MICHAEL MOORE - CORPORATE PIG

The San Francisco Chronicle has a smarmy little editorial out today bashing Michael Moore(!?). The Chronicle calls Mikey to the mat on his feeding from the corporate, anti-environmental trough - the private jets and company SUV’s he’s using on his “progressive, pro environment, little-guy, anti-Bush, anti-big business” book tour. They should have mentioned his multi-million dollar apartment in tony Manhattan, too. The whole scene reminds me of the Democratic Congressman a few years ago that went to an energy crisis press conference in their own gas guzzling SUV’s.

The Chronicle isn’t too mean to their boy, even though Moore wasn’t the least bit apologetic about his corporate largesse. Probably because they know if the push too hard, this “little guy” house of cards that Michael Moore has erected might come down around all of their heads.

HILLARY THE HUN

The Corner at National Review hooked me up this morning with comments made by Hillary Clinton yesterday. Whatever you say about this woman, you can never say she doesn’t have gumption or even shame. Check out this quote from The Smartest Woman in the World about President Bush:

"We must always be vigilant against letting our desire to keep information confidential be used as a pretext for classifying information that is more about political embarrassment."

HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!

How about an un-named former President who wanted to keep Secret Service agents from being subpoenaed under “executive privilege”? Or eight hundred thousand other times those two words were tossed about between 1993 and 2000? Or maybe she might want to direct that towards the current Democratic front-runner, Howard Dean. As I have mentioned before, he’s got half of his gubernatorial records under lock and key for TEN years because of self-admitted “embarrassing” information.

The lady’s got guts, not conscience, but lots of guts.

BOYS, SCHMOYS

Funny little story out of Newport, New Hampshire. It’s a Title IX-type situation and it should have the usual suspects like the Feminist Majority and the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education in arms.

It seems the Newport school system disbanded it’s boy’s soccer team and won’t allow one of it’s members play on the girl’s soccer team. They say the state athletic association rules won’t allow “mixed competition” teams. Of course, the same rules allow girls to play on the boy’s teams when there is no comparable girl’s team.

What to make of this? Well, it’s pretty funny to see our preferential treatment of “aggrieved classes” demands get thrown back in the faces of the whiners and to see the usual suspects remain wholly silent on this issue. The young man is also getting an early education on what it can be like to be part of the evil, white, male, corporate, power structure in this PC world we live in today.

In reality, Title IX doesn’t apply below collegiate sports, so I expect the usual suspects to keep quiet and use that as their cover, not that that would stop them if a girl was denied on the boy’s team. Look, boys not being allowed to play on girls teams makes sense, especially when they will be playing other girls teams. Girls teams could guarantee state championships by recruiting the most talented and statistically larger and more powerful boys onto the girl’s team and playing teams with no boys. That’s why the state athletic commission has the rules they do – and it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is allowing girls to play on boy’s teams because they would statistically WEAKEN the boy’s team when playing against all boy teams from another school. But, who cares about that? As long as the girls feel good about themselves…

THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP

Check out this news story title from MSNBC:

"Space storm hits; Earth survives"

Maybe next time, they will check their headlines from Space.com.

WELL, AT LEAST I'M MOSTLY GOOD

According to the Gematriculator, Mel's Diner is:





Take what you want from that.

FORTUNE COOKIE SAY, "AMERICA BAD!!"

Back in September, I highlighted a column by a crazed liberal by the name of James Carroll. It was one of the most deranged columns I had ever read and worthy of some derision. Well, I found another column by Mr. Whacko in today's Boston Globe and although it is not nearly as deranged (ah, the joys of modern psychiatric medicines), it was still pretty loopy. Because of that, in the flavor of his first sentence, I can say, "This may not be the dumbest column James Carroll has written"

He spends the whole column fawning over China's desire to hamstring the United States Strategic Defense Initiative. He says such damning things as:

"For decades, "deterrence" and "balance" were the main notes of Pentagon planning, but now "prevention" and "dominance" define the US posture. Such assertions can be made in Washington with only good intentions, but they fall on foreign ears as expressions of aggression."

Jeepers, what are we thinking? "Prevention"? Wouldn't want to be the strongest when it comes to defense now, would we? We get this, too:

"In the words of John Steinbruner and Jeffrey Lewis, writing in Daedalus, 'The Chinese were particularly alarmed by a 1998 long-range planning document released by the then United States Space Command. That document outlined a concept called global engagement -- a combination of global surveillance, missile defense, and space-based strike capabilities that would enable the United States to undertake effective preemption anywhere in the world and would deny similar capability to any other country.'"

"Undertake effective preemption anywhere in the world"? Oh, the horror!!!!

Carroll feels bad for the Chinese because:

"China has constructed a minimal deterrent force with a few dozen nuclear-armed ICBMs, but US "global engagement" based on a missile defense, will quickly undercut the deterrence value of such a force. The Chinese nuclear arsenal will have to be hugely expanded."

Might SDI also undercut the STRIKE capabilities, too? Maybe that's what has China so concerned, huh? Or, maybe by limiting our anti-missile and anti-satellite initiatives, it will allow China to charge right ahead and develop there own even in defiance of their own treaty, as documented very well by the Heritage Foundation here.

James Carroll is one of those America-hating liberals who either cannot see the damage to this country in the ideas they espouse or they can see it and espouse with full intention. I don't know what category Psycho fits into, but I tend to believe he falls into the latter category.

RED SOX NATION

There was much happiness here in “Red Sox Nation” when the Florida Marlins won the World Series. Not because the people here are Marlin fans, it’s because they hate the New York Yankees and anything that hurts the Yankees is a good thing. I personally don’t care, I hope they all loose.

What the Marlins win should do though, is stop the Red Sox fans from mooning over how big the Yankees payroll is. Every year, I hear the Sox fans crying, “Well, what do you expect? Of course their winning, look how much they pay!” or “If we could afford to pay that much, we’d be winning, too!” Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just another canard thrown out to excuse the Red Sox from failing yet again.

A quick look at the salaries will show that the Marlins have a payroll one third of the Yankees and one half of the Red Sox. If payroll was what counted, then how come the Marlin’s were able to beat the Yankees and the Red Sox couldn’t? How have the Marlins, who have been around for only eleven years, been able to take the pennant TWICE while the Red Sox, who have been around for a million years and twice the payroll, haven’t been able to do anything in ninety years? The Red Sox have the third highest paid player in baseball, paying more for any one man than the Yankees, and they still can’t get it done? I thought it was all about salaries, salaries, salaries.

TERRI SCHIAVO LIFE WATCH

I’m sure many of you have seen the latest goings-on in the Terri Schiavo case, but here is a quick rundown of what has been happening.

