ORACULATIONS

Bush still has problems that a SC appointment won't cure. Check out Debbie Schussel today, and this is no treat.......

"Debbie Does 9/11" as Hollywood Lefties pile in to do "a 9/11" movie. First the Hate America lefty, Oliver Stone. Followed by a slew of other communist pricks. A partial list is here

1. "Flight 93," a Universal Studios film about the hijacked plane that left Newark, N.J., and crashed into a Pennsylvania field

2. an adaptation of the book, "102 Minutes"

3. A TV mini series based on the finding of the Sept 11 Commission, you know the one that left everything out.

And you can bet Muslims will be treated "with kindness and understanding," we can only hope that we Americans will be treated the same. I'm not betting on it.

Noonan's piece of last week is suddenly getting the attention it deserves. It is here and should be read and then really thought about. Does it mirror me and the people I deal with both as clients and in the workplace? Yes, to a great extent. Everyone is thinking that "it's all over." Combine the court decisions, the presidential sonamulance and inability to communicate anything, his miserable appointments, Iraq, energy prices, the hurricanes, bird flu that nobody thinks the government can handle, the scandals, the attack on religion, the utter collapse of our elites and institutions, and and and. Read it and see what you think. I largely agree with it based on my experiences right now and I wish I didn't...... And if you didn't read my piece comparing JFK's reaction to crises to Bush's, go there. Then go over to The Gun Guy---we all know who he is---and check out his take. I think most of us agree that "the wheels are coming off the trolley." I will post on this tomorrow.

I've had a communication from Holly Aho of soldiers Angels regarding their fund raiser designed to get enough money to supply thirty voice activated lap tops to disabled GIs who have lost limbs. To make it simple, there will be a single PayPal link and to satisfy the "competition" you can mention Marines so Holly gets the credit. Once all ducks are in a row I'll link and I hope you donate something to guys who really need it this Thanksgiving. I suggest you not go to the above links because they are so confusing as to be maddening. It's simple. Donate something through PayPal, disabled GIs get voice activated lap tops.

Want actual proof of media bias? Proof that they cannot see beyond their liberal backgrounds? FOOTBALL rankings are there for all to see. It is a known fact that almost half the journalists in the entire country (as opposed to New York and LA) graduated from Northwestern University, a Chicago eliteist school with an enrollment of less than 6,000 and SAT scores above 1,400. Anybody with a brain knows that a chickenshit little school like that cannot be rated in the Top Twenty Five in football, unless in the unlikely circumstance they actually beat somebody in the Top Ten. (Yes I know they went to the Rose Bowl in the last century when they lost to USC.). So their in house elites had them rated up there. Final score: Michigan 105, Northwestern 17 as anyone with a fucking brain knew would happen. Really think about it. Those rankings were totally insane and could have only been cooked up by an elite with their heads up their asses. BTW Stanford, a Left Coast eliteist high SAT school with 7,000 students, has been to the Rose Bowl and actually won some, beating both Ohio State AND Michigan in the early 70s.

First Libby Views from around the web: are starting to come in, led by the LA Times (slobbering all over themselves in self rightous preening) and the NY Times....(There is no ivory tower too high for them inhabit; no pulpit too remote for them to pontificate from) both bird cage bottom liners delight at the indictment, they are sorry there aren't more right now; but not to worry because Cheney is next, followed by "you know who." Exception is Washington Post which I linked to yesterday.....

Now some real shit about the New York Times.....I have culled this from a long long post at Maxed Out Mama, and one I forgot to read at Michell Malkin. This is proof that there is really nothing more sinister, nothing less principled than the NYT. Most of us will respect the wishes of the dead, particularly those killed in battle. Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr was one of those and he left a final statement for people to read. The NYT distorted what he said to fit their own political bias. Read either link if you haven't already. Is there a single word that can define the MSM and particularly the vile NYT? How debased do you have to be to do lie about a guy's last words? Patterico has a short summation which tells it all briefly.

Libby: the views from Left and Right are as far apart as the earth is from the sun. The Right says that Libby is accused of lying about a crime that was never committed; the Left says that Libby is just the first in a chain of liars who lied to the country about Iraq, lies that go all the way to the top

Consider the spokespeople on the Left: we are waging nuclear war in Iraq (Cindy Sheehan), that there was cannibalism in New Orleans (Randall Robinson), that George Bush and Dick Cheney should be shot (the novelist Jane Smiley) or executed (Al Franken). If you think I'm cherry picking, try Durbin and Kennedy who slander American soldiers as akin to either Saddam’s torturers or even Nazis and Stalinists. The Left has allied itself with Arab kleptocracies and the corrupt Europeans and leave no stone unturned in order to be "right" on Iraq. Oliver Willis sums up in six points the Left view of Bush and the Libby indictment:

1. They ignore warning signs about terrorist attacks
2. They leak classified information to the media
3. They lie under oath and obstruct justice in an investigation about national security violations
4. They send our country into war without an exit strategy and without a good reason
5. They create massive deficits while only cutting spending on vital social programs and veteran benefits
6. They fill vital government positions with political cronies, leading to death and disaster

That about sums up most of the Left.

Consider the Right: here it gets very dicey because the MSM would have us all believe that the "extreme" Right is all the neo Nazis, the apocalypic Christian groups, and the "Patriot Movement," those armed anti-government groups who talk only to themselves. The actual Right seems to be celebrating the Miers demise while searching for a reality about the Libby case. Libby has a lifetime record of honesty and clarity of purpose. "Why did he lie, if he lied." is the cry right now because it doesn't make sense. There may be no instant Right Wing view of the case right now other than wonder.

The good liberals, ones that actually think? Today's Washington Post editorializes as follows:

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby should be the final proof that the system of "special prosecutors" is bankrupt and ought to be abandoned.

Fitzgerald, a highly respected federal prosecutor from Chicago, was given the task of investigating whether Bush administration officials had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by "leaking" the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame.

It is clear that, at least by sometime in January 2004 -- and probably much earlier -- Fitzgerald knew this law had not been violated. Plame was not a "covert" agent but a bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters. Instead of closing shop, however, Fitzgerald sought an expansion of his mandate and has now charged offenses that grew entirely out of the investigation itself. In other words, there was no crime when the investigation started, only, allegedly, after it finished. Unfortunately, for special counsels, as under the code of the samurai, once the sword is drawn it must taste blood.

Which is sort of what I said yesterday and let me say it again: no more special prosecutors for anything unless it's for a specific crime and nothing else, and before they go on their kamikazi run at underlings and secretaries the subject of the "probe" must be limited and authorized by two thirds of both houses of congress. The only thing left is for Fitzie is to find a soiled dress in Rove's laundry.

Why Libs have been losing since about 1983, when those horrible tax cuts happened


Dow Jones Industrial Average....Click a couple of times on the chart to see it real real big.

The one thing that the defenders of the administration make: "Everybody knew Plame worked for the CIA," is now demonstrably false. In truth, nobody knew, and if any of these right wing reporters had gotten off their dead asses and gone to the neighborhood and asked they would have found out. But Right Wingers are just as lazy as the lazy Lefties, they only know what they hear over the phone, in D.C. bars, and read on right wing websites.

We have a despicably lazy press on both Left and Right.

The story seems to have originated in the Washington Times in a single sentence contained in an editorial that ran on 7/26 as well as another on 7/19 and then spread as Gospel by all the dopes on the Right too lazy to check. There seems to have been only one person who knew her and knew she was CIA and he was no longer a neighbor. The NYT reported and quoted David Tillotson, the same neighbor quoted in The Washington Times article, as well as another neighbor, Christopher Wolf::

On June 1, after a year's unpaid leave, Ms. Wilson, now known to the country by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, returned to a new job at the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get her career back on track, her husband said. Neither the agency nor Mr. Wilson would describe her position, except to make what might seem an obvious point: she will no longer be working under cover, as she did successfully for almost 20 years.

"Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent," said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons' children, Trevor and Samantha.

"She wasn't mysterious," Mr. Tillotson said. "She was sort of a working soccer mom."

He recalled his incredulity on July 14, 2003, when his wife, Victoria, spotted in The Washington Post, in a syndicated column by Robert Novak, a line identifying their neighbor by her maiden name and calling her an "agency operative." Ms. Tillotson kept calling out: "This can't be! This can't be!"

The Wilsons' neighbor on the other side, Christopher Wolf, was similarly aghast. As he sat on his deck staring at the Novak column, Mr. Wilson came out his back door.

"I said: 'This is amazing! I had no idea,"' Mr. Wolf recalled. "He sort of motioned to me to keep my voice down."

There is plenty like this, but I was too lazy to really check it out too. So there.....

"While $115 million has been spent by public employee unions to oppose the reform initiatives in California and promote a message that the voices of their members will be silenced if Prop 75 passes, an angry mob of dues paying union members showed what little respect they have for free speech by physically attacking a woman who spoke out in support of the governor’s reform initiatives." Watch as the union goons attack a woman who dared......LINK TO CBS CHANNEL 2--no commercials. Link via Right Nation. I think the unions know they are in trouble. Let's hope so......

Just what we need on the court, but will Bush select her...?

"We undeniably still do have a justice system that does not provide justice for all as provided by the Pledge of Allegiance. One justice for rich, one justice for poor. One justice sometimes for minorities, one for whites."

On judicial activism, she implicitly applauds courts for doing the work Congress won't do, writing:

"When you hear Courts blamed for judicial activism or intrusion where they don't belong...stop and [sic] examine what the elected leadership has done to address the issue at hand...."

What? He already did? That's a quote from a Miers speech? Shit! She was a fucking liberal. So much for "trust me" politics. Laura Ingraham, seems to be finally finding her sea legs in the trecherous sea of talk radio and has an audience; it is she I have quoted here. I never listen because I have a job.....

Best solution? Libby pleads guilty and Bush pardons him.....

Instapundit is reporting that Ghana (that's in Africa someplace, around 500 miles south of Paris) only has 0.09 physicians per thousand population. Compare with Beverly Hills which has one doctor for every 19 people----at just one hospital (Cedars Sinai). So what's the big deal, Glenn? Fuck Ghana....Oh, somebody already did? Bet it was God. Never mind.

So Rove stays under investigation for what, and for how long? Once again we see an Inquisitional "special prosecutor" lurching around like a blind elephant in a pet cemetary seeking something---anything---so he can indict a sitting president, and failing in that indict people close enough to him for whatever he can cook up---(and don't tell me what Clinton did; if the president of the most powerful country on earth can't grab himself a little stray pussy any time he wants to, why be president?). So like Clinton---who was indicted for lying about fucking some dopey cunt instead of the "crime" of doing God only knows what in some penny ante land deal---we have brought another government to its knees. Two glorious years of "investigation" plus another three to four years to continue the investigation in an attempt to wreck another president, and for what?

No mas for any special prosecutor without a two thirds authorization from both houses of houses of congress, and then a specific crime must be charged or all charges dropped. AND a time limit for the investigation.

The only people getting something out of these things are the useless Left reporters who get to chase after the government and smear one and all for another few years.

ONE GOOD THING about all this is that the dire predictions that any indictments would result in financial collapse are proving false. Markets are up--both the dollar and S&P---and oil is down. However it is oil where the really interesting things will be happening. The oil cartels---not independent competing companies---have made their last killing at the expense of the rest of us. What can the government do? Plenty. History buffs will recall FDR invading the offices of Montgomery Ward and carting off their president, Sewell Avery in the 1940s over his refusal to pay union wages, a refusal that threatened to cause a strike during war time. JFK went after all the steel companies in 1962 and in a speech delivered to the press he basically threatened to take them over. Read the text below and then compare with the chickenshit speech by Bush delivered just the other day.

"Increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitutes a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest.
"In this serious hour in our nation's history, when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking reservists to leave their homes and families for months on end to risk their lives … the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives – whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility – can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans. (Bush say that? Never)
"If this rise in the cost of steel is imitated by the rest of the industry, instead of rescinded, it would increase the cost of homes, autos, appliances, and most other items for every American family … . It would seriously handicap our efforts to prevent an inflationary spiral from eating up the pensions of our older citizens and our new gains in purchasing power.
"It would add, Secretary McNamara informed me this morning, an estimated $1 billion to the cost of our defenses, at a time when every dollar is needed for national security.
"The facts of the matter are that there is no justification for an increase in steel prices … . At a time when they could be exploring how more efficiency and better prices could be obtained … a few gigantic corporations have decided to increase prices in ruthless disregard of their public responsibility.
"The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are examining the significance of this action in a free, competitive economy. The Department of Defense and other agencies are reviewing its impact on their policies of procurement … . And I am informed that steps are under way by those members of Congress who plan appropriate inquiries into how these price decisions are so quickly made and reached, and what legislative safeguards may be needed to protect the public interest.
"Price and wage decisions in this country … are and ought to be freely and privately made. But the American people have a right to expect, in return for that freedom, a higher sense of business responsibility for the welfare of their country than has been shown in the last two days.
"Some time ago, I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country, and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours, we had their answer." (All emphasis mine.)

That was the end of the steel crisis. Now contrast what Kennedy said with the ENTIRE statement by Bush:

"I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow. I'd do that."

He wishes. That's it. Period. This can't continue folks; we have an uncompetitive cartel, one that aggressively acts to squash any competition that raises its head, one that is making more money than at any time in the history of the country, a cartel that is squeezing the American consumer into a recession. AND BUSH WISHES. Tell me again why I am a Republican......

Results of any indictments will be horrible for both Bush and the country. The trial will be manipulated so that it becomes a debate on the Iraq war, a debate that will end up defeating the Republicans and pulling the U.S. out of Iraq prematurely. Unless whomever is indicted can plea bargain out. Stay tuned because this can be big.

Think a special prosecutor will be assigned to this? Naw, he might find something important. Debbie Schussel has the gory details...... I'd just add, another fine Bush appointment that has been approved is fucking up the country......

Front Page has the O'Reilley interview about Soros up on their web site. FOX should be ashamed, being scooped on their own story....but the supposed writer of the piece is called "Fox Hound" a name that sounds like it might be written by someone from FOX.

I'm a Super Right Wing Fanatic for Christ and I personally destroyed Harriet Miers... No, and neither did anyone else. It was a combination of Moderate Conservatives like George Will, the Guys at National Review and Weekly Standard, plus a ton of bloggers voicing their opinions; there was also supposedly "extreme Right" people like Rush, Coulter, Hannity, etc. and the combo was too much pressure.

Will this hurt Bush? Not necessarily, remember that the Senate destroyed FDR's attempt to "pack the court" in his second term and he was reelected two more times. However it might be noted that FDR read the tea leaves and probably had to keep us out of WWII til we were attacked because the Congress would have castrated him had he allied us with England; after the packing fiasco he knew they would and could.

Bush now knows the same thing, it's how he handles it that counts. Only disturbing thing about the process is the "buzz" that Laura Bush insisted(s) on a woman and Bush caved. But more to the point is that we have a completely gutless Republican Senate and a cowardly bunch in the House. Face it, we have elected weaklings, no it's greedy weaklings, who stand for nothing other than the next pork.

Miers bites the bullet.... Bush is still in trouble unless he names a real jurist to the post. It's not enough that somebody will vote to overturn Roe v Wade, because I doubt that more than a bare majority of Republicans think it would be a good idea to overturn a law that is thirty five years old. The problem Bush faces now is that Repubicans have stood up and challenged his leadership and aren't afraid to shine a spotlight on the things that bother them. If nothing else, the Republican Right let Bush know that they want quality, KNOWN quality, over a known vote on one narrow case. Bush still has the problems of possible grand jury indictments, some of his horrible agency appointments, and his refusal to police the border, all issues that were there before Miers but are now on the front burners. It ain't over, but at least Bush can try to rebuild. Below is the lone Miers supporter in the Republican Party after she heard the news....Below, first photos of Bush Supreme Court Selection Committee meeting after Miers appointment....

How 'bout them White Sox???? For the first time in a while I called a major sporting event correctly. I also think that this team is the best baseball team I've seen since my yoot; no weakness at all....well their shortstop makes more errors than a Bush appointee, but other than that, WOW. But all the phony liberals and race hustlers are pissing and moaning that the team is too white, it's like they cannot stand it if whites win any athletic contests. So you say that there ARE blacks on the team? No, they are not the right kind of blacks, they are blacks from other countries. The Black American, Dye, may have been named MVP by the fake liberal media just to send a message to us uppity white people. Lost in all this is the fact that ALL of the White Sox top management is BLACK, something that is a major breakthrough in racial politics, but that doesn't count to the race hustlers in both media and politics.

Hey,what do you have to do to get fired at the New York Times?....asks Kaus in a dam good post today.....

Why are these people celebrating? They are partying it up over the 2,000th dead soldier in Iraq. To start your day pissed off, go to Little Green Footballs and check it out because there are pictures of many more celebrants.

Mr. Patterico has offered to debate me regarding the statements I have made about two of the cases included in his post; Roper v. Simmons (banning execution of juveniles) and Atkins v. Virginia (banning execution of the retarded). The debate to take place on either my blog or his. He also questions Miranda having a role in my police roust escapade. I appreciate his graciousness and wish I had to tools to debate the law as he suggests.

1. I ain't a lawyer and am not schooled enough in the trade to debate a person trained in the law. All I can say is that I'm glad that we are not allowed to slaughter the retarded and pot shot the very young; if that is activism from the bench, then I approve of it. I have a "real job" in the investment field and just don't have the time to do the scholarship involved in order to debate you the way somebody ought to debate you. Putting myself up against you in a debate would be the same as daring to shoot it out with Billy the Kid if he called me out on the street; The Kid is a professional gun slinger and would kill me. I'd be crazy to take him up on his challenge just to save my "manhood," which would be lying in the street full of hot lead. Similarly, you would take me out unless I had the time to prepare, which I do not.

