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Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Food, folks and fun----omigoddidyouseethose!!!!!...
Parent upset about students' trip to Hooters
A trip to Hooters Restaurant isn't appropriate for Signal Hill School students and the superintendent who took them there should know it, a student's parent said Monday.
Joni Quaas -- whose 13-year-old daughter was among the seventh- and eighth-graders who dined at the Springfield restaurant -- said she plans to bring her concerns to the Signal Hill School Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. today.
"I really feel strongly that it's not a healthy place to bring girls," Quaas said. "You don't let people get away with things like this."
Signal Hill School District 181 Superintendent Darrel Hardt took 26 seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls to Hooters in Springfield while there for a two-day Junior National Beta Club Convention. The Beta Club is a service organization for students who maintain good grades.
Choosing the restaurant was a decision made out of concern for the safety of the kids, Hardt said.
Most of the restaurants in the area were located on the other side of a four-lane road from the hotel where the group was staying. Hooters was the only restaurant within walking distance that was inexpensive and could accommodate the 26 students, he said.
"We did it for the right reasons," said Hardt, who is set to resign as superintendent later this year. "We did it simply because of the safety of the kids."
[snip]
No parents were notified that the trip to Springfield would include a visit to the local Hooters, Quaas said. She found out when her daughter had pictures from the trip developed, including a photograph of an eighth-grade boy standing on a chair while Hooters waitresses danced and sang "Happy Birthday."
"It's inappropriate," Quaas said. "Everybody knows what Hooters is all about."
Considering these kids were a part of a good grades "service organization" (nerds) I'm willing to guess this is the best thing that ever happened to them. I think Joni Quaas needs to lighten up a bit.
posted by tbogg at 4:13 PM
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Todays Non Sequitur
Pregnancy.
(Thanks to Kim)
posted by tbogg at 3:15 PM
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"...a monumental photographic opportunity for those of you in the press who haven't died in my war."
I feel very much at home here in Northern Ireland. These folks are drinkers and Protestant. Just like my family, only these guys are as poor as Mormon hookers, live in ugly little row houses and speak with weird accents that make them sound ignorant as Hell. Neverthemore, these good people have proved that they can get along peacefully with those Pope-kissing boozehound Catholics – just like we are going to get along with that grab-bag of human trash that lives in the country next to Iran that Exxon-Mobile just signed a hundred-year lease on.
posted by tbogg at 1:31 PM
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But it's not a quagmire....
The 101st Airborne Division's battalion — fighting since Sunday with the First Brigade of the Army's Third Infantry Division — advanced methodically from the international airport, about a mile and a half from here, expanding the Army's control on the western side of the city and bringing its troops ever closer to those now in the city's center.
"We're expanding and squeezing," said Maj. Frank McClary, the operations officer of the First Brigade's 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment.
Despite the presence of the division's tanks into the center of the city, where intense fighting continued today, Major McClary expressed doubt that the pockets of Iraqi fighters would be suppressed soon.
"Tactically-wise, it's going to be going on for a long time," he said, as blasts of cannon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles reverberated around him. The Iraqis that they are encountering, he said, still have rocket-propelled grenades. "Personally, I think it's going to be going on until we leave this country."
posted by tbogg at 12:45 PM
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Your daily dose of Sullivan.
Andy sez:
Three weeks. Under 100 American casualties, half of which came from accidents. No use of tactical WMD. Extraordinarily targeted bombing; exceptionally light force; oil wells intact; Israel secure; Turks kept at bay. War is terrible, of course. It may flare up again for a while. There's still a chance of last-minute atrocities. And every civilian casualty is a tragedy. But it's beginning to look as if this was an amazing military campaign, something of which the American and British people - and their governments - can be deeply, deeply proud.
Here are some things for Andy to be "proud" of:
He can be proud of this.
and this
and this
posted by tbogg at 12:28 PM
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"...and tell helmet-head over there to quit changing the radio stations while he parks my car."
If Trent does a good job with the parking garage, they're going to let him become a hall monitor next.
In how-the-mighty-have-fallen news, we just got the memo from Senate Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who lost his job as majority leader over last year's Strom Thurmond gaffe. "Beginning April 1, garage parking stickers for the 108th Congress will be affixed to cars listed on the garage parking assignment forms which were previously submitted by your offices," writes Lott, who once set the agenda of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. But lest anyone think he's lost clout, Lott warns in his missive to "All Senate Garage Permit Holders": "Please note that only one vehicle per person may be parked in the Senate Garage at any time. . . . Violations will result in revocation of garage parking privileges." Message received, senator!
posted by tbogg at 9:23 AM
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Advertisements for my cowardly myself.
David Horowitz never stops trying to prove his "street cred" to an uncaring world and in doing so, reveals himself to be one of the more obtuse and self-promoting people wandering the planet.
When I was a college radical and anti-war activist forty years ago, I was quite the intellectual and (in my estimation) cautious and sober. Though I became an editor and then co-editor of the leading radical magazine of the Sixties, Ramparts, I never threw a rock during the entire era. I never joined a radical sect and never went to Communist Cuba or North Vietnam, which were then the meccas of the radical faith. Although I was a founder of an organization called the “Vietnam Solidarity Campaign,” I never fooled myself that the Communist state that would result from an American defeat would be a “rice roots democracy,” the way Tom Hayden and other leaders of the “New Left” movement proclaimed.
Nonetheless, before the era was over, I was lured by my desire to do humanitarian good and to further the cause of social justice into working with the Black Panthers, a group of radical gangsters who in 1974 murdered a friend of mine (the mother of three children) and a dozen other individualss(sic) besides. The project I had become involved in with the Panthers was building an elementary school.
From the vantage of the political and cultural left, my activities with the Black Panthers were neither marginal or extreme. At the time, the Panthers were icons of the progressive intellectuals, symbolizing strong black leaders who were standing up for their “oppressed” community. The entire liberal culture supported them. Leading cultural figures like Garry Wills and Murray Kempton were writing praises of the Panthers in the New York Times Sunday magazine Kempton even compared their leader Huey Newton to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther in the Times’ august pages. To this day The New York Times, The Washington Post and other pillars of the American political culture, celebrate the Panthers – the murderers of my friend and a dozen others – as icons of the “social struggle.”
Fortunately, the Panthers disintegrated in the early Seventies, dragged down by their criminal activities, internecine battles and the sordid brutality of their leaders, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. Before he died, Cleaver told a Sixty Minutes audience, “If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the Sixties, there would have been a holocaust in this country.” Many radicals, among them Cleaver’s most prominent promoter – Los Angles Times columnist Robert Scheer -- looked forward to that holocaust and actively encouraged it. The Panthers were the “noble savages” of liberal compassion, symbols of the injustice that America was said to be inflicting on American blacks.
In his own words, Horowitz tells us that he was a "college radical and anti-war activist" and "quite the intellectual" (…really, now? What happened?) but David never really got all that involved, and in fact, seems to go to great lengths to disassociate himself with his past, because, you know, everyone else was doing it (“ The entire liberal culture supported them. Leading cultural figures like Garry Wills and Murray Kempton were writing praises of the Panthers in the New York Times Sunday magazine Kempton even compared their leader Huey Newton to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther in the Times’ august pages”). Long story short....David is finally confessing to being a dilettante with a side order of victimology (“ in 1974 murdered a friend of mine”…which he never stops mentioning).
