AFTER-WORD: Saturday, December 31, 2005
Indeed. The Sunday show lineup is in the post below this one. I’ll mutter a Pre-Face in the morning, then the review of the Sunday Shows will be live at about 2p ET.
And I guess Times Square is going to drop on Dick Clark tonight.
The Sunday Morning Talk Show Lineup
For New Years Day (January 1), 2006:
Meet the Press (NBC): Host Tim Russert has a throwaway this week: historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Newsweek’s Jon Meacham, Bill Safire of the New York Times, and the WashPost’s Eugene Robinson will chat and chat and chat ceaselessly.
FOX News Sunday: Host Chris Wallace will chat with Senate GOP whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Chuck Schumer of New York about “what’s in store of 2006.”
Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer talks to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, and Gingrich.
This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos will attempt to interrogate Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace, USMC, “on American troop levels and the future of Iraq.”
Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer will talk ot HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt about the bird flu. He’ll also talk to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar of Indiana and Dem Whip/Nazi hunter Dick Durbin of Illiinois about… stuff.
~~~~~
It looks like it will be mostly Year-in-Review/Look-in-Crystal-Ball stuff this week, except for Blitzer’s bit on bird flu, and I have no idea where that one’s coming from. McCain and Joe Biden are absent, but Newt’s got them covered.
I don’t know what Schieffer is up to with Nagin and Geberding, unless he’s suggesting that Brownie gave bird flue to the Big Easy.
The review of the Sunday Shows, found everyweek at RedState.org, will be here (rightsided.org) at about 2p ET tomorrow afternoon. Bookmark this site and keep it bookmarked. It is your destiny.
Next week, the review will appear at Redstate.com, but you’ll have this site bookmarked as well. Which will be nice.
The President’s Weekly Radio Address and Democrat Response
President Bush used his weekly radio address [text] to talk up Iraq:
The United States has a vital interest in the success of a free Iraq, so in the year ahead, we will continue to pursue the comprehensive strategy for victory that I have discussed with you in recent weeks. This strategy has security, political, and economic elements
and the economy:
During 2005, thanks to our tax relief, spending restraint, and the hard work of the American people, our economy remained the envy of the world. Our economy has been growing strongly for more than two years, and has added nearly 4.5 million jobs since May of 2003. More Americans own their homes than at any time in our nation’s history. Inflation is low, productivity is high, and small businesses are flourishing. Real disposable income is up, consumers are confident, and early reports suggest good retail sales this holiday season.
To keep our economy moving forward, we must continue to pursue sound policies in Washington and be wise with taxpayers’ money. We made real progress this year in restraining government spending.”
Good luck with that, but the President’s speech recapped success and looked forward to more of it.
The Democrat response, Pelosi again, promised to “renew America’s promise.”
“The federal budget should be a statement of our national values,” Pelosi said. “Sadly, the Republican budget fails that test.”
The federal budget should be receipts and spending with which to pay for those government functions listed in the Constitution. Pelosi wants to do health care and education. Fine. But taxing is not about our nation’s values, and neither government spending.
Speaking of values, though, Pelosi has religious leaders “drawing a moral line in the sand against the Republican budget’s misplaced priorities.”
The moral law is now drawn, Nance. You’re more than welcome to get on the right side.
The New York GOP strains credulity
I suppose it is okay if you’re into that kind of thaang, but debt-ridden TV star/builder Donald Trump is considering a run for the GOP gubernaorial nomination in New York next year.
State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R), the guy who put the kibbosh on Jeanine Pirro’s abortive run against Hlllary, claims to have recuited “Donald, The” for the race.
Said Frank MacKay, state chairman of the Independence Party: “(Trump) is a formidable candidate for anything he decides to run for. We would love to see him run for president of the United States in 2008 as a third-party candidate. I’d do what I could to help give him a strong base here in New York and everywhere else in the country.”
Trump flirted with a run for president on the Reform Party ticket in 2000. He has given money to Republicans and Democrats in state races.
At least the NY State GOP plans to put on a circus for Governor Spitzer before his coronation. Can’t these freaks get serious?
