Saint Hillary Stinks It Up

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Apparently, Hillary's Democratic opponents have decided that they can't afford to play nice with the girl anymore and she's not up to taking them on.

Now I ask you, who's likely to be tougher, the lovely John Edwards or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Environmentalist Wackos Sue To Protect Giant Palouse Earthworm

The moment we have all been expecting since that damned worm was found is about to fall upon us. Will the environmentalist wackos succeed in making farming illegal? I'll bet they'd make an exception for farmers who were willing to plant a few rows of marijuana.

Environmentalists on Tuesday signaled their intent to get a court order forcing the federal government to study the giant Palouse earthworm and its worthiness for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Two citizens and a coalition of conservation groups filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after the agency refused earlier this month to conduct a status review of the lily-scented worm that can grow up to 3 feet long and is known to spit at attackers. The plaintiffs say the pink-colored worm was common on the Palouse Prairie at the turn on the 20th century but is now extremely rare.... "The giant Palouse earthworm, and the Palouse habitats that it depends, are on the edge of extinction and will be lost forever if we don't act soon," said Steve Paulson of Lenore and a signer to the notice of intent. "The earthworm needs the protection of the Endangered Species Act to survive."

Saudis - You're Not Doing Enough To Protect Yourself From Us

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah criticized Great Britain for not doing enough to defeat terrorism.

That's rather odd as Saudi Arabia certainly bankrolls more terrorism than any other country in the world and keeps planting hate spewing Wahabi mosques all around the world, including Britain.

Extremist literature that encourages hatred of gays, Christians and Jews can be easily found at many of Britain's mosques, according to a new survey.

Researchers for the centre-Right think tank Policy Exchange claims it found the literature in a quarter of the 100 mosques and Islamic institutions they visited.

Many of the publications allegedly called on British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims and for unbelievers to be treated as second-class citizens wherever possible.

The literature also allegedly contained repeated calls for gays to be thrown from mountains and tall buildings and for women to be subjugated.

Policy Exchange said that among the documents were the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and other publications peddling bizarre conspiracy theories.

Anthony Browne, the director of Policy Exchange, said: "It is clearly intolerable that hate literature is peddled at some British mosques.

"I am sure the majority of moderate Muslims will be as horrified as everyone else that pamphlets advocating jihad by force, hatred for insufficiently observant Muslims, Christians and Jews, and segregation have found their way into the UK's mosques."

Saudi royal family made a deal with the devil generations ago. In exchange for being left to wallow in wealth and peace, the Wahhabis were allowed to educate all Saudi children. Ultimately, that wasn't enough for the Wahhabis and they attacked Mecca in 1979. The attackers were killed, but the frightened Saudis struck another peace deal with the Wahhabis. This time, the Saudis would fund the establishment of Wahhabi mosques around the world, including Britain and the United States.

It seems that I'm not the only one gagging on Saudi hypocrisy.

King Abdullah caused an uproar ahead of a visit to Britain this week by scolding his hosts about terrorism. But as long as the Saudi monarch has raised the subject, by all means let's debate the kingdom's role in promoting radical Islam.

In a BBC interview Monday, King Abdullah said that "most countries are not taking this issue [terrorism] too seriously, including, unfortunately, Great Britain." The king also claimed, through a translator, that his security services had provided information that could have prevented the July 2005 bombings in London, implying that U.K. authorities chose to ignore it.

The royal musings didn't go down well, perhaps because Saudi Arabia churns out manpower, money and spiritual inspiration for jihadis around the world. British intelligence service MI5 yesterday refuted the accusations, saying Saudi information was "clearly not relevant to those attacks." But the Brits might as well press the king further on the subject by asking about Saudi Arabia's efforts to export its state-sanctioned brand of radical Islam, Wahhabism, to madrassas and mosques around the world.

Britain is one of the biggest targets. Policy Exchange, a think tank, put out a report Monday that Saudi Arabia was the source of much of the extremist material found in British mosques. According to the conclusions of a year-long investigation, that material included calls for the murder of Muslim "apostates" and gays, as well as anti-Western incitement. It was either written by members of the Saudi religious establishment, or distributed by the country's institutions, or found in Saudi-funded mosques. "The influence of Saudi Arabia is both powerful and malign," the report concludes.

Maybe it's time we gave King Abdullah reason to fear the west even more than the Wahhabis.

This From The Guy Who Wanted To Ban Space Based Mind Control Weapons

Dennis Kucinich questions George Bush's mental health.

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush's mental health in light of comments he made about a nuclear Iran precipitating World War III.
"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health," Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board on Tuesday. "There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact."

Kucinich, known for his liberal views, trails far behind the leading candidates in most Democratic polls. He was in Philadelphia for a debate at Drexel University.

Bush made the remarks at a news conference earlier this month.

He said: "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Maybe Representative Kucinich should have his own sanity evaluated.

At least give Denis Kucinich some credit. Being a doddering old kook attacts babes. Although, I doubt that I'd care to have a converstation with any woman who finds Denis Kucinich attractive.

Barack Obama's Imaginary Memories

The New York Times is digging into Barack Obama's autobiography and finding his memory is somewhat Kerryesque. In other words, his recall of events that did not occur are seared, seared into his memory more vividly than event that really did happen.

Portland, Land Of Sexual Predators

The wall of silence is crumbling around what was known and when it was known in the case of a former Oregon governor's sexual abuse of a 14 year old girl. The scandal seems likely to consume the current governor, who appointed Goldschmidt to high office despite knowing of the crimes, and the Multnomah County sheriff, who was working for Goldschmidt at the time of the abuse, while simultaneously having an affair with the governor's wife.

Can you believe this crap? This is worse than a daytime televison soap opera.

No wonder pedophile Jack McClellan moved to Portland. He's right at home.

Yes, of course. Everyone involved is a Democrat.

If The Fu Hsits, Part II

The Clinton's Chinese funny money connection seems to involve organized crime.

On October 19, 2007, the L.A. Times broke the NYC Chinatown donations story. The reporters noted that Clinton's success in raising money from "dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers" is due, in part, to a strategy of forming "mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups." Really, what sort of groups?

The L.A. Times stated that "Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Fujian province. The organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous influence over immigrants." What sort of influence, and to what end?

The unnamed organization has to be the Fukien American Association. On page 22 of the Senate report, a display labeled "Leadership Structure of Primary Tongs and Affiliated Gangs in New York City" draws a line between the Fukien American Association and the street gang Fuk Ching. A map of street gang territories in a book entitled Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise, and Ethnicity, by Ko-lin Chin (Oxford University Press, 1996) locates Fuk Ching's territory on East Broadway, near the Manhattan Bridge -- right where the L.A. Times found bogus addresses for some missing Clinton donors.

This all begs the question: Is the communist Chinese government trying to buy influence from the Clintons again?

Back on June 24, 1997, a select team of investigators from Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security & Intelligence Service drafted a report entitled "Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada." The secret report, code-named "Sidewinder," concluded that three groups of recent immigrants from China were working together to "gain influence on Canadian politics by maximizing their presence over some of the country's economic levers." The three groups represented the (1) Chinese Intelligence Services (ChIS), (2) former Hong Kong tycoons with known connections to ChIS and PRC officials, and (3) "Chinese organized crime elements." (The Sidewinder document is available here and here. This writer also telephonically interviewed two persons with intimate, first-hand knowledge of Sidewinder.)

