed, Persians were overwhelmingly the most supportive of President Bush. In fact, over fifty two percent of Iranians preferred Republican George W. Bush to challenger John Kerry who'd received a minuscule forty two percent of the vote. Thus, surprisingly, unlike in the United States where the presidential race was relegated to a couple of percentage points, in Iran - President Bush won by a landslide.

Sorry About That

Blogger would not permit me to post yesterday morning, which is the only time I can post. So, an entire day went by.

Foreigners Not For Kerry

John Kerry's best demographic in the last election was citizens of other other country. Kerry won France in a landslide.

But, there are exceptions to that rule, those who are yearning to breathe free - like the Iranians.

The BBC world service website recently released the results of their 2004 presidential poll. Of the sixteen linguistic ethnical groups surveyed, Persians were overwhelmingly the most supportive of President Bush. In fact, over fifty two percent of Iranians preferred Republican George W. Bush to challenger John Kerry who'd received a minuscule forty two percent of the vote. Thus, surprisingly, unlike in the United States where the presidential race was relegated to a couple of percentage points, in Iran - President Bush won by a landslide.

Foreigners Not For Kerry

John Kerry's best demographic in the last election was citizens of other other country. Kerry won France in a landslide.

But, there are exceptions to that rule, those who are yearning to breathe free - like the Iranians.

The BBC world service website recently released the results of their 2004 presidential poll. Of the sixteen linguistic ethnical groups surveyed, Persians were overwhelmingly the most supportive of President Bush. In fact, over fifty two percent of Iranians preferred Republican George W. Bush to challenger John Kerry who'd received a minuscule forty two percent of the vote. Thus, surprisingly, unlike in the United States where the presidential race was relegated to a couple of percentage points, in Iran - President Bush won by a landslide.

Affirmative Action Hits Rock Bottom

What Ward Churchill wrote on September 12, 2001 is old stuff, the bell that cannot be unrung. But, the Ward Churchill affair can make a contribution to the future, by exposing what affirmative action hath wrought.

The University of Colorado hired Churchill onto its faculty because he claimed to be an American Indian. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with research universities can glance at his résumé and state this with something close to complete confidence.

Churchill thus represents the reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary university's willingness to subordinate all other values to affirmative action. When such a grotesque fraud - a white man pretending to be an Indian, an intellectual charlatan spewing polemical garbage festooned with phony footnotes, a shameless demagogue fabricating imaginary historical incidents to justify his pathological hatreds, an apparent plagiarist who steals and distorts the work of real scholars - manages to scam his way into a full professorship at what is still a serious research university, we know the practice of affirmative action has hit rock bottom. Or at least we can hope so.

Democratic Playpen, in The World Of Make Believe

Yesterday Democrats, frustrated from being out of power, held a pretend committee hearing for C-SPAN cameras.

[V]iewers might have noticed that there were no Republicans on the panel, no administration officials at the witness table, and only two Democratic senators in the room. Then, the viewer might have surmised, correctly, that this was not a real committee hearing.

These are frustrating times for the Democratic Party, shut out of power in the White House, the House and the Senate. Democrats don't have power to call hearings, to subpoena witnesses or to move legislation.

Twenty Yeart Too Late

Now that a new, virulent strain of HIV has emerged, one that is drug resistant and developed into full blown AIDS just three months after infection, homosexuals are suddenly willing to exchange privacy for epidemic control.

While many are calling for a renewed commitment to prevention efforts and free condoms, some veterans of the war on AIDS are advocating an entirely new approach to the spread of unsafe sex, much of which is fueled by a surge in methamphetamine abuse. They want to track down those who knowingly engage in risky behavior and try to stop them before they can infect others.

It is a radical idea, born of desperation, that has been gaining ground in recent months as a growing number of gay men become infected despite warnings about unsafe sex.

Although gay advocates and health care workers are just beginning to talk about how this might be done, it could involve showing up at places where impromptu sex parties happen and confronting the participants. Or it might mean infiltrating Web sites that promote gay hookups and thwarting liaisons involving crystal meth.

Other ideas include collaborating with health officials in tracking down the partners of those newly infected with H.I.V. At the very least, these advocates say, gay men must start taking responsibility for their own, before a resurgent epidemic draws government officials who could use even more aggressive tactics.

It is not radical. This is how we have dealt with diseases like tuberculosis, or even syphilus.

I wonder how many people have died because we pussyfooted around with this for two decades.

Kojo's Mojo Was Daddy

Kojo Annan had a much bigger hand in the Oil-For-Food jar than previously admitted to.

Kojo Annan, the son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, played a far more extensive role than previously revealed in a company that won a key contract under the scandal-plagued Iraq oil-for-food program, Senate investigators have learned.

And Benon Sevan skimmed far more money that previously realized.

