Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

When Tom Brokaw retires, he will be replaced by MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who evidently possesses, according to a piece on CBS MarketWatch, a “wry side.”

Williams, 45, is capable of showing good humor and a dry wit in public. When Time magazine held a lunch to discuss candidates for its person of the year, he exposed a side of his personality that is seldom seen on the air.

When a fellow panelist mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are “on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem.”

Move over, Jay!

As for anchormen, those self-styled journalists are “on an equal footing with a drunk guy reading the New York Times to himself in the mirror.”

Flush when you’re finished, Bri.

[HT, Taegan Goddard.]

When Tom Brokaw retires, he will be replaced by MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who evident has, according to a piece on CBS MarketWatch, a “wry side.”

Williams, 45, is capable of showing good humor and a dry wit in public. When Time magazine held a lunch to discuss candidates for its person of the year, he exposed a side of his personality that is seldom seen on the air.

When a fellow panelist mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are “on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem.”

Move over, Jay!

As for anchormen, those self-styled journalists are “on an equal footing with a drunk guy reading the New York Times to himself in the mirror.”

Flush when you’re finished, Bri.

Eric Lindholm (Viking Pundit) blogs from Switzerland that “[t]iny keychain Swiss army knives [for souvenirs] were $20 each.” One would think that in Geneva, there would be an abundance of such Swiss Army Knives, and that the market would pull the price down as demand exceeded supply.

Silly me. Talking about the market in the context of Switzerland.

Perhaps it’s good that he did not purchase one. He might have been forced to blog from Guantanamo Bay.

Live from Ottawa, President Bush addressed Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s concerns about the U.S. refusal to import Canadian beef because of a Mad Cow Disease scare. The President said that he wanted to lift the restrictiongs, but…

“There is a bureaucracy involved. I readily agree that we’ve [USA] got one.”

Then it is past time for that bureaucracy to go, Mr. President. When the bureaucracy becomes an excuse for government’s bumbles, it is deleterious to the nation, and in this case, post-Chretien normalization of our relationship with the north.

We have the new column by Doug Hagin, “JE$$E Jackson Fraud”, live on the web site of the Rightsided Newsletter.

He’s not yet through with “Brother Jesse,” and you can read is column on the site: HERE.

After 22-years in public service, the last several of which were spent in a department which merged all or parts of 22 federal agencies, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has resigned. He said, of course, that he wants to spend time with his family. That’s code for getting a real job in the private sector.

On the list to replace Ridge: Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut), who loves to boast that the Homeland Security Department was his idea.

Had he lived this long, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a Tory’s Tory, would have turned 130-years-old on this very day. November 30, 2004.

A friend sent me some words on Churchill by historian John Lukacs, and some of them seemed especially compelling for this day and age:

Hitler could not understand the romantic springs of English sentiment; he mistook Churchill’s bravery for mere panache; Churchill’s peculiar compound of resolution and nonchalance was one of the few things which remained far beyond the reach of Hitler’s wild and powerful mind.

Now, President George W. Bush is no Winston Churchill, and certainly French President Jacques Chirac is not Adolf Hitler, but the same statement applies in another context.

Try this:

Chirac could not understand the romantic springs of American sentiment; he mistook Bush’s bravery for mere panache; Bush’s peculiar compound of resolution and nonchalance was one of the few things which remained far beyond the reach of Chirac’s wild and powerful mind.

The power of Chirac’s mind is, to be sure, open for debate, but it’s a nice fit otherwise.

Happy birthday in heaven, Sir Winston.

The Baltimore Sun reports Tuesday that Kweisi Mufume is stepping down as head of the NAACP. He cites spending time with his family, etc., but he is gearing up to fill the seat of Maryland Democrat Senator Paul Sarbanes, 71, who really ought to retire when his term expires after 2006.

Mfume, born Frizzel Gray, served as Congressman of Maryland’s 7th CD (Baltimore) from 1987-1996. In July, Mfume famously accused the President of treating blacks like prostitutes.

With Julian Bond’s latest rants still ringing, it doesn’t look like the NAACP will find any constructive leadership.

Washington’s chief elections officer, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed, has certified Republican Dino Rossi as the next governor of the State. He defeated Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261 votes in the straight count and 42 in the recount.

Gregoire isn’t done, though. She’s demanding yet another recount, and AP reports that the GOP side is going to demand their own recount.