So what is the purpose of Horowitz’s confession? Why to trash Rachel Corrie, of course.
How many American college students and antiwar activists have been seduced by these poisonous elements at work in our society? It is difficult to know. But one who has already paid for it with her life is Rachel Corrie, a 24 year old undergraduate at Evergreen College in Olympia Washington, who has become known as the “Saint of Rafiah,” the name of the West Bank town where she died. Evergreen is one of the many leftwing campuses in America, whose values have been turned so upside down by tenured leftists that it recently featured convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal as its commencement speaker. (He spoke via tape).
Rachel Corrie began her activist career as a member of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, an organization formed directly after the 9/11 attack on America to oppose an American military response. Its members feared that, “America would retaliate by bombing some of the poorest and most oppressed on earth, the Afghan people.” Their Marxist view of the world is captured in one of the Movement’s favored slogans: “Corporate Globalization Equals Imperialist Domination.”
It was not long after she joined the Olympia Movement that Rachel Corrie was burning an American flag in the name of social justice. It was logical step for her to gravitate to an organization that would demonstrate her commitment to the cause. Through her contacts in the antiwar movement she joined the International Solidarity Campaign, whose purpose is to recruit young Americans to become human shields for Palestinian terrorists. The Solidarity Campaign’s ties to terrorism became inescapable eleven days after Rachel Corrie’s death when an elite anti-terror unit of the Israel Defense Forces captured a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya hiding in its offices in Jenin.
Rachel Corrie was sent by International Solidarity to a town called Rafia in the Gaza Strip to obstruct Israeli Defense Forces conducting anti-terror operations. She sat down in front of an Israeli military bulldozer, and – according to an American eyewitness -- was inadvertently killed when the machine whose driver could not see her, ran over her. This Sunday, the New York Times Magazine – the same magazine that once celebrated the murderer of my friend by the Black Panthers– had a tribute to Rachel Corrie, to her humanitarian goodwill. The article was called “One Last Sit-In,” to wrap the halo of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement around her pro-terrorist activities. The Times article summarized the news reports of Corrie’s death in these words: “23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Wash., crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer as she tried to block the demolition of a physician’s home in Gaza.”
You see, if Rachel Corrie had been offered the opportunity to hear the sage words of “former radical” and putative “intellectual” David Horowitz, who has made a career out of complaining that student bodies won’t pay him to speak on their campuses, she would be alive today, looking forward to life as a whiny, bloated, sweaty sell-out who never put anything on the line, who merely dabbled in left-wing circles until the opportunity came along to cash in with the help of a rightwing sugar-daddy.
I mean, what are ideals, compared to a monthly check personally signed by Richard Mellon Scaife?
Money for nothing and your self-loathing is free.
posted by tbogg at 8:57 AM
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Don't know much about nothing at all
According to Tapped, Candace de Russy isn't about to let some little things like facts get in the way of a good rant.
WHAT ELSE DID SHE GET WRONG? In this otherwise unremarkable and cliched National Review article on leftists in the academy, Candace de Russy states that one school of radicals:
"[E]nvisages an international political monolith with which to replace America and indeed all of liberal democracy in the West. These yearnings are embodied in a doctrine called “transnational progressivism,” which is gaining prominence in law schools, for example, at Princeton and Rutgers."
Tapped don't know about this whole "transnational progressivism thing," which from her description sounds goofy and marginal. But we do know that Princeton doesn't have a law school.
Ms. De Russy was recently appointed to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy by President George W. Bush where we assume she will oversee their school of Dentistry.
posted by tbogg at 8:03 AM
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Monday, April 07, 2003
Pulitzers awarded today.
Peggy Noonan shot down again. Colbert King of the Washington Post, on the other hand, won. From his latest:
Meanwhile, back here on the home front, we're all still about lining up behind our own racial and ethnic groups, defining ourselves by our disagreements and making it a trial to be human.
This week's examples of what I'm talking about: Jennifer Gratz and Ed Kwiatkowski.
First, Gratz, who was Topic A at the Supreme Court a few days ago. She wanted to attend the University of Michigan in 1995 along with thousands of others. It turns out that 4,000 applicants were ultimately granted admission to the university. Alas, Gratz, who had a good SAT score and grade-point average, was not one of them. In fact, more than 1,500 students with grade-point averages and SAT scores lower than Gratz's got into the school. Those 1,500 students, by the way, were not beneficiaries of affirmative action; they were admitted on the basis of other admissions criteria that awarded extra points on a 150-point admissions scale to ensure that a broad and diverse array of talented students attend the university.
Gratz apparently was okay with that, because she didn't kick up a fuss about the 1,500 students with lower scores and grades who got in ahead of her. But then she learned about other students with lower scores and grades who got in because the university awarded them 20 points on the 150-point scale. The difference between the 1,500 students with lower scores and grades than Gratz and the others with lower scores and grades is that the latter group -- minorities -- were beneficiaries of affirmative action.
It seems that Gratz, who is white, could graciously lose out to white students with lower grade-point averages and test scores. But losing out to similarly situated African Americans and Latinos was just too much to take.
Second place to them? Pass the smelling salts.
So she sued.
Go read the rest.
Dave Horsey wins the prize for Editorial Cartooning. I like this one.
Meanwhile Noonan steadily works on her Pope John Paul II book, Humping the Shoes of the Fisherman: Faith, Hope, and Sexual Hysteria
That sucker's got Pulitzer written all over it....
posted by tbogg at 1:46 PM
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The dinner went fine until the banana flambé was served.
Then the hooting turned into terrified shrieks.
In case you missed it, and if you have a real life, you probably did, the Media Research Center held their annual " DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2002" on Thursday March 27th at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Held in the plush Australopithecus Room just down the hall from the room where the Omni Shoreham stores the urinal cakes, it was a night of gaiety (the straight kind) by Conservatives from all around the country who joined together to laugh at each others strained attempts at humor instead of their usual sitting at home in a pair of loose sweatpants watching Friends while indulging in self abuse. Like this guy.
Notable Conservatives (two words not often used together) who made appearances included Cal Thomas, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. John Fund was supposed to be a presenter but instead spent the evening slapping his girlfriend around in the parking structure. Just like last year. Entertainment was provided by washed-up cracker band, The Charlie Daniels Band, who played their one hit song six times before stumbling off-stage and back into obscurity.
The highlight of the evening, besides the Kate O'Beirne/Phyllis Schlafly Astroglide Wresting Smackdown, was the award for the Quote of the Year, this year delivered by Bill Moyers:
“The entire federal government — the Congress, the executive, the courts — is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.
“Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what’s coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture....”
“So it’s a heady time in Washington, a heady time for piety, profits and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money. Don’t forget the money....”
“Republicans out-raised Democrats by $184 million and they came up with the big prize: monopoly control of the American government and the power of the state to turn their radical ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.”
