Editorial Blog
December 1-18, 2002
By JEFF RUSHING, Webmaster
Good column in the Boston Herald today on how the Lott fiasco has gone too far in the knee-jerk reactions of the Left. Joe Fitzgerald recalls some similarly outrageous comments by Lefties that went all but unnoticed.
For instance, future Dem. presidential candidate John Kerry, on the Don Imus show, said that "The Iraqi army is in such bad shape, even the Italians could kick their ." Another time, he said of former Mass. governor, Bill Weld, "a guy who takes more vacations than people on welfare."
Read it all. There are more good examples.
Posted 12/18/02, 12:05 p.m.
The Jordanian government is keeping the Palestinians down! I look forward to anti-Jordan screeds over Palestinian Arab oppressors any day now! Come on, Yasser, let's hear some aimless rants!
Posted 12/18/02, 10:05 a.m.
One of the strangest things about the upcoming war with Iraq is that while the U.S. is charged with wanting to oust Saddam for his oil, it's somehow all right that others seek appeasement to protect their interests. For example, the main reason that France and Russia are wavering is to ensure that they don't lose money from oil contracts with Iraq, looking for handouts from us to make up for any lost revenue. Then today we see that Germany's biggest worry over the war is that they are - covertly - a major arms supplier to Iraq.
Posted 12/18/02, 9:55 a.m.
Now the Trent Lott fiasco is not just sad, but frustrating. Lott, appearing on BET last night to suck up to the Congressional Black Caucus, endorsed affirmative action. The GOP Majority Leader is willing to cave in on his own principles and that of his party in order to save his skin. How pathetic. Why wait until January to revote and pick a leader besides Lott? Why don’t Republican senators get it over with this week?
Posted 12/17/02, 2:35 a.m.
When you hear Lefties complain that the media leans to the right (?!), just remember that 89 percent of Washington-based reporters said they voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, with seven percent voting for George H.W. Bush and two percent for Ross Perot. Asked "How would you characterize your political orientation?" 61 percent said "liberal" or "liberal to moderate." Only nine percent labeled themselves "conservative" or "moderate to conservative."
The “National Survey of the Role of Polls in Policymaking," completed by Princeton Survey Research Associates questioned 1,206 members of the public, 300 "policymakers" and 301 "media professionals, including reporters and editors from top newspapers, TV and radio networks, news services and news magazines." The survey found that 59 percent of those in the media considered themselves to be “moderate,” 25 percent self-identified as “liberal” and only a piddling 6 percent said they were “conservative.” (Courtesy Media Research Center)
Posted 12/16/02, 3:35 a.m.
This week's best Vents from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
– Maybe Hollywood stars should stick to what they know best - drugs, alcohol and shoplifting.
– The people who are attacking John Ashcroft for spending all his time protecting our country are the same people who praised Janet Reno for spending all her time protecting Bill Clinton.
- Don't break the law and you have no reason to fear John Ashcroft.
- I wonder where the 'Poinsettia Pronunciation Police' are this year.
- If Lott is driven from his position as Senate majority leader, will his wife turn into a pillar of salt?
- You cannot do much about your ancestors, but you can have an enormous influence on your descendants.
- At a wedding I attended last week, the printed program said the bride and groom would be "Exchanging Wows." I suspect that was a preview of the honeymoon.
- Headline you'll never see: "304th member of Augusta National decides not to quit."
- Why are the Hollywood lefties so upset about going to war with Iraq? They've been dropping their own bombs on the American public pretty regularly for the last few years.
- Iraq says that it has no doomsday arms but will use them if attacked by the United States.
- What part of my TV past will Old Navy and pillage next?
- Our neighborhood has been rocked by a holiday decorating scandal. A "Mrs. Snowman" inflatable from the corner lot disappeared with a Santa from down the street. Mr. Snowman is looking rather Frosty.
- My co-worker said she would vote for Bill Clinton for president again if only for the entertainment factor.
- The invitation to our annual Lion's Club wives' luncheon reads, "Bring your wife, your or your friend." Should I draw straws?
- TV is so sorry, I'm thinking about learning how to read.
- They say that the best things in life are free, but that doesn't explain the thousands of dollars charged on my credit card.
Posted 12/16/02, 3:30 a.m.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that global warming is coming! Get ready for your doom! Oh, wait. Maybe not:
"Scientists have been warning that the Earth is slowly heating up, that the recent run of gentle winters in the United States is no fluke, but the warm-up to the big meltdown. Now, however, comes a chilling prediction from some of the same experts. Before the climate gets balmier, they say, it could take a sudden turn toward the frigid--and stay that way for decades, if not centuries."
These are the same folks who want to spend billions of dollars on making SUVs get 22 miles per gallon instead of 19. Maybe I should get my two-year-old nephew to relay to these guys that usually things do feel warmer after being cold - these 'scientists' consider global warming so bedrock that it's silly.
Posted 12/16/02, 3:25 a.m.
Some of Martha Burk's ilk plan to spend next April's Masters golf tournament by walking in front of the entrance dressed in burqas in protest of the club's policy not to admit women as members. Yep. Nothing says "wrong priorities" than comparing the lack of rich women playing golf to women beaten for showing an ankle and refused education.
Posted 12/16/02, 3:25 a.m.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat demanded Osama bin Laden stop using the Palestinian struggle for statehood as a reason for the al-Qaida terror network's attacks. This is hilarious yet outrageous, since he's strategically distancing himself from one world evil to keep his own terroristic regime in place.
Posted 12/15/02, 10:45 p.m.
Who knew that among Sasketchewan Indians bred a hotbed of anti-Semitism?
With comments that would be Goebbels blush, David Ahenakew, a senator with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), a former chief of the organization and a former chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), said Friday Hitler did the right thing when he "fried" six million Jews during the Second World War.
Posted 12/15/02, 10:44 p.m.
Now that the GOP runs the Senate again, I sure do hope that they choose to elect a Majority leader besides Trent Lott, who wasn't effective in the 90s, and won't be any better in 2003.
The final straw was last weekend, when he single-handidly pushed the GOP back two steps in improving symbolic race relations with blacks long subservant to the Left. For those who hadn't heard, Lott was speaking at the 100th birthday celebration for Strom Thurmond last week:
"I want to say this about my state (Mississippi): When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Background: Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, was the presidential nominee of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party in 1948. He carried Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and his home state. He declared during his campaign against Democrat Harry S. Truman, who supported civil rights legislation, and Republican Thomas Dewey: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches." On July 17, 1948, delegates from 13 southern states gathered in Birmingham to nominate Thurmond and adopt a platform that said in part, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." (Washington Post)
I know Lott was just trying to make an old man smile, but there are better ways. When you hear it, the audience gasps or is otherwise silent when he says it, knowing that the world would not be a better place if Dixiecrats had their way in '48.
Lott was ineffective as Senate leader when Clinton was president, cowering in fear of the Democrats. He won't be any different now, and the GOP has some re-building to do with someone who can make a difference. I vote for Bill Frist of Tennessee, who many see as a future presidential pick, but he's also an effective speaker and conveys his opinions and intentions clearly.
Posted 12/11/02, 4:37 a.m.
Jimmy Carter, who never met a dictator he hasn't coddled, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today. Surely he recognizes that he only won so that the hoity-toity Nobel committee could give Bush a "kick in the leg," as the chairman admitted, regarding the current president's foreign policy.
In his speech, Carter said: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
Oh really? Well I'm sure that will reassure Jews saved from the ovens in WWII, the Muslims in Bosnia, and the women in Afghanistan, among the millions of others saved because of "evil" warfare.
Posted 12/10/02, 9:25 a.m.
This week's best Vents from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
- My grandson surprised my daughter by telling her he didn't want to go to the mall to see Santa. So she asked him, "Don't you believe in Santa?" "Yes," he replied, "but this is the last year."
- I'm looking through a Frederick's of Hollywood Christmas catalog and I see they have French maid and tuxedo costumes. I ask my husband which one he prefers, and he asks, "Do they have a Waffle House uniform?"
- Georgia's new school motto: "We may be 50th academically, but we're 10th alphabetically and that ain't half bad."
- Is pepperoni beef or pork?
- A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it also uses up a thousand times more memory.
- How do you know when you are out of invisible ink?
- I hate it when the TV remote is all the way down at the other end of the coffee table, just past the dog, who wouldn't get it for you even if he had hands.
– To all guys: Just say not to all those guilt trip diamond commercials and give her a crock pot.
– My computer beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.
– Is it called rap music because all of the singers have rap sheets?
