How dumb are they?

The Los Angeles Times flaunts their gullibility with a fake press release on the front page.

OUCH

Editorial from the New York Post:

Does The New York Times consider it self a law unto itself — free to subversively undercut basic efforts by any government to protect and defend its citizens?

"The New York Times -- a once-great and still-powerful institution -- is badly in need of adult supervision."

We've said that for a long time

Government Art

The problem with government-sponsored art.

The set of posters in PDF.

Munich Advisor

Do you get the feeling that this story is another Spielberg consultant hired, as was the political advisor to Arial Sharon, to make "Munich" more palatable to audiences?

Near end of article: Kathleen Kennedy, Spielber's producer, admitted that an unnamed Palestinian consultant was used for "Munich". How come Nazis were not consulted for "Schindler's List"? That, folks, is why critics understand Spielberg's latest film is about moral equivalence.

Kyoto hypocrisy

From the State Department? Washington Times? The White House?

Although the US is portrayed as the ecological villain for refusing to sign up to the agreement, 10 out of the 15 European Union signatories - including Ireland, Italy and Spain - will miss their targets without urgent action, the Institute for Public Policy Research found.

France, Greece and Germany are given "amber warnings" and will only achieve the objectives if planned policies are successfully carried out.

None of the above. This surprising story was reported in the Independent. Here Wait! Wait, you say. Isn't that the Leftwing newspaper from the U.K.? Yes.

And those are only the European countries. You ask, how about Canada? Well, it isn't in this story, but Canada has not reduced emisions either. In fact, Canada's emissions have increased 30% since 1997. Like 13 out of 15 European countries, emissions are increasing every year in the Land of Sanctimony and Ze Boondoggle.

"Shifting Sands" Part II

Scott Johnson at PowerLine has "more on 'Munich" wth a devastating review by Mitch Webber. Webber:

The most misleading line in Stephen Spielberg's Munich comes near the beginning. Israel's prime minister, Golda Meir, tells her cabinet, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." The implication is that Meir was reluctant to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre, and that doing so was contrary to Israeli, and civilized, values.

The truth is just the opposite. Meir understood that Israel's chief obligation is to ensure that Jews will never again be slaughtered with impunity, simply for being Jewish. Holding mass murderers accountable is not a compromise; it is Israel's reason for being.

The most misleading omission from Munich is Germany's response to the massacre. Germany released the Black September terrorists less than two months after they had killed eleven innocent civilians. Israel had to hunt down Black September, because Germany didn't value Jewish lives enough to capture, try, and imprison those who kill Israelis on German soil. (Also missing from the film is any mention of Germany's refused to allow the Israeli Olympians their own security detail, despite credible threats to their safety, and Germany's refusal to let Israel conduct a rescue operation.) Meir said that she was "literally physically sickened" by Germany's capitulation. She continued, "I think that there is not one single terrorist held in prison anywhere in the world. Everyone else gives in."

It is a great review, well worth reading and Scott's comments are very relevant. What is missing, however, is to note that Spielberg may have had another motivation and that is to condemn the U.S. reaction toward terrorism as another compromise with cvilized Western values. If Spielberg had no message, he was either incredibly naive to rely on the screenwriter or, more likely, I suspect, he was bought and paid for by people who wanted to promote that view, condemning both Israel and the U.S.   Think of it as a Scott Ritter film with a multi-million dollar budget.

NO NO! DON'T CUT -- NOT NEWSPAPER JOBS!

Allegedly, according to the New York Times, there are public demonstrations against job cuts by the Tribune Company, owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel, etc.

The company has cut its work force by 4 percent, or 900 jobs, accounting for nearly half the estimated 2,000 jobs lost in the entire industry this year.

Later in the article... way down:   MoveOn attended an investor conference and handed over petitions with 45,000 signatures. Uh huh

A more discerning person might suspect possible linkage that the New York Times doesn't even consider.

CAN YOU SPELL CORRUPTION?

Of the $1.1 billion in U.N. disaster funds from a world wide appeal, some $590 million was spent on staff, administration, and "related costs." This, according to an investigation conducted by the Financial Times. It might be even worse as the FT found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to release details of their spending.

FLASHBACK The U.N. was quick to promise a full audit to ensure countries pay the money they pledged to tsunami relief. (Jan. 6, 2005)

The Financial Times story is behind a subscription wall, something they should reconsider. A FT Synication Service story in The Financial Express, however, has a few details.

If the 2005 tsunami is the major story of 2005, why don't the media spend some time writing the conclusion?

A "HOMOPHOBIC INCIDENT"

A "homophobic incident" investigated by police. How come the New York Times is in full snit about wiretaps of conversations with known terrorists but thinks incidents like this and tracking the road use of every car in the U.K. is ho hum?

That was, of course, rhetorical. We all know why the New York Times does not find such intrusions alarming. To the New York Times, Yassir Arafat was a "romantic revolutionary" and Fidel Castro is a newsroom folk hero. Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize is still memorialized on the NYT walls and they, like CNN's defense of non-coverage of the brutality in Iraq, defend Duranty's dispatches, crediting the laspse to this day to the brutality of the regime they were supposedly covering. Duranty was a tool, a propaganda piece employed by the Soviet Union to conceal murderous purges that, even today, the New York Times cannot call genocide.

Duranty symbolizes everything that is wrong with the New York Times. And the Pulitzer prizes.

FLASHBACK

Tell me again why Bill Clinton urged Sri Lanka to share tsunami aid with the Tamil Tigers in the north. Predictable

Flashback

UH UH NO WAY

Remind ourselves when Ford asks for a bailout.

HILARIOUS

It is not the first time that Ted Kennedy has looked like a fool. However, in a "Student's Tall Tall Revealed" from the Boston Globe you have to read to the bottom of the article to find Uncle Teddy's hilarious gaffe.

Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said last night that the senator cited ''public reports' in his opinion piece. Even if the assertion was a hoax, she said, it did not detract from Kennedy's broader point that the Bush administration has gone too far in engaging in surveillance."

Worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit. Tall Tail

BAH HUMBUG and SHAME ON THEM

And you wonder why movie attendance is down. Here

TV ratings

This can't be a good Christmas for Fox News competition. Scoreboard: Thursday Dec. 22

25-54 demographic
7pm: Shep: 337,000 / Situation: 155,000 / Hardball: 52,000 / Showbiz: 86,000 / On the Money: 23,000

Total viewers
7pm: Shep: 1,390,000 / Situation: 511,000 / Hardball: 428,000 / Showbiz: 233,000 / On the Money: 61,000

Either the viewers of Hardball are below age 25, something I very much doubt or they would overhype it, or the Hardball audience is geriatric.

Source: Mediabistro

SPIELBERG'S MUNICH

"The History Behind Munich: Separating truth from fiction in Spielberg's movie" is the title of this Slate article. And Aaron Klein is just the man to do it. (Scroll down for his credentials.)

Short version: pure fantasy based on a questional book. Translation: ET is still phoning home and Steven is always available.

More Canadian election nonsense. This time, B.C.'s Lieutenant Governor wants an apology from the U.S. government for the lynching of an aboriginal boy by an American mob more than 120 years ago.

As one wag at Lucianne.com says "I wasn't there. And I can prove it."

It is, of course, the silly season. Unfortunately, it has become a year-round event with Canadian as well as American Liberal politicians. One can only note that the failure of Liberalism is the ascent of the hard left and the nutcases. Increasingly it is difficult to differentiate.

DIVORCE, CABLE STYLE

It's all their fault.   Microsoft, that is.   It's their fault that The Preciouss MSNBC has "lagged behind Fox News Channel and CNN in the ratings race for years."   At least that is what the New York Times implies in this absurd article about the breakup of Microsoft and NBC in cable channel MSNBC.

Allegedly, (<-- journalistic device to denote scepticism) NBC executives complained they did not have enough control of the budget to market their programs and hire the right talent.   YEAH RIGHT <-- conversational device to denote scepticism)   Now that NBC is "squarely in control" we can expect great things I imagine.