— Bill Moyers’ commentary on PBS’s Now, November 8.
Proving once again, that you can be both biased and absolutely correct at the same time. Afterwards, according to the MRC:
Following the presentation of the awards, attendees saw replays of three of the five winning quotes: ABC's David Wright claiming “it is impossible to say whether” the 99.96 percent vote for Saddam Hussein is “a true measure of the Iraqi people’s feelings,” ABC's Barbara Walters proclaiming that “if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth,” and Bill Moyers denouncing conservatives for acquiring “monopoly control of the American government and the power of the state to turn their radical ideology into the law of the land.”
Then, as a picture of each nominee was displayed, audience members were asked by MRC President L. Brent Bozell to hoot, holler and applaud to indicate their preference so that he, along with Cal Thomas, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter (Sean Hannity had left to do his FNC show), could decipher the audience's preference.
Just like in previous years the "hooting" was accompanied by some feces throwing and "banging of sticks on the table" but was mostly confined to Michelle Malkin's table where she had spent most of the evening demanding to see the busboy's green cards.
Afterwards select attendees retired to L. Brent Bozell's salon where they enjoyed brandies, cigars, and the oral attentions of a latex-clad Ann Coulter wearing a Howell Raines mask.
No arrests were reported.
posted by tbogg at 1:18 PM
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Florida orders Ann Coulter quarantine.
It's bad enough that Florida has to contend with hurricanes, crazy Cuban ex-pats, Disney World, drug addicts with hair issues, and Rush Limbaugh befouling their beaches...now, as noted before, Ann Coulter is coming to town. Yes, the Horsefaced Woman of the Apocalypse is riding into town bearing her special kind of illness.
According to The Courier-Mail the dreaded respiratory disease known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is spread by chlamydia.
South Beach males wishing to bag a bony shiksa with man hands are advised to "watch their asses".
You've been warned.
posted by tbogg at 11:30 AM
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Massive political mis-calculation about to occur...please stand by.....
By agreeing to meet Blair in Belfast, Bush is taking the boldest step of his presidency into the conflict in Northern Ireland, and blending in a set of issues that complicates his 25-hour trip.
Former President Clinton made three trips to Northern Ireland, the most of any U.S. president. Clinton’s envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, led the Belfast negotiations that produced the British province’s Good Friday peace accord of 1998.
Bush has shown less interest, delegating the business of following Belfast developments to a senior State Department official, Richard Haass.
Blair, a stalwart ally in Bush’s war with Iraq, hopes presidential backing will strengthen his hand when he publishes his government’s new Northern Ireland plans by Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the Good Friday pact. A senior administration official said Bush’s very presence in Northern Ireland was meant to signal Bush’s backing for Blair’s blueprint.
Bush and Blair drew Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern into their talks on Northern Ireland, inviting him to a lunch on Tuesday afternoon.
The location of the summit, Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast, shields Bush and Blair from the kind of mass anti-war protests that have engulfed London and other European cities. Still, members of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, plan to demonstrate against the war outside the castle.
Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labor Party criticized the idea of mixing Iraq war planning with Northern Ireland peacemaking.
“I cannot disguise my personal unhappiness at this, given my own opposition to this war and my concern for the integrity of our own peace process,” said Mark Durkan, leader of the moderate, mainly Roman Catholic party.
Considering that President Steely Backboned Rocket Man with Eyes is about as popular in Europe as SARS, what exactly is Blair thinking? I predict the talks regarding Northern Ireland will start to detriorate within moments of Bush refering to the people of Ireland as "Irelanders".
Meanwhile the "Irelanders" are preparing a warm welcome for the Leader of the Free World.
posted by tbogg at 11:04 AM
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Saddam never forgave Janeane for Mystery Men....
Soundbitten on why celebrities caused us to go to war with Iraq.
Because someone has to take the blame for Operation Inigo Montoya.
posted by tbogg at 10:32 AM
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Walking with the nun.
Amy over at Rubber Nun on war-protesting this weekend, anarcho-syndicalist-trustafarians, and horse poop.
Just another day in Chicago.
posted by tbogg at 9:03 AM
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Collect 'em, and trade 'em
Have you ordered your Psychedelic Republicans trading cards yet? Why not?
I'll trade you two George Bush's and a Jeb for a Clarence Thomas.
posted by tbogg at 8:56 AM
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A beautiful mind...a black ugly soul
According to Jimmy Breslin, via MWO, Barbara Bush (not the drunken First daughter, but the brood mare mother of President Dim Son) had this to say:
The following is from an immensely interesting transcript of Barbara Bush on an ABC-TV morning show. She was asked if she and her husband, the former president, watch television.
"He sits and listens and I read books because I know perfectly well that - don't take offense - that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we're talking about the news. And he's not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer."
I guess we now know from which side of the family the unelected fraud acquired his wonderful way with words.
posted by tbogg at 8:17 AM
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Sunday, April 06, 2003
Just in time. To put America asleep again.
Hootie and the Blowfish are back again.
Yeah. I'm not interested either.
posted by tbogg at 11:42 PM
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More on Kelly...not by me.
I said last week that I would pass on writing anymore about the late Michael Kelly, but old friend Will emailed me this and I thought I would pass it on as a contrast to all the Saint Mike columns flooding the media.
Is it too late to get one more word in on Michael Kelly? Here's what he wrote in the Washington Post last September, about Al Gore's speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, at which Gore dared challenge the wisdom of former Governor Bush's Iraq policy:
“It distinguished Gore, now and forever, as someone who cannot be considered a responsible aspirant to power. Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Gore has now shown himself to be ignorant of those limits, and he has now placed himself beyond that pale.
“Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts -- bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.”
Look Who's Playing Politics
What irony (not that Kelly would appreciate it) that if Gore were President, Kelly would probably still be alive. Still wretched, vile, and contemptible, but alive.
posted by tbogg at 11:36 PM
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My loss is journalism's gain
Peggy Noonan, the whirly-twirly Stevie Nicks of conservative journalism, is going to take some time off to work on her dementia opus on Pope John Paul II, giving her editor, James Taranto, time to recuperate and rebuild his shattered career. But she has left us, and generations to follow, a parting column to ponder, parse, dissect, and marvel at in the dark Noonan-less days to come. (Journalism grad students will cry to the heavens "Why?", but God, as usual, won't want to get involved.)
Because there is so much Peggy-ness here ( much more than one man can handle), I thought I would just share my favorite mangled syntax, gibbering theo-patriotic babble, and post-sanity daddy worship. Enjoy it...or not.
Our young troops love their country. That is why they are where they are. It has had me thinking a happy thought, about the success with which our country, for all its troubles the past few decades, has continued to communicate to new generations the simple idea of the goodness of loving America. They have picked up the sheer exuberant joy of understanding a thing and, because one understands it and because it is good, loving it, and then acting on that love to the extent that you would fight for it, you would even die for it.
****************************
Twenty five years ago at CBS News a major network star said to a newsroom friend of mine, who still wore his pin, "I wish I could wear one of those." But, he explained, it might be "misinterpreted." My friend thought, but did not say: Yes, it would be interpreted in a way that suggested you love your country. How terrible.
