Stand with the Weaz

Pauly Shore aligns with HC.

Also note how the “extremely random” collection of support all happens to be from the entertainment industry, which has never been extremely random with its support of liberal candidates.

UK nanny state gets worse

A team of firefighters slept in the wrong place–on the floor with sleeping bags instead of some fancy new reclining chairs.

Firefighters in Greater Manchester are facing disciplinary action over claims they slept on a station floor instead of their new reclining chairs. Three men, based in Bury, are being investigated for “involvement in the use of unauthorised rest facilities”.

It is claimed they broke regulations by using sleeping bags on the floor rather than the £400 chairs.

The chairs were installed as part of modernisation programme to replace all beds in the region’s 41 fire stations.

The Fire Brigade Union (FBU) said the men were all asleep as a team of inspectors from the fire service carried out a spot check one morning at 0630 BST.

It gets better:

The service bought more than 300 of the chairs last year after chiefs decided to remove beds from dormitories across the region.

But firefighters were not allowed to sit or lie on the devices before reading a four-page health and safety manual.

Are you kidding?

Pallywood 2007

Faked and staged, complete with the requisite Palestinian crowd swarming, injured child as carryon baggage, and ridiculously well placed photographers.

A moderate’s dilemma

Who should I placate now?  Who did I placate last time?  Can I demonstrate evenhanded commitment without enraging half of my base?  Where O Where did I put my convictions again?

Moderates worry more about electoral politics than about the long term effects of their vote–these are the worst of the poll-reading politicians imaginable.

Next for Sheehan: A Venezuelan Paradise

Sheehan quits as face of US anti-war fight:

“I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican party,” she wrote. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic party to the same standards that I held the Republican party, support for my cause started to erode, and the left started labelling (sic) me with the same slurs that the right used.”

I feel for this woman and the loss she suffered–I really do. But does she really think she wouldn’t have been used as a tool by partisans scrambling to consolidate any nascent anti-war murmurs in 2004?

Suggesting America isn’t truly for her anymore, Sheehan might be implying that a move abroad could potentially be in her future. She’s already laid the groundwork with Boss Chavez–is she going to move to Caracas? That would be positively entertaining and so utterly predictable. Venezuela–a country that honors the right to dissent!

Look and laugh

Successful Photoshops don’t win on their attention to technical or artistic detail–they win on comedic relevance and subtle irony. This one is genius.

Chavez turns RCTV into Current TV

Don’t like the viewpoint? Shut it down (or, if you’re an American Democrat, boycott it).

Venezuelan leader Hugo “Boss” Chavez terminated the broadcasting license of one of his country’s most popular television stations.

RCTV was regularly the top channel in viewer ratings, but Chavez accused the network of violating broadcast laws and “poisoning” Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism.

The government promises TVES will be more diverse, buying 70 percent of its content from independent Venezuelan producers. It will carry sports, news and an educational program for children emphasizing socialist values, as well as foreign-made programs such as National Geographic documentaries.

“We’ve come here to start a new television with the true face of the people, the face that was hidden, the face that they didn’t allow us to show,” said Roman Chalbaud, a pro-Chavez filmmaker appointed by the government to TVES’ board of directors.

To me, this new format doesn’t sound that much different than Google/Gore Current TV.

Unfisking

Jules Crittenden takes on Robert Fisk’s assertions that there are, in reality, no true responsible actors for the mayhem in the Middle East–there are only common interests:

So there is no responsibility in the Middle East, only commonality of interest.  A fascinating and revolutionary concept, worthy of study. Hey, wait a minute.  This suggests a sea change in Fisk’s thinking. It means the Americans are not responsible for violence in Iraq and throughout the region.  It is only an expression of their commonality of interest with the Iraqi people.  Israel, no responsibility … just commonality of interest with the civilized people of the world.

