Wednesday, August 31, 2005

650 Die in Iraq Stampede Spurned by Rumors


This is tragic:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Panic engulfed thousands of Shiites marching across a bridge in a religious procession Wednesday after rumors spread that a suicide bomber was about to attack, triggering a stampede that killed 648 people.

Scores jumped or were pushed to their deaths into the muddy Tigris River about 30 feet below, while others were crushed in the crowd. Most of the dead were women and children, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

The pushing was so forceful, that literally hundreds of pairs of shoes were removed and strewn about in all the commotion (as seen above).

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

"Everybody's store"

I'm sure you all remember how almost immediatly after the fall of Baghdad, looting erupted throughout the city. This, in fact, was one of the greatest criticisms leveled against the administration at that time, for the war tactically had gone exceedingly smooth. It seemed night after night, and column after column, liberals were citing the examples of looting as a failure to plan.

Well, it turns out, not suprisingly, the looting isn't limited to geographic location. Since Hurricane Katrina, looting is rampant throughout that region, and the Libs are, shall we say, silent. In fact, it is even being viewed as a way for the "oppressed" to get back at society.

Maybe the residents should follow this advice.

Monday, August 29, 2005

A hero in the news

News of Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla in the Seattle Times. Kurilla is part of the unit being covered by independent journalist Michael Yon in his blog http://michaelyon.blogspot.com.

Mudville has this great commentary on the article,
In his blog, Iraqi insurgents are "terrorists" and the United States is making progress in its nation-building efforts.
Funny - it's that way in Iraq too.

Why we need tort reform

Here's a great article on the recent Vioxx decision.

All this goes to show that physicians under the gun make lousy witnesses, which we already knew. To understand the Angleton verdict, one would think that Vioxx were the moral equivalent of mustard gas. But in truth, we should be grateful to any firm that speeds its product to market when its anticipated use promises many more benefits than adverse side-effects. Merck should not apologize for pushing hard to win quick market acceptance; before Vioxx was withdrawn, countless people with chronic pain were able to get on with their lives. Now these folks are left far worse off because of a double whammy: a Food and Drug Administration that yanks too many drugs off the market because it has no idea how to evaluate risk, and individual jurors who think it is their solemn duty to "send a message" to the drug companies on whose products we so desperately depend.

What Media Hype?

Check out these pics.

Friday, August 26, 2005

It's conclusive, Roberts is racist

The Washington Post really has a doosy today. File this one in the "leap of logic" category.

It turns out that twenty years ago Supreme Court nominee John Roberts wrote a draft article for an obscure legal journal. Here's how the Post describe's its significance:

Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."

So what's the big deal you ask? Here's the key.

While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners. Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant.

"Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,' " McSeveney explained. "People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose."

Oh, I see. Since people opposed to the civil rights movement would be more comfortable with his word choice, Roberts must be like minded.

The sheer fact that this is even newsworthy is embarrasing. It just shows that the Left has absolutely nothing on Roberts. Zip, Zero, Zilch, Nada. Just ask Senator Feinstein who just the other day could only complain about Robert's sense of humor.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Praise for the IDF

From opinionjournal, a great story about the Isreali self-eviction from Gaza. It's amazing to read about the poise and dignity these people showed, and compare it to the hatred and crass exploitation that the Palestinian propogandists are making of this self-sacrificing momment.

Ouch

Hat tip to Instapundit for pointing out this great response to a rumor-mongering proffesor slandering a murdered journalist.
Take a look.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Monday Bloggy Goodness

Here's a round-up of some interesting news from the past couple of days.

This got my blood boiling:
In the adding insult to injury category, the city officials that triumphed over a group of Connecticut homeowners in a landmark Supreme Court property-rights case are expecting those residents to pay the local government rent dating back to the year 2000. ...
"It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation," wrote Jonathan O'Connell in the Fairfield County Weekly.
Read the whole filthy story.

On a different not, during an interview on Hardball with MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell, former CIA analyst and bin Ladin expert Michael Scheuer revealed how much of a distraction government attorneys can be in the War on Terror:

O‘DONNELL: Let me ask you what you know about what we‘ve read recently about a secret military operation known as Able Danger. There are people involved in that that say that the United States knew about Mohammed Atta a year before the 9/11 attacks. Is that true? And was there a massive failure by our government?

