Why They Hate Him

The looney left is absolutely delusional in their hatred of Pres. Bush. They are so rabid, there are no limits to which they'd stoop to try to make him look bad. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if the left didn't try to blame Pres. Bush for Hurricane Katrina!

Quit laughing -- they already did. I am not making this up. Some kooks on lefty blogs are blaming Pres. Bush for Hurricane Katrina; see here and here!

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled post. Check out this Michael Medved Crosswalk article excerpted via the Federalist Patriot:

"The always inventive Los Angeles Times recently discovered a new reason to despise President Bush: his personal commitment to physical fitness. Suggesting the chief executive's daily exercise routine represents an 'obsession...that borders on the creepy,' columnist Jonathan Chait describes the notion of any connection between physical and mental fitness as 'silly,' comparing Bush to the 'perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood.' Actually, the president's demanding exercise schedule reflects the key element of his mature personality, which is self-discipline. He runs or bicycles with the same reliability with which he prays and studies the Bible every morning, arrives early for every appointment and gets to bed by 10 p.m. Most Americans consider such discipline a virtue, but liberal hatred for Bush is so intense that even his most admirable characteristics -- consistency, determination, cheerfulness, deep religious faith, self-deprecating humor and, yes, remarkable physical fitness -- become, for them the basis for contempt and derision."

--Michael Medved

Telling It Like It Is

One of the easiest ways to distinguish between a liar or a liberal (often the same thing) and someone telling you the truth is how succintly they speak.

A perfect example is Bill "Bubba" Clinton. When a guy has to parse the meaning of "is", you know you're dealing with a full-blown liar. For an example of a straight-shooting, truth teller, check out this quote from Pres. Bush via the Federalist Patriot:

"[W]e fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens -- and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we will fight them there.... [W]e will fight them across the world -- and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won. ... We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity, and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat; it is courage.... When the history of this period is written, the liberation of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom."

--President George W. Bush

Sorry ... Never Mind ... Just Pretend We Weren't Here

From the (Newark) Star Ledger:

SWAT team raids wrong home

Thursday, August 25, 2005
BY JONATHAN CASIANOStar-Ledger Staff

A State Police SWAT team and a swarm of federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed a four-family home in Newark on Tuesday, kicking down doors, waving guns and ransacking two upstairs apartments.

The officers tore through an armoire looking for guns and shouted curses at frightened adults as they clutched their young children.

Then the officers apologized for being in the wrong house.

Home health aide Cedelie Pompee, 59, was livid yesterday as she recounted how police rushed through the Smith Street house that she has owned for 27 years, leaving cracked door frames, broken doors and scuffed walls in their wake. Pompee shares the home with her two sisters, their children and another family that rents a downstairs apartment.

The raid occurred around 2:30 p.m., when Pompee's 21-year-old daughter, Yedah Desir, was home with several relatives and the downstairs tenants. Without warning, officers in full SWAT gear broke down the front door and raced upstairs, kicking down the doors of both upstairs apartments and telling everyone to freeze where they stood, Desir said.

With guns drawn, they went room by room, breaking through locked doors as they went. When Desir and other family members complained, the officers cursed at them and demanded to know where the guns were kept.

But after 15 minutes of fruitless searching, the officers realized they had made a mistake.

"The investigator said they were looking for bad people and they were in the wrong place," Pompee said as she demonstrated how several doors in the house no longer close properly. "That's a bad mistake they made."

State Police Sgt. Gerald Lewis confirmed yesterday the officers and DEA agents raided the wrong house. He would not reveal the nature of the investigation that led them to the house, other than to say it is ongoing. Lewis also refused to disclose who they were looking for.

"Unfortunately, there was some erroneous information disseminated, so we're looking into that," Lewis said. "The family was not the subject of the investigation."

Lewis said the officers did have a search warrant, but could not say what judge issued the warrant or what address it was for.

DEA Special Agent Douglas Collier said the warrant was a state warrant, not a federal warrant. He also would not comment on the investigation, but said agents were back in the neighborhood yesterday conducting interviews.

Lewis said the State Police and state Attorney General's Office would be working together to cover the damages to Pompee's home.

