Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Page 3 of 5

There Is No Crisis?

Published on 2005/03/16 in Politics. 17 Comments

While poking around some moonbat sites, I found a link to a site called “There Is No Crisis”. They seem to be of the opinion that Social Security is just fine, thank you very much, and we don’t need to fix it. If you’re wondering what the political slant of the site is, one only need to see the DNC on the blogroll to get a good idea.


However, the Democrats’ favorite son, Bill Clinton, had much to say about Social Security during the 90′s:


President Clinton: ?This Fiscal Crisis In Social Security Affects Every Generation.? (President Bill Clinton, Remarks At Georgetown University On Social Security, Washington, DC, 2/9/98)


President Clinton: ?[F]irst, And Above All, We Must Save Social Security For The 21st Century.? (President Bill Clinton, State Of The Union, 1/19/99)

President Clinton: ?So That All Of These Achievements ? The Economic Achievements ? Our Increasing Social Coherence And Cohesion, Our Increasing Efforts To Reduce Poverty Among Our Youngest Children ? All Of Them Are Threatened By The Looming Fiscal Crisis In Social Security.? (President Bill Clinton, Remarks At Georgetown University On Social Security, Washington, DC, 2/9/98)

President Clinton: ?Now Is The Time To Strengthen Social Security For The Future. ? We Can And Must Accomplish This Critical Goal For The American People.? (The White House, ?Presidential Statement On Social Security,? Press Release, 4/23/99)

President Clinton: ?But Because A Higher Percentage Of Our People Will Be Both Older And Retired, Perhaps Our Greatest Opportunity And Our Greatest Obligation At This Moment Is To Save Social Security.? (President Bill Clinton, Remarks To A National Forum On Social Security, Kansas City, MO, 4/7/98)

President Clinton: ?[I]f You Don?t Do Anything, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either It Will Go Broke And You Won?t Ever Get It, Or If We Wait Too Long To Fix It, The Burden On Society ? Of Taking Care Of Our Generation?s Social Security Obligations Will Lower Your Income And Lower Your Ability To Take Care Of Your Children To A Degree That Most Of Us Who Are You Parents Think Would Be Horribly Wrong And Unfair To You And Unfair To The Future Prospects Of The United States.? (President Bill Clinton, Remarks At Georgetown University On Social Security, Washington, DC, 2/9/98)

President Clinton: ?And Above All, To My Fellow Baby Boomers, Let Me Say That None Of Us Wants Our Own Retirement To Be A Burden To Our Children And To Their Efforts To Raise Our Grandchildren. It Would Be Unconscionable If We Failed To Act, And Act Now, As One Nation Renewing The Ties That Bind Us Across The Generations.? (President Bill Clinton, Remarks To A National Forum On Social Security, Kansas City, MO, 4/7/98)


Not to mention an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll back in January which showed that 90% of Americans think Social Security is either in crisis or in trouble.


The system does need fixing. Even Bill Clinton can admit that.

Willis Gives Up On Hume

Published on 2005/03/16 in Politics. Closed

The banner at Oliver Willis’ site is now gone. I guess he realized there was no way Hume was going to resign. Sadly for Jeff G., no more post titles like “BREAKING: FOXNEWS WASHINGTON EDITOR BRIT HUME RESISTS LATEST WAVE OF PRESSURE FROM LEFTWING MEDIA WATCHDOGS TO RESIGN HIS POST, DECIDES INSTEAD TO “DO A LITTLE GOLFING”; A DETERMINED AND ANGRY OLIVER WILLIS DISMISSES HUME’S LATEST AFFRONT TO TRUTH AS “RIGHTWING ARROGANCE,” NOTES THAT “BRIT CAN RUN, BUT HE CAN’T HIDE. WHEREAS IN MY CASE, I CAN DO NEITHER. BUT THAT’S JUST TOO MANY PULLED PORK SANDWICHES.”


Oh well…


However, Willis has replaced it with a banner calling for the resignation of Tom DeLay. With choice grammar such as “He should resign, if he had some shame.”


And he gets paid for doing this?

I Didn’t Know The Lebanese Were Fans Of Mel Gibson

Published on 2005/03/15 in Politics. 4 Comments

Lebanese Woman

You Mean There Really Were WMD’s?

Published on 2005/03/15 in Politics. 20 Comments

According to yesterday’s New York Times, it seems that sites in Iraq capable of making nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons were looted during the war.


In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein’s most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government’s first extensive comments on the looting.
 
…

Satellite imagery analyzed by two United Nations groups – the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic – confirms that some of the sites identified by Dr. Araji appear to be totally or partly stripped, senior officials at those agencies said. Those officials said they could not comment on all of Dr. Araji’s assertions, because the groups had been barred from Iraq since the invasion.