Microsoft has been negotiating to leave the partnership for several years, not just this last year.   It has been downright disastrous for Microsoft with "hundreds of millions [of dollars] in losses".   Had the Times written the story honestly, they might have noted that, and the fact that the only profitable side of the venture has been MSNBC.com, the online news site.   Only Variety mentions that.     (But The Preciouss must be protected!)

Microsoft will continue the 50-50 partnership in MSNBC.com

HO HO HO

Here's something to cheer about. The New York Times stock prices in 2005.


Hat tip to American Digest.

Hugh Hewitt interview

Hugh Hewitt had a great interview today with University of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein on the allegedly illegal wiretaps by our intelligence agencies that turn out probably aren't illegal at all. What appears almost certainly illegal is the the leak of classified information on the program, the release of which was probably, and almost certainly, very harmful to our national interest.

Great interview. I am hoping they post a sound file for it.

DESPICABLE

Stem cell research fraud
"This kind of error is a grave act that damages the foundation of science," the panel said.

That's how a panel at the Seoul National University described the deliberate fakery by Hwang Woo-suk, unable to bring themselves to call it what it was.

Body snatching in Brooklyn
Some of Alistair Cooke's bones were stolen by morticians in Brookly and sold for $7,000 to two tissue processing companies for transplant, despite the fact that he had died of cancer that had spread to his bones. His was only one of what may be 1000 bodies that were desecrated. The Guardian has more details than you want to know about the investigation. The New York Daily News broke the story and continue to follow the scandal. More

BRIEF

Chinese spill poisons water for millions
How come professional environmentalists don't scream about this?
The story doesn't even quote a single activist.

Outrage - - that wasn't
Human rights activists are curiously silent, too, when Belgium passes a law to allow police to bug suspects, tail them, and search their premises without - gasp - a warrant. And where is the outrage for this?

On the bright side
Things are getting serious at the Knight-Ridder offices. The union is talking about buying the paper chain. One less ultra-liberal newspaper chain.

Just wondering
What is with all the major newspapers racing to shield their journalists from critical eyes? Is it to protect fragile egos or maintain a fiction that the sods can actually think or write?

SPINNING

A story a few days ago about the aging and declining population in Canada must have raised a few concerns. Quick to assure readers, the Globe and Mail can happily report that Toronto has avoided that "hollowing out" that plagues North American cities for a number of reasons. Condos and population density changes aside, the real reason is that they are importing vast numbers of immigrants. You just have to look at the official Canadian census figures and the percentages. And then consider the implications of this demographic.

This isn't a problem unique to Canada. Virtually every Old European country has the same time bomb they are ignoring. California has a similar problem with a percentage of immigrants who do not wish to assimilate and a political power that doesn't have any reason for them to do so. There may be one small difference though. In the U.S. the more enterprising immigrant who does want to assimilate and become upwardly mobile can move to another state to find opportunities and escape the liberal plantation. That outward internal migration isn't happening in Canada.

Statistics Canada. Link

IN A HAND BASKET

If we ever have a position of Culture Minister in our government you will know we have gone straight to hell.

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here (The first Culture Minister for Tourism, Culture, and Sport was de-throned for taking his vacations abroad and generally behaving like an absolute and utter idiot.)
Here
Here
Here

VOTING WITH OUR FEET

While Canada is starting to worry about their rapidly aging population, the liberals in the U.S. have whole other worries. The population is shifting from the northeast (read: ultra liberal) states to the west and south. This has political consequences.

Clark Bensen of Polidata, a Virginia firm that crunches political data, said population shifts over the past 65 years have dramatically changed the regional makeup of Congress.

In 1940, Northeastern and Midwestern states had a total of 251 seats in the House, compared with 184 for states in the South and West. Today, Southern and Western states have the edge, 252-183.

"Basically, it took two generations to have a complete shifting of the power base,' Bensen said.

It's not just the decline of manufacturing in the northeastern states that accounts for the population shift. Those manufacturing firms did not drift south or to the west. Manufacturing shifted overseas for the most part. So why has the population left Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia leave? Again, it is the political climate that created the conditions.

Americans have always voted with their feet. Most voted with their feet when they emigrated to the United States to begin with. You move for jobs and a stable climate to raise families. Who would want to live in the crime in Washington, DC, a district overseen by liberals for 40 years with non-benign neglect, the predictable result of which is a murder rate that is appalling. Those northeastern jobs simply moved elsewhere. No businesses wanted to relocate or expand in the oppressive environments in the northeastern states, states that had followed the California model of anti-business, environmental-obsession.

The business exodus from California to Texas is a symptomatic of what happens when liberals control government without check. The regulatory agencies in California have increasingly burdened companies to the extent that it is cheaper to buy new property, -- sometimes even knowing you can't sell that unused Calfiornia real estate -- and moving en masse with all the expenditure that entails to other more business-friendly states. My husband has worked for three companies who subsequently moved their facilities to Texas or to Nevada, closing their California plants and offices. The burdensome regulations are not safety-inspired in socialist California: a regulatory agency that fines a company millions of dollars isn't intent on correcting a situation so much as taking advantage of an unvoted-for tax, one that, by the way, you do not have to account for in any state budget. The Air Quality Resources Board in California is such an agency.

In order to meet requirements of EPA standards these non-elected, semi-independent environmental regulation agencies whose authority derives from regulation and NOT law, who are appointed by other government officials, have vast authority and a huge budget. They require companies in Los Angeles, for example, to provide ride sharing information and incentive programs to their employees. What this means to most companies is keeping a full-time person on the payroll who has to dedicate 25% to 50% of their time complying with this program. The employee(s) are paid to harass other employees, maintain bulletin boards, post notices for alerts for the following day if a smog alert is anticipated. The employee(s) who oversee the program are required to attend training and the company has pay for the privilege. The companies are penalized if the Air Quality Agency helicopter flies over and takes pictures of their parking lots to make sure the number of cars is reduced. Then there are huge fines. I am not kidding. It is that onerous. At one time I attended a Air Resources Board training for my company where Air Quality-approved trainer bragged how the Air Quality Agency had the authority to arrest - to arrest - a company executive. For safe air.

What is instructional is that most states, despite having far more businesses, do not have the same onerous and job killing, anti-business attitudes.

What is ironic is that it seems to be the exact same pattern you find in old Europe. High taxes, an intrusive regulatory attitude that is largely designed to be revenue generation, agency power building, and ever enlargening public employment, coupled with a burdensome preoccupation with control. Our ancestors left Europe for similar reasons. Only then it was to escape an onerous church, meddling bureaucrats, heavy-handed governments, and a vast patronage system. Substitute the church of Liberalism with its secularism and not much has changed.

Bensen study. Well worth reading.

ANOTHER UN-SELECTED OUTRAGE

If you have any doubt what Liberals actually think of your privacy, check this out. It's in the U.K. but you could expect the Dems to embrace it if they were in power. Cause, frankly, it is power.

Their selective outrage is comical.

TIS THE SEASON

FOX News making friends.

CANADIAN TRAGEDY

I have a special interest in Canadian politics, primarily because I once lived so close to the border and had many friends who lived in Canada. Watching the decline of a country with such potential for greatness has been saddening and infuriating and downright tragic at times.

From widespread government corruption on a scale that would thrill the Mafia and inspire the United Nations, to the activist courts to the massive interference by Canadian media in politics, the country has been moving gradually but inexorably toward what I call continental Europeanism. Canada has lost the traditions of Anglo-Saxon law and, under the Liberals, have embraced Secularism with a passion that rivals the French and Dutch embrace of a Godless world. If Canada inspired to become a Third World nation complete with SARS and French pretensions, they couldn't have succeeded better.

The Canadian Supreme Court recently blessed gay unions. Now they are giving similar blessing to group sex in swingers clubs. The text of their decision, written by the Chief Justice, is here.

Excerpt:

Canadian law on indecent acts, from its origins in the English common law, has been firmly anchored in societal rather than purely private moral concerns. For example, in the early case of R. v. Hicklin (1868), L.R. 3 Q.B. 360, Cockburn C.J. stated that the test for obscenity was whether the material would tend to deprave and corrupt other members of society.