"Luckily, no one was hurt and we gave an explanation to the residents. Of course, everyone was apologetic," Lewis said.

But Pompee said the explanation she received wasn't good enough. She said she feels unsafe now because her front door won't close and the inner door doesn't lock. Strips of molding with sharp nails sticking out lean against the apartment walls. In one bedroom, the wooden door's center panel was kicked clean out.

"They said they're going to fix it, but I don't know what to do now," Pompee said. "I don't have any money to fix it and my door doesn't close."
This is the second time in four months the State Police have raided the wrong home. In May, officers stormed the home of a retired truck driver in Woodbridge in search of a prostitution operation.

Yesterday, both Pompee and Desir questioned what kind of investigation even led police to a household of devout Jehovah's Witnesses in the first place. If any surveillance had been done of the house with the iron gate and small herb garden, Desir said, officers would have known that no one in the house so much as smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol.

"You're trying to work in a community and get bad people, but you don't even know where they live," Desir said. "When you're dealing with these type of neighborhoods, there's no room for incompetent police officers."

© 2005 The Star Ledger
© 2005 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

Lapdog Senators

Been pretty busy the last couple of days, but wanted to be sure I got this WSJ op-ed posted. It's a week old, but is indispensible for showing how Senators like Leahy, Kennedy, et al are nothing more than lapdogs for the liberal activists.

It's no news flash that organizations like the Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way and MoveOn.org are influencing Democrats' attack on Judge Roberts. But the rapidity with which Senators Pat Leahy and Ted Kennedy jumped this week to follow the groups' orders is nonetheless remarkable, and politically revealing.

Within hours of publication of the first Post story [the title of this story was "Roberts Unlikely to Face Big Fight; Many Democrats See Battle as Futile."], Mr. Leahy hit the barricades with a statement calling Judge Roberts "an eager and aggressive advocate" of policies "deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party." During the Reagan years, the Senator added, the nominee held views "that were among the most radical being offered by a cadre intent on reversing decades of policies on civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, privacy, and access to justice." At least he didn't call Judge Roberts a member of the Taliban.

Eight Suggestions for Succeeding

1. Fear no opponent. Respect every opponent.
2. Remember, it's the perfection of the smallest details that make big things happen.
3. Keep in mind that hustle makes up for many a mistake.
4. Be more interested in character than reputation.
5. Be quick, but don't hurry.
6. Understand that the harder you work, the more luck you will have.
7. Know that valid self-analysis is crucial for improvement.
8. Remember that there is no substitute for hard work and careful planning. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

John Wooden

Don't Forget ...

... with just a few hundred more (stolen) votes, this guy would have been president on 9/11.

The Wall

In previous posts I've mentioned the reckless stupidity -- recklessness and stupidity which border on treason -- of the Clintonistas. In addition, I find it the height of irony that one Clintonista, Jamie Gorelick, was on the 9/11 Commission when she should have been an investigative target of the Commission.

Today Power Line has a post linking to an excellent article in the New York Post on the efforts of Mary Jo White, former U.S. Attorney, pleading with Gorelick to abolish the "wall" Gorelick had established which prevented our intelligence agencies from communicating valuable intelligence to our law enforcement agencies.

Note that this "wall" that Gorelick established was not required by law -- it was required by politically correct sensitivites of the Clinton Administration. Sensitivites which led to the deaths of 3,000 Americans.

Here is the article in its entirety:

NY'S CASSANDRA

By DEBORAH ORIN

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was "very dangerous" and could have "deadly results," according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.

Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

White must have felt like Cassandra, foreseeing dangers that proved all too real while no one at Clinton's Justice Department would listen. Team Clinton put up the "wall" in 1995 and it stayed up until after the 9/11 attacks.

Questions about the "wall" recently arose in regard to possible warnings from Able Danger, a pre-9/11 military-intelligence program, but the White memo makes clear that the issue was far, far broader.

In theory, the "wall" was supposed to avoid legal challenges to terror prosecutions. The problem was, as White and her team noted, only prosecutors familiar with a case or a cast of terror players might see the connections that could led to nabbing a suspect or foiling a plot.

Justice honchos overruled White's plea — even though her team knew better than anyone else in law enforcement what the real risks were. White's team won a host of convictions — including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty.

Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White's stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them.

The commission's report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White's passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine.

So it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick. (White has declined to discuss the matter, and Gorelick didn't immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday.)

White wrote the memo after her earlier pleas against the "wall" were rejected. She enlisted the help of her "Bomb II Team" — prosecutors working on terror bombings like the 1993 Twin Towers attack.

They gave six pages of detailed reasons why it was a mistake to create too much of a wall between intelligence and prosecutions. White forwarded that analysis to Gorelick and added her own notes on the Clinton-era decision "to keep prosecutors in the dark about intelligence investigations."

"What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted-upon information that reside in some file or other or in some head or other or in some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other," White wrote. "These can be disasters waiting to happen."

For instance, in August 2001 — a month before the attacks — the FBI learned that two dangerous characters, future hijackers, might have arrived in the United States but didn't connect the dots to see that as a priority.

Also in August 2001, FBI headquarters failed to see the significance of the fact that arrested "20th hijacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui had taken flight lessons — despite desperate bids by field agents to sound the alarm.

Could some of those dots have been connected, absent the wall? There's no way to know — but surely the 9/11 Commission should have examined the issue.

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau chief.

Michael Yon: Embedded Blogger

Here is a very powerful site to check in on. Michael Yon is a journalist/blogger embedded with one of the Army's frontline units. They are currently taking on the insurgents in Mosul. It makes for some very compelling reading.

At this same time, it's frustrating because you can't help but wonder the good the MSM could do if they did this kind of reporting. Here's an excerpt from a recent dispatch from Michael:

Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man "customer" because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. There's no need to whisper. I hear the bombs every single day. Not some days, but every day. We're talking about criminals who actually volunteer and plan to deliberately murder and maim innocent people. What reservoir of feelings or sensibilities do we fear to assault by simply calling it so? When murderers describe themselves as "martyrs" it should sound to sensible ears like a rapist saying, “she was asking for it.” In other words, like the empty rationalizations of a depraved criminal.

The word martyr is derived from the word "to witness." It is used to describe a person who is killed because of a belief or principle. Given the choice to recant, martyrs chose instead to face their murderers and stand in witness to their beliefs. True martyrs do not kill themselves, but stand their ground and fight in the face of death to demonstrate the power of their convictions, sometimes dying as a result, but preferably surviving.

The only martyrs I know about in Iraq are the fathers and brothers who see a better future coming, and so they act on their beliefs and assemble outside police stations whenever recruitment notices are posted. They line up in ever increasing numbers, knowing that insurgents can also read these notices. The men stand in longer and longer lines, making ever bigger targets of themselves. Some volunteer to to earn a living. This, too, is honorable. But others take these risks because they believe that a better future is possible only if Iraqi men of principle stand up for their own values, for their country, for their families. Theses are the true martyrs, the true heroes of Iraq and of Islam. I meet these martyrs frequently. They are brave men, worthy of respect.

Cindy Sheehan -- Enough is Enough

Here is a good article by James Taranto of the WSJ on the Journal's Best of the Web blog on Cindy Sheehan.

An excerpt:

"Losing a child is probably the saddest thing that can happen to anyone. Unlike the death of a parent or a spouse, it is not part of the ordinary course of life. Yet somehow the vast majority of parents who suffer such a loss are able to maintain some perspective while coping with the experience.

That Cindy Sheehan has been unable to do so makes her story all the sadder. But it does not validate the hateful views she is espousing, nor does it make her pain more important than that of Linda Ryan or the thousands of others who have lost a child but maintained their dignity."

The Clinton Legacy

Monica? Whitewater? Renting out the White House? Selling missle technology to Communist China? It's hard to tell what will be the enduring legacy of Bill Clinton. However, if you've been following the Able Danger story this week, it has be a strong contender for Clinton legacy status.

What the heck is Able Danger you say? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't heard of it. As usual, the MSM has been focused on "gripping" stories like Cindy Sheehan. (While it's tragic that her son died in Iraq, that's no excuse for her to use it as justification for her grand-standing -- in fact, it's shameful.)