Katie Couric Can Relax

So can Mary Tyler Moore. Apparently, lobsters do not feel any pain when tossed into the pot alive.

Lobster biologists in Maine have maintained for years that the lobster’s primitive nervous system and underdeveloped brain are similar to that of an insect. While lobsters react to different stimuli, such as boiling water, the reactions are escape mechanisms, not a conscious response or an indication of pain, they say.

“It’s a semantic thing: No brain, no pain,” said Mike Loughlin, who studied the matter when he was a University of Maine graduate student and is now a biologist at the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission.

Needless to say, without the slightest scientific evidence to back them up, PETA disagrees.

“This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn’t cause cancer,” PETA spokesman Karin Robertson said.

My, how original. What typically deep thinking from the left.

Well, I say, if we can send a man to the moon, then we can boil lobster painlessly.

It Just Shows, You Can't Deal With Terrorists

Now that the fat, evil little terrorist Yasir Arafat is six feet under, his successor is free to make peace.

The new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview this weekend that the war with the Israelis is effectively over and that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is speaking "a different language" to the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon's commitment to withdraw from Gaza and dismantle all Israeli settlements there and four in the West Bank, despite "how much pressure is on him from the Israeli Likud rightists," Mr. Abbas said, "is a good sign to start with" on the road to real peace.

"And now he has a partner," Mr. Abbas said.

Pray that this is true.

The Wall Street Journal Bemoans the Power of The Blogosphere

The MSM hangs together, as the Wall Street Journal accuses CNN of surrendering Eason Jordan to a lynch mob.

"That may be old-fashioned damage control. But it does not speak well of CNN that it apparently allowed itself to be stampeded by this Internet and talk-show crew. Of course the network must be responsive to its audience and ratings. But it has other obligations, too, chief among them to show the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs."

The WSJ seems to be exercising willful ignorance of Jordans many other transgressions, including a disruptive love affair with the widow of one of its own murdered reporters.

The Journal ends on this rather whiny note: "No doubt this point of view will get us described as part of the "mainstream media." But we'll take that as a compliment since we've long believed that these columns do in fact represent the American mainstream. We hope readers buy our newspaper because we make grown-up decisions about what is newsworthy, and what isn't."

UNSCAM Coverup Is Years Old

At least as far back as 2001, the head of the UN's Oil-For-Food program, Benon Sevan was hiding his scams from prying eyes.

A United Nations auditing team determined at the time that running the $64 billion program was "a high-risk activity" and a priority for review. But Mr. Sevan denied the auditors' request to hire a consultant to examine his office in May 2001 - an act top investigators of the program are now calling into question.

"I think the auditors thought they were steered away from some areas," said Paul A. Volcker, who is leading an independent commission appointed by the United Nations to investigate fraud and mismanagement in the program.

"Our judgment is that the main office should have been audited," he said. "And that leaves the inference that perhaps the auditors were not encouraged to do the work. I think we draw the inference that it was at least suspicious."

Two months after Mr. Sevan refused the auditors' request, African Middle East Petroleum, a Panamanian company run by a friend of Mr. Sevan's, purchased one million barrels of oil that Iraq had allocated to him. That was one of nine allocations between 1998 and 2002 involving Mr. Sevan and believed to have generated $1.5 million for the company, according to an interim report that Mr. Volcker's committee released this month.

Big Brother Is Watching

According to the Washington Post, the United States has been secretly flying pilotless spy planes over Iran, seeking out that terrorist nation's nuclear weapons fabrication facilities.

"The small, pilotless planes, penetrating Iranian airspace from U.S. military facilities in Iraq, use radar, video, still photography and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity to gather information that is not accessible by satellites, the officials said. The aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation."

Net Closes On Zarqawi

This certaily can't be bad news.

"He [Abu Musab Zarqawi] came to Kirkuk from Mosul," a source in the Kirkuk police department told Reuters news agency, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "There's a possibility that he might be captured at any moment."

Meanwhile, The Blogosphere Contemplates Its Next Victim

It's like the old buzzards dilema. Should they just sit around hungry, waiting for something to die, or should they kill something?


"So far, we've just weighted [sic] for some one [sic] to say or do something stupid before we ride them [sic] like a coal car into the ground," wrote one unnamed blogger. "But now it's time to get proactive. We're going to pick the next soon-to-be-former journalist and then force him into some career-ending vortex of deception and denial."

He's Gone Howie, You Can Stop Covering HIs Back

Not even Howie Kurtz's pathetically slavish column earlier this week could save Eason Jordan.

Today, he has a nearly as sympathetic, and suggests that Jordan was, in reality, on his way out anyway. Just can't give the bloggers credit can you Howie?