16 However, depravity and corruption vary with the eye of the beholder, and the Hicklin test proved difficult to apply in an objective fashion. Convictions often depended more on the idiosyncracies and the subjective moral views of the judge or jurors than objective criteria of what might deprave or corrupt.

No longer is indecency a community standard. The new standard is - was anyone harmed? If you accept that standard I suppose an attempted murder that caused no injury means you get a pass, doesn't it?

It's like watching a train wreck. It's the kind of social and moral train wreck our mainstream old media planned for us. The operating theory seems to be, if you can't compete with the United States, try to drag it down to the level of Old Europe.

Sad.

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE

Max Boot on the selective outrage about Valerie Plame and more genuine assaults on our national security. [Bolding mine]

Since then [Valerie Plame] there have been some considerably more serious security breaches. Major media organs have broken news about secret prisons run by the CIA, the interrogation techniques employed therein, and the use of 'renditions' to capture suspects, right down to the tail numbers of covert CIA aircraft. They have also reported on a secret National Security Agency program to monitor calls and e-mails from people in the U.S. to suspected terrorists abroad, and about the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity designed to protect military bases worldwide.

CANADIAN ELECTION SEASON

Definitely election time in Canada. Ala Schroeder. When socialists -- and the Liberals in Canada are rotten-to-the-core Socialists -- get in trouble with the polls, it's time to drag out the boogeyman to bash in a public display. It's the U.S. that menaces them from the south.

Molson beer tried controversy in a series of "I am Canadian" with lots of anti-Americanism campaign ads. It's now an American-owned company. And Schroeder is no longer Prime Minister of Germany, so you would think the Liberals would kinda learn something, wouldn't you? NAH That's why they are socialists. Too dumb to get actual jobs.

SCHWARTZENEGGER, MY HERO

Ahnold has spoken. Loudy. Smile. The letter hasn't made his web site yet, but there some good information. Full text of clemency denial.

Look for more politicans to have web sites, bypassing the liberal media.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Noam Chomsky excerpts from a Dutch radio program.

Full transrcript.

Sample of how a linquist distorts the truth.

The victory of the non-violent resistance in Iraq, which compelled the occupying forces to allow elections, that's a major victory.

As they say, read the whole thing.

WHEN THEY OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL ...

After a $2 billion (with a B) gun registry. Smirk

The Globe and Mail: Canada says no to border fence

It must be election time again in Canada. Americans are threatening to build a fence on the Canadian border and they won't have it!!!

Canada has long fought the perception it's a haven for terrorists, combatting the mistaken belief some of those involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks entered the United States from the north.

There have also been complaints from some U.S. legislators that Canadian immigration policies are too lax, although there are an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 people in Canada without legal status, compared with more than eight million in the United States.

Are they suggesting that the millions of Mexican illegal aliens are potential terrorists? I don't think so, but anything to bash the U.S. and divert attention from their own problems.

From the first page, same edition, a 24-year old Canadian citizen named Abdullah Khadr was arrested Saturday accused by the U.S. government of procuring munitions for al-Qaeda. Just your typical immigrant.

Born to Arab parents who were naturalized Canadian citizens, the six Khadr children grew up mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan during their 1980s and 1990s. Their father, an ostensible charity worker, was a hard-line Islamist who was friends with Osama bin Laden and hostile to Western values. A decade ago, he was briefly held in custody in Pakistan for involvement in a deadly bombing, but he was ultimately let go.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Khadr family fled Afghanistan as U.S. forces invaded. One son, Karim, was disabled in an attack that killed his father. Another son, Abdurahman, spent more than a year in U.S. custody before being allowed to return to Canada. A third son, Omar, was involved in a battle with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He remains in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and has recently been charged with murder.

Just one of their legal immigrants. Connect the dots with this PDF.

MORE REASONS WHY DREAMWORKS HAD TO BE SOLD

The latest Steven Spielberg movie, Munich, is in trouble already if Spielberg has to resort to hiring an Israeli political advisor to Ariel Sharon to try to cushion the movie from anticipated criticism.

Munich promises to be another Spielberg loser and a reason why DreamWorks studios had to be sold to pay enormous debts. (See previous entries) You might just say that it had to be sold to pay for Spielberg's enormous ego because the division in deep dirt was their movie studios. The animation group appears to be self-functioning, but that's because they kept Spielberg far, far away.

We recently rented Spielberg's War of the Worlds. It is a horrendously awful film. A dysfunctional family, a dysfunctional "hero" so badly drawn that you wondered if the intent actually was to make Tom Cruise a retarded parent just to invoke sympathy for the character. Every scene with Tom Cruise was so focussed on him that they could have CGI-ed an entire cast and no one would have noticed. Worse, a movie that featured panicked citizenry had crowd scenes that were so unconvincing that they appear frozen while waiting for someone, anyone, to use a megaphone to tell them to run. NOW. A policeman who obviously moonlights as such because his full-time job must be at Public Works is seen staring down at a widening hole in the pavement authoritatively claiming "There's no water mains down there." In the middle of an intersection. (Policemen know these things when it moves the scene along.)

The extras on the disk include interviews with people who created the monsters. "Steven wanted to call them tripods." "So, going along with that, we gave them three eyes." etc etc etc. Gene Barry was no genius in the original, but he knew it. Tom Cruise has no such humility. And the special effects and artwork people appear to be sycophants whose loyalty was measured by how many times they mentioned "Steven." But the real killer was that they tell you that they decided to do everything opposite of the original movie. The monsters come up from the ground, instead of from the sky. See how original they can be? All of that, however, wasn't the kiss of death.

It was a movie shot with no apparent script, improvisation apparent in just about every scene. In fact, the entire middle section with Tim Robbins was entirely pointless, full of what appears to be unscripted dialogue that went nowhere. It not only was pointless, Tim Robbins with breasts was revolting to see. The only lucid actors in the movie appear to be the child actors whose egos didn't demand they screw around with scenes. The movie may have recouped it's production costs, but I doubt it made enough to pay for the publicity costs which usually cost as much as the movie itself.

The lesson of DreamWorks is that media hype only goes so far anymore. It won't save a lousy movie. The Democrat party ought to be paying close attention. There's a lesson there.

MORE GLOBAL WARMING BULLSHIT DETECTED

Wonderfully coherent David Warren on the "climate change" activists meeting (article written Dec. 3rd) in Montreal.

They are deeply invested in the idea that a human-compounded global climate disaster, which only they can understand, can be prevented only if the world's taxpayers surrender money and power on a planetary scale, to the care and feeding of themselves and their kind.

He understands the futility, if not the silliness. And he has this prediction: "These people will not give up, however. There is too much money and power to be grabbed."

Of course they won't give up. Not when there are 10,000 attendees at the conference, all of whom hope to benefit materially from the plan that, in a nutshell, allows (or forces) some governments to buy pollution credits from Russia, thereby transferring western wealth to the Russian mafia-run government. Chief cheerleader, if not co-architects, are Canadian in citizenship whose chief friendship with the Russians is that they share criminal intents.

CANADIAN HYPOCRISY

Rex Murphy on the hypocrisy of the global warming conference in Montreal that was attended by ten thousand people for a conference on reducing energy consumption: "I don't suppose many delegates walked."

The bigger disconnect at this monster seminar goes further than rhetoric, however. It's that Canada's the host of this sequel to Kyoto, and that Canada's performance since Kyoto --- and remember, we signed on --- is at this date, 24 per cent higher than our 1990 levels. According to our commitment, we're aiming for six per cent lower. So as of 2005, there's a 30 per cent spread from what we've promised and what we've done so far.

The U.S., which didn't sign on, is only thirteen per cent higher than its 1990 levels. Still, around the world, the U.S. is the villain for not signing on, while countries like ours, who talk a virtuous environmental line and host King-Kong-scale conferences to celebrate our commitment, pose as the planet's dearest lovers. Perhaps Kyoto is Japanese for hypocrisy

Indeed.

Link to Rex Murphy columns written for the CBC.

FAMILY FRIENDLY? I DON'T THINK SO.