The ACLU has joined the case as part of Michael Schiavo’s legal team. I guess they have been going by the acronym for so long, they have forgotten the CL part stands for CIVIL LIBERTIES. One would expect an organization that claims to defend the civil liberties of the helpless would actually be acting on Terri’s behalf, but I’m not a high class lawyer-type either, so I may be mistaken. The ACLU has just become another front for the vast left-wing agenda and it’s flagship, the party of death, the Democrats.

Michael was on Larry King, that hard-hitting, tough questioning, prime time battle zone. Oh, I mean the fluffy, cuddly low rated love fest for liberal causes and their spokesmen. Mikey is trying to alter his public image from the SOB of a husband with HUGE conflicts of interest to a caring man who is just trying to fulfill the wishes of his wife.

A fine Catholic priest is down in Florida helping out Terri’s Monsignor and is blogging from there. It’s an inspirational blog and one worth checking out.

I have to admit, I’m not as sure as I was a few weeks ago about this whole case. I still feel the husband is a dirtbag and more likely than not is just trying to be rid of his problem (that pesky first wife), but I also have some doubts. What if he’s right? What if Terri is living in the Hell of just existence? What is God’s will here? Would stopping the feeding be murder? If you don’t feed your baby he dies and that is definitely murder. If you starve yourself to death intentionally, that is suicide. Both of those are wrong, but is it either of those in this case? I pray for guidance on this issue and while I search, my guess is we need to give the benefit of the doubt to life.

REAL MAN

Well, the Real Man bar has just been raised. An Icelandic fisherman killed a 650 pound shark that was stalking his men. I'll let a bit of the story speak for itself:

"Captain Sigurdur Petursson, known to locals as "the Iceman", ran into the shallow water and grabbed the shark by its tail. He dragged it off to dry land and killed it with his knife."

Dragged it onto the land and killed it with his knife. I don't understand thinking like that - I probably would have just stood there and screamed like a little girl. I feel so ashamed, maybe I'll start watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Funny aside, the story is filed under "Oddly Enough".

MONSTERS, MD

I have always felt to perform an abortion, the doctor must be conscience-free. I mean, the doctor must seriously have no conscience, no little voice inside yelling, “STOP!! THIS IS WRONG!!”. Abortionists must steal at will, run over puppies and slap their grandmothers – they are missing that “Good/Bad” filter. Of course, I have been scorned and ridiculed for believing this because that’s just “crazy-talk”.

Oh yeah? - check out Slate. It has an article by an abortion doctor wondering if he can be prosecuted under the new Partial Birth Abortion law. He explained, in great detail, the late term abortions he does, how they are performed and what is done. We get stuff like this:

“I reassured her that I do not perform the "partial-birth" procedure and that there is no likelihood that the ban's passage would close my office and keep me from seeing her. The fetus cannot be delivered "alive" in my procedure—as the ban stipulates in defining prohibited procedures—because I begin by giving the fetus an injection that stops its heart immediately.”

How ‘bout this?

“Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. “

Why exactly he’s going into such detail to DEFEND himself I’m not sure, but go he does. Can this man have a conscience? Seriously, where is his disgust and mortification meter? These people are sick – there isn’t a single thing I could say to demean this man he hasn’t already made clear in his little ditty today.

TERRI SCHIAVO LIFE WATCH (YEAH!!)

Well, Terri has started to be fed again, but there is concern that there may be some organ failure because of being starved for so long. It was something like this that I feared when I said Governor Bush's actions were welcomed but maybe too little, too late. Of course, we don't know for sure, yet, if there really is any problems.

Michael Schiavo was his normal black-hearted self. He denied Terri's parents any visits with her yesterday and waited until late today to let them see their daughter. I find it harder and harder every day to pray for this man, yet every day his actions require me to pray that much harder for him because every day he does the Devil's bidding.

"FACTS ARE FOR SUCKS!"

In yesterday’s USA Today, they had a front page story on violence in schools. I didn’t read too much of it; it seemed the same old blah-blah. What caught my eye was the box listing school-related deaths so far this year. As I scanned the list, I was stunned by what the country's number one daily considered “school related” Check these out:

Aug. 14, Columbus, Ga.: A 14-year-old girl visiting former teachers is accidentally shot and killed by a 14-year-old boy.

Aug. 19, Meraux, La.: A man holding his 2-year-old is shot to death near a crowded school bus stop.

Sept. 4, Brighton, Colo.: A 15-year-old boy is shot and killed near a high school.

What? “Killed near a high school”? “Near a bus stop”? These are school related? I’m sure they were both killed near trees, too. Does that make them “tree-related deaths”? Of the eighteen deaths the paper listed, I count roughly six maybe that I would say were school related. Check out the list your self and you’ll see what I mean.

The paper does this to try to blow the school violence story out of proportion. They do this to sell papers, perhaps to push an agenda, like an anti-gun agenda, who knows for sure. All we do know is they do it fairly sloppily. Of course, six months from now, that won’t matter because the Lexis-Nexus search will return results for some anti-gun nut that says “The USA Today reported eighteen school-related deaths back in October, just two months after the start of the school year”. It won’t matter that at least twelve of the reported deaths were bogus.

OH, HAPPY DAY!!

Well, what can I say about today? Today was an affirmation of LIFE. In direct repudiation of the party of DEATH (Democrats), today we Republicans showed what we can do once we realize we have a backbone.

The special session of the State Legislature called by Governor Bush for a completely unrelated subject (economic development) used it’s God-given timing to quickly, and probably it was record setting, pass a bill through the House, to the Senate and back through the House again to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Governor Bush immediately signed the bill and decreed that Terri’s feeding tube should be put back in. Her cockroach of a husband immediately looked for a judge to halt the stay but he was denied. The bad news was he was denied on a technicality and can try again to kill his wife, but hey, any little bit helps.

In a development that may save even more lives is the U.S. Senate passed the partial birth abortion ban. This means the bill will go to the President’s desk and because our current President has a conscience, he will sign it. Of course, the forces of evil and operatives from the party of death will immediately appeal it to the Supreme Court, so the fate of the law is unknown. But, it’s a start and any little progress is loved by yours truly.

So, all in all, it was a day of unsure victories, but victories none the less. What we should take from this is the power of prayer and the knowledge of what party (Democrat or Republican) is really looking out for the powerless in this country.

TERRI SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH

Great News!!! The Florida Senate passed the bill with minor changes and it has been sent back to the House for a final vote. If it passes (and it should) the Governor Bush has promised to sign it immediately and order Terri's feeding tube to be reconnected. As good as this is, it's no time to stop the prayers; there are some more hurdles to get over still to save Terri's life.

How about the votes? In the house it was 61 Republicans voting yes, 3 voting no; Democrats 7 yes, 20 no. The Tallahassee Democrat reports in the Senate the vote was 23-15, with most Republicans voting yes, most Democrats voting no. So this means Democrats are usually for killing people before their born (abortion) and when they get sick and/or old (Terri's case and physician assisted suicide). The Democrats are the party of DEATH.

