The Michael "Meathead" Stivic Of The Week Award

This week I'm giving it to, Drum Roll Please...

Everyone who is going to be on stage at some point during this years Academy Awards.

I know they haven't said anything yet, but...Think about it, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, and a whole slew of other self important people telling us how courageous they are for making movies, and for spouting other peoples lines.

The only important question is this.
Will they show a picture of Theo van Gogh, in the cavalcade of dead film industry people that they show every year?

What's Good For The Goose...

A wonderful story in today's local fishwrap (yes I provide the link this time) has RI's "reform" candidate for the Democrat nomination for the US Senate seat held by Linc Chafee pleading innocent to campaign finance shenanigans

Yet here is part of an editorial by Senior editor Froma Harrop, from Oct 2, 2005.

I take some poetic license in referring to the House majority leader in the past tense. Others may point out that the House majority leader is presumed innocent until proven guilty. To [Tom DeLay]'s many detractors, the indictment is only more oozing on the cake. To us, whatever happens in Travis County (Texas) district court, DeLay is finished.

This is of course only part of it, because the rest of it would cost money, and since I don't even buy the fishwrap, why would I pay for computerized copies of said fishwrap.

Now wasn't Mr DeLay indicted for "laundering monies" thro campaign contributions? For doing something similar to the following.

As Brown's campaign solicited a total of $25,000 from the Hawaii, Maine and Massachusetts Democratic parties at the end of last year, it asked some of Brown's contributors, in turn, to give money to those state party organizations, the Brown camp has acknowledged.

Yet in this view of the world

The fundraising gambit, ... could carry the Brown campaign close to the fine line that separates lawful third-party campaign solicitations from unlawful ones, according to Larry Noble of The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance monitoring group.

What's the difference? Why the letter after the candidates name of course.

Well once again, why am I even the least bit surprised?

How Did I Miss This?

Victor Davis Hanson (a.k.a. The Smartest Man In America) had an Op Ed in the WSJ yesterday about the Iraqi Civil War. There hasn't been a Civil War that the Left has been more interested in since Franco stopped Communists and Anarchists from destroying Spain.

Here is the piece, with all the usual great incite from VDH/TSMIA.

He sets the record straight as to how the Iraqis reacted to the destruction of a Holy Site, they yelled and screamed, and then:

Thugs and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced...Shaken Sunni and Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a viable coalition government.

Wow, that's not what the LSM media told me, but wait there's more:

But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost--as we heard the tired metaphors of "final straw" and "camel's back" mindlessly repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us.

I know, I know being surprised at the LSM's bias is getting old, but I can dream can't I?
I can dream of a day when these bozos get that the majority of those of us who vote, don't rely on them for the majority of our news.
They may still have the rubes and the morons, who they question for their weekly/weakly opinion polls attacking the President and the Administration, but the only polls that matter, are fed at the wellspring of the internet, esp. the blogosphere.

A Great Question From Cptham

The ten who voted against the Patriot Act
Akaka
Bingaman
Byrd
Feingold
Harkin
Jeffords
Leahy
Levin
Murray
Wyden

Can I question their patriotism now?

I Wonder What Will Happen?

The WSJ has an editorial (subscribers only) today, by Roya Hakakian, about the hidden news from Iran.
Update: Roya Hakakian's own site has a free link to the piece.
It seams that there has been growing labor unrest between the mullahs and a Union of Workers of the United Bus Company of Tehran. The union called, in December, for a strike to take place on Jan. 28th, and the mullahs did what autocrats do all over the world. They cracked down on the leaders, the members and the families of those involved.
What, you don't remember reading about this in the "Freedom Loving" LSM? Well that is because, well I'll straight type out one of the better paragraphs for you.

What did enlightened people do to support the strikers? Very little. Most Iranian intellectuals, former Marxist activists included, were consumed by polite electronic debated over the Dutch cartoons. Hundreds of striking drivers were arrested, as the cameras of the world's biggest news agencies shot images of the couple of dozen government-paid hoodlums throwing rocks at the the Danish embassy in Tehran. Wives and children, even distant relatives, were hauled off into detention to force the union leaders to turn themselves in, as India's Communist Party threatened to leave the ruling coalition in New Delhi if India voted to refer Iran to the Security Council. Clearly, workers of the world ought to postpone uniting until other scores are settled.

This doesn't surprise me, but I remember the way that even the Liberal labor union movement in this country, put it's distrust of RWR on hold to help out the Polish Solidarity Movement. They stood behind the workers as they tried their best to get themselves some freedom in a system designed to deny freedom.

Well I guess we can all just wait for the left to get over their irrational hatred of GWB...
No wait, that will never happen, never mind.

One Day Later; I Still Don't Get It!

In the local fishwrap yesterday I read one of the more confusing pieces about the RI Republican Primary to date.
Merrill C. Bakst, Political columnist, penned a piece entitled Chafee, Laffey: Now the battle is over Israel.

And the point appears to be this:
Chafee has been to Israel; so he is pro Israel.
Laffey hasn't been, so even if he says he is, he can't be pro Israel.
Got it? No? Good neither did anyone else!

Now I would love to provide a link to this fishwrap, but the ProJo is near impossible to register with and is a pain if you register and forget your password. So I'll just straight type my favorite part right now.

There's plenty of pro-Israel political money around the United States...Linc Chafee says the Christian Right, increasingly active in Republican politics, also has a strong, Biblically inspired interest in Israel. (emphasis added)

Okay! What was the point of that? Well in the Bluest Blue State, if you can get people all worked up about The Christian Right, you can keep your friends in office. The rest of the piece is a list of prominent Jewish Rhode Islanders, and which side they are on. Or he has a list of weak-a## excuses from the Senator for why he voted for different bills that affected Israel. My favorit being this gem.