Either way, Dino Rossi is officially the governor-elect of the State of Washington, set to replace outgoing governor Gary Locke, a Democrat.

Good morning!

One of NPR’s few “superstars,” Tavis Smiley, has decided that the December 16 edition of The Tavis Smiley show will be his last. NPR had promised him that his show would be part of an effort to reach out to a younger, more ethnically diverse audience, and, he said, “NPR has simply failed to meaningfully reach out” to the people he likes.

Split infinitive aside, Smiley was (is?) considered a rising-star of the hard left who was able to get away with some serious race-baiting. Part of me liked the man, because he seemed very serious about what he said. And he also sounded as if he wanted to hurt someone real bad.

Smiley didn’t say what he’ll do next, but I first noticed him on B.E.T., and he does do a talk show for PBS. Maybe he could do an afternoon show for the habitually angry.

Dr. Eamonn Butler at the Adam Smith Institute blog from the U.K. points to a bit of British policy regarding the Ukraine which turned out to be unforgivably stupid.

[A] couple of years back the outgoing energy minister, Michael Meacher, decided to be true to his anti-nuclear principles and commit the government to phasing out all its nuclear power capacity over the next 20 years.
What would fill the gap? Well, don’t go too deeply into the sums, but the government thought that gas from the East might do the job. … And already, new pipelines were already marching West from the new gas and oil fields there.

Slight snag here. Britain is of course at the end of the pipeline, so anyone in between could turn the tap off. Not to worry, though, because the gas goes through ’stable’ countries. Like Ukraine. And now, about a third of Europe’s gas comes through Ukraine.

Dr. Butler points out that ’tis folly to pin all your energy hopes to one donkey, and I can add that the no-nukes have traditionally been pinheads anyway.

John Edwards is embarking on a six-stop farewell tour of North Carolina, vowing that “this fight is not over.”

What fight? His wife is fighting cancer, and he said that he is concentrating on that, but that’s not what he meant. He’s got some battle he and Kerry were fighting, and the substance of this struggle existed only in their minds.

He blamed their loss on the icy perception of a lack of beliefs:

“The voters did not know where we stood and what we believed in,” he said. “The American people need to know we are going to keep this country safe.”

I’ll again posit that the ticket stood nowhere and believed in nothing. That is not, per se, Edwards’s fault, as he had to tow Kerry’s line. Kerry’s line was a blank.

Baroness Margaret Thatcher, part of the winning side of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, has spoken on the electoral situation in the Ukraine.

“A new Iron Curtain threatens to fall across Ukraine,” Thatcher said in a statement on Monday. “The West and its leaders must act decisively to support the brave Ukrainian democrats in their struggle. Tyranny must not prevail.”

She obviously supports pro-European candidate Viktor Yushchenko, and sees the “reelection” of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich as Russian aggrandizement, akin to the old Soviet style.

He’s a caricature from a cave, a pathetic mutant who brings to mind David Bowie’s Suffragette City when I hear his name. (”Ay-man, oh leave me alone, you know.”)

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s got a new vid, and in it he says he wants only to “purge our land from the aggressors.”

It’s quite a fall from a previous goal of destroying the United States to ensure that Moslems could do as they will, but at least he’s still around.

“Ay-man, I can’t take you this time, no way.”

Franklin Graham writes in todayis Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription) that he uges “other Christian leaders to keep our focus on our true calling, which is spiritual, not political,” not to gloat because they pulled the levers and “their team” won.

First, it is spiritually wise. We are admonished in Scripture to boast of nothing but the cross. Second, while some 20 million evangelicals voted for President Bush, nearly 40 million people who are not evangelicals joined them in their support — perhaps even for different reasons. Third, if 79 percent of 26.5 million evangelical voters voted for Bush, that means 5.6 million of them voted for John Kerry.

For my part, I pray only that God’s will be done in the election and that the loser be not spiritually crushed. No matter what happens, He’ll help us sort it out.

The President has nominated Carlos Gutierrez, CEO of Kellogg co., to be the next Secretary of Commerce.

It looks like a grrreat! choice. At Kellogg, Gutierrez beat the bagel-craze by concentrating on the company’s bottom line of cereal and healthy snacks. He put the company back in the black.

Now we have to watch Hank Waxman, et al., attempt to do to Tony the Tiger what they did to Halliburton.