In a nutshell, "Able Danger was a military intelligence unit set up by Special Operations Command in 1999. A year before the 9/11 attacks, Able Danger identified hijack leader Mohammed Atta and the other members of his cell. But Clinton administration officials stopped them - three times - from sharing this information with the FBI." (this nutshell courtesy of Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade.)

That's right, 2 years before 9/11, a U.S. intelligence agency had information on these terrorists but was unable to forward it to the FBI because of Clinton administration policies. One policy was to treat terrorism was a "law enforcement" issue. The other policy was formulated by former Clintonista Jamie Gorelick and created rules prohibiting our intelligence agencies from sharing vital intelligence with our law enforcement agencies. (As you may know, Gorelick was a member of the 9/11 commission. How ironic that one of the people investigating the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks was one of the people responsible for those failures! Check out this archived post from Power Line for the story behind Gorelick's role in creating the conditions that made 9/11 possible.)

In closing, check out this column from Mark Steyn on the Able Danger debacle.

Oh, and while I'm sure this picture was taken as some kind of a joke, it sure does aptly capture how the Clinton Adminstration treated the security of our nation.

Beautiful Ellen -- The Steel Drivin' Woman

Beautiful, smart, talented, compassionate -- and she throws a mean sledgehammer.

What a woman!

Admiral Stockdale and Hanoi Jane

Here's an interesting comment on the vast difference between an American hero and an American traitor.

Here is yet another case of the kind of bizarre juxtaposition that continues to characterize the Vietnam War well into the first decade of the new century. I refer on the one hand to the recent loss of Admiral James B. Stockdale, a highly decorated Navy aviator and prisoner of war of the North Vietnamese for seven grueling years. His funeral services were held, appropriately, on the Navy carrier the USS Ronald Reagan with the full military honors the Medal of Honor winner deserved.

Meanwhile, in the Peoples Republic of Hollywood actress Jane Fonda announced that she is launching an antiwar crusade – on a 1960s-style vegetable-oil-powered bus – in order to protest continuing American military operations in Iraq. Recall that Fonda earned the sobriquet “Hanoi Jane” after being photographed posing in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun emplacement grinning vacuously, empty head adorned with an NVA pith helmet with a blazing red star. She also abused American POWs on this visit, demanding publicly that they denounce their “crimes against the brave, peace-loving people of North Vietnam.

Check out the rest of the article here at Frontpage magazine.

Headlines from the year 2029!

Our correspondent on the Left Coast secured this piece of vital intelligence which we pass along for your information.

• Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia, formerly known as California.
• White minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language.
• Baby conceived naturally -- scientists stumped.
• Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.
• Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.
• France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.
• Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.
• George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.
• Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.
• 85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.
• Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.
• Japanese scientists have created a camera with a shutter speed so fast, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.
• Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.
• Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.
• Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.
• New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.
• Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.
• Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.
• IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.
• Florida voters still having trouble with voting machines.

(For those of you who are curious about our anonymous correspondent, he dreamed of going to Iraq as an embedded reporter in order to report on angry and hostile anti-US militants. His wife put an end to those dreams of glory, but he has found much the same environment in California and surreptitously files his dispatches from there. :-)

Mea Culpa

To my eternal shame and regret, I realized today that I have not once posted, or even mentioned, one of my favorite columnists, Dr. Mike Adams.

There is no excuse for this lapse on my part. The only thing I can do is to point you to his website and recommend you read his archived columns at townhall.com.

Oh, one other thing. He had a recent column that is so good that I'm going to paste in full below. Enjoy!

Life and how to live it
Mike S. Adams
July 26, 2005

Over the weekend, I received several emails from readers warning me that I might lose my job over the article I wrote criticizing my university’s new harassment policy. Readers who sometimes suggest that I should learn to hold my tongue fail to understand my simple philosophy of life. It is an uncompromising philosophy that guarantees both peace of mind and success in any important endeavor. It can be roughly summarized as follows:

1. If you want to be happy and successful, you must immediately disabuse yourself of the notion that there is no such thing as good and evil.

If, for some reason, this is difficult for you to do, take the time to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. If that still does not convince you, take the time to visit Auschwitz.

2. You must also immediately disabuse yourself of the notion that good and evil are simply relative terms. There are moral absolutes and they have absolutely nothing to do with your personal feelings and perceptions.