Maybe This Isn't Such An Awful Country After All

Most of those pinkos who promised to leave the country if George Bush was reelected are, unfortunately, still here.

But some really are leaving.

Fox News says 18,000 Americans are heading north in protest of the election.

I think that this is a grand idea. In fact, I have a few I'd like to nominate for export, starting with Ted Kennedy.

Eason Jordan Quits

Another head mounted on the wall of the blogger trophy room.

"CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, said Friday he's resigning amid controversy over his assertion that journalists were targeted and killed by coaltion forces in Iraq. 'After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq,' he said in a note to CNN staff."

Hasta la vista, Baby!

Ward Churchill's Chickens Come Home To Roost

There was something distastefully cowardly about Eastern Washington University’s disinvitation of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. After a public outcry arose and university donors threatened to close their wallets, EWU President Stephen Jordan withdrew Churchill’s invitation citing “safety and security” issues. Jordan would have us believe that Churchill would provoke such right wing indignation that public order might be threatened.
I really wish that President Jordan had the courage to say that Ward Churchill simply falls far beneath the standards of discourse that EWU wishes to maintain. Although welcoming a porn star (Ron Jeremy) to speak complicates making that case.
Churchill breathed notoriety into an otherwise undistinguished academic career by publishing on September 12, 2001, an essay titled, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” He argued that the victims of the previous day’s terrorist attacks had it coming for serving the some role for the United States that Adolf Eichmann performed for Nazi Germany.
Of those who worked in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that morning, he said, “They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.”
For their contribution to America’s prosperity, he dubbed them “little Eichmann’s,” comparing them to the administrator of Hitler’s death camps.
He later compounded this insult by arguing that one slaughter was insufficient. “One of the things I’ve suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary.”
Ward Churchill has every right to say these things. After all, this isn’t Europe, where people get arrested for speech that deviates from the permissible. But no one is obligated to provide him with a forum. And, we “little Eichmann’s” certainly should not be forced to fatten his wallet.
I’m confident that President Jordan would have no difficulty denying a podium and a microphone to someone who preached hatred for Muslims or blacks. Although, to be honest, if he did give a megaphone, a soap box and an honorarium to a speaker who advocated killing Jews, he would not be the first college president in recent years to do so.
And, there’s another good reason to slam the door in Churchill’s face. The man is a fraud. He prospers in an academic environment in which the extravagance of one’s anti-American rhetoric counts for more than genuine scholarship. Ward Churchill gained fame within the “ethnic studies” field by inventing tales such as the one about the Mandan Indian “genocide” of 1837.
According to Churchill, the Mandans were mostly exterminated when the US Army gave the tribe smallpox infected blankets. The problem is that it never happened and the very references that Churchill cited in his work prove it. Churchill was wrong on nearly every historical point (the exception being that the Mandans were decimated by a smallpox epidemic in 1837), but because his “scholarly” works are judged for attitude and venom rather than accuracy, the man has ascended to the chairmanship of his department at the University of Colorado.
Ward Churchill seems to have gotten his job and his celebrity by convincing radical and gullible palefaces that he was an authentic voice of indigenous Americans. To accomplish this, he has falsified his own ancestry. He claims to be a member of the Keetoowah Tribe of Oklahoma. But he is not listed in the tribe’s registry and so far back as anyone can trace his lineage, not a drop of Indian blood can be found.
He claims an affiliation with the American Indian Movement, but they disavow him and condemn his hateful rhetoric. “The sorry part of this is Ward Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as an Indian, and a member of the American Indian Movement…”
The Indian Country Times gets right to the point, with a story headlined, “Ward Churchill’s No Indian.” In the story they remind their readers that a crew of Mohawk ironworkers were among the first on the scene after the Trade Center attacks and risked their lives saving those whom Churchill slurred as, “little Eichmann’s.”
Judging by the opinions expressed by Indian Country Times and the American Indian Movement, his views are as authentically Indian as his genealogy.
At long last, Churchill’s chickens have come home to roost.

Democrats Mixing Their Grape Kool-Aid

They need to have it ready for tomorrow, when they crown Howard Dean as their new party chairman.

The former Vermont governor is poised to claim the party chairmanship tomorrow. His victory represents a personal triumph one year after his presidential campaign was in ashes and symbolizes the strength of the party's revitalized grass roots in the aftermath of John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush in November.

But for a party grappling with the question of how it can become more competitive in the red states of the South, Midwest and Mountain West, the decision to elect as its chairman a confrontational New Englander with a liberal identity and a penchant for making controversial statements sends a message in the view of some Democrats that little has been learned from the losses in 2004.

His supporters say Dean will rebuild moribund state parties, keep the grass roots energized, raise money, and keep Bush and the GOP on the defensive. Others fear he will push the Democrats' image farther to the left and drive moderate voters into the hands of the Republicans. That is a particular concern among some grass-roots Democrats in the red states."