This morning on the RSN site, we bring you the latest column by Judson Cox, I Dare Call It Treason. He once gain calls for bringing back Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Affairs (HUAC) to prosecute the likes of Michael Moore and John Walker Lindh.

You can read it on the RSN site: HERE.

Live, from Iraq. Omar from Iraq the Model relates how, while most foreigners take steps to make themselves inconspicuous to kidnappers/thugs, the French broadcast that they are French and travel about with no concern.

It seems that the French are not afraid of the terrorists. Were they excluded from the terrorists’ targets list for some reason? Is there a peace truce between them? Did we miss something here? Because the French are moving freely and saying for the terrorists: “Hey, it’s us, so don’t mistake us for your enemies, the other foreigners! And we are not just ordinary French. We are the French government! And we are certainly not doing something good for Iraq, so relax!” This may explain why no one is anymore worried about the two French journalists; they’re in friendly hands!

Remember, the French expressed shock when their journalists were kidnapped last August; after all, they were from France, and France opposed the liberation.

Good morning!

CNN’s Bill Schneider has picked his top 5 Turkeys of the Year, and their in a little slideshow on the CNN site.

Number One is Howard Dean, whom he thinks was done in not by his loss in Iowa but by his scream. Schneider claimed “Iowa Democrats decided to go with a candidate who had a better chance of beating Bush” than did Dean.

Hindsight should tell Schneider that Dean had a better chance of beating Bush than did Kerry. I didn’t need any hindsight. Dean was a “something” candidate, and the Dems would have stood a better chance with something than with nothing. They could never have won a pure referendum on the President, and that’s what they got with Kerry.

As for Dean: “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”

We’ve got the latest column by Barbara J. Stock, The Sleeping World is Awakening to the Dangers of Islam, is now live on the web site of the Rightsided Newsletter.

Read it on the RSN site: HERE.

I’ve stumbled on the web site of a major protest planned for the President’s inauguration in two months:

We’re calling on people to attend inauguration as they are: members of the public. Once through security and at the procession, at a given signal, we’ll all turn our backs on Bush.

Kewl.

It is not likely, after the ferocity we’ve seen from the ABB crowd this year, that it will be limited to that. Or hollering. Or public urination. Or…

On the 9th, a fellow wrote on TruthOut.org:

George W. Bush’s vote tallies, especially in the key state of Florida, are so statistically stunning that they border on the unbelievable.

The problem? The President received significantly more votes in some Florida counties than there were registered Republicans.

The Miami Herald reported Sunday on their vote-counting in three counties which most fit the conspiracy:

The newspaper’s count of optical scan ballots in Suwannee, Lafayette and Union counties showed Bush whipping Sen. John Kerry in a swath of Florida where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-1.

[ . . .]
The Herald count confirmed that Bush’s message sold in a part of the state where many voters may be Democrats by registration only.

And this shows the potential for a different outcome had the Democrats nominated a credible candidate.

Former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos is host of ABC’s This Week, and his first guest this week were Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), an opponent and a proponent of adopting the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission without further debate.

Sensenbrenner said that his problem is driver’s licenses. He wants a uniform, national standard for them, and he does not want them issued to people who cannot prove that the live here.

Lieberman said that the 9-11 Commission Bill passed by the Senate and held up in the House already addresses uniform driver’s licenses. He added that the bill’s current main opponents, Sensenbrenner and Representative Duncan Hunter (R-California) had contributed more to the bill than had anyone else in either house of Congress. They do not, he argued, have the right to block reform.

Steph brought up someone quoted in a Washington Post as saying that the President’s support for the bill was lukewarm at best, that he was supporting it for political reasons. Lieberman countered: “I believe that the President wants this bill.” He again faulted Sensenbrenner and Hunter for blocking a bill “even though the President says he needs it.”

Sensenbrenner responded that the President is for the bill, but he wants them to get it right. “What good is revising intelligence if we don’t have homeland security?”

The driver’s licenses.

Lieberman stated that someone had found that if the 9-11 Commission bill had been law, “probably 9-11 would not have happened.” Yikes! Not even Tom Kean dared make such a statement.