Update: The House passed the revised bill at 4:01, 73-24!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TERRI SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH

Topsy-Turvy day yesterday for Terri Schiavo. In the morning, it looked like the bill that would save her life would be introduced and our hopes soared. By the afternoon, a Florida house staffer was telling Kathryn Jean Lopez over at National Review that the House would never manage to gather the two-thirds vote required and even if it did, the bill would fail in the Senate. My heart sank. By late last night, we found out the bill did pass the House (58-23) and it would be taken up by the Senate today.

So, please, keep praying. Terri needs all the help she can get right now, it will be a week tomorrow since her husband started to starve her to death. Her parents said this weekend she was already less responsive, so time is of the essence. Don’t forget to keep her dirtbag husband in your prayers, for he has put his eternal soul at risk for damnation and not even this slimeball deserves that.

Click here for the last update.

TERRI SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH

There’s great news in Terri Schiavo’s starvation death case. Governor Bush has called a special session of the legislature and a bill will be introduced to immediately halt all deaths by starvation and dehydration.

Please kick your prayers into overdrive that this gets passed and in time to save Terri’s life. She has only a few days left, at most, to live and even if this becomes law, it may come too late.

Click here for the last update.

THE SUN IS RISING IN THE WEST AND THE WORLD IS SPINNING BACKWARDS

Something downright weird happened this week, I agreed with a New York Times columnist. Bob Hebert had a column about the newest version of Monopoly, Ghettopoly. In this urban version of the game, the pieces are a machine gun, crack cocaine, etc. The properties to buy are stuff like Kim’s Liquors and instead of houses, you build crack houses. It really is rather tasteless, even though deep down you know you’re laughing.

Not everyone is laughing, of course. The usual suspects cried from the rooftops how this game is racist, promotes stereotypes, etc., Yeah yeah – we knew that was going to happen. What I didn’t expect to happen was Bob Hebert’s column. Check this out:

“So I'm not feeling sorry for David Chang, the game's beleaguered 28-year-old creator. What I'd like to know is why all this outrage is springing up over a board game when so little is heard in the way of protest about the outlandishly self-destructive behavior that gives rise to a game like Ghettopoly, and which is burying any chance of a viable future for extraordinary numbers of young black men and women, and their children.

How can you march against a game and not march against the real-life slaughter on the streets and in the homes of inner cities across America? Violent crime, ignorance and disease are carving the very heart out of America's black population.”

Wow. I fully expected him to blame the symptom and ignore the disease and he blew me away.

“Ghettopoly is a stupid and offensive game. But its reach is nowhere near as vast or as dangerous as the "Lord of the Flies" street culture that is seducing one generation after another of black children, and producing freakish entertainers like Nelly and 50 Cent.”

Damn, Bob Hebert, classic NYT columnist, looking the problem right in the face and calling it as it is. I never thought I would see the day. The whole “urban, hip hop” culture is a suicide pact for everyone who gets involved. It’s not just the poor kids who are killing themselves and each other, the rich are doing the same thing – look at Biggie Smalls and Tupac. I never thought I would get that message from the New York Times op-ed page.

TERRI SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH

There is new hope, I think, in the Terri Schiavo case. A Leon county judge refused to allow Gov. Bush to halt the killing of Terri Schiavo. This is hopeful because the judge said he didn’t have jurisdiction over it, it should be filed in a different county. This isn’t a blanket no, so I take it as hope. Look for action on Monday.

I was also happy to see Terri’s case as the lead story in the law section of CNN.com. As much publicity as we can get can only help us.

Please, keep her in your prayers.

See the last update here.

EASTERBROOK OR DONNYBROOK?

A “déjà vu” kind of thing has happened to Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic. He wrote a column for his blog at TNR about Quintin Tarantino. It seems Tarantino’s new movie Kill Bill and it’s WAY OVER THE TOP violence pushed Easterbrook over the top, too. In the column, Easterbrook blasts the whole culture of gratuitous violence that pervades Hollywood today, even when studies have shown that violence on the screen leads to violence in real life.

So far, so good until the last paragraph. In that he says,

“Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice.”

Whoa, did he just say Jews worship money? It surely can be read that way and A LOT of people did. Including Easterbrook. A few days after he posted the Kill Bill blog, he posted an apology trying to explain how he could post something so stupid. It was creepily similar to my blog on Mel Gibson’s The Passion. In his apology, Easterbrook explains how he was trying to make the point that Christians and Jews are both acting against their faiths by producing violent movies, especially just to make a lot of money. He feels that Jews doing this is especially egregious considering how they have for centuries been targets of violence. He also admits that his wording was terrible and the point he worked on through the whole blog on was lost because of very poor and insensitive expression. He was NOT saying Jews are money hungry.

I feel for the man because I did the same thing and boy, I still feel stupid to this day. The internet rocks and blogging is great, but when you make a colossal blunder like this, it’s often made worse by instant dissemination. Perhaps I’m especially empathetic to situations like this because I was in one of my own, but reading his original column and the apology, I think it’s obvious he wasn’t defaming Jews, he was incensed by Kill Bill and didn’t make sure he was expressing himself well before he posted.

Of course, that’s not good enough for a lot of people. Abe Foxman over at the ADL called his explanation “insufficient”. Foxman said:

“We expect more from The New Republic. Gregg Easterbrook's mea culpa is insufficient. It's a rationalization. There is no excuse for bringing religion into a discussion about greed and the film industry. Greed is a human frailty. Money is not only colorless, it is faithless. “

Abe says there is no need to bring religion into the discussion of greed and the film industry? That’s poppycock. Easterbrook was saying religious people have a responsibility NOT to promote violence, especially for money, and I think he may have a point. Foxman is asking something incredibly unreasonable - that nobody can ever mention money and Jews in the same sentence. If they do, they

“summon[s] up classic stereotypes that Jews are greedy, money-grubbing and morally deficient.”

Please, come in from the ledge Mr. Foxman. Judeo-Christianity has strong underpinnings of generosity, fairness and a visceral dislike of greed. To mention that someone may be acting against their faith by promoting something bad (violence) just for money is calling anyone, Jews, Baptists, tree-huggers, whoever greedy with no feeling for society at large. It’s not fair to exempt Jews from such criticism just because of ancient stereotypes and that’s what Mr. Foxman is asking for.

The story gets worse. I guess Gregg Easterbrook was a columnist for ESPN and they fired him over this scandal. OK, so they fired him – it’s understandable considering ESPN is coming off the whole Rush Limbaugh thing and ESPN is owned by Disney, the subject of Easterbrook’s column, but that’s not the worst part. ESPN has purged their website of any mention that Easterbrook ever worked there. Searches for his name yield no results. It’s like they have said to him, “You are dead to me, you have never existed”. If that’s not some sort of revisionism, I don’t know what is.