The network star feared he would be considered biased in favor of America. My friend thought, as he later told me privately, that the star damn well ought to be biased in favor of it. America had given him everything he had, all his riches and fame, because America gave him the liberty to use to the utmost all the gifts he'd been born with. America guaranteed the freedoms he now and then referred to so blithely in his elegant reports. America was a more just and kind place, and an infinitely more humane one, than any of the dictatorships, communist governments or banana republics that network stars spoke of in those days with such delicate understanding and consideration.
American journalists still fear that, being called biased in favor of America. So do intellectuals, academics, local clever people who talk loudly in restaurants, and leftist mandarins of Washington, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities. For all cities have them.
****************************
But there was always another America, and boy has it endured. It just won a war. Its newest generation is rising, and its members are impressive. They came from a bigger America and a realer one--a healthy and vibrant place full of religious feeling and cultural energy and Bible study and garage bands and sports-love and mom-love and sophistication and normality. It was full of ambition, of the desire to start here at point Z and jump there to point A, and all within one generation. It was populated by an utterly practical and yet romantic and highly spiritual people.
****************************
Is this corny? Too bad. It's beautiful to see Americans stand up and embrace their patrimony and go forth into the world with faith. And none of this is unconnected to our president. George W. Bush has given our soldiers something to be proud of, something they can understand and respect. He is, now, after all he's been through the past two years, Mr. Backbone. He has demonstrated to a seething and skeptical world that America can and will stand and fight for a cause, see it through, help the tormented and emerge victorious.
It is important who he is. George W. Bush is an American of the big and real America. He believes in it all--in the vision of the founders, in the meaning of freedom, in the founding and enduring ideas of our country. He believes in America's historic insistence on humanity and not inhumanity in war, and he appears to have internalized the old saying that "one man with courage is a majority."
I used to wonder if George W. Bush's biography didn't suggest a kind of reverse Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was born in low circumstances and rose with superior gifts. Mr. Bush was born in superior circumstances and rose with average gifts. And yet when you look at Mr. Bush now I think you have to admit--I think even clever people who talk loudly in restaurants have to admit--that he has shown himself not to be a man of average gifts. Backbone is not an average gift. Guts are not an average gift. The willingness to take pain and give pain to make progress in human life is not an average gift.
All in all these are amazing qualities in a political figure, and in a president. There's a headline for you: America appears to have a president worthy of its people.
...and you thought only Hunter Thompson wrote while on acid.
posted by tbogg at 11:20 PM
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Friday, April 04, 2003
Tomcattin' with the Fergu-meister
Many thanks to the newly returned Roger Ailes for pointing out that it takes more than a few trinkets and a couple of drinks to get a Republican laid:
In his dark suit, knotted tie and official congressional ID pin on his lapel, Republican House member Mike Ferguson looked out of place at the Rhino Bar and Pumphouse, a Georgetown saloon popular with college kids.
"He shouldn't have even been at the bar," 21-year-old Georgetown University junior Michelle Mezoe told us. "He and his group" – two unidentified staffers, also wearing suits – "stuck out like sore thumbs."
Yesterday Mezoe accused the congressman, a 32-year-old married father of three representing New Jersey's 7th District, of grabbing her in the wee hours Wednesday morning. She said Ferguson removed his ID pin and handed it to her, saying she could keep it if she would "come back and have a drink with me." Mezoe said she refused to return it unless Ferguson apologized for his "disrespectful" behavior. An apology was not forthcoming.
[snip]
Mezoe said the incident began around 1 a.m. as she strolled past Ferguson, who was leaning against the bar on the second floor. She said Ferguson, a Georgetown alum, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward him, introducing himself as a member of Congress. He pulled out his congressional ID card, she said, and pointed to his pin. "That's special," she said sarcastically. "Yes, it is special," he replied earnestly, she said.
"He came across as very arrogant, as though he was invincible," Mezoe said. "He appeared older, slightly balding, not someone I wanted to talk to*. . . . It was very obvious I was a student and not someone to sit down and talk politics with over a late-night drink. I don't think he was interested in my political views." (*Ouch...that's gonna leave a mark)
Mezoe told us that as last call was announced, Ferguson gave her the pin – which she attached to her shirt. When she declined Ferguson's offer to "come back" for a drink, Mezoe continued, Ferguson demanded his pin back. According to Mezoe and other witnesses, she refused to return it unless he apologized, and walked away.
A Ferguson staffer tried to change her mind. "This guy in a suit came up and said, 'I'm sorry, it's my fault. I brought him here and got him drunk, and that's why he's behaving like this.' He asked for the pin and started stroking my hand. I told him, 'If you think you're helping the situation, you are sadly mistaken.' "
Then, Mezoe added, a young jeans-wearing woman, who seemed to be with Ferguson's group, approached and tried to remove the pin by force, grabbing at her chest. The attempt was unsuccessful. Finally, Mezoe said, she was granted a brief audience with the congressman as his aides stood close by. "What is your perspective on what happened here?" she asked. "You stole my pin and you won't give it back," he answered. To which Mezoe replied: "How old are your children, Congressman Ferguson?"
Mezoe said the staffers immediately interposed themselves between her and their boss. "You have offended the congressman," one informed her, she said.
There's lots more. Go read it.
Oh. And here's the party animal himself walking with the family while imaging what it would be like to bag a co-ed for a little rough sex.
Here he is with his hand on Sonia Ghandi's ass.
Here he is sizing up the action.
Here he is asking Alan Greenspan if Andrea Mitchell is a moaner or a screamer.
Here's Ferguson getting a "time out" for peeking in the girls' bathroom at Christy Whitman Elementary.
posted by tbogg at 4:12 PM
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The last word on Kelly...by me
The Kelly Moratorium is over. Not content to try and turn Jessica Lynch into Cassie Bernal by way of Audie Murphy, the Mighty Wurlitzer has decided to turn Kelly into a combination of Ernie Pyle, HL Mencken, and, of course, the Man Who Almost Saved Us From Clinton's Penis. Besides the Upper West Side Gothic of Peggy Noonan as seen below, we have the following:
Media Research Center
Howard Kurtz
Miguel Estrada's cabana boy, Byron York
Rod Dreher
Satan's momma's boy, Jonah Goldberg
James Spader's body double, Rich Lowry
Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote a bunch of stuff about him too, but, like most of her writing, it's not even worth the muscle twitch to click on it.
posted by tbogg at 2:42 PM
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Noonan on Kelly
Okay. We're all sad about Michael Kelly's untimely death... but come on.....:
I knew him as most people did, through what he wrote. I'd met him and admired him easily, but the Michael I read I loved. And so today, without a particular right to, I feel heartbroken. When the news broke, Mencken biographer Terry Teachout expressed with concision what I felt and had not been able to articulate: "This is horrible, horrible news--[Michael] had evolved into a great force for journalistic good, not just as regards this war but in general, and his death will leave a black hole in the sky."