Ol’ Meanie

John Murtha is accumulating quite a reputation as being a hot head–maybe more so than Rep. David Obey.  Maybe he’s always been this way in his thirty-odd years of service but now that the cameras seem to roll on him a little more we can see the real him.  Recently, he’s blown up twice at fellow congressmen who’ve drawn his ire–first Rep. Todd Tihart and more recently at Rep. Mike Rogers, in an exchange that actually may trigger an ethics investigation.

If accusations of bullying (sometimes from more than twenty years ago) can sink John Bolton, why wouldn’t the same be true of Murtha?  His tirades have even been documented on video.  Term limits, anyone?  May George Voinovich cry for him.

Sidenote:  Somebody has defaced Murtha’s Wikipedia entry with some really adolescent profanities.

Sneer a little louder

As EU Referendum says, you can see why they despised John Bolton so much at the UN–he didn’t take loaded pretense lying down.

So what? I like to play with guns.

Looking like everyone’s old Auntie Mabel, Phil Spector lashes out at his female accusers.

Proof that Europe is eating itself from within

A female gondolier?  The end times are near.

How to waste a billion dollars

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to run for president, possibly as a third party candidate.   Why bother?  This man is famous only for being rich, and is willing to spend more money than everybody else just to reinforce this stigma.   I don’t see the winning strategy.

Gaddafi in coma?

Early reports like this are almost never accurate, but one can hope.  It is Monday morning.

Who Elected Sharpton P.C. Police Chief?

I’m actually sorry that I missed “Hannity and Colmes” — for the first (and probably the last) time in my life.

Espionage update

A Chinese-American man has been convicted of passing secrets to China–over twenty years.  How many more are out there?

Exploiting our openness?

We know bad apples take advantage of our open society.  Is it time we look a little closer at how sanctuary cities might invite future trouble?

Hillary 2.0

How would President Hillary (not Rodham) Clinton treat the now-apprehended Fort Dix jihadists years down the road when they appeal for clemency?  Will she align herself with the right decision–rejection of clemency–only if there is popular support to do so?

A look back at the 2000 New York Senate race and the issue of pardoning FALN terrorists might provide a little guidance (hint: it took a little while for her to get it ‘right‘).  Rudy, incidentally, had no such problem.

<p><img id=”technorati_img” src=”http://www.wikistan.com/technorati.gif” alt=”Technorati” />&nbsp;<strong></strong><a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tag/HRC” rel=”tag”>HRC</a>, <a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tag/hillary+clinton” rel=”tag”>hillary clinton</a>, <a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tag/FALN” rel=”tag”>FALN</a></p>

tag tester

tag test this!

Straight Talk Express

Democratic hopeful John Edwards said Tuesday that he worked for a hedge fund to learn more about financial markets and their relationship to poverty in the United States.

Ahem—that’s EXACTLY why I would want to work at a hedge fund.

Private industry circumventing the government–again!

Wait— You mean private researchers can study embryonic stem cells without federal funding?

 bush, stem cells, medicine

You won’t resign? Well, uh, what about this?

Gonzales comes under fire (again) by House Democrats, this over perceived racial imbalances in the Justice Department.

When begging for resignations doesn’t work, why not try the ol’ battle tested accusation of racial discrimination? If this issue is so important, why didn’t it have priority over the absolutely pointless inquiry over the US Attorney firings?

gonzales, politics

Al Qaeda video taunts Bush, Iran, Shiites, or so says the headline.

Al Qaeda video taunts Bush, Iran, and the Shiites, but there is no mention of a Bush until after this (fourth) paragraph:

In one section of the video, an interviewer asks al-Zawahiri to comment on legislation that ties the funding of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

“This bill reflects American failure and frustration,” says al-Zawahiri, second-in-command to Osama bin Laden. “However, this bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap.