So - what is it about the Clintons that the communist Chinese government and Chinatown crime gangs want? Or considering the Clintons' history of auctioning off pardons and renting out the Lincoln bedroom, it may be that they just want the Clintons in office, comfortable in the knowlege that they can place their specific orders later.

Oooh! This Bike Makes Me So Hot!

I read an interesting post this morning, recommended by The Blogfather, regarding political correctness in classical Rome.

One of the points of the post was Tacitus's belief that superior morals should make good laws superfluous.

I don't know if this was a failure of law or morals, but there's certainly nothing noble about this savage having sex with a bicycle.

A man has been placed on the sex offenders’ register after being caught trying to have sex with a bicycle.

Robert Stewart was discovered in his room by two cleaners at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, south west Scotland, in October last year.

On Wednesday Mr Stewart admitted to sexual breach of the peace in Ayr Sheriff Court, where depute fiscal Gail Davidson described how he had been found by the hostel workers.

She said: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.

"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white T-shirt, naked from the waist down.

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."

New York Times Newspeak With Gratuitous Norman Hsu Puns

The New York Times proposes a solution to illegal immigration: Stop using the word "illegal."

America has a big problem with illegal immigration, but a big part of it stems from the word “illegal.” It pollutes the debate. It blocks solutions. Used dispassionately and technically, there is nothing wrong with it. Used as an irreducible modifier for a large and largely decent group of people, it is badly damaging. And as a code word for racial and ethnic hatred, it is detestable.

Nevermind that it's accurate.

Hillary might try this to lighten the stain of her multiple campaign finance scandals. They weren't illegal contributions. They were - what? Lawrence Downes suggests "unauthorized" for immigrants.

Hillary might have other words. I'd like to suggest, "dihsonist." Or maybe "impermihsible." Or maybe we could just call all such questionable funds "contribuhsons."

Television News - Too Shallow For Maria Shriver

Mrs Terminator had to give up her job as an NBC news correspondent when her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ran for governor. And now, she doesn't want to go back. Apparently the view from the sidelines taught her something the rest of us have known for a long time.

Maria Shriver, who reluctantly gave up her job as an NBC News correspondent after becoming California's first lady, says she's not going back. The reason: the media frenzy over Anna Nicole Smith's death. "It was then that I knew that the TV news business had changed and so had I," Shriver said last week.

I don't think that the media suddenly changed - just her perspective. Too me this looks like the same old news media we've always had.

Hollywood Overestimates The Anti-Semite Appeal

It seems that Jimmy Carter is not the box office draw that the movie moguls thought it was.

My only reaction is: Wow! Who knew that there were seven theaters willing to show this? Is payola legal in movies? If not, the fact that any theaters were willing to show this is damned strong evidence.

Babel - El Stinko Movie

I should know better than to trust the judgement of my sophisticated friends. Several of them recommended that I watch the movie "Babel." I had also read some glowing reviews of the movie.

So, I finally ordered it from Netflix and after having it sit on my desk for a week, I finally found a couple of open hours that I could devote to a movie. As it turned out, two hours wasn't enough. The movie is 2 hours and 23 minutes long. That should have tipped me off.

Anyway, Babel ranks as one of dreariest flicks I've even endured. As far as I could tell, it was three crappy, uninteresting storylines, not one of which was worthy of a half hour television drama, stitched into one narrative, with only the flimsiest connection holding the plots together.

What does an emotionally disturbed deaf-mute, Japanese teenager looking for love have to do with an illegal immigrant domestic worker in San Diego?

The answer: Damned little.

I suppose sophisticates were impressed by the movie's artistry, if you define artistry as tediously grinding every little grain of plot into flour, with odd camera angles, subtitles and an unmistakeable gratuitous injections of caricaturized American oafishness.

I suppose the movie could be considered a success in the same way that PBS measures success - the fewer people you have watching a show is a measure of how high brow it is.

Unless you enjoy self-indulgent navel-gazing convesations about deep meaning in the artful tedium of a confusing and depressing film, don't rent this one.

The Breck Girl's Thin Skin

Johnny Boy reveals two more personality disorders that should disqualify him as a presidential candidate. He's too vain and a he's a bully.

A University of North Carolina professor said Friday that John Edwards' campaign demanded that he pull a student reporter's television story that focused on the upscale location of the campaign's headquarters.

C.A. "Charlie" Tuggle, an associate professor at the school, said the Edwards campaign contacted the reporter, second-year master's degree student Carla Babb, asking for a video of her report to be removed from the Internet. When that failed, the campaign demanded in three calls to Tuggle that the TV story be killed, he said.

Here's the story that unfit to broadcast.

US Prestige In The World Declines

And once again, it's not Bush's fault.

Dutch lawmakers who visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison this week said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay."

Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peter, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took notes of the remarks.

A Lantos aide said he realizes that the Guantanamo facility does harm to the reputation of the United States and has praised judges who ruled in favor of extending legal rights to prisoners. He has not, however, suggested that the prison be closed.

Before the Guantanamo exchange, the lawmakers had discussed a debate in the Netherlands about whether the country should maintain its 1,600 troops serving in NATO's Afghanistan operations.

"You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany," Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.

"The comments killed the debate," said Harry van Bommel, a member of the Socialist Party. "It was insulting and counterproductive."

A Lantos spokeswoman said Lantos was not available and had no comment.

Even when Lantos is right, partially anyway, he's such an oaf that he loses the point.

Somebody Oughta Write A Column

Mickey Kaus has a great idea for a column. Now, if he can just convince somebody else to write it.

Send Congress Home - Now!

Didn't George Bush take an oath to uphold the Constitution? I believe he did. Now it's time to start living up to Article I, Section 4.

See you in December.

A Novel Concept

Enforce the law.

The U.S. Border Patrol plans to announce today a "zero tolerance" operation to prosecute, jail and deport all illegal immigrants caught in the bustling Laredo area, marking a significant tightening of immigration enforcement along a key U.S. border corridor.

This stepped-up effort is an expansion of the Border Patrol's "Operation Streamline" project in the Del Rio and Yuma, Ariz., sectors, which sharply reduced illegal entries. That is being expanded to the sprawling Laredo sector beginning Wednesday, officials confirmed.

This reminds me of the late Sonny Bono. When asked about his proposals to deal with illegal immigration he responded to his inquisitor: "What's to talk about? It's illegal."
It's about time we started treating illegal immigration as a crime. Who says that Republicans are doomed? Americans are sick of nuance and finesse and crave common sense solutions.

If The Fu Hsits

I confess. I've been just waiting for the opportunity to write that. And, it turns out that Fu Lin's Chinese Restaurant in Little Rock was "The early nexus of Clinton connections to Chinese funny money."

Owned by the infamous Charlie Trie, supposedly one translation of Fu Lin is, "enrich your neighbor."

Too perfect. Especially when your neighbor might become president.


Welcome Instapundit fans. I’ve just realized this morning that I qualify as a “real journalist.” I had my narrative in anticipation of facts that I could mold to fit it.. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to make them up. They were just buried in history. I only needed to dig them up. Or, more accurately, find someone else who had dug them up.

Update: More silly Norman Hsu puns here.

Ethnic Cleansing

In Los Angeles.

A south Los Angeles Latino street gang targeted African-American gang rivals and other blacks in a campaign of neighborhood "cleansing," federal prosecutors say. Alleged leaders and foot soldiers in the Hispanic gang Florencia 13, also called F13, are being arraigned this week on charges stemming from a pair of federal indictments that allege that the gang kept a tight grip on its turf by shooting members of a rival gang—and sometimes random black civilians. The "most disturbing aspect" of the federal charges was that "innocent citizens … ended up being shot simply because of the color of their skin," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien told reporters in announcing the indictments.