It should be noted that people who claim to believe in moral relativism are just lying in order to make themselves appear to be morally superior to others. Their actual belief in moral absolutism is revealed when, at some point, they openly proclaim that there are no absolutes. If everything is relative, the philosophy of moral relativism can’t be absolutely true.

3. Take some time every day to fine-tune your understanding of the difference between right and wrong.

Recently, a good friend of mine lost his mother to cancer. He later made a casual suggestion about the need for some sort of handbook, which could be used to sort out the difficult problems and answer the difficult questions one encounters in life.

Fortunately, such a handbook exists. It is called the Holy Bible.

No one can call himself educated if he has not read the Bible at least once. Even after several readings of the Bible some things will remain unclear. Some questions will remain unanswered. Nonetheless, upon every reading of the Bible, greater wisdom is gained. After all, life is a journey. It is not a destination.

By the same token, one should never go to a psychologist or any other counselor who is a self-proclaimed atheist or agnostic. I cannot think of a single important principle the field of psychology has established that wasn’t already established in the Sermon on the Mount.

4. Life will present you with plenty of encounters with good and evil. Just as you should never pass up an opportunity to promote good, you should never pass up an opportunity to combat evil.

One of my favorite verses of the Bible is James 4:17. It states that “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” That verse reminds us that we don’t have to actually do something to be morally culpable. In other words, there is such a thing as a sin of omission.

It can often be tough to step up and combat evil when one may be risking, for example, one’s job. We humans are so weak and frail that it is often tough to stand up for what is right even when the consequences are merely ostracism or momentary ridicule. In those times, the following verse (Hebrews 13:5) helps: “…For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” Remember when you read that verse that, quite literally, nothing else in life matters.

In the past, I have been faced with some risky decisions that involved the prospect of taking on campus radicals – some have been communists, some have been feminists, all have been, in some way, morally decadent. But some of these morally bankrupt individuals also happened to have some degree of power over me and over my economic livelihood.

When, in the past, I have contemplated the prospect of cowering away from these situations, I have sometimes found strength by thinking about some old war veterans – some in my family, some friends – who risked or even gave their lives to preserve our nation and our freedom.

The next time you find yourself tempted to cower from something you know you should do, just imagine a roomful of old war veterans. Get in a quiet, dark room. Close your eyes, concentrate on their faces. Then just imagine walking up to one of them to have a face-to-face talk about what you are cowering from and why.

Once, I imagined myself walking up to my grandfather who was hit with grenade shrapnel in World War I and saying something like this: “Thanks for serving to protect my First Amendment Rights. I’ve been meaning to stand up to some campus feminists who are violating the constitutional rights of some students on campus. But, frankly, I’m afraid of feminists and what they might say about me.”

You might want to end this mental exercise before you picture one of those veterans punching you in the nose.

Just remember that Jesus didn’t die on the cross for you to run from what is right. And war heroes didn’t die on the battlefield for you to cower away while this country is destroyed.

5. Standing up against that which is wrong invariably means that you will have to take on a lot of angry people. If you cannot do it with a sense of humor, you are less likely to prevail.

Without question, liberals are the angriest people in America these days. If you respond to them with anger, you will allow them to conceal this fact while playing upon stereotypes of conservatives that are no longer accurate. In addition, you will not be able to influence people in the middle.

Now, you know a little more about my simple philosophy of life. In my next column, I plan to answer Dr. Phil’s favorite question: “How’s that working for you?”

To be continued…

©2005 Mike S. Adams

Here's the Real Criminal

'Nuff said!

Impeach Bush?

Moonbat Central, a blog which keeps an eye on the looney left, has a post on the plotting and planning of the libs to try to impeach Pres. Bush for "ginning up" the Iraq war.

"They don't stand for anything"

Mark Steyn has a great column in the Sun-Times. He manages to cover the Ohio special election, Bush's exercise regimen and the dismal outlook of the Dem's non-strategy strategy.

You know, I'll bet Karl Rove is behind this. I don't think the Dems could look this pathetic on their own!

Michelle Malkin Interview

American Enterprise magazine has an interview with one of my favorite writers/columnists/bloggers, Michelle Malkin.