2. Regarding Miranda in my case: I immediately hired a lawyer and he bombarded the court with "discovery requests" and included a request for the reading of Miranda before they questioned me after arresting me. The reason for Miranda was that during the time of my "grilling" I was rude as hell as one can imagine, calling the main cop just about every name you can think of. It was my "threating" language that was to be the basis of the 34 charges of resisting arrest, but they had NOT "Mirandized" me and the DA refused to prosecute based on that failure. Now it's probably true that once the DA's office got hit with the discovery requests they found that the cops had behaved in a usual LAPD way, which is illegally, and dropped the 34 resisting arrest charges. When I showed up in court for my first hearing on the charges the judge looked at us and informed us that all charges had been withdrawn. My entire record had been expunged. The "crimes" for which I was accused happened in the police station after my arrest and booking, and since the cops claimed "cause" for my original arrest on the street they had to Mirandize me before continuing with their "questioning."

So based on my experience there and another one I had later, I support Miranda in every way because my exposure to the reality of the legal system tells me that the cops have no problem stomping on the rights of anyone they go after, if and when they can. After a century of police abuse--see the old movies where they routinely beat prisoners---they Goddam well should have forms to fill out.

I appreciate the offer of a fair fight Billy, but I left my guns at home.

I'm posting this on my blog as well

The Bush White House has turned into the Nixon White House — complete with Harriet Miers as its Rosemary Woods, with an 18-year gap in her credentials..... so starts Ann Coulter's white hot hot enough attack on Bush, citing the border, spending, signing the "Fair Campaign Act, and Miers. This means that both Hannity and Coulter have bailed on the Republicans in a single day. While Coulter is merely a clever antagonist, she is widely read by all us weird people, and probably represents a fairly wide POV. She accuses Bush of a betrayal worthy of Judas in destroying conservative hopes for the Supreme Court. She is stunned that Bush appointed "Ben Bernanke for Fed chairman — A MAN WHO'S TOTALLY QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB," adding that The White House has yet to explain how this happened.

The "problem" now is Bush, Bush and his entire White House staff. When a Republican president makes enemies out of loyalists like Coulter and Hannity, you know the cake that was put in the oven didn't rise; something is wrong with the recipe. I'd only add that the sell out now includes reversing course and reinstating the U.S. Department of Labor's Davis-Bacon regulations on federally funded hurricane recovery and reconstruction projects in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. And before I forget, The White House failed to add their support for the Coburn amendments.

Read her column....

Big Republicans are bailing on the party. I just caught 5 minutes or so of Hannity in the car and he was blistering the Republicans, particularly the Senators. The spending, border, and tax cuts were his main thrust. If that guy goes for the gusto, you can bet a hell of a lot of other Republicans are too. He basically said they don't deserve to be elected, which has been my attitude for about three weeks. There is no leadership, quoth Hannity. He's right (correct).

As crude drops almost $2, a $2,000 move, check this five minute chart and see how tight you'd have to trade it to make money. This is not a market for the less than heavily capitalized investor.... Strictly for the intra day trader willing to scalp a few hundred here and there.

Show Biz Bullshit: the newly elected SAG board has fired all the old executives and taken over. They not only fired their leader, a guy named Hessinger, but they are refusing to honor the contract he had with the Guild (here come da law soots). The New Gang will go on strike if the studios don't cave on DVD resids for actors. The last "strike" they called cost them millions in lost wages and netted them zero. Actors refused to picket and the Guild simply pulled nobodies off the street and gave them SAG cards if they marched on the picket line. Initiation fees of $1,500 for everyone were waived without a peep from the rank and file.

SAG President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement that SAG members expected "concrete results" in collective bargaining and organizing efforts.

"After much consideration and debate, the national board has decided to make a change in our staff leadership that will allow us to focus our resources more intensely in these areas,"

Now there are a lot of actors who think this tactic is wrong and hypocritical

"It is an ugly, brutal development, and it is only unexpected in its having happened so soon," said former "M*A*S*H" star Mike Farrell, who described Hessinger as "a good and smart and decent professional" who proved himself capable during his short tenure. He called the Membership First faction "a group of angry, destructive, mean-spirited dissidents" who were putting the union's future in jeopardy.

"Hey, Mike! Go fuck yourself. Union jeopardy has never stopped us actors before." The totally Left Writers Guild similarly trashed their leadership

SAG's firing of Hessinger comes in the wake of a similar move by the Writers Guild of America, West. Its newly elected leadership, which also has pushed for toughening its negotiations with Hollywood studios, canned Executive Director John McLean last month.

Writers have a history of long long strikes that net not much of anything too but they are usually rescued when their producer-writer members finally put their Left feet down. Ethics has never stopped the Commie Left. They are only interested in money (Commies interested in money is hypocrisy, not an oxymoron).

"Ethics? We don't need no stinking ethics. We're actors. We're writers. We're Democrats and nobody is as unethical as George W. Bush. Bush is the unethical one, don't forget that."

Stay tuned. Or don't. Crotch scratch to Defamer who linked to this.

Fox is saying that target letters went out yesterday.....MSN has reported ditto.

And, surprise, shock, etc., once again FOX scores an exclusive and doesn't post it on their website. Last nite, O'Reilley did a number on George Soros that was as good as it gets. He exposed the money, the fake news web sites, and some of the closet organizations controlled by Soros. Really good. Once again, FOX just sucks as far as their website is concerned.

This piece appearing today in the NYT mirrors what I know about WalMart's salary/wage/benefits policy. The two guys I know who used to work there told me they thought all companies were like that:

Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

Skip to next paragraph---Related Text of Internal Wal-Mart Memo

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Go there and read the rest. The figures for LA County, which come from an unreliable source---CAL Berkeley---have not been challenged: 75% of WalMart employees who get sick "go on the county." In other words, I am paying WalMart's health coverage here in SoCal just as you are probably paying them where you live. The entire text of the internal memo is here, the NYT piece itself is dam good, and balanced too.

While I classify myself as a conservative, I realize after reading Patterico yesterday that I'm probably a commie, because I hope "conservatives" like him never take over anything. In his piece he supports the death penalty for both the retarded and the young. Under a section titled; "Which five precedents does the commentator think are in most pressing need of reversal?" he lists Miranda, Roper v. Simmons (banning execution of juveniles) and Atkins v. Virginia (banning execution of the retarded). As for Miranda, anyone who has ever been arrested for doing nothing at all, as I have, can thank their asses for Miranda, the only thing keeping asshole cops from framing people. And though I agree that McConnell, the Campaign Finance law be reversed, and a few other things, I'm a square peg that just don't fit into that right wing round hole.

I commented on his polite and literate reply thusly, which may or may not prove me a total fucking Lefty:

My reply to Patterico: 1. One night while driving home after a night shift I was pulled over by what turned out to be vice officers pissed off that they arrested a person who was not involved in the drug bust they were about to pull off. They bent me over the hood, took my clothes, handcuffed me and took me into the station. Then after booking I was taken upstairs and grilled. There were two cops, one big and one little. The big cop left and the little one called me names, told me I was a fag (I was an upcoming actor at the time, a fact he cleverly deduced by searching my wallet and finding my SAG card), told me I was going to the Glass House (the local name for the jail downtown). Then he took my wife's engraved watch that I had pinned to the inside of my jacket, pinned there because I was driving a cab and you hid your watch or risked death, and read her name: "Clairice, this the lady you stole it from?" When I told him it belonged to my wife, he proceeded to describe my slut whore wife sitting at home and fucking a "chink, a dirty yellow chink cock is in your wife's mouth right now," said he. Well I was pissed, but luckily I turned toward the door and I saw pressed agains the opaque glass part of the door about six feet six inches from the floor, an ear. The ear belonged to the big cop who was just waiting for me to do something so he could kick my ass. To make a long story short, they prevented my wife from bailing me out by placing me in a paddy wagon for two hours and taking me from jail to jail before taking me to the main jail. I won't continue this sagging saga except to say that they filed 34 charges of resisting arrest against me, all of which vanished into thin air when I went to court to fight the charges two weeks later because they didn't "Mirandize" me.

As far as "making law" when they (the Supremes) ruled against killing retards and kids? If that is making law, then I am for making law if that is what it is. In Roper the state court set a 17 year old up by waiting til he was 18 so they could try him as an adult. Supremes ruled that the Constitution prohibits the execution of a juvenile who was under 18 when he committed his crime. This was backed up by another opinion that a national consensus had developed against the execution of those offenders. BTW a national consensus may have developed over Roe too??

In Atkins they clearly did NOT legislate but ruled that the 8th Amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishment applies to a person who is so retarded he cannot differentiate right and wrong, moral or immoral, and that the national consensus was that killing a retard was wrong. The retard got a life sentence without possibility of parole.

I absolutely agree with those opinions, and like I said, I'm not that conservative. What are we supposed to do, let 20 retards be executed before a legislature somewhere passes a law?

Of course if the Schultz linked Sarah Michelle Gellar told me "First, we have to kill all the retards," I would change my mind in a nano moment.

File this under "What Liberal Bias?" or hasn't the Left actually turned traitor?

Today's LA Times (print edition) has no front page story on the Iraq election, just a link to one. What's important? A story with pic about a tree house, the 2000th death in Iraq, a piece about the waning support for the war, juvenile crime, etc. Support for the war for people who get their news from only the LA Times is down to zero.

And Mudville has an eye opening post regarding the pre, pre, pre reporting about WMDs in Iraq. Like from BEFORE Bush was even nominated.

And for details on a vicious MSM slime job on Rice, check out Malkin.

"The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."

If you want graphic proof that Arabs fuck donkeys, go to Schultz. He has live TV of the act. What? No donkey Abu Grahaib?

Sports dot com: baseball is a sport that actually IS inches and it seems that God is in the corner of the White Sox, as a "pitching" series turns into close games. I couldn't stay up for the fourteenth inning last night but it ended when the Astros finally ran out of pitching...... BTW that guy Urebe tried to give the Series away, but failed. I wonder how long the Sox will keep him. Another aside is a useless stat, but interesting nonetheless, that at 5 hours, 41 minutes, it was the longest game by time in Series history. It matched the longest by innings, a Babe Ruth complete game for the Boston Red Sox against Brooklyn in 1914. Ruth pitched 13 innings and gave up just one run, as the Red Sox won 2-1. In all, Ruth's pitching record in World Series games for the Red Sox was a total of 29 2/3 scoreless World Series innings. A meaningless but interesting stat.

Christmas gift idea for the kiddies: "Choke the Chicken" is chicken doll that allows you to squeeze its neck, and then the fun begins. The harder you choke it the more weird the behavior of the chicken becomes; its tongue hangs out, it clucks, it dances, AND IS BEING BANNED from sale in all the right places. It's on Ebay now, (only five days left) but you can bet your ass that some independent toy makers are ready to roll them out in time for that Holiest of all Days..... Reaction from the usual Lefty sources: are here: Animal Lovers Slam Choke a Chicken Toy; then we have this one from The Courrier Mail in Kangarooville which does the usual liberal "extension" from reality linking this to burn the cat and kill the dog reality for kids; and the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Rubber Animals want it outlawed in Kiwiland. Some funny critics think that, boys should taught to give their chicken a pleasing neck massage with baby oil, or hand lotion instead. My prediction: a HUGE Christmas seller.

Iraqis approve new Constitution as one Sunni area approves by narrow margin.

Energy News: gas prices are so high that the gang bangers are now doing walk bys......

In real life, it looks like $60 might be a support (or resistance) area. There is a lot of trading on both sides of that number with a bias to the high side.

New York Times solves the gas price problem, which means they have the liberal solution. Tax gasoline so the price rises to $3, which will tax almost everybody out of the gas guzzlers. Even better: give the excess money to the poor. Not mentioned by the paper of record, is that the poor created by the high gasoline price are those who will not be able to afford everything from food to underwear. The genius class will also give tax breaks to low income people, people who already pay zero federal taxes, so does this mean rewarding low income by giving them mine? A moron asks.

Any business problem in our economy is always, at its core, about the people involved in it. And by that I don't mean only the leadership, I mean the grunts, both corporate and labor. I was once in top management in a company that fell on hard times and I couldn't bring myself to fire either my friends or the people near the bottom, all of whom were resposible for my success. I had to leave.

The guys in the UAW hate GM and Ford, look upon them as the enemy, and their jobs as an entitlement, one they know they don't deserve. None of them can get jobs in their "skill level" outside the car companies. My very first job after the Military was in an employment agency that was near two GM plants. The union called a strike that everyone knew might last as long as six months, so a lot of GM workers were looking for work. Surprise! Not a single GM tool and dye maker, skilled machinist, or welder was employable anywhere in the local economy.

Think about that. A tool and die maker is the cream of the labor pool; a tool maker is the Rembrandt of the labor market. I was in an area where a skilled welder could start at $35 an hour, but skilled welders in the private sector had to work to tolerances unknown in the car business; the same with lathe operators and sheet metal men. So even the most highly skilled people were totally without real marketable skills, something each and every one of them learned back then and still know now. So what the UAW members are faced with is certain death no matter what the company does. What the UAW is doing is very human, they are trying to live just one more day.

The suits upstairs are actually human beings too, with feelings and concerns for their families and themselves. The suits are faced with the problem I faced: fire your friends, the people who are responsible for your position and salary within the company; fire the people in the automobile "town" of salesmen, dealers, engineers, designers and so on. Just like me, they can't do it either. Even worse, they know that losing a job in the protected auto business is the end of life as they know it.

Another way to look at it is that the dinosaurs are plum out of food. Period.

Believe it or not, the below pic is a Cadillac. This car won at Laguna Seca last Sunday, something the geniuses at GM don't even publicize......



Max Papis won the SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge GT race last Sunday afternoon at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in his No. 16 Cadillac CTS-V, Andy Pilgrim came home fourth to win the 2005 SPEED GT Drivers' Championship in his No. 8 Cadillac CTS-V, and Cadillac won its first SPEED GT Manufacturers' Championship Presented by Racer Magazine.

Below is a car that I've seen four or five times on freeways the past few weeks. It's called a "Crossfire," made by Chrysler who for some reason hasn't put the company name on it.


Below car goes 205mph in third, costs $500,000 and I've got two of them.... It's the good ol' Maserati MC 12 Click on the picture for the full page layout, really a drooler.

Filth and trash from Dumb Ass Daily:

"Sweet" Sixth Grade Teacher Arrested for Being Drunk . . . at School! Even the kids noticed something was wrong with their 6th grade English teacher, Cynthia White, 58 who has almost 20 years in Virginia Beach schools. According to one student, "Like, her hair was all messed up and she just looked a little weird......"

More over there....

France fucks us again. Won't join in condemnation of Syria. Russia follows suit. Just in case you think the French have changed in any way. They are an enemy. They support Islamic terrorism, as does Russia as long as they are free to slaughter Chechnians.

Wrong Again! Looks like Harriet Miers will NOT be the new Fed Chairman. Some clown with the usual big resume (Princeton) will get the job. Exit strategy for Miers now being worked out. Possible solutions:

1. Car accident
2. Sudden detection of cancer
3. Her lesbian partner objects
4. She wins the Texas lottery, thus casting suspicion on her past.

If we had a real political system we could just kill her.

Energy: prices below $60 in Europe overnight and these are new positions not longs unwinding. I said my target was $58 and I think we could see it by tomorrow with $57 being a good possibility. What does this mean for gasoline prices? Nothing unless it trades in this area for a week.

Movies and Sports: can't blog too much today, but it is obvious that audiences can smell an agit-prop stinker from a million miles away, in spite of (or because of??) all the Lefty critics telling them how "important" it might be. I refer to that feminist rant called North Country which opened with around 7 mil. The only audience for this kind of movie is hard core lesbians and feminists (there's a difference??). Girls won't drag their dates into the theatre for that shit unless they are trying to dump the guy. Bad weekend overall with top movie grossing only 15mil. Of course it's all the white male's fault. The Clooney Murrow epic did shit but only opened in a few theatres. I couldn't make it to the Libertas Film Fest because one of my relatives plays high school football and the kid was in the biggest game of the year and I had tickets for the UCLA Oregon State game....BTW don't be surprised if UCLA kicks the crap out of USC. They have a great offence but not much D. 63-62 might be the final. Whoopsie emailer Ron S informs me that USC has a bye week before the UCLA game, which is better for them than you might suppose. Their schedule has been brutal, they have lots of injuries, and they still have to play CAL and Washington State (has an offense that can score a lot of points on anybody). Anyway a bye week really helps them so I think a UCLA win would be an upset, but hardly a surprise. BadJocks.com has more dirt on the Vikings Slut Boat Cruise. BTW the "rookie" who supposedly set the deal up is hardly a rookie. All American at Mississippi State, was drafted by Redskins in 2001, became a free agent this summer and the Vikings grabbed him. Smoot was a backup in the pro bowl is one of the best corners in the League. Now the good stuff: this guy is deeply involved in charities and community service, sponsors a youth football team--meaning he buys all equipment and uniforms---works in the Redskins Relief Fund to aid victims of the September 11 attacks at the Pentagon, and other stuff. He may be a good guy who just did one favor too many.

As I posted here a few days ago, Bad Jocks is reporting that the FBI is now involved in the Viking Love Boat deal because transporting prostitutes across state lines, furnishing tickets or transportation, or some other stuff is a violation of the Mann Act. Inserting "toys" into those special places may not be against the law in MN. Whatever, this thing won't just fade away. After all, celebrities are targets. Wait for the whores to sue.