This sad story, but I'll be paying attention to it to see if Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton take advantage of it. I suspect not. There probably isn't any money it it for them.

Liberals Play Snugglebunnies With Islamofascists

When WSU’s Progressive Student Union synchronized its “Week of Tolerance” with the WSU College Republicans’ “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” I thought that perhaps we would at last have an ideological reconciliation. According to the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, the PSU’s daily themes would focus on “racial and ethnic equality, gender identity and sexual orientation, disability awareness and environmental issue education.” Considering that Islamofascism is uncompromisingly intolerant of such liberalism, a grand harmonic kumbaya between well-groomed campus conservatives and leftist wackos with their multiple facial piercings seemed in order.

Nope. I was wrong. Tolerance does not extend to those who wish to defend Western Civilization from those committed to snuff it out. As one of Tolerance Week’s organizers phrased it: “The College Republicans appear surprised about why we find their outrageous film so objectionable, but by the end of the week they will have felt the full fury of progressive voices for tolerance on the Palouse.”
Consider my bubble popped.

Michael Moore expects to have flower petals cast before him when he waddles his twaddle onto a college campus. The dominant culture of higher education cannot wag its tail enthusiastically enough when a leftist agenda is promoted. Conservatism cannot expect reciprocal courtesy.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, we were all lectured, in sanctimonious tones worthy of Hillary Clinton, that we needed to make clear distinctions between the monsters who would commit such atrocities and the great majority of peaceful Muslims. It would seem that now, even pointing the finger at Osama bin Laden and his acolytes is no longer politically correct.

If moderate Muslims fear that Islamofascism is staining their faith’s image, it is not the College Republicans or David Horowitz that is to blame. Point the finger at Islamofascists who distribute snuff films of themselves beheading infidels and apostates while chanting “Allah akbar.” Moderate Muslims could ameliorate the harm done to their faith’s reputation by turning out in numbers to forcefully denounce Islamofascism, but they don’t. In part, I am sure that they don’t for the same reason that American bookstores refused to sell Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses,” in 1989. It’s the same reason that United States’ newspapers refused to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons that sparked deadly riots throughout the Middle East.

It’s fear. Islamofascists enforce their doctrine with a level of violence that would shock Hitler’s Brownshirts. Journalists immodestly pound their hairless chests and extol their courage when they exercise their constitutionally protected right to criticize the president. But few dare to dip their toe into a storyline that might invite a suicide bomber’s attention.

In this strange world, the left trembles in fear of encroaching fascism – as well it should. I fear it. We live in a country now where a kindergartner can be expelled from school for drawing a stick figure holding a gun and the Democratic leadership and most Democrats in the United States Senate try to force Rush Limbaugh off the air. And right here at WSU, the College Republicans were ordered by Campus Involvement to advertise a Progressive Student Union event scheduled to follow the showing of their movie, “Obsession.” As the anti-Islamofascism Awareness week theme was that the College Republicans are racist, it’s not hard to imagine what they were being asked to promote.

I am personally sick of hearing liberals excuse their deplorable behavior by reciting their new favorite cliché, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Among the so-called progressives, patriotism might qualify as the highest form of dissent. It would certainly rank as the most unusual.

Rather than confront those who wish our obliteration, the left prefers to ponder “why they hate us?” The left never considers that they hate us because our culture tolerates expressions of “racial and ethnic equality, gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Winston Churchill once defined appeasement as feeding one’s friends to a hungry alligator expecting nothing more in return than being the last course on the alligator’s menu. Today’s appeasers are not that smart. When one considers that the left has replaced Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms with the freedom to engage in any manifestation of sex without judgment or consequences, the freedom to access pornography, the freedom to use psychoactive drugs and free access to unfettered abortion, it’s clear that those now serving as Islamofascism’s useful idiots would be the first to lose their heads under an Islamofascist tyranny.

More Bad News For Democrats

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid won't sleep very well tonight if they read this.

Osama bin Laden's latest call for Iraqi insurgents to unite against Americans fell on deaf ears this week in Ramadi, the city that al-Qaeda leaders once declared the seat of a new Islamic caliphate and capital of the Iraqi insurgency. Rather than rise up against them, the people of Ramadi Tuesday invited U.S. forces to watch a massive parade.

Poor Democrats, they can't even count on Al-Jazeera to get their message out.

Al-Qaida sympathizers have unleashed a torrent of anger against Al-Jazeera television, accusing it of misrepresenting Osama bin Laden's latest audiotape by airing excerpts in which he criticizes mistakes by insurgents in Iraq.

No wonder the Democrats say that they're going to go around the mainstream media and take their message directly to the voters.

No Wonder The Left Loves Ted Rall

I agree with the Weasel, Ted Rall is a piece of shit.



I've long thought that you could always identify liberals early in life. They were the guys who were picked last when teams were chosen on the playground. They all threw like girls. And their bitterness has devolved into an anti-American venom.

Ann Coulter Takes On The Islamofascism And Its Useful Idiots

Ann Coulter spoke at USC's Islamofascism Awareness Week festivities last night and this morning has a column about Islamofascism's nitwit allies on college campuses.

Conservative speakers are constantly being physically attacked on college campuses -- including Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and me, among others. Fortunately the attackers are Democrats, so they throw like girls and generally end up with their noses bloodied by pretty college coeds. But that doesn't make it right.

Michael Moore can waddle anywhere he wants in America without fear of violence from Republicans. But we still have to hear about every testy e-mail Paul Krugman ever receives as if liberals are living in the black night of fascism. Any time Krugman wants to get into a "Most Vicious Hate Mail" contest, just say the word. You don't hear me sniffling.

I still snicker when I recall Al Gore whining about "digital brownshirts" who use the internet to publish dissent from leftist orthodoxy.

For Once, I Agree With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Islamofascist dictator of Iran describes UN sanctions as, "just a pile of papers."

Clearly he appreciates just how toothless and irrelevant the UN really is.

World's Wildest Terrorist Bloopers

Bring Back The Orange Beanies!

John Edwards has hired Joe Trippi to do for his campaign what he did Howard Dean's.

Fortney Stark - An Asshole With A History Of AssHoliness

The Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers has assembled a brief list of occassions when Fortney Stark made a complete fool of himself. Well, actually, he has always been a fool. These are a few occasions when he has reintroduced his foolishness to the world.

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing in 1995, he called then Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) a "whore" for the insurance industry and said she learned about health care through "pillow talk" with her doctor husband.

At a hearing on welfare reform in 2001, he insulted former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) by saying Watt's "children were all born out of wedlock." (For the record, only one of Watts' children was born out of wedlock.)

At yet another hearing in 2003, Stark called Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) a "little wimp" after McInnis told Stark to zip it. "Come over here and make me," Stark said. "I dare you. You little fruitcake."

In 1990, Stark said Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, an African American, was "as close to being a disgrace to his race as anyone I've ever seen." And in 1991 Stark singled out his "Jewish colleagues" for blame for that year's Iraq war.

Senatorial Bipartisanship

In a rare display of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans came to together to ensure that the taxpayer gets screwed and that graft continues to flow into their own coffers.

Interestingly, Democrats were quick to blame George Bush for failing to fund infrastructure when a Minneapolis bridge collapsed. But, aren't they the ones who squander the public's money on crap like "field experiences" in Chesapeake Bay or "ice centers" in Utah?