"I was in complete shock. I just sobbed." That's how a close friend of Kelly's described getting the news, by phone. She didn't want me to use her name. She is a former worker in the network-news vineyards and a close friend of Kelly's who'd known him for 15 years, and she wanted to make sure he'd be spoken of in a way that was true. I asked her for her sense of Kelly's special place in journalism, and her answer conflated the personal with the professional. Understandable. All that he was as a professional came from who he was as a person, as an intellect and a personality and a soul.
She said, "He was brave. And he was a warrior. He would take on anything if he believed it was right."
You mean he was willing to pay a price for where he stood? I asked.
"Yes. He refused to be part of the conventional wisdom. He was never part of the pack." She paused. "That's what drove people crazy, that they couldn't classify him. But he was willing not to be liked."
Good thing, as a life of honesty is a life of controversy, and Kelly seemed constitutionally an honest man.
[snip]
Kelly went to The New Republic, where he was no doubt hired for his independence and brilliance and then rather obviously canned for his independence and brilliance, in that case for showing disgust with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He landed at National Journal and got a weekly column at the Washington Post.
He summed up his final judgment on Bill Clinton in a column a few years later, when he responded to another journalist's assertion that Bill Clinton was "unique." Yes, said Kelly. "What comes across as the most important source of Clinton's uniqueness as president is the nearly unbelievable degree of his essential unfitness to be president -- his profound immaturity, his pathological selfishness, his cynicism, above all his relentless corruption."
Oh, did I mention that she thinks Kelly should be buried at Arlington?
He remains will come home now soon enough, and I hope what comes home is met with an honor guard, for he has earned it, and a flag, for he loved his country, and a snapped salute, for that is one way to show respect. And maybe it would be good if this son of Washington--born there, educated there, drawn to its great industry, politics and the reporting of it--were to find his final rest nearby, among those who fought with distinction for America. Michael Kelly went at great peril to be with U.S. troops, and he fell among US troops, while trying to tell the story of U.S. troops. So perhaps his final rest should be with U.S. troops, in Arlington, where we put so many heroes.
I would like to give Peggy the benefit of the doubt since she tossed this one off in about four hours, but even if she had four weeks we would have seen the same finished product. The column has that certain Noonan-cy that we have come to both fear and mock. If you saw an insane person on the street waving a pair of scissors around, you would call the police. What do you do with a crazy woman with a word processor?
posted by tbogg at 2:13 PM
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Colonel Bogey's poodle
Billmon, who is filling in over at the Daily Kos, makes a great film analogy, and I'm a sucker for film analogies.
...and speaking of film...Fry's has Mulholland Drive on DVD for $9.99 this weekend.
Cool.
posted by tbogg at 1:44 PM
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Kerry's Democratic stock just went up.
MWO has the latest on the War Hero vs. The Chickehawks.
Great quote:
Kerry dismissed the criticism Thursday at a meet-the-candidates dinner in Atlanta, saying, "I don't need any lessons in patriotism or in caring for America from the likes of Tom DeLay." He rejected the criticism in stronger terms on Friday.
"If they want to pick a fight, they've picked a fight with the wrong guy," he said. ...
" I watched what they did to Max Cleland last year," Kerry said. "Shame on them for doing it then and shame on them for trying to do it now."
If the next election isn't about domestic issues, and even if it is, a Kerry/ Wesley Clark ticket could be a Republican nightmare. Two decorated war heroes, one from the northeast the other from the south. Kerry's money. A very articulate and poised Clark. That's enough to give El Presidente Borracho the shakes and VP Halliburton some serious angina.
Here's a good bio on Clark.
posted by tbogg at 1:04 PM
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Meanwhile in the "not-a-quagmire"....
Afghanistan. You know, the other war we're fighting? Taliban? Osama bin Laden? The guys who helped Saddam blow up the twin towers?
Heavy pounding by U.S. fighter aircraft drove Taliban holdouts from their mountain hideout, where cleanup crews today found a transit camp and a staging ground for hit-and-run assaults by the hard-line religious militia group and its allies.
"We discovered a base with tents, food, weapons. It was here that Taliban coming from Pakistan would stay before moving out to other parts of the country," said Fazluddin Agha, district police chief of Spin Boldak.
U.S. air support launched from Bagram air base pounded the Tor Ghar mountain range, where about 60 Taliban fighters were dug in after fleeing a border village during fighting a day earlier.
[snip]
Evidence is mounting in the southern regions of Afghanistan that the Taliban is reorganizing and has found an ally in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel commander who has been labeled a terrorist by the United States and hunted by its troops.
"Six months ago their attacks were sporadic. But today there is a new organization to the Taliban," Kandahar's 2nd Corps commander, Khan Mohammed, said at the sprawling compound where Taliban supreme leader Mohammed Omar once lived.
But it's not a quagmire. Andy Sullivan (Barca-lounger Orwell), Glenn Reynolds (Tennesee Phil Spector) and David Limbaugh (Cape Girardeau Fredo) said so.
And they have Fredo's six years in the Nattional Guard to back it up.
So there.
posted by tbogg at 11:53 AM
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The resolute, focused, determined steely eyed President sheds a tear...no rust reported
President Steely Eyed Family Man met with the widow of a fallen Marine.
President Bush, a father who watched his twin daughters grow up, met twin 6-week-old girls Thursday whose father never will.
The babies were among about 20 family members of Marines lost on the battlefield in Iraq that the president and first lady consoled during a visit to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The meeting was private, but one administration official who was present provided some details of a gathering that the official described as "tearful" at times.
The official said the president told family members, "You're an inspiration" and "a tower of strength." He sought to comfort those left behind by telling them their loved one "is in heaven."
Each family was then given an American flag and the coveted Croix de Pennzoil medal for bravery in the face of Administration Cowardice.
posted by tbogg at 10:54 AM
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Holy Crap.
Michael Kelly killed in Iraq
I've made fun of Michael Kelly many times here, but this is really sad. I know that Kelly has two sons and a wife back in Boston and I feel badly for them.
In a column back in October of last year he wrote:
Further, the inescapable logic of "chicken hawk"-calling is that only military men have standing to pronounce in any way on war -- to advocate it or to advocate against it. The decision not to go to war involves exactly the same issues of experiential and moral authority as does the decision to go to war. If a past of soldiering is required for one, it is required for the other. Chicken doves have no more standing than "chicken hawks." We must leave all the decisions to the generals and the veterans.
I am myself not technically a "chicken hawk," as I was, thank God, a few years too young to serve during the Vietnam War and too old and too untrained to be of any military use during the next significant war, the Persian Gulf War of 1991. But I suppose I fit the spirit if not the letter of the slur. I am certainly now a hawk, and during the Vietnam years I was certainly a dove. What changed me was in fact experience of war -- but not as a soldier.
I covered the Gulf War as a reporter, and it was this experience, later compounded by what I saw reporting in Bosnia, that convinced me of the moral imperative, sometimes, for war.
In liberated Kuwait City, one vast crime scene, I toured the morgue one day and inspected torture and murder victims left behind by the departing Iraqis. "The corpse in drawer 3 . . . belonged to a young man," I later wrote. "When he was alive, he had been beaten from the soles of the feet to the crown of the head, and every inch of his skin was covered with purple-and-black bruises. . . . The man in drawer 12 had been burned to death with some flammable liquid. . . . Corpses 18 and 19 . . . belonged to the brothers Abbas . . . the eyeballs of the elder of the Abbas brothers had been removed. The sockets were bloody holes."
