Day: October 8, 2005

This afternoon, reports had the death toll from yesterday’s South Asia earthquake at 3,000. The number is now 18,000 30,000.

As in ‘jonesing‘. Gets me every time, and now I’m sitting here wondering what in the heck it means.

I hate when people do this.

😉

UPDATE: OK, so it wasn’t the news I was jonesing about, but I suppose it is important to fans of Bill Hobbs. He has announced today a self-imposed blogging hiatus. He claims that he doesn’t intend to disappear completely, but that his readers won’t find political issue focused commentary on his site for the foreseeable future.

It’s deja vu all over again. Whenever a black cloud moves in over the Clinton’s, their minions are dispatched throughout the land for the counter attack. Wanna bet that puppet master Sidney Blumenthal is somewhere, hunkered below ground in a dark room coordinating this response?

Via Drudge Report

Under strong pressure from former President Bill Clinton’s advisers, CBS’s “60 Minutes” has agreed to read a statement denying an explosive charge being made on Sunday night’s program by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the WASHINGTON POST reports.

In the statement, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, challenges Freeh’s assertion that Clinton failed to press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to cooperate with an investigation of the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in that country, and used the occasion to ask for a contribution to his presidential library. The Saudis made such a donation last year – six years after the 1998 meeting.

Berger, who was at the meeting, said: “The president strongly raised the need for Saudi officials to cooperate with us on the investigation into the attack on Khobar Towers at the time when the FBI was attempting to gain access to the suspects. The president did not raise in any fashion the issue of his library.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he told CBS’s Mike Wallace that he had supportive accounts from five other former officials at the meeting, including those briefed about a private conversation between Clinton and Abdullah.

“The fair journalistic question is why they didn’t call and get comments for their story from people who were in the room, such as Sandy Berger, and why they took until Friday afternoon to get that done,” said Lanny Davis, a former White House lawyer, who tried to persuade “60 Minutes” producer Jeff Fager to allow him or another Clinton spokesman to appear on Sunday night’s segment.

Carson, who called the Freeh book “a total work of fiction.”

I can’t even imagine what a lonely existence it must be to live your life at the beckon call of Bill and Hillary. The loyalty is stunning. And for what? Are all of these boot-lickers awaiting appointments to the best leadership positions in a hoped for Hillary administration? Are they really risking all of their credibility for this?

So far, we know that hundreds have died as a result of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake near the Pakistan-India border. The death toll, currently 3,000, will no doubt climb higher, due to the weak infrastructure in the area

In terms of relief, this disaster (so far) hasn’t suffered from bureaucratic dysfunctionality, as we saw immediately after Hurricane Katrina. According to early reports, relief efforts began within ‘minutes’.

Political tensions between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region took a back seat Saturday as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to offer help. Musharraf thanked him for his offer.

Musharraf called the quake “a major catastrophe” and said that “relief efforts began minutes” after it happened.

Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told CNN it was the largest relief operation the country has ever mobilized.

Tents, sleeping bags, blankets, water, food and a lot of help were arriving from all over the country and overseas, said Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

“The government has moved quickly, and we hope that we can minimize the losses,” he said.

The United States, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Japan, the United Nations and non-governmental humanitarian groups have marshaled resources to help the region.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ‘disastered out’. My brain just can’t handle another week of tragedy TV coverage. Pleas for relief help. Geraldo types sensationalizing the destruction.

I just can’t do ‘it’ anymore.

You knew it would happen, and it has. Former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork slams Miers and calls her nomination a ‘disaster’.

TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FORMER SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Not a bit.  I think it’s a disaster on every level. The first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever.  Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already.  So that—I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by.  I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.

But the other level is more worrisome, in  a way:  it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years.  There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution.  And all of those people have been overlooked.  And I think  one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.

It’s odd that Justice  Roberts, who is now the chief justice, and who will probably be an excellent choice in many ways, also had no track record that was easy to follow.

The Borking continues, here.