If, as Arlen Specter argued, senator know their own state's best, then isn't it the fault of the Minnesota congressional delegation that the bridge fell?

Will Henry Waxman Chair Iran's Hearings?

Now this is just too good. Iran's Mullahs want to "judicial bodies to form a war tribunal to punish the United States' warmongering ruling party for its crimes."

So now that Democratic Party has the full cooperation of its most natural ally, Iran.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Deputy head of Iran's judiciary here Tuesday called on the world's independent legal and judicial bodies to form a war tribunal to punish the United States' warmongering ruling party for its crimes.

Seyed Ebrahim Rayisee viewed the recent statements made by the US president about contingencies of World War III as a serious threat to the international peace and security, and stressed, "Iran's peaceful nuclear activities are carried out under the legal and technical inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and such remarks indicate the ignorance and confused status of the US ruling party in dealing with international relations, and specially Iran's peaceful nuclear activities."

He further said that the crimes committed by the US ruling party in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Washington's increasing threats in the international arena would bring nothing to the US but further political isolation.

The official said the world today knows very well that the hawkish policies of the US administration have come to a dead-end, "and in case the United States continues violation of the international norms and criteria, it will have to face increased pressures from the side of the world Public opinion, particularly the American people, insisting the illogical leaders of that country to revise their current attitudes."

Hat tip: The Blogfather

If A Tree Fell In The Forest And Nobody Heard It....

Or, how about if we won in Iraq and nobody reported it?

Violence is way down in Iraq. A news service that has been historically hostile to the United States made that information available to all news outlets.

Did you read about it? Probably not. But nobody thought the information worthy of printers ink.

Reuters serves thousands of newspapers and media outlets worldwide. Their story didn't come from an anonymous source, nor was this the result of an exclusive interview with the Interior Minister in Iraq. It came from a public announcement from the ministry. Given the critical nature of the information for the war debate, one would expect that American news outlets would give this some high-profile coverage, either by reprinting the Reuters wire service copy or assigning reporters to the announcment ... right?

Wrong. Despite the announcement coming well before deadline yesterday -- the Reuters article has a 1:01 pm ET timestamp -- the major newspapers apparently didn't consider the violence drop newsworthy today. The Los Angeles Times covers the National Assembly's proposal to limit US military missions in Iraq. The New York Times reports on Kurdish terrorism in Iran. The Washington Post didn't even bother to have a report on Iraq for its morning edition today.

That's no even the worst of it. Newsweek magazine is accusing the Bush Administration of hiding good news. What will these people think of next?

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime.

Can you believe this crap? The Mainstream Media is so devoted to making everything seem sinister and screwed up in Iraq that they even report declining violence as bad news. See here.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

If the MSM want an explanation of their declining influence, maybe they should look within.

Contrary To Popular Opinion...

Illegal immigration is a winning issue for Republicans.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer is said to be endangering the whole Democratic Party in New York with his plan to issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens. State Democrats fear that this scheme will cost the party votes and possibly threaten Hillary's coronation in 2008.

And now, Massachussetts Democrats just barely squeek out a win in what was supposed to be a safe seat when the Republican candidate introduced illegal immigration into the campaign.

A Nobel Prize For Fiction?

No! Wait! That's what the Academy Awards are all about.

Anyway, a real scientist has identified 35 scientific untruths in Al Gore's idiotic powerpoint presentation.

The Best Campaign One Liner of the Year

Maybe, the best of all time.




If you'd like a little background about what John McCain was referencing, see here.

I wish John McCain were not such a self-centered, big government jackass. I could support him.

Hat tip: Powerline

Clinton Unfit For Office?

Now that fresh Clinton campaign scandals are effervescing to the surface, will the press remember 2001?

If they (Barack Obama and John Edwards) really wanted to be president, then when they look at the polls and realize that Hillary Clinton is leaving them in her dust, they would vow to stop her with every fair and accurate tool at their disposal -- and the beauty is, they would legitimately be able to tell themselves they are doing it to save the United States from somebody so corrupt that she is "unfit for elective office."

Those are the words of the (very) liberal New York Observer in a 2001 editorial Ultra-liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert added that Hillary's husband Bill Clinton "is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening." It is, of course, almost impossible to separate Bill from Hillary in this regard, because their careers are so intertwined and because so many of the corruptions in Clinton's past specifically involved projects on which Hillary was actively involved.

Say It Ain't So!

Glenn Reynolds wonders if the mainstream media intentionally misrepresented the Swiss elections.

Come on now. Would they really do something like that?

It's A Good Thing That The MSM Has All Those Editors And Fact Checkers

The mainstream media has had three weeks to get the story right. Amazingly, the mainstream media still manages to ignore the truth even when it is placed directly under their noses.

Here is a small taste of what the Seattle Post-Intelligenser considers thoughtful, well informed opinion worthy of its pages.

Limbaugh, though, may well represent the ultimate example of the far right's "do as I say, not as I do" philosophy. Can a three-times-divorced, draft-dodging, Viagra-chomping guy with a drug problem really be the far right's standard-bearer?

That, on top of getting the facts wrong. Thank goodness for all those editors and fact checkers.

Washington Post Gags On Hillary's Dirty Money

With another eruption of Clinton dirty money scandals even the Washington Post is beginning to take notice, even if the LA Times seems immune to interpreting what its reporters uncover.

To the LA Times, it was just a case of marginalized people getting involved in the US political process. The Washington Post sees the obvious, dirty money.

DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York senator in New York City's Chinese community. Out of 150 donors examined, one-third "could not be found using property, telephone or business records," the Times reported. "Most have not registered to vote, according to public records."

This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign's zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment. After the fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton's money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs. As the Times reported, a single Chinatown fundraiser in April brought in $380,000. By contrast, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry raised $24,000 from Chinatown in the course of his entire campaign.

Are we to believe that poor Chinese immigrants are 15 times more enamoured with Hillary than they were with Kerry?

And the Post swats aside the typical Democrat defense that it's racist to consider Asian money suspect.

Of course, the reason that the Clintons do stuff like this is because they got away with much worse when Slick Willie was in office, when they raised money from the Chinese military.

And precisely because it has never had to suffer any consequences, the Clinton machine brazenly let it be known that it has no real intention of changing its ways. According to the New York Times, "No one has been disciplined as a result of the flawed donations, the officials said, and vetting procedures have not been altered."

Murdered By Monkeys

Marauding primates are getting to be a problem all around the world.

New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by a gang of Rhesus macaques, but succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall, the Press Trust of India news agency and The Times of India reported.

Rogue baboon gangs have been wreaking havoc elsewhere.

The Revenge of Socks The Cat

Like the Black Cat of Edgar Allan Poe's imagination, Socks could come back to haunt Hillary for her cynical exploitation of that abused feline.

Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks anymore. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first female president.

Clinton has been boosting her prospects in the past week with some homespun references to her gender as part of a series of events with the theme Women Changing America, during which she chatted girlfriend-to-girlfriend and mom-to-mom with female voters.

The softening of Clinton’s image seems to be working. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, predicts that up to a quarter of Republican women will vote for her. She leads Democratic rivals in the polls by 26 points and is scooping up more donations to her war chest from Wall Street and defense contractors than any candidate from either party – an unmistakable indicator of who they think will win in 2008.

Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?

“In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list,” writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. “But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference.”

