Month: January 2006

57% of Americans support military action against Iran.

The New York Times and CBS released poll results regarding the NSA wiretap story. As usual, Republicans were undersampled. Still, a majority of Americans (53%) approve of Mr. Bush’s authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval “in order to reduce the threat of terrorism”. Yet, the NYT headline claims that support remains mixed.

Dr. Steven Taylor shares his opinion on polling the NSA wiretap story. I agree with him.

Ankle Biting Pundits analyzes the results.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid faced the facts today.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid admitted on Friday he and fellow Democrats lack the votes to block President George W. Bush’s nomination of conservative appeals judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Everyone knows there is not enough votes to support a filibuster,” Reid said, referring to the procedural roadblock that some Democrats said should be used to put off a vote on Alito.

The Nevada Democrat said, however, he would vote for such a measure to at least send a message of opposition to the nominee. That vote will come on Monday with final confirmation set for Tuesday.

Reid acknowledging the lack of votes is a move in the right direction for the man personally, but it doesn’t erase the fact that other members of his party, namely John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, are still speaking as if a filibuster is next on the docket. It’s yet another example of disconnected communications from the Democratic party. If they can’t get the message out consistently from within their own party, how are they going to speak to the American people?

Unless someone wakes up over there, the Democrats will take another beating at the poll this November. 

The former president is completely off his rocker.

A day after Hamas swept to an upset victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, former US President Jimmy Carter on Thursday said that Wednesday’s voting had been orderly and fair.

“The elections were completely honest, completely fair, completely safe and without violence,” the former president said.

Carter, who led an 85-member international observer team from around the world organized by the ‘National Democratic Institute’ in partnership with ‘The Carter Center,’ urged the international community to directly or indirectly fund the new Palestinian Government even though it will be led by an internationally-declared foreign terror organization.

“The Palestinian Government is destitute, and in desperate financial straits. I hope that support for the new government will be forthcoming,” Carter said at a Jerusalem press conference.

He added that if international law barred donor countries from directly funding a Hamas-led government than the US and the EU should bypass the Palestinian Authority and provide the “much-needed” money to the Palestinians via non-governmental channels such as UN agencies.

He’s smokin’ dope.

Carter, who has long supported the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, voiced the hope that the Islamic terror group would act “responsibly” now that it had won the elections.

“My hope is that as Hamas assumes a major role in the next government, whatever that might be, it will take a position on international standards of responsibility,” he said at the news conference, held at an east Jerusalem hotel.

Senility sucks.

If you listened to Democrats, you’d believe Wal-Mart to be the most evil corporation mankind has ever known.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart announced that its new Evergreen Park, IL store received more than 25,000 applications for 325 positions – a majority of which are full-time. Evergreen Park (and the store itself) border Chicago. The new store is set to open on Friday morning.

Wal-Mart will soon announce that it created 20,900 new jobs in the U.S. during the month of January alone.

Did Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia forget to take his medication today, or is he worried about reelection?

Probably a little bit of both.

John Kerry is a desperate man.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is lobbying his Democratic colleagues to filibuster the Alito nomination — an uphill fight, given that none of the chamber’s 55 Republicans have opposed his confirmation and three Democrats are on the record supporting it.

“Judge Alito’s confirmation would be an ideological coup on the Supreme Court,” Kerry said in a written statement.

“We can’t afford to see the court’s swing vote, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, replaced with a far-right ideologue like Samuel Alito.”

Here’s Kerry’s complete statement. Oh, and his daddy-o Teddy got in the act too with this statement.

And naturally, the peanut gallery couldn’t be happier.

But, the New York Times thinks he’s nuts.

Former VP Al Gore warns Canadians to keep their eye on their newly elected leader.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has accused the oil industry of financially backing the Tories and their “ultra-conservative leader” to protect its stake in Alberta’s lucrative oilsands.

Canadians, Gore said, should vigilantly keep watch over prime minister-designate Stephen Harper because he has a pro-oil agenda and wants to pull out of the Kyoto accord — an international agreement to combat climate change.

“The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta,” Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

“And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests.”

If Gore new anything about how elections work in Canada, he would have thought twice about making this stupid speech.

Darcie Park, spokeswoman for oilsands giant Suncor Energy, said she’s taken aback by Gore’s remarks and hopes they don’t resonate with Canadians.

“Our company just doesn’t do business that way. We’re really puzzled about where these comments came from,” she said.

“Canadians understand how elections work in Canada and understand there are these very tight restrictions around what individuals and companies can contribute to individual parties or campaigns.”

The federal Elections Act limits how much money individuals, corporations and unions can donate to political parties. Individuals are allowed to give as much as $5,000 a year, while companies and unions are capped at $1,000 a year.

Who died and made Algore the foremost expert on Canadian politics? And who does he think he is, butting into Canada’s business?

It smells like fear to me. Fear of conservatism. Not only is it taking hold in the United States, but now Canada, a place moonbats considered refuge. What’s this world coming to?

Well, there’s still France.

When you get canned from a job, you’re usually unhappy and ready to tell the world about how much you think your employer and its industry stinks.

It’s Aaron Brown’s moment.

The anchorman whose boss once characterized him as ice compared with his successor’s fire was anything but chilly in the impassioned speech he delivered Tuesday at The Society of the Four Arts.

“Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news,” said Aaron Brown, whose four-year period as anchor of CNN’s NewsNight ended in November, when network executives gave his job to Anderson Cooper in a bid to push the show’s ratings closer to front-runner Fox News.

Brown said he tried to give viewers a balanced diet of light and serious news with NewsNight. “But I always knew when I got to the Brussels sprouts, I was on thin ice,” he said.

Balanced – heh. The world remains an unfocused place when you view it from within the MSM bubble.

Sorry for radio silence today. I have been busy traveling through airports, riding shuttle buses, taking taxis, and being shoe-horned into airplanes.

Oh, and I’m sick as well. I caught a bug from someone who was ill and had no business being on an airplane Monday. Of course, I was flying at the same time, and you know how clean that ‘inside the airplane’ air is. I started feeling bad yesterday, and it’s gotten progressively worse. There’s nothing like being forced to run the travel gauntlet while you’re feeling like crap. It’s not been a pretty day.

And there so much to comment on. Lots of interesting news stories, but you’ll have to get your fix elsewhere. I’m gonna go bury myself in the dirt. Well, OK, not the dirt. Maybe I’ll just go to bed.

Until tomorrow, unless I die. (just kidding)

UPDATE: OK, I’m only slightly better. Most of the day I lived with the feeling that a spike had been driven into the top of my head. A pounding headache like I haven’t had in years. The type that no pain reliever would relieve. But like I said, it’s slightly better now.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t die?

OK, don’t answer that.