OK, to recap. Easterbrook’s column was out of line, it definitely gave the impression that he thought about Jews everything Abe Foxman accused him of. Because of that, he deserved all the scorn that was thrown his way. Waiting three days to make the apology/explanation was another problem. Dude, you need to get these things out quicker in the age of internet. His explanation was fine, I feel it covered everything and cleared up all misconceptions, but it should have appeared the next day at the latest. The ADL embarrassed themselves with their press release. Easterbrook offered a very believable and heart-felt explanation of his blog, to say he meant to call Jews cheap is disingenuous. The ESPN thing is just plain creepy.

SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH UPDATE

I didn’t think I would have a Terri Schiavo update so quickly, but I’ve got a little one. Tonight on Hannity and Colmes, Fox had a legal analyst on discussing the case. While Sean was talking to her, he was visibly upset. I have never seen Sean Hannity on the verge of tears before, he is a such a thoroughly professional, straight forward conservative and listening to all the liberal press, we know what SOB’s they are. Seriously, Sean was holding back tears with a choke in his voice.

I think this says a lot about the case. Sean Hannity was close to tears and I was awash in them a couple of times today. I thought I was the only one taking this case “over-the-top” serious, but it seems to be affecting a lot of people. If only it would affect her heartless demon of a husband. Again, I ask for your prayers.

Click here for the last update.

SCHIAVO DEATH WATCH

Well, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed at 2:00 PM today, her husband expects her to die from starvation in a week to ten days. Isn’t that freakin’ nice? I will continue to post updates as this ordeal unfolds.

There was some positive news; Governor Bush met with Terri’s parents this morning and has instructed his:

“..legal staff to find some means to block the court order allowing Michael Schiavo to end his wife's life.”

This is too little, too late, but I am happy to see him getting involved. Please pray for a miracle in this case and if God chooses not to intervene, that she should find the happiness and solace in Heaven that has eluded her this many years.

ANGLICAN, UNITARIAN, WHATEVER

I wonder how marginalized the Anglican Church really wants to be? They have elected gay Bishops and now the leader of the church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has turned into a terrorist apologist. He urged the United States to recognize terrorists can “have serious moral goals”. Yeah.

Perhaps he would also want the courts to be considerate of murderers of abortion doctors because they have serious moral goals. Is that what you are saying, Dr.? No, what you are saying is the United States is wrong, whatever it’s doing. Well, they may not be absolutely true, because in the same speech you pulled the old “you need international backing/permission” or you’re just a crazy cowboy.

Christian churches are supposed to be bastions of morality, no matter what the world says, hey, that’s where martyrs come from. But the Anglican church is willing to subordinate whatever moral stature it has in the name of politically correct “feel-good” garbage.

"TRUTH? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' TRUTH!"

A while ago, I said it must be nice to work for the New York Times editorial board and be unencumbered by the truth and sure enough, today, we get an editorial about the case of an elderly elevator operator with a serious heart condition. Her job was eliminated when automatic elevators were put into the Hudson County administration building in Jersey City and the Social Security administration denied her disability payments because technically she could still perform her job, it’s just the job wasn’t there anymore. Now, I’m not going to comment on the right or wrong of their decision other than to say this is what happens once government becomes everyone’s wet-nurse.

What got me right off was this quote:

“It is an absurd decision, but one fully in keeping with the Bush administration's drive to cut back on spending for the needy. “

Puhleeze, what was that all about? The Bush administration has nothing to do with this case. What the Times failed to mention, and I’m sure it was just an oversight, that the case dates from 1995. Now, who was President in 1995? It wasn’t George Bush, it was the original Gropenator, Bill Clinton. And Clinton didn’t even have anything to do with it, the Social Security Administration is a lumbering beast of a bureaucracy and the current administration has only minimal, if any, influence on it’s rules.

But, why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good insulting lie, huh? Perhaps the Times could have had something like this in their coverage of the Red Sox/Yankees violence last week:

“Garcia threw Zimmer to the ground fully in keeping with the pro-violence stand of the New York Times”

If George Bush can be lied about because of a low level decision from a government agency, there’s no reason the Times, as part owner of the Red Sox, can’t be blamed for the thug-like actions of it’s star players, right?

Or does all of this just not make sense?

NATURE OF A DEFENSE

You know what I find interesting and telling about the whole Rush Limbaugh deal is the conservative reaction. What I have found from fellow pundits is sadness for Rush that he has a terrible addiction and requests for prayers. Many say we need to remember what he did for us and to stick with him through his problems.

Is this what Jonathon Alter was talking about when he asked this week in Newsweek:

“So why have almost all of his conservative talk-show friends rushed to Rush’s defense?”

Defense? What part of this is defense? It’s more like being there for a friend. Perhaps Jon should go back through his liberal archives and check out what a liberal defense would have been like. He would find it would look like this:

- The maid would have been attacked as a drug dealer and a liar. Rush would be hailed for trying to give such an unworthy person some help and it’s just terrible how she is setting him up like this.

- Marta would be portrayed as this rock of a human, standing for her man.

- Cal Thomas would have said, “When you drag a $100 bill through a crack house, you never know what you’ll find.”

- It would all be blamed on the zealotry of Ken Starr.

- Rush would have gone on the air and said he did not have drug dealing relations with that woman and it was time for him to get back to the work of the people.

- As more of the story broke, articles would appear in Newsweek about how Rush’s drug addictions are all because of his childhood as an overweight kid who was picked on in school and whose father scared Rush by yelling at Walter Cronkite each night.

That’s how the left leaps to the defense. The left wants so much to use this against us and they can’t. We treat our “lost children” differently because we believe in personal responsibility.

MORE PEDRO

I’m not sure exactly why the Pedro Martinez/Don Zimmer altercation has me so incensed, I mean - I hate baseball. Baseball is the slowest, most boring game invented since public chess matches. If there ever was a game that needed a shot clock, it’s baseball. Anywhoo, I think it’s because of the age thing. There are certain things not done - beat your kid, your wife or your grandfather, and Pedro beat his grandfather.

I watched with interest this morning any reactions I could find on the incident. Mike Barnacle had a positively deranged response to it. He said Pedro tried to get out of Zimmer’s way, “grabbed him by the shoulders and Zimmer slipped”. Please, let’s call a spade a spade here, Barnie – Pedro taunted him, stood there and threw him to the ground.

The Boston fans seem to be much more realistic. In a message board section of Boston.com about the incident, it seems about 80% of the people thought Pedro was a thug. I was surprised to see how many of them wanted the Red Sox not to re-sign Pedro, who I have always heard was one of the best pitchers in the league. They’re right, of course, there is no room for thugs in sports, even if they are good players. But, Sprewell still plays basketball, so I’m sure Pedro will have no trouble being signed, if not by the Red Sox, by somebody else.