It's worth noting that Buddy, Hillary's chocolate labrador suffered the same fate that so many former friends of the Clintons experience once they are of no further use to the Clintons.

Paul Krugman Gets His Ass Handed To Him

Paul Krugman's idiotic ideology could only have matured in the nurturing incubator of the New York Times and its coccoonish and ill-fated Times Select, that provided Krugman with more protective insulation from contrary ideas.

But now he has published a book and has exposed his ideas and his manufactured facts to the marketplace he so hates. The first review is in - from his own paper - and it's a thumbs down.

To get the flavor of Krugman's arrogance, condescension and immunity to penetrating thought, Times reviewer David Kennedy cites these sources of partisan blindness to that Krugman presents to explain why Americans do not unanimously for Democrats:

The ascendancy of modern conservatism is “an almost embarrassingly simple story,” he says, and race is the key. “Much of the whole phenomenon can be summed up in just five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. ... End of story.”

A fuller and more nuanced story might at least gesture toward the role that environmental and natural-resource issues have played in making red-state country out of the interior West, not to mention the unsettling effects of the “value issues” on voters well beyond Dixie.

And as for national security — well, as Krugman sees things, it was not Democratic bungling in the Iranian hostage crisis or humiliation in Somalia or feeble responses to the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center or the assault on the U.S.S. Cole, but the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety.

Krugman's book might sell. There are enough people out there who will pay to have their prejudices reinforced. After all, 42% of the Democratic Party believes that George Bush either participated in the 9/11 conspiracy or knew about it and allowed it to happen so that he would have a pretext for a war he already planned. Surely enough of those people are literate to make Krugman's book a commercial success.

A "commercial success." My, isn't that ironic?

Hillary's Bad Math

Friday, Mark Penn boasted that a quarter of Republican women would vote for Hillary simply because she's a woman. A real pollster disagrees though.

According to the Zogby Poll, 83% of Republican women say that they would never vote for Hillary. In fact, half of all Americans say that they would never vote for him.

At least Mark Penn got one thing right. He disagreed with Rudy Giuliani's claim the only he could beat Hillary. I believe that just about any of them could be Hillary.

I Question Pelosi's Intelligence

Nancy Pelosi's judgement questioned.

"It's certainly not her finest moment," said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"There's been no great harm done, but we do have to find some ways to mend the U.S.-Turkish relationship."

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed in World War One, but denies they were victims of a systematic genocide.

Pelosi took office amid much fanfare 10 months ago. She proposed "a new direction" for America and vowed to challenge Bush on a host of fronts, including the Iraq war.

Her stumble on the Armenia resolution gave Republican critics more ammunition.

They called the bill another "irresponsible" or "dangerous" foreign policy gambit by Pelosi, who flew to Syria last spring when the White House was not on speaking terms with Damascus.

I agree that it was not her finest moment, but I have to ask: Has Nancy Pelosi even had an average moment? I am beginning to think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are proof of God's mercy. God is said to be particularly protective of drunks and Irishmen. Apparently he has a soft spot for Americans too. If we're going to be foolish enough to put Democrats in charge, God saves up by installing fools to lead them.

Van Halen Stinks It Up In Greensboro

Santayana said that you cannot step into the same river twice. Apparently, you can't make the same band twice either.

Indigestible Irony - Gag Alert

Syria filed a formal complaint against the US in the United Nations, accusing America of interfering in Lebanon's internal affairs.

Syria says US interference in Lebanon threatens country's stability

Syria accused the United States of interfering in Lebanese internal politics, saying its bias for one side against the other threatens Lebanon's security and stability.


In a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and published by the state-run news agency Thursday night, Syria said it respected Lebanese sovereignty and independence and was not interfering in Lebanon's presidential elections. (AP)

Just remember, this is the regime that Nancy Pelosi made nice to.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, check this out.

Inexcusable Journalistic Laziness And Dishonesty

When attempting to divine the motivations of a Democrat who does something truly idiotic, and you have to decide whether it was stupidity or sinister conspiracy, Charles Krauthammer comes down on the side of stupidity as the most likely explanation. He calls it "Krauthammer's Razor."

I don't know if my thoughts are sharp enough to qualify as a razor, but I do have an opinion on why two of the nation's largest newspapers still get the story wrong even though all the information required to get it right have been made freely and easily available.

About three weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh remarked that liberals prefer "phony soldiers" to real soldiers - phony soldiers like Jesse MacBeth, who became a liberal darling with tales of atrocities that were proven to be false, even as he was proven never to have been an Army Ranger as he had claimed. He also mentioned what I would call a "soldier phony" named Scott Beauchamp. Scott Beauchamp is indeed an Army corporal who wrote a diary for The New Republic about the depravity of US soldiers in Iraq. He wrote these diaries before he had ever set foot in Iraq and has since confessed that he made it all up.

The free and easy availability to the truth has not had the slightest influence on the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Friday's Times contained a story that took for granted that the Media Matters lie was true.

After Rush Limbaugh referred to Iraq war veterans critical of the war as “phony soldiers,” he received a letter of complaint signed by 41 Democratic Senators. He decided to auction the letter, which he described as “this glittering jewel of colossal ignorance,” for charity, and he pledged to match the price, dollar for dollar.

That's just BS and if the Times cared even a little bit about the truth, they could have asked him or simply consulted his website. They didn't. They accepted Media Matters and Harry Reid at face value.

And this morning, the Washington Post takes it for granted that Media Matters is a reliable source (pun intended) and also repeats the lie.

The letter in question is an Oct. 2 two-pager from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to Clear Channel Communications CEO Mark Mays lambasting the syndicate's Rush Limbaugh, who had recently criticized U.S. troops who were against the war in Iraq.

"Phony soldiers," blasted Limbaugh.

A brief glance at the transcript or listening to a tape of the conversation in question would have immediately informed the reporter that Rush Limbaugh was not referring to dissenting soldiers as "phony soldiers." He referring to phonies like MacBeth and Beauchamp.

So, how is it that two of more widely quoted newspapers in the country get it wrong even though getting it right would require only about two minutes of their time? It's all about the narrative. When journalists hear a factoid, they judge the reliability based not upon exhaustive or even in this case convenient research, but on whether or not the factoid conforms to the assumed narrative.

"We fell into a stereotype of the Duke lacrosse players," says Newsweek's Evan Thomas. "It's complicated because there is a strong stereotype [that] lacrosse players can be loutish, and there's evidence to back that up. There's even some evidence that that the Duke lacrosse players were loutish, and we were too quick to connect those dots."

But he adds: "It was about race. Nifong's motivations clearly were rooted in his need to win black votes. There were tensions between town and gown, that part was true. The narrative was properly about race, sex and class. . . . We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place. . . . We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong."

Evan Thomas revealed what we already knew. The narrative drives the story, not the facts.

So when trying to judge the motivation for journalists getting the story wrong in the face of a preponderance of facts, I'm going to come down on the side of what I'm going to call, ideological laziness. If a story conforms to the reporter's preconceptions, it's obviously true and the reporter need not put any more effort into it. I'll call it Mike's Razor.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Even though I hate opera, I had to share this, if only because it is perhaps the only recorded example of that Simon guy (I don't know his last name) not behaving like a complete asshole.

It Isn't Just That Hillary's Money Is So Dirty

Somebody needs to ask why is it that China is pouring so much illegal money into the campaign coffers of Democrats, especially the Clintons.