For nearly a year, the two agencies have sent regular reports to the United Nations Security Council detailing evidence of the dismantlement of Iraqi military installations and, in a few cases, the movement of Iraqi gear to other countries. In addition, a report issued last October by the chief American arms inspector in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, told of evidence of looting at crucial sites.


Of particular interest is the phrase “movement of Iraqi gear to other countries”. That sounds remarkably like the scenario I blogged about last August, where scores of trucks were seen crossing the Iraq border into Syria right before the war started.


Now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, I’m wondering how the rest of the MSM is going to react to this story. With all the Bush Was Right stories seeping through the woodwork, it’s getting pretty hard to keep quiet about it much longer.

I’m Shocked, Shocked I Tell You

Published on 2005/03/15 in Politics. 6 Comments

Note: Stating the obvious is now considered journalism:

U.S. media coverage of last year’s election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.


The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.


Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

So the media was three times more likely to run negative stories about Bush than Kerry. Somehow, I’m not surprised in the least. And the report comes from the Columbia School of Journalism, hardly a bastion of conservative thought.


There is an interesting item a little lower in the story:

The study noted a huge rise in audiences for Internet news, particularly for bloggers whose readers jumped by 58 percent in six months to 32 million people.

No explanation as to why, but I’ll bet that “Rathergate” played a hand, since the ‘sphere is where all the breaking news was coming from.


I’m shocked Reuters even ran this story.

Quote Of The Day

Published on 2005/03/15 in Entertainment. Closed

“I’ve worked enough to be able to fail the rest of my life. And that’s what I’m going to do.” – George Lucas


 Ah, the American Dream is still alive…

ACLU To Monitor Minutemen

Published on 2005/03/11 in Politics. 50 Comments

This is just ridiculous:


According to the Tucson Citizen, the Arizona chapter of the ACLU wants to monitor the activities of those on patrol.

The group is looking to recruit “observers” who will trail the Minuteman members searching for illegal aliens along the border in Cochise County, Ariz.

“We will be there to make sure they’re not abusing anybody’s rights,” the ACLU’s Ray Ybarra told the paper.


He says a team of attorneys will be ready to file civil cases against project participants should any abuses occur.


So the ACLU wants to show up and make sure that people who come across the border don’t have their rights violated? What rights? If they come across, they’re doing it illegally. They’re not American citizens, why should they be entitled to the same rights as Americans? They only right they should have is the right to be put on a bus and shipped back across the border, ASAP. Why does the ACLU feel they need to butt in? Surely they have better things to do.


On second thought… Dark night… Middle of the desert… No one around for miles but a bunch of armed citizens and ACLU lackeys in range standing around.


I’m just sayin’.

Looks Like Blogrolling Is Down

Published on 2005/03/11 in Geeky Stuff. 2 Comments

Their web page doesn’t respond, which was killing mine. I had to take out a couple of blogrolls to get my page to load normally again.


Hopefully Blogrolling will be fixed soon and I can put them back in.


Sorry for any inconvenience.


UPDATE: Well, that was quick. Web page is back up, blogrolls loading normally. Don’t know how long that went on, nothing on their news page to indicate they even knew about it. Hopefully, it will stay fixed.


UPDATE II: Nope. Blogrolls off again. I think I’ll leave them off for a few hours and check back later.

Instalanche, Once Removed

Published on 2005/03/10 in Geeky Stuff. 2 Comments

Yesterday, I made this post comparing Giuliana Sgrena’s car to Bonnie and Clyde’s car. Shortly after I posted it, Dr. Rusty Shackleford linked to me in this post.


That link alone was bringing in the hits. But early this morning, Glenn Reynolds linked to that post. So I basically am getting the second-level effects of an Instalanche today:


Instalanche


That’s a lot of visitors for this little site. I’m just glad my web server is keeping up.

I Wouldn’t Believe It, But The LA Times Says It’s True

Published on 2005/03/10 in Politics. Closed

I’m still reeling after reading this:

One of the administration’s staunchest opponents, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), even said Sunday that President Bush deserved credit for what seemed to be a tentative awakening of democracy in the region.

“What’s taken place in a number of those countries is enormously constructive,” Kennedy said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s a reflection the president has been involved.”

Hmmm, same guy who said this?

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.”

With the fall of Saddam having repercussions in Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, and generally all over the Middle East, I guess Senator Kennedy is finally realizing that Bush was right all along.


Is he up for re-election in ’08? That might make some sense of this. If not, I’m baffled.