ANIMAL

You all know how much I don’t watch baseball. So, tonight, in game three of whatever’s going on, when the fights broke out, I wasn’t watching. But I did hear what happened and I watched all of the local television news to see how it was covered. The specific coverage I wanted to see was Pedro Martinez and his altercation with Don Zimmer. And the coverage was terrible. Almost everyone said that Zimmer was taking a swing at Pedro and Pedro defended himself. Is that true? Sure is. Was it right? No.

Pedro is 31 years old and in top physical condition. Don Zimmer is 72 years old and is no way in comparable condition to Martinez. Pedro was criminally out of line by throwing Zimmer to the ground by his head. Zimmer may have started it, but Pedro was way out of line. The comparable situation is when the 5’3 wife storms up to her 6’2” husband in a fight and he throws her to the ground by her hair. In no way would the husband be in the right, even though she was coming at him and tonight, Pedro was completely in the wrong.

I sure hope while Pedro is shopping someday, some kid in a wheelchair doesn’t turn into him, Pedro will kill him. And if that happens, I’m sure the media and the fans of Boston will say the kid had it coming.

Update: (12:10 AM) I despise Pedro even more. Look at this quote from SI.com:

"I could never hit him. I would never do it," Martinez said. "I was just trying to dodge him and push him away, and too bad his body fell. I hope he's fine."

"TOO BAD HIS BODY FELL"? You son of a motherless goat, do you think your grabbing of his head and throwing him to the ground may have had ANYTHING to do with his fall? Anything? You idiot, I hope that kid in the wheelchair runs you over first.

TERRI SCHIAVO

There’s a story out there I’ve been following for a while now, but have yet to comment on it. Terri Schiavo suffered some sort of brain damage in a fall that left her unable to speak or feed herself. She is NOT in coma, she laughs, cries and responds to emotions. In 2000, her dirtbag (and that’s kind) husband got a Judge Greer to approve the removal of Terri’s feed tube to starve her to death. This has been caught up in the courts ever since, but the endgame has been played. This weekend, a federal judge ruled (correctly) that the federal government is prohibited from intervening in the case. So, as of October 15, her feed tube will be removed and within two weeks, Terri will die of starvation.

I’m so angry as I write this, I’m having a hard time making sense in this post. I encourage all of you to go this site and see what is going on. Her husband is shacked with some bimbo and all he wants is his wife out of the way so he can collect the money that is put aside in her medical fund and marry this other woman. He has consistently blocked all attempts to teach her to eat on her own again and has tried several times already to block medical treatment for her. He claims she would want to die instead of living in this state, but he does everything to keep her in it.

The law is on this animal’s side, but there may be some things that can be done. How about if the Attorney general steps in and says her civil liberties will be violated if she is allowed to starve to death? If they can jump in on the Rodney King case, I would think they could do it here. Or how about this? It’s a leap and a big chance, but what the Hell? Jeb Bush should grant a stay of execution on October 15th. Now, this leaps all kinds of legal barriers and will most likely be found illegal, but it will bring a WHOLE LOT of attention to the case, maybe enough to stop the killing.

For now, keep her and her family in your prayers. Also, keep the slimeball husband in your prayers, too because he is the one who has but himself in jeopardy of salvation by his actions. Pray he sees his sinful errors and seeks forgiveness – especially before it is too late for Terri.

"MEMO: BUSH WANTS TO KILL CUTE, CUDDLY PANDAS, TOO!!!"

The Washington Post has an interesting, and I believe typically misleading article today on the Nation page. As soon as I saw this headline, I knew something was fishy in Denmark:

“U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species”

The first paragraph reads:

“The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.”

Bush is such a S.O.B., isn’t he? He finally wants to kill all of the Bengal tigers and African elephants, just to give his fat-cat, big business donors a thrill of bloodlust. How can this man sleep at night?

At least, that’s what the Post wants us all to think. It’s only when you get to paragraph eight does the Post explain the logic behind the proposal, which is already allowed in the Endangered Species Act of 1973, by the way. The current ban on importation gives poor countries NO incentive to protect the animals. Because these countries cannot export any endangered species, dead or alive, the animals have become nothing more than pests. In countries where they slash and burn to survive, what do they care if some crazy straight-horned markhor or blue fronted Amazon parrot is killed. Heck, they might as well eat it, they can’t do anything else with it. The idea is that if poor countries can sell these parrots for lots of cash-money, they will have an incentive to keep the dumb birds alive.

The Post has a quote from John Monson, trophy hunter from the great state of New Hampshire, as saying the act will help preserve endangered species. The Post then launches into an explanation that he his the President-elect of Safari Club International, a national hunting advocacy group. The Post then explains Safari Club International:

“...gave $274,000 to candidates during the 2000 election cycle, 86 percent of it to Republicans. It also spent $5,445 printing bumper stickers for the Bush presidential campaign. Monson has made a variety of contributions himself, including $1,000 to the Bush for President campaign. “

They quote this AFTER saying Monson agreed to be interviewed ONLY as a private citizen. The Post added all of the irrelevant, yet circumstantially damaging information so they could quote the Humane Society as saying it was “…lobbying by Safari Club International and other special interest groups for a "sea change" in conservation policy”. It's that damn Karl Rove and the ultra right-wing special interest groups at work again, see?

Of course, they don’t mention that The Humane Society’s “kissing cousin” Humane USA PAC (Humane USA was started by Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States) gave $236,000 in the 2002 election cycle, 94% of it to Democrats. Hmmm, I wonder why that is? Maybe it was too complicated for the teams of researchers at the Post, just blocks away from The Humane Society headquarters and Humane USA’s offices to dig up and it required an Accountant from New Hampshire with 20 minutes to spare on the computer.

Typical Anti-Bush spin from our friends in Big Media. Everyday I thank my lucky stars Al Gore invented the internet so I don't have to rely on the Washington Post, The New York Times and the Boston Globe for my news.

LIBERAL PRESS

I hate the press. They have such a liberal mindset, it makes me sick everyday. Look at this lead paragraph from our friends at the Associated Press about President Bush’s new task force looking into achieving democracy in Cuba:

“Eager to please a key Florida constituency, President Bush directed his secretary of state and his Cuban-born housing secretary Friday to recommend ways to achieve a transition to democracy in Cuba after 44 years under Fidel Castro.”

There’s no way they could possibly believe he is doing this because it’s the right thing to do. My guess is Brother Jeb gave it to him after George sent those 15 Cubans back and George realized the error of his ways. He is a man of conscience and I am sure wants to do what is right in Cuba. It also helps that Cuba is the last totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere and a logical base for terrorist operations.

But, liberals don’t think that way. They think in terms of “cover” and “political expediency”; morality doesn’t even blip on the radar. That’s the difference between them and us.