Time-Warner cable is leaping right in there with family friendly alternative cable service. It will include Disney Channel, C-SPAN2, HGTV, CNN Headline News and the Weather Channel. A sure fire way to attract families. /sarcasm off

Parents Television Council President L. Brent Bozell summed it up nicely. "It is perfectly obvious Time Warner is deliberately offering a product designed to fail." Yes, and they get one Time-Warner station and HGTV which is more and more known as Homosexual and Gay couples redecorate on TV. Just the fare you want your kids to watch. It's no bargain either. At $13 a month, the cable company will probably realize $12 in profit. And, as Bozell points out, Time-Warner assumes that families don't want sports, or religious programming, or classic movies. Or, I might add, FOXnews. Or the Hallmark channel. Or the Disney Family channel. (although I wouldn't want that channel either.) WAM or the NASA channel, or Discovery, or National Geographic. Or a host of program suitable for family viewing.

For those people who are still cable captives, and that includes most poor urban families, it amounts to the dis-education of poor black Americans. Just as blacks in New Orleans were so mired in poverty that they could not move elsewhere, doomed to unemployment and government dependence, crippled by hopelessness, Time-Warner is still herding for the Liberal Plantation.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS

It isn't just Bill O'Reilly's imagination. Chula Vista, California.

MERRY CHRISTMAS - EUROPEAN STYLE

Just in time for Christmas. Belgium has passed a law to allow pharmacists to supply doctors with lethal doses of medicine so that the physicians can euthanasize their patients.

Great gift to the world, no? Those Europeans are sooooo progressive.

The gifts just keep on coming.

Time-Warner Woes

Between layoffs at Time, Inc., including Top Executives, the Warner t.v. operation laying off 300, and the Atlanta Braves up for sale, you might just conclude that Time-Warner is having, ah, financial problems.

NOAM CHOMSKY in the NETHERLANDS

This quote was featured at the Radio Netherlands site to promote an on-air question and answer with Noam Chomsky.

"The insurgency [in Iraq] was created by the brutality of the invasion and occupation - which is, in fact, one of the most astonishing failures in military history. The Nazis had less trouble in occupied Europe, and the Russians held their satellites for decades with far less difficulty
-- Chomsky on Iraq and War on Terror

I suppose our enemies have to find comfort where they can, even if it means nutcases like Chomsky.

REVISIONISM

In France, it's a crime to revise history. Especially Halocaust history. Most especially if you are deputy leader of the National Front party. ("extreme right")

It is not, apparently, a crime though to conceal the collaboration of most of France with Nazi Germany. It was called Vichy France.

Cable News Race

From DrudgeReport:
CABLE NEWS RACE --- TUES., DEC 13, 2005 --- HOUSEHOLDS

FNC O'REILLY ---------------1,825,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES ------1,503,000
FNC HUME------------------ 1,162,000
FNC SHEP ------------------1,176,000
FNC GRETA -----------------1,335,000
CNN KING --------------------975,000
CNN PAULA ZAHN ------------568,000
CNN COOPER ----------------483,500
CNN DOBBS ------------------467,000
MSNBC HARDBALL ------------394,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN ----------376,000
MSNBC RITA COSBY ----------368,000
CNNHN NANCY GRACE --------353,000
MSNBC TUCKER --------------289,000

God isn't dead, after all

Gosh, what a surprise. A new Gallup survey claims some 94% of Americans think God exists. You couldn't tell that by our newspapers, our movies, our television, most journalists, or almost all movie stars. But, maybe that's because they Liberals, who are less likely to believe strongly. (87% of Conservatives vs. 61% of Liberals are strongly convinced.)

Sheeze, you think that's why newspapers are losing subscribers, movies are barely breaking even, and t.v. viewership is down?

You have to subscribe to Gallup to read the questions and methodology.

Knight Ridder on the block

Knight Ridder is on the auction block after their biggest stockholders have demanded the sale. Among the really liberal rags they own The Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer are stand out losers. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the San Jose Mercury News are equally, and predictably, liberal.

Their papers. Find ONE, just one, that is not liberal.

Richard Prior

Stanley Couch, who has grown up, puts Richard Pryor into perspective.

WHIMPS

They definitely aren't nation builders. After two months, Palestinians are "tired of chaos and poverty."

Especially when they have no one to blame for it.

In a wonderful irony, the Dutch advisor to Kofi Annan on gaining control of the internet in the World Summit on the Information Society scheduled to finish this week, has quit.

The conference is being hosted by Tunisia. Professor Cees Hamelink says Tunisia is guilty of human rights abuses and he thinks the choice of Tunisia shows the UN does not take "the information issue seriously."

Of course they do, Cees. That's why they are trying to stifle free speech by limiting the growth of the internet. But first they have to stifle free speech by those in Tunisia by oppressing those who protest.

PRIME MINISTER, AHHHH, AHHH, UHHHH

Talk about a name recognition problem. The Prime Minister of Belgium has been the same for sixe years. A recent poll, however, showed 60% of those polled did not know his name. Some 7% thought his predecessor was in charge and one even suggested Gerhard Shroeder was at the helm. The poll was taken in Belgium.

Pierce who????

Pierce Bosnan, the Clueless:

"I was looking forward to making (Bond) edgier and grittier -- and for all of that to go down in one phone call was highly disappointing," Brosnan said, adding that he had been invited to make a fifth Bond film but that negotiations suddenly collapsed without explanation.

"To this day Im not sure why," he said, dismissing media reports that his demands of an exorbitant salary of 30 to 40 million dollars had scuppered the talks.

He must have a faulty memory.

"This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for," the former James Bond actor told reporters Saturday. "I don't know if this man is really taking care of America. This government has been shameful."

In a faltering movie industry shunned by most Americans why the hell would they hire him?

FRENCH BASHING is so easy

FRANCE
The Eurotunnel, that symbol of European physical unity, is in worse shape than ever. AFP reports that the company could face bankruptcy in 2007 unless it manages to reduce its debt load of nine billion euros.

Marks and Spencer, the British retailer, learned the hard way not to do business in France. They was fined by a French court for breaching labor laws for not convening the store's works committee before deciding to close the store in 2001. Not only can't you close a store in France without consulting labor union thugs, you can't very well open one either. Marks and Spencer stock rose on new earning.

Ludicrous poll of the day

Ludicrous poll of the day. Do you believe Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to marry?

From? The notoriously anti-religious Globe and Mail and the secular nincompoop Canadians who also decided that the Canadian Supreme Court could arbitrarily decide on gay marriage despite 70% of Canadians who are polled against it. Call em passive. It's the kindest thing you can say.

For 12597
Against 1429

Oh wait.. there's competition from a previous poll that asked, "Is it okay with you if convicted criminal Martha Stewart comes to Canada to row a giant pumpkin?"

For 13378
Against 5654

Newsday continues to slide

The latest Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) audit of Newsday shows circulation decline of 8.8% to 439,708.

This is the kicker, though.

If Newsday had made the March 2005 FAS-FAX it would be the country's 12th largest paper in terms of daily circ falling below the Arizona Republic in Phoenix (daily circ, 452,016) and above The Boston Globe (daily circ 434,330).

Just imagine how many papers would sell in Boston if they had something other than another New York Times clone.

Just Wanna know

If Justice Souter was believed to have been so liberal before his nomination, why did 9 of the most liberal Democrats vote against him?

Including Kennedy, John Kerry, Cranston, Lautenberg, Miluski and Bradley.

Senate vote on his confirmation

BORDER CRIMES

Vicente Fox is visiting Canada to commiserate with them on their disputes with the U.S. Maybe he should pay more attention to border town violence.

NUEVO LAREDO is across the border from Laredo, Texas. It is noted for being a drug smuggling corridor to the U.S. with appalling violence.

More than 135 people have been killed by violence in this city across from Laredo, Texas, since January. Quimbar was the 14th police officer slain.

If you want to follow the violence and corruption indemic to Mexico, The San Diego Union-Tribune's section on Tijuana/Border is a must read.

SOBBING JOURNALISTS AND HURRICANES

The leftwing Independent can be counted on for a good laugh on any day. They outdo themselves today and I agree with them. Taking U.S. t.v. reporters to task for their emotionalism, singling out Shepard Smith at FOX who was, in my view, an absolute idiot. The Independent thought he was emotional during Katrina. But Rita was something else.

