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April 13, 2005
Good for the Goose?
Tom Delay isn't the only one who has been involved in questionable practices:
Rep. Bernard Sanders used campaign donations to pay his wife and stepdaughter more than $150,000 for campaign-related work since 2000, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.Don't count on the media jumping on this little revelation any time soon.Jane O'Meara Sanders, his wife, received $91,020 between 2002 and 2004 for "consultation" and for negotiating the purchase of television and radio time-slots for Sanders' advertisements, according to records and interviews.
Jim Barrett, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, used Sanders' family payments to highlight what he said is Democratic "hypocrisy" for fiercely attacking DeLay. "It's the standard hypocrisy from the left," Barrett said. "When a Republican does it, it's inappropriate and front page news. But now it turns out, our own Bernie Sanders has been doing it for a long time."
He added: "If it's corruption when Tom DeLay does it, then it's corruption when Bernie Sanders does it."
Jon Copans, executive director of the state Democratic Party, declined to comment.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:38 PM | Comments (0) |
April 05, 2005
Bond Is Back
And so is, apparently, Pierce Brosnan:
A source tells website Darkhorizons.com: "All the stuff we heard about Brosnan being out is just a ploy from both camps. The negotiations between Brosnan and Eon (Bond production company) came to an end because, in the last year, things were up in the air, thanks to all the organisational changes taking place.
Posted by bubba138 at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) |
The Vast (insert faction here) Conspiracy
Perhaps this is more like what Glenn is looking for?
Update: In a related post Glenn sez, "But I think this is more whistling in the dark. It's certainly true that the Libertarian Party is trivial. But libertarian-leaning Republicans and independents are far more numerous, and have less reason to stick around given that their agendas aren't getting much attention."
He's right. The only question really is where are they to go? Democrats have fallen off the map from a security standpoint and they certainly aren't any better than the Republicans when it comes to smaller government. Further while the libertarians aren't too happy about the social conservatism of some Republicans, they cannot align themselves with a party that wants to stick its hands into every area of our lives, even going as far as to regulate the obesity of public school teachers.
Now if the Democrats wake up from their weak-backbone malaise and actually start taking terrorism seriously, as well as credibly argue for a slimmer, more efficient government, then the Republicans could be at real risk of losing the libertarian leaning wing of the party.
But with the likes of Howard Dean at the head, that's not likely anytime soon, is it?
Posted by bubba138 at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) |
Toothless
The press was hoodwinked again:
But the hoax wouldn't have grown legs, and scampered into the public prints, if it hadn't been for a press pack resolutely determined to overstate the transformative power of technology. Wired is a particular sucker for this kind of gadget-inspired nonsense. On such occasions Linus Torvalds' famous reminder should be nailed to the newsroom wall - or even tattoed on Wired reporters' foreheads. "Technology doesn't change society," the Linux ubergeek likes to point out, "society changes technology."So Toothing never was, but similar myths remain uncorrected and at large.
Posted by bubba138 at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) |
Wonders Never Cease
As if the TV series was not bad enough, someone is bringing busty brainlessness to the big screen:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon will write and direct a live-action Wonder Woman movie.Update: Apparently I'm late to this party. MSNBC already has readers picking their favorites for the role.No casting has been announced yet, but Whedon is expected to start on the superhero saga when he finishes post-production for Serenity, the big-screen adaptation of his TV drama, Firefly.
Posted by bubba138 at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) |
Liberal Experts
The things most Liberal’s
Think they’re experts on,
Are usually the things,
They've never done.
While their rhetoric’s raucous,
Their record is poor
In suiting up for the game,
Or volunteering for war.
It’s so easy to think
You’re calling it right,
When you’re not on the field,
Or involved in the fight;
To piously protest
The spilling of blood,
While not one drop of yours
Lies mixed with the mud.
Oh yes it’s so easy
To be scolding and bold,
When you’ve not felt the fear
Makes the blood run ice cold.
Standing safe on the sidelines,
Do you never feel shame,
When you’re bawling at us
That we’re blowing the game?
Till you’ve carried the rifle,
Till you’ve handled the ball,
Just sit down and shut up
And let us make the call.
To you few Liberal warriors,
Who truly give us your best,
We wish your hearts and cojónes
Were shared by the rest.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
Posted by bubba138 at 08:29 AM | Comments (0) |
Words From the Grave
Ronald Reagan is, of course, unsurprisingly unsurprised that freedom and democracy is breaking out:
Q: If I may, Mr. President. You called on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, but these days all sorts of walls seem to be falling. Are there any particular lessons we ought to learn from what has been taking place?It certainly reminds me of something.A. Well, I'm no historian. But while the professors are writing their big books, maybe I can offer a couple of simple observations. The first ought to make everybody happy. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were right--Adams sits a mount pretty well for a stocky little fella, by the way--but they were right. We really are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and no matter what his culture, his religion, or his language, everybody would rather have a say in electing a government than have some tyrant tell him how to live.
Remember that 1982 speech to Parliament that I delivered over in London?
Q: I have it right here on my desk. I was looking it over before I got in touch with you.
A: There's a passage in the middle of that speech that I inserted in my own handwriting--you speechwriters did a good job most of the time, but every so often I did a little writing myself. It's about the 1982 election in El Salvador. Would you read that passage aloud?
Q: My pleasure, sir. "On election day the people of El Salvador braved ambush and gunfire, trudging miles to vote for freedom. A grandmother who had been told by the guerillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls told the guerillas, 'You can kill me, kill my family, and kill my neighbors, but you can't kill us all.' The real freedom fighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country."
A: Now, does that 1982 election in El Salvador remind you of anything?
What infuriates liberals the most about recent developments is not that they have been wrong, but that Reagan and those who think like him were so right.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) |
April 04, 2005
Climbing the Charts
Glenn notices the Pope's latest book is at the top of the charts. It is currently running #2 behind the latest Herry Potter episode.
Just as interesting is Pope John Paul II holds three of the top ten slots on Amazon.
...and five out of the top twenty-one.
Posted by bubba138 at 08:09 AM | Comments (0) |
April 01, 2005
No Tsunami
The 8.7 quake last week may not have produced the expected tsunami, but it was not without effect on nature:
Huge fissures riddled the roads, at least three people were dead and dozens more wounded. But the light of a full moon revealed an even more terrifying sight, the ocean had retreated about 200m, leaving fish flopping on the sandflats."We all knew what that meant," Mr Carr said.
"It was head for the hills."
By last night, most of the villagers were still in the hills, puzzled about why the water was still 200m out to sea and convinced that a repeat of the Boxing Day waves that destroyed nearby Banda Aceh, would soon arrive.
"The reef we used to surf over is now 3m above the sea," said Mr Carr, who fled Afulu with Mr Thorns on Thursday.
"The village, or what's left of it, has also been raised by 3m-4m. The new high water mark is about 200m out from where it was."
Posted by bubba138 at 08:49 AM | Comments (0) |
A Little Premature
ABCNews Headline: "Pope Said Conscious, in Grave Condition."
Did they have to use the word "grave?"
On a serious note, the Pope did suffer heart failure and seems to be looking forward to joining the Savior:
He said the 84-year-old pontiff had been "informed of the gravity of his situation" and rather than be hospitalized, he decided to stay in his apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square, where thousands of pilgrims gathered to pray for him.Navarro-Valls said John Paul asked aides to read him the biblical passage describing the final stage of the Way of the Cross, the path that Christ took to his Crucifixion. In that stage, according to the Bible, Christ's body was taken down from the cross, wrapped in a linen shroud and placed in his tomb.
Navarro-Valls said the pope followed attentively and made the sign of the cross.
"This is surely an image I have never seen in these 26 years," Navarro-Valls said. Choking up, he walked out of the room.
Posted by bubba138 at 07:46 AM | Comments (0) |
Shredders and Missing Eight Minutes
Instapundit reader Patrick Hynes wonders:
Berger did not destroy (or even attempt to AFAIK) all of the copies of the Clarke report, so what he was trying to expunge can't be anything Clarke said in the report. Must it not be true that Berger was after the marginal notations made on the report by officials who read the particular copies of the Clarke report Berger shredded?How is Berger's destruction of the handwritten "conversations" that occurred in the margins of those reports any different than Nixon's erasure of eight minutes of audio tape?
Update: James Taranto makes another interesting comparison:
Berger was reviewing the documents to prepare for his testimony before the Sept. 11 commission. For those who think the news media aren't biased, how many stories were published about this actual crime, versus about the "Valerie Plame scandal," which looks now to have been totally phony?
Posted by bubba138 at 07:33 AM | Comments (0) |