Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

“HELP… END ALL WAR & CLEAN Up OUR EARTH …NOW”: EarthBall.org.

Look at this. It seems they’ve found a drunken freak with two torsos playing one of Mozart’s sonatas for four hands.

No, seriously, this is amazing: that two people can so coordinate their minds and thus their limbs under the written direction of genius. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was something, and we do owe a debt to Leopold for raising him to give us this gift.

This afternoon, the House of Representatives passed an earmarks-laden supplemental appropriations bill which House Republicans had an opportunity and perfect reason to oppose.

Here’s Erick:

The GOP has discovered in the 24 hours it has had to review the legislation that the legislation wipes out funding for programs designed to prevent AIDS in babies that have virtually wiped out “baby AIDS” in several states and the legislation almost takes away over $16 million in funding for military family housing.

I don’t think a single Republican voted against it.

That’s a blown opportunity, folks.

It just keeps coming:

If Harry Reid hadn’t succeeded in politics, he could have done well in real estate. Actually, the Senate Democratic leader, who hails from Nevada, has managed both.

In 2001, he made $1.1 million on a Las Vegas transaction that got him some unwanted attention from the Senate ethics committee because he failed to report some crucial information on his financial disclosure forms. Now, we learn that he bought out a business partner in another land deal at a price that looks too good to be true and that he has sponsored legislation that would benefit that former partner.

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that in 2002, Reid paid $10,000 to a pension fund–controlled by an old friend, Clair Haycock–which owned a 37.5 percent share of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City, Ariz. That is one-ninth what Haycock paid when he and Reid bought the land 25 years ago. On a per-acre basis, it’s also about one-fiftieth what it fetched in 1990 from buyers who later defaulted. The county assessor says it sounds like a “super deal” for Reid.

The man is a genuine lowlife.

The media, mainstream variety, haven’t picked up on this quote from Joe Biden, noted by Mike Krempasky at RedState.com.
Said Joe about Barry Obama:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he [Joe Biden] said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Joe’s found an African American whom he finds to be bright and articulate! Wow, Joe, good for you!

The quote was evidently taken from an interview with the New York Observer, whose site I cannot now access. Biden has a race problem, calling Delaware a “slave State” and joking about Pakistanis at the Quik Stop Mart.

I got this one from California Yankee at RedState. It’s an NBC report:

In no uncertain terms, our troops in Iraq are pleading with Biden, Levin, Hagel, and their defeatist, anti-Bushie ilk to stop playing their game. If they want to support the troops, they should do it. The troops believe in what they are doing.

Judy Miller takes the stand in the Fitz silliness trial of Scooter Libby today, but USA Today has uncovered an important “twist” in yesterday’s testimony from Air Fleischer:

Fleischer testified that on July 11, 2003, he told three reporters — including John Dickerson, who then worked for Time — that Plame worked at the CIA.

But Dickerson, now at Slate, remembers things differently. He says Fleischer didn’t say anything about Plame — only that reporters should look into who sent retired U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson (Plame’s husband) on a fact-finding trip to Niger.

Is this a big deal? Dickerson wonders if Fleischer’s testimony and his different recollection of events will “get me out of my press seat and into that uncomfortable little witness box.”

He also wonders if it “hurts the prosecution if Ari admitted something he didn’t do, because they’re relying on his memory.”

Somebody in addition to Joe Wilson is lying, it seems. Does anyone trust Dickerson? If Dickerson is correct, then it helps the prosecution for the reason he cites and because it is an example of Val Plame’s name not being used by the WH.

I’d like for Dickerson to have to testify as to what he recalls, preferably after Joe Wilson, who should have testified first so as to have been most thoroughly trashed and refuted.

My wife and I were in Suncoast yesterday, getting Volume IV of the Family Guy cartoon, when this came on their little TV vid screen:

I had seen it once on PBS, and it is the most profound, gripping, intense two and a half minutes of television I have ever, and I mean ever seen.

(Back to politics in a bit. I did a Castro piece over at RedState.)

Zeyad at Healing Iraq, from Iraq, has a post — US Likely Duped in Najaf Clashes — in which he talks about the MSM reporting on what has happened in Najaf, with the 250 militants killed, etc.

The official U.S. and Iraqi story about what happened in Najaf today, which was swallowed and propagated by news wires (and apparently also the New York Times), is complete nonsense. First of all, they can’t even decide whether they were fighting Sunni insurgents or a “violent Shi’ite cult,” as Reuters’ unnamed self-appointed expert put it in their story.

He explains at the post linked, but read on here first.

(more…)

From the AP:

“Let’s say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican,” Cheney said. “But it’s very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved.”

There is no cause for concern, Mr. Vice President.

(more…)

When I watched CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday morning, I heard host Bob Schieffer say [pdf]:

Yesterday in Washington was like a day from yesteryear in a war that, to many, seems long ago and far away, the war in Vietnam. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people descended on the Capitol to protest the war in Iraq. Some of them are young, some were those who marched and protested Vietnam. [Emphasis mine]

I didn’t follow the rally, so I thought nothing of it. Then I saw Brent Baker’s piece at NewsBusters.org, where he pokes fun at Schieffer’s statement.

[A]ll other major news outlets, including his own network’s Saturday evening newscast, pegged the number of people who attended Saturday’s anti-Iraq war protest rally in Washington, DC as in the “tens of thousands.”

I asked my wife, an authority on such things, and she said that she didn’t know. She thought they sand 30,000, but she admitted that she hadn’t really paid attention.