RUSH, REDUX

Well, Rush has come out and admitted what we all knew was true – he is addicted to prescription pain killers. Addictions are a terrible thing, they are a physiological condition and can lead good people to do bad things and that’s what Rush seems to have done. I am sure some laws were broken and for that he should be punished. I expect MORE from those in positions of respect and influence and Rush is no different. I am VERY disappointed he let things get to the point where he had to break the law and get caught before he fully addressed the issue. It will be interesting to see what quotes we will get from Rush over the past few years about addictions, some in context, some out of context and we need to accept the ridicule Rush will receive when it is warranted.

That being said, we also need to stick by our man. As Lucianne Goldberg said last week, he was there for us in the darkest days and now we need to be there for him. One flaw does not ruin a piece of art and Rush still has INFINATELY many more good qualities than bad. He has a sharp wit and piercing mind that cuts through the baloney out there and presents the filet of the matter. (yeah, I’m hungry) So please, send out your prayers for his quick and total recovery and support him against the coming tide of gloating, exaggerations and “In you face!!” we will get from the left. All they can do is hate and with this revelation, their hatred has been fed a bit more.

RIGHT TO EXIST

I’ve been meaning to mention Israel’s attack on the terrorist training camp in Syria for a while now and a column in Newsday by James Klurfeld has finally prompted me to do it.

As you know, last week a female terrorist blew herself up in a crowded restaurant, killing twenty people, including several children. Israel then bombed the livin’ bejesus out of a training camp in Syria, leveled the terror bombers house and moved into Gaza this morning in an attempt to shut off a weapons pipeline from Egypt. President Bush also stood up for Israel by not condemning the Israeli’s actions, but by saying Israel has a "right to defend hertself". John Negroponte, our U.N. ambassador, also defended Israel.

Of course, this is not going over well with the liberals and world intelligentsia. They still insist on Israel taking attack after attack with no response and Klurfeld is no different. He tries to distance himself from his liberal friends by bringing up a past of Israeli defending. But he then goes right into the party line that Arial Sharon is the devil and the Bush administration backs Sharon no matter what he does. This is not true, usually unfortunately. Our current administration has several times not supported Israel when we should have.

Klurfeld also says this:

“The president's predilection to see things through a prism of black and white, right and wrong, is also a major factor.

There is certainly nothing wrong with moral clarity, but unfortunately the Middle East is complex, and oversimplification could lead to unwanted consequences for years to come.”

Again with the moral compass stuff. Liberals are incapable of seeing anything as good or bad, everything is relative. It’s this moral relativism that has lead us into a whole lot of problems, from hate crimes, to abortion, to gay marriage, to terrorism. Our inability and refusal to see certain cultures as better than others has lead to Libya chairing the U.N. Human Rights Committee. Klurfeld, it’s Bush’s moral clarity that makes him as good of a man as he is.

GAY BASHING

Remember the “gay” high school in New York? The Harvey Milk High School is a school for gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender and “questioning” students. Does this have “problem” written all over it or what? Well, sure enough, yesterday about twenty of the students jumped a man who they claim was threatening them. They say he attacked one of the students with a screwdriver and they all jumped in to defend him, her, it, whatever. The police say the man was giving them lip from his car as he waited for his wife to come out of Starbucks and they started throwing bottles at his car. He got out with a screwdriver and all hell broke loose.

Assuming the police story is right, does their attack constitute a hate crime? We get this quote from one of the students:

“We were heading for the train and the straight guy went wacko," said a student. "All the kids from the school jumped the guy because he hit the girl."

Why did he mention the guy was “straight”? Why not just “the guy went wacko”? Well, I can assure you that it will not be called a hate crime because never are members of the liberally protected groups held accountable to these crazy laws.

BIAS

Steve Lopez is certainly a prodigious writer; he seems to have a least one column a day in the Los Angeles Times. I mentioned him in the Diner last week here. Maybe he writes too much, because he sure didn’t self-edit a column yesterday. It was all about, surprise, surprise, Arnold, who he calls Big Boy. Well, he doesn’t call him Big Boy all of the time, in this last one he called him:

“Der Gropenfuhrer”

Ah, isn’t that cute? I’m sure he finds that really funny and an intelligent play on the groping accusations. But it could also be construed as a Hitler reference, in fact, I wouldn’t put it past Lopez to have meant that. Ha Ha, let’s pick on the Republicans.

But what if Arnold turned the tables? What if he called Steve LOPEZ Wetbackus excitus? Or maybe Speedy Gonzalez? Or El Taco? Then you would see Steve crying to everyone, from the ACLU to Dear Abby about how racially insensitive the Governor-elect is. This is the kind of bias we conservatives talk about all the time. Either Lopez is consciously trying to be “racially insensitive” or he honestly has no idea that’s exactly what he’s doing. One way or the other, it’s a bias.

IT'S STILL STINKY IN FRANCE

Did I ever mention to you I dislike the French? In an effort to, I don’t know, snub their noses at the United States, the city of Paris has declared Wesley Cook an honorary citizen. Oh, you may know Cook by his terrorist name, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Cook was going by this name and a member of the Black Panthers when he brutally murdered a Philly police officer, Daniel Faulkner. Jamal shot Faulkner in the back and then emptied his gun into Faulkner’s face. I give you that bit of horror so you understand just what Paris has done and just who all these pinkos in Hollywood and on college campuses defend with such fervor.

To make matters even worse, the person accepting the award was professor Angela Davis, fellow terrorist and Black Panther member. Davis spoke of Jamal’s “profound sense of humanity". I bet he’s got a sense of humanity after coldly murdering a man at close range. I also know that sense is evil and he deserves to stay behind bars for the rest of his life.

THIS ISN'T YOUR DADDY'S PARTY ANYMORE

The Democratic National Committee has a new blog on their website and it has such a nice name, "Kicking Ass". Now, what does that mean? Is it a typically gutter reference that we have come to expect from the party of hate, or is it a play on the party's symbol, the donkey. If it's the latter, does that mean they want to kick themselves or maybe each other? So, you decide, is it a reference to crudeness and boorishness or stupidity and idiocy?

Maybe both?

CALIFORNIA RECALL

It’s 11:30 and I’ve been jumping between Fox News and The Daily Show, watching coverage on both of the California recall vote. The Daily Show just had a bit with their “senior political” correspondent reporting that Arnold was just accused of groping Adolph Hitler. I jumped to Fox and thought I hadn’t changed the channel. Fox had Bob Mulholland (no jokes!!!) on and he was saying the recall didn’t have anything to do with Gray Davis’ policies, it had everything to do with unhappiness with incumbents and “Bush Jr.” had better watch out. He also said the Democrats would give Arnold 100 days to fix all of California’s problems before they started to push for a recall.

Months ago when this recall looked like it was going to happen and Arnold was going to get in, I said something profound (it does happen once in a while). I said Arnold wasn’t going to be touched by any dirt because he was from Hollywood. I said stars are always doing things that would crush a normal human being, but it doesn’t affect the love people have for them. Stars shoplift, get caught doing “stuff” in porn theaters, hit and run, spend half their lives in rehab and generally act like boors and pigs – and the people just shrug. Sure enough, Arnold wins a MAJORITY of the votes in the recall election.

In another starnge twist, more people voted for Arnold than who voted for the recall. That means people who voted for Davis (No on recall) on question number one also voted for Arnold. They said, "I want Davis the Democrat, but if I can't have him, please give me the Republican". That makes as much sense as Bustamante's slogan, "No on recall, Yes on Bustamante".

Ah, Californians. You can't make this stuff up.

"CLINTON GOOD, BUSH BAD!"

I jumped over to MSNBC and saw this headline:

“Slow Response to CIA Inquiry”

I skimmed the story and it was about the White House’s deadline of 5:00 Tuesday rapidly approaching and only 300 of the 2,000 responses had been received yet. In all honesty, I didn’t read past that, I immediately researched Clinton White Houses stonewalls of subpoenaed information. After about twenty minutes of searching, I cam back to the MSNBC story and TA-DA! The story was gone and replaced by this one:

"White House to screen leak material”

Going back into my browser history, I found the original page, but when I went to it, I ended up at the current story. The original headline still appeared on the main page of MSN and even as a “related story” on the sidebar of the updated “White House to screen” story. Obviously, someone at MSNBC spiked the obviously partisan story. The “deadline” of 5:00 today was SELF-IMPOSED by the White House AND the story was filed six hours BEFORE the deadline. Check out this list of real “slow responses” from our buddies, the Clintoons:

- Billing records missing for 2 years (subpoenaed, crucial to FDIC investigation) appeared in White House living area and turned over several days after statute of limitation expired.
- Bruce Lindsey's notes, subpoenaed but not turned over until the day after the Senate's Whitewater Committee authorization expired.
- Existence of diaries subpoenaed in April 97, were "concealed" to October 97 and have not been released. Second set also not disclosed until three weeks before committee's deadline expired.
- FBI files from 91 (Chinese efforts to influence U.S. elections) were turned over five days after the Senate committee ended its hearings.

I guess even the partisans were uncomfortable with the original story. It’s hard to imagine that they could be considering the stuff they normally pull, but maybe.

LOSERS

Conservatives and Republicans are no strangers to liberal bias in Big media. The New York Times hasn’t endorsed a Republican candidate for President since Dwight Eisenhower (That means they endorsed Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter – twice). But, the blantentness of the LA Times in the past couple of days was just over the top. In the LA Weekly, Bill Bradley reports that Gray Davis’ campaign had prior knowledge of the details of the groping story. That explains the immediate blitz by the Davis campaign the morning of the story. This supposed “super secret” story somehow magically made it into the hands of the Davis camp before the story came out. Bradley also mentions how the LA Times buried the story of the huge Arnold rally, under-reported the number of people there and LIED about the protestors drowning out Arnold.

The compressed schedule of this campaign forced the liberal media to be sloppy and less circumspect in their campaign for Democrats under the guise of news. The Los Angeles Times threw all of their cards on the table and it might just work. But at what cost? 400 subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions (just a drop in the bucket for sure, but still enough to make the news) and thousands of angry phone calls came in over their Arnold coverage. It just may turn out the two big losers today will be Gray Davis and the Los Angeles Times.

"ME LIKE CRUZ!!"

Just a quick one here, folks: Check out this op-ed piece from the San Francisco Chronicle – aside from it’s socialist/liberal agenda, it reads like a poorly written book report from a mediocre sixth grader. The list of items are choppy and the explanations are distressingly brief and notes-from-lecture like. He wants to be Governor – heck, I hope he makes it, Californians should be punished for all kinds of things and I think Mr. Illiterate is just the one to do it.

POLY POLLS AND THE POLSTERS WHO TAKE THEM

The New York Times (Yes, I’m so ashamed, I’ve gone back to the font again) today had the results of a CBS/NYT phone-poll on all kinds of subjects. Now, to be fair, the article was one of the more fair I have read in the Times. It didn’t just report all of the anti-Bush results, carefully leaving out anything might be construed as good news to conservatives. That’s not to say they didn’t twist ANYTHING, hey look at the headline:

“Poll Shows Drop in Confidence on Bush Skill in Handling Crises”

Let’s just jump into everything. Look at this prominent quote form the article:

“Thirteen months before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track…”

The question read this way:

“Do you feel things is this country are generally going in the right direction or do you fell things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?”

My problem is that isn’t two fair comparisons. If you are not very happy where the country is going, your option is to say things are pretty seriously off track. The Times then drops the modifier “pretty”, meaning not too bad and just reports “seriously off track”. Now, that’s the New York Times I know.

It’s stuff like that that drives me nuts about the Times reporting. Look at this question:

“Which comes closer to your opinion about what the United States policy should be after the war with Iraq? The United States should not attack another country unless the U.S. is attacked first, OR the U.S. should be able to attack any country it thinks might attack the United States?"

Nice. How about asking if the United States should attack countries that might pose a terrorist threat to the United States?

When it came to the Democrats (and Wes Clark) running for the democratic nomination for President, if the Times didn’t use titles (Dr. Dean, Rep. Kucinich, etc.) nobody seemed to know who they were or who they would vote for. It that case, Wes Clark came out on top. If titles were used, rising from fourth place, Dick Gephardt jumped into first place, knocking Clark down to third. That shows the primaries are defiantly dictated by the rabid partisans (of which I am I proud member on the Republican side).

Like I said, the Times wasn’t too unfair in this article. They did mention some flattering statistics like:

“But more than 6 in 10 Americans still say the president has strong qualities of leadership, more than 5 in 10 say he has more honesty and integrity than most people in public life and 6 in 10 credit him with making the country safer from terrorist attack.

By contrast, the Democratic presidential contenders remain largely unknown, and nearly half of Americans — and a like number of registered voters — say the Democrats have no clear plan of their own for the country”

But, they also quoted two uninformed Americans and shock, shock! both were disappointed in President Bush. So, when I complement the Times on their article, it’s along the same lines of

“You don’t sweat much - for a fat girl”

SOMETHING'S STINKY IN FRANCE, AND IT'S NOT JUST THE CHEESE.

What’s this? French anti-aircraft missiles were found in Iraq by Polish troops. Missiles manufactured in 2003. Could this be proof of the long suspected Franco-Iraqi connection? The French deny it, of course. But the seem to be using a Clintonian denial:

“It is not credible to say that the Roland missiles found a few days ago were produced in 2003 and delivered just before the Anglo-American intervention," the spokeswoman said. "Let's be absolutely clear about this: no military exports to Iraq were licensed after July 1990."

Sure, none were licensed, but did they occur none-the-less? The more likely scenario is they were winked at by Chirac & Friends, but never officially licensed. Expect future denials to go like this:

“We did not have military sales with that man, Mr. Hussein”

SMEAR? TRY AGAIN

Interesting bit of dynamic happening out in California over Arnold. The LA Times has an explosive story about Arnold’s alleged mistreatment of women, spanning thirty years. The paper managed to find six women, four who remain anonymous, to say Arnold groped them at one point or another. The LA Times also just happened to print this five days before the election, just when Arnold had pulled into the lead. Now, to be fair, there is the possibility that this is not part of an October Surprise on behalf of Gray Davis, it is an extensive story and it must have been vetted by several layers of editors and a legal department. Coincidence or planning, the people of California are outraged.

At the Los Angeles Times.

Susan Estrich has an op-ed piece in the LA Times slamming the paper for this bit of muckraking. SUSAN ESTRICH!. She’s the Mike Dukakis-campaign chief, Clinton defender we all got to know so well from Hardball. Andrew Sullivan, who admits he believes the women in these types of cases (he believes Anita Hill) slams the Times.

Steve Lopez, a columnist for the LA Times, did a column on the backlash. You can hear the wonder in his voice, “Hey, we dug up dirt! Why don’t you hate him like we tell you to?”

So, what’s happened here? Have the people finally smartened up and see a smear campaign for what it really is? Or are they just in love with the persona that is Arnold? I think it’s the persona thing – the same reason Clinton got such a free pass.

RUSH

Today I’ve been watching the Rush Limbaugh “pill-popping” scandal unfold. I haven’t picked up too many details, so I’m not sure what to make of the thing. My gut reaction was this was a bunch of hooey, but the maid or whatever she was seemed to have some evidence. So, I thought I’d wait it out.

Than came something truly saddening, first of many I’m sure.

This is Rush’s statement:

"I am unaware of any investigation by any authorities involving me. No governmental representative has contacted me directly or indirectly. If my assistance is required in the future, I will, of course, cooperate fully."

This is right out of the Bill Clinton’s playbook. “I am sure there will be no proof found of any wrongdoing”, denying an affair in the PRESENT tense and all of that kind of stuff. If the stories are untrue – just say so. If they are true, admit it. But Rush is denying something that wasn’t asked and avoided the real question – just like Bill Clinton.

My guess is there is truth to this story. The thousands and thousands number is probably exaggerated, but getting Rush painkillers is going to be proven true. Rush didn’t admit any wrongdoing because he’s in consultation with his lawyers on what he can or cannot say. And that’s too bad because that means he is addicted, which no one should deserves and he also had to pull a Clinton, which is hard to swallow (no pill pun intended). Come to think of it, he DIDN’T have to pull a Clinton, he could have just said nothing. Why Rush degraded himself like this, I don’t know.

More preaching as the story unfolds.

Update – I just heard from Fox that there are other drug suppliers. This is REALLY, REALLY bad. I have to force myself to feel empathetic to Rush, but my anger at his stupidity is getting the best of me.

If all of this is proven true, we conservatives need to remember one thing – even if the messenger is soiled, that doesn’t mean the message is wrong.

And it isn’t.

HOWARD THE COWARD STRIKES AGAIN

Howard Dean made the Mike radar today on a couple of points. On Fox and Friends yesterday, he said a couple of whoppers: When E.D. asked if he would cut the $87 billion requested for Iraq, he said this:

"There's a ready source for that. The president gave three trillion dolars of our tax money away to people like Ken Lay."

Just how did Ken Lay get money from George Bush and where did the “three trillion dollars” number come from? Three trillion in two years? The funny thing is nobody will question him on this outrageous number. It’s like someone saying, “Howard Dean ovcrcharged his patients $250 million while he was a doctor” or “The population of Vermont increased by 75 million people while he was Governor”.

Whatever. What is does say is that Howard is either completely unconcerned by facts and the truth or he is just plain stupid. I report, you decide.

In that same interview, he said this:

"I do intend to stand up for what I believe in , which is a balanced budget and fiscal conservatism and then a social progressive program like health insurance for every American."

Tim Graham at National Review Online was confused by the seeming “fiscally conservative socialism” aspect of the quote. I’m not quite that esoteric, what got me was the “I do intend to stand up for what I believe in…” part. He INTENDS to stand up for what he believes in? Doesn’t that mean he is currently NOT standing up for those beliefs? If so, that explains a lot of the babble currently spewing forth from his mouth. It also doesn’t say a lot for the man, either.

Over at the Boston Globe, we have the story of Howard Dean’s sealed gubernatorial papers. He sealed some of his papers for ten years and the same group, Judicial Watch, who hounded Clinton and Dick Cheney have filed suit trying to get the seal lifted. Now, the sealing is hardly unprecedented and I feel there may be good reasons for them to be sealed, but it kind of funny coming from the man who portrays himself as a straight-shooter and a political outsider. It’s even funnier when you hearken back to what he told Vermont Public Radio about the sealing:

"Well, there are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."

Yeah, he’s an honest, straight-shooter allright. Slimey as a Clinton or a Kennedy, is more like it.

MARRIED, SCHMARRIED

I just saw a commercial for Las Vegas. It involved a woman, speaking to a Latino man with a “Marriage Chapel” sign in the background. She was speaking to him in Spanish or something, pulling away from him. All you really catch is her saying, “..we got married”. After that we get the exterior shot with the chapel with the bride leaving and the overdub:

“What happens here, stays here.”

What in the hell is that?

Update. (10/02/2003) I'm glad to see I'm not the only one worried about this, but I seem to be the only one concerned about the message on morality and marriage it conveys.

"WE'RE NOT RACIST, WE JUST WANT TO BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY"

I have always had a major problem with the Congressional Black Caucus. My problem is that only blacks can join. Non-blacks can be Associates or Friends or something stupid like that, but they can’t be full fledged members. If they were a country club or American Legion, that would never fly, but as a member of the United States Government, well hey, racism is cool.

Because I am dealing with Congress and blacks, I mean African-Americans, I know there is nothing I can do about it. Well, it seems William Tancredo (R-LA) didn’t get that memo, because he has introduced a rule to abolish all race-based congressional caucuses. His theory is the same as mine,:

“A race is something over which we have no control. Everything we are told is we should ignore it, that we should try to eliminate that as a distinction in our society,”

As you can imagine, this doesn’t go over well with the left. Check this out:

“First of all, it’s hard to believe that a member of the United States House of Representatives can be that insensitive to diversity by even entertaining the notion of such a resolution, but given the source of the filing, I am not surprised,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), a Black Caucus member.

Insensitive to diversity? Just how diverse is the Congressional Black Caucus, Bernie? Are all your white members keeping everything in balance? What white members? EXACTLY, YOU RACIST!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll be blunt. As long as the African-American community allows racists like this speak for them, they will ALWAYS be treated differently. You can’t demand racist prerogatives like this and not be treated with racism.