Year: 2006

iPod compatible Levi Jeans.

I don’t know why I’ve been listening to the Alito hearings because it’s driving me crazy. The Democrats just won’t stop on the issue of Samuel Alito’s membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Apparently, Drudge was right, in that the Dems are attempting to attach controversial statements by members of CAP to Alito. So far though, it seems fruitless.

Meanwhile, the drama continues, as a report was just released stating that Alito’s wife Martha was so fed up with the questioning that she left the room in tears. The sessions have been gruelling.

One senior Republican in the hearing room said of the situation: “After three full days of attacks against her husband’s character, Mrs. Alito had enough. Democrat behavior during this hearing has not only been wrong, it’s been embarrassing. Ted Kennedy is nothing but a bully.”

A hiccuping bully, at that. S’pose he’s drunk?

The whole thing is a charade, and it’s unfortunate that this is what it takes to be confirmed as a Supreme Court judge today. Ruth Bader Ginsburg never faced this pressure.

So says Michael J. Totten.

It’s time for me to go to Iraq.

I am not going to embed with the military. While it sounds exciting (as well as terrifying), I’m only going to be there a few weeks. War correspondence isn’t something a person does for two weeks.

Instead I’m going to the part of Iraq most journalists ignore: the North. Erbil, Sulemaniya, Dohok, and Halabja – the city near the Iranian border where Saddam Hussein massacred thousands of people with chemical weapons.

Michael does a great job reporting from far away lands. A visit to his blog will give you a taste of some of the reports he’s filed over time. His mix of words and images bring places to life.

Seattle has had 23 consecutive days of rain, and I should know. The windshield wipers on my truck have been in the ‘on’ position for, yes, 23 days. But, we haven’t broken the record yet.

With more rain forecast over the next several days, Seattle could break a record set in 1953. The city saw 33 days in a row of measurable precipitation then _ the most since the National Weather Service office started tracking rainfall here in 1931.

“Usually we have a few days of rain and one or two days of cloudy and dreary days and then it rains again, and that’s the way it goes,” weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said Monday. “We’re not getting our dry days in between – just having one system follow another.”

As New Orleans officials strategize over just what the Big Easy will be in a post Katrina world, one wonders if they’re simply rearranging chairs on a Titanic.

This city is dreaming big as it puts together a blueprint for its rebirth in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, considering such audacious ideas as re-creating a long-gone jazz district, building a network of bike paths and commuter rail lines, and establishing a top-flight school system.

In the coming days, beginning Wednesday, a commission appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin will unveil a grab bag of ideas that could become part of the master plan for rebuilding this devastated city, a task unparalleled in American history.

Committees and subcommittees of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission were invited to think big, with little regard for the price tag. That will be dealt with later, when New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast divvy up the $29 billion in federal aid designated for hurricane recovery and reconstruction.

And what a party that will be! State, city and national organizations and grass-roots groups have their own ideas for how to rebuild the city. Watch the personalities and personal agendas collide. Tickets are on sale now!

This is all well and good – dreaming dreams, throwing costs to the wind, communicating hopes and desires. One problem still exists though – the faulty levee system. Until this safety mechanism is completely rethought, redesigned and rebuilt, plans to install bike paths and a jazz district will be a complete waste of time and money. 

The rebuilding of New Orleans has to be taken seriously, but given the history of the state of Louisiana, it’s too easy to believe that the transformation of the Big Easy will end up being the big land grab of the century. 

UPDATE: The fight has begun.

If you’re in the market for a new car, GM’s woes might be your gain.

General Motors Corp., whose U.S. sales fell 4.3 percent last year, said it will cut the prices on about 80 percent of its cars and trucks.

Prices will reduced on all Buick, Chevrolet and GMC models and most Pontiac vehicles, said Mark LaNeve, GM’s head of North American marketing, in a statement today. The price cuts take effect tomorrow. Combined with reductions made on some models in August, the changes cover 90 percent of GM’s volume, LaNeve said.

The firesale isn’t just a ploy to gain sales in what is normally a lackluster season for car buying. GM’s CFO says he’s in crisis mode.

“You can’t panic. That is not crisis mode. Crisis mode means taking serious action, decisively, quickly and addressing your problems as urgently as you possibly can. So I think I understand crisis mode and I am in it and have been for a while,” Henderson said.

He’s right, and hopefully, for GM’s sake, their strategy will work.

More ‘Osama is Dead’ news, this time from Michael Ledeen.

“According to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year’s message in conjunction with the Muslim Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.”

Find the grave, exhume the body, positively identify and do an autopsy, THEN I might believe that Osama bin Laden is dead. 

Senator Ted (hiccup) Kennedy will write a children’s book. Parents, protect your kids from this one.

Meet the latest children’s author, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash, his co-protagonist in “My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C.”

Scholastic Inc. will release the book in May.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to create a book for young readers and their families that will deepen their understanding of how our American government works,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday issued by Scholastic.

According to Scholastic, Kennedy’s book “not only takes readers through a full day in the Senator’s life, but also explains how a bill becomes a law.” Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, was inspired to write the book from his work with a Washington-based reading program, “Everybody Wins!”

Heh, a day in the life of the senator.

“Well kiddies, first thing I do when I get up (hiccup) is grab a tablespoon of grandma’s recipe. OK (hiccup), maybe just a little more than a tablespoon. Uncle Teddy is a big man, and I need a little more than most grown-ups.”

Oh could I go a long way with this, but I won’t on this PG-13 rated blog.

Harry Belafonte calls Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world”. What a moron.

The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez’s television and radio broadcast Sunday.

“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people … support your revolution,” Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.

Stay in Caracas Harry. Your DAY-O has come and gone in the United States.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton will appear with Belafonte tomorrow. Of course, this will go unnoticed by the media.

I won’t be spending a lot of time on this story, aside from a snark here or there, unless something outrageous happens. Otherwise, there are plenty of lawyer bloggers out there who will comment on every utterance, jot and tittle (as they should).

One thing to say at the outset – why, why, why is this news?