That was the beginning of the making of me as at least an honorary "chicken hawk." After that, I never again could stand the arguments of those who sat in the luxury of safety -- "advocating nonresistance behind the guns of the American Fleet," as George Orwell wrote of World War II pacifists -- and held that the moral course was, in crimes against humanity as in crimes on the street corner: Better not to get involved, dear.
I don't know how to describe the sadness and irony of this man dying in this war that he so whole-heartedly supported.
(Added: Someone over at Atrios called what I'm feeling conflicted grief, which is the feeling you have when someone you don't like dies. I think that's a pretty accurate term. For the record, I won't ever feel that for Tom DeLay)
posted by tbogg at 9:20 AM
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"It's a crazy world right now," Williams explains. "May as well wear a crazy hat."
Time magazine has a good article on Lucinda Williams that you should go read. I know that Eric Alterman has been mentioning her as of late (going so far as to mention her in the same breath with Brrrruuuuuuuce) and I second his endorsement of her. While she is being compared to Springsteen and Dylan, it would be safer and more accurate to compare her to Neil Young. Simple, yet powerful lyrics and a voice that's not exactly shiny and new.
Pick any of her CD's, she's so good you can't miss. I'm a particular fan of the song I Envy the Wind from the Essence CD. It's flat out gorgeous.
posted by tbogg at 9:04 AM
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Karl will get the tip...and there's a little something for you in the envelope under your plate (wink wink nudge nudge).
Noted independent thinker and George Orwell's funk soul brother, Andrew Sullivan is already explaining away his " My Lunch with Karl" moment because, you see, well, he always has lunches.
The New York Times has commissioned another piece designed to attack the administration's journalistic supporters. The first, by Jim Rutenberg, was an attempt to gloat over conservatives' alleged belief that this war would be a "cakewalk." (I wonder if the Times would ever ever run a piece about those journalists who recently claimed that a "quagmire" was imminent.) The second by David Carr is designed to portray non-lefty journalists as stooges of the administration. It'll probably appear tomorrow. Carr's scoop is that yesterday, a bunch of us hacks had lunch with Karl Rove at a public restaurant in downtown DC. Organized by National Review's Kate O'Beirne, these off-the-record lunches are regular events, and, although no material can be used, they are a good way to sense the mood in the administration, ask tough questions, talk candidly and so on. Most political magazines organize such lunches - at The New Republic, we used to have them all the time. In fact, such off-the-record lunches with senior politicians are a Washington fixture. But watch the Raines spin. Just a heads-up.
No. You spin first, Andy. And later, share with us the "mood of the administration" without using the following words:
There is an approved list of adjectives White House officials employ when asked to describe the president's mood these days. "Let's see," a senior Bush adviser mused out loud recently as he sat in his West Wing office. "What are the words we use? Resolute. Focused. Disciplined. Determined. And steely, of course."
Look for Andy to describe President Steely Eyed Focus Man as a "groin-grabbingly good" President.
You heard it here first.
posted by tbogg at 8:31 AM
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Thursday, April 03, 2003
As expected...
The top three Republicans in Congress sharply criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Thursday for saying that the United States, like Iraq, needs a regime change.
In a speech Wednesday in Peterborough, N.H., Kerry said President Bush so alienated allies prior to the U.S.-led war against Iraq that only a new president can rebuild damaged relationships with other countries.
[snip]
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., released a statement that said in the midst of war, the nation should pull together to support the troops and commander in chief.
"Once this war is over, there will be plenty of time for the next election," the statement said. "But the war is not yet over, and we still have much work to do to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime."
Sen. Bill Frist, R.-Tenn., the senate majority leader, said the statement called into question Daschle's fitness for presidential office.
"Free and open discourse is one thing, but petty, partisan insults launched solely for personal political gain are highly inappropriate at a time when American men and women are in harm's way," Frist said in a statement.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, released a statement calling Kerry's words "desperate and inappropriate."
"America before New Hampshire," DeLay said.
For those keeping score at home:
Dennis Hastert:
Hastert spent the first 16 years of his career as a government and history teacher at Yorkville High School, and it also was there that he met his wife, Jean, a fellow teacher. In addition to teaching, he coached football and wrestling and led the Yorkville High School Foxes to victory at the 1976 Illinois State Wrestling Championship; later that year, he was named Illinois Coach of the Year. Hastert, a former high school and college wrestler himself, was inducted as an Outstanding American into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma in 2000. In 2001, the United States Olympic Committee named him Honorary Vice President of the American Olympic movement.
Born on January 2, 1942, Hastert is a 1964 graduate of Wheaton (IL) College where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics. He attended graduate school at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, where he earned a master's degree in the philosophy of education in 1967. Hastert lives in Yorkville, Illinois along the Fox River with his wife and their three Labrador retrievers. They have two grown sons, Joshua and Ethan, both who live and work in Washington, DC. Whenever he can find free time, Hastert enjoys attending wrestling meets, going fishing, restoring vintage automobiles, carving and painting duck decoys
Bill Frist:
Born and raised in Nashville, Frist graduated in 1974 from Princeton University where he specialized in health care policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1978 he graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and spent the next seven years in surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital; Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England; and Stanford University Medical Center. He is board certified in both general surgery and heart surgery.
In 1985 Frist joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he founded and subsequently directed the multi-disciplinary Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which under his leadership became an internationally renowned center of multi-organ transplantation. In addition to performing over 150 heart and lung transplant procedures, Frist has written more than 100 articles, chapters, and abstracts on medical research and three books: Transplant, which examines the social and ethical issues of transplantation and organ donation; Grand Rounds in Transplantation; Tennessee Senators, 1911-2001: Portraits of Leadership in a Century of Change; and When Every Moment Counts, a guide on bioterrorism.
Tom DeLay:
"Clutching a pole topped by a drooping American flag, 22nd District two-termer Tom DeLay launched into a rather implausible defense of Dan Quayle, an Indiana senator freshly picked by George Bush as his presidential ticket partner...DeLay seemed to feel the issue applied personally to him, and perhaps it did. He had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong. He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention. "Who was that idiot?" asked a TV reporter who arrived at the end of the media show. When he was told the name, it drew a blank. DeLay at that time was a national nobody, and his claim that blacks and browns crowded him and other good conservatives out of Vietnam seemed so outlandish and self-serving that no one bothered to file a news report on the congressman's remarks..."
John Kerry
John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 at Fitzsimmons Military Hospital in Denver, Colorado, where his father, Richard, who had volunteered to fly DC-3's in the Army Air Corps in World War II, was recovering from a bout with tuberculosis. Not long after Sen. Kerry's birth, his family returned home to Massachusetts.
A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry entered the Navy after graduation, becoming a Swift Boat officer, serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.
One of these four is not like the others......
posted by tbogg at 9:24 PM
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Going out on a limb.
