Posted by at 01:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

ANKLEBITER BUDDING AUTHOR!

H-Bombs forthcoming book: I finally have a plot outline I am happy with. I have thirty chapters plotted out and am on pace to put one chapter to bed a day. Heres the plot summary: A Secret Service agent and a right-of-center blogger team up to solve the murder of a Supreme Court nominee and end up unraveling a far-reaching liberal conspiracy.

Posted by kitty at 10:53 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

THE LONG GOOD-BYE

For a woman who supposedly wanted to die, Terri Schiavo is tenaciously clinging on to life, even without food and water.

TERRI HUBBY'S AUTOPSY PLAN
As Terri Schiavo hovered near death yesterday, her husband made arrangements for an autopsy that could prove that his wife had lived in a persistent vegetative state.
The Pinellas County medical examiner has agreed to conduct the autopsy of Schiavo at the request of husband Michael, who is confident it will validate his decision to withdraw her feeding tube March 18.

TOO PUBLIC A DEATH
Sad to say, the American public wants Terri Schiavo gone. And people seem to understand that if the GOP had let this matter lie, they would not have been subjected to two weeks' worth of headlines and breathless news coverage.
George W. Bush and his Republican Party insisted that the American people become mindful and aware of this horrible story, for which there could never be a happy ending. I think the public is blaming the messenger.
If I'm right, there's a risk for Democrats and liberals who want to use this as a wedge issue against Republicans. The public will resent them just as much as it resents the Republicans and conservatives for keeping the subject alive long after Terri Schiavo is dead.

American Death Sentence
The local newspaper here in Beverly Hills expressed it best in a headline: "Terry Schiavo Sentenced To Death." Because she had a "husband" who did not want her alive to talk about him or for whatever reason, she was sentenced to die in a cruel and unusual way that the Supreme Court would never have countenanced for the most savage mass killer -- slow starvation and dehydration.
...
This is what we have come to. The unelected judiciary has simply taken over, like a gangster governmental branch, from the rest of the government, and it is a judiciary of death. And this is with a Republican, right to life president. Whena Democrat wins again, as will surely happen, God help us.

Lying Jesuits and Journalists
Just as reporters are more comfortable calling soon-to-be-killed human fetuses "blastocysts," so they prefer calling a disabled human like Schiavo a "vegetable." Reporters helped launch the abortion movement with euphemisms denying the humanity of children, now they help the euthanasia movement pick up speed with euphemisms denying the humanity of the disabled and the elderly.
...
Euthanasia has never been about ending the burdens of the ill but about ending the burdens of the living who don't want to care for the ill. It is not about "letting die" -- the media's dishonest description of what's happening to Schiavo -- but about killing someone who isn't dying but people wish would die.
...
If Terri Schiavo were in the act of dying, she would have died. It is precisely because she wasn't in the act of dying that her husband resorted to having her killed by starvation.

EXCELLENT!: Joe Scarborough talks about, and shows video of, the 80s' Live Aid and the starvation in Ethiopia in his discussion of Terri Schiavo's death by starvation.

Memo to Christopher Hitchens: In his latest Slate column, Hitchens writes of his regret discussing the Schiavo case to begin with, then picks up the shovel and continues to dig.

Posted by kitty at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Strange but True: Lawsuit Over Reduced-Sugar Cereal

A mother in San Diego is suing Kraft Foods, General Mills and Kelogg USA because she claims their low-sugar cereals are a crock.

Apparently, Jennifer Hardee thought that Fruity Pebbles would be more nutritious with less sugar and "was extremely upset," according to her lawyer, when she discovered that the calorie count was the same as the regular version.

Come on now! A cereal that features Fred and Barney and turns your milk purple will have extra nutritional value because the sugar count was lowered?

If Mrs. Hardee wants her children to have a nutritious breakfast, she should start giving them oatmeal (not instant!), eggs, bacon and other such foods that aren't processed to the point of non-recognition. Blaming the food industry because the products they sell because lots of people buy them is simply passing the buck for her own poor choices at the grocery store.

Consumers don't always understand the details in nutritional labels, he [Miami lawyer Howard Rubenstein] said.

"A lot of people, quite frankly, don't have the educational ability to make those decisions. They rely on the one-line ad," he said Monday. "It is that kind of an ad that adds a lot of ambiguity, and it shouldn't."

Did I mention this is a class action suit? How much money will Hardee and other California residents actually get? That's the real crock.

If people can't be bothered to find out more about the foods they buy and put into their mouths (and their children's mouths), then that should be their problem. Frivolous lawsuits such as this one prove once again that tort reform is sorely needed in this country.

Posted by at 10:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Brooks Contemplates Switching Allegiance?

No, not politically, but far more fundamentally: He's considering rooting for the new team in Washington over his beloved Mets. I imagine this paragraph will draw irate denials in certain quarters:

Certainly our loyalty to a team has little to do with the players who happen to be on it at any given moment. If the Yankees and the Red Sox swapped all their players, their fans would blink for a few seconds, but then go on cheering for their same old team just as passionately.

Posted by pat at 10:34 AM | Comments (2)

Can someone help with a work assignment?

I need to locate an article on "positive indexing for social security" by "Posen" that "probably appeared in the WSJ in the last couple of days."

Best Researcher award will be bestowed on this wonderful individual (I need the text...not just a link to an article I can't read cause I have to pay).

Posted by Aaron at 09:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

This Is Hard to Believe, Even in the Times

Few things have been overhyped and underdelivered so spectacularly as the European Union. Sure, the Euro has been a big hit, appreciating strongly against the dollar. Unfortunately for the Europeans, having your currency strong against the dollar does not help business or the working class, since it makes European exports more expensive and less able to compete against American products. Result: The unemployment rate in Europe's two biggest economies, Germany and France, exceeds 12% and 10% respectively.

And the EU itself is turning into something of a joke. France and Germany have been getting by for years with budget deficits beyond those allowed by the EU constitution. To prop up their faltering social safety nets, the Europeans are allowing themselves to be invaded via immigration by Middle Easterners, apparently without requiring assimilation into the local culture. The result is an EU that may not have many Europeans in a couple generations.

Two Op-Ed contributors to the NY Times, Rafael Fernandez de Castro and Rossana Fuentes Berain look at this and ask, why doesn't the US try the same thing over here?

First, security: the attacks of Sept. 11 and the rise of global terrorism show the need for a safety perimeter around the continent. The Mexican and the United States governments are deeply troubled by intelligence reports that Al Qaeda might be laying plans for an attack across America's southern border. But simply putting more guards and towers in the Arizona desert won't keep America safe. In place of the inefficient borders between the countries today, we need a policy on a strong external continental border.

Each country would of course keep sovereignty over the edges of its own territory, but each would have to meet border security requirements agreed upon by all three parties to ensure there are no weak links. This wall around the continent would, in turn, allow us to make internal North American crossings more flexible; the European model, with its uniform visa requirements, is worth following.

Ehhhhh, no! I'm not as anti-immigration as many of the other folks on the right are, but open borders between the US and Canada? No way!

Just kidding; we all know what Rafael and Rossana are talking about. And think about what they are offering in return: supposed border security because the Mexicans and Canadians will be on the job. I don't know if Mexico is as corrupt as it was in 1982, when during a vacation in Acapulco I was offered pot for sale by at least three Mexican cops and asked to exchange pesos into dollars by two customs guys, but I'd suspect that bribery is still a way of life down there. The Canadians aren't apparently as corrupt, but they make up for it with imcompetence and political correctness. Sorry, I don't want either of those countries running guard duty for us.

Posted by pat at 11:53 PM | Comments (3)

Michael Jackson's Persecution Complex

On my blog tonight, I posted an entry about Michael Jackson complaining that it's the stigma of his being a black man that is causing all of his problems. You can read it here.

When is he going to get it through his plastic surgery-enhanced noggin that it's not his race (which is undetermined as of this writing), but his actions that condemn him in the public eye?

Posted by at 08:35 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

MSM vs. Bloggers

In a letter to Poynter Online's Jim Romenesko, Weldon Berger criticizes David Shaw's LA Times piece Do bloggers deserve basic journalistic protections?.

Here is an excerpt from Berger's letter to Romenesko:

"There are something like ten million bloggers out there and many of them are as nasty and feckless as they come (and would shriek with laughter at being accused of pretending to journalism). But institutional journalism, with its lofty standards and fail-safes, has its own serial offenders, its Nedra Picklers and Judith Millers and such, who regularly trigger the hackery alarms. Those two should have lifetime invites to the press critics ball, and they'd never lack for a dance with their peers. The notion that they're more deserving of legal protections than their more responsible blogging counterparts in similar straits would be laughable if it weren't so frickin' irritating.

Given the flaws in his own reporting, Shaw should probably be asking bloggers, many of whom survive and thrive - accurately - with only spell-checking, Google and common sense at their disposal rather than an armada of editors, for lessons on how to get things right."

Over on his own blog, Weldon Berger writes the following:
"Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw has a column in Sunday’s paper in which he argues for the reservation of source shield privileges to bought-and-paid-for journalists, excluding, I trust (for no good reason), the ones who have been bought and paid for twice: once by their employers and once by the government.

It’s an epic low-grade temper tantrum from an unreservedly elitist journalist who continues to project his own and his profession’s failings onto the backs of bloggers."

Here is an excerpt from the letter that Weldon Berger sent to David Shaw:
"Institutional journalism is an unholy mess. You might want to focus on getting your own house in order before you vent about bloggers. I’ll close with what one very well-respected press critic told me his wife said about his work: “What an easy job! The sky is raining shit, and all you have to do is stand there with a net and catch some of it.”

And no, I’m not making that up."

The posts on Weldon Berger's blog reveal that Berger is a liberal. Yet, even a liberal blogger can see the folly of MSM members claiming to be superior to bloggers.

3/28/2005 2:57:03 PM

From WELDON BERGER: David Shaw's sanctimonious temper tantrum in the LA Times represents all that is fossilized about the institutional media. He says institutional journalists deserve stronger shield laws because they benefit from the filters imposed upon them - four, in his case, including a copy editor and three to ensure that he doesn't libel anyone, spit in the soup or get his facts wrong, and he could benefit from a fifth to guard against self-parody - while ignoring the mountain of evidence that the filters are clogged, some of which he provides in his own piece.

Shaw credited bloggers with crashing the Rather gate, but apparently didn't read either the CJR takedown of bloggers and their press tag-alongs in that instance, or Pentagon Papers attorney James Goodale's New York Review of Books story regarding the document-related failures of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report. He then goes on to scorn the bloggers who jumped on Bush's poorly-tailored debatewear, apparently ignorant that the New York Times' had a story on the subject which was, according to E&P, killed on the eve of the election.

The Iraq war drove through a hole in Shaw's filters. Whatever filter Adam Nagourney's elegiac front page tribute to Jeb Bush went through had better be handled with tongs lest the examiner contract some nasty little infection. Ask Dan Kennedy, Steve Lovelady, Jack Shafer, Shaw's own colleague, Tim Rutten, and a host of others how well those filters are working.

There are something like ten million bloggers out there and many of them are as nasty and feckless as they come (and would shriek with laughter at being accused of pretending to journalism). But institutional journalism, with its lofty standards and fail-safes, has its own serial offenders, its Nedra Picklers and Judith Millers and such, who regularly trigger the hackery alarms. Those two should have lifetime invites to the press critics ball, and they'd never lack for a dance with their peers. The notion that they're more deserving of legal protections than their more responsible blogging counterparts in similar straits would be laughable if it weren't so frickin' irritating.

Given the flaws in his own reporting, Shaw should probably be asking bloggers, many of whom survive and thrive - accurately - with only spell-checking, Google and common sense at their disposal rather than an armada of editors, for lessons on how to get things right. And in order to counter his reflexive sense of superiority, he should have the following quote about the life of the press critic, from the wife of one well-respected member of that tribe, tattooed on his forehead:

"What an easy job ! The sky is raining shit, and all you have to do is stand there with a net and catch some of it."