PRE-FACE: Saturday, December 31, 2005
The WashPost has discovered that Tom DeLay may have accepted money from the U.N. Oil for Food Program. Okay, they don’t mention it, but the story leaves open that possibility.
The paper tells us that an outfit called U.S. Family Network, which had “close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization,” was actually comprised of Jack Abramoff’s friends and a London Law firm the partners of which “would not identify the money’s [$1-million check] origins.” I had no recourse but to surmise that it came from Kofi Annan and Oil for Food.
The WashPost trumpets the theory that the check came from the Russians, seeking to influence DeLay’s vote on IMF legislation which would allow “a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.”
Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million — a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group — the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff’s long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known.
Oil for food, I tell you! South American drug money. Impoverishing the American Indian (Katrina).
Whatever was done here, the paper tells us, was corrupt if not illegal and was perpetrated by Tom DeLay. The story mentioned the name DeLay (or his wife Christine) 47 times, not including the headline. Abramoff’s is mentioned 21 times, though the story is about Abramoff’s money and an emphemeral relationship with Tom DeLay. (Through a mysterious set of “strong ties” with Abramoff.)
The WashPost ought to present its allegations to a grand jury like any other prosecutor. Of course, that nonsense would never make it that far.
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into who leaked to the press that the National Security Agency had a program to monitor the international telephone calls of suspected terrorists without first applying to the FISA court for a warrant. President Bush has maintained that the leak has damaged U.S. security.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Justice undertook the action on its own, and Bush was informed of it Friday.
“The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al-Qaida’s playbook is not printed on Page One and when America’s is, it has serious ramifications,” Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays.
Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Times, declined to comment.
This, folks, is very serious stuff, not merely ticking off some failed State Department employee by revealing that his desk-jockey wife was CIA. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote the Times piece, released the day after the historic elections in Iraq, based on information from Risen’s forthcoming book.
There was no public “need to know,” no public “right to know,” nothing. This was a compromise of national security which, if not purposeful by the paper, was at the very least negligent. I’m afraid we’ll need to see some serious frog-marching. Since it never happened to Karl Rove, as per Joe Wilson’s threat, at least we’lll get to see it.
AFTER-WORD: Friday, December 30, 2005
I am not making this up. From the WashPost:
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It’s a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan — Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It’s a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts — marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.
At that point, it’s only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: “ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL.”
Rumsfeld… Wolfotwitz… Feith… neocons… naaaah. The plan was constructed and approved by the Department of War in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was all done under the watchful eye of the second President Roosevelt.
Why would we want Canada? Well, only as a launching point for a war against Great Britain.
Those wacky New Dealers.
The author of the WashPost piece, Peter Carlson, tries to be clever throughout the piece. He even opens:
Invading Canada won’t be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn’t have a plan.
Barrel of laughs, that one.
These WashPost reporters should stop trying to be clever and just report the news, lest they end up laughing-stocks like their cousin Froomkin.
This afternoon, I listened to Elgar’s Falstaff and the well-played Enigma Variations, but it’s now Friday night. Jazz on XM!
The review of the Sunday Morning Talk Shows will be on this blog this week on Sunday afternoon, and the lineup will be posted here tomorrow (Saturday) evening.
For better or for worse, I’m going to try an open thread.
Have at it.
“Life During Wartime, Without RedState.”
I have been writing for RedState for over a year, and this is my first weekend without it. Many of you visiting from the RedState site might be on the edge of a similar separation anxiety. We are all in this together.
My hit count is telling me just how big RedState has become.
Tavis Smiley. I flicked to XM Radio’s “Public Radio” channel (133) and heard the start of the Tavis Smiley show. He declared 2005 to be the year of “death, destruction, denial,” and he had a panel on to discuss… death, destruction, denial: Cornell West, author Michael Eric “Mike” Dyson, Constance “Connie” Rice, and syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock. I have a mental picture of Murdock being forced to sit behind a curtain, with his microphone turned on only at Tavis’s whimsical decree.
Tavis said that he was looking for bright spots, and he turned to Rice. She declared that Hurricane Katrina attacked poor people, as did the rescuers. BushLied™, war on the impoverished, etc.