In case you linked through Schultz to the Scientology thingy and found it shut down, here is a mirror site that will also be shut down by Monday......

Count the Black Dots

I had disremembered that Ford once cleaned Ferrari's ass with a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans in 1966. So what happened? The suits at Ford decided that racing was for stupid kids and abandoned the youth market to the Europeans and Japanese for 40 years. Well they are bringing it back and here it is....

You can find the dope on it here and then the red version and story here.

And GM joins in with a 650hp Corvette; that might be a Camarro, or maybe something else, all in time for $4 gasoline prices.

Above are torture victims of the Taliban. Burning the bodies of poor day old dead and stinking Talaban terrorists should be cheered. The fucking White House will not defend those guys. The Pentagon ditto. The Republicans in general ditto. These guys are being sold out by our leadership. Sold out by gutless Bush and all the rest of them. Best rundown of everything is HERE. I endorse our guys 100%. My problem is with the stupid suits at the Pentagon who allowed an avowed America hating Leftist to become an "imbed" in the first place. This guy, Martinkus will lead the Hate America Left and WE put the son of a bitch in position to do it. Remember, he was the guy who was captured by terrorists but let go....

Martinkus was able to convince his captors that they should release him. Ya see, Martinkus is an anti-war activist, he's been a featured speaker for "Coalition to Stop the War" events and he's written a highly critical book on the American actions in Iraq.

Jason Coleman has some terrific sourced takes. My active dislike for Bush and Republicans is eating out my guts.

Once again----Republicans Suck.

The Mayan Riviera; above is Tulum from the air; below, view from atop the cliffs over a beach at Tulum. How much is left? Be sure you click on the pictures....

The economy, specifically domestic auto production:

There is nothing about the way Detroit and the UAW currently go about their business that is sustainable. Not one thing. Now, it's only a momentary layover on the Oblivion Express.

Peter DeLorenzo, below with his latest model, knows his shit from the inside

and if you're interested just go here. There is no summing up his piece, or cutting to the chase; if the UAW and the companies can't junk what they are doing---and both sides are smoking the same bad shit---it's over. When I posted last week that the UAW compromise was great, I was wrong, and if you doubt it check Ford stock in the last week. Read this other post regarding the entire issue of selling off the GM financial services unit, the only part of GM making money. Like he says, management and UAW are snorting from the same line and neither one is in touch with reality. Ford stock is down from $35 in 1999 to less than $8 today. There is a late article in Weekly Standard that spells it out for Delphi;

the union says it will strike if a judge tries to throw out their insane UAW contract: More than 12,000 auto workers, including 4,000 from Delphi, are put in a "jobs bank," meaning that they show up at a plant and spend the day doing no work. Others do community service. Including healthcare and pension benefits, the cost runs from $65 to $71 an hour per worker--$135,000 to almost $150,000 a year. This program comes after a worker is laid off and has exhausted their company-financed unemployment benefits, which are equal to 95 percent of their former pay. The total cost to the industry is $4.5 billion a year and growing.

Energy: As I posted yesterday, the main cause of the downturn in energy was caused by the huge number of people who had to unwind positions at Refco. So after trading most of the morning way below $59, (low was $59.15) crude made a big move to the upside closing at $60.63, up $1.40 from the lows and around $.60 for the day. Unleaded is up two and a half cents.

Line of the day: The way out for Bush in this Supreme Court mess is to withdraw the Miers nomination and appoint her to take Alan Greenspan's place as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. She's been banking for almost fifty years, has had lots of loans for cars and things, and has balanced her checkbook for years......

White House fires their final salvo at Senators on the Supreme Court Hearings...............

Energy Alert: this decline in prices makes no sense based on supply demand basics, all of which are known by everyone by Wednesday of every week. So what is going on? The market is moving down mostly because Refco customers, and Refco itself (a billion dollar company), are being forced to unwind positions in all the markets. Futures formally expire today. Expect a major rally in the Crude complex once those positions arew unwound. Thursday's prices are in the last box (below) and note the collapse to $59 before it rallied. This is the last day for the November contract; starting today the active energy contracts will be December, crude currently trading at 60.12 59.67.

Wilma nears Cozumel: what does that island off the Yucatan Peninsula, now under hurricane attack, mean? For those of you who don't vacation in Mexico and are not scuba and snorklers it means nothing. But for those of us who know the area are fearful that THE most beautiful scuba and snorkling spot in the world may be toast. Caves (and yes, it really is that blue down there) created by the monster asteroid that hit the area back in God Knows when make scuba diving in Cozumel an unequalled experience.

The snorkling is equally amazing, the fishing for snook, bonefish and tarpon are unique experiences, and you can always go after the usual blue and black marlin. The entire magnificent scenic experience may be gone. This area is also known as the "Mayan Riviera" because so much of the Mayan culture is on display there. The fear is that much of the old Mayan city of Tulum, the gorgeous Playa del Carmen will be destroyed, and Cancun damaged so badly that it will take ten years to rebuild. Those of you who have not visited there missed something very special. It may be gone for good.

"Who told the president to nominate Harriet Miers? The commission should also be charged with getting an answer to this question: Who was his second choice?" Coulter lands on the Miers dog pile with a thud.

We've gone from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling thing is — even conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one.

All this stuff is aimed at President(?) Bush and I don't think it's only about Miers, it's just everything.

Not only do they defeat the Coburn effort to stop the "Bridge to Nowhere," they over funded Amtrack by a billion dollars more than the president asked for, gave five billion to HUD not requested, and and and.....

For those of you who haven't seen the disgusting "defense" of the "Bridge to Nowhere" put on by Alaska "Senator" Stevens, I present an excerpt:

"If the Senate decides to discriminate against our state, to take money only from our state, I will resign from this body," Mr. Stevens said. "If one senator can decide he'll take all the money from one state to solve a problem of another, that is not a union. That is not equality."

And remember he is yelling. He is clearly out of control from time to time and has to pause. What is interesting is that the Senate chose instead to attack Coburn for trying to cut spending, not only there but in Washington State (a sculpture park) and an outrageous over funding of Amtrack.

Essay: I am a Republican because........

Gutless Republicans---is there any other kind---killed the Coburn amendment 82-16. I just don't know how I can ever vote for them again. Ever.

More proof that Bush is as disconnected from reality as was his father:

We are in the midst of a special election in California called by Arnold to pass his reformation ideas for the state. The unions have spent (rumored) $150 million in saturation TV advertising to defeat these measures. Schwartzenegger has been trying to raise enough money to overcome the avalanche of TV advertising. So what does Bush do? He walks into this state to raise money-----for himself---- right in the middle of Arnold's effort. Money Bush raises is stolen from Arnold's campaign.

We ought to face reality: Bush is worse than Gore said he would be. I am no longer interested in anything but somehow getting past this tin eared political zero.

Senator Patty Murray (Dem WA) is now threatening (like in actually threatening) anyone who votes for the Coburn amendment:

Patty Murray is now speaking against the Coburn Amendment, and has just issued a threat against any Senators who vote for the amendment.

Is she to be feared? Is she going to do something? Well she is an extreme leftist and once told a group of high-school students that the U.S. should adopt Osama bin Laden's nation-building tactics; she voted against using military force agains him in both Iraq and Afghanistan; and can be counted on for every Leftist proposal. Government pork increases the dependency of the recipients, which is just what every big government lefty wants. What can she do? Well she can always go to her pals in the media and plant stories about people she doesn't like.

As you all know I've been critical of Reynolds for the past several months, feeling he had slipped into sonambulistic robotic writing, or linking to his sycopantic ass kissers only; and I know many of you feel the same way. However, during the past couple of weeks or so he seems to have "found" himself again; he links as he used to six months ago and he writes like he is actually interested in what he has to say. He is worth reading now. He is linking to many new sites, many of which are fresh and have a lot to say.

BTW, Reynolds, as well as many others, are having a sort of hissy fit over the fact that girls now outnumber boys in many colleges. What does this mean? Well I went to school right after the number of WWII and Korea veterans ceased swelling the rolls and the girls outnumbered the boys by 60-40. What did this mean? It meant that the girls had trouble getting dates. It meant that if they wanted to be taken out twice they had to put out (and they had to be good at it; I think women faking orgasms comes from that period). We all got laid like a cat house was giving out free samples. Of course these days it might mean a big increase in lesbianism, but so what?

World Series: a "dream matchup" only if you like 2-1 games dominated by great pitching. To me, the White Sox have both the best pitching AND the best hitting (have you ever seen so many successful bunts?),as well as the best defensive infield. This from the man who said USC by three touchdowns.

Retail gasoline prices, where will they land?

As the futures prices of unleaded gas tumble, what's in it for us? If you guessed absolutely fucking nothing, you are correct. The "spread" (difference) between the futures prices and the retail price has been as high as $1.06, a total rip off price. The average spread has been around $.61; excluding all taxes, transportation costs, storage costs, insurance, etc. This AM the futures prices are around $1.61 so add .61 to that and you get $2.22 without taxes. Here in SoCal we have $.36 in taxes, which means we could get "as low as" $2.58 (currently $2.89). Now if the oil companies are ripping us off (impossible) the spread between futures and retail could go to a dollar.

Now you can trade retail gasoline contracts:

CFE Gas At The Pump Futures are cash-settled futures contracts designed to track the price of regular octane gasoline sold in retail gasoline outlets across the United States. CFE Gas At The Pump Futures are based on a survey conducted by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). CFE Gas At The Pump Futures are based on the prices of regular octane gasoline sold in retail gasoline outlets across the United States and in different geographic regions within the United States, known as Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts (PADD), as determined by the EIA. The five geographic PADDs are as follows: East Coast PADD, Gulf Coast PADD, Midwest PADD, Rocky Mountain PADD, and West Coast PADD.

The final settlement value for CFE Gas At The Pump Futures is the weighted average price estimate of regular octane gasoline sold in retail gasoline outlets across the United States or in the applicable PADD, as reported by the EIA for the Monday following the third Friday of the applicable contract month.

We do not have free market capitalism in the energy markets. What we have is "State tolerated monopoly capitalism," state tolerated cartels, etc., but with the advent of a futures contract on retail prices we may have a mechanism that will suddenly make retail prices trasparent for the first time. Right now the volume is too low to trade and the open interest is low as well.

ABLE DANGER: Getting really dirty, and another reason Bush is in trouble; in trouble for not minding the store at all. Suggest you start reading about what is going on and Malkin is a very good place to start..........

What's wrong with Bush---besides Miers: As a conservative, he deviates on the role of the federal government, on domestic spending, on education, on the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and on immigration.

What's Right: Tax cuts, support for social issues, hawkish position on national security and terrorism, rejection of the Kyoto protocols, He also killed the ABM and Comprehensive Test Ban treaties, kept the United States out of the international criminal court, defied the United Nations, and advocated a shift in power from Washington to individuals through an "ownership society." On some issues--partial privatization of Social Security is the best example--he is a bolder conservative than Ronald Reagan, the epitome of a conventional conservative.

What's really wrong: He failed to kiss the right---as in Right---asses...not to mention the trouble with Harriet, which is that she has given us a depressing glimpse into the vast open space that now appears to be the Bush political mind.

This and more from Fred Barnes.....

Them: She's a decent woman of sound character who is an evangelical Christian! What? You have a problem with those things?
Me: No. I have a problem when it's only those things.......

Flu vaccine news: The much touted Tamiflu is NOT the miracle drug. Nobody knows if it works. Roche Labs, the patent owner and maker of the drug, said today it is willing to help other companies make it, but the litigation fear in the U.S. may mean that U.S. manufacturers won 't make any. There are only three U.S. manufacturers left and with Schumer (TA (total asshole) NY) threatening to break all patents in the U.S. you can bet even more drug companies will be reluctant to mess around with inventing drugs.

There are few U.S. vaccine makers. And even those, such as Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter International, produce most of their flu vaccine outside the United States in countries that can claim first dibs on any vaccine made to protect against bird flu, the company and government officials acknowledged.

Even more, we will be last in line in the world if a vaccine is developed

There is no commercially available bird-flu vaccine, and no one knows for certain how much of the experimental vaccines being worked on would be available and when. But if one is developed, the void in capacity to produce flu vaccines in the United States highlights the troubling aspects of the U.S. vaccine business, which has unappealing economics: small profits, high risks and stagnant innovation.

from Seattle Times.

OK, Crude: I told you a week or so ago that the target was $58 but "who knows if we'll get there?" Now, after a rally, the bottom has dropped out of the market. Q: Is all this tradeable? A: Not for people who can't get in and out within seconds. People who trade on the floor trade a five minute chart, reproduced above. There are several entry spots but probably the second time it couldn't take out $63.20. Had you done it you would now (9:38 AM) be up more than $4,000 in one half a morning. But you would have to be a well capitalized super pro to do this kind of thing, and those kinds of people do not need advice from me. The risks are so high in this market that I don't think I'd ever do more than intraday trading. Looks like it's going to hit $58. Later Add: at 11:15 on the five minute chart below, you will see the strong rally so the bail out point would have been around $61.62; this is as tight as you can play it, but keep in mind that the market can move so fast you can't get in or out.

After months AND months of downtime, the Jersey GOP hot Republican Babes is back up. Without linking to them, go direct to a complete audition site. Name is Kim Smith and who cares what her politics are? And after a quick look at their site, they have been back up for a while.

Here's a solid Right Wing fanatic who has opinions about the Court...

And then there is this babe: "Beat me, hurt me, make me vote Republican."

THE Left is staking out their anti-American stance on the Saddam trial, all the while pretending to seek justice, natch:
1. It is a show trial
2. It isn't being held under "international rules" which forbid the death penalty.
3. The Iraqis aren't really qualified to hold a fair trial.
4. This is an American (read Bush) lynching.
5. It is not necessary to try Saddam on every count.

Let's face it, the Left doesn't care how many hundreds of thousands of people Saddam killed, raped, tortured, and maimed for life, all they care about is proving America wrong in every possible way they can. They are already getting support from CNN and the New York Slimes.

MY last word on the Miers-abortion debate:
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.......

Schultz has this great post up about something but I couldn't concentrate because of this obscene pictoral political reference.

To the Left, George Bush is the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him.

No matter the outcome of the "Plame" hearings, does anybody seriously believe all people will accept it? The Right thinks the entire thing as a pimple on an elephant's ass and the Left is sure it is a High Crime as bad as Watergate. There is no result that will change opinions.

I was at a clinic yesterday and was forced to watch and listen to CNN for a little over an hour while waiting for a doctor and I was sickened by the bias. Each and every report assumed that Rove and Cheney are guilty while Wolf and the gang made continuing references to Watergate within sentence after sentence. The similarity of the "crimes" were a part and parcel of their "news" coverage. Several "commentators" pointed out that Watergate started with something little and this will be just like that. The theme of a corrupt Republican Party was all that was presented. The boobs glued to the set accepted everything as fact.

The Left will never accept anything but a guilty verdict by the Grand Jury; the Right will never accept anything other than dismissal of the charges. BTW, The NY Daily News has a front page story that says Bush rebuked Rove over his connection to the Plame case two years ago....

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News. "He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Further down in the piece it seems that White House Staff is now leaking the bad news....

sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

Whatever happens, losing Rove is a serious blow to Bush and great news for the Left. Then we will hear about the "problem" of Bush not trashing Rove the moment he found out. Stay tuned.

Bush pegged to a tee, at National Review.... Long but well worth the read.

"I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me," said somebody once, and it seems that the UAW finally figured out that if they kill GM the company will actually stay dead. The Golden Goose will finally become extinct. The dual instruments of the demise are unfunded pension liabilities (money that has to be paid in the future that you have no way of getting), and unfunded medical benefits that have to be paid when incurred.

Deals with unions "negotiated" during fat times are unworkable in the new world economy. The failure of the UAW to negotiate with Delphi has resulted in the bankruptcy of the largest auto parts company in the world; the result will be a non-union Delphi and a formerly employed work force with no pensions and no medical coverage. (Be sure to read Auto Extremist for a great post).

But the problems Detroit faces - the health care costs, the pension costs and the gross trade disadvantages - are problems America now must face as a nation. Don't believe it? Between one in seven and one in nine jobs in this country are still either directly or indirectly connected to the domestic automobile business. Quite simply, if the domestic auto industry goes down for the count it will affect every corner of this nation and impact the national economy far beyond the devastation caused by the two recent hurricanes. It would be a catastrophe of almost incalculable proportions.

It is a sign of the times that the UAW agreed to reduce both pension liability as well as medical coverage for both members and retirees at GM, but it ain't over til it's over. The company hating union members still have to ratify, and to those not familiar with UAW workers at the plant level, the agitation from the company hating faction of the union will be loud. There are the "red hots," the under educated bozos with communist ideas, who will try to agitate against the contract adjustment, calling it a "sell out to the fat cat capitalists in the board rooms." Those of us in SoCal remember the union refusing to negotiate with GM in Van Nuys even though anybody with a brain knew the company would close the plant unless they could reduce costs there. Knew it. But the "red hots" wouldn't give an inch, preferring instead to preen and demonstrate their manhood. So they "won," no jobs, no pensions, no medical coverage.

As we sit this AM, the city of San Diego is facing bankruptcy over unfunded pension liabilities and posh medical coverage, and because the unionized city employees won't back down, San Diego may become the 23rd city to go into Chapter Eleven. It will be the first large government bankruptcy since Orange County pulled a fast one and bailed on all their creditors five or so years ago.

Unfunded mandates from the Feds, the courts, and local governments may land all of us into the soup if we don't stop tossing loans and cash around like it was just another credit card we can max out til we get the next one.

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money," as Everett Dirksen, the late GOP senator from Illinois once said. It won't be funny in a few years.