– Now I know why our public schools are rated last in the country. Schools were canceled or closed early in some counties because there was a THREAT of ice in the forecast.
Posted 12/09/02, 5:02 a.m.
Royal & Ancient Club is changing the greenside sand trap at No. 17 of the Old Course at St. Andrews to make it easier for duffers. Problem is, this makes it a lot easier for professionals as well, and could take away some of the drama and intrigue from one of the most famous holes in golf. Now, instead of baling to the right and ending up to the right of the green on the road, golfers could bale in the bunker and get up and down easier. Thus ends much of the attraction of the Road Hole.
Posted 12/08/02, 4:05 a.m.
The Washington Post has a piece on the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier heading out to sea, probably to the Persian Gulf. As the ship was leaving the dock a voice came over the loudspeakers and declared: "Peace on Earth to men of goodwill...All others stand by." (Jonah Goldberg, National Review)
Posted 12/07/02, 6:35 a.m.
After a day to sleep on it, take some of the vitriol back from yesterday's rant against Tom Glavine for signing with the New York Mets. I acknowledge that the Atlanta Braves - specifically General manager John Schuerholz - disrespected what Glavine has done for the organization the last 18 years, and with such an insult as was their treatment of him during the negotiations, I don't blame him for bolting. But going to the Mets, well, I think Glavine was just sticking it in Schuerholz's craw. Ugh. Tommy in a Mets uniform. I could've taken the Phillies, but not this.
Posted 12/07/02, 6:35 a.m.
The French tried to stop Yahoo from selling Nazi memorabilia on its auction sites, but a bestselling novel for teens in France is title Rever la Palestine, the story of a young Palestinian who becomes a suicide bomber. One of the novel's heroes calls for Jihad against the Jews who are 'a doomed people' and to 'kill all Israelis.' The main character is encouraged "to kill hundreds in his suicide bombing" and later does blow himself up along with five Israelis. Translated as Dream of Palestine, it was written by a fifteen-year-old Egyptian who lives in Italy and apparently knows all about the call to fight "bloodthirsty Jews, who assassinate children and old people, profane mosques, and Arab women."
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Posted 12/07/02, 6:35 a.m.
Canadian anti-war idiots are on their way to Iraq to serve as human shields in case of war with Saddam.
Hey, if they're lucky, maybe they can serve faithfully in Saddam's rooms. Yep, you read that right. As part of the British government's dossier on Iraqi crimes, it talks about "the appalling human rights record of Saddam’s regime." Among the mentions are the use of electric drills on prisoners' hands, brutal of men and women, women beheaded and their heads mounted in public view, eye-gouging, cutting off ears, slicing off tongues, lowering of prisoners into acid, electroshock and confinement in coffin-like cages. This, of course, was just the physical. There is also talk of burning and draining Iraqi lands to punish people by starving them. But hey, we're all about oil, while the Left just wants to save the world. Well, at least they used to.
The Left in the U.S. used to agree with today's administration. Who said it?:
Iraq is a "rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed."
That would be President Bill Clinton, in 1998.
But now, Jo Wood, a psychology professor at Carleton University, says groups across Canada are raising money to fund a “national peace coalition” against a war on Iraq. Wood told CBC News Online that the Iraqi people get hurt either way. “All efforts to hurt Saddam hurt the Iraqi people much more and weaken them so that they cannot find their own resources to make a better world for themselves,” she said.
Yeah, that's it. They'll be so much better off with Saddam remaining in power than with the U.S. instituting a new regime.
Posted 12/07/02, 6:35 a.m.
Well, it’s almost official. Tom Glavine took the money and agreed to play for the daggum Mets. The Mets! I’ve got two words for my former favorite player: Benedict Arnold.
In other baseball news, the Hall of Fame ballots are out. Next year, Darryl Kile will be given a special deferment from the five year rule and placed on the ballot less than two years after his tragic death this past summer. I can only guess that this is a sympathetic move for Kile’s family, friends, former teammates and organizations. But it’s the wrong move. I only hope that the voters see past the grief, because Kile’s stats don’t warrant entry in the Hall by itself.
Posted 12/06/02, 3:20 a.m.
Let's get this straight - again - the Middle East conflict is not a "cycle of violence." Palestinians purposely murder kids on a bus. Israeli army kills those responsible. That's not a cycle, it's a reaction. If the Palestinians stopped bombing, the Israelis wouldn't have any people to go after. But the Palestinian terrorists wouldn't stop gunning down Israeli voters at polling place (as occurred this weekend).