They should probably change their party symbol from a jackass to a lemming.

Jimmy Carter Ends His Pout

Ending 11 days of sulking silence, Jimmy Carter finally mustered the grace to praise the Iraqi elections.

"Former President Jimmy Carter, who predicted that elections in Iraq would fail and in the past year described the Bush administration's policy there as a quagmire, this week ended 10 days of silence to declare the historic Iraqi vote "a very successful effort."
"I hope that we'll have every success in Iraq," Mr. Carter said in a CNN interview. "And that election, I think, was a surprisingly good step forward."
The Nobel Peace Prize winner's comments on Wednesday contradicted his September assertion that the Iraq elections could not be held by January and ended a period during which the Georgia Democrat's failure to comment prompted one critic to gloat about the election success "shaming him into silence."
Last year, in venues ranging from CNN to National Public Radio, Mr. Carter predicted that Iraq would not be ready for a January election, compared the situation there to the Vietnam War and implied that "the control of oil" was a major reason for the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
"I personally do not believe we will be ready for an election in January," Mr. Carter told Katie Couric Sept. 30 on NBC's "Today" show.
The United States, he said, should "go through the election and then withdraw American troops as rapidly as possible. ... Get us out of there."
As recently as three weeks ago, Mr. Carter predicted low turnout and an unrepresentative result for the Iraq election."

Better late than never. Still haven't heard from George Soros or Michael Moore.

Solid Mainstream Journalism

Eason Jordan's version of the truth" "There are people who believe there are people in the military" who have it out for journalists.

You certainly can't trust blogs for news when you have quality sleuths for the truth like Eason Jordan and Dan Rather.

Alone In Front Of The Mirror

Few visitors are stopping in to tour the extravagent Clinton Presidential Library. One guy has been there many times though. His name is Bill Clinton.

And, being the Clinton library, it lies about the number of visitors who have shown up.

Although the library originally said it had drawn more than 100,000 visitors in the first six weeks of its opening, the National Archives and Records Administration, which operates the library, told U.S. News & World Report that only 42,045 visitors actually paid the $7 to enter. The rest of the visitors were VIPs, journalists and other nonpaying guests.
Although Clinton supporters predicted that 50,000 persons would attend the star-studded Nov. 18 dedication, where actors Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt mingled with the locals, the true number was closer to 20,000, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
By comparison, Mr. Bush's presidential library on the campus of Texas A&M in College Station -- which also has a presidential apartment -- drew 67,677 paying visitors in a comparable period in 1997, between Nov. 5 and Dec. 31.
In 1991, the Ronald Reagan library at Simi Valley, Calif., drew 69,152 paying visitors between its Nov. 4 dedication and Dec. 31.

But one particular visitor has been trying to make up the difference all by himself.

"I understand he's here regularly," says Todd Scholl, director of marketing for Little Rock's Peabody Hotel.
And what does the former president do?
"That's a good question," says Mr. Scholl.

Tsunami Relief Plagued By Corruption

Immediately after the Asian tsunami, George Bush assembled a few nations to coordinate relief efforts. The clear intent was to cut the United Nations out of the process and the usual suspects cried foul, demanding that all relief go through the UN.

Bush, clearly didn't trust the UN, and now he has been vindicated.

"In a stunning revelation last week, the government said only 30 percent of those affected by the tsunami had received aid, and set a target of Feb. 10-15 to complete delivery.

Many still await the rice, sugar, noodles, milk powder and biscuits stacked in warehouses. The government has blamed bureaucratic bungling and incompetence. Survivors blame corruption."

The UN Can't Even Predict The Weather Without Corruption

It's true. There's less money to steal from the UN's Weather Agency than there was from the Oil-For-Food program, but the UN is so inherently corrupt that it just part of the culture.

France Lied, People Died

You might remember a very moving series of pictures from 2000. It showed a man trying to shelter his child while the two were trapped in an Israeli - Palestinian crossfire. The final photos showed the boy, supposedly lyind dead in the street alongside his severely wounded father.

Egypt and Tunisia issued postage stamps of the boy, Muhammad al-Dura, crouching against his father and under attack from a fusillade of bullets in September 2000. Egypt named a street in his honor, and suicide bombers invoked the boy as a martyr in videotaped farewells.

The French News agency that circulated the photos blamed the Israelis for the killing, although no hard evidence was ever produced. The photos were the ignition point for the latest incarnation of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising that ended Tuesday with the truce announced by Sharon and Abbas in Egypt.
Thousands died in that Intifada. But, it turns out that those pictures were probably staged and guess what, the French are still lying about it.

Liars Exposed

King County has been claiming for months now that there is nothing "unusual" about the fact the election officials counted far more ballots that could be accounted for by the number of voters who came to the polls.

A King county councilman pronounces BS upon the tale.


A Metropolitan King County councilman who once served on the county canvassing board is disputing election officials' claim that there is nothing unusual in their inability to figure out who cast 1,800 ballots in the Nov. 2 gubernatorial election.

David Irons, R-Sammamish, said yesterday that in the 2000 general election the discrepancy between the numbers of ballots cast and voters credited with voting was only 17 — far less than the 1,230-vote variance that election officials are citing.

Irons also said there was "no discrepancy" in some special elections he certified along with other members of the canvassing board

But, even if the King County election commission is telling the truth, that truth is even more damning. The previous discrepancies were in the opposite direction. King county always had more voters that ballots cast.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan said Irons had not contacted him to dispute Logan's numbers. He reiterated that the 2004 discrepancy "doesn't seem largely inconsistent" with those of earlier years.

Logan said yesterday the number of voters listed as voting exceeded ballots by 3,067 in the 2001 general election and by 2,809 in 2002.

Having fewer ballots than voters is understandable. A voter can enter the polling place, sign in, receive a ballot, then leave without using the ballot. This is not uncommon when voters are in a hurry and there are lines.

If we accept Logan's numbers as accurate, then we should enlarge the number of excess ballots counted to about 5000.

The Shark has this, and much more.

We Accept

One foreign skeptic apologises for ever doubting us and admits that George W. Bush was right all along. Well, on many things anyway.

There have been other operational failures and mishaps for sure. Need the Iraqi army have been dissolved so soon? Could Al-Sadr have been dealt with more sensibly? Could the elections have been held sooner? And so on.

None of this can take away from the fact that the broad contours of the Anglo-American effort have been reasonably successful so far in achieving both strategic and tactical aims that many in the world share — some openly and candidly, some silently and furtively lest they jump into the well of political incorrectness. It is however too soon and quite silly to declare victory. An enterprise of this kind and magnitude involves enormous risks and great uncertainties. While playing Cassandra is not desirable, neither is a naive optimism justified.

He's Never Worked For Anyone But Himself

Ward Chruchill babbled defiantly yesterday, rejecting calls for his resignation.

"I do not work for taxpayers, I do not work for (Colorado Governor) Bill Owens," he said.

I would agree with that. He has never worked for the people of Colorado. He has simply cashed the checkes they've written for him.

Speaking Truth To Power

Harvard president Larry Summers does it once in a while, but doesn't have the balls to stick to his guns. John Leo tries to help Mr. Summers out.

He could have said something like this:

"Yesterday I spoke bluntly at a closed academic conference and offered some possible explanations of why women are less represented than men in the upper reaches of math and science. In addition to the cost of the time women spend in bearing and raising children, I said that innate sexual differences may be playing a role."

It's Never Their Fault

But the Clintons sure have a way of getting close to some very slimy people.

"The guest list reflected the glitter of the occasion: Cher, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Patti LaBelle, to name just a few. But a person who later emerged as perhaps the most memorable - to the Clintons and their associates, anyway - was a well-connected figure with a checkered past who helped organize the event. He is Peter Paul, a man who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and trying to defraud Fidel Castro's government out of millions of dollars in 1979, among other things.

Mr. Paul said he spent nearly $2 million of his own on the fund-raiser as a way to curry favor with Mr. Clinton, and photographs show him chatting with Mr. Clinton at a dinner table, having a discussion with Mrs. Clinton and striking poses for the camera with both of them."

No John Kerry's Here

John Kerry pursued and still proudly wears Purple Hearts he got for "fingernail scratches" and self inflicted wounds.
These Marines were shamed when they were forced to accept Purple Hearts they did not feel they deserved.

Kurtz Licking The Hand That Feeds Him

"Journalist" Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post, who also pulls down big paychecks from CNN, has finally commented on the Eason Jordan affair. And he investigated with the vigor that Dan Rather showed when he wanted to "be the first to break the story" about forged documents used on "60 minutes.
His apparent conclusion is that Eason Jordan was misunderstood when he accused the US military of targetting journalists.
I'm sure Howie's little lady is pleased that those CNN paychecks will keep coming in.
It's not nice to mess with the blogosphere Mr. Kurtz. We don't get paid for our work. We are beholden to nothing but the truth. And, we don't forget.
Just ask Ward Churchill.

Santorum Was Right

Pennsylvannia's US Senator Rick Santorum was widely derided when he predicted that, when the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws were unconstitutional, that the door to gay marriage, polygamy, and who know what else would be thrown wide open.
He was right.

Better Late Than Never

Or maybe, the Germans just figured out that it's time for them to get on the bandwagon.

"If George W. Bush is a cowboy, then one of his most trusted hands just brought in a stray. Thanks to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent trip to Europe, Germany is now promising to rejoin the herd migrating toward Iraqi democracy. This was not how it was supposed to be. Last year John Kerry claimed only he could bring in the wayward European cattle."

The Religion Of Hate

Even our "allies," the Saudis issue a fountain of anti-Western, anti-Christian hatred.

+ “Whoever believes that churches are houses of God . . . or that what Jews and Christians do constitutes the worship of God . . . is an infidel.”

+ To offer greetings to a Christian at Christmas -- even to wish "Happy holidays" -- is "a practice more loathsome to God . . . than imbibing liquor, or murder, or fornication."

+ Jews "are worse than donkeys." They are the corrupting force "behind materialism, bestiality, the destruction of the family, and the dissolution of society.

+ Muslims who convert to another religion "should be killed because [they] have denied the Koran."

+ Democracy is "responsible for all the horrible wars" of the 20th century, and for spreading "ignorance, moral decadence, and drugs."


But there may be hope in that regions. New Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has ordered that Palestinian televion turn down the anti-Israeli rhetoric.

Newly elected President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered Palestinian television to cleanse its screens of bloody imagery to conform with a new mood of conciliation in the region.
Eulogies to suicide bombers, or "martyrs" as they were known, have given way to "feel-good" nature programs and romantic films. Instead of referring to "martyr operations," suicide bombings are described more neutrally as "explosions."

More Bad News For Democrats

We're winning the battle for the hearts of the Iraqi people.

In the week since national elections, police officers and Iraqi National Guardsmen said they have received more tips from the public, resulting in more arrests and greater effectiveness in their efforts to weaken the violent insurgency rocking the country.

None of the officials said they believed the violence was over. An attack Sunday on a police station in Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad, left 22 policemen and National Guardsmen and 14 attackers dead, the Associated Press reported. The incident was a bloody end to a day in which at least nine other Iraqis were reported slain, and a U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded north of the capital. Four Egyptian engineers were kidnapped and two insurgent groups issued statements threatening to kill an Italian journalist who was taken hostage on Friday.

But officials in Baghdad said a relative lull in violence in the capital has fueled the sense that something has fundamentally changed since the vote. A change of attitudes in Baghdad could make a crucial difference in the battle against the insurgency, and a buoyed sense of civic pride is already beginning to change the way the public treats the police, authorities say.

Ted Kennedy had this to say: "Damn, Damn, Damn!"

Russert Gets His Head Handed To Him

A fine example of how the MSM lies.

Russert Gets His Head Handed To Him

A fine example of how the MSM lies.

Fraud Told To Stay Home

Eastern Washington University is the latest to withdraw its invitation and withold it speaker's fee from Ward Churchill.

And like the others, the Eastern's administration could not bring itself to admit that the speaker was just too foul. Instead, they cited vague security concerns.

In truth, they're just exercising good judgement a little late in the game. The Eastern would not invite a neo-Nazi for a paid lecture.

Ward Churchill is today fraudulently claiming that he has been taken out of context, that he never endorsed the 9/11 attacks in the first place. But, in fact, after his first statements on the attacks gained him notoriety, he said that “One of the things I’ve suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary.”

In other words, bring on more terrorism.

And, if you read this interview of Churchill on an animal rights website, he makes it clear that he favors the complete annihilation of the United States.

"I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether."

Ward Churchill isn't even the Indian he claims to be.

''It's disturbing that anyone would use such hateful speech, and do so while claiming to be an American Indian when there is significant evidence that he is not. Professor Churchill caused many in the media to falsely believe an American Indian scholar could besmirch the lives of those who died on 9/11. Because of this, he owes every American Indian an apology.

''Likewise it is sad that he would perpetrate this apparent hoax on Hamilton College, an institution founded to help educate Indian students.'' (Hamilton was founded by Samuel Kirkland, 18th century missionary to the Oneidas, and the famous Oneida Chief Schenandoah is buried on its grounds. The Oneida Nation owns Four Directions Media, publisher of Indian Country Today.)

The American Indian Movement, of which he claims to be allied, totally repudiates Chruchill and summarizes their opinion of him in this cartoon.

If You Can't Beat'em, Join'em

Iraqi Sunnis can see the future as well as anyone. Iraq will be a democratic nation. If they want a part of it, they'll have to cooperate.

Need A Nine Inch Rubber?

You can get one here.

Well, Then He's The Last To Know

Kofi Annan is shocked, shocked at learning that the UN's Oil For Food program was corrupt.

"I think I'm not the only one who was shocked by what we read in the report," Annan said. "He's been here working with many of us for quite a time, and we had not expected anything of the sort."

But, Annan said, "I think we should wait until the work is done before we draw definitive conclusions."

Annan reminds me of Dan Rather who said that, if the National Guard documents turned out to be phony, he wanted to be the reporter who broke the story.

He's probably shocked that his attempted cover up failed so badly.

Are The Democrats Suicidal?

Obviously observed Jonathan Chait. But he delves into the harder question. Why are they suicidal?

But, he can't figure it out, except that the party activists are so virulently hateful that they can't envision anything bigger than giving a platform to their favorite anti-Bush loudmouth.


He lays out all of Dean's flaws and predicts catastrophe for the Dems.

The Root Of Some Evil

These people believe that violent video games are being acted out on the streets.

Just Shoot 'em

Spammers have found a way around spam blockers and are expected to snarl networks in the near future.

Back In The Fold

After an uncharacteristically whiny response to Bush's inaugural speech, Peggy Noonan is comfortable being a Bushie again.

Best lines today.

"Republicans tend to assume that everyone hungers for more investment accounts to handle. This is because Republicans like personal autonomy and authority, and are good at math. Others might reasonably wonder if life isn't complicated enough. The beauty of the Social Security system is its almost idiotic simplicity: They take your money from your paycheck and then 40 years later when you're old they start giving some back each month."

And,

"Harry Reid looks and talks like a small-town undertaker whom you want to trust but wonder about, especially when he says the deceased would love the brass handles."

Shock And Awe

That's the only way to describe the MSM's reaction to the Iraqi elections. As Charles Krauthammer notes, "The media have not been as surprised, noted a friend of mine, since the Nicaraguans turned out in their 1990 election to kick out the Sandinistas."

A Foreign Leader For Dean

Well, from liberal's point of view, he's an alien anyway.

If Howard Dean becomes the face of the Democratic Party, then they will truly be exposed, in Dean's own words, as the party of hate.

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for." Not "I oppose the Republicans and everything they stand for." Not "I'm determined to beat the Republicans." Not "I reject the Republican message." No -- Dean wants it understood that he hates the Republicans and all their works. That is the banner under which he is marching as a candidate to lead his party.

Coffee House Liberal Excesses Inspires Secession

Is there any way for Washington’s King County to become even kookier? The land of Baghdad Jim McDermitt has managed is rapidly challenging Baghdad by the Bay (as San Francisco is known colloquially) as the looniest jurisdiction in the western United States, if not the western hemisphere. While the rest of the state is inhabited by a fairly level-headed population, King County is a weird, blue aberration. But because of its enormous population and ideological extremism, the rest of the state must endure the humiliation of being represented by Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, and now, Christine Gregoire.
Can King County swing further to the left? Well, yes it can. And it just might happen, if its ballast parts company with its kooks. The normal people who still reside there could vote with their feet and leave. Or those parts of the county where the plague of liberalitis has not reached epidemic proportions could quarantine themselves by seceding from their Seattle brethren. And that latter solution is actually receiving serious consideration.
Secession is not a simple matter. It’s been tried before, but the Washington Supreme Court declared in 1998 that counties were creations of the state and that individual counties could not divide themselves. And therefore the process of creating new counties had to proceed through the legislature.
The Washington State Supreme Court went a step further and issued a dictate requiring that 50% of the proposed new county’s residents sign a petition before the process of creating a new county may begin. What happens after that is not clear. New legislation before the Washington House of Representatives lays out a procedure for dividing counties and would lower that threshold that rebellious residents must overcome to 25%.
The primary beneficiaries of this new right to secession would be the rural nether reaches of King County. There one finds a serious secession movement as rural and unincorporated suburban residents bristle under the onerous land use regulations cooked up in Seattle’s gourmet coffee houses. There, caffeine supercharged socialists on the King County Board of Supervisors have been brewing up plans that would essentially seize control of rural properties.
Recently, Seattle liberals inflicted what they call the “Sensitive Areas Ordinance” on the rest of King County. As it stands now, a King County rural property owner whose land is being overgrown by blackberry bushes has to ask Seattle liberals for permission to pull them out. How would Seattlistas like it if they had to ask for permission to pull up dandelions? They wouldn’t. And, of course, they don’t have to. The rules don’t apply to them.
We actually have a precedent for this sort of thing. Years ago, largely on the strength of Seattle voters, animal traps were banned throughout the state. As a consequence, gophers were suddenly free to set up housekeeping under Seattle area yards. Seattlista politicians petitioned the legislature for permission to trap gophers, while leaving the ban in place for the rest of the state. We were supposed to learn to love our vermin. Seattle knows how the rest of the state should live, but they’d rather not live under their own strictures.
Rural King County understands this very well and is disinclined to take it anymore. A coalition of business and agriculture interests is exploring the possibility of freeing themselves from the tyranny of the coffee house intellectuals.
And there’s some sense in dividing King County anyway. Currently, King County has 1.7 million residents. Meanwhile, Garfield County, just a little west of here has only about 2400 residents. That’s about the same number of imaginary, dead, and illegal voters who cast ballots in King County during the last election.
Needless to say, many of King County’s more fire breathing liberals are fuming over the prospect of secession. After all, in their minds, they’re just trying to preserve the character of rural King County.
King County executive Ron Sims confessed that, “I've always said that all wisdom does not reside in downtown Seattle.''
But he might be the only Seattlista who thinks that way. Seattle has even tried to lecture Eastern Washington about its dams.
Considering that, during the last election, Seattle could not even demonstrate the capacity to count on its fingers, what reason is there to believe that the coffee house liberals know a darned thing about how to manage anybody else’s lives?

The Coogler Award

Hint: It's not quite as prestigious as the Pulitzer.
Hing: Jon Stewart wins.

Looking to What Worked Before

Handwringing over illegal immigration seems to be the only solution offered for decades. But, there was once a time when we had a program that dealt sensibly with the problem. We called it the bracero program, and it's similar to President Bush's "guest worker" program.
Liberals and labor unions hated it, but isn't that a hint that it's a good idea?

The Disloyal Opposition

Of course, the reason could be that hatred has remade the Democrat Party so that its only principle is to oppose.

Blinded By Hatred

"Every so often, an American politician takes an unpopular stand for the sake of what's right: Think of Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Frequently, he takes an unprincipled stand for the sake of what's popular: Take Richard Nixon's price controls. Sometimes, even, he does what's right, which also happens to be popular: Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya.

Only in the rarest of instances, however, do politicians take positions that are both unpopular and unprincipled. That is where the Democratic Party leadership finds itself today on Iraq."

Of course, the issue here is the Democrat Party's dour response to the very successful Iraqi elections.

Annan Off The Hook, For Now

Paul Volcker will release his first report on the United Nations Oil-For-Food corruption scandal. It will be sharply critical of the UN and the program's administrator, Benon Sevan, but skips of the role of Kofi Annan and his son, Kojo.

Asked about his comment, Annan asked with a laugh, “Do I look worried?”

The fixaroo is in.

Colorado Eases Illegal Immigration

Why be bothered that Mexico is distributing a "how to" guide for illegal immigrants. Colorado was doing the same thing, until yesterday.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens has removed an online pamphlet from the state Web site that offered advice in Spanish to illegal immigrants on living and working in Colorado.
Titled "¡Entérese!" which means "Inform Yourself," the 50-page pamphlet was posted on the Colorado Department of Education Web site until Monday, when the governor's office had it removed after criticism from advocates for tighter borders.
The 2003 guide, which included a welcome message from Mr. Owens and the Mexican consul general, was intended to offer advice to legal immigrants, said Mr. Owens' spokesman, Sean Duffy.
But the guide wound up resembling a "how-to" manual for illegal aliens, providing them with tips on how to obtain medical care, open a bank account, earn university scholarships, and deal with police and other authorities.

Corrupt UN To Carefully Account For Donations From Stingy West

The UN promises not to steal any money from victims of the tsunami. How generous!

If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Don't Say Anything At All

George Soros and Michael Moore (among others) have been conspicuously silent ever since the Iraqi elections.

"Billionaire Bush-basher George Soros and left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore were among critics of the administration's Iraq policy who had no comment after millions of Iraqis went to the polls in their nation's first free elections in decades."

And,

Asked whether the Carter Center had a comment on the election, spokeswoman Kay Torrance said: "We wouldn't have any 'yea' or 'nay' statement on Iraq."

Churls all.

A Nitwit Resigns

After calling the 9/11 victims "little Eichmans" and saying that they got what they deserverd, the execrable Ward Churchill has resigned his chairmanship of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado.

In an interview, Churchill denied that he was a cheerleader for violence. Hmmm. That seems to be at odds with this recent interview.

How Does The UN Change A Light Bulb?

They investigate the light bulb and declare that it's okay after all.

How does the UN deal with genocide?

They investigate and say that it wasn't.

A U.N. commission investigating atrocities in Sudan has concluded that the government did not pursue a policy of genocide in the Darfur region but that Khartoum and government-sponsored Arab militias known as the Janjaweed engaged in "widespread and systematic" abuse that may constitute crimes against humanity.

Hillary Chameleon

Even as her party lurches to the left, the cynically pragmatic Hillary Clinton aims to seduce the middle.

"In a recent series of public appearances, Mrs. Clinton has generated considerable attention - and, in some cases, scorn - by imbuing her remarks with mentions of God, faith, prayer and the need to be more tolerant of people who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage because of their beliefs."

Uh huh. Once again we have a liberal who plots her political future on the belief that her true believers will know she's lying and will forgive her, and that middle America will believe them.