SCHEUER: I don‘t know firsthand information about Able Danger, ma‘am, but from what I‘ve read in the media, that the lawyers prevented them from passing the information to the FBI, that certainly rings true. The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers. When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden‘s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn‘t irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community.

Supreme Court Follows NCAA

Washington D.C.:
In a surprise move, the nations highest court today affirmed the NCAA's new policy towards institutions with Native American imagery or references. The court also expanded the list of offenders to include the 28 states whose name is of Native American origin, ruling that under the established policy, states are prohibited from displaying names that make any references to Native American's.
Local governments were left to wonder whether the ruling applies to local municiple names, or only to those under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile other minority groups saw the ruling as not broad enough.
"This is totally ridiculous," complained California activist Jose Vasquez. "There are plenty of states and towns with names of Hispanic origins. In failing to ammend the NCAA's policy to include governments who are profiting through the exploitation of our language, the court has turned a cold shoulder to our plight."

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Latest Martyr

From IMAO:

A bus overturned in Tel Aviv after hitting a traffic island, hurting 30 children.

Thirty children sustained light injuries when a bus overturned at the Morasha Juncion, outside Tel Aviv, on Thursday afternoon.

The bus toppled over after hitting a traffic island.

Magen David Adom rescue forces arrived at the scene of the accident to evacuate the children to hospital.

According to Palestinian Authority Television, the martyred traffic island will be honored with parades in Jenin and Ramallah tomorrow morning, and its spirit is currently enjoying an eternity in Paradise with seventy-two buckets of wet cement.

"Camp Casey"


Ok folks, this Cindy Sheehan thing has gone way too far. It's like watching a train wreck, horrified at the twisted metal and strewn bodies, but yet, unable to turn away.

Seriously folks, if people like this start showing up to support you, doesn't a flashing light start going off in your head? As much as I love the stench, I mean company, of a group of retarded hippy rejects, it is a bit much. (the rolled up dooby and desecretated american flag with missles on it ads a nice touch though)

This picture pretty much sums up the left doesn't it? The sad thing is, this is the best thing the left has going for them. This is their only hope. Why else would Ariana Huffington feature the Sheehan Circus as a front page story for the past week and a half. They got nothing on Roberts, Able Danger is incriminatig the Clinton administration, and Air America is going down in flames.

The whole situation is quite sad. Expect Sheehan to be invited to the 2008 DNC convention and be seated between Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore, oh and don't forget Joe Wilson won't be far as well.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Clinton's 20/20 Hindsight

Our beloved and impeached President, Bill Clinton, recently told reporters what he would have done if he knew Bin Laden was responsible for the USS Cole Attack while he was still in office:

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early." (ed.-ok, seriously, this remark doesn't even pass the smile test)
"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”
Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush.
"I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did," he told New York magazine.


Of course, this is one steaming pile of B.S. The first reason is because the FBI and CIA did confirm that it was Bin Laden while he was in office. And lets not forget that Sudan had offerred Bin Laden on a silver platter to Clinton, who didn't want to take him (audio here). And even if Clinton had taken action, do we really believe he would have done anything decisive, especially after we pulled out of Somalia when the going got tough? I guess he could of fired off a couple of cruise missles on an Aspirin factory, the same night Monika Lewinsky was to return to the grand jury.

Two words folks, Able Danger.

Friday, August 12, 2005

NY Times Speaks!!!

After weeks of silence regarding the Air America embezzlement scandal, the "old gray lady" the "paper of record" the end all be all of news sources has finally acknowledged the existence of the radio station's financial woes. Of course, it adds absolutely nothing knew to the story, and is a simple regurgitation of what the blogs and other news sources have been reporting. Not suprisingly, the Times even goes out of their way to dowdify an Al Franken quote to put a less negative spin on the whole situation.

Even after realizing the Time's incompetence and bias, I was still surpised that it took them so long to even mention or acknowledge the story. Especially when one considers that it took place in the Time's own backyard, and that the Time's was falling over itself to write stories on the station before, during and after its debut.