Satire
Prodded by conservative news casters Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, several discount chains have stated that they will hide the covers of salacious magazines: Glamour, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Redbook when they stock those mags in their magazine racks. Maxim, Stuff and FHM will no longer be sold in the stores at all.

"Thank God", said convicted sex offender David Crawford. "Every time I went in there I'd get a hard on. Them goddam kids in strollers would read that shit and then grin at me in suggestive ways that I for one, couldn't take no more. There was this one three year old that read that cover about oral sex and started lookin' at me like he wanted it. Good thing his momma smacked the shit out of him or I might be back in jail again. Jesus she hit him til he was bleeding. Stores shouldn't be allowed to carry magazines like that."

Sally Ann Bollenger of Craigmore Kansas, now on probation for the ritual slaying of former president Bill Clinton's pet dog Buddy, heaved a big sigh of relief. "Son of a bitch. Them dirty covers and sayings was drivin' me to think evil thoughts. Whenever I seed a Goddam Cosmetopelan (sic) with all them words like climax, and orgasm I just wanted to go out and kill me a cow or even a elephant. I'm glad they're off the shelves."

Fifteen year old high school sophomore Jeanette McDonald (no relation to the famous Hamburger) had a slightly different take. "You know you must think I'm stupid or something. I've been having multiple orgasms for like eight years and I climax whenever I want to in Algebra class so those magazines were not the reasons I gave Mr. Mitchell a blow job in study hall. I mean the problems of a bunch of over the hill 25 and 35 year old old bitches who can't cum don't interest anybody. Besides, I'm getting into lesbian stuff now."

WalMart will continue their crusade to make family shopping a priority. Phallic ice creams like Big Stick and Long John are being looked at. The New York Times has long been banned due to the salacious news stories featured on their pages and columns. Books with titles containing the words Richard (an innocent sounding code word), Feline (another innocent sounding code word), and butt fuck (again innocent sounding code word) will be hidden from view.

HUSTLER TO BAN ALL RELIGIOUS ADVERTISING

Responding to concerns of their customers, Hustler announced today the immediate cessation of all religious advertising. "Hustler clientele is offended by the intrusion of these weird images, slogans, and promises of endless fires of hell into their peaceful world of chicken choking sexual bliss.

"So-called women who cover their bodies with material and then pose for ads in our magazine are causing serious problems. Let's say a dude is trying to clean the old rifle and is looking for a two page spread of a pink clam sandwich so he can squeeze off a load and he suddenly gets hit with some up-tight truthful bitch with all her clothes on and her hands pressed together in front of her, a clear signal of a closed pussy, just staring out at him. And underneath there is some fag message from Jesus like "Jesus Loves You" or some such shit. A real man scrotes up on that kind of incursion into his choices of viewing.

"I mean you don't see a porno with Jesus or Mohammed or somebody dressed out in all them robes and beards doin' the Sermon on the Mount while he's butt fuckin' some teeny bopper, do you? Well it's the same thing. We have a mature, sophisticated audience of gentlemen who are choosing an involvement with a fantasy of totally depraved bitches who like it in the ass, in the face, in their mouths, between their titties, and other places. They do not want women who want it in their souls for Chriss fucking sakes."

"There are appropriate places for honesty, doing good deeds, and helping other people but those are fantasies that can best be fulfilled in prisons, combat situations, and public transportation", said a spokesperson. "Read that stuff on the walls of busses, the sides of buildings, anywhere but in our publications."

Blue America speaks.

Hollywood re-ducks.....here's the latest local opening movies aimed at getting the young male back into the theatre:
Dreamer: if you thought Seabiscuit was boring, wait til you snore through this horse epic.....
Doom You heard the one about the isolated work force on the planet X and suddenly communication stops...? Huh? Have you? Might work for the nine year old male......
North Country Single Mom takes a job in the iron mines in order to......young males just dying to fuck older single moms and end up paying child support for the rest of their lives will flock to this one, I guarantee it.
Stay.... see, this psychologist (with no tits because he's a man) and this......Tip Off: any movie that isn't reviewed before opening stinks. Not reviewed because producers were afraid to let critics see it. Next tip off: opening in hardly any theaters.

White House releases college picture of Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers going to a prom in her college days (photo below). Could this be the opening salvo of the New Miers campaign? It's your call......



Miers claims that the man to her right "only looks like Robert Redford." Several Democratic Senators have vowed to find out just who he is before the hearings commence.

ANY OF YOU GUYS EVEN THINKING OF MAKING A MOVIE, GO HERE. GO NOW. BEST ADVICE EVER....

Part of Limbaugh's column, go here to read the rest

Abortion is only one of countless areas in which a mere nine lawyers in robes have imposed their personal policy preferences on the rest of us. The court has conferred due process rights on terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay and benefits on illegal immigrants. It has ruled that animated cyberspace child pornography is protected speech, but certain broadcast ads aired before elections are illegal; it has held that the Ten Commandments can't be displayed in a public building, but they can be displayed outside a public building; and the court has invented rationales to skirt the Constitution, such as using foreign law to strike down juvenile death penalty statutes in over a dozen states.

Maxed out has a pretty long, but accurate, comment regarding our pathetic media, their seemingly coordinated trivialization of the voting in Iraq, and the turnout. BUT there is something much bigger here that isn't being covered anywhere that I know of.

The "Iraqi" army does not exist, even on paper. In the south, Iran and Sadr effectively control everything. The Shia "army" is just that: Shia. They don't care about Iraq, all they want is an Islamic state dominated---controlled---by the Shia clerics from Iran. Saddr thugs control most of the south and they are immune from control by Baghdad.

In the North, the Iraqi army is Kurdish. They don't like anybody from the South and are not reliable for any action south of their invisible border.

The central part of Iraq has furnished a reasonable facsimile of an army, but nobody knows just which faction they will support. I have written many times here about the tribal nature of all of Iraq, loyalties going back a few thousand years to these tribes, and the impossibility of controlling the country by any means other than a vicious strong man capable of doing anything.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating American and Arab military cultures. In every significant area, American military advisors find students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to — the culture of their own armies in their own countries — defeats the intentions with which they took leave of their American instructors. Arab officers are not concerned about the welfare and safety of their men. The Arab military mind does not encourage initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter. Responsibility is avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Political paranoia and operational hermeticism, rather than openness and team effort, are the rules of advancement (and survival) in the Arab military establishments. These are not issues of genetics, of course, but matters of historical and political culture.

Don't be surprised if the Iraqi "army" fucks up. It is a lead pipe cinch that they will be useless when we leave

Iraqis are seeking a strong man---a nice one natrually---to take over and they will find a couple of them. Here's the guts of my prior post

Who were the original Iraqis and what influences from way back when still obtain there? It can be said that they invented the farm collective, a necessity because of the flooding of Tigress and Euphrates Rivers. The Iraqis were known as Sumerians. Sumerians invented writing, double entry accounting, private property (even the King was held to contracts); they invented both the wheel and the plow, as well as the first mathematics system (based on 60). Their society was "matriarchal" meaning women had rights. They, not the much later Arabs or Greeks, invented banking. It was the ancient Iraqis and not the Greeks who invented the long narrative, they wrote stories down; their most famous narrative includes Noah building a boat to save himself and civilization from a flood, before the Jews and before the Bible. They invented an alphabet and the first calendars. We know they invented bureaucracy and that they had a yearning for some order. We know they had arts, statues, tall buildings called ziggurats, and that they traded with others.

Well the Sumerians got knocked off by the Akkadians, a Semitic people said to be descended from Noah (you know where this will lead, eventually) spread all the way to Lebanon and then got knocked off by a Sumerian revolution. By this time the transfer of power by war was fully in place. So Mesopotamia took over. Everybody agreed that The Garden of Eden was in Mesopotamia and it just so happens that the most war like people at this time were the Assyrians (like in Syria) who lived there too so all hell broke loose forever. So it came to pass that the country was united by a guy named Hammurabi (a hostile takeover), the empire was known as Babylon and he invented law, known as the Hammurabi Code. The Code is considered the earliest legal comprehensive code of laws known in history. A copy of the code is engraved on a block of black diorite. A team of French archaeologists dug up this block and it is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The good old French have taken one of the great prizes of ancient Iraq.

I could go on with the Hanging Gardens, Nebuchadnezzar, Solomon's Temple, The Assyrian takeover (war again), then Cyrus the Great (war) Alexander the Great who died there (war), and lots of others tramped around Iraq. Persia (Iran) took over til the Arabs (Muslims) marched in and took over.

Baghdad become the seat of the first Muslim Caliphate and the city became the center of Islamic civilization. Baghdad was important both commercially and culturally as well as a famous center of learning in the Middle Ages. It was regarded in the tenth century as the intellectual center of the world, the cultural capital of the Islamic world, and a center of power in the world. It was where Arab and Persian cultures mingled to produce a blaze of philosophical, scientific, and literary glory. This era is remembered throughout the Arab world, and by the Iraqis in particular, as the pinnacle of the Islamic past.

If all that weren't enough, mathematics was invented there too. Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khawarizmi (680-750 AD), discovered algebraic equations, and some credit him with the invention of zero (before the Mayans). He introduced Hindu numbers to the Arab world. "Abu Ja'far" wrote a math book so influential that the title Abu Ja'far gives us the word "algebra". His books were translated into Latin and hit renaissance Italy like tactical nuclear culture shock. They couldn't speak Arabic, of course, so his name came out as "Algorismus". His name (misspelled again!) has gone into mathematics and computerspeak as Algorithm; for a step by step process for performing computations.

So there you have it, 4,000 years of hostile takeovers for one of the most creative people who have ever hit the planet. Yet democracy is nowhere in their culture. Nowhere in their civilization. Saddam imposed himself after the Shah, promising "better things". He seized power by force, normal in that part of the world so there was nothing culturally different from what they had been used to, and made a lot of the country more or less western in so far as streets, sewage, electricity, and TV goes. He, like Tito in Yugoslavia, suppressed all tribal (cultural) wars by killing anybody who crossed the line, which was nothing different from Cyrus or Alexander, and he tried to impose his will on his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, not unlike the great Hammurabi or other leaders in that part of the world.

The big question for us right now is: How can Iraq embrace what they know nothing about? How can they embrace "democracy"? Especially since autocratic systems produced one of the greatest and most creative civilizations in the History of the World. Something for all of us to think about. Not that it can't be done, Europe had nothing but thousands of years of Kings and they did it, but it took 500 years from Magna Charta to evolve. Suppose they DON'T WANT REAL DEMOCRACY? 4,000 years of Iraqi culture is against it.

And don't forget the rampant corruption in every Muslim state and now appearing in Iraq. Bakshish rules. From an old post:

Whether you call it mordida (the bite), un pot-de-vin, or just bribery, nowhere on the planet is it as universal as in Middle East. There, under the term "bakshish", it controls every form of business or government service. You cannot get a job without bakshish, roads don't get built, you can't sell so much as a date on the street without bakshish.

Buy stock? Oh no! A powerful person (or people)simply takes 10% of the stock and agrees to pay for the stock when the accrued dividends match the stock price at time of "purchase"; in addition he gets a seat on the board of directors PLUS a salary. In exchange, the business won't have tariff problems, labor problems, or any problems. Judges take money from both sides and routinely rule in favor of the biggest bribe (he keeps both bribes); hospitals have two sections, one for the people who have paid a bribe and one for those who have not.

Hospital doctors are the ones who paid the most in bribes to the government guy in charge of hospitals, business executives are where they are only because of bakshish, army officers, artists whose works are shown, and so on, pay bakshish. It seeps into every facet of society. This has been going on for thousands of years. When you pair bakshish with the "shame/honor" of the society at large you have hell on earth. Any criticism of a doctor puts shame on the doctor. To regain his "honor" he will go to the guy above him, the one to whom he paid bakshish in order to get his job in the first place, and the guy above him will go after the complainer and perhaps put him in jail. Nobody cares if the patient dies....unless the patient had paid bakshish to somebody much higher than either of them, etc., etc., etc.

It is a nightmare because any complaint is shame. Praise is honor. Everyone walks the line of shame, honor, bribery. Naturally everybody lies in that society. It is the only way a man can stay alive. The main reason everyone comments on the extreme politeness of Arabs is that every word is measured in honor/shame/bakshish. Who are you really? This is who I am (pretend). This food is good (because I might be killed). Everyone honors everyone and lies like hell to get what they may want. If your son wants a government job and goes to your tribal leader to ask for one the tribal leader cannot say "no", because a "no" would shame both his family and his position as leader of the tribe. He has to "see what I can do". Then he may have to go to the head of another tribe who works in the correct section of the government. Haggling is done. If the government guy already "owes" a favor then the deal can be done relatively quickly, perhaps for a consideration later. Otherwise a deal must be made so that nobody is shamed. The unqualified kid becomes an official for the right consideration and everybody has honor. The parents of the kid "owes", the kid "owes", the tribal leader looks strong, the father of the kid looks like a strong parent and so on. It is a society built on lies.

Right now we are in a place where the Saudi family tells Americans one story and a completely different one to the Arabs on TV at home. This is normal. Nothing wrong with it. What is really going on? Honor is going on. The Arab people know what was told to Americans and by telling the opposite story to them on TV the Saud family shows "honor" by both lying to the Americans and getting away with it. But suppose the Saudis told us the truth and lied to their own people? That's OK too, the Saud prince shows he can conduct smart business. The Saudis may have made a secret deal with Powell by telling Powell that they would have to lie to their people but that they are telling the truth to Powell.

Get it? Arabs lose wars because their generals are only there because of bakshish. Their scientists are there for the same reason. There is not one aspect of their lives where competence is the criteria for position. Period.

In search of the young male movie goer Hollywood has released:
Elizabethtown---totally boring
Good Night and Good Luck---story of Edward R Murrow (Who?) About a newscaster nobody under the age of seventy has ever heard of.
Domino---story about the daughter an actor nobody under the age of sixty has ever heard of
The Fog---Pirates of the Carribean re-ducks
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio----you gotta be kidding
Just Like Heaven---this chick keeps appearing and disappearing,

Who greenlights this shit? And does anybody give a shit about the shareholders?

This piece by Michael Barone tells all you need to know about our country today. Reynolds linked to it (I didn't know USN&WR) was still publishing. I'd only add that when you examine the history of Rome to include the ordinary people, the farmers, shop owners etc., you find that they were nothing like the elites. I think this separation is a function of societal decay.

When the floods hit all yuh really need is beer, ice, toilet paper, and a steady piece of ass---Pliny the Elder

USC BY THREE TOUCHDOWNS points.... And yes, they should have lost and that particular fumble rule in the last two minutes should be changed, even though Linert did not deliberately fumble the ball. I've posted quite a few times that I can't see a number one team that collects penalties like they were lottery tickets and can't cover kicks. Notre Dame is better, USC is lucky---and as the man said, I'd rather be lucky than good.

Refco, possibly the world's largest futures trading company, has been shut down by the Feds for massive accounting fraud. Customer accounts are frozen and Refco cannot trade. Late Add: My friends on the floor of the Merc tell me that Refco and the Feds are allowing clients to "unwind" their positions. Futures clients won't lose too much because they will put them on again at other firms. The options holders are screwed.

A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR ALL INVESTORS AND SPECULATORS

What happens when one of the world’s largest futures trading company like Refco is shut down by the Feds without warning? Keep in mind that a dominant company like Refco not only has smaller customer accounts, but it has thousands of “hedge” accounts, which are multi-million dollar accounts that are maintained by all large energy (Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, etc.) and agricultural corporations around the world, farmers big and small, every bank in the known universe, as well as many corporations using those markets to reduce their risk. What about the billions in customer money? Where is it?

Answer: their money is tied up, customers can’t touch it, and there is no way they can protect themselves other than by doubling their account size in other markets. Their accounts at Refco are frozen.

What about ordinary customers, you? If the government can possibly screw ordinary people, you know they will do it. They have. While the corporation itself still has some liquidity, it is barred from trading customer accounts and customers can’t close high risk positions. What has happened in effect is that the Fed has actually stolen all at risk money at the firm and donated it to speculators trading through other futures companies around the world. This is still another accounting scandal and the people who signed off on the books include public accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP, private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners and Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston and Banc of America Securities LLC.

Try suing those guys to get your $5K back. Twenty years from now the case might get to the Supreme Court.

You may have to sue the government and that means going after the CFTC, chaired by Clinton appointee James Newsome. Unlike other crony appointments, Clinton appears to have appointed a guy who knows the business, even though the suspicion persists that Newsome was named specifically to hide Hillary’s cattle trading records; Mr. Newsome has been the Executive Vice-President for both the Mississippi Cattleman's Association and the Mississippi Beef Council; he would know how to bury Hillary’s account records forever.

Hillary traded through (surprise) Refco.

Refco is known by every broker in the business for their shady dealing. They have a supposed currency trading system that is basically guaranteed to take all customer money; they refuse to correct “bad fills” on orders for small accounts; was known to have accepted trading accounts for independent brokers who charged as much as $99 round turn for ONE contract (options or futures---average commission in the business is $7), $99 is a sum almost guaranteed to insure a customer loss and a broker profit. Refco has been too big to fail for far too long.

Refco might be THE biggest fish in the commodities tank with supposed assets in the billion dollar class and their stock holders are totally fucked. Just to give you a small idea of part of the fraud, consider this from a very good article appearing in the Washington Post

.....lent an unidentified Refco customer $335 million to be repaid in March. On the same day in February, according to the criminal complaint against Bennett, the unidentified customer lent the Bennett-controlled entity, Refco Group Holdings Inc., $335 million. Refco Group Holdings then allegedly used the money to pay down its debt to Refco Inc.