I tuned out and put on Chris Wallace in for Brit.
By the bye, one of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame’s twins declared for all to hear that his “daddy is famous, my mommy’s a secret spy.” Daddy must have wanted to frog-march the 5-year-old, but we don’t want to think about that.
SuperDome: not a place for fun
Scandalous news was first reported this morning by the San Antonio Express-News: the New Orleans Saints may return next year, at least in part, to the New Orleans Superdome:
The Saints likely will play most of their home schedule in Baton Rouge and perhaps the Louisiana Superdome, which Pelican State officials say could be ready for use by November.
Scheduling conflicts in Louisiana, however, could send the Saints back to the Alamodome for some games.
ESPN.com has come upon an horrific memo from Saints owner Tom Benson:
“Today we are very pleased to advise our entire organization — coaches, players and staff — that we will be returning to Metairie [training facility] in January,” Benson said Friday in a memo circulated to the team. “We are working in Louisiana to play as many games as possible in the Superdome, which may be ready in September.”
The Superdome, if you’ll recall, is where Brownie and the Feds “had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged” the stadium in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is a symbol of forced-poverty, forced-criminality, BushLied"e;, racial hatred, and journalistic triumph. It should be either razed or turned into a monument to the thousands who suffered and died there.
Viennese Quasi-Porn Billboards
They’ve pulled some offensive billboards in Austria:
The images, splashed on scores of electronic rolling billboards, showed two naked female models wearing masks of President George W. Bush and the Queen, and a male model with a President Jacques Chirac mask, posed as if engaged in a sex act
You see, Austria is about to take over the EU for a time. They don’t want to be embarrassed, so the disgusting displays got the hook.
The producers of the billboards say that they were meant to “reflect on the different social, historical and political developments in Europe.” As if engaged in a sex act.
How’d Chirac get into this? He was probably just surrendering to his passions.
The producers ought to bring their show Stateside, where our government will give them a large N.E.A. grant that crap.
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Here is a small photo, if you want to see the thing.
The MAKPA “Of the Year” Awards
These third annual, or second annual, MAKPA “Of the Year” Awards are awarded on a need-to-know basis. (Sorry. I’m not sure why I wrote that.)
There is no prize with these wards other than the notoriety they offer, and some categories are more notorious than others.
Read them below the fold:
(more…)
PRE-FACE: Friday, December 30, 2005
Althought he refers to it initially as the “effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda,” the WashPost’s Dana Priest warns us that the GST, as the program’s acronym goes, “includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.”
Appealing to our fear of the uknown, Priest ominously spooks that the GST is “compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.”
He tells us that the public is outraged. And he tells us that program is virtually intact, in part because the President has cast aside all lawyers and advisors who would question his authority to do “anything.” Bush now has a team of attorneys in place, Priest writes, who will write legal briefs arguing in favor of any od thing the President wants to do.
So what is the media’s role in this? Is it to frighten peopleand undermine the effort with stories based on little actual knowledge of the subject, or is it to prove once-and-for-all that BushLied and ought to be impeached?
Priestly tells us that there is something dark and nefarious, he does not understand it, but Bush is defending it even though it runs roughshod over various things. The story was not at all helpful to anything.
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My apologiest to MS. Dana Priest, most definitely a woman and not a man.
Click her lovely image for her Gwenn Ifill Show bio. She’s married, two kids, living in DC. She was a military reporter, now she’s trying to cover the intelligence beat.
Coming up shortly in this space are the awards from 2005.
AFTER-WORD: Thursday, 29 December, 2005
I have to doff my capt to the web site of the public access channel for terrorists, Aljazeear.Net. They have managed a fair and balanced headline, this over a story about disgraced South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who convinced the world that human embryonic stem cell research held great promise for treating injuries, curing diseases, and alleviating poverty.
Of course, he made it all up, and the headline reads: Scientist lied about everything.
That says it all.
The third annual MAKPA “Of the Year” Awards will go live on this blog tomorrow morning just after 10a ET. It’s a fun exercise, anyway.