For anyone that has any doubts about liberal bias in the media, all you have to do is ask yourself, if Rush Limbaugh's Clear Channel station was involved in similar financial shenanigans, would the Times have sat on its hands the same way they did here? No chance.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

9/11 Commission Ignored Key Facts

A classified data mining operation called “Able Danger” identified Mohammed Atta as a threat and called for his deportation long before September 11, 2001, but the Clinton administration's restrictions on intelligenge sharing ensured that the information was never forwarded to the FBI: Commission Urges Investigation Into 9/11 Claim.

Of course the 9/11 Commission, who was supposed to figure out what our intelligence failures stemmed from decided to sit on the report. So, you ask, why in the world would the Commission not bring up the fact that there were reports actually identifying the terrorist ring-leader? Because it didn't fit their preconceived notions. According to the New York Times, the 9/11 Commission officials said that Able Danger had not been included in their report because some of the information sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about Atta.

Captain Ed writes:

What does that mean for the Commission's findings? It meant that the cornerstone of their conclusions no longer fit the facts. Able Danger showed that the US had enough intelligence to take action -- if the government had allowed law enforcement and intelligence operations to cooperate with each other. It also showed that data mining could effectively identify terrorist agents.
So what did the Commission do? It ignored those facts which did not fit within its predetermined conclusions. It never bothered to mention Able Danger even one time in its final report, even though that absolutely refuted the notion that the government had no awareness that Atta constituted a terrorist threat. It endorsed the idea of data mining (which would die in Congress as the Total Information Awareness program) without ever explaining why. And while the Clinton policy of enforcing a quarantine between law enforcement and intelligence operations came under general criticism, their report never included the fact that the "wall" for which Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick had so much responsibility specifically contributed to Atta's ability to come and go as he pleased, building the teams that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.


Jamie S. Gorelick was a deputy Attorney General under Clinton, who in the wake of the WTC bombings in 1993, ensured that there would be virtually no intelligence sharing between federal and local police agencies. For more on the "Wall" in the intelligence community click here. Despite a gross and obvious conflict of interest, Gorelick was appointed by democrats to sit on the 9/11 Commission panel. More Gorelick conflicts can be read about here, here, and here.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

NARAL, credibility vacuum

The pro-abortion group, NARAL has completely blown whatever credibility it might have had. These folks make Amnesty International and Michael Moore look like George Washington.

If you haven't heard, NARAL has developed and started to air, an anti-judge Roberts ad which makes it appear that Judge Roberts supports the bombing of abortion clinics. Just about everything in this ad is so false and twisted it's hard to know where to start.

Indeed, I've never heard lies so many, in words so few.

Factcheck.org debunks the ad here, as does powerline. Drudge has an article discussing how CNN will continue to show the blatant distortions.

As usual, Michelle malkin is in the mix as well.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Wednesday Morning Bloggy Goodness

I know it's been a few days since the last post, so here's a quick rundown of some interesting events that occurred over the past few days:

immediately after Bush's Doctors declared him to be in superior physical shape, the Dems, not to be one-upped, issued an unintentionally funny press release, complaining that the President was to blame for America's obese children. Powerline gives it a thorough fisking.

Via Michelle Malkin: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Federalist Society is "a somewhat secretive group." Patterico responds: "How is the Federalist Society even somewhat secretive? Can someone fill me in on this? I'm a member or at least I thought I was and I don't know a single secret. What's the secret?"

Helen "I'll die if Cheney becomes Prez" Thomas actually expressed outrage that she had been quoted by a Hill reporter. "I'll never talk to a reporter again!" Thomas was overheard saying. "We were just talking -- I was ranting -- and he wrote about it. That isn't right. We all say stuff we don't want printed," Thomas said. Of course, isn't this what reporters salivate for? Hoping to catch someone with their guard down, ready to tell them what they really think? Irony, thy name is Helen.

And of course, what would a day be like without some ridiculous Howard Dean comment? The other day, Howard Dean condemned President Bush's right-wing Supreme Court for the Kelo decision. Of course, it seems odd that 1) Bush had nothing to do with the current make up of the court, and 2) three of the four dissenters in the decision were the strongest conservatives on the court, with O'Connor being the fourth.