So a company that has been on the edge to say the least, has now gone down the tubes and the only people who will pay damages are their innocent customers. To make it even worse, Goldman Sachs, one of the corporations that was supposed to supervise the Refco books, has been named by Refco to investigate. Goldman is involved in far to many of these “scandals” to be trusted any more.

Cutting to the chase: if you’re a Refco stockholder you are fucked. And if you are a Refco customer you are fucked.

Trading futures is far more riskier than you thought.

Notre Dame football and their moronic alumni, most of whom are in their 40s and 50s, have been on display at ESPN for about ten hours saying stupid things at a "student" pep rally. What assholes. I hope SC beats them by forty points. How can a 50 year old behave that way? I guess that's what an education at over rated Notre Dame prepares you for.....

In case you doubt that Roger L Simon is still a liberal----Well, the proof is in his pudding. He censors comments that are critical of his POV. At heart he's still a Lefty fascist from Hollywood. He called a blogger who disagrees with him "irresponsible." I posted a comment that basically asked: who the hell are you to brand anyone "irresponsible." I commented that Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Victor Hugo, Jesus, and everybody else who has done anything was also irresponsible. I repeat, Simon is still at heart a Hollywood leftist fascist who is in favor of the war, mainly because he is Jewish and sees that a U.S. loss will basically end Israel as a country. Period. He's about as conservative as Howard Dean or Al Gore. And, like a hell of a lot of "former" Jewish liberals, he cares most about Israel, not about Iraqi freedom.

A correction, of sorts. Yesterday I posted about the Bush-soldier interviews and commented upon the "set up" by the clueless White House. I stand by the accusation, however the interviews themselves were terrific. The good stuff was destroyed by the stupid White House staff bungling the entire thing. In fact the interviews HERE are very good. And don't forget, Bush appoints the morons on the White House Staff......

LGF is also posting on the media slant.

Another fucking triumph for the Bush Administration.....over at Malkins.

Enter the contest: "I voted for Bush because....." No more than ten obscenities per one hundred words.

Rapist tricked police with other men's sperm.

Cox and Forkum have a different take on the Iraq election. I am fearful as well. Since when was Sistani our pal? And remember Sadr? Cox's information indicates that Iran is funding everything bad in the South so they can take over later. Sadr's baddies, 20,000 strong are trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Read it. Very scary.

Vikings little party may now be a felony. They flew the hookers in from out of state. There used to be a Federal Law about interstate trafficking in whores. The Act, called the Mann Act, has to do now with furnishing tickets or transportation for acts that would be a crime in the state receiving the hookers. As an aside, it is said that the local Minneapolis whores are totally pissed that they were frozen out.

After reading this piece by Michael Yon I have more understanding of MSM lack of reporting. Doesn't excuse the lying, but this read will broaden your understanding....

ANOTHER SCANDAL????? Did FEMA higher ups hire auto mechanics based on criteria other than competence??? Mechanic (photo) who showed up two hours late is seen re-installing a spark plug, a task that took several hours. Mechanic did not know how to raise hood.

Now, for something completely different....Media caught red handed fabricating news. Lots of other stuff at Newsbusters. A group blog, but not really. They are Right Wing and awfully good. Written by and commentary by

John Armor
Lyford Beverage
Lisa Fabrizio
Mark Finkelstein
Dan Gainor
David Limbaugh
April Mickelson
Joshua Sharf
Noel Sheppard
Mark Tapscott
Clay Waters

Contributing Writers
Michael M. Bates
Jimmie Bise Jr
Brian Boyd
Edward L. Daley
Justin Darr
Geoffrey Dickens
Vinny Fiore
Karen Hanna
Stacy L. Harp
Dustin Hawkins
Lawrence Henry
Sharon Hughes
Michelle Humphrey
Mithridate Ombud
Megan McCormack
Rick Moore
Dave Pierre
Amy Ridenour
Mike Russell
Ian Schwartz
Tom Segel
Ken Shepherd
Rudy Takala
Brad Wilmouth

A "Who's Who" of top notch people. I think you'll make it one of your favorites. Its laser like focus is on Media and their distortions.

ANOTHER boo boo by Bush Administration, this time they are accused of leaking the terror threat privately to their relatives. How many more "slip ups" can we stand?

Daily News revealed that two E-mails describing the purported bombing plot had been sent early last week to a select crowd of business and arts executives by New Yorkers who claimed to have close connections to Homeland Security.

From what I'm reading SURFSIDEKICK is a menace and a half. Symantec users do not have to fear. It also must be downloaded by the user. Warning, don't use it, don't believe their hype.

Spyware Scorecard v2.0, SurfSideKick violates the following criteria: First, Installs or updates without user permission or knowledge at time of installation. Also, bundled with a variety of other pests. Displays popup/popunder ads that are displayed when main product is not running or do not appear to be connected with the product. Third, Silently connects to an unintended location to transmit personal information. Fourth, Defends against removal of or changes to its components.

VERY hard to manually remove it.

The biggest threat to our country by far, is the current French led UN effort to control all cultural output from every country. And this will pass, make no mistake.

international treaty is expected to be adopted that will "protect" the planet's "cultural diversity." Who could oppose something that sounds so noble? Not much diversity on that point: 190 governments love the idea, leaving only one--dubbed "arrogant," "misinformed," "obstructionist"--in dissent. No prize for guessing to whom we're referring.

America's honeymoon at the U.N.'s culture arm didn't last long. Two years ago, Laura Bush raised the Stars and Stripes at the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization after a 19-year boycott prompted by rampant--even by U.N. standards--corruption and anti-Americanism. The U.S. came back into the fold, picking up the tab for nearly a quarter of the agency's budget. But then came the "Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions."

Lest you doubt, even for a moment, that the world wants to control our press, our literature, our movies, and all our art and expression, consider that the French and Canadians are the ones hustling this obscenity.

Unesco members are seeking legal cover to block, or undermine competition from, a variety of U.S. imports--from books and magazines to TV shows and movies. In many cases protecting diversity will mean nothing more lofty or original than insulating domestic industries from competition or boosting censorship. Phrases such as "regulatory measures" and "public financial assistance" translate as trade barriers and government subsidies--all kosher when it comes to "nurturing and supporting" artists.

France championed this bit of international lawmaking, with the main supporting role played by Canada's prickly cultural capos. Once 30 nations ratify the treaty, France will have an official U.N. seal of approval to keep subsidizing its film industry, and Canada will have permission to block American magazine imports.

Go over there and read the whole thing.

Louis Farrakhan joins in (actually he is now leading) the "whitey dynamited the dikes" hysteria while on a "bad will" trip to Japan.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on Thursday claimed that explosives, not Hurricane Katrina, broke New Orleans' dikes and flooded poor African American neighborhoods.

He is rallying Blacks for another million man(?) march on Washington.

Forty-eight hours before the Louis Farrakhan-led march of African Americans through the streets of Washington, D.C., the controversial minister Thursday repeated his charge that levees in New Orleans were intentionally blown up on Aug. 29, following Hurricane Katrina. He also implied that the Bush administration may have orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.

He represents, and leads, a Black movement that wants to restore segregation. After you read this depressing shit, try going over to the Journal and while there read this constructive essay by Prof. Charles Johnson of the University of Washington.

.....we are CEOs at AOL Time Warner, American Express and Merrill Lynch; we have served as secretary of state and White House national security adviser; we are mayors, police chiefs, best-selling novelists, MacArthur fellows, Nobel laureates, professors, billionaires, scientists, stockbrokers, engineers, toymakers, inventors, astronauts, chess grandmasters, dot-com millionaires, talk show hosts, actors and film directors; Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists

A good piece that will only be read by whites. Can you see one of those rag headed hip hoppers bothering to read?

As if cronyism couldn't possibly get worse, David Horowitz lays a haymaker on the bribes, quid pro quos (I'll scratch your crotch if you lick mine), and deals so suspicious even the CIA would catch them. The Republican hacks at various agencies are corrupt. I don't think the Republicans survive '06. This piece is an add on to this one posted earlier. Keep in mind that the conservatives are leading the pack, and the pack keeps finding more and more.

And then the scripted "spontaneous" interviews with our soldiers in Iraq. Talk about "not getting it," these guys must be taking unconscious pills. This is like Clinton and the faked pictures at Normandie. Fox covered it, but as usual there isn't a word on their "news" web site. CNN has it too but hasn't attacked Bush.

The Junkman has an interesting commentary on the Miers nomination via a pretty good Fisking of another Blogger. It's long, but worth reading.

And still another totally unqualified Bush crony at Health and Human Services, the agency assigned to handle the possible flu epidemic. This cronyism charge has no end to it. There is a long history of a "spoils" system in all democracies, but these days one hopes "spoils" will be limited to things like ambassador to Guam or chief of rodent abatement in Death Valley. The story is in the lefty CNS via MoveOnDotOrg, but even paranoids are right sometimes.

Stewart Simonson is the Bush administration's point man for a flu pandemic but he has no public health management experience. He got his job because he is a close associate of former Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson

Somebody in the White House better get themselves a pooper scooper and clean this mess up. Pronto.

Yesterday, shortly after noon, I posted a comment regarding the Blacks starting a campaign claiming whites blew up the levee by the 9th Ward in New Orleans in order to get Blacks out of New Orleans. There was an additional short paragraph concerning similar agitation in Canada demanding a segregated state. There is a piece today HERE from the Toronto Star that goes into this at length, and makes the same observation: Blacks want segregation.....

Malkin re-visits the USS Cole bombing and the MSM blackout of the "incident" since. Good job.

Two essays in today's Journal, one by Fund the other by Noonan, can be summed thusly: The entire White House is too sloppy to be allowed to continue. Mier wasn't even vetted, meaning nobody bothered to really check her out before Bush nominated her. The Conservative base was ignored, nobody from the White House talked with anyone. So a woman with no proof of competence is named to the highest court in the land.

Incompetent? Bush is too sloppy to continue and his sloppiness equals incompetence. Read Fund's piece and shake your head over other appointments and non-supervision; the Julie Meyers appointment; retaining a known bum Tenant at CIA; Harvey Pitt at SEC who was a part of the accounting scandals because of his prior work; and so on.

Mier ain't going to be on the Supreme Court. Strange as it seems the Republicans are at long last going to stand for something besides spending money we don't have. And to make matters even worse, Ann Coulter piles on today....

Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.

Face it, Bush has made too many mistakes. Way too many. Who's he going to name to replace Greenspan as Fed Chairman? Somebody who goes to church? The fucking pope?

The Viking sex cruise story??? "I thought we were in International Waters," said an unidentified Viking player....

When told that Lake Minnetonka was nowhere near international waters (12 miles out into the ocean) the player's response was reported one word: "Sh*t!"

Most good stuff is at Bad Jocks.

LFG has a shorty about manipulating Google. I share that observation and have commented here frequently that if you put in a certain word or words all you get are Left Wing sites. I also wrote to Google and got a reply that "there is nothing we can do about it." Google, and I presume other search engines, has been hijacked. Sometimes you have to go as many as eight search pages to find a legit reference.

Latest Black Halucination: Whitey deliberately dynamited the levee by New Orleans 9th Ward to get Blacks out of New Orleans. This rumor started in some shit hole refugee center and is now becoming the latest "truth" the Black Political Elite is peddling to their idiot clans.

Filmmaker Spike Lee on Tuesday announced he is making a film for HBO about the post-Hurricane Katrina flooding in New Orleans, and said he wouldn't be shocked if conspiracy theories of intentional government involvement in the flooding proved true.

Lee's appearance on CNN, to promote his new co-authored memoir/biography, Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It, followed a report on the rumors circulating among evacuees that the government somehow engineered the flooding of the largely black and poor Ninth Ward section of New Orleans

That story from the Detroit News, a paper that panders to the Black population of Detroit. Add to this the fact that Ray Nagin, the mayor who is responsible for much of the actual refugee plight, will fuel this latest stupid rumor so he can be re-elected by the no longer living in New Orleans Blacks and get his hands on the $200 billion. Ain't you glad you donated? Ain't you glad government will help?

Oh, and FOX News? They aired the accusation and filmed Spike Lee making the statement but once again nothing on their website.

Major K's blog was blocked in a way that looked like it was shut down by somebody. It's up this AM

HOW 'BOUT DEM ANGELS?????

I know a lot of you think Debbie Schussel is a stupid cunt BUT you owe it to yourself to read her today. Mark Cuban (you know that insanely rich owner of the Dallas Mavricks?) has produced a pro terrorist major motion picture. I know she goes off the deep end on her arts criticism, but this time we should pay attention. A parenthetical question regarding this prick would be: "Why do so many people in the top 1% of the net worth class join the "Hate America Left?" Mark Cuban has funded terrorists. Period. The plotline of this movie is a contrived story that shows the featured terrorist as a simple guy who becomes a terrorist only after a couple of years of torture. The movie lets us "understand" terrorists, as if all terrorists are victims of prior torture and shared the same background of the featured terrorist. It's total bullshit presented in a very believable package. Sort of a successful Manchurian Candidate. Thanx Marc. Thanx Debbie.

Next she unloads on Julie Myers---caught bribing influential Wedding Guests with White House "trinkets" paid for by taxpayers (sourced to USN&WR). Debbie always sources her material, she does not make things up. Best line? "Julie Myers for Social Secretary or perhaps National Party Planner." Debbie is on my "must read every day list," and this post will put her on your short list as well.

Tongue Tied has a couple of terrific posts, the first with a link that will curl your hair regarding the racism gripping the Black communities in Brooklyn. The second link concerns Canuckville racism as well. Funny thing is that the Brooklyn horror story doesn't suprise me at all; I'd file it under "Welcome to Racial Understanding in America." The "solution" proposed by BLACKS in Canada is racial segregation. Bottom line? I think Blacks want to re-segregate the U.S.

Bulletin: Peace Loving Iran has turned their nuclear program over to the military.

Is there any reason to believe this isn't more of Iran's "cheat and retreat" delay tactics? No. In fact, other news last week indicates there is even more reason for concern. The Washington Times reported that, contrary to public statements by the regime, the Iranian military has effectively taken control of nuclear program.

Very good piece at Cox and Forkum.

Well, good ol' Jesse Jackson thinks displaced New Orleans residents should get those rebuilding jobs now going to immigrants and he's blaming the Bush administration for failing to put evacuees to work rebuilding their city.

Jackson has taken matters into his own hands, leading a caravan of buses to St Louis to convince evacuees to return home and go to work, and bringing the message that New Orleans citizens "should have priority over imported workers to rebuild the city." But only three people boarded the Jackson's bus in St Louis and two of those spoke only Spanish.

Send more money, dem poor black folks done need it.

Miers Ree Ducks----I get this feeling that the objection to Miers is only about the fact that the Republican Conservatives didn't have somebody they could pick a big fight over. Well here's a news flash:

RINOs McCain, Chafee, DeWine, Graham, Warner, Collins and Snowe would have supported a "real" conservative like they supported Social Security Reform, adding individual investment accounts to Social Security, revising the tax code (eliminaing the "death tax"), and Immigration Reform. Conservatives are NOT a majority in the congress. In fact the GOP is actually a minority party on the issues that count. The RINOs struck early. Before Bush's coat was off after the inauguration, Senators (Arlen) Specter and (John) Warner were already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Even worse, Bush has made it very difficult to "grease" the foes; almost the entire White House Staff, the guys who had stuck with Bush all through the first term, were not "encouraged to stay on," thus the White House replaced them with (big surprise) medocrities who are not competent to do the jobs. Sowell had a good column a while back that should be required reading. Miers is the best the gutless Republican RINOs will allow through. However, Collins (URB--Useless RINO Bitch ME) moved Heaven and earth to get Judy Myers through committee in two days. Mudville links to a commentary (John in North Carolina)that uses the usual sexist crap, as do a ton of other blogs and editorials. No. It's RINO crap. Miers is all Bush can hope to get through the Senate.

If you want to stay abreast of all things UN this is the site to visit at least once per week. Wake up call courtesy of Power Line.... Oh, the name of the site is "eye on the UN."

Watch the Birdie


From Cox and Forkum

Bombs on campus and terrorism: Jesus H. Christ, give me a break. What one real terrorist can do with a backpack bomb has been on display in Israel for at least ten years. Real live terrorists would have blown up the student union during lunch hour, blown up part of one of the medical buildings during the 8 to 9AM peak patient hours or something like that. Yawn......

From time to time over the past few months I have commented on the widely held opinion that "it is impossible to stay in business if you have a UAW contract." The first bankruptcy revolving almost entirely around a UAW contract---pensions, medical care, work rules---is under way. Delphi is an auto parts manufacturer and the biggest supplier of parts to GM. It used to be a part of GM and was spun off in 1999. However, you can never divest yourself of the UAW once they are in the door.

Among the thorniest problems will be deciding who is responsible for post-retirement and health-care benefits that GM, which shares many of the same problems that sent Delphi into Chapter 11, has said could cost it up to $11 billion.

That is eleven billion that not even GM has in the til. Delphi wants to junk the entire UAW contract and the UAW ain't happy.

Alluding to that possibility, UAW leaders said in a statement on Saturday that it would be "an extremely bitter pill" to swallow. "I think this case is, in fact, a watershed. I think what it does is -- in the most dramatic way we've seen to date -- it introduces the wages of the global economy into Main Street in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley specializing in labor issues.

