Month: February 2006

Traditions are good things, but eventually, they change, or they come to a natural end on their own. Some traditions continue when they should have been killed off years ago.

Helen Thomas is a White House Press Corps tradition that needs to end.

Her extreme bias against Republicans and this administration in general can no longer be restrained it seems, since she has taken to asking loaded questions which serve no real purpose other than to provide Helen with a platform for pushing a radical leftist viewpoint. Helen doesn’t seek the facts. She’s not interested in reporting the news.

Her colleagues in the MSM are quick to note that Helen has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, as if somehow she represents the very essence of what it means to be ‘a White House Correspondent’. She’s become an institution in their eyes. They celebrated her coronation decades ago. Yet I would believe most Americans see the Helen Thomas of today in a completely different light than the Helen Thomas of the Reagan era, or even the Clinton era. With each biased comment and snide remark, the American people see Helen for what she’s become.

How many young reporters are looking for a role model who’s epitaph will include the words “biased, mean spirited, radically partisan editorialist”?

Maybe it’s simply an ‘age’ thing? After all, Helen is no spring chicken, and as anyone who’s family includes with an aging parent or grandparent would attest to, these types get a bit crotchety in their sunset years. That would be fine if the MSM would characterize Helen as a partisan, but they don’t. She’s still considered to be an objective reporter covering the White House beat.

Ending a tradition is never an easy thing to do. Most of the time, attrition ultimately solves the matter. One can hope it will come knock, knock, knocking on Helen’s door…and soon.

Brokeback to the Future. This years best picture (trailer).

In Britain, hospital nurses want patients who are bent on hurting themselves to be provided with clean razor blades so they can “cut themselves more safely”.

 

Rap music stars, a video shoot, egos, a confrontation and bullets. Now, three kids will grow up without a Dad.

 

I’m growing increasingly tired of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). The theatrics, the grandstanding, the bloviation, the pontificating, the especially the cow-towing.

His time’s up.

…the ‘Uglier Than Thou’ weekend caption contest over at Electric Venom.

The Muhammad cartoon craziness continues. Buildings have been burned, mobs have protested, threats of death have been hurled aimlessly. And now today, there’s word of at least 4 deaths associated with the demonstrations. On American soil, the Left has thrown their hat into the ring by telling the world that this, like everything else in recent history, is Bush’s fault.

How boring.

Jim over at Gateway Pundit continues to provide wall-to-wall coverage of this event, and Michelle Malkin remains firmly entrenched in the story.

UPDATE: Darn.

Al Lewis died Friday. He was 83 years old.

Best known for his role as Grandpa in television’s “The Munsters,” Lewis died after a long illness, a local radio station said on Saturday.

A movie Web site listed his age as 95, but there have been reports that he was 83.

Lewis was born in Brooklyn and was raised by his mother, an immigrant sweatshop worker in the Brownsville district of that borough.

At least 73 people are dead as the result of a stampede at a stadium in Manilla. Hundreds of people showed up hoping to get into a popular television game show offering cash and prizes.

Vice President Noli de Castro had put the death toll at 79, with other estimates even higher. But Health Secretary Francisco Duque told Reuters there had been some double-counting of victims, adding that 353 people were injured.

Most of the dead were elderly women, crushed against a closed steel gate at the bottom of a slope or trampled underfoot. One child was killed, hospital officials said.

Some witnesses said chaos erupted when someone shouted “bomb” but others reported a railing collapsed as people were being let into the stadium, causing guards to panic and slam shut the gate on the surging crowd.

“My mother came here hoping to win a prize,” said one man in his 20s, holding her dead hand and sobbing.

Some tickets for the first anniversary celebration of the game show “Wowowee,” which picks contestants at random from the audience, were given out earlier in the week.

But thousands of fans, many of them poor, camped out for days for a chance at the usual jackpot of 1 million pesos ($19,230) and special prizes of a car and a house with land.

The thought of winning gave them hope of ending their poverty. Instead, they end up paying the ultimate price.