Last week, though, when Hurricane Rita provided the anticlimactic follow-up to the devastations of Katrina, those same reporters found themselves standing alone in the driving wind and rain, struggling not only to maintain their dignity on camera, but also to come up with a valid reason why they were doing this at all.

Fox News's Mr Smith, now in Beaumont, Texas, was blown several feet and knocked to the ground during a live two-way. Anchor Greta Van Susteren, dry and comfortable in the studio, didn't even stop talking as Smith struggled to get up and find something solid to cling to.

No doubt, she was humiliated by his performance. If Roger Ailes had not been otherwise engaged doing something else, I expect he would have cut off the sorry spectacle. And don't even mention Geraldo Rivera to me. I half jokingly tell friends that I am buying a gun so in case of an earthquate, if that Adam Henry comes anywhere close, I am plugging him. He's not posing in my front yard.

But in case you think the Independent actually had a clue. They go on to chide Russert for challenging Aaron Broussard. They thought it "a heartless piece of gotcha journalism." Shows how closely they follow anything.

DECENCY

David Warren is a journalist, or what a journalist used to be. Or maybe there never was a time when journalism was ever as lofty as those who practice it claim it was, and is.. But when you do find a journalist of extraordinary talent and attitude, it gives you hope again. Even if they get discouraged, there is something worth savoring:

It is not necessary to be pro-Bush, pro-Republican, or even pro-American to tell the truth, as completely as one can. Nor is it necessary to be neutral. What is instead required is a mind that wants to know the truth, and will report what it discovers candidly. It is not even necessary to like people, to treat them fairly: only necessary to realize that hatred makes one blind.

Mr. Warren is such an individual. But he is guided by a quality that isn't even considered important in a newsroom: decency.

HAVING IT BOTH WAYS

Arianna Huffington isn't buying the Judith Miller-New York Times story of her victimhood.

How deep is the Times' contempt for its readers that it really thinks they'll buy the 'Oh, Judy finally has the right waiver' line?"

Time will tell what the real story is, but strong bets say it won't be the current New York Times version.

Every time a Leftie like Arianna writes on Miller, they refer to Miller's WMD articles written before the war. In this context, they cite her lack of credibility and not their gullibility. I suspect that Miller wrote the articles in the first place to drum up emotional overload of the Left to inspire their opposition the invasion. Now the Left disavows the claims of WMD, but it was damned convenient when they wanted to warn of the dangers of invading Iraq. Apparently, the Left wants it both ways.

BIRD FLU-MONGERING

This is exactly why the CDC is not developing a vaccine against bird flu.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Michael Barone making a point about "Prosecutorial discretion."

Doesn't this prove that elected Republicans are better because they have to be more accountable?

NEW HAWLINS - CAPITOL OF THE OLD SOUTH

As National Guardsmen return to their states, stories about the actual conditions in New Orleans will be coming in. It's Grinding poverty and political infighting.

NO LONGER GOD'S CREATIONS

A Canadian man drugged and suffocated his 11-year-old son who was suffering from epilepsy. Purportedly, the father thought the boy partially brain dead and wanted to spare him a life of suffering. There was also some babble about saving his family from a child he saw dangerous to other family members.

A Canadian judge (it was a judge-only trial) found him not responsible for his actions on "account of a mental disorder." Family members had eagerly testified to a history of depression and suicide. Which makes you wonder if they should have their children removed for safekeeping.

This is, whether we want to admit it or not, the logical extension of State Secularism in Canada. Children are no longer "God's creations" but ours to do with what we want, or the court directs. I am not big on religion, but I can see what the Religious Right has saved us from here in the U.S. It's a question of balance. If you don't believe it, the Dutch have even more plans in store for infants and patients unable to give informed consent "due to learning disability or dementia. "

Just kill em. God knows, there's precedence in Europe.

AFFIRMATIVE WONDERFULNESS

You can, if you like, totally ignore the rest of the story by Jack Shafer about how a New Yorker journo lost out on a job at the Washington Post because he was white and the follow-on histronics of the journalists who like to attack even their own. This money quote near the bottom of the article is worth embroidering just so you remember it.

Whether the claims are true or not, when diversity plays a significant role in hiring it makes race the prism through which folks start viewing their jobs.

Exactly. Which is why affirmative action at college campuses, in the workplace, and in newspapers leads to separateness in awareness and by implied fiat. If you are a gay journalist and are hired as such, you know without being told what is expected. You are there to promote gayness first and be a journalist second. (God knows where being human comes in.) Black journalists are expected to be loyal to blacks without question, liberal media notions of "liberalism as a liberator" without thinking, and if you do any investigation it ought to be framed accordingly. The same is true of women in the newsroom, chosen exclusively for their dedication to girlishness. Maureen Dowd comes to mind. A cheerleader in her own mind, she knows the score and stereotype and can flaunt dumb blonde thinking without being blonde.

Diversity hires can also shield middle management from criticism. In the newsroom it pays to hire gay copy editors so they can complain loudy about perceived insults. That way, when the section editor makes a decision, it's based on his sensitivity to diversity, and not because he's a flaming liberal with a mission to spike the reporter's work. This happened to Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe when two gay copy editors helped squash his freedom of speech. Diversity hires at universities serve the same purpose. They simultaneously prop up administrations that are incompetent and decidedly liberal and help pass along the defects to their students.

In the workplace, diversity hires function as apartheid markers, separate but equal -- but more separate than equal, if you follow the drift. No one even expects that they were hired for being, well, equal. Certainly not those who hire them. Management wants the cover, and if you demean people by thinking that they are inferior to begin with, and it is just your personal wonderfulness that wants to give them a break, it wasn't your intention to promote an ugly racial stereotype of incompetence. The side benefit, besides the implied "wonderfulness" and shield from criticism, is the personal loyalty that creates an instant shock trooper who will intercede for the manager. "Hey! That's my friend there!" Hire enough "diverse" employees and no one can criticize you for anything.

It's only a slight extension of affirmative action to multiculturalism. The principles are the same.

APPALLING JUDGEMENT - NEWS AND OTHERWISE

Heather MacDonald of City Journal is one of the best writers in the country. She's what newspapers used to strive for and were thrilled when they got. A keen observer of life, a great writer, and prolific enough to fire those other three reporters who didn't pan out.

She takes on the New York Times' gay obsession, displayed once again in a Metro-section spread detailing gay sex on the way home.

DEFENDERS IN STRANGE PLACES

David Frum at NRO reports on the defense of Tom DeLay coming from - E.J. Dionne. Nice summary by Frum if, like me, you find reading Dionne is the equivalent of watching porn in the same room as the kids.

(I wish Dionne paid as much attention to the redistricting maps in California where gerrymandering as an art form.)

THE NEXT BIG SCHEME

CANADA's military is seriously underfunded, according to a Canadian Senate report released Thursday. Interestingly, the report notes that Canada was named by al-Qaeda as one of five target nations deserving of attack. I would have put them lower, like 190th, especially with their friendship with the Tamil Tigers, and handing out nuclear technology like lolipops, and Maurice Strong's connection with the Kyoto Treaty, and considering Canada's prized status as a "Peacekeeper" (meaning they do little actual anything but move a few forces around at the direction of the U.N.)

Canada, the report says, ranks 128th out of 165 countries in defense spending as a percent of its GNP. (Supposedly, this rankles the United States and other NATO allies, but I don't see it myself. Mexico spends even less and we are grateful for their parsimony.)

Naturally, all this lamenting of military power leads to -- you guessed it -- a new MASSIVE spending proposal. The military budget should be $21 billion a year instead of the current spending of $1.77 loonie (which is, what? .00008 U.S. cents?) If you follow Canadian current events at all, you know that the whole adventure will end up with politicians with French-sounding names in $300,000 a year jobs and expense accounts at least that much, meeting in restaurants to pass envelopes to cronies they couldn't manage to get on the payroll. And no one will ever go to jail.

It's Haiti to the North, minus the voodoo stuff. You can feel it in dem bones.