The courts could rule several ways here---there is no doubt that Delphi is broke---they could order a near bankrupt GM to take back the company which would probably cause GM to file too; they could allow Delphi to remain in business with a shell of a UAW contract they would have to honor; or they could go along with what Delphi says it must have if creditors are to be satisfied. The trial will be conducted in New York, not in Michigan where the UAW has literally appointed most of the judges. We all have a stake in the outcome, because if the judge rules largely in favor of Delphi it may mean that Ford and GM can bust away from their UAW contracts. Stay tuned on this one. The UAW has thugs galore, has rioted in the past, and can paralyze the country. There is also the usual race component because the UAW was in the forefront of the Civil Rights movement in the mid part of the century and forced companies to hire Blacks who are a large part of the union. The UAW is the last large industrial union standing, their members regard their jobs as an entitlement, and don't think for a moment they won't resort to violence if their candy is taken away. There is a major article HERE that states:

Banc of America Securities, a brokerage firm that tracks companies for investors, released a report that said Delphi's bankruptcy created a 30% chance GM would follow suit. Standard & Poor's downgraded GM's long-term credit rating, already at junk bond status, to BB--, meaning the company faces uncertainties that could keep it from meeting financial commitments.

Both of the photos were taken in Detroit during two riots, one of which (1943) quickly degenerated into a notorious race riot. You will note in the fuzzy black and white picture that Blacks are shown looting downtown businesses exactly as they do today. The sepia tone photo shows mostly white people turning over a car and breaking into an unidentified structure, presumably a unit of the Ford company. White mobs always turn cars over, whether they are rioting over winning a game or having their beer taken away. The UAW has a long history of violence, which was originally started by corporate thugs hired by both GM and Ford to beat and assault workers. The workers retaliated and these stories have become legend and lore within the UAW. The violence was a function of both sexes as the famous picture below shows....
















Two women battle to the bloody end in the Ford strike.

Below: FEMA officials meet to approve $3 billion to open bars and gambling casinos
















New Orleans resident hauled away for trying to start an illegal AA Meeting in Downtown New Orleans.

Above: City Council member has a little drinkiepoo after voting to accept $3 billion in Federal dollars for cultural improvements.


Left: New Orleans president of "Pork Busters," an organization formed to stop pork barrel spending in New Orleans, beaten by New Orleans cops for apparently objecting to Federal money being allocated to rebuild a rival's whore house. New Orleans police will investigate.

Soros money funding the DeLay prosecution? Front Page makes a hell of a case. The number of orgs getting tons of money from Soros should be of concern to all of us. Money corrupts, too much money corrupts absolutely. Take a look.....

There's a (shit load, huge quantities, massive reserves) of crude oil showing up under the ice caps. Ice caps? That can't be. Yes it can. See, if you learned in school that oil is strictly the result of a hundred million years of dinosaurs you are a moron. Oil is a result of plants and animals sinking into something and then coming under pressure. It's in shale. It's everywhere, especially under the ice caps. Huh? Well the north pole wasn't always cold. Scientists now believe that at one time they were very warm and the decay of plant and animal life up there is a result of the warm era. So while the Russians are moving heaven and earth to sew up all the oil in the arctic, our environmentalists are stopping the United States from getting any at all. You better be hip to this, and the New York Times has a series of articles this morning you should read. 25% of the reserves are under the arctic ice. Get hip to this. Now. If we allow the nutball environmentalists to stop us we will become Third World.

Plame/Wilson/Rove/Miller as a conspriatorial novella is here at the ever complexity loving Kaus. Jesus, can't anyone in Washington do anything just for a blow job any more? I'll bet you can't follow the story line to save your life.

A new site (to me) is called Tongue Tied. Give it a look

While the former residents of New Orleans lay around in shelters waiting for Uncle Sucker to give them welfare, food, and shelter, thousands of jobs are unfilled in New Orleans. Starting wages are $15 per hour for unskilled. Guess who is filling the jobs? Here's the LA Times article: Immigrants Rush to New Orleans as Contractors Fight for Workers

As many evacuees stay away, Latin American workers move in, lured by soaring pay. They could change the face of the city. Are they illegals? Nobody asks because nobody wants to know.

Specialized roofers can make $300 a day. I assume the usual Black Suspects will blame the government and whitey. Glad there's some games on tonight. And here's a comparison of the people in Mississippi, both black and white, actually working together to make things better. Part of the commentary:

New Orleans is a cesspool of defeatism and political corruption. So-called leaders in that city, both black and white, have for decades worked to keep blacks dumb, dirt-poor, and angry. They’ve succeeded. The poverty-stricken masses in New Orleans are absolutely dependent upon the bureaucracy for their needs.

The rest is here

Junkyard has a piece that proves judges is what this culture war is all about. Talk about legislating from the bench and telling us all to go fuck ourselves.....

More on incompetent Julie Myers who was approved by the totally corrupt GOP committee.....

Questions: What are Myers' five strongest management credentials that have prepared her for such a high level management position? How many beats has she walked? How many investigations has she done? How many surveillances has she conducted? Does she even know how to use a firearm?

Debbie Schussel does her. BTW, everyone has been ordered to use her new married name instead of Myers. Call her Mrs. Wood; not Her Scummyness, Former Slut, or Her Incompetency. Keep on voting Republican? Sure I will..

A balanced analysis of Bird Flu over at Business Week. Cutting to the chase: very little likelyhood of the disease hitting humans via human to human contact BUT because viruses have the ability to mutate, this COULD be bad. So far NO record of anyone getting it by any other means than contact with infected birds. Now for the scary stuff:

Most experts, however, believe H5N1, if it does end up threatening humans, will probably be quite deadly because of its similarity to the Spanish-flu virus. Also, doctors have noticed that more people are surviving the infection recently than they were when H5N1 was first discovered. That's not necessarily a good thing. It could mean that the virus is mutating into one that is easier to carry -- and spread. Ominously, the Spanish-flu virus, which also started in birds, followed a similar evolutionary path.

This strain, when caught by humans, has been particularly deadly so far; fatality rate is close to 90%. Now, go watch a game. Again, we are talking about lots of IFs here.

Schroeder the goober steps aside in Heilville. "Conservative" Merkel will form the German government this week. Pretty good take over at Scott's who has been following this for a while. He thinks that the Euro anti-American political parties are all out on their asses. I don't, I just think it's the same old horses with different saddles. There is a very good piece about the real European Leadership elite over at No Pasaran that tells a far different story about the virulent anti-Americanism among the upper class in Europe. (Warning: the link is to a very long post, but in this case it's loaded with references and facts. Well worth the time to read)

The thing about European governance most striking to American eyes today is its comparatively undemocratic nature. In much of the continent, elections mean little, unaccountable bureaucracies and elites commandeer the most important decisions, the same people hang onto power endlessly, and policies that would not survive the test of popular opinion are simply instituted by administrative fiat. To cite just one example, direct election of mayors has been blocked in many localities, with national authorities insisting on appointing local leaders themselves.

I suggest you read this one because it is precisely these assholes who want to take over the Internet. This little excerpt is quite telling:

We have conventionally thought of Europe as having about the same standard of living as Americans. This is less and less true. For the European Union as a whole, GDP per capita is presently less than two thirds of U.S. levels. America's poorest sub-groups, like African Americans, now have higher average income levels than the typical European.

Envy rules, and it's getting worse not better.

File this under: the Left never quits, even when the law says stop. They are doing everything possible to circumvent the orders of the government and continue the Hate America Museum "project" at Ground Zero. See story at "9-11 Families for Peace" site, the one that thought they stopped the horrible display. This time the Hate America crowd is not supported by the usual suspects as even the Daily Hypocrite (NYT) piles on.

Another Two big Republicans, jump off the Miers bandwagon. John Fund:

"She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.

John Fund describes her as a person who walks on the sand and leaves no footprints. I now say either Bush withdraws this nomination or she will be destroyed by the Senate. Another fucking crony bites the dust. Fund again:

But it was Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade.

More to the point is the past history of approving people Republican presidents assured one and all were conservatives who turned out to be the most liberal members of the Court. Then we have Robert Bork, he of the verb "bork" fame on Tucker Carlson's MSNBC SHOW:

Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FORMER SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Not a bit. I think it’s a disaster on every level.

Right Nation has the entire transcript here.

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a long time insider in D.C., stated on FOX News Sunday that he thinks Rove is going to be indicted. Most panelists agreed. As usual the FOX NEWS site doesn't have a word about their own story. Methinks this is another Conservative institution that is collapsing under mediocre management now that Ailes has moved on.

USC ain't number One. They wandered through another game yesterday like an alcoholic looking for the last bar open at 2AM, showing one and all they can't cover kicks (one run back for a TD and a few more for 50 plus yards) and they draw stupid penalties like they were lottery tickets. I guarantee that if Notre Dame doesn't beat them UCLA will.

Why the NFL won't come to LA

Yesterday 90,000 fans showed up to see USC sleepwalk through another boring opponent, and 84,000 showed up to watch UCLA do a "last man standing" war with CAL. This proves to the NFL that LA is obviously NOT a good football city. The problem with LA fans is that we want a winner, we aren't stupid enough to cough up $100 per to see a loser.

So now the NFL, just like the corrupt UN, demands a bribe to build a stadium suitable for their desperate need for ever more dollars. I speak for all of LA when I say "fuck you, NFL, when all our schools and roads are up to date we still won't talk a deal." You want in, come in on your dime.

Demarche, the diplomat writing anonymously, has a good piece up today and links to a few more. Right now I'm burned out by football (the Cal UCLA game was only great) and can only be pissed off at one thing at a time so I'm not all that interested in what is happening in towelheadville, but for those of you who are, Demarche is good today.

He is also the most articulate person around regarding immigration and the impact of illegals on our coutry. He has actual facts, something that usually pisses me off, but once in a while I need a few.

Belmont joins a ton of media and bloggers in commenting on the Zarqawi memo. Doesn't anybody suspect that it was the CIA that wrote it? The letter smells to high Heaven. A letter? In the days of encrypted emails? Total shit. "Oh please stop killing Muslims and send me money," is something for the MSM to swallow, not me.

Miers take for today: lots of comment re; GOP will look weak if they don't nominate her. Well la dee da, ain't that a toilet full? Let's see, the Democratic Party fell apart because they stopped FDR from packing the Supreme Court in 1938; they were destroyed forever when a ton of them joined Republicans to rise up against Abe Fortas, the LBJ crony. Right.

Standing on principal is something that, way down deep, we actually respect and want. People defending her are playing the sex card, the eliteist card (she went to SMU so the Ivys hate her), and naturally the unity card. How about the "is she the best available person for the job" card? It is clearly obvious that by nominating a woman for a woman's seat "the best available person" was not possible anyway. This is just the latest straw in the mountain of straws of mediocre appointments and the one that finally broke the elephant's back. The totally unqualified Julie Myers is still going to be confirmed to lead one of the most sensitive security agencies in Washington and she was jammed through committee by that RINO slut from Maine, Susan Collins.

18,000 dead in Pakistan earthquake.

Sigh, glad there's some good games on today, New England vs Atlanta is more important to me. How about you? Are you as "disastered out" as I am; tired of hearing how our money was thrown away in the Tsunami Relief; up to here with those New Orleans assholes wanting Federal money to reopen bars and strip joints? Aren't you tired of hearing that building codes designed in 12 BC cause apartments to collapse; cities built below sea level actually flood; or that people who are allowed to build homes in dry brush areas and then lose them to wild fires somehow deserve to be given my money to rebuild again? And the Angels play the Yankees tonight while Cincinatti goes against Jacksonville.

Miers watch: first, support from Harry Reid, and now super slob lefty Barbara Mikulski jumps in. I don't know if this is a plot against her but she is developing a list of "friends" that many are finding disturbing. The Conservative backlash continues. If they keep it up this will be a judge nobody respects. Either dump her or shut up.

The Weekly Standard is full of shit, and other observations...... They have a negative Arnold story that only could have been written by one of the usual suspects inside The Beltway. Deep inside the piece he reveals that every one of Arnold's special election propsitions is leading; one propsition demanding member approval of of union donations to political campaigns, has 77% approval INSIDE UNIONS. Don't believe anything you read or see on TV; this is a classic "us vs them" game, with the "us" being the people who have no media access (right or left) and no media other than Arnold's commericals and word of mouth working for us. Help from Conservative Media? They're the same suspects wearing different colored blinders, educated in all the usual places, convinced they know best and we know shit. Stay tuned. BTW, the unions will have put up more than $250 MILLION to beat these propositions, money that has been stolen from members without their permission.

Oil hysteria, some reality:

Of the 3,050 Gulf Coast drilling platforms in the path of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (out of 4,000 the Minerals Management Service administers), only 109 were completely destroyed while another 50 were extensively damaged; also destroyed were 59 drillings rigs with another 19 suffering major damages. All but one of the drilling platforms completely destroyed were classified by the DOI as being at “the older end of life,” meaning they were not built to MMS’ upgraded design standards. These facilities account for a very low percentage of the Gulf’s oil and gas production (1.7% and 0.9%), and will not be rebuilt.

Since Hurricane Rita, 342 platforms (40%) and 17 drilling rigs (12.7%) remain evacuated. Recovery is taking longer to get underway because those who operate the platforms were affected personally by the hurricanes as well – many having lost their homes, offices and possessions. Many company headquarters are in pieces

Even more significant is the extensive damage experienced by onshore processing facilities. Those onshore issues make it difficult to restore the offshore production.

Still, there are 342 platforms (40%) and 17 drilling rigs (12.7%) remain evacuated. It takes divers going down and examining each and every rig in order to determine damage and repair. It's going to be mid December at the earliest before all production is restored.

Supplemented from yesterday......

General Motors Downshifts Toward Default Drive or bankruptcy boulevard headlines Bloomberg in a dreary warning to all. They are on the hook for billions from companies they backed that are going bankrupt, the bond agencies are about to lower their rating again, and nobody wants their SUVs. In a surprise, the usually sad sack Chrysler (Diamler Chrysler) is starting to do a lot better. Chrysler Group, a Detroit automaker accustomed to near-death experiences, is managing to avoid the pain of its two larger Detroit-based rivals. Their stock is up and investment firms have put them on their buy lists. Overall this is very bad news for the economy because if GM goes, it will mean a million jobs at least.

Things are OK on the Mississippi, the grains can go all the way to port, a fact that has helped to cause a near collapse in the prices of beans and corn. This will mean lower meat prices pretty soon since both products are animal feed not human food (corn is not the sweet corn that we eat). This will mean that one inflation index, the CRB, will be moving down a little from record highs. All the meats are near all time highs right now---as anyone who shops for beef or pork knows---but relief is at hand. We won't feel it in the stores for at least a couple of months. As cattle herds are rebuilt, keep in mind that the cycle for cattle---screwing, having a calf, having it grow and breed again, etc.----is seven years; Hogs---those fuckers have litters of at least eight twice per year, easy to rebuild stock. Right now some meat contracts are at ALL TIME HIGHS and trending higher; keep in mind that there are now commodity FUNDS (like mutual funds) in these markets and when they bail out, because they all use the same chart signals, markets collapse; funds are now a disproportionate share of futures markets..

For those of you interested, go HERE, for a terrific piece on the outlook for energy based on technical analysis of the market. Scroll half way down to "liquid energy." This is a proprietary site but you can order their stuff.

Stop having a cow over Bird Flu..........Media hysteria is way way out of line and don't get caught up in it. The liklihood of a pandemic is microscopic. Even in filthy parts of Asia the death toll is very low as a result of it. All this shit about vaccine not being available is total crap too. This from CDC

While it is unusual for people to get influenza infections directly from animals, sporadic human infections and outbreaks caused by certain avian influenza A viruses and pig influenza viruses have been reported. These sporadic human infections and outbreaks, however, rarely result in sustained transmission among humans.

Person to person infection:

To date, human infections with avian influenza viruses detected since 1997 have not resulted in sustained human-to-human transmission. However, because influenza viruses have the potential to change and gain the ability to spread easily between people, monitoring for human infection and person-to-person transmission is important.

Below are the boring details

Confirmed instances of avian influenza viruses infecting humans since 1997 include:

* H5N1, Hong Kong, 1997 : Avian influenza A (H5N1) infections occurred in both poultry and humans. This was the first time an avian influenza virus had ever been found to transmit directly from birds to humans. During this outbreak, 18 people were hospitalized and six of them died. To control the outbreak, authorities killed about 1.5 million chickens to remove the source of the virus. Scientists determined that the virus spread primarily from birds to humans, though rare person-to-person infection was noted.

* H9N2, China and Hong Kong, 1999 : Avian influenza A H9N2 illness was confirmed in two children. Both patients recovered, and no additional cases were confirmed. The evidence suggested that poultry was the source of infection and the main mode of transmission was from bird to human. However, the possibility of person-to-person transmission could not be ruled out. Several additional human H9N2 infections were reported from mainland China in 1998-99.

* H7N2, Virginia, 2002: Following an outbreak of H7N2 among poultry in the Shenandoah Valley poultry production area, one person was found to have serologic evidence of infection with H7N2.

* H5N1, China and Hong Kong, 2003 : Two cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) infection occurred among members of a Hong Kong family that had traveled to China. One person recovered, the other died. How or where these two family members were infected was not determined. Another family member died of a respiratory illness in China, but no testing was done.

* H7N7, Netherlands, 2003 : The Netherlands reported outbreaks of influenza A (H7N7) in poultry on several farms. Later, infections were reported among pigs and humans. In total, 89 people were confirmed to have H7N7 influenza virus infection associated with this poultry outbreak. These cases occurred mostly among poultry workers. H7N7-associated illness included 78 cases of conjunctivitis (eye infections) only; 5 cases of conjunctivitis and influenza-like illnesses with cough, fever, and muscle aches; 2 cases of influenza-like illness only; and 4 cases that were classified as “other.” There was one death among the 89 total cases The death occurred in a veterinarian who visited one of the affected farms and developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and complications related to H7N7 infection. The majority of these cases occurred as a result of direct contact with infected poultry; however, Dutch authorities reported three possible instances of transmission from poultry workers to family members. Since that time, no other instances of H7N7 infection among humans have been reported.