These people want to “relive” the romantic version their minds of created of the protests of the Vietnam, sans, they promise, the spittle for the troops. It is a pathetic event, watching these lemmings. It makes you wish they did not want to drag us to the cliff.

Every Saturday and every Sunday, Brian Wilson has hosted FOX News Live on FNC, a gig he inherited from Tony Snow. Roger Ailes has decided that he should now be called Vice President Wilson, Washington Bureau chief. (He replaces, interestingly, DC Managing Editor Brit Hume’s wife, Kim Schiller Hume.

All that’s kinda old news, but Brian signed off his last show as a regular host today, and Johnny Dollar has vid.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Two of the 9 o’clock shows led with conservatives seeking the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. Mike Huckabee (MTP) is going to file papers on Monday. He said that his religion explains who he is, and that candidates who say that their religion won’t influence their decision-making are saying that their beliefs are insignificant. Sam Brownback (FNS) would not answer the question of whether or not a Mormon is a true Christian; rather, he pointed out that this country has no religious test for office.

Joe Lieberman told Wallace on FNS that he remains allied with the Democratic Party because they are progressive and strong on defense. Strong on defense? It sounds like they’ve changed from what Joe remembers, and is he trying to tell us something? Or to dangle a threat?

In the din which Russert called a discussion, Chuckie Schumer pointed out that 70% of Americans surveyed by someone oppose sending more troops to Iraq. He declared this “democracy,” and I suppose he still doesn’t understand why the United States is a republic. Schumer also said that the Democrats voted to approve General Petraeus while opposing his plan because they have no business interfering with the President’s decisions on commanders. (I’m still shaking my head. I need a transcript.) He called the President’s plan, “A Flop.”

On TW, Dick Lugar said that the resolutions would not be helpful and we should give the President’s plan a chance to succeed. Joe Biden said that merely by introducing his resolution, he’s created great changes in the nature of the world and its condition, and that it is not important if his resolution ultimately fails. What is important is the debate he has started. He’s going to announce for President on Wednesday and he can win because Jimmy Carter was an incompetent boob with no experience who got this country into trouble with foreign nations.

On FTN, Jim Webb says that in Iraq, we have a “five-sided problem.” He could have been referring to the Pentagon, though he wasn’t explicit. Same show, Arlen Specter said he opposes the surge and might like to see a cut in funding, along the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam model. (He named the countries as his precedent.) Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he doesn’t see any of the proposed resolutions getting the 60 votes needed to pass.

On LE, Jay Rockefeller said that if we fail in Iraq, they’ll just go on killing each other, Jon Kyl characterized the results of a failure in Iraq as much worse and left open that he might consider sending more than the initial 21,000 troops.

Read the show-by-show review at RedState.com.

Monty the moonbat, who really exists and is perhaps my only fan, sent a link to something called “Smirking Chimp,” a post which resembles parody: “Who’s Helping the Terrorists?” (Google it if you’re interested.)

It contains the following deep sarcasm:

To Liz Cheney, who surely qualified on merit for her former job as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, there’s only one option – to stay the course in Iraq and to remain firmly in line behind President Bush.

The joke, to this fellow at the smirking chimpanzee website, is that Liz Cheney is a bimbo who got the position only because her daddy’s the veep. This might be the only reason she wanted or accepted the position, but (from her the State Department):

Ms. Cheney has served previously in government, most recently as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2002 to 2003. Prior to that Ms. Cheney practiced law in the private sector and at the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. Ms. Cheney has also served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State for Assistance to the former Soviet Union, and as a USAID officer in US embassies in Budapest and Warsaw. Ms. Cheney received her bachelor’s degree from Colorado College and her law degree from the University of Chicago.

The smirking chimp fellow’s problem with Liz Cheney? She takes al Qaeda at there word, something intelligent people know we’d better do. (Oh, come on, they’re joking about hijacking airplanes and… you get it.)

But U.S. intelligence knows that al-Qaeda’s public statements must be taken with a grain of salt.

I feel bad for this smirking chimp guy and I hope someone adopts him before PETA gets their lethal hands upon him.

For Sunday, January 28, 2007

Meet the Press (NBC): Host Tim Russert talks to Mike Huckabee about 2008, then he turns to Iraq with Senators Schumer (D-New York) and Vitter (R-Louisiana), Mike Gerson (a first term Bushie — speechwriter, policy guy, conscience) of the CFR and Ken Pollack of Brookings. (Pollack is also CFR and was on Clinton (Bill’s) National Security Council.)

FOX News Sunday (FNS): Host Chris Wallace talks Iraq and Presidential politics with Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, then he talks about the future of relations between the Bush White House and the Reid/Pelosi Congress.

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer talks to, in descending order, Mitch McConnell, Arlen Specter, and Jim Webb. Senator Webb is evidently someone to be taken seriously, and I promise to at least try.

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos talks opposition to a shot at victory in Iraq with two key opponents: Joe Biden of Delaware and, sadly, Dick Lugar of Indiana. Then he goes on the campaign trail with Dunc Hunter.

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer talks to Jay Rockefeller, who might be insane; Jon Kyl; Mike Steele of GOPAC; Donna Brazile, whose name I haven’t typed for a good siz years; and, the text goes, “Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, candidate for president.” I guess that means he’s serious, believing he has a shot at it because he did not screw up so badly before or call our troops idiots.
~~~~~

Huckabee, Brownback, Hunter, Biden, and Dodd. No frontrunners in the Presidential lineup this week, but someone has to emerge from somewhere on the Republican side. Biden’s going to insist that all good ideas were his years ago and that Iraq must be partitioned in the manner he invented, which plan was actually designed by CFR president emiratus Leslie Gelb.