Monday, January 31, 2005

It’s Now Begun

Probably at the direction of Chrissy Matthews, MSNBC has started the campaign against democracy with their latest headline: White House waits for Iraq fallout; Will Sunday's vote spark democracy or civil war?

The media will now plant the seed (plans, momentum and justification) for the Sunni's to embrace the insurgents.

They are trying to win the Walter Cronkite prize for treason.

THIS BOY’S LIFE

Leonardo DiCaprio poses with his Platinum Award in recognition for his exceptional career at the 20th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, California January 30, 2005. REUTERS/Phil Klein

Boy is right. I felt like I was in some bizarro world when I read that. This is the kid who said, "My career should adapt to me. Fame is like a VIP pass wherever you want to go." And let's not forget this: "Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act."


DiCaprio Gets Lifetime Achievement Award
"It's a lifetime achievement award, which is completely and utterly surreal, given I'm only 30 years old," he continued, with a laugh. "But, you know, what has it been? Almost 17 years now. I've done quite a few films. But what's really exciting, for me, is that this is what I really love doing. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life."
...
Once inside the auditorium, DiCaprio sat down for a two-hour career retrospective.
His screen credits include "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993), "This Boy's Life" (1993), "Titanic" (1997) and "Catch Me If You Can" (2002).

You read the rest of his astonishing career highlights here.

“ONE OF THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS FILM FESTIVALS”

Jeff Timmons changes a light bulb at the Egyptian Theater on Main street as the 2005 Sundance Film Festival is set to begin in Park City, Utah,January 20, 2005. The film 'Happy Endings' will screen on opening night of the festival directed by Don Roos and starring Lisa Kudrow and Jason Ritter. Over 200 films will be screened during the ten day festival, considered one of the most prestigious film festivals in the United States. REUTERS/Fred Prouser

WELCOME TO SIN-DANCE

PARK CITY, Utah - There was plenty of shock and awe at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Audiences here have come to expect taboo-busting behavior from the indie movies making their debuts, but there were still gasps when James Woods reached for a tissue to wipe his thigh in "Pretty Persuasion."
...
Marcos Siega's "Pretty Persuasion" - which was praised by Los Angeles Times critic Carina Chocano for its "jaw-dropping inappropriateness" - also features Woods seducing a lesbian TV newswoman played by Jane Krakowski, and makes cruel fun of sexual harassment, school violence, Palestinians and the handicapped - yet it had plenty of competition for the film festival's most offensive movie.
Sundance screens were awash in semen, and all other kinds of bodily fluids, as audiences were treated to graphic scenes of rape, castration, dismemberment and sex acts that crossed the threshold of almost every imaginable taboo - sometimes by performers who will be too young to attend these movies when (or if) they make it into theaters.

OH, NO, MR. BILL!

HILLARY COLLAPSES
(AMHERST, N.Y.) Sen. Hillary Clinton collapsed during an appearance here Monday before delivering a speech on Social Security.Clinton was not taken to a hospital and was expected to continue on with her schedule, an aide said.
Clinton was speaking in warm room in front of 150 people, according to one of her aides. She had been suffering from some sort of 24-hour flu."She was weak and needed to sit down. She fainted," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.Colleen DiPirro, president of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, told WBEN-AM radio that Clinton told the crowd she was feeling weak and had had a stomach virus. Clinton started to speak then collapsed, DiPirro told the radio station. ... "I saw her walk out the door by herself, she smiled and said `thank you'," said the manager, Vincent Tracy.

UPDATE: Rush speculated that of course Her Royal C would be dizzy after that abrupt 180-turn she did last week on abortion.

A chink in Her Royal C's armor?

FRAUD, FOR FUN & PROFIT

SHE'D RATHER TALK TO ABC
IS Mary Mapes, the only CBS News staffer fired in the wake of Memogate, about to spill her guts on ABC? Sources say that Mapes Dan Rather's longtime producer who obtained the bogus National Guard memos has been wooed by rival ABC stars Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters. Mapes is said to be leaning toward Sawyer. The Mapes interview, timed to air before before Rather retires from his evening news anchor chair on March 9, will be helpful to Mike Walker, the venerable gossip columnist for the National Enquirer. Walker has a book, "Rather Dumb: A Top Tabloid Reporter Tells CBS How to Do News," coming out in two weeks in which he gleefully takes on Rather and the rest of "the media elite." Walker argues that he and his dirt-digging colleagues at the tabloids are far better at investigating dubious documents than the over-educated "journalists" at the networks. "We know about documents," Walker told PAGE SIX. "The Enquirer has specialized in going through people's garbage. For CBS, it's amateur night in Dixie." The book is being published by Nelson Current, an imprint of Thomas Nelson in Nashville, Tenn., the world's largest publisher of Bibles.