There is little tolerance of rival religions in nations where Islam is the rule of law. For example, only Muslims are allowed in the entire city of Mecca, but you won’t have any problem finding Buddhists waltzing into synagogues or churches in non-Muslim countries. And Lutherans aren't strapping themselves with bombs and jumping on buses or crashing carloads of explosives into mosques.
Posted 12/06/02, 3:20 a.m.
Ever notice that the "World's Funniest Movie Outakes," aren't?
Posted 12/06/02, 3:15 a.m.
As a member of Augusta National quit this week because of the flap over women’s membership, I would like to extend a hand to chairman Hootie Johnson and respectfully offer to take his place.
Posted 12/06/02, 3:15 a.m.
Great article by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund on Thursday. He makes it clear that while Dim-ocrats have lately whined about the “conservative press” conspiracy lately, it’s clear that they’re in full smear and attack mode, as Das-hole, Gore and Clinton all jumped on the bandwagon.
Then again, as Fund notes, “Democrats may continue to engage in ritual denial that they need to rethink their policies. They can keep raging against sinister and shadowy elements they perceive in the media. If they do, they'll keep losing.”
That doesn’t sound so bad, after all.
Just remember that when they play the victims, that it was Clinton and his cronies that begin the politics of personal destruction: "The Democratic Party told voters in some states that electing Republicans would result in more Church burnings. Alec Baldwin exclaimed that Henry Hyde should be stoned to death for participating in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux openly wished on PBS that Clarence Thomas would eat so much fatty foods that he would drop dead. Jesse Jackson accused the GOP of deliberately targeting Holocaust survivors for disenfranchisement in the 2000 election. A Democratic ad in the last election featured George Bush pushing an old lady off a cliff. And don't even get me started on the collected sayings of Paul Begala and James Carville." (Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online)
Posted 12/06/02, 3:13 a.m.
There's nothing like home repair to make you feel less than a man. For the past two months I've had to really twist to get my key to unlock the deadbolt in my front door. After calling the office about it this weekend, today I wake up and see a note from the maintenance guy saying "Sprayed WD-40." Much better. I'm such a wimp.
Posted 12/3/02, 2:00 a.m.
Last week were told that Muslims in America saw a 1,600% increase as victims of hate-crimes following 9/11. It's not so much when you consider the numbers. There were 28 incidents in 2000, 481 in 2001. In comparison, according to FBI data, there were 2,899 hate crimes against blacks in 2001, more than 1,000 against Jews and nearly 1,400 against s. In addition, the 2001 hate crimes report was drawn from 11,987 law enforcement agencies around the country, up from 1,160 agencies in 2000.That's a jump of 933%.
Posted 12/3/02, 1:55 a.m.
This week's best Vents from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
- I'm going to start watching what I eat and exercising because I want to live long enough to see how Michael Jackson's kids turn out.
- Is Thanksgiving still an actual holiday, or is it just a speed bump en route to the High Holy Days of Merchandising?
- You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
- Why does the Postal Service spend big bucks on TV ads? Do they think there are people out there who haven't heard about them?
- When are you foo-foo pointyhead movie critics going to get it? We LIKE Bond movies because they are all the same. Does everything have to be an intellectual pursuit?
- I just finished reading all 12 horoscopes and it looks like everyone on earth had a good day.
- Who is Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon? Dr. Seuss?
- True terror is waking up one morning and realizing that your high school class is running the country.
- The media that continue to use the phrase "acting unilaterally," despite more than a dozen nations joining the United States to force Iraqi compliance, have changed the meaning to "without liberals' approval."
- Written on a wall in a woman's restroom: "My husband follows me everywhere." Written just below it: "I do not."
- The Beatles wanted to hold your hand. Eminem wants to cut it off and stick it down your throat.
- Why do liberals have their shorts in a wad because Fox News tends to be conservative? You guys have ABC, CBS, NBC, PBC, CNN, the entertainment industry and 80 percent of the major daily newspapers.
- Why do I suspect that there wasn't a whole lot to eat backstage for the s at the Victoria's Secret TV show?
- My wife's always looking for sales on shoes, so I told her she could get a pair at the bowling alley for a dollar.
Posted 12/1/02, 3:17 a.m.
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