This is another blessing from the Democrats

If this does not become a national campaign ad, then Karl is off his game:



Ace of Spades found a copy of the arrest warrant:

• COUNT ONE: "Being in Congress while black" (CLASS A FELONY)



• COUNT TWO: Driving Under the Influence of Barry White (CLASS B MISDEMEANOR)



• COUNT THREE: Reckless uppitiness (CLASS A MISDEMEANOR)



• COUNT FOUR: Aggravated Sass in the second degree (CLASS A MISDEMEANOR)



• COUNT FIVE: Refusing to yield to The Man when he demands you shuck and jive for him (CLASS C FELONY)



• COUNT SIX: Carrying Soul Without a Permit (CLASS B MISDEMEANOR)



• COUNT SEVEN: Possession of TRUTH! with intent to distribute (CLASS A FELONY)

God bless Ace for writing the script for the campaign ad.

Performancing!  I love it!

I love my new blog editor that fits right in my browsing window!  Check it out at Firefox/Performancing.

The N.O.W. Headquarters in New Orleans

[Formerly Hancock Bank]

LA Times Faces its readers

Opinion LA's online discussion really demonstrates the mood in this country against Mexican nationalists/reconquistas and illegal immigrants. Here are some choice comments:

• If the US Selective Service law states that all males between 18 and 26 must register for the draft within 30 days of turning 18 or being in this country illegal or not,punishable by a $250,000 fine and 5 years in jail and they haven't so done, then that is another violation of the US LAW and that man should not be eligible for US Citizenship and should go home!



• Big deal, a bunch of children immigrants skip another day of school. Go home.



• Mexico is the biggest coyote. It does nothing to improve the living conditions of it's people. The US needs to stop sending aid and start billing them for the services we provide for their citizens.



• I canceled my gardener this week.I'll do it myself from now on or find a kid in the neighborhood.I will make a consious effort from now on to pay money for sevices to LEGAL residents and I suggest that eveyone does the same.I also suggest to close all accounts with banks that encourage illigal immigration such as wells fargo and B of A.WE NEED TO BE HEARD! Get off your couches and turn off the video games and let's save OUR country!



• if it was not for the mexican i bet half of you would nhot work what we work plus i don't think you would work for low wage and are people do you guys don't understand why is it only the mexican that bush want out of the united state and plus why is it on the bill its said united we stand that mean everyone that live here that even mean for our people

Notice how wrong the last person is (I give him credit for knowing some English)...Bush does NOT want to throw anyone out and that's why we are upset with Bush. Bush wants to condone illegal behavior because of business interests and because he wants the Republicans to get latino votes. But his mistake is typical; he assumes its all Bush's fault whether it is true or not.

Bet They Wish They Had Capital Punishment

Disgusting:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - A woman who stuffed the bodies of two of her four infants in a freezer and entombed two others in plastic buckets filled with cement was convicted Friday of three counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Gertraud Arzberger, 33, was convicted by a court in the southern city of Graz, closing out a macabre crime that stunned Austria when the tiny bodies were recovered last summer. Her live-in companion, 39-year-old Johannes Genser, was convicted as an accessory and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment.

Oh, and the boyfriend claimed he knew nothing about the pregnancies. Hello, McFly! Only a complete dumba** could miss his live-in girlfriend being pregnant four times.

The two were charged last June after police discovered the bodies of two newborns in a basement freezer shared by residents of an apartment complex in Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna, and the remains of two more entombed in paint buckets filled with cement.

Autopsies performed on the remains indicated that the two infants found in the freezer were still alive when put inside, wrapped in plastic bags. Autopsies could not be performed on the two newborns whose remains were sealed in cement because they had deteriorated too much.

And, it gets weirder:

Prosecutors said Arzberger told investigators she killed the infants out of despair over her inability to pay the bills, and out of fear that having children might drive away Genser, her partner of eight years.

Genser, whose lawyer insisted the charges were "pure fiction" in closing arguments Friday, was led from the courtroom in handcuffs after asking Judge Karl Buchgraber if he first could propose marriage to Arzberger.

"Can I still offer her my hand?" Genser asked.

"No," the judge replied.

Too bad she didn't live here, where she could have gotten late third-trimester abortions. Then she wouldn't have been accused of murder, but of making a healthcare choice, and she'd be free to tend the beautiful garden she is said to have.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Call Me Crazy

But I don't think we invaded Iraq over aluminum tubes...however, the HuffPuff is hysterically linking to a National Journal article that says that Bush was warned by the State Department that the tubes were most likely for conventional weapons (Saddam with any weapons is dangerous).

Okay, so what do we have here? Two agencies sent Bush a one page memo that stated it disagreed with all the other government agencies over the probable use for aluminum tubes.

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."

Man, that would make me sleep like a baby at night! So, I guess they got Bush! In his SOTU address Bush stated that we are going to war with Iraq because it has aluminum tubes. He never mentioned the human tragedy and genocide; he never mentioned Saddam's support for terrorism; he never mentioned that Saddam never accounted for all kinds of WMDs and we had no clue what happened to them.

Liberals only remember what they want. The only part of the speech they did remember was the part about uranium from Africa (which was in fact true), but now they will forget that and say that the whole reason for war was over some tubes. It was a preponderence of the evidence--not one sole thing.

And, like all of these blockbuster articles, no one is on record (which means it's probably Powell, Armitage and that they are Richard Clarke-ing their egos).

I Apologize to Everybody--Except the French!

Here's an amusing article on the current French woes. The government has proposed allowing companies to fire workers with fewer than two years of seniority. This has resulted in riots and a general strike.