* H9N2, Hong Kong, 2003 : H9N2 infection was confirmed in a child in Hong Kong. The child was hospitalized but recovered.

* H7N2, New York, 2003: In November 2003, a patient with serious underlying medical conditions was admitted to a hospital in New York with respiratory symptoms. One of the initial laboratory tests identified an influenza A virus that was thought to be H1N1. The patient recovered and went home after a few weeks. Subsequent confirmatory tests conducted in March 2004 showed that the patient had been infected with an H7N2 avian influenza virus. An investigation to determine the source of infection is ongoing.

* H5N1, Thailand and Vietnam, 2004: In January 2003, outbreaks of highly pathogenic influenza A (H5N1) in Asia were first reported by the World Health Organization. From December 30, 2003, to March 17, 2004, 12 confirmed human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) were reported in Thailand and 23 in Vietnam, resulting in a total of 23 deaths. Visit www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/asia.htm, www.oie.int, and www.who.int/en for more information.

* H7N3 in Canada , 2004: In February 2004, human infections of H7N3 among poultry workers were associated with an H7N3 outbreak among poultry. The H7N3-associated illnesses consisted of eye infections.

* H5N1, Thailand and Vietnam, 2004 and 2005: Beginning in late June 2004, new lethal outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry were reported by several countries in Asia. The new outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry in Asia were followed by renewed sporadic reporting of human cases of H5N1 infection in Vietnam and Thailand beginning in August and continuing into 2005. Of particular note is one isolated instance of probable limited human-to-human transmission occurring in Thailand in September. Visit www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/outbreaks/asia.htm, www.oie.int, and www.who.int/en for more information.

Symptoms of Avian Influenza in Humans

The reported symptoms of avian influenza in humans have ranged from typical influenza-like symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches) to eye infections (conjunctivitis), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia, and other severe and life-threatening complications.

So there. This left generated hysteria is exclusively in the best interests of the Left Democratic Party, a golden opportunity to blast the Bush Adnministration for not being prepared for a phantom pandemic. Glad there's a couple of good games on today.

Socialite Life has the dopiest link to tacky taste imaginable. Nice tits though.

Public Service: Schultz has a tantalizing piece running that links to a closed page on Rush Limbaugh's site. By accident (I think), I crossed linked HERE to what I believe is actually the page Schultz wanted. Or maybe it isn't. But it looks like Rush's page.

Benito Giuliani? The picture on top captures what New Yorkers thought of him before 9/11. When he was mayor of New York (before 9/11) he had become very unpopular. People did not like him at all. His shack job while married, the way he treated his wife, the way he treated his kid, the "do it my way or the highway" method of governance had run its course. Talk about feet of clay, this guy has feet of flaming hay. Remember his wife banning his mistress from the Mayor's residence at Grace Mansion? Remember him kicking his wife out into the street while he moved his mistress in? Just look back and read this one. He has as much of a chance of being nominated as Jew in Gaza.

Miers? Miers? We wanted Oprah.....

"George Bush decided to nominate himself to the Supreme Court."
Another articulate and damming essay regarding Ms. Miers, this time in the bastion of Conservatism, the Wall Street Journal. Take a read, more and more it looks like the Republicans may actually deep six this nomination. Add to that the super GOPer Charles Krauthammer. Some of THE most influential Conservatives on the block are piling on this one, all singing parts of the same tune: she is an unqualified mediocrity when compared to at least twenty other peopole, a lady who will do what Bush tells her to do rather than actually think. Every once in a while political parties stand up for principal, as they did when Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court in 1938 (which is exactly what Bush is trying to do in 2005) and when Johnson tried to elevate his crony, Abe Fortas.

I have no idea why I have suddenly become so popular but my readership has quadrupled (at least) in the last month. Thanx to all of you for dropping by. 5,000 visitors yesterday; it ain't Reynolds or Kos but it ain't chopped liver either.

VISITS

Total 1,537,462
Average Per Day 4,971
Average Visit Length 1:15
Last Hour 137
Today 13
This Week 26,798

Again, thanx.....

The Mother of us all, like it or not, was not Ronald Reagan. Nor was she Barry Goldwater. Neither would have risen from the depths had it not been for National Review and Bill Buckley and 1955. It was Buckley who showed that Conservatism had a soul AND a brain. It was Buckley who presented to us the Conservative writers and thinkers who shaped the movement and gave it life. For a leisurely trip down a really great memory lane this weekend you should check out the look back on their 50th today. And here too.

Christian Right mobilizing against Mier for Supreme Court

Conservative Republican Christian women plan monster protest rally outside of Harley's Bar in D.C. Bush voices concern and says he will meet with them. Former Catholic nun, Sister Pistolita (above), vows to bring the morally bankrupt White House to their knees. "Read Ann Coulter today if you want to know the truth," snarled the former Mother Superior.

12:40 PDT ADD: Gasoline is about where it should be in reference to the crude price. Each $1 in price of crude equals a nickel in the price of gasoline. December Gasoline is forty cents off the highs of several weeks ago. If this holds or continues we could see a thirty cent drop in retail prices fairly fast.

FROM 5AM this morning:Crude oil from a purely technical view, oil is headed to $58 very fast ($57.50 on the weekly). Why is technical analysis so important? Is it always right? At least 80% of traders rely on technical analysis somewhat, which means it has something of a self fulfilling prophecy about it, but it is far from always right. Let's see how fast, or if, it gets to $58. Gasoline is telling us with today's gap opening down, that it might get there pretty fast. We could see relief at the pump by the end of the week. Heating Oil is not moving down very much and it is heating oil that can wreck this economy; however as I post this the NYMEX is not open. Important because heating oil is strictly an American product (Europeans use fuel oil, a different formulation). If I'm still around I'll post later.

Jobless claims: 350,000 much bigger than expected--by us--obviously expected by the smart money yesterday.

Later: Heating Oil is down but not enough. Look at the chart for the December contract (December is when it starts to get really cold). You will see that it must drop another eighty cents just to be awful. Badder news cannot be found. If you live in the east pray for global warming, winter temps in the 70's would be best.

Another blast at the bullshit about hybrids, this time from a non-automotive site. If you're thinking buying a car that gets good mileage, hightail it over there and read. It's a re-hash of what I've posted here before but this time it's from a different source.

Instead, we're offered gas-electric hybrids -- which is fine, but far from inexpensive (and thus far from economical). Hybrids cost around $2,000-$10,000 more to buy than conventional, gas-only versions of the same car with similar trim and equipment. Even at $3 per gallon, you'll have to burn an awful lot of fuel before reaching break even. Indeed, a number of recent stories have "done the math" -- and found that, for the average buyer, a hybrid can be more expensive to operate than a "gas guzzling" conventional car.

And there's always the risk -- downplayed by the automakers but real, nonetheless -- that down-the-road upkeep/maintenance costs of complex hybrid technology (especially the battery pack) could be very, very expensive indeed.

Toyota is selling everyone a "bill of goods," goods that cannot be delivered.

LA Times, a paper that has ridiculed and black listed conservative artists for thirty years, is giving the conservative Liberty Film Festival some straight coverage. Be sure you check out what looks like a terrific series if you are in LA during the last weeks of October, this is a seminal event and they have put together some real heavyweights. Tickets available on line only, HERE. And be sure to visit the home site: Libertas. They deserve support.

Sports and Media: Hockey's back and the fans really loved it last night. Attendance was capacity or 98% everywhere and the new rules are liked by both fans and players. So, what is the future of hockey? About twenty five years ago I was editing a movie across the street from Technicolor and one of the guys from there asked us to come over and "check out" this new TV from Japan called high definition. We went over and it was a mind blower. Sports was featured: car races, rodeo, and most especially hockey. It was hockey that stole the demo. For the first time you could see the puck, and the immediacy of the players meant that every check was a collision that made one grunt. I thought, "wow."

Segue to three or so years later: I'm attending a major function in New York and was seated for dinner just to the left of the CEO of the Madison Square Garden company. He was an interesting guy and in asking him stuff, I asked why he kept the pathetic Rangers. He looked me dead in the eye and told me about HiDef TV. He was "sure" that when people had it and HiDef was televised that hockey would rival football in popularity. So now we will see because millions of people own sets and all games are televised in HiDef.

Miers ree-ducks: it's all over the media and I won't bother linking to what you already know. The GOP doesn't want her, period. I won't supply links but even the WSJ's Noonan, who is hardly a hard nose about anything (she's a feel good Republican) is miffed:

By the time of the hearings she'll have been painted as Church Lady. There's a great old American tradition of not really liking Church Lady.

I absolutely don't believe a Christian, or Jew, or whatever disqualifies a person, but I don't want to chose somebody just because they are "born again." And then Noonan shows a side that more and more Republicans want: she wants to rumble. And if sweet Peggy, who won't hit a nail with a hammer wants to rumble, what must we think the rest of the GOP wants to do? Rush may have hit on it yesterday when he said that debate; brawling in the mud, a bare knuckles bloody brawl, is absolutely necessary in order to advance. We'll see. We could be looking at an Abe Fortas here, because in the end it was the Democrats that threw the Johnson crony to the gators.

Harriet Meirs has reached the age of 60 and no one seems to know what she thinks.

That is a damming little sentence. And the Kelo decision riles Republicans almost as much as Roe v Wade riles the Democrats. Stay tuned.

Oh, and while this goes on, feel good super RHINO senator Collins (Asshole, ME) is sliding the other nothing crony and former shack job of somebody influential, Julie Meyers, through for head of ICE.

And there's this one from Schussel:

I'm waiting for a third unqualified woman with yet another alternative spelling of the surname to be nominated by President Bush. How about Oscar Meyer's daughter for head of the FDA?

I heard she knows how to spell "bologna.

It's "baloney" Debbie. You have to trust me. There is a good overall view at Brother's Judd.

Markets and stuff: go here to Random Roger for a good analysis for living. This is one of the best sites on the web; he's successful; been successful for a long time; and he really knows his shit. We have a regional Fed guy (Fisher) who runs off at the mouth on CNBC every few months and when he does he moves markets, for a day. Look for a horrible jobs number this week, loss of at least 150K to 200K. Markets have already digested those, anything higher could cause real problems. And this little quote should get you over there:

I will call on Puru Saxena's nugget about per capita consumption of oil. US per capita consumption is about 25 barrels per year. China's and India's per capita consumption is less than one barrel. What do you think will happen to global demand for oil when their demand rises to 1.5 barrels per year?

This is a very good site. Scary, but good.

Miers: be sure to read George Will's piece at Town Hall. There are way too many on the Right that think this appointment is just flat wrong and this opinion is growing, not going away. Rush did almost twenty minutes on Greta last night----as is usual with FOX there is nothing on their web site, but there is a word for word accounting of her interview with Bill Clinton---and Rush had plenty to say that was very thoughtful. To sum up: he commented on the fear of confrontation as a fear of debate and without debate we never get to issues; he commented about the "culture of the Supreme Court" and how they only talk with each other; and basically said that Miers was a very "soft" candidate. Here's some stuff from Rush's site which he usually removes every few hours:

......a philosophical comment. It's a bit of philosophy that I happen to believe, and it is this: that if you show weakness to your opponents, you encourage them. If you operate from a position of conviction and confidence and strength, then you have a little easier time dealing with your enemies, your opponents, or what have you -- and that's why I just don't like the idea of coming at anything from a position of weakness or a position of being on the defensive. I believe in total offense. We're winning. We won the elections in 2000 and 2004. We added to the majorities from 2000 to 2004, and there's every reason to come out here and be proud of who we are, and proud of what we stand for, and you heard the president say here, "There's not a lot of opinions for people to look at," which is what convinces me that the president here -- and I'm not saying that he personally is weak. I think the position of weakness is that he can't count on his own allies in the Senate for a protracted fight, so he comes up with a nominee that's a small target. There really is nothing anybody can say about her in terms of her opinions because she doesn't have any. She doesn't have any legal opinions that can focus on the special interest groups gonna have to drum up a bunch of stuff that, frankly, is going to offend people, i.e., she's a "lesbian," i.e., she "helped Bush get out of the National Guard."

But his comments regarding the necessity and usefulness of debate is what struck me:

......when it's important to have the debate -- and don't forget why it's important to have the debate. It's just an important to have the debate to cream the left, because in many ways, folks, that's already happened, which was my point. But you have the debate and you have the debate in open for the purposes of continuing the education of the American people as voters, and this is not to imply that they're dumb. It's not that at all. It's just that the Supreme Court -- you all know it. We talk about the O'Connor seat as being the "swing vote." There's no such thing as a swing vote on the court, as it should accurately be working. There's no such thing! There's no such thing as quotas on the court. It's time to have the debate about where the Supreme Court's taking this country and how so many of the issues the court deals with end up being taken out of the legislative process in the arena of ideas and therefore out of the hands of the people. Yeah, as Justice Breyer said in his interview on Sunday: "The Constitution begins with 'we the people.'" Well, the way the court's going, it needs to be rewritten pretty soon, "We the Supreme Court," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's not the way this should be!

The quote is very long and check it out before he takes it down.

And for something really stupid about Miers, check out Roger Simon who has this bullshit piece comparing Orson Welles directing a chickenshit fucking movie with a person qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. And 140 people commented. Hey! Hollywood! It takes eight years of school to become a lawyer, a high school drop out can direct a movie. When we all reduce our thinking to this level we get what we think about.

After the big national unions have spent tens of millions of member dollars to beat Arnold and his sponsored initiatives he has placed on the California ballot, here are the current poll numbers just completed on Sunday. You can fool some of the people......etc. Remember this huge amount of money has come in from all over the country.

A brand new Survey USA poll done for KABC and other local TV stations shows all four of the Governor's reform initiatives winning in the special election. This is the first poll done since the Governor went on TV.

Here are the KABC/Survey USA results. The poll was taken 9/30 to 10/2.

Prop 74. Yes 55%, No 44%. (528 Likely voters. Margin of error +/- 4.3%)
Prop 75. Yes 60%, No 37% (529 Likely voters. Same Margin)
Prop 76. Yes 58%, No 36% (507 Likely voters. Margin of error +/- 4.4%)
Prop 77. Yes 59%, No 36% (517 Likely voters. Margin of error +/- 4.3%)

Unless you live in CA you can't appreciate how vicious the union ads have been. Obviously didn't work. My opinion: they have been so phony, so far over the top, and so badly acted that people became angry.

As a public service link here to a filthy cartoon posted at Schultz. Very dirty. Very funny.

Miers? Ya gotta be kidding......

See here's the deal. This pic is posted with a contest to caption it. It is impossible to log on and enter the contest. So have at it in the comments section.....BTW actual title of pic is "Zaporozhian Cossacks" | c. 1887 |by Elias Repin

Price of crude: answer to a few emails asking why I will say crude is down $2 but when they look at it at 12:30 PM PDT it's only down twenty cents? Between the hours of 9AM EDT and 3PM EDT the market trading is NYMEX in New York. When they close you are getting after market quotes til Sydney opens; then Hong Kong; then Europe. New York and London are most active markets but you can get a real surprise out of Asian markets, that's why you must trade a global contract.

Government spending on unnecessary make work to pay off campaign contributors will not be cut back. The entrenched Republican leadership attacks everyone who suggests it and is actually campaigning against Rhode Island Republican Steve Laffey in a primary, a guy who dares to raise the issue.

Do we have the guts to change our votes to Democratic? The Republicans are the swamp dwellers slithering around in the muck collecting and collecting. WE can stop them. We can send them home. They have been around too long. Far too long.

THE best car site on the web WOD is auto extremist, and for those of you contemplating fuel economy vehicles right now this is a must read I don't think most of you realize how Toyota has mastered the manipulatively simple minded press regarding their new hybrids. This is a must read. Sample

This new ad campaign for its hybrids is the direct opposite - it's not only irresponsible, it's flat-out unforgivable. We warned Detroit in this column a couple of weeks ago that Toyota would use this marketing onslaught for its hybrids to go for the jugular. And if anyone misread Toyota's true intentions up until this moment, the quaint notion of Toyota as the Jolly Green car company filled with Shiny Happy People out to save the world should surely be dispelled by now. By allowing this campaign to hit the airwaves, Toyota has made it clear that they will stop at absolutely nothing to gain any advantage in this market, even if it means equating its "Hybrid Synergy Drive" with the Fountain of Youth.

And in another post you'll read about

Japan maintains a weak yen policy that gives its automakers a cost advantage ranging from $3,000 on a small car to $12,000 on a luxury sport utility vehicle. And lawmakers chimed in. Rep. Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that U.S. - Japan trade is stagnating because of Tokyo's protectionist policies. Protectionism is the one issue that Toyota's leaders in Japan fear more than any other.

In another posting there is this gem:

intentionally plays on the widespread ignorance that exists about hybrid technology to exaggerate the environmental benefits (hybrids = electricity = "clean"). Focusing on the air is a misdirection from the environmental problems created by disposing of all of the extra battery materials. Someone needs to do a full environmental accounting of this synergy drive crap and see how much pollution is just redistributed to some other area and stage in the life cycle of the product. Which is worse: a car company that isn't doing a lot about improving fuel economy & environmental benefits in its current cars...and isn't claiming to do so? Or a car company that isn't doing a lot about improving fuel economy & environmental benefits in its current cars...and is claiming to do so (and knowing the consumer ignorance will let them get away with this)?