New York Times headline:
Bush Praises Troops During Visit to Marine Base
It's considered bad form to criticize them when you yourself have a history of desertion and cowardice.
After reciting some of the war crimes the Hussein regime has been accused of, the president went on, "In stark contrast, the citizens of Iraq are coming to know what kind of people we have sent to liberate them. People of the United States are proud of the honorable conduct of our military, and I'm proud to lead such brave and decent Americans."
...from the Presidential Gameroom at Camp David which is just down the hall from Jenna's Blacklight Freakout Room*.
(*courtesy of whitehouse.org).
More on the speech here.
posted by tbogg at 3:21 PM
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I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a teenager who had no Pilates studio.
When you review Jim Carrey's ex-wife's petition for an increase in child support (courtesy of the Smoking Gun) you may not be sure who to feel sorry for.
Head shaking and eye-rolling permitted.
posted by tbogg at 3:14 PM
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A liar named Sue
Atrios points out that Steno Sue Schmidt is making stuff up again.
Front page too.
posted by tbogg at 2:56 PM
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Remember to visit...
The Smirking Chimp.
Toss 'em a few bucks while you're at it.
Because, although making fun of George Bush is fun for the whole family...it isn't cheap.
posted by tbogg at 2:24 PM
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American apocrypha
Michael Finley had a good post up a few days ago regarding the Vietnam era myth about protestors spitting on returning soldiers. We've all heard this story of the war weary vet returning to an ungrateful nation only to be called a "baby killer" and then spit upon at the airport. Of course, like the Richard Gere/gerbil story that my cousin's best friend's sister who works at UCLA Medical swears is true....nobody really knows or fesses up to being involved, or is able to prove it. Thus it becomes part of the "this proves my point because I heard somewhere that...." lexicon of the fact and position challenged.
Which brings us to the "Saddam's men kidnapped their husbands" van story noted below. L.T. Smash, who is an "on-the-ground" source for the housebound I'd-be-fighting-if-it-wasn't-for-this-pilonidal-cyst warbloggers is perpetuating the story based on the "word on the street":
He's referring to an incident in Iraq, where a large van attemted to run a Coalition checkpoint. The soldiers at the checkpoint opened fire, killing several women and children aboard. It's been all over the news here.
"Yes. It is very sad."
"Do you know what happened?" He's going to tell me.
"What?"
"Saddam's men kidnapped their husbands. They said they would kill them if the women did not drive through the checkpoint."
"That's horrible."
"Yes. Saddam is a very bad man. You must kill him." He is angry.
"We will get him," I promise
Of course, he runs a disclaimer:
I don't know if what this man told me is what really happened. Rumors about atrocities in Iraq spread like wildfire amongst the local population.
Then diminishes it:
But I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
That's the word on the street from here.
...and the couchbound freedom fighters unleash a torrent of their bodily fluids with a grunt of satisfaction because if coincides with their suspicions and it was...oh...so...good. Several tissues and a cigarette later, they file away the "Saddam's men made me do it" story because this one is a lot more fun to tell to the guys down at the Sip N' Suds later on, than about about the two years that they spent as a supply clerk at Ft. Dix.
There you have it. Apocrypha made easy.
posted by tbogg at 1:18 PM
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Our long national nightmare is over
Roger Ailes is back.
A grateful nation breathes a sigh of relief.
posted by tbogg at 11:55 AM
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More competition for the South Beach transvestites
Ann Coulter is going down...and while that's not really news most days of the week, it's different this time. She's moving to Florida.
Human Uzi Ann Coulter, who left Washington for New York because of the disappointing dating scene, has left New York for Miami.
"YES -- I HAVE MOVED TO THE CITY OF INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE!!!!" the tall blond bestselling author e-mailed us yesterday. "Many reasons. Among them: The tax rate is a lot better for my business. The weather is better for my business. The real estate prices are better for my business. Moreover, that Democrat Michael Bloomberg is a latter-day John Lindsay -- he's wrecking New York City and I didn't want to pay for his fascist smoking police." Never mind that Bloomberg ran for mayor as a Republican.
"Soon he'll be mandating that New Yorkers have a glass of milk and engage in calisthenics every day. He seems to imagine that New Yorkers were drawn to that city for the clean living. It's literally mind-boggling that the mayor's response to a disastrous NYC economy is to crush the restaurant and bar business. I'm not sure even Lindsay could have come up with something so breathtakingly stupid. Reduced bar business means reduced tax revenues means Ann-Pays-More. So I'm gone.
"Also, I'm sick of working all the time and I need to sit on the beach and drink pina coladas with little umbrellas for a while to recuperate. Perhaps I will have a cigar with my pina colada -- which is still legal in Florida. And of course, Matt Drudge is in Miami -- as well as lots of swarthy, patriotic Cubans: the nation's best Americans. Having felt the lash of Democratic 'patriotism' at the Bay of Pigs, I believe they will like my next book."
Coulter's move has also been forced by the fact that, since Katherine Harris moved to DC, Florida is no longer in compliance with Federally mandated minimum levels of State Skankiness.
(Thanks to Maia for sending me the link)
(Added: Suckful has pictures. Make all children and cats leave the room before clicking)
posted by tbogg at 10:11 AM
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Guy must be a traitor or something.....
Fifth-columnist John Kerry
Senator John F. Kerry said yesterday that President Bush committed a ''breach of trust'' in the eyes of many United Nations members by going to war with Iraq, creating a diplomatic chasm that will not be bridged as long as Bush remains in office.
''What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States,'' Kerry said in a speech at the Peterborough Town Library.
Despite pledging two weeks ago to cool his criticism of the administration once war began, Kerry unleashed a barrage of criticism as US troops fought within 25 miles of Baghdad.
By echoing the ''regime change'' line popular with hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters who have demonstrated across the nation in recent weeks, the Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential contender seemed to be reaching out to a newly invigorated constituency as rival Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, closes in on Kerry in opinion polls.
Kerry said that he had spoken with foreign diplomats and several world leaders as recently as Monday while fund-raising in New York and that they told him they felt betrayed when Bush resorted to war in Iraq before they believed diplomacy had run its course.
He said the leaders, whom he did not identify, believed that Bush wanted to ''end-run around the UN.''
''I don't think they're going to trust this president, no matter what,'' Kerry said. ''I believe it deeply, that it will take a new president of the United States, declaring a new day for our relationship with the world, to clear the air and turn a new page on American history.''
This story will be repeated later on Fox News as:
Furrow-browed Jew Threatens Our Christian President.
posted by tbogg at 9:49 AM
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Roger Ailes held hostage
Day three... Roger is still a Lord of the Rings-obssessed goth-chick fending off advances from the Virgin Ben who wants to see The Two Towers at least once with a girl other than his mom.
Roger never knew he would someday become whacking material for the socially stunted. At least his career counselor never mentioned it....
A nation watches...and waits.
Won't somebody help? If not for Roger...do it for the children.
posted by tbogg at 9:33 AM
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Spinning like a top
Yesterday on my way home, I heard local hate-radio racist Roger Hedgecock spreading the latest spin on the story about the van that was fired upon by American soldiers. Busy Busy Busy points out that the " Fedayeen made us do it" story is bullshit.