As I mentioned before, not only is Michelle a great author and journalist, but she has "guts". It takes guts to put up with the venomous personal attacks she endures for having the effontry to confront the liberal lies and distortions on a daily basis.

Check out the interview here.

Hugh Hewitt on the MSM Black Out of the Air America Story

Here is Hugh Hewitt's latest on the Air America scandal from the Weekly Standard.

You know the scandal I'm talking about, don't you? I mean, haven't you read about it in the New York Times? Really? I wonder why not?

The Air Out There
The mainstream media may be close to discovering the Air America scandal.
by Hugh Hewitt
08/04/2005 8:00:00 AM

WHAT DID AL FRANKEN KNOW, and when did he know it?

When Air America launched last year, it was the beneficiary of more free publicity than any radio show or network launch had ever received. So desperate was the mainstream media to find some left-leaning response to the Limbaugh-led revolution in talk radio that the many and obvious flaws in the network's offerings went largely unreported. Those of us who have been around radio studios for a few years know, though, that launch hype and selective reading of Arbitron results can never mask the key question: Is a show profitable? Do the ads sell? Do sponsors arrive and stay, year after year? Does the affiliate list grow and grow?

The answers to those questions are yes, yes, yes, and yes for Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and, yes, me. About Air America it is very hard to say because, well, the numbers are hard to come by. When the Philadelphia Inquirer took a hard look in July, the assessment wasn't rosy:

Now that it's possible to compare ratings for this spring to last
year's start-up, it's clear that [Air America] has yet to climb out of the
cellar.

Air America's overall ratings, which rose initially after all the
free publicity, faded before the November election and haven't recovered. . .

Limbaugh, still the giant among talkers, with 14.75 million
listeners on 600 stations, has squashed Franken like a bug.

Franken's ratings have dropped 50 percent in Boston since spring
2004, and he is down 14 percent in New York, where his listeners now number
fewer than 188,000.

To its troubles over audience decline must now be added the very strong smell of scandal. Though you, and apparently New York's publicity-addicted Attorney General Elliott Spitzer, may not have heard, Air America is in some serious trouble for its creative start-up financing.

The full details are available from bloggers Radio Equalizer, Michelle Malkin, and Ed Morrissey, and New York Sun reporter David Lombino is digging as well. Short version: Not-for-profits that exist to serve kids and Alzheimer's' patients, overwhelmingly via the funds obtained from government grants, should not be "investing" in incredibly risky start-up radio networks. But the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club--apparently now defunct--did just that last spring, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into Air America's coffers.

Here's the most recent IRS Form 990 for the Club. Here's the one from the year before. The Club does not appear to have made any prior "investments" of this sort, and if there are "investment guidelines" from which the Club's Board of Directors was operating, I will be very, very surprised. My producer and I have spent a lot of time trying to get a member of the board on the record about the investment. The only one who agreed to talk to us referred us to Rubenstein Public Relations. An assistant to Richard Rubenstein called me to relay that he didn't know anything about the "Gloria Wise story." Odd.

But nothing is so odd as the black-out of the story in the mainstream media. It took about a week from the first television mention of Eason Jordan's Davos speech for that story to break out into the mainstream media. CNN's Inside Politics blog segment covered the Air America story on July 29, so we may be getting close to break-out day. There is every indication--conflicting accounts, big names, big money--that the story has legs.

We know a lot about the medications Rush Limbaugh has taken.

We know a great deal about Bill O'Reilly's troubles.

But thus far we don't know much about how Al Franken got paid the big bucks last year, when all of the mainstream media seemed to be cheering his debut.

Coming Attractions

Saw this post today on Power Line. Michelle Malkin is coming out with a book on "unhinged" liberals. Without knowing more, she must be referring to liberal foaming at the mouth re things ranging from the 2000 election to evil genius Karl Rove to such mundane things as Pres. Bush's physical fitness.

Michelle's on the front lines of the cultural battles and she is a lightning rod for liberal venom (if you don't know what I'm talking about (and have a strong stomach) read her post on why she stopped allowing comments on her blog).

This book is sure to be required reading.

Breaking Down the NYTimes
The New York Times had an "interesting" editorial today on the Bolton appointment. It gave me a chuckle and prompted some thoughts. I've inserted them directly in the editorial.