THE SIGHT OF MILLIONS of Frenchmen, predominantly young, demonstrating in deep sympathy and solidarity with themselves, is one that will cause amusement and satisfaction on the English side of the Channel. Everyone enjoys the troubles of his neighbours. And at least our public service strikers just stay away from work, and spend the day peacefully performing the rites of their religion, DIY, and not making a terrible nuisance of themselves. In fact, many of them are probably less of a public nuisance if they stay at home than if they go to work.

Of course, demonstrating in huge numbers is what the French do from time to time. We should never forget that to break a shop window for the good of humanity is one of the greatest pleasures known to Man. Trying to topple governments by shouting insults is also great fun.

Of course, if companies were more easily able to fire workers, they would also be more willing to hire them as well. The writer points out that the rioters are simply protecting themselves at the expense of the Muslim youth of the country:

It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent. Moreover, in the banlieues it is 50 per cent. These banlieues are homes to millions of people, disproportionately young. It follows — does it not? — that there must be a considerable section of the young population in which unemployment is less than a quarter, actually much less. One would hardly have to be de Tocqueville to guess in which section of the young population the unemployment was less: the section from which the demonstrators, or at least their leaders and agents provocateurs, are drawn.

Noonan on Immigration:  Brilliant

Every so often, her prose just soars and gives such clarity to an issue:

What this all got me thinking about, the next day, was . . . immigration. I know that seems a lurch, but there's a part of the debate that isn't sufficiently noted. There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them--economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in.
But there's another thing. And it's not fear about "them." It's anxiety about us.

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.

We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch.

So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good.

But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.

What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.

The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was "providential.")

We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.

Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold?

Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No, not always, not even often. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas.

And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.

Amen!

CSM Reporter Jill Caroll Freed

I LOVE waking up to news like this:

American newspaper reporter Jill Carroll has been released after several months of captivity in Iraq, an editor at her newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, said Thursday.

Incredible.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Kiefer is Hot!

He really is photogenic. This picture is priceless and should be hung up in every cell in Gitmo:

It’s Just Sad

I really believe that she started using crack with Bobby and that's why she married him--to have someone to crack-out with:

Whitney Houston has spiralled into a world of squalor and degradation on deadly crack — as the shocking pictures in today's Sun newspaper reveal.

It shows the disgusting mess in the singer’s bathroom after a drug binge.

Drug paraphernalia including a crack-smoking pipe, rolling papers, cocaine-caked spoons and cigarette ends are strewn across the surface tops.

But Whitney, 42, no longer cares.

She needs a major intervention.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Irony:  Dem Meshes both Culture of Corruption and Wire Tapping

I think its too fitting that a Democrat loses his appeal for both being corrupt by illegally handing over illegally taped phone conversations to the news media:


A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Rep. Jim McDermott violated federal law by turning over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters nearly a decade ago.

In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott violated the rights of House Majority Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call involving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The lower court had ordered McDermott to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and at least $600,000 in legal costs.

McDermott, D-Wash., leaked to The New York Times and other news organizations a tape of a 1996 cell phone call The call included discussion by Gingrich, R-Ga., and other House GOP leaders about a House ethics committee investigation of Gingrich. Boehner, R-Ohio, was a Gingrich lieutenant at the time and is now House majority leader.

Cold-Hearted Liberal Paul Krugman

The immigration debate is heating up and surprise, surprise, Paul Krugman finds himself siding with the nativists.

First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Of course, looking solely at income ignores some of the other benefits of illegal immigration: Lower costs. Is landscaping cheaper because of illegal immigration? Is food cheaper because it's harvested by low-wage migrants?

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst- paid Americans.

The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration.

That's certainly a double-sided coin. If we accept that raising the wages of high-school dropouts is a good thing, aren't we running the risk of creating more of them? Should our immigration policy be determined by its effect on the high school dropout cohort?

From the above, you might think that Krugman is an enthusiastic supporter of anti-immigration legislation proposed by immigration hawks in Congress? But of course, you'd be wrong:

Mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration. But the harsh anti-immigration legislation passed by the House, which has led to huge protests - legislation that would, among other things, make it a criminal act to provide an illegal immigrant with medical care - is simply immoral.

Ah, so he must in favor of Bush's plan? Of course not:

Meanwhile, Bush's plan for a "guest worker" program is clearly designed by and for corporate interests, who'd love to have a low-wage work force that couldn't vote. Not only is it deeply un-American; it does nothing to reduce the adverse effect of immigration on wages. And because guest workers would face the prospect of deportation after a few years, they would have no incentive to become integrated into our society.

Is there a third way finesse? Nope:

What about a guest-worker program that includes a clearer route to citizenship? I'd still be careful. Whatever the bill's intentions, it could all too easily end up having the same effect as the Bush plan in practice - that is, it could create a permanent underclass of disenfranchised workers.

We need to do something about immigration, and soon. But I'd rather see Congress fail to agree on anything this year than have it rush into ill-considered legislation that betrays our moral and democratic principles.

Translation: Krugman's about as opposed to illegal immigration as Hillary Clinton is. Which is to say, pro forma.

For a different (and personal) take on immigration, check out this terrific post by Rick Moran.

Immigration Filibuster

Polipundit seems to think there are only two options to defeat the amnesty bill:

We have two chances to stop this bill:
1. In the full Senate
2. In the House-Senate reconciliation process.

I'd like to also point out that if we get 40 republicans together, we can filibuster this bill. I think this could also be a winner politically going into the 2006 elections if a strong republican front prevents a bill of amnesty from going to a vote.

Defeating it would be best--but the filibuster will also smoke out the democrats.