My friend Keith Milby dropped me a line the other day to remind me that my last post on my old blogspot blog was posted one year ago Thursday. That one was a reminder that I was still in the process of migrating to the new setup. My last full post on that blog was the PRE-FACE of December 23, 2004. The last part read:
Blogging will be very light on this Blogspot blog as we await transfer to the new Wordpress version set up over yonder. Someone has to point DNS name servers, or some such, and we’ll see how that goes. www.rightsided.org will soon not point to this version of the blog, perhaps taking you to an error message for a while until the stuff is properly align.
And we made it.
I listened to the Vienna Philharmonic doing Haydn and Scriabin. It’s hosted by Jeremy Irons
James Taranto at OpinionJournal.com’s Best of the Web has a story about those U.S. soldiers John Kerry told Bob Schieffer were terrorizing Iraqi women and children. Theese brutish fiends were searching a home when they were shown a baby born with Spina Bifida.
They got the girl help, but to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt, they must have done so “in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”
Read Taranto’s brief piece for some inspiration.
The Associated Press is again proving that the MSM are the guardians of our rights, and as such, should be able to print whatever they want.
I has come to attention of the AP that there is a major issue with the National Security Agency which goes beyond even the monitoring of international telephone calls by terrorists and, in their words, “raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.” The NSA actually has the brazen gall to place “files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.” If you were to have visited the NSA web site, they would have place a file on your computer which would have SPIED ON YOU, DENYING YOUR BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS.
A cookie. We all know what an internet cookie is and isn’t:
The vulnerability of systems to damage or snooping by using web browser cookies is essentially nonexistent. Cookies can only tell a web server if you have been there before and can pass short bits of information (such as a user number) from the web server back to itself the next time you visit. Most cookies last only until you quit your browser and then are destroyed. A second type of cookie known as a persistent cookie has an expiration date and is stored on your disk until that date. A persistent cookie can be used to track a user’s browsing habits by identifying him whenever he returns to a site. Information about where you come from and what web pages you visit already exists in a web server’s log files and could also be used to track users browsing habits, cookies just make it easier.
But not everyone reading that AP piece would not know that the NSA wasn’t running amok, trampling everything before it.
Freaks.
Quote of the Hour: Joe Barton’s Excuse
This is from Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), who missed some votes during the important time leading up to this month’s Congressional recess. John McCaslin at the Washington Times shows us Barton’s excuse, inserted into the Congressional Record on December 18:
“Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, December 15, 2005, I was admitted to the hospital upon suffering a heart attack. As a result, I missed three days of votes.”
To the American Left, this might be another GOP sob story. To the rest of us, it is dedication and tenacity.
AFTER-WORD: Wednesday, December 28, 2005
The process by which a terror suspect in U.S .custody is transferred to the custody of another country for interrogation is known as “rendition.” Catch a bad guy, ship him to Saudi Arabia and let them extract the answers in their own way. When it was made public that the United States had rendered people in this manner, the American Left went ballastic with the BushHitlerCo nonsense.
The French wire AFP reports this about that:
The CIA’s controversial “rendition” program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday’s issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.
“President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda,” Scheuer said, in comments published in German.
“We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said ‘That’s up to you’.”
Clinton, Sandy “Docs in my Pants” Burger, and Dick Clarke, of 9-11 Commission Book Tour, were big into rendition.
I’m not faulting Clinton, mon.
I listened to Handel’s Messiah — the expurgated version — on XM Classical (110) this evening. It’s still in season, and I’ve heard the full version twice already this month. It’s just beautiful work.
My wife and I are nearing the end of Buster Keaton’s The General, from 1927. It’s a treat.
Today was our wedding anniversary. We went out for lunch and spent some time together this afternoon. Looking back on the “good old days,” I would not want to go back. Sure, a good time was had by all, but that’s another time, another person.
For all the pre-election talk of media darling Ahmed Chalabi emergining as a compromise prime minister once the new Iraqi government was formed, it’s not going to happen. Chalabi lost his election, will not be a member of the Iraqi parliament, and will not be a compromise anything.
According to news from the Washington Post, Chalabi managed to receive only 32,000 votes in Iraq, where 95 percent of the votes have been tallied. He reportedly failed to de well among exiled voters who were able to cast their votes at overseas election stations.
Haider Musawi, a spokesperson for Chalabi’s party, which has filed complaints of election irregularities, said he was waiting for the investigation results.
“Ahmad Chalabi will have an important role, whether in the government or outside,'’ said the spokesperson.
Yeah, right. He can be the janitor.
He had run last January as a member of the secular Shi’ite alliance, but he decided that he was his own party for the December 15 election after the alliance refused to kiss his bottom.
Chalabi can always hire on as a CNN “expert.”
Over at RedState.org, Steven Den Beste asks: “Why does the MSM hate President Bush?” He thinks it might be in part because of this:
Bush has broken with the tradition, and it represented a threat to the MSM to create a new tradition in which the MSM’s position is substantially downgraded.
So I think that part of the MSM’s reaction to Bush has been, “Ignore us, will you? OK, we’ll raise such a stink that you’ll be forced to pay attention to us. We have real power, you know.”
In other words, what we’ve been viewing is a power struggle between the president and the MSM.
I agree, but I also see an element of a MSM which still considers itself to be some sort of “public watchdog,” the great protector the people from their government. This MSM impulse is solidified and increased by their ideological antipathy toward a Republican Administraiton and especially one this seemingly certain of itself.
This has become, to the MSM, a war to be won at all costs.
Steven concludes:
Interestingly, there’s every reason to believe that the MSM is losing it. In their ongoing attempts to try to cause as much trouble for Bush as they possibly can, they’ve been degrading their own reputation steadily. The press’s reputation has been fading for decades anyway, but in the last five years it’s taken a nose dive. Their ongoing attempts to force Bush to give them obeisance is a significant part of the reason why.
Note that the MSM continues publishing pure crap even when the bulk of the population laughs it off and/or rejects it. Kerry did not defeat Bush. Bolton is serving very well as US ambassador to the U.N. Harry Reid’s little shut-down-the-Senate gambit over BushLied failed miserably. This Risen NYT story about spying has not made a dent with a public.
They are failing.
(posted also at Rathergate.com)
Writing his Op/Ed the WashPost, David Ignatius attacks the Bush Administration under the guise of being reasonable and concerned. He tells that the surveillance done by the NSA is important, thus it “should be brought within the rule of law — so that they can be used… legally.” He asserts, then, that the surveillance was illegal. It was probably not.
Despite his audacious claim, Ignatius admits that “[w]e know only the barest outlines of what the NSA has been doing.” Then he does not know that it was illegal. He claims that the “most reliable accounts have appeared in the New York Times.” WRONG. Those stories were hyperbolic and in truth pointed to no illegalities. If Ignatius is using the Times dross as his backing in his claim that laws were broken, he’s either boneheaded or drunk. Or he has a deadline.
Opines Ignatius:
America needs surveillance and analytical techniques that can connect the dots. But even more, it needs a clear legal framework for this effort. Otherwise it won’t be sustainable. In that sense, continuing the current lawless approach would be the true gift to the enemy.
Again, what lawlessness? Which laws were broken and by whom? One must establish the problem that before claiming to seek a positve solution. Ignatius merely assumed the problem in order to plant in the heads of his readers that there was one.
PRE-FACE: Wednesday, December 28, 2005
In last night’s AFTER-WORD (see below), I wrote of the seven seats Chuckie Schumer and the DSCC are targeting next year and posited:
Not all seven of those seats are realistically winnable for Dems, and I’m thinking of Rhode Island, Missouri, and Arizona in particular, where Chafee, Talent, and Kyl should have no problem. I don’t see Tennessee happening for them, either, and the Dems do not have a good candidate in Pennsylvania.
I neglected Montana and Conrad Burns, another Schumer target. Yesterday, Chris Cillizza, blogging for the WashPost, told us:
Fully 58 percent of those tested said they were either very or somewhat concerned with Burns’s relationship with [Jack] Abramoff. Thirty-three percent said they were not concerned. (Republicans are likely to note that the result is somewhat skewed given that respondents were read a paragraph of information detailing the nature of the dealings between the two men before being asked their level of concern.) National Democrats are sure to be emboldened by these numbers nonetheless, having already run two television ads earlier this year seeking to tie Burns to Abramoff.