Sensenbrenner insisted again that they had to “do it right.”
~~~

You can read the rest of the Sunday shows in the Rightsided Newsletter on the RSN site: HERE.

The Sunday edition of the Rightsided Newsletter, my review of the Sunday Morning public affairs talk shows, has been successfully delivered to the sundry Inboxes around the world, and it is available online for you to read on the RSN site: HERE.

I’ll be back in a bit with my review and analysis of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

From the draft of today’s RSN. Duncan Hunter and Suzie Collins are guests on FOX News Sunday:

Maine’s moderate Republican Senator Susie Collins shared the set with one of the opponents of the 9-11 Commission Bill, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-California). Hunter explained his opposition: “You have to keep that tight, close-knit relationship between the war fighters and the people who run the satellites… literally the eyes and ears” of our troops. His argument is that if the military needs a satellite somewhere for a reason, it is dangerous to make the orders to have it position travel through channels of bureaucratic approval.

Collins shot back that Hunter was wrong, because the Commander in Chief supports the bill and the Commander in Chief would never support a bill which endangered our troops. She asserted that Secretary of State Colin Powell had stated that the 9-11 Commission Bill would “improve battlefield intelligence.”

Hunter argued that it was important to keep a chain of command in deploying these satellites. Such military decisions, he argued, should not be subject to “indecision” and “bureaucracy.” Collins countered that they would not be, because, again, the President would not support the bill if it would be that way.

That’s a logical fallacy. Something cannot be something else merely because an “authority” claims that is is.

Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Indiana), speaking this morning on FOX News Sunday about the election situation in the Ukraine:

This story is important, perhaps the greatest story in the world right now.

Good morning!

Meet the Press (NBC): Host Tim Russert will talk to Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton of the infamous 9-11 Commission, as they demand that their recommendations be adopted without debate. Then he’ll speak to four religious and quasi-religious figures — Jerry Falwell, Richard Land, Al Sharpton, and Jim Wallis — presumably about the often nebulously used term “values.”

FOX News Sunday: Host Chris Wallace talks with Senators Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) and Susie Collins (R-Maine), and he’ll talk to Representative Duncan Hunter (R-California), one of those who objects to some of the 9-11 Commission recommendations Congress is trying to foist on itself.

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer will chat with authors Chernow, Joseph J. Ellis, and Bob Woodward. Who knows about what?

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos will talk with Joe Lieberman, Jim Sensebrenner, Gary Bauer, a few university presidents, and an author named Weigel

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolfgang Blitzer chats away with Senators Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and Barbara Boxer (D-California); Representatives Chris Shays (R-Connecticut), J.D. Hayworth (R-Arizona) and Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida); German Ambassador Wolf Ischinger; British Ambassador David Manning; French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte; and others.

I will review and summarize the shows for Sunday’s Rightsided Newsletter, to which you can subscribe for free by visiting the web site at http://rightsided.tripod.com, or by sending a blank e-mail to rsn-subscribe [AT] topica.com.

It will arrive if your inbox shortly after it is completed early Sunday afternoon. And a link will be posted online at which you can read the RSN if you do not subscribe in time.

With Yassir Arafat now “cold/ And in the icy silence of the tomb” (Keats), the P.L.O./P.A. now feels safe to dismantle their “Death Squad.” Being dead, Arafat no longer needs his henchmen.

The government of Pakistan is pulling its troops from the tribal regions of southern Waziristan, one of the infamous “tribal regions” wherein Osama bin Laden has been believed to be living.

A senior Pak military guy says that OBL has vacated the premises.

So they don’t know where he is, but they know he’s not there.

From AP:

Ronald Reagan, in his 1988 State of the Union address to Congress, hefted a 1,000-page, 14-pound spending bill and warned lawmakers against sending him more “behemoths” like this. “And if you do, I will not sign it.”

That was from the 1988 State of the Union address [text, and he was speaking to a Democrat Congress.

Last Saturday, AP reports, Congress passed a spending bill of over 3,000 pages. (Well, 3,646 including accompanying docs.)

Pork. If your Congress critter doesn’t grab it, someone else’s will. They know this, they repeat this, and most of them grab it. It’s one of them “vicious cycles,” they say.

The President needs a line-item veto, and he must use it heavily. That ends the cycle. Barring that, he has to have the balls to veto the entire budget until it is cleaned up, which is a bad thing to do politically when your party is Congress. (Clinton’s veto of the budget reconciliation in ‘95 was a slap at a fledgling Republican Congress: he could blame Gingrich.. For the purposes we’re discussing, that veto does not count. The President would have to blame… whom? Dennie Hastert?)

The Columbian guerilla mega-gang Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had a plot to kill President Bush when he was in their country last week. Before you are concerned that this is part of JF Kerry’s “THE WORLD HATES BUSH” picture, they had planned to blow up President Clinton in August of 2000.

They claim they want to kill these Presidents because the U.S. gives money to Columbian corporations while ignoring the poor – the leftist argument Stateside – but it is more likely that they want to show that they are a force to be reckoned with, capable of striking anywhere at will, etc.

From AP:

A man with a history of mental illness charged with stabbing two relatives after they criticized his table manners during Thanksgiving dinner was ordered by a judge Friday to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Good idea. Evaluate him, as their might be something wrong.

D’ya think? This has ABB disgruntlement written all over it.

Taking my cue from Adrian Warnock, this blog as signed on with TTLB Eco Team, as a member of the Blogdom of God…

These relationships appear more complex than they actually are. Spirit of America is raising money to help not per se any side in the Iraq war other than the people of Iraq: everything from sewing machines to irrigation to gifts for children. The contacted NZ Bear at TTLB, who put the challenge out to members of his ecosystem. Adrian of the Blogdom of God rose to that challenge and asked me to see what I could do.

Here’s what I did:

Joined the team then personally donated at least $25.

Posted about the effort in this space. (You are my witnesses.)

E-mailed the Bear to let him know I’ve done these things.

Having done this, he will list me an all who accept his challenge atop the ecosystem for a time. Above the “mighty Kos. ” (And even Instapundit…)

Anyone can donate, but we bloggers have been given an extra incentive by the Bear.

The idea of a nation under attack from inside and out, working together to throw off the last vestiges of a despotic tyranny and emerge with a country of their own making is the kind of thing we read about in history books. For the Iraqis, as for the world, these are important times. That we as Americans, independent of our government, can help out is appealing.

Click on the links in the first paragraph to find out more.
~~~~~

NZ Bear tells me that I evidently did not sign up for the TTLB Ecoteam properly, so I had to do that again. I’ll excuse myself the mistake, if for no other reason than that I occasionally do. (Not often. Excuse myself, that is.)

Good morning.

“[B]ad news for Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company.”

Halliburton.

The election’s over. They can let this go now.

This evening, I caught most of Bill Cosby’s speech about children to the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-Push Coalition on July 1st. It’s breathtaking, and this it is something which should be shown to a wide audience. I flipped on C-SPAN2 in passing.

His message is that his people have done too much, gone through intense struggles, to get where they are. It is the responsibility of the parents to see that their children do what they should for the future not only of them but of everyone.

The Reverend Jackson was unmoved. He treated the remarks as a contextual explanation and retracting of May 17 remarks. Actually, they were a reaffirmation.

And in commenting in direct response after Cosby’s remarks on July 1, the Reverend Jackson broke down in tears to emphasize “the media exploits Bill’s words.” He didn’t mean what he said.

A collection of groups of Iraq politicians are demanding that elections be held in eight months instead of two.

A delay, of course, would be a victory for the mutant opposition, and it is not clear how much cleaning can be done in the six extra months. They should ask the Iraqi government. Another reason given for the delay request is to give negotiators time to talk the Sunnis away from a boycott. Again, it’s unclear what could be done eight months which could not be done in two.

It is too late for the United States to impose martial law, and such a move at the beginning, though it would have let Iraq avoid the current situation, was diplomatically impossible.

Barring the chips falling where they may, the next governor of New Jersey will probably be Senator John Corzine (D-New Jersey). The NY Daily News says the bazillionaire is ready to run for his party’s nomination. The general election is next year/

On the GOP side, he could face bazillionaire Doug Forrester, who lost his try at Bob Torricelli’s seat when Toricelli was forced to drop out and was replaced by cadaver Frank Lautenberg. Forrester says he’s set to throw in $8-million in personal funds.

Corzine is getting out of the Senate, of course, because the Democrats are hopelessly out of power and will remain so for at least the next four years. (It’s a longshot that they could get back something in 2008, if their Presidential candidate is hot.)

(There were rumors circulating that Corzine was going to challenge McGreevey for the Dem nomination next year anyway, though.)