Blogger's Note: Normally I do not post the entire version of another person's work, because I do not wish to risk violating copyright laws. Usually, I will quote an excerpt and then give a link to the entire work. In this case, there is no URL that belongs exclusively to Weldon Berger's letter. Thus, I have posted Berger's entire letter so that it will not become lost in cyber-space.

-Dodo David

Posted by Dodo David at 07:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

G.I. Fundraiser Bracelets Available!

Click here to find out how you can buy a purple G.I. bracelet, with proceeds going toward veterans and their families!

Posted by at 02:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Calling All Conservative Students...

Are you, or were you, a college student who is tired of your Leftwing professors dishing out what you don't want to partake of? Front Page Magazine has just what the doctor ordered! If you submit a winning essay describing the professor you had who deserves the Front Page Magazine Churchill Twin award, you could win $500! The winning entry will also be published on Front Page Magazine.

Check it out...what have you got to lose?

Posted by at 01:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Immigration

Michelle Malkin has created a new blog dedicated to the topic of immigration. To visit Michelle’s new blog, click here.

Some people oppose the effort to prevent illegal immigration. For example, the Minuteman Project has been mischaracterized as promoting armed confrontations with border-crossers. On the contrary, volunteers with the Minuteman Project do not deliberately confront border-crossers. Project volunteers perform the functions of a neighborhood watch, but on a much larger scale. Project volunteers watch the border for people crossing the border illegally. The volunteers report illegal crossings to the appropriate federal officers. The Project volunteers who carry firearms do so for the purpose of self-defense only. It is no secret that some illegal border-crossings are committed by drug smugglers, who themselves carry firearms and are willing to shoot anyone who tries to stop them from entering the USA.

One point needs to be made clear. Americans who want illegal immigration stopped are not necessarily opposed to foreigners immigrating to the USA. Such Americans only want foreigners to immigrate though legal means.

Not only is illegal immigration a threat to the USA’s security and a drain on the USA’s economy (allegedly), but illegal immigration is also a threat to the safety of people who immigrate illegally. Illegal immigrants become prey to unscrupulous employers who violate state and federal employment laws.

Furthermore, illegal immigration is a threat to legal immigrants. Legal Hispanic immigrants are prone to discrimination because they are mistaken for illegal immigrants. Sadly, too many Americans are prejudiced against Hispanic people. Such prejudice is fueled by illegal immigration.

The prevention of illegal immigration benefits the USA. Yet, Americans born in the USA need to keep in mind that they are the descendants of immigrants, that immigration itself is not immoral. Discrimination against legal immigrants is unbecoming of a nation that was built by immigrants. Furthermore, such discrimination contradicts the Christian faith that many Americans claim to adhere to. The commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” applies to legal immigrants, too.

Illegal discrimination is a touchy subject in my family because for a brief time my wife was in the USA illegally. She gained legal status after the federal government offered her amnesty. These events took place more than 20 years ago, long before I met my wife.

I am making this disclosure so that nobody will accuse me of having a hidden bias.

-Dodo David

Posted by Dodo David at 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UPDATE: DYING TO SEE HER DIE?

In no particular order, here are reactions from all over:

RUSH: I'd like to read you an e-mail I just received, ladies and gentlemen, from one of the subscribers at Rushlimbaugh.com. It's perhaps the most virulent of the e-mails, but there are a few, and have been many over the course of the week that are of equal sentiment.

Rush, get off this bleep. It's none of your bleeping business. You're advocating more government intrusion. I'm tired of this diatribe by you. I've been a big supporter, advocate, and listener since you started but now I've gotten blanked. You don't know what the blank you're talking about in this case. You just stated that Congress has the authority over the courts. Well, dumbass, the people have authority over the blanking Congress. Get your blanking facts straight. I have more damn authority than the blanking Congress or the blanking courts. I'm an American voter and I've spoken. Let her blanking die and move on. You and Hannity are destroying our power in this country by acting like holier-than-thou morons trying to control our lives. I didn't vote for Bush because of a religious zealot attitude. Although I'm a Catholic and a conservative Republican, I did not vote for Bush or you to get more involved in my life, so get out of my life, as you would like others to get out of your life. You've become a hypocrite. Get out! Signed "Al."