Now we learn that vast sums of money are apparently being funnels into Hillary's presidential campaign through straw donors who could not possibly donate that much of their own money.

What is this money buying?

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton's success in gathering money from Chinatown's least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins.

Clearly, Norman Hsu, like Johnny Chung before him, is only the tip of a very, very large iceberg.

Al Qaida And Democrats - Haditha Co-Conspirators

Islamofascists routinely use women and children as human shields. Unfortunately the tactic works sometimes.

It is especially effective when Democrats and the mainstream media cooperate with the terrorists.

Innocents were killed at Haditha, as they inevitably are in all wars--though that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or "massacre" that many assumed--though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.

The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.

Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.

A common cliche' reads that generals are always preparing for the last war. I think that we can also say that liberals are always trying to lose the last war. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam was a devastating blow to the American consciousness. John Murtha clearly hoped to accomplish the same thing with the Haditha Marines.

Chickenshit Democrats Can't Help Themselves, They Were Born That Way

Apparently, there is no way to cure Democrats of their cowardice. It's in their genes and in their brain chemistry.

A mechanism in the brain may explain why some people keep their cool and others crumble under stress, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"We have identified the ways in which the brain naturally copes with chronic stressful experiences," said Dr. Vaishnav Krishnan of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, whose study appears in the journal, Cell.

Oops!

I would have paid dearly to have been in the room when this woman's vocabulary was filled in after the show.

Reward Good Teachers. The Bad Ones Can Sell French Fries

If we can put a man on the moon, then we can create a formula for evaluating and rewarding teacher performance. Yeah, I know that’s stupid, but it feels good after all these years to turn such a ridiculous comparison back on liberals who said that moon landings were proof that we could eliminate poverty.
Gratuitous lunar associations aside, I do know this: Contrary to the prevailing wisdom among teachers and their unions, developing a system that can accurately evaluate teacher performance in the classroom is not impossible. It might not be easy. It might require coarse adjustments or fine tuning as we gain experience with it. But measuring teacher performance is possible. And it’s an essential first step toward honest education reform.
As the Idaho legislature moves forward with proposals to link pay raises to teacher performance, teachers insist that they do not want to be judged and don’t believe that they can accurately be judged anyway.
“Your performance as a teacher isn't necessarily reflected in your product,” said Nancy Amos, president of the Potlatch teacher’s association. As for standardized testing that would measure student performance she said, “You're not necessarily measuring what should be taught.”
As I understand it, standardized tests measure reading, writing and arithmetic. But, what makes the parents and taxpayers think they are qualified to judge what should be taught?
This is a bit like a car manufacturer saying that we, the consumers, are unqualified to judge the quality of the cars we buy and that we should trust the carmaker to decide what’s best for us. The carmaker might say that reliability, durability and gas mileage are not the measure of a good car. It’s the celebrity endorsements that matter.
For as long as I have been paying attention, there have been three incontrovertible truths about education. First, the quality of elementary and secondary education in the United States has been almost uniformly poor when compared to the rest of the world. Secondly, in spite of what teachers’ unions have argued, class size and per pupil spending have little correlation with student performance. And finally, teachers have resisted every attempt at accountability for the quality of their work.
A quarter century ago, Ronald Reagan proposed merit pay increases for teachers nationwide. The unions let it be known that they would prefer no raises at all to raises that rewarded quality work. In 2007, unions still oppose any system that would make teachers accountable for the quality of their work. In a country that surpasses the rest of the world in just about every endeavor (with the notable exception of education) precisely because it does reward excellence, the contrast should gain somebody’s attention. We have Soviet level performance in our schools because we have a Soviet style system of rewarding performance – we don’t and they didn’t.
A couple of decades ago, a baseball fanatic with entirely too much free time on his hands created a mathematical discipline that he called “sabremetrics.” All winter long, Bill James would pore over player statistics and eventually developed equations that assigned a numerical value to a player’s contribution to his team. Originally dismissed as nonsense, sabremetrics is increasingly used by Major League general managers in medium to small markets who are trying to assemble winning teams by assembling rosters with the highest value to salary ratio.
Undoubtedly turning a few professional mathematicians loose on the problem of evaluating teacher performance should yield at least as good a system of evaluating teachers as Bill James created for evaluating baseball players. The formulas would be entirely dispassionate and would insulate teachers from capricious or vindictive administrators.
I don’t see why teachers should be so skeptical of a system that evaluates the quality of their work and rewards them accordingly. I have no doubt that if I were to poll Idaho teachers about the reliability of mathematical models used to predict global warming, a large majority would express their faith in those forecasts. When Al Gore’s acolytes warn that if we don’t give up our cars and replace our incandescent bulbs, then our coastal cities will be submerged and polar bears will die of sunburn, the majority of teachers believe it. Many probably teach this instead of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Forget the moon. If baseball and climate can be modeled mathematically, then we can evaluate teachers.

I Almost Feel Sorry For The Democrats

It doesn't take brains to defeat the Democrats - just balls.

Proof That The Mainstream Media Willfully Misinforms

Nearly half of Americans surveyed believe that the United States is in the midst of a recession.

Nearly half of Americans feel the U.S. economy is in a recession, marked by a significant decline in economic activity, according to a survey released Thursday.

The poll by the CNN-Opinion Research Corporation found that while 46 percent of Americans hold that belief, 51 percent don't.

Black citizens were more pessimistic than whites, findings show.

Sixty-nine percent of black Americans feel the United States is in a recession, while only 42 percent of white Americans feel the same way.

Just imagine how ignorant Americans would be if they only had the MSM to get their news.

Dinosaur Death Watch - BBC Extinction Watch

The incredible shrinking BBC.

Perhaps it wouldn't be shrinking if it were more credible.

Hillary Applies Stain-Away Again

According to the New York Daily News, Norman Hsu attempted suicide during his brief attempt to escape justice again. Hillary's Stain Away seems to be losing its potency.

Jailed fund-raiser Norman Hsu began popping pills on his way out to California for a court appearance last month and continued to down over-the-counter drugs in a failed suicide attempt when he went on the run, the Daily News has learned.

Hsu's effort to kill himself is detailed in court papers obtained Wednesday by The News. The "excessive number of over-the-counter pills" eventually led Hsu's kidneys to fail and induced severe delirium. He was in such bad shape when authorities pulled him off an Amtrak train in Colorado that emergency room doctors thought he was suffering from West Nile virus.

"Medical staff suspected that Mr. Hsu might have encephalitis or West Nile virus," said documents filed by Hsu's lawyers.

The filing is the fullest disclosure yet of Hsu's most recent flight from justice. It confirms Hsu, 56, sent multiple suicide notes before boarding a plane that arrived in Oakland, Calif., at 5:25 a.m. on Sept. 5, the morning he was due to face his 15-year-old California theft conviction.

Before landing, Hsu took "a few unidentified pills provided by a friend," the filing says.

Things got worse when a "sleep-deprived" Hsu took a taxi to a San Francisco hotel and panicked when he saw people he assumed were reporters. He then hopped an Amtrak train - forfeiting his $2 million bail - and ingested plenty more drugs "in an effort to end his life."

The judge should probably keep Norman Hsu stashed safely away in his cell, if only for his own safety.

Saudi Financed Wahabi Madrassa In Virginia

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that a Saudi financed madrassa be shut down - in Virginia for crying out loud!

[T]he academy hews closely to the curriculum used at Saudi schools, which they criticize for promoting hatred of and intolerance against Jews, Christians and Shiite Muslims.