ALGERIA, VOTING ON FORGIVING TERRORISTS

It never fails to disgust me that our MSM is so tolerant of muslim violence, especially against other muslims. In Algeria, they are voting on a referendum to absolve the terrorists (the Associated Press calls them "insurgents.") who waged war on society, in a civil war that left 150,000 dead. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND. Did you read about that? Was there any European Commission condemnation? Or any United Nations resolutions? Or anyone else?

The terrorism (not "insurgency") began in 1992 when the army canceled voting when it became apparent that the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front might win. As the AP says, "Daily beheadings and massacres committed by Islamic extremists followed. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed." In response, thousands disappeared, probably at the hands of the security forces. Nightly, the terrorists would slit the throats of villagers, sometimes a whole village. Men, women, children. The New York Times on the war:

Algeria soon faced a bloodbath. Militant Islamic groups attacked government agents and civilians, often slaughtering men, women and children at night. Meanwhile, state security forces abducted thousands of people, and the government provided arms to militias that dispensed vigilante justice. Much of this happened without international attention, in part because journalists were made targets and were killed.

The writer got this from dredging up this 1996 NYTimes piece by Roger Cohen. What he didn't reproduce was this interesting bit:

Diplomats said Clinton had written two letters in the last year to President Liamine Zeroual, a retired general, urging him to be "inclusive" -- to reach out to as wide a spectrum as possible of the nonviolent opposition in seeking national reconciliation.

In other words, deal with the terrorists in the same way Northern Ireland is forced to deal with IRA terrorists and Israel was forced, by the Clinton administration, to deal with Yassir Arafat, terrorist extraordinare.

Timeline of the Algerian War here
(Scroll to 1997 to get some idea of the scale of the terrorism. )
List of Algerian massacres here

In April 1994 civil war broke out in Rwanda. Roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died. And our MSM, the UN, Bill Clinton and the rest of the world were, again, equally silent. Had the terrorists not been defeated, no doubt the EU, the UN, and Bill Clinton would have tried to impose a compromise on the Algerian government to accept terrorists into the government as well.

MEDIA HERO ARRESTED AGAIN

Rodney King, the Los Angeles Times idea of a hero, albeit one that sparked a riot that killed 55 people, permanently crippled a fireman who was shot by rioters, 2,300 injured,** 1,100 buildings damaged,** and caused $1 billion in damage, has been -- arrested again.

This time, the charge is making criminal threats - threatening to kill his daughter (age 23) and wife after the two got into a fight with his current girlfriend. Apparently, they all live together. Which makes "Can we all get along?" a work in progress for Mr. King. Some public spirited citizen kept track of his arrest record up until 2001 when John Q. Public, no doubt, got tired and gave up. There were several more, including this domestic dispute in 2003. CNN calls him a "public figure." I guess he is, in the same mold as John Gotti. Only the media loved him.

**from the CNN article.

I remember the riots. Even 30 miles away, the pall of smoke was so thick that nursing homes ordered extra oxygen for their skilled nursing facilities in case elderly patients were affected. The ash from the fires was worse than any forest fire we have experienced. And having read the hype that the Los Angeles Times gave to the beating that seems, in retrospect, not only appropriate but remarkably less than what King deserved, the Times worked very hard for the riot they wanted. The second one.

ALIEN INVASION WARNING (Art Bell please call)

Someone at the Guardian -- Anne Gearan -- has been drinking conservative Kool-aid that is bound to be a career death. Her article is "U.N. Ambassador Bolton Says Reforms Begun"

Bolton, President Bush's hard-charging choice to be the U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, has been pulling long hours and winning respect if not friends among U.N. diplomats in the nearly two months since Bush went around Senate Democrats to give Bolton a rare recess appointment to the U.N. job.

It's probably because Bolton voted yes on some "reform" items. Nevertheless, a compliment from the Guardian is startling.

Even more startling, there was this found elsewhere in the obituary for Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley, age 84, a Johnson appointee:

At the heart of much of it was Motley, from a case in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 that led President Eisenhower to call in federal troops to protect nine black high school students to leading the legal charge to win James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi in 1962.

You mean, Bill Clinton didn't personally order those troops?!!
Aliens have taken over the Guardian!!!!!.

WHEN POLITICIANS GO TO WAR

I was angry at first, positively furious at the headlines at DrudgeReport that Tom Delay had been indicted and had stepped down as majority leader. Disgusted at Delay. The stupid *&@!@# of a **&^%. Until I went to PowerLine.

PowerLine produced Tom Delay's full statement. While it isn't a convincing document (how do you prove you didn't hit your wife?) it made me think about Ronnie Earle and Delay's claims. Paranoid?

A brief trip to Lucianne.com made me wonder.
DNC Stands by Rangel After "Hate Speech"
Sheehan calls McCain "warmonger" after meeting
Dan wants a second go at Bush
Chuck Schumer staff members using opponent's credit card information

FROM YAHOO NEWS
Democrats claim Bush is blocking bipartison health care for evacuees
Brown Shifts Blame for Katrina Response
Dems Vow Battle Over Ideologue Nominees
Democrats criticize US accounting of Katrina money
Kayne West: Bush hates blacks

PERSPECTIVE
AWOL Democrats hole up in Oklahoma motel
The Next Redistricting Target: Ronnie Earle?
BS from [David Brock's] Media Matters

OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY
Howard Dean: [About the Republican Party] "It's pretty much a white Christian party."
Howard Dean: "Republicans never made an honest living in their lives."

It's war folks. It's a daily barrage of pettiness and viciousness. At the anti-American, anti-Capitalism, anti-western, anti-war rally in Washington, DC, George Galloway said Tony Blair and George Bush were war criminals. No American in that crowd of misfits stood up in that crowd and said, "Just a minute. That's strong language. Let's be reasonable here." Democrat Ramsey Clark called the war in Iraq an illegal occupation and and "international crime." An NPR personality from KPFK in Santa Monica, CA, called the war in Iraq "genocide." "Poet" Alexis Devaux warned, "Your chickens has come home to roost." Former New Jersey Poet Laureat Amira Baraka: "I am a communist." and lyrically referred to "those assholes in Washington."

It is meaningful, folks, that over half the speakers at the Washington rally were international peace activists. It is meaningful that the Chairman of the Democrat National Committee would have fit right in with the rabble at the Rally.

And it is encouraging that District Attorney Ronnie Earle indicted Kay Bailey Hutchinson and then declined to prosecute. It's all about hate, folks. And it does serve to distract the public from comparisons between Democrat and Republican state officials in two hurricanes.

COVER YOUR EYES, MAXINE

This has got to hurt. The quarterly ratings are in and Variety reports that Fox scored big.

Fox finished the quarter averaging 1.2 million daily viewers, up 31% from last year, followed by CNN with 693,000 viewers (a 39% increase) and MSNBC with 300,000 viewers (up 11%).

And it gets worse for the competition.

In primetime, Fox reasserted its dominance by recording 2.3 million viewers, the highest quarterly viewer total in its history. Fox primetime tentpole "The O'Reilly Factor" remained the most-watched cable news program with 2.8 million viewers.

Maxine Waters must be rabid. Oh, wait. She already is.

A BOX OF CHEERIOS

Chris Matthews had Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, on Meet the Press again to explain, sorta, the discrepancy in his story about the Federal government failing to save a colleague's mother in a nursing home after frantic calls ("Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?") on Tuesday, Wednesay and Thursday but she died on Friday. Bloggers pointed that there couldn't have been any calls. The woman drowned in the St. Rita nursing home on Monday when administrators and staff abandoned them. BACKGROUND: here and here

How did Aaron explain that? The transcript shows he didn't and Chris Matthews was either insufficiently briefed on the facts or wanted to give Broussard a chance to muddy the water as MSNBC did in describing it as "a misunderstanding." Matthews certainly didn't press him hard. Broussard did not retract the outright lie either. (Broussard is under supoena to testify about his part in a corruption case soon so maybe he was practicing.)

He is still accusing everyone.

Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. It's so obvious.

People like Broussard used to be called a "cracker." It's still a good description for a very offensive man.

DENNIS PRAGER: THE LEFT AND HYSTERIA

Dennis Prager is a synidcated talk show host who deals primarily in ethics and morality and daily events. Everything the man says is worth listening to and his books are ones you savor for their moral clarity.

Writing in Real Clear Politics, his "The Left and Hysteria", is case to consider whether "leading leftists either use hysteria as a political tactic or are actually hysterics. It's a great article by a generous and kind man.

A DISASTER IN NEW ORLEANS

I think Mayor Nagin can actually help with this one.

NEW YORK TIMES v SULLIVAN REVISITED

The New York Times is already starting to worry about how Judge Roberts - soon to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court -- will rule on libel laws.

The case in point was New York Times v. Sullivan. In 1964 the U.S. Supreme Court revolutionized libel laws to shield newspapers from anything but the most unprovable demonstration of libel.

The Sullivan case held that the First Amendment required public officials suing for libel to prove that the statements they complained of were made with "actual malice" - that is, with knowledge that the statements were false or with reckless disregard as to whether they were false.

This was a complete reversal of libel laws inherited from, and still in effect, in England. The libel laws that kept media honest. The libel law that keep British newspapers from the lies that American media have been shielded from by the NYT v Sullivan ruling. The libel laws that curbed vicious assaults on the truth.

The Sullivan case was the subject of a book ""Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment" by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. His wife is currently head of the Massachusetts Supreme Court who ruled that the state had to accept gay marriage.

The New York Times is right to worry. Their own refusal to correct news stories by Paul Krugman and Alessandra Stanley's libel of Geraldo Rivera demean journalism. You can bet for the immediate future that our MSM is going to worry about some libel case being brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. And that is a very good thing.

UPDATE: The New York Times retracts the story. John Roberts had NOT authored the memo.

TAKE MY PICTURE! QUICK!

A doctor who went to Louisiana to help out describes how he, among others, were just not needed. Not content, however, he had to try to screw up the work that others were doing.

Figuring that there may, in fact, have been a communication problem between the various groups, I called one of my patients back in Washington who is chief of staff to a member of Congress from the Gulf region. Perhaps he could iron out any red tape. The next thing I knew I was escorted to the nerve center of the entire rescue operation. I met the governor's chief of staff, the head of the federal Health and Human Services team, the coordinator of the state hospitals and a FEMA representative. They were all trying desperately to find a place for a physician with my skills.

And they didn't have another bloody thing to do except take time out to meet you, you colossal twit. The good doctor finally seems to recognize this, but not before he, no doubt, made a bloody nuisance of himself.

Another case of ego chasing the media cameras.

HOW COME WE DIDN'T KNOW?

John Fund is setting the record straight. "No state turns out better demagogues than Louisiana.." he intones as he examines A Swamp of Corruption. Starting with Aaron Broussard and the sad story of his colleague's mother drowning because of the Federal delays - a story that was "embellished." It's a way of life in Louisiana.

Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes (Mississippi takes top prize). In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted. Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes. Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes.

Did you know any of this? It was, in fact, in the newspapers. The New Orleans Times Picayne covered all those stories and more. The Times Picayne covered every clumsy misstep by the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana. The stories are in Lexis Nexis. We may not have access to Lexis Nexis, but you can bet the baby that the New York Times does. You can bet that MSNBC does. And the Los Angeles Times. And ABC. And CBS. And NBC. And every newspaper in the country.

So why didn't you hear stories of the corruption in Louisiana or the number of mayors --15 at last count -- in New Jersey who had been indicted and tried? Why don't you hear that the Homeland Security coordinator for New Joisey was unqualified for the position and was a foreign national who couldn't attend the briefings but he got his $110,000 a year anyway? How come Cokie Roberts knows Edwin Edwards, former governor of Louisiana, is in jail and she doesn't hold him in contempt for his fraud but is mildly admiring of his ability to get things done?

Corruption in Louisiana and Mississippi is just not newsworthy to a mainstream media that plays by the same rules.

UNFAIR AND UNBALANCED

Criticism of the New York Times.

"I find it disturbing that any Times editor would come so close to implying - almost in a tit-for-tat sense - that Mr. Rivera's bad behavior essentially entitles the paper to rely on assumptions and refuse to correct an unsupported fact."

From some disaffected pajama-clad, computer-bound blogger? Uh. Uh. Nada.

No pictures of this.

It's doubtful that even if there were pictures if the media would run them. They would be considered incendiary. God forbid that terrorism be defined as shooting unarmed civilians and killing and maiming men, women, and children. But in case you get really incensed about the Tornoto Sun article, the idiocy is an Associated Press story. That means it's from the American MSM who own the Associated Press.

Grieving mother

You think the husband had a clue or two that she was deranged?

Random thoughts on a Monday morning

MICKEY KLAUS: "TimesSelect doesn't need to be replaced by TimesDelete. TimesSelect is TimesDelete!" YUP Read the whole thing.

GLOBAL WARMING If global warming is inevitable -- as it seems to be with projections that even with adoption and implementation of the Kyoto protocol, the reductions will be miniscule -- New Orleans will be under water anyway in ten or fifteen years years why rebuild? They should just go the Tuvalu route and sue the U.S. for global warming.

CAN'T WE ALL GET ALONG CANADA Canada will resume selling dual-use nuclear technology to India. It's reactivating Canada's armament of India. India's first nuclear device used Canadian technology. Hey! Maybe Canada can help Iran along??? Ya think?

CANADIAN IMMIGRATION The Globe and Mail's poll today isn't turning out the way they like. At 11:30 am PT "Do you largely approve of the way Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board handles its job? had a lopsided 1473 yes to 8850 nos. Background
UPDATE: Final tally 1869 yes 11268 no

KEEP THE DONATIONS COMING BECAUSE ... The CBC has good news. Headline: "IRA disposes 'totality' of illegal arsenal" allegedly verified by (from another article at CBC) a retired Canadian general and "The IRA permitted two independent witnesses - a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams - to view the secret disarmament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States." Is 'totality' the same thing as absolutely all of them? And speaking of terrorists, isn't Al-Jazeera running on Canadian television? Yep.

GERMANY - a German doll company is selling a Dalai Lama doll in plastic. "The doll measures 46 centimetres in height and its paint matches the Dalai Lama's skin colour." At 165 Euro it will come to $198.90 for the 18-inch statue in Dalai Lama's skin color to replace your garden gnome kidnapped by the Gnome Liberation Front. Richard Gere will be thrilled.

POLISH VOTERS DECIDE This is the difference between Europe and the U.S. From Deutsche Welle: "Poland Veers to the Right After Election" Didn't the voters veer right before the elections??

TAKING NO SIDES Despite two years of investigation and a two and a half month trial, conviction and sentencing, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas is, to the Guardian, “A suspected al-Qaida leader.” He was sentenced for “being the leader of a terrorist organization.” The man was tried and convicted after a preponderance of evidence convinced the Spanish judges of his guilt but the Guardian in their infinite wisdom convicts him of suspicion of being an al-Qaida leader. What more do they need? Osama bin Ladin’s rolodex?

OVERHYPED CELEBRITY I just heard a radio ad by Mary Lou Retton. I could never warm up to the girl who, unfortunately, looked a little like a garden gnome herself.

New Vatican Policy in the works

William Rees-Mogg writing in the Times of London with no apparent irony:

For the past three years, mainly under the late Pope John Paul II, that body has been drawing up a new instruction, which will cover the issue of which candidates should be admitted for ordination. The outcome is a document, not yet published, on which The New York Times has been given a special briefing. That is an unusual way for the Vatican to behave, but it reflects the Vatican's sensitivity to American opinion on this issue. [bolding mine]

That's like consulting Mike Tyson before you write domestic violence laws. Who does Rees-Mogg think actively promotes homosexuality everywhere from the diversity quotas in the newsroom to the classroom? It isn't Vatican sensitivity to American opinion, for God's sake. They know the New York Times/WashingtonPost/LosAnglesTimes and the Stepford media will immediately and vociferously condemn the policy. The Vatican just wants to know how they will frame the argument.