As I said this is must reading for anyone who is buying into the Toyota hype; the cost of disposal of those huge lithium batteries and buying a new one for 5K every nine years; the myth of superior fuel economy; and lots of other stuff. Must reading. Warning: this is a professional industry site not a consumer site. Then be sure to check out the entertainment value stuff that includes hot cars, NASCAR, and girls:

What do the charts tell us about crude prices? Not a FT, but if it falls below the low of a few days back (barely over $62) it's a free fall. Nobody actually knows anything, but from my years of trading experience I can tell you that supply and demand are always in precarious balance and that new supply suddenly appearing will slam the price, and Bush releasing strategic reserves at the price originally paid ($27 per bbl) will nail this market. Now the real test will be these greedy fucking oil company owned refineries refusing to refine crude to a heating oil bias. Heating oil prices are the BIG dog in this deal, and if you live in the East you may be facing eviction or foreclosure. Heating oil, even at last winter's prices ($1.20) is very high by the historical standards of around seventy cents at the highs and fifty cents at the lows---I used to go long at $.49 and short over $.70---just to give you an idea.

Miers a slam dunk, fuhgedaboudit. Above pic from the ever funny WuzzaDem. go there for a funny look at this one. And she will have an immediate impact because there are a lot of cases coming down the pike. We'll see. If she goes Left it is all over for the Conservatives because the judiciary was the purpose of voting for these guys...... I rarely agree with the Left, but both the NYT and WaPo share the same view: Neither Bush nor the Dems wanted a fight. Period. I doubt that I'll blog any more about this one, it's like telling you that water is wet. An old low for cronyism; it's been done before: Chief Justice Fred Vinson regularly played poker with President Truman; Felix Frankfurter was a confidant of FDR; and Calvin Coolidge's crony, Harlan Fiske Stone, whom many consider the best Supreme Court Justice ever, was the crony of all time. Look him up, a real gem. He is famous among teachers of the Law for a thing called "Footnote 4" that has changed and dominated law since 1938.

Justice Harlan Fiske Stone announced that Congress had the power to regulate interstate commerce, and if it chose to set minimal standards for milk quality, that was the business of the legislative and not the judicial branch.

Immediately following this statement, however, Stone inserted his famous Footnote 4, which asserted that in noneconomic regulation cases, the Court might adopt a higher level of scrutiny. Footnote 4 has been the basis for the Supreme Court's subsequent judgments in cases protecting the integrity of the political process or involving so-called "suspect" classifications, such as race, creed, alienage, religion and gender. The Court has assumed an obligation to examine these statutes carefully, to ensure that individual liberties have not been abridged.

Quite a mouthful for a crony. Maxed out has a more lofty view of things with footnotes and shit.

Here's why it's dam near impossible to open and then run an industry in France. You simply cannot fire anyone at any time for any reason. This is why the unemployment is so high. Close a business that is losing money? Impossible. Close a business that no longer exists? The government comes after you for "socially damaging conduct." It's all at the link which includes several other stories. Main story concerns HP. A relative of mine had a nightmare experience with a business over there. A nightmare.

The nation(?) of Bhutan is ditching the GDP in favor of a more holistic measure of a nation's prosperity—the GNH, or Gross National Happiness. Have no idea if they stole the idea from Nancy Pelosi or some other Frisco Democrat.

For those of you interested in DeLay----This guy Earle got the indictment for money laundering cooked up in 12 hours. He went to a different Grand Jury because his original charge was so flawed that he knew it would not only be thrown out of court, but would be rejected by he court outright, and he'd lost credibility with the old Grand Jury. A good place to start your reading on this would be PowerLine; after all they are lawyers and lay it out there.

Business shrugs off Katrina---WTF? Well it might be that New Orleans has a gross domestic product of .00001 and Louisiana, a backwater swamp, has about .00002. Business left New Orleans more than a decade ago, unwilling to pay the sky high insurance rates for staying there. I guess that's why the stock market kept going up, the smart money knew that Louisiana is a Third World economy seeking to be Fourth World. All they have is oil and a port, neither of which will be affected for more than a few days more; the port will be fully operational by December 1, and Galveston can handle the goods til then, in fact that business may never return to New Orleans.

Late Add: Fred Barnes over at Weekly Standard likes her. WFF?

Miers appointment to SC? Bush will lose almost all his base over this one. She is a Liberal Democrat, donated to Gore, and has zero conservative credentials. Bush has a tin ear, a suspect brain, and no more support from almost anyone who counts. The Republican Party will never support this. What the hell is the White House thinking? I think we know from their performance over the past year that nobody thinks over there. Nobody.

I don't read Sullivan anymore but this quote of a few minutes ago is worth a look:

The only reason I can think of for Bush to rattle his base in this fashion is the same reason Clinton decided to push his luck with a blow-job in the Oval Office: "Because I could." He picked Miers because he could. If he wasn't allowed to get his favorite crony, Gonzales, he was going to go one better.

This is Bush's blow job? A bit harsh perhaps? Not harsh enough, says I. I honestly think that this is the end of the Conservative movement; a mediocre president makes crony appointments of unqualified bums. It's over.

Right Wing News gets it about right, if you haven't read it go here. Only Hugh Hewitt of all the bloggers on the Right thinks this is a good apointment.

Results of instant replay: after further review, World Magazine has a lot of good stuff from other people who know her. Be fair to yourself and go there. Says that any contribution she made to Gore etc. were pressure contributions; her bosses demanded she do it (the dog ate my homework; and if true why no contributions to the GOP?). Very religious person, very kind, and shit like that, but how does all this qualify a person to sit on the Supreme Court?

I am getting a record number of hits today and I'm trying to figure out who linked to me in order to thank them. One thing I've discovered is that one of my faves who left blogging for milder climes may or may not be blogging again with this new site. The Gun Guy.....AKA A Nation of Riflemen.....

Investment instruction: go HERE for some really good stuff. Give yourself time because there is a lot there.

OMFG, Socialite's Life has posted pictures of what gorgeous celebs will look like in their 40's and up. Click here for Jessica Simpson, I think envy played a big part in this..... Solution: Marry her now, use her, gaze at her, and then dump the bitch when she starts to break down.

GO HERE and then act..... Congress wants to take over the web.

Mudville links to a hell of a speech UNREPORTED by MSM, naturally. Things we didn't know include: NATO is involved in Iraq; NATO has trained literally hundreds of Iraqi police; there is an NCO Academy; "The most impressive thing about the Iraqi units is how tenacious they have become, notwithstanding early reports that they would cut and run."; it's no longer sure death to travel from Baghdad to the airport; and lots more. Good stuff. I particularly loved this one regarding Inshallah Marksmanship used by Iraqis before US:

Iraqi soldiers in combat would hold the weapon over their head, shoot wildly until the magazine was empty, and “inshallah -- meaning if God wills it -- you will hit something.”

"Under NATO's auspices, the Iraqi military academy is open with entirely Iraqi instructors. It might have been opened much earlier with foreign instructors, but the Coalition felt that it was important to make it an Iraqi endeavor. General Patraeus noted later that he was very unhappy that this achievement got essentially no coverage in the media given its importance to success in Iraq."

Maxed out Mama, has a bunch of links to violence in Canada; would seem like fiction but it ain't.

The ESPN show called The Sports Reporters posed an interesting question Sunday AM. The moderator pointed out that there were only three head football coaches in Division I Football who were Black. The obvious implication is that this is simply a case of blatant discrimination and a person using only the numbers will come to the following conclusion; it is the hatred that majority whites bear toward Blacks that is the sole reason for the lack of Black faces in the coaching ranks.

It is not nearly that simple.

I would be classified as a small contributor to my university, not doing too much beyond buying season tickets and making a contribution to a children’s hospital. However, alumni have a major voice in who is selected as coach because the alumni is where the endowment money is. The coach meets with alumni once each week and hypes the games, shows tapes, answers questions, pretends to like everyone, and sort of raises money for the university by pitching a building fund, a hospital wing, and so on. There is a rapport between coach, chancellor’s office, and alumni, and this rapport is necessary for him to keep his job. As an example, I would point to the former UCLA basketball coach (white as snow Jim Harrick) who was fired because the chancellor and athletic director couldn’t stand his manner on the golf course; he violated some NCAA rules and was dumped. He was white and a winner on the court, but a lousy golf partner. I would note that basketball is considered a "black only sport" so a black coach would be OK, but only OK.

I am of the age of school integration at every grade, integration of university student and faculty, and associated some with lots of Blacks while in school. I have been the only white employee in an entire Black division of a company, in the minority white part of a work force in another, and as the head of a department and CEO of a company I hired, not only Blacks but any man or woman, no matter how weird, who I thought could do the job. I also associated with Blacks in sport (football) and while in the service. Both of those last endeavors require uniting toward a common goal and there was no racism tolerated and it certainly did not visibly exist, particularly in the service.

I’ve been there-done that.

So what is the “there and that” that I’ve done? Start with our formative college years. In school the Blacks separated themselves from the university as much as they could, even going so far as to have a separate graduation ceremony for themselves in which they received “honors” for absolutely nothing. Their speaking on campus was racist as were most of their actions including stealing copies of the student newspaper every time something “they” didn’t like was printed and “occupying the university” whenever they deemed it necessary. Most were “passed” by faculty more interested in numbers of Blacks and Hispanics passing than if the student learned anything. While in college I also had Black teachers, some of whom were as racist as they could be, throwing race into Chemistry Class if they could get away with it. I was also in the era of preferential treatment for Blacks in student acceptance into the school, a process designed to freeze out qualified whites and Asians and load up on unqualified Blacks and Hispanics. The line of Blacks by the copy machines around every finals time was clearly a racial group that was stealing what others published and taking credit for it. That they were allowed to get away with it caused plenty of private resentment and anger.

In the real world of jobs, I found myself in a Black only division of the most anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, and anti-White atmosphere you could imagine; when I was a minority white member of a completely “diverse” work force the Blacks would huddle by themselves and most of the conversation had to do with Blacks as victims, including blaming white racism any time a white won the state lottery, or beat a Black in some contest, etc. I have had Black managers, and almost all were totally incompetent, racist, and had backup from “upstairs” to keep their jobs. I had no problems with any race or sex when I managed small and large numbers of employees, but I found out much later my Black employees grouped by themselves and blamed me for their shortcomings. I fired anyone regardless of race, sex, or age who didn’t perform. I didn’t give a shit and I was afraid of nobody, a part of me that everyone recognized. I also knew the “game” with both women and minorities and had a video taping device in full view inside my office (women have become worse than Blacks as a legal threat from a work force).

So, based on all my past experiences, what is my attitude toward hiring a Black head coach who gets hired plainly because of race (Wittingham at Notre Dame being the most obvious example)? What is my opinion toward a totally qualified Black who needs to communicate with alumni, an alumni who have been immersed in Black racism for twenty or more years, or ever since their freshman year in college? To put it in personal terms: would you or would you not be scared to death if you awoke in a hospital emergency room and found two Black doctors hovering over you, sure in your own mind that they didn’t pass through med school on their own merits?

Well?

That is the problem. Nobody white who is over forty likes the special benefits given to Blacks on every level or the racist ramblings of Black political leadership. I would go even further. There are two worlds out there, a Black world and a world containing everyone else. There is no longer any rapport between the white and Black races, there is just a feigned cordiality. A relationship in which what is unspoken is more voluminous than what is. A Black head coach won't be hired too often because the Alumni experience with Blacks is almost all negative. A coach MUST be able to raise money from the entire alumni; get us to buy shirts, hats, and blankets from the student store before games; get us to donate money to the school, and a coach must especially associate with the wealthy alumni and help get those million dollar endowments. As a perfect high profile example: since Pete Carroll arrived at USC and started winning, season ticket prices have doubled, attendance at games has gone from 45,000 to 90,000, requirements for alums to donate to various university schemes is a requirement in order to be “eligible” to buy said season tickets, and you better have your name on the “building fund” for the new on campus basketball arena should you hope to qualify for a seat that isn’t very high or very low in the end zone.

Then, of course, a coach who has all this “panache”must win. So, yes prejudice is why there are only three Black coaches in Division I schools, but it goes a lot deeper than plain dislike.

Finally, the MSM is piling on the Julie Meyers nomination for head of ICE. Most credit (blame) the blogs for piling on but all acknowledge her lack of qualifications. Bush, as usual, sleeps through the whole thing. Red State thinks we've all jumped the witch, and some of this is true. What is true about this well connected nobody is that she has zero experience in law enforcement, and most important she has zero experience supervising 20,000 people. Most I've ever supervised was a thousand, and let me tell you that even at that level you better have terrific middle management, or else. 20,000? I cannot even imagine it.

Here's something completely different

Two political action committees linked to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have been charged with attempting to circumvent to legal limits on campaign giving, the Federal Election Commission has ruled. According to the March 2004 FEC finding, Pelosi appears to have violated the same kind of arcane campaign finance regulation that spurred the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay this week. The San Francisco Chronicle explained at the time:

"The FEC ruled that two Pelosi political action committees created to help Democrats in the 2002 elections were related instead of being independent and therefore violated a rule against giving more than the maximum $5,000 annual contribution."

But it's DeLay we must hate, not our Nancy. Details are at Right Nation.

Media bias Ree-ducks: Just in case you haven't linked to the phoniness of "photojournalism" as now practiced by the MSM, just go HERE..... and after reading it please click on the main picture of the girl in mask and read exactly what the SF Chronicle web page printed about it.

EU controlling the internet in any way spells fascism. Should you doubt this check out what Finland is on the edge of passing:

Legislation has been sponsored by local record executives who believe that listening to music on a computer is a privilege, not a right, and the process is being overseen by a culture minister who says that people who send email to Parliament are terrorists.

BTW I just got turned on to this site, Boing Boing by the incredible Schultz.

It's beginning to look like the appointment of Julie Myers (neice of the head of the Joint Chiefs, shack job of Michael Chertoff's Chief of Staff (Homeland Security) is going to actually pass. Debbie Schussel has joined Malkin in exposing this sham appointment--not another mediocre nomination by our president----to the ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the masters of illegal immigration. This disgusting appointment of a completely unqualified person is now a feminist "cause glorieux" and they have a super liberal Republican trying to sneak this breathtakingly bad nomination through the Senate.

And in a Judith Miller Ree-Ducks, Kaus has a hell of a take on what could be code in the Libby letter "releasing her to testify." Worth considering.... Then click to the Powerline possible storylines. Curiouser and curiouser.....

In response to several emails regarding markets being a leading indicator for the economy in the future: many pointed out that the market has called six out of the last two recessions. They're right, of course, but the recessions they are accused of predicting were "corrections" to most market technicians and the reaction to 9/11 was just that, a reaction to 9/11. The stock market remains A GOOD INDICATOR to the future of the economy. Period. I did remark that the smart money must see something I don't see, because Greenspan (another genius who has caused the last two recessions by raising rates) has raised rates so he could be correct about the housing market.

Bill Bennett, my take: Something is very wrong when a well known public figure chooses Blacks to structure an (hypothetical???) argument about killing off the unborn Blacks to lower the crime rate. He could have made the same tasteless and unecessary analogy by using poor whites, the offspring of criminals, and so on. He ain't stupid. The choice of Blacks was his and his alone, and I think it reveals a latent racism.

USC Number One???? While out and about I got to see Alabama, Texas (part of), and USC in action yesterday. For the second week in a row USC stank to high heaven for an entire half of football, nine penalties in the first quarter alone, and gave up around 250 yards passing and 150 yards in punt returns. Their kick coverage doesn't exist and I question how good Leinart really is as a qb.

#1 is clearly Alabama; #2 might be a tie between USC and Texas a team that starts fast and finishes fast. I still say the Big 12 is the most over rated conference in the country and should be called The Big One, since year after year we see a single team dominate and then lose in a bowl game. Were I a voter, that is how I'd vote. And how good is unbeaten Penn State? Next week they actually play somebody (Ohio State).

The Mickster has a good piece that links to an even better one regarding the cowering liberal pansies at the LA Times. It seems that these dedicated liberals ain't so dedicated at all when they find out that nobody is reading the goddam thing. But the listing ship that calls itself the Los Angeles Times---fifty cents---higher in some areas---is too left for anyone not to twitch left. Today's front page print edition features:
A Journey Toward Healing and Restorative justice brings crime victims and perpetrators together to confront the loss. It’s helping one grieving widow find forgiveness.

(Right Wing version: Instead of jail, criminals get counselling and freedom---again)

Next we have: In Uprooted Farmers, Nigeria Sees Teachers---Whites driven from their land in Zimbabwe get resettlement aid to share their modern methods in a nation of subsistence agriculture

(Right Wing version: Robert Mugabe, the dictator who has deliberately starved tens of thousands of his own people who disagreed with him, now expects the people he stole the land from to help him)

Next we have them slobbering over the deaths of illegal aliens who cross the border; then----Get Ready For this one...

movie flops caused box office slump...(only liberals have failed to grasp this)

Then stuff about Gucci; a note about the sinking coast of Louisana; the death of the the inventor of Valium--he may get a heroes burial in Beverly Hills---and and and and, you get the picture.

Nothing about the phony Judith Miller; nothing about the corruption in New Orleans and Louisiana; nothing about Turkey and the EU; nothing about.....well you get my drift. This is a paper so attached to the Liberal agenda of the Elites of SoCal that there is no way they can start actually reporting news.

Sports: you may wonder how USC can possibly play in the 100 degree desert heat that they will face today in Arizona. Well God gave us a week of 100 degree heat right here in LA just so USC could prepare. Now, does anyone have a question about the health of the students who have to play in this heat just so the NCAA could rake in more bucks? Isn't there a chance that a kid might collapse and die under this withering mid-day desert heat? Haven't we had enough deaths over the past five years due to heat? Naw, money is much more important than life to the NCAA and the schools. If the USC administration gave a rats ass about the health of teen aged students, this game would not be played til nightfall.