NY Times Op-Eds for January 31, 2005

Bob Herbert salutes the courage of the Iraqi people in voting for freedom despite threats from the terrorists. But (you knew there had to be a but):


But as with any positive development in Iraq, this one was riddled with caveats. For one thing, dozens of people were, in fact, killed in election day attacks. And shortly after the polls closed, a British military transport plane crashed northwest of Baghdad.

So there was no respite from the carnage.

And we should keep in mind that despite the feelings of pride and accomplishment experienced by so many of the voters, yesterday's election was hardly a textbook example of democracy in action. A real democracy requires an informed electorate. What we saw yesterday was an uncommonly brave electorate. But it was woefully uninformed.

The rest reads almost like a parody of a NY Times' column.

There is very little concern here about the plight of ordinary Iraqis, which is why the horrendous casualties being suffered by Iraqi civilians, including women and children, get so little attention.

Shoot, you know he just wanted to say "women and minorities", there, don't you?

Todays' substantial column is by Bartle Breese Bull, who gets the award for the tongue-twisting name of the day.

I write this from a rundown house in the poorest slum in the Middle East. Until yesterday, my hosts and neighbors had for three decades been among the most repressed people on earth. Yet when I walk out the door, I see a city smothered in posters and banners from a hundred political parties. Like Afghanistan last year, the country has endorsed the right to vote in percentages that shame the electoral apathy of the rich world. Let nobody tell you that this election was anything but real. Iraq's Baathists and Wahhabis may continue to bark, but this caravan is moving on.

The recently deceased architect Philip Johnson comes in for a little bashing at the hands of Mark Stevens for his youthful obsession with fascism. I don't know what significance this has, but the left has the memory of elephants when it comes to old enemies (think of the continuing crusade against Pinochet for example).

I suppose this piece about Mozart's avocation for police work is intended as humor, although I confess I don't get the joke.

COULDA, WOULDA, SHOULDA

"May I also suggest that we need a taller horse? You can get through deeper waters that way."

Bad Kerry Day
By Shawn Macomber

As awful as it sounds, Kerry's Meet the Press appearance seemed timed to coincide with the election day disaster we all believed was coming in Iraq, but never materialized. While Iraqi Kurds and Shias were still dancing in the streets celebrating their first free elections after more than three decades of tyranny, Kerry could not have been more dour or pessimistic.
"It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and don't vote," Kerry told Russert. But what election was he referring to? Was it the one that was stolen from him or the one that was apparently being stolen from the Sunnis? The rhetoric is virtually interchangeable. Just switch the words "Democrats" and "Sunnis" around and he'll have enough material to go on forsometime. Does this jab at Senator Kerry mean either our election system or Iraq's is perfect? Of course not. Personally, I'd like to see college students have to dip their fingers in indelible ink after voting as well so they can't canvas a state votingin every town along the way.
...
So with all this genius, how did Kerry lose? Well, according to the senator, it basically came down to the "9/11 hurdle" and that "When a country is at war and in the wake of 9/11, it's very difficult to shift horses in midstream." Not so long ago, Kerry suggested to Wisconsin voters that "they shouldn't be wary of changing horses midstream when the horse is drowning" and joked, "May I also suggest that we need a taller horse? You can get through deeper waters that way."Maybe so, but withso little faith in the electoral process on his part, what horse on the planet would want to attempt to tote John Kerry across the electoral river -- be it the Mississippi or the Euphrates?