Rees-Mogg is under the impression that it is pedophiles who committed the offenses against children in the Catholic church. He ignores altogether the fact that only 1% of the abused are female. The consequence of that is if he can claim it is pedophiles, he can claim there is absolutely no reason to exclude homosexuals from the priesthood. I hate to disabuse him, but former seminarians acknowledge that homosexuality is rampant in U.S. seminaries, so much so that straights quit in abject frustration. And disallusionment. (Imagine 200 Andrew Sullivans in a seminary and you got the picture. One disagreement with the church and then imagine the emotional tantrums.) A Kansas City Star investigation of priests with HIV and AIDS indirectly confirmed the sexualization of the seminaries by appallingly high HIV/AIDS rates among priests. They wanted to validate homosexuality. They ended up confirming what we know about AIDS and HIV.

HIV virus is sexually transmitted -- infection through needles is rare and confined to drug addicts. Most HIV infected people are men, and the virus is transmitted through anal sex. The higher infection rate in priests in the Kansas City Star article points to an epidemic of sexual activity in the seminaries. And not casual sex either. The victims who have come forward to accuse the priests have not themselves been infected. They do not charge that. You don't get infected through casual or infrequent contact. HIV infection involves multiple partners and a lot of sex. Of course, the Kansas City Star blamed AIDS on celibacy because the seminaries didn't teach enough sexuality.

I hate to shatter Mr. Rees-Mogg's defense of homosexuals, but most boys abused by priests are not children but adolescents. It isn't a love of children that motivates the priest. It is love of boys and young men.

Contemporary English lacks a common word for the behaviors included in the great majority of “clergy-abuse” cases, in which the “abused” is often fifteen or sixteen years old. The best and most comprehensive term is probably pederasty, the erotic love of a youth (Greek, pais), which is etymologically very close to pedophilia but covers relationships with any young person, usually male, up to the age of full adult maturity.

Not all homosexuals are pederasts. Most homosexual men are not interested in young boys. All pederasts are homosexual. Many of the pederast priests so accused had engaged in sex with boys who turned out later to be gay which makes you wonder whether the attraction was mutual. It does not make it acceptable and it does not excuse the adult homosexual priest. Adolescents are still below the age of consent. And priests should not be shielded from prosecution for acting on their inclinations. And no homosexual should be ordained. Period.

Blair appears to be losing control

Honest to God. You can't make up things like this. George Orwell anticipated it, but he was off 20 years. GPs will go door to door to target the unhealthy

Unfit and overweight Britons will get doorstep visits from NHS staff to track those at risk of future illness, under radical plans for a new 'contract' between patients and doctors.

It's a matter of time before your thinking will be subject for interdiction.

If you're under age 7

This is for those who still believe in the tooth fairy.

Third World Canada

What a plan - to "ramp up the immigration levels" in Canada. (It would be a rise of 40% in 5 years. Source: Google catch article.)

In a bid to counteract Canada's declining birthrate and aging population, the federal government is looking at a dramatic boost in immigration -- up to 100,000 additional newcomers each year. The increase, part of a new immigration plan to be unveiled next month, means Canada would open its doors to 320,000 immigrants a year by the time the plan is fully implemented in five years.

With 50% of Toronto foreign-born already, you have to wonder if the Liberals are hoping to stack the immigrants in areas where they can't drum up legitimate Canadian votes. Toronto is still the only city outside of the Orient to have a SARS outbreak -- a Third World disease for a Third World country. It's a consequence, not only of immigration, but where they are coming from. Wait till bird flu hits Toronto.

Small wonder we now require a passport for Canadians entering the U.S.

This is, of course, only part of the story. At some future date, you will see a split in Canada. It's already there demographically. (See Chart 9) And the separatists won't be French speaking.

Canadian Governor General decides to be -- Canadian.

This story is self-explanatory (reproduced in entirety in case you are not registered at the Toronto Star.)

Michaëlle Jean is giving up her dual French citizenship as she prepares to take up her post as Governor General of Canada.
In a brief statement issued Sunday, Jean said she was making the move given the duties she will be assuming, including the title of commander in chief of the Canadian Forces.

She said French authorities have acceded to her request to renounce her citizenship in that country.

The Haitian-born Jean, who grew up in Montreal, acquired French citizenship when she married film-maker Jean-Daniel Lafond, who was born in France. Jean will be installed Tuesday as Governor General, succeeding Adrienne Clarkson.

Marginalized media

I am sure the AP photographer was walking the beach and stumbled on this shot.
*snort* *laugh*

The only reason I post it is to make the observation that the more marginal our media becomes, the more marginal their sources.

Making a Nigerian e-mailer smile

David Warren on the "German failure":

The SPD is to Germany as the Liberals to Canada: the party to manage national decline. The long-term success of each has depended on turning 'voters' gradually into 'clients'. From the humblest welfare recipients, up to big businessmen whose fortunes depend on sweetheart regulatory arrangements, each party pitches itself, as crassly as necessary, to the beneficiaries of state largesse. Their supporters therefore become quite inured to massive corruption, and revelations of ineptitude -- and remain so, as long as they are guaranteed preferred access to the government trough.

The intention of such governments is not to run the economy into the ground, nor even to destroy the moral order through experiments in social engineering. That is simply the natural consequence of their way of doing business. A Social Democrat or Liberal government will do whatever appears immediately necessary to defend its tax base; and since full socialism has been repeatedly shown to lead directly to economic collapse, a kind of "guided capitalism" is favoured. The long-term economic decline becomes a by-product of a political outlook that mechanically ranks national interests below party interests.

While our "Mainstream American Party" -- as Howard Fineman calls the coalition of the Democrat Party and the Mainstream media -- is floundering, challenged by the new media and an internet database, Canadian corruption is on a scale that would make a Nigerian e-mailer smile.

We are doing just fine

A Instapundit reader questions the melodrama and newsworthyness of the "front row" seat coverage of the hurricane. I am with the writer. Watching Shepard Smith turning his hat backwards and clinging to a post while saying nothing of any importance whatsoever is not only not newsworthy, it is fodder for a a Saturday Night Live skit. John Belushi in a black trench coat, holding his hat, clutching a post and eating a chicken sandwich comes to mind.

On the other hand, Al Rantel, a KABC talk show host who used to have some common sense, was asking tonight if, after Katrina and now Rita, and [emphasis his] 9/11, if people were feeling a bit vulnerable. He confessed he was. I guess you would feel that way if you lost your sense of perspective.

What we are seeing is a fantastic display of the power of nature. People used to call those Acts of God as they recognized the inability of man to conjur up such immense power. We are seeing some of the biggest storms to ever hit this country and the loss of life is minimal. There is no question that we have the money and manpower to rebuild. There is no question that people will recover and return and make new homes. If anything, we should feel grateful, not vulnerable. If anything, we ought to feel humbled and awed, not fearful. Can you name another country in the world that can move 3,000,000 people in three days to safety and provide shelter for them in that distant place and make sure they are fed and clothed?

Hell, this isn't a tragedy; it's a test. We got an "A". We're doing just fine.

Fighting pornography

I am glad that someone is bringing perspective to the anti-porn focus by the FBI. Brent Bozell has a thoughtful piece. Quoting Ben Shapiro, author of Porn Generation, on the rising acceptability of porn:

"Pornography is no longer relegated to the dark corners of the newsstand or the scuzzy box in the video store; it's now in your inbox. It's on the radio, the television and the billboards. We live in an America that makes [amateur sex-tape star] Paris Hilton a cultural icon and [professional porn star] Jenna Jameson a New York Times best-selling author."

Frankly, I think this focus is long overdue. As a parent with grown children in their mid-thirties I am glad I do not have to worry about the proliferation of sleaze and the casual acceptance of porn star actresses and singers, the embodiment of small-time criminals as contestants on mainstream media tv reality shows, and the gross and inexcusable sexualization of children.

There is reason why child pornography is proliferating. For those satiated and bored with pornography, it is a new rush. Excuse me, but as a parent, I applaud the Congressional-mandated plan to fight pornography. Just google sex addiction and porn addiction for a clue that this isn't just a video in the backroom of Blockbuster anymore. It's a 24-hr cycle.