The Zawahiri tape does eventually taunt Bush (don’t they all?), but clearly the main point of the tape is to jab at American timetable debate. Was it Bush’s timetable? Or is Zawahiri simply confused about American politics? Or is it more likely that CNN’s headline editors can’t see the forest for the trees?
Also, when is Charlie Rangel going to step up and curse the foreigner for criticizing a fellow American? He’s only about twenty tapes too late!

tags: bush, zawahiri, al qaeda, democrats, iraq

What the HECK does that mean?

I guess it remains to be seen, but

After a May 2 debate with Sarkozy and the publication of the polls yesterday, Royal turned up her rhetoric, saying on RTL radio that his candidacy was “dangerous” and that this election could “trigger violence and brutality across the country.”

If there is significant violence, that means the Socialist Royal is the figurehead of a menacing union of brigand thuggery. If there is not, she is guilty of hoping that a threat of violence will help her cause. What kind of mature human is this? What is she appealing to?

Technorati: sarkozy, royal, france, elections, french elections

But the letter was sloppy!

ThinkProgress chews the tough gristle and gives its legions all the soft, juicy innuendo they’ll ever need about the spat between George Tenet and Richard Perle.  (bold emphasis mine):

CNN played a clip from 9/16/01 that showed Perle telling the network:

“Even if we cannot prove to the standard that we enjoy in our own civil society they are involved, we do know, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Osama bin Laden. That can be documented.” There were concerns that Iraq had a certain level of contact with al Qaeda and allied organizations, but the implication is that nobody in their right mind should have been linking Hussein’s government to any level of any terrorist organization

There is more strong evidence that Perle was advocating a war against Iraq shortly after 9/11. As ThinkProgress has noted, Perle signed a letter to President Bush on 9/20/01 that stated the following:

“[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Although not all sponsors of regime change in Iraq could acquiesce with the notion of Coalition troops storming Baghdad (later authorized by the Iraq Resolution of 2002), this was hardly the narrowly-held position that the progressive left contends.

Moreover, conservative pundit Robert Novak recalls in a column today:

“Over the telephone on Sept. 17, Perle told this column that there were few good targets in Afghanistan but many in Iraq. Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense, was then chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board.” And there wasn’t?  Is this supposed to be a ‘gotcha’?

After thoroughly trashing Tenet, Perle later in the same interview cited him as a source for a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. “There was a relationship,” Perle said. “It has not only been documented, as I said in the clip. But George Tenet himself has written a letter that indicates this.”

Tenet did indeed write a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 claiming an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. But Tenet recently told Blitzer, “We were sloppy in that letter.” But there was a letter–from the DCI. We should have dismissed it back then! Perle should be castrated!

But then Perle steps in it himself:

Perle was a vocal supporter of the invasion of Iraq aimed at deposing Hussein. He did not apologize for that Friday, but said he felt the war had been mishandled.

“I’m sorry that after removing Saddam, we did not hand things back to the Iraqis,” he said. “I’m sorry that we embarked on an occupation that became the basis for an insurgency against us. I think the right thing to have done — and I said it at the time — was to hand things to the Iraqis as soon as Saddam was removed from office.”  Saddam fled from office and it took us about eight months to capture him. Were we supposed to let his entire, politicized Baathist infrastructure remain in place, with its proven propensity for ethnic barbarism and political intimidation intact?  Although the current path towards complete and earnest national reconciliation has taken many varying and sometimes tragic detours, how in the hell could it happen AT ALL with the Baathists in power?

Asked who bears responsibility for that, Perle said ultimately it would be President Bush and his closest advisers.  Absolutely.

“They made the decision, I think wrongly, that we send thousands of Americans to Iraq and try to administer that country,” he said. “They did it with good will and good intentions, I certainly don’t fault them for that. But it was politically inept and I think it contributed to the situation we’re in today.” The evidence says yes, perhaps, but how much of the debate and analysis was toxified by American electoral cynicism?

. . . And judging by the comments following to the article, I’m beginning to think that the well funded Thinkprogress exists solely to give anti-semites, Truthers and Sheehanites 501(c)(4) cover for what they consider spontaneous, rational discourse.

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