COURAGE, IRAQI STYLE

Greg Donaldson of Columbus Ohio leads chants with protesters during a rally against the result of the U.S. Electoral College of the 2004 election in Washington, January 6, 2005. Congress is counting votescast by the Electoral College to certify the winner of the 2004 presidential election today. REUTERS/Micah Walter	Iraqi police examine the scene after a suicide bomber blew himself up near a polling station in Baghdad January 30, 2005. Insurgents bent on wrecking Iraq's historic election killed two people in a string of bomb and mortar attacks across the country Sunday soon after voting began in the first multi-party ballot in half a century. REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz

Voter Intimidation - Ohio Democrats v. The Average Iraqi

First, I'll say this - Man, do you people owe me big time. In preparation for this piece I had to force myself to read the entire 101 page staff report from the extra-congressional sham "hearings" John Conyers had on the Ohio vote. Of course he claims a grand conspiracy that gave President Bush the victory there. After reading it you can take my word (boy, watch the lefty bloggers have fun with that statement) that it ranks right up there with the X-Files and "Area 54" when it comes to conspiracy theory. Wild, unsubstantiated testimony not subject to cross-examination is taken as gospel truth. The supporting footnotes contain partisan sources. Leaps of logic are made that would make a psychic blush, and everyone they talk to has and agenda. Quite simply, and frankly, it's 10 pounds of sh*t in a 5 pound bag. But the reason that I read it was to see the exact election day "disenfranchisement" supposedly carried out by the GOP in Ohio to steal the Presidency.
...

[J]ust for fun, let's compare the experiences of the average Iraqi voting on Sunday to that of the poor, put upon Ohio Kerry voter, because the report is dead certain that all those people who didn't vote would have voted for Kerry. But given the Democrats belief that they can determine the will of the voter, that's not surprising.

ANKLEBITING PUNDIT SUFFERS SO WE DON’T HAVE TO

"No one in the United States should overhype this election."

Bulldog has posted a bullet point rundown of Kerry's (hee hee hee) untimely MEET THE PRESS performance. If he were a real man, one who wants to be president so badly that I swear hed sell Teraaaza for the chance, he would have swallowed his pride and congratulated Bush and the Iraqis and our troops. Oh, yes, how he values the military. You did know Kerry was in Vietnam, didnt you? Oh, yes, and he was awarded three Purple Hearts, too. Oh, such bravery! The Iraqis could learn a thing or two from the bravery Kerry exhibited in Vietnam. After all, they don't have Purple Hearts. Yes, yes, our troops in Iraq must have been proud when Kerry visited them recently.

Kerry on "MTP" OR "An Hour of My Life I'll Never Get Back"

1. He's running in 2008.
3. Thank God this man isn't President. His dour response to questions about the Iraq vote and constant carping about "what's wrong" tell us all we need to know about the man's fitness for leadership. Leadership requires a vision. Kerry has none. Never has.

Fresh, New Reasons to Dis Iraq

• Well, yeah, there was an election, but will they count all the votes?
• Elections are one thing, then there's that whole messy government requiring massive multinational involvement and the full cooperation of the whole wide world that George Bush could never muster. So singing Kum-bai-ah right about now wouldn't hurt.
• Are you sure this was a real election?
• Did we mention bin Laden is still on the loose?
• OK, can we leave now?
• Literally TONS of evidence of voter suppression. Like with suicide bombers and stuff.
• Do you realize how angry this is going to make the insurgents!

cross posted at ProfShade

Sunday, January 30, 2005

FIRST HAND ACCOUNT

The first thing we saw this morning on our way to the voting center was a convoy of the Iraqi army vehicles patrolling the street, the soldiers were cheering the people marching towards their voting centers then one of the soldiers chanted "vote for Allawi" less than a hundred meters, the convoy stopped and the captain in charge yelled at the soldier who did that and said:"You're a member of the military institution and you have absolutely no right to support any political entity or interfere with the people's choice. This is Iraq's army, not Allawi's".This was a good sign indeed and the young officer's statement was met by applause from the people on the street.

A first hand account from Iraq The Model:

The people have won
How can I describe it!? Take my eyes and look through them my friends, you have supported the day of Iraq's freedom and today, Iraqis have proven that they're not going to disappoint their country or their friends.Is there a bigger victory than this? I believe not.I still recall the first group of comments that came to this blog 14 months ago when many of the readers asked "The Model?"... "Model for what?"
Take a look today to meet the model of courage and human desire to achieve freedom; people walking across the fire to cast their votes.
Could any model match this one!? Could any bravery match the Iraqis'!?
Let the remaining tyrants of the world learn the lesson from this day.
...
No more confusion about what the people want, they have said their word and they said it loud and the world has got to respct and support the people's will.God bless your brave steps sons of Iraq and God bless the defenders of freedom.
Aasha Al-Iraq....Aasha Al-Iraq....Aasha Al-Iraq.

Mohammed and Omar.

ALGORE UPDATE

Does Algore still have the screaming meemies? I'll bet he gets them when people remember he said this:

Al Gore: "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." ("Text Of Remarks By Former Vice President Al Gore At The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco," Federal News Service, 9/23/02)

Read what other Democrats had to say at ChronWatch: The Dem Base: People Who Now Call Bush a Liar

He's ready for his injection now, Nurse Tipper.

FOR THE FREEDOM OF MAN

After all car movements were prohibited, thousands of Iraqis make a trip on foot to the town of Al Alamara, Iraq, to place their votes Sunday, Jan. 30 2005. Iraqis turned out to vote Sunday in their country's first free election in a half-century, defyinginsurgents who launched deadly suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations. By midday, at least 29 people were dead but the violence had slowed and votingpicked up.(AP Photo / Daily Mirror/James Vellacott /Pool

Iraqi women wait to enter a polling station in Najaf, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005. Text on the Iraqi flag reads 'vote Iraq'. Iraqis turned out to vote Sunday in their country's first free election in a half-century, defying insurgents who launched deadly suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations. By midday, at least 29 people were dead but the violence had slowed and voting picked up. (AP Photo/Alla al-Marjani)

Question: Who said the following?*

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
...
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man

.

It's early, so I'm hesitant to believe such good news, but the turnout is being reported as better than expected.
72% Iraqi Turnout Stuns U.S. Press

With an hour left to go before the polls in Iraq close, Reuters reported that turnout had reached 72 percent nationwide. Election officials in Shiite areas say turnout there may top 90 percent.
Initial voter response was slow as the polls opened late Saturday U.S. time, but increased dramatically after threats of spectacular attacks failed to materialize. Of 5300 polling stations, only 15 reported attacks. 29 people were killed, including five police officers.
"Once it seemed like the worst was over, [voters] came out in very large numbers," Nordland said. While Sunni turnout was lower, "it was a lot better than would have been expected."

Some maintain that to legitimize this election, the turnout must be good. But frankly, the fact that Iraqis are turning out at all, walking openly along the roads to the polling places, is a victory itself.

A crowd of Iraqi women wait at the entrance of a polling station waiting to vote in their country's national election, in the holy city of Najaf, January 30, 2005. Insurgents bent on wrecking Iraq's historic election killed two people in a string of bomb and mortar attacks across the country Sunday soon after voting began in the first multi-party ballot in half a century. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber

An Iraqi woman cries tears of joy after casting her vote, outside a polling station in the holy city of Najaf, January 30, 2005. Insurgentsthreatening an election day bloodbath killed at least 22 people Sunday in a string of bombings and mortar attacks on polling stations in Iraq's first multi-party ballot in half a century. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber

The exhilaration of democracy after years of exile
SALAH NASRAWI IN AMMAN, JORDAN

Clearly we were a mix - Shiites, Sunnis, Christians; Kurds, Arabs - but we were all Iraqis and all willing to ignore boycott calls and intimidation to have a say in our future and maybe one day live in the free, democratic, federal and united Iraq touted in election posters. It was exhilarating, and it was why I travelled to Amman in Jordan from my home in exile in Egypt, which was not among the countries where Iraqi expatriates could vote. As I stood in line, I recalled scenes from South Africa in 1994, when blacks, whites and South Africans of mixed race lined up to participate in the election marking apartheids demise.
...
I was only four when Iraq held its last independent elections. Four years later, in 1958, army officers toppled the monarchy and ruled the country by decree until Saddam's Baath party took over in another coup in 1968. The military leaders and Baathists despised democracy, considering elections a western novelty. They always said Iraq was unfit for democracy, Iraqis not competent to judge what is best for the nation, and the tenets of democracy un-Iraqi. By implication, the Baath party was claiming for Saddam the official and sole right to decide what was best and what was indigenous to our culture. Now we are relying on ourselves to decide what is best.
...
I fled with my wife and two children. I was lucky: days later the regime began imprisoning and torturing journalists for the same offence Id committed. I have no illusions. Elections are only a first step in a long process that is bound to be imperfect. There will be public frustration over the results, accusations of irregularities and possibly vote-rigging. Later, corruption and broken election promises are almost certain. Still, with Saddam gone, I could feel as I left the school courtyard that Iraq has a real chance to transform itself from a brutal, pariah nation to multiethnic democracy. Now I can hope that the agony of the past will end soon and I will be able to return to stay.