Chafee says he opposed the Iraq war because he didn't believe Bush
administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction he could use against America. And he says, Israel is now worse off because the war spread unrest in the Middle East. (emphasis added, again)

There was no counter to the lies from the Senator from Virginia, in this column. I mean, I mean, AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!
The administration NEVER SAID that Sodamn Insane had WMD's that he was going to use against the US!
And the Middle East was a garden spot before the war, right?

It is so much fun to watch these people just dance and sing the same old lefty song and dance.

Mass Citizens Get No Choice

Former Rep Peter Blute decided against a run for US Senate. This means that the Hero of Chappaquiddick will run for reelection UN-OPPOSED this year.

This is a crying shame.

The usual answers were given by Mr. Blute for not running, wanting to spend more time with his family, etc., etc., etc...
Most political junkies say that he was afraid of having a past indiscretion be used against him in the campaign. There was a problem with a cruise ship and some drunken staffers from Massport, but as far as I can find, no one died.

Think about it, someone isn't going to run against the Fat Swimmer because of a image problem involving water and alcohol. I would think that the Kennedy clan would just agree to stay silent on any such issue, as the name Mary Jo Kopechne would continue to appear in news reports.

But then the Kennedy clan isn't known for playing fair, too bad, because now the only losers are those of us who would like to see the runt of the litter have to get a real job.

Relinking Is Still Fun

Here again are those hateful pen and ink drawings of The Profit.
I hope you keep enjoying them.

Note this site takes a couple of seconds to refresh, but they all show up as you scroll down.

Mudville Alert

Greyhawk over at The Mudville has a blood pressure raising post about the current Defense Department budget, and all the useless crap that has been added to the total cost of the budget.
The left will yell and scream about the total, but it up to us on the right to yell and scream about the waste.
These are my two favorites, Greyhawk lists many more:

- $1.8 million for Los Angeles sixth-graders who are "disrespectful, have poor grades and don't obey rules."
- $500,000 for curling, dog mushing, snowboarding and a snowshoe biathlon at Alaska's Arctic Winter Games.

WFT.

Wasn't this stuff supposed to end with the new leadership in the House? Well I guess it could have been put there before, but it does need to be taken out now.

The Frank "Ferret Face" Burns Of The Week Award

Now I have used a liberal icon a few times to roast liberal icons, with this name I'm ready to roast a conservative. As you may or may not remember Major Frank Burns was a pompous republican ass. Well there are a few of them and a couple of them raised their heads high enough for me to notice them and give them their own award.

Senator William "I want to be LOVED like John McCain" Frist:
For his truly irrational and racist reaction to the Dubai Ports World buyout of the British company P&O. It had nothing to do with port security and it was just an excuse for Bill Frist to gather some of that sweet media coverage that other "courageous" Republicans get when they "stand-up" to President Bush.

Frist gave the following statement earlier last week;

"If the administration cannot delay this process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."
"I'm not against foreign ownership," said Frist, "but my main concern is national security."

He was speaking to reporters in Long Beach, Calif., where Frist was doing a fact-finding tour on port security and immigration issues. This type of trip is also known as a preliminary campaign stop to test the waters for a run for President.
He states that he is not against foreign ownership of ports, well then it must be the possible owners, because he had no complaints about the ownership by a company from Shoe Bomber Richard Reed's homeland. HHMMMMM
While I realize that there were Republicans and Conservatives who said more outrageous things about this situation, Senator Frist, should know better. His stand is pure politics and it needs to be called what it is.
That is all.

The Michael "Meathead" Stivic Of The Week Award

This one has only one nominee:

The Admissions Department at Yale University.

Why you ask?

Let's try this one on for size. From the New Criterion Blog ARMAVIRUMQUE:

What "caliber" (interesting choice of word) are we talking about here? Well, Hashemi al-Haw Haw, whose primary objective while in the employ of the Taliban was to justify the dynamiting of some 1000-year-old statues of the Buddha in Kabul, Afghanistan, has "a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree." There you have it. Probably makes Scutch the Quarterback look like Cicero by comparison.

Wow. There's that Ivy League edumacation fer ya.
But it isn't really all that hard, remember those statues were religious icons after all.
This story is also found over at Opinion Journal.
This is a major WTF moment.

Olympics As Metaphor

No not in the old "Good Vs. Evil", "US Vs. Them", "Spy Vs. Spy" ways, no I mean in a new way, a way that involves the coverage of the Games and the "Networks of NBC".

If you spent any time watching the games during Prime Time, first congratulations there weren't very many of you. But Secondly and most IMPORTANTLY you would have been very confused if you watched after looking at a globe. Because the globe would have told you that Turin Italy was hours ahead of us Time Zone wise, but not in NBC TIME!!
Bob Costas and his co-hosts talked to the viewers like they didn't already know the results. They embargoed video to any other network, but not the results. So what you ask? Well it was just an example of a big network's arrogance. There is only us, we are your only source for Olympic results, we will tell you who won, when we feel like it.
I mean was there really any reason to have the prime time show run until midnight each night?
Although had it been any shorter, there would have been more than 10 commercials per segment, because it appears that NBC sold every minute to someone and had to jam them all in.

So what is my point?
Good question?
The networks are failing to present the world in their own special little lefty way, because there are choices; from other networks, the internet and talk radio. The world view that the big city/blue city networks is being countered daily and truthfully.
They lost the race, but they are still waiting to tell us the results. It may take a while, we have to wait for the Russian judge to get out of the men's room.