This is just what we need - to nurture our very own home grown terrorists.

Did somebody say that we don't need Islamofascism awareness week?

Know Thy Enemy - The Traitorous Times

The New York Times. Who would have believed that a major American newspaper would disseminate the enemy's propaganda? Now wonder the stock price has been tanking.

I think that now we know why institutional investors are dumping their Times stock. They must have gotten a sniff of the filth Arthur Sulzberger had planned.

New York Times shares slid 43 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $18.48 at 4:04 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the lowest since January 1997. The stock has declined 24 percent this year.

At some point financial reality will have to overcome the traitorous ideology of the editors and publishers.

Does anybody still doubt the neccessity of Islamofascism Awareness Week?

Dissatisfaction In The Worker's Paradise (New Jersey)

Half of New Jersey's population wants to leave.

About half of New Jersey residents wish they were living somewhere else, with most citing high living costs as the reason, a newspaper poll found.

Just over half of those who said they want to move expect to follow through on it, Gannet News Service reported.

I wonder: Has it ever occurred the New Jersey to try a different political party - just once?

Grownups Take Charge Again

So, the House of Representatives won't be condemning Turkey after all.

Well, if Nancy Pelosi wishes to condemn a genocide, maybe she could start by condemning the Soviet Union for the Ukrainian famine. And they could add on a condemnation of the New York Times for covering it up.

I won't be holding my breath.

The Right Wing Hate Attack That Wasn't

Screwball lefist Err America radio host tripped and fell, got a booboo, imagined that she had been mugged, then her network falsely blamed the "right-wing hate machine" for trying to silence her.

Considering Err America's crappy ratings, it would seem that she has already done a fine job of silencing herself.

Surge Succeeding

Grave diggers and morticians hardest hit.

I blame George Bush.

Another Pelosi Failure

Now it seems that Nancy Pelosi can't even deliver on a irrelevant, symbolic gesture for a small, insignificant special interest group.

According to Congressional and Bush administration sources, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now unlikely to bring a resolution which would label the deaths of Armenians in a conflict more than 90 years ago as "genocide".

Pelosi, as recently as Sunday on "This Week", has repeatedly said she would call the controversial but nonbinding resolution for a vote despite the opposition of the Bush administration and warnings that it could damage U.S. relations with Turkey.

President Bush called Speaker Pelosi on Monday night and asked her to pull the bill. But Congressional sources say that Pelosi is telling House members that she will not bring the bill to the floor without majority support.

At least seven House members have withdrawn as co-sponsors of the bill and several more are expected to follow. Key Pelosi ally Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., is also lobbying against a vote.

Key House members continue to canvass members but don't expect a vote this year.

This is a good one to let fail. Actually it has that in common with all of her failures. Nevertheless, Nancy Pelosi managed to cost Americans billions of dollar as oil prices soared thanks to her gratuitous provocation of Turkey.

If we're going to have a Democrat Congress, thank God that it's led by bumblers like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

We Will Win Because We Have Men Like This

How did this make it into the mainstream media?

As pressure builds on the Bush administration to give the war its final push, Gunner Walker is a stalwart. This 51-year-old marine, on his third tour in Iraq, is the face of members of the US military who say the job can still be done, despite the odds.

Walker, a wiry intellectual with glasses and a chirpy exuberance, joined the Corps at age 17, straight from high school in Rittman, Ohio. Now, he directs training for the Iraqi security forces at a US base in Anbar Province, driven by a personal quest to help transform the Middle East. A serious guy, he says the US war in Iraq will have a "revolutionary" impact on the region.

"It's how to inculcate within these people the idea that you can win this fight," he says, referring as much to the Iraqi soldiers he trains as the American public that he knows still needs convincing. "It's about vision." Here in Habbaniyah, a former British air base distinguished by its Western-style barracks and palm tree-lined roads, Walker leads a group of about 50 trainers and interpreters, which grew from about 15 American instructors that he handpicked to come here and, quite literally, teach Iraqi soldiers and policemen how to shoot straight.

Somebody needs to take this reporter aside and set him straight on the importance of sticking with the narrative.

Can The MSM Simply Ignore The Edwards Affair Story Into Oblivion?

I don't think so. Pretty soon, the National Enquirer is going to have to show their cards.

I choke when I say this, but the Enquirer's credibility is on the line. After all, they've stopped trying to sell papers with blazing headlines about women who were impregnated by aliens.

If they can't back up their gossip, then they're back in the same market as the Weekly World News.

On the other hand, this does strike me as credible.

Ann Coulter Needs To Learn The Lesson Of Rush Limbaugh

Have you ever heard of Johnny Deutch? Probably not. He's a nobody on a nowhere cable network. I saw a few minutes of his show once when another show that I occasionally watched was cancelled and replaced with his. He had a porn star on with whom he was engaging in sexual fantasies.

Well, one way for a nobody to get noticed is to convince a somebody to appear on his show and make a scene. Limbaugh figured this out and does not assist liberal losers acquire an audience that they could never attract on their own.

Unfortunately Ann Coulter did not take this into account when Johnny Deutch invited her to come on. And now he has exploited her appearance into publicity for his pathetic show.

But, it's not nice to mess with Ann Coulter.

"I didn't realize he was going to turn himself into the Al Sharpton of the Jews."

Ouch! If Johnny weren't such an ass, I'd feel sorry for him.

MSNBC Tries To Keep Pace With CNN

Last week, CNN sought out the authoritative opinion of burnt out hippie relics regarding the promise and perils of nuclear energy.

Not wanting to be left behind, Chris Matthews scoured the celebrity rehab clinics and found Graham Nash and David Crosby. And of course, as long as you've restored them to temporary lucidity, why not ask them a penetrating question about US foreign policy.

"How many lawyers does it take to rescue our soldiers?"

"It should be zero."

In the early hours of May 12, seven U.S. soldiers - including Spc. Jimenez - were on lookout near a patrol base in the al Qaeda-controlled area of Iraq called the "Triangle of Death."

Sometime before dawn, heavily armed al Qaeda gunmen quietly cut through the tangles of concertina wire surrounding the outpost of two Humvees and made a massive and coordinated surprise attack.

Four of the soldiers were killed on the spot and three others were taken hostage.

A search to rescue the men was quickly launched. But it soon ground to a halt as lawyers - obeying strict U.S. laws about surveillance - cobbled together the legal grounds for wiretapping the suspected kidnappers.

Starting at 10 a.m. on May 15, according to a timeline provided to Congress by the director of national intelligence, lawyers for the National Security Agency met and determined that special approval from the attorney general would be required first.

For an excruciating nine hours and 38 minutes, searchers in Iraq waited as U.S. lawyers discussed legal issues and hammered out the "probable cause" necessary for the attorney general to grant such "emergency" permission.

Thank you Harry Reid. Thank you Nancy Pelosi. Thank you New York Times.

Hat tip: The Blogfather

Those Who Really Deserve A Peace Prize

How about General Petraeus and the fighting men he commands? A few months ago, Democrats declared the war lost and the surge a failure. They must find this morning's copy of the Washington Post very discouraging.

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures.

The flow of foreign fighters entering through Syria is diminshed. Tribal leaders have thrown in their lot with us. And the remnants of Al Qaida are;

"are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

Al Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize for factually inaccurate propoganda. Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to enabling tryants and dictators, and yet he has a Nobel Peace Prize. Yasir Arafat had a Nobel Prize on his wall. No commentary required.