Associated Press writer Salah Nasrawi, an Iraqi, fled his homeland in 1991 after Saddam Husseins regime revoked his press credentials because of his coverage of the Gulf War and the Shiite uprising that followed. Yesterday he cast his vote in Jordan.

* Answer: President John F. Kennedy; Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 1961. It's difficult to believe that Jack Kennedy and Ted Kennedy are brothers.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Appropriate Response

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology ... this evil principle. Anyone who tries to set up this system is part of it," Zarqawi said on a tape broadcast this week. For any Iraqi who needed an even more graphic warning, there was this from a leaflet being distributed by insurgent groups around Baghdad:
"This is the final warning to all of those who plan to participate in the election. We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood. To those of you who think you can vote and run away, we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children."

Islamic Klansmen

With the Iraqi elections on the line; have you ever considered the price others have paid to vote? The media and democrats will tell us the election is illegitimate--no matter what. But what about other countries who have stuggled to vote? What about South Africa? Rush asked this question: if only 20% of the white minority showed up to vote during South Africa's first election, would anyone question its legitimacy? Hell no!

This piece offers great perspective...it demonstrates freedom can overcome this insurgency and prevail just like it did here.

THE SAME EVIL

As Iraqis prepare to cast secret ballots in Sunday's free election, terrorists work day and night to obliterate the entire project. Their political violence recalls that of white supremacists who shielded Jim Crow in the battle for civil rights. Those who block the doorway to Iraqi self-determination are nothing more than Islamo-Klansmen.

"Those of you who think you can vote and then run away...we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children," threatened one Muslim-extremist leaflet the New York Times's Dexter Filkins saw distributed on Baghdad's Madaris Street. "This is a final warning to all of those who plan to participate in the election," it continued. "We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood."

That blood already flows. On Wednesday alone, terrorists bombed three Baghdad polling places. A fourth explosive was disarmed at another precinct: an elementary school. In Baquba, Islamic fanatics shot up the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic party, the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity, and the Iraqi Communist party. They also released a videotape of three election workers kidnapped in Mosul.

Last month, terrorists yanked three election officials from their car in Baghdad and shot them point blank in their skulls in broad daylight. They also assassinated party leader Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim in an attack that killed 13 Iraqis and wounded 66.

Such mayhem has hindered campaigning. Some parties conceal the names of their candidates to prevent political tickets from becoming hit lists.

The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists similarly slaved away to stymie southern democracy. An 1866 assault on black and white Republican legislators in New Orleans by racist white Democrats killed 137 people and wounded hundreds more. Ongoing Klan violence led President Ulysses S. Grant to announce in 1871 that (note the word) "insurgents were in rebellion against the authority of the United States."

The Invisible Empire of the South, as the KKK also was known, kept the torch of terror ablaze. During 1964's Freedom Summer, Mississippi alone saw 30 black homes burned, 35 volunteers shot at, 37 black churches firebombed, 80 activists beaten by white bigots, and some 1,000 civil rights fighters and their allies jailed by racist cops.

Pray feverishly tonight that the struggle of the Iraqis succeed like the one of my ancestors.

From Iraq The Model:

Saddam had tried all tools of oppression, killing and torture he could find against our people (including WMD's) but he failed to make the people believe in his hateful regime. And that's why the people abandoned him and now, he and his regime are just a bad old tale from the past.

On Sunday, the sun will rise on the land of Mesopotamia. I can't wait, the dream is becoming true and I will stand in front of the box to put my heart in it.

Mohammed

Amen.