This is another example of irresponsible hate radio "personalities" (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) lying with every word that comes out of their mouths. In Hedgecock's case, it's not too suprising. He has a long history as a professional liar:
Soon after winning the mayoral race over Maureen O'Conner in 1983, Hedgecock and his allies were enmeshed in a series of grand jury investigations and later, trials over alleged illegal campaign fund raising.
After a first trial ended in a hung jury, Hedgecock was convicted in 1985 in a second trial of 12 counts of perjury and one count of conspiracy of illegal campaign financing, forcing his resignation.
Hedgecock appealed and the State Supreme Court reversed the perjury counts. In 1991, the single felony was reversed to misdemeanor and then dismissed, with Hedgecock paying a $5,000 fine. McDade, who was the only targeted defendant to voluntarily talk to the grand jury about the campaign, was never charged with any wrongdoing, but his association with Hedgecock led to health problems.
More on Hedgecock here
To anyone who would listen, Hedgecock claimed he was the victim of a vendetta by Miller and the press. He sued The San Diego Union. He hired a San Diego lawyer specializing in drug cases for his first trial and then a Las Vegas lawyer who represented organized-crime figures for his second. When the second jury convicted him of conspiracy and perjury, he claimed a bailiff’s comments to jurors constituted tampering, although the trial judge disagreed.
As he imposed sentence, Judge William L. Todd Jr. said he had no doubt of Hedgecock’s guilt and that he had “violated the public trust in an onerous, onerous way... Your conduct ... is reprehensible in every sense of the word because you violated the public trust, completely, over and over again.” Facing automatic ouster under state law, Hedgecock had resigned at 3 p.m., December 5, 1985, just minutes before being sentenced.
By the way. Roger occasionally fills in for Rush. If you ever hear him...give him a call and ask him his opinion on perjury.
Good fun for the whole family.
posted by tbogg at 9:02 AM
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Filling up their pockets while the country is distracted.
Meanwhile the war continues at home:
The House is moving swiftly to enact energy legislation, hoping to revive a proposal for oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge and, in a boon to farmers, expand the use of ethanol as a gasoline additive.
Both provisions were included Wednesday as separate committees crafted key parts of the energy legislation. Lawmakers said they expected an energy bill to be voted on by the full House, possibly as early as next week.
[snip]
``We're talking about a very small amount of land,'' Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said shortly before the House Resources Committee passed a package of energy measures that included opening the Alaska refuge to oil companies.
``This nation needs the oil,'' he said.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., argued that drilling in ANWR's 1.5 million acre coastal plain would ``ruin the jewel of the national wildlife refuge system'' and said more oil could be save if the government imposed tougher fuel economy requirements on automobiles.
But hours later, in another committee, a Markey proposal was rejected that would have forced automakers to make more fuel efficient cars by requiring a 10 percent reduction in gasoline use.
The Resource panel passed a series of financial incentives aimed at spurring production of oil, natural gas and coal.
The bill would allow producers to forego paying federal royalties when developing deep offshore wells in search of natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska, remove limits on how many acres coal companies may lease and require the government to reimburse energy companies for the cost of meeting environmental reviews.
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., called it ``a buffet table'' for the oil and gas industry.
posted by tbogg at 8:37 AM
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The Trojan whore
Beware of lobbyists appointed to important positions.
The No. 2 official in the U.S. Interior Department participated in meetings on oil and gas leases involving companies that were clients of a lobbying firm he had worked for previously.
Clients of Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles' former lobbying firm had huge financial stakes in the leases off Florida and California.
Some of the meetings involving Griles figured in a dispute that ended with the Bush administration paying $46 million to Chevron USA Inc. to abandon a natural gas drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico, just 30 miles from Florida beaches.
Before the Senate confirmed Griles in 2001, he promised to refrain for a year from involvement in any issue in which one of his former clients or employers had a financial interest.
Though Griles is listed as a lobbyist for Chevron in reports filed with Congress by his firm, he says he did no personal lobbying for the company.
While Griles' nomination was pending before the Senate, Chevron was paying Griles' firm $80,000 to lobby the Interior Department, according to reports filed with Congress.
In September 2001, two months after he was confirmed, Griles participated in the first of at least four meetings with Interior Department colleagues about the Chevron project, according to Griles' appointment calendars, which were obtained by news organizations and environmental groups under the Freedom of Information Act.
Interior spokesman Mark Pfeifle defended Griles' actions, saying he acted ethically.
Pfeifle said Griles participated in discussions about the dispute involving Chevron's leases, but made no decisions. The Justice Department negotiated a settlement with the company.
``Steve Griles made as many decisions for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl as he did on the Destin Dome buyout,'' said Pfeifle. Destin Dome is the name of the area of the Gulf where Chevron's leases were located.
Pfeifle said the Chevron settlement was negotiated by career employees who saved taxpayers more than $285 million because Chevron and other oil companies had sued the federal government for far more than they collected.
After inquiries by The Associated Press, Griles' former lobbying partner Marc Himmelstein said the firm plans to change each of the three lobbying reports it filed with Congress to remove Griles' name.
So it looks like Griles lied at his confirmation hearings.
He wouldn't be the first Bush appointee to do that. He won't be the last.
posted by tbogg at 8:32 AM
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Wednesday, April 02, 2003
The Pope of Provincetown
I try not to do it. Every night I tell myself I'm not going to go look at Sully's blog. That he's not even worth a left click and a scroll. But he really is a car wreck of a writer, and, like a co-ed in a slasher movie, I can't stop myself from going up those stairs. And every night there it sits...the horror... the horror:
You can argue the costs but you can't argue the moral good of it. We will save many lives; we are rescuing many people who are oppressed in ways those who constantly talk about "oppression" do not really know or understand. These are good things to know. They are vital things to remember.
Here is something you need to know:
Hussein Ali Hussein, 26, a door-to-door gas salesman, lay on a bed, the stump of one leg covered in a bloody bandage, a mass of flies settling on the gauze. He said that he had been in a car that was hit by an American tank shell as he drove south toward Kifl, near Najaf.
"We believed the Americans, when they said they were not going to attack civilians," he said. "Why would the Americans do this to me?" As nurses arrived to wheel him away for surgery, he added: "But we Iraqis will never accept that this country is ruled by anybody but Iraqis, so we will fight to the last drop of our blood."
Another patient, Bassan Hoki, 38, said he was in the bus attack. Surgeons had amputated his right arm above the elbow, and seeping bandages covered deep wounds on both his legs. Mr. Hoki, with a neatly trimmed, gray-flecked beard, gesticulated with his remaining arm as he described seeing the tank from the window of the bus.
"There was no warning, they simply opened fire," he said.
He said that his mother, who was seated beside him, was killed instantly in the blast. "I looked around me, it seemed like everyone was dead," he said, "people's heads were snapped off their bodies. The bus was torn to pieces."
He said, "I have just one thing to say to George Bush. He is a criminal and a liar to talk of bringing us freedom. He attacks civilians for no reason. This is a crime, a crime, a crime."
"the moral good of it".
Blow it out your power glutes, Andy.
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