Throw that poll out. Abramoff Burns will be able to defend himself in the actual campaign, which polls mentioned by Cilizza show him leading.
AFTER-WORD: Tuesday, December 27, 2005
New York’s senior Senator Chuckie Schumer, as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says he’s targetting seven Republican seats next fall: Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, and Arizona.
Schumer heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which had more than $22 million available according to their last fundraising report. That’s more than double the cash available to their counterparts in the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
NRSC spokesman Brian Nick said Schumer’s current fundraising advantage “means zilch” and his list of target states “is suspect at best.”The NRSC also is looking at replacing some Democratic senators in places like Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey.
Advantage: Dems. Not all seven of those seats are realistically winnable for Dems, and I’m thinking of Rhode Island, Missouri, and Arizona in particular, where Chafee, Talent, and Kyl should have no problem. I don’t see Tennessee happening for them, either, and the Dems do not have a good candidate in Pennsylvania.
Either way, the Dems aren’t taking the Senate. The House? If things go their way, which means if things go against the Americans in Iraq. That’s the Democrats best hope.
Bastards.
Here’s a headline: Secret surveillance up since 9/11. It seems that requests to the covert court to conduct clandestine surveillance have risen since 9-11. I do not wonder why, but perhaps Reuters does.
And this means that the Administration must have had a damn good reason not to ask for warrants in the matters sensationalized by that distorted NY Times piece.
Canadian Liberals and “She’s got Cooties!”
Mike Klander, executive vice-president of the Ontario wing of Canada’s Liberal Party, has been forced from his position for acting like a dKosby Kid. He had posted on his blog something very stupid about NDP boss Jack Layton and his wife, party Olivia Chow.
He stepped down from the volunteer position after it was revealed he had posted a picture of Chow on his personal blog alongside a picture of a chow chow dog, with the heading “Separated at birth.”
Chow is the NDP candidate for the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina in the Jan. 23 federal election.
The blog, which has been taken offline, also contained nasty comments about Layton.
In an entry dated Nov. 23, Klander wrote: “I’m going away for a couple of days, so I thought I would find something smart and witty to put up on my blog before I left. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything, so I just want to say that I think Jack Layton is an a**hole … for no reason other than it makes me feel good to say it … and because he is.”
He blogs like most American liberals. It is not serious discourse; actually, it’s more like Cootie accusations.
Quote of the Hour: Polish President on Troops in Iraq
Polish President Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz at a news conference Tuesday on his government’s decision to keep troops in Iraq through 2006 as part of the international coalition.
“The government decided to ask the president to extend the deployment of Polish military forces as part of the international forces in Iraq from Jan. 1, 2006 until Dec. 31, 2006. This is a very difficult decision, but we take into consideration the fact that the mandate of U.N. stabilisation forces has been extended to the whole of 2006 and, secondly, strong requests of Iraqi authorities that we stay there.”
Deputy Defence Minister Stanislaw Koziej added that Poland would begin to concentrate less on security and more on training.
I did not try to reach Congressman Jack Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) for his reaction.
PRE-FACE: Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Good morning
According the the WashPost, abortion is a rare thing in South Dakota because most local doctors are afraid of the “stigma” which comes with the practice.
The last doctor in South Dakota to perform abortions stopped about eight years ago; the consensus in the medical community is that offering the procedure is not worth the stigma of being branded a baby killer.
They have to ship in doctors from the oustside to kill the babies. They can do it, and be done with it and get out of there.
The paper paints a stark picture of State taxpayers who refuse to fund the procedure, “even in the case of rape or incest” (Rape and incest might be the circumstances in which Jimmy Carter thinks Jesus Christ might favor abortion.)
I guess this isn’t big news. Workmen digging a new water pipe in the holy city of Karbala have found another of Saddam Hussein’s mass graves, this one containing the remains of dozens of Shia murdered after Saddam put down their revolt in 1991.
This has to be unnerving. Such digging in the United States, if it finds anything unexpected, might uncover something historic novel. In Iraq, they can’t dig a few feet to put in infrastructure without finding the bodies of the victims. So many victims.
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