Ronald Reagan did more for peace than anyone in my lifetime. Before him, it was Winston Churchill. Both made the world a safer and freer place, but neither was ever recongnized for their contributions. George Bush and General Petreaus will also have to wait decades for the judgement of history.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Committee chooses to recognise contributions to peace that should be more properly called the "Neville Chamberlain Peace Prize."

Wasting Money And Endangering Troops, Crooked Northwest Democrats

Patty Murray has now declared herself to be a better judge of military procurement than the military itself.

Murray remains a staunch defender of earmarks. She pointed to Insitu, a high-tech company in Klickitat County that makes aerial drones the Army uses for surveillance in Iraq. She said she helps local companies with good products that may be overlooked by the sprawling Pentagon and its faraway bureaucrats who might favor their "buddies" who they "were having drinks with ... on Friday night."

"People tend to talk about earmarks as something that is a bad thing," she said. "I see it as a way to make sure that the tax dollars that are spent are spent in a very wise way."

The Seattle Times has a very well researched article about how Northwest politicians abuse earmarks to pay off their contributors, and how the process isn't just wasteful, but dangerous - especially when politicians force the military to purchase gear that's unsafe.

In June 2005, Rep. Wu of Oregon arrived in Iraq and handed out free T-shirts to Marines. He was promoting the wares of InSport, a Portland-area company that makes fast-drying polyester shirts.

Earlier that year, Wu and other Northwest lawmakers got a $2 million earmark in the defense bill to sell T-shirts to the Marines. Wu said the shirts would be far more comfortable than the cotton ones the Marines wore under body armor.

But there was a big problem with these T-shirts, a problem encountered in the deserts of Iraq and in 1982 during the Falklands invasion.

Polyester clothing melts in intense heat, adhering to the skin. "This essentially creates a second skin and can lead to horrific, disfiguring burns," said Capt. Lynn E. Welling, the 1st Marine Logistics Group head surgeon, who conducted research in Iraq in early 2006.

Months after Wu's visit, a Marine wearing a polyester T-shirt was riding in an armored vehicle in Iraq when a bomb hidden on the road exploded. Even though the Marine wore a protective vest, the shirt melted in the explosion, contributing to severe burns over 70 percent of his body. Doctors had to extract the shirt's remains from the Marine's torso.

In April 2006, the Marines banned polyester T-shirts for use in combat or anywhere outside the protected "Green Zone" bases.

But, don't Wu doesn't concern himself with any of that. He's fishing for campaign contributions.

Executives of InSport and its owner, Vital Apparel, donated $6,100 to Wu's campaign in a single day at the end of the earmark "season."

The day after the bill passed on Sept. 29, 2006, one executive gave another $750 to Wu. Two others followed with identical donations within three weeks.

So Wu squanders millions of dollars of taxpayer money and contributes to grevious injuries to at least one Marine, all exchange for $8350 in campaign contributions.

The Sauce Makes The Meal

Any good cook knows that you can make just about anything edible with enough of a good sauce. For that reason, I'd like know what this guy used.

The claim to fame of Frenchman Michel Lotito, who apparently never heard of garage sales, is that he has consumed 128 bicycles, 15 supermarket carts, six chandeliers, two beds and a pair of skis.

America's Most Trusted News Source

If you wanted a thoughtful, inciteful and well-informed opinion piece on nuclear nuclear energy, what sort of credentials would you seek out?

How about three rock and roller has-beens and an never was hippie cult author/camp follower?

This, is CNN.

Commentary here.

Of course, if you really want to learn more, you can ask Bonnie Rait some questions.

I thought about asking her to evaluate of the perils and inefficiencies of a fluidized bed reactor as compared to a graphite moderated reactor, but....

Hat tip: The Blogfather

Resume' Padding? John Edwards' Affair

John Edwards continues to deny that the had an affair with a campaign staffer and expresses umbrage that someone would even look into such things, although he didn't seem to think that it was out of bounds for the press to look into his opponents' lives.

"But, I think every single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we'd make." John Edwards on 60 Minutes

I still wonder if this a last ditch effort to salvage his candidacy. After all, Bill Clinton twice turned affairs to his advantage - first in 1992 when Gennifer Flowers went public and again when it came out that he was getting blowjobs in the Oval Office.

As resume' enhancers go, few things work as well as affairs. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was exposed boning his best friend's wife and immediately went to alcohol rehab, simulated fellatio with a microphone on television, and emerged with an 80% approval rating.

The MSM has been slow to acknowlege this simmering controversy, possibly suggesting Clinton dirty tricks.

Cooties

I really can think of no more dramatic metaphor the cultural divide that separates Democrat elitists from normal people than the advice that Democrats get vaccinated before venturing into the swamplands of NASCAR country.

"Democrats should know that there is no preventive measure yet designed to ward off the blue-collar values and patriotism that NASCAR fans represent," said Linda Daves, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, to McClatchy Newspapers. "If they aren't careful, they just might catch some of it."

As the Washington Times summarizes:

"NASCAR cooties," as some are calling this flap, reinforces what each side believes to be true about the other. In this case it underscores Democrats' allergic reaction to sharing close quarters with a Republican constituency.

Update: By Thompson's standards, you've not only got it bad – but you're also a walking, talking, fire-breathing, beer-drinking, tobacco-spittin', cussin' and cheerin' sumbitch who is carrying enough pestilence and pathos to bring the good, old U.S. of A to its knees.

News Unfit To Print

When George Bush awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Lt. Michael Murphy, a Long Island resident, the New York Times didn't consider his sacrifice worthy of darkening their newsprint.

He served with unusual valor and distinction in Afghanistan.

When Taliban militants ambushed his four-man team in 2005, he risked his life scrambling to an open spot to radio for help. He got his call through, but was later killed in the battle.

Surely even editors at the Times could have had the heart to report - if not honor - such courage and self-sacrifice.

Unless, of course, they're so blinded by their disdain for America's fighting men and women and their missions that they just can't muster the decency to do so.

That must be it.

The Times editors have advanced beyond Bush Derangement Syndrome. But then, the Times has a long history of ideological blindness when it comes to America's enemies.

Forget Miss Teenage South Carolina

This is much better (or worse).



She's introduced as "Miss Douglas." I sure hope that this isn't the same Douglas that so many of my ancestors hail from - but, it would fit.

Just a reminder:



Update: Whew! I guess she's from Douglas, Nebraska.

Now That The Democrats Have Put Surrender On The Slow Track

They're getting into the issues that really matter in America.

Rep. Barney Frank, a leading gay rights champion in Congress, on Thursday urged fellow gay rights advocates not to let their dispute over protecting transgender workers doom a job discrimination ban that could mark a major civil rights advance for gays in the workplace.

The debate over including transgender people has sharply divided gay rights activists, many of whom are trying to kill a stripped-down bill without protections for transgender workers that Frank and Democratic leaders hope will win House passage this year.

"We're not going to be split off this way," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We're driven by principle. No civil rights movement has ever left a part of its community behind - and we're not about to be the first."

Frank, D-Mass., one of two openly gay members of Congress, supports transgender protections, but said they don't have the votes.

"Politically, the notion that you don't do anything until you can do everything is self-defeating," he said.

Frank said the public has more awareness because gay activists began educating people about the unfairness of prejudice based on sexual orientation a long time ago.

"These things take awhile," Frank said. "The transgender issue is of relatively recent vintage."

So, it seems that the Democrats are setting up to throw transgender people under the bus just as they did with the peaceniks.