August 2, 2005
Ambassador Bolton

If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department ["looking more productive" -- what kind of drivel is that? This is your typical liberal smear tactic. How does one measure "looking more productive"? You can't. But, you can imply that things have improved since Bolton's departure. What tripe.], and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.

But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution [So, are you saying that this testimony was uncalled for?? No, it was the Senate obstruction crew and the liberals like the writers of this editorial who dragged Bolton through the mud for weeks.] and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business [After all the witch-hinting and opposition research, this is the entire nub of the liberal objection to Bolton -- he's a "bully". "Whaa. Mommy, Johnny Bolton threw sand on me!! He's a big bully. I don't want to play with him anymore!! Whaa!" Can you believe this stuff?]. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager [Very funny. Maybe someone buy Voinovich an appointment calendar -- he missed almost every hearing on Bolton, but showed up at the end and suddenly decided to jump on the anti-Bolton bandwagon.] It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee.

Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton's nomination confirmed by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy [like the aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy that emanates from Kofi Anan?].

The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly has little respect for either the United Nations or international diplomacy in general [and after all the UN and the international community have done to earn our respect too. There was that heroic U.N. intervention in Rwanda. And the integrity of the French, Germans and Russians in abiding by numerous international treaties and U.N. resolutions prohibiting arms sales to Iraq. Or, how about the U.N. "peace keepers" in Srebrenica who prevented the massacre of hundreds of civilians. Oops, sorry, none of those things happened. Nevertheless, it's so important to respect the U.N. -- maybe Bush should nominate John Kerry for U.N. Ambassador!].

There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but real work happens there [really, like what? -- maybe a draft resolution to consider the need to form a committee to prepare a report on the possibilty of the convergence of tidal moss in the Aleutian Islands?], and it requires the services of men and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives. The president has not just sent the United Nations what Senator Christopher Dodd accurately termed "damaged goods." [This is classic liberal politics -- spend months trashing Bolton and then complain he's "damaged goods". This is the equivalent to Lizzie Borden pleading for mercy from the court because she's an orphan!] In Mr. Bolton, he has selected goods that weren't appropriate for the task even before the Senate began to hold hearings - when Mr. Bolton's reputation was still in one piece.

The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution better, the Bush administration would first have to show that it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. [Bush does have such a vision -- and Bolton's the man for the job. That's what the liberals are so worked up about. The liberals want to give us more of the same. Bush and Bolton are likely to say "let's take a flamethrower to this place!] That vision has to begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead.

Character

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are. Reputation is often based on character -- but not always.

Character is how you react to things -- sensibly, without getting carried away by yourself or your circumstances. A person of character is trustworthy and honest, and for a dollar he or she will give you a dollar.

The other kind of person looks for the easy way out.

I like to think the players I coached, however they came to UCLA, left as men of character. But in truth, if they didn't have it when they came, I couldn't give it to them. By then it was too late. That's a job for a mother and father."

John Wooden

Ban Homeschooling Now!

Here, courtesy of the Scrappleface blog, via the incomprable Michelle Malkin, is a useful list of points explaining why homeschooling should be prohibited.

Why Public Schooling Is Better Than Homeschooling

• Most parents were educated in the underfunded public school system, and so are not smart enough to homeschool their own children.
• Children who receive one-on-one homeschooling will learn more than others, giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace. This is undemocratic.
• How can children learn to defend themselves unless they have to fight off bullies on a daily basis?
• Ridicule from other children is important to the socialization process.
• Children in public schools can get more practice "Just Saying No" to drugs, cigarettes and alcohol.
• Fluorescent lighting may have significant health benefits.
• Publicly asking permission to go to the bathroom teaches young people their place in society.
• The fashion industry depends upon the peer pressure that only public schools can generate.
• Public schools foster cultural literacy, passing on important traditions like the singing of "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg..."
• Homeschooled children may not learn important office career skills, like how to sit still for six hours straight.
  
  
  
  

Miracle Baby Born

Don't know if any of you had seen earlier versions of this story, but there are wins in the war to support a culture of life. Here, from the WaPo is the latest dispatch from the front:

"A brain-dead pregnant woman who has been kept on life support for nearly three months to give her fetus more time to develop gave birth to a baby girl Tuesday."

UPDATE: "Seldom Exercised" Recess Appointment

I had a little fun today with that Journal reporter who glommed onto to the liberal spin that Pres. Bush was taking some outrageous liberties by making a recess appointment of John Bolton.

Yesterday, I had dropped a quick e-mail to the reporter about his piece thinking I could offer him a little enlightenment.

> Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 11:55:55 -0700 (PDT)
> From: R Ryan
> Subject: "Seldom Excercised" Recess Appointment
> To: mark.gongloff@wsj.com
>
> I'm curious on your use of the term "seldom
> exercised" in describing Pres. Bush's recess
> appointment of John Bolton.
>
> Ronald Reagan used his recess appointment authority
> 243 times; George H. W. Bush 77 times; Bill Clinton
> 140 times; and now George W. Bush 105 times.
>
> That's 565 recess appointments in 25 years -- hardly
> "seldom exercised".
>
> Richard Ryan
> Barrington, IL

His response? Nada

Today, I thought of it again and this time dropped a note to the Journal's managing editors.

From: Rich Ryan
Date: Aug 2, 2005 1:02 PM
Subject: The Liberal Slant of the Wall Street Journal?
To: b.grueskin@wsj.com, dave.pettit@wsj.com, j.heller@wsj.com, j.fry@wsj.com, t.cullen@wsj.com

I am continually mystified by the apparent discrepancy between the
Journal's editorial positions and the liberal slant taken by some of
its "news" reporters.

I expect a particular point of view from the editorial page. However,
I expect "straight" reporting in the rest of the paper. (In fact, if
I wanted to read editorializing masquerading as news reporting, I
could just subscribe to the New York Times.)

Case in point: Yesterday Mark Gongloff posted a piece on the John
Bolton appointment and characterized it by saying "Using a
seldom-exercised power, Mr. Bush appointed John Bolton, an
Undersecretary of State dealing with weapons of mass destruction,
to be the U.S. representative to the U.N."

"Seldom exercised"? A quick check on wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org),
shows me that the recess appointment has been used 565 times in the
last 25 years. That hardly qualifies as "seldom exercised". However,
Gongloff makes it sound as if Bolton's appointment was some kind of
extra-constitutional usurpation of power by Pres. Bush.

The Journal is an excellent paper and I continue to subscribe to both
the print and on-line editions. However, if your "news" reporters
want to editorialize, I'd appreciate it if they would apply for
positions on the editorial staff.

Richard Ryan
Barrington, IL

About 30 minutes later, I got this response from the Journal reporter.

From: Gongloff, Mark
Date: Aug 2, 2005 1:38 PM
Subject: RE: "Seldom Excercised" Recess Appointment
To: R Ryan

Thanks for writing.

My use of the phrase "seldom-used" to describe recess appointments in the Afternoon Report was an error. The tool has often been used by modern presidents, including Reagan, Clinton and both Presidents Bush. But it has seldom been used for high-profile appointments such as Mr. Bolton's. That was my meaning, but in my haste, I didn't make that distinction clear. In the Evening Wrap, I pointed out that, though high-profile candidates don’t often get appointed in this way, some very high-profile candidates have been recess appointments, including a few Supreme Court Justices.

Best regards,

Mark

"But it has seldom been used for high-profile appointments such as Mr. Bolton's. That was my meaning ..." Yeah, right. Nice try -- not. :-)

The lesson learned here though is: you liberals blow off my e-mails at your peril! :-) That'll learn ya to ignore my e-mail. Not a good idea what the Journal's website has the e-mail IDs for the entire management and editorial staff!

"Seldom Exercised" Recess Appointment

One thing that continually mystifies me is the disparity between the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and the rest of the paper.

Yesterday, for example, Journal reporter Mark Gongloff wrote with respect to the recess appointment of John Bolton: "Using a seldom-exercised power, Mr. Bush appointed John Bolton, an Undersecretary of State dealing with weapons of mass destruction, to be the U.S. representative to the U.N."

"Seldom exercised"? Ronald Reagan used his recess appointment authority 243 times; