Month: July 2006

A reasonable judge in Baltimore, Maryland. Imagine that.

A first-of-its-kind state law that would have required Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care in Maryland is invalid under federal law, a judge ruled Wednesday.

The state law would have required non-governmental employers with 10,000 or more workers to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health care or pay the difference in taxes. The measure was aimed at Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has been under attack by critics who say that its inadequate health care offering is forcing some employees to use state-funded plans.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz decided that the Maryland Fair Share Health Care Fund Act would have hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees in a different way from how it keeps track of employee benefits in other states. Motz wrote that the law “imposes legally cognizable injury upon Wal-Mart.”

It’s about fairness, and the legislation signed into law last December was a travesty. It deserved to be thrown in the trash, something this judge saw clearly.

Bush’s overall approval numbers have been going up steadily for a few weeks now. You’d never know that if your sole source of news is ABCNBCCBSFOXMSNBC and you read newspapers like the New York Times. Funny, when Bush’s numbers were in the mid thirties, we were bombarded with daily stories about how bad he was doing. Remember those headlines?

Bush hits new low of 38%.

Bush approval at all time low of 37%.

Bush slide continues; only 36% approve.

No end in sight; Bush at 35%.

Yet now we’ve got nothing but the sound of crickets.

Typical.

Charles Krauthammer explains what must be done to end the Israel-Hezbollah fighting.

The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.

It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Persian Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran’s choosing.

Just as in Kuwait in 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded — implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.

Krauthammer insightfully adds that there are a couple of people who can mess this whole plan up. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Secretary of State Condi Rice. He wonders if Olmert has the will, and questions whether Condi can come home from her upcoming Middle East trip empty handed, rather than ‘win’ by forcing a premature cease-fire. I think I know the answer.

Olmert has the will.

Rice doesn’t.

The cause of her weakness is completely political. After years of fighting in Iraq and the perceived lack of progress toward democracy (thanks to the Left and the liberal MSM) Bush and his team seem leery of getting completely engaged with Israel (or North Korea, or Iran, et al). The fear is all about the November mid-terms. The Bush administration have been worn down by the incessant beating of the Left and so called moderate Republicans. They’ve been put on notice by Frist and Hastert not to make bold moves on anything because of the political risk which could cause a loss of majority status for the GOP. The mere fact that George W. Bush (in his open mic moment) confessed that he wished Kofi Annan would just call Syria’s Bashir Assad to “make things happen” speaks volumes. Since when did we relinquish our super power status to the U.N.? Basically, it seems the White House hopes that this whole thing will just blow over without our involvement so as to prevent a wedge issue decision at the poll.

That’s foreign policy crap on a stick, and I ain’t buyin’.

Let’s hope Dick Cheney gets a call from Krauthammer.

A power outage at a radar facility Tuesday evening cut communications and brought incoming and outgoing flights in Southern California to a standstill, affecting Los Angeles International Airport, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and Ontario International Airport. The cause for the outage at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center was not immediately known.

The outage at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center was reported shortly after 5:30 p.m., and power was restored about 90 minutes later, said Allen Kenitzer, a regional spokesman for FAA.

I can only imagine what a nightmare it is right now at LAX. It’s got to be U-G-L-Y.

I just couldn’t pass this one up. Paris Hilton, on Paris Hilton.

“There’s nobody in the world like me,” the partying heiress told the Times of London. “I think every decade has an iconic blonde — like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana — and right now, I’m that icon.”

“There’s a lot of heiresses out there, and I don’t see any of them doing what I’ve done,” she continued. “I have so many projects — bags, fragrances, make-up. I go round the world every three days, designing and personally approving it all. I’ve got movies to make, a tour, TV shows. Every day of my life is scheduled until the end of 2007.”

(h/t A Socialite’s Life)

The Senate voted 63 to 37 today to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, ushering in what is shaping up to be a guaranteed veto by President Bush, his first since taking office in 2001.

“The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow. “The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research.”

This is slippery slope legislation, and if Bush were to sign the bill as is, we’d be one step closer to full-on fetus farming, the implanting of a human embryo in a woman or animal for the sole purpose of harvesting cells or tissue. The president is keeping his word to do everything he can to prevent this, and I for one, respect that.

UPDATE: It’s in the books.

I wonder what Senator (hiccup) Kennedy is doing to commemorate this day?

Brace yourself.

The Left is accusing President Bush of sexually harassing German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Moonbats far and wide are trying to make hay out of an innocent, light hearted show of friendship.

.. Entering the meeting room, as relayed by a Russian television camera, Bush headed directly behind the chancellor, reached out and, placing both hands on the collar of her gold jacket, gave her a short massage just below the neck.

She smiled. …

Yes, there are grainy pictures of the accused caught in the act of committing the alleged crime.

Yes, there is video.

And there’s this expert analysis from Taylor Marsh:

This is why Iraq and the Middle East are in flames, and we have no credibility around the world. We have a prepubescent president in charge. It is an outrage.

Excuse me for a moment.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Heh heh heh.

BWAAAAAAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAAA!!!!!

Of course, the whole thing is utterly absurd, given that the Left’s patron saint Bill Clinton raped at least 2 women, exposed himself to another, and used a White House intern for sex.

Puhleeze. What will these crazy kidz think up next?

69 people are dead after a powerful earthquake caused a tsunami to form and strike Indonesia’s Java island. (CNN VIDEO)

Regional agencies had issued bulletins that the 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake was strong enough to send a killer wave steaming toward the country worst hit by the 2004 tsunami, but they did not reach the victims because the island has no warning system.

The hardest-hit area appeared to be Pangandaran, an idyllic beach resort long popular with local and foreign tourists, where witnesses said people shouted “
Tsunami! Tsunami!” and climbed trees or crowded inland mosques as the wave approached.

Red Cross official Arifin Muhadi told The Associated Press that 69 people were killed, most in Pangandaran, and that 77 others were missing.

“We are still evacuating areas and cross-checking data,” he said.

The full scope of the natural disaster won’t be known for a few days.

More: Pictures

UPDATE: 86 104 341 550 reportedly dead as a result of the killer wave. 

Bush, unvarnished.

It wasn’t meant to be overheard. Private luncheon conversations among world leaders, picked up by a microphone, provided a rare window into both banter and substance _ including President Bush cursing Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel.

Bush expressed his frustration with the United Nations and his disgust with the militant Islamic group and its backers in Syria as he talked to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.

“See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s— and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.

He told Blair he felt like telling U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who visited the gathered leaders, to get on the phone with Syrian President Bashar Assad to “make something happen.” He suggested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might visit the region soon.

The unscripted comments came during a photo opportunity at the lunch. The leaders clearly did not realize that a live microphone was picking up their discussion.

Or did they? Don’t be so quick to think that Bush didn’t know exactly what he was doing. You see, diplomatically he would have never made that comment in front of the press corp. Yet this is a man who says what he believes. It’s obvious he wants Syria to get it together and control Hezbollah. Perhaps this microphone malfunction wasn’t really a ‘slip’ at all?

More: Transcript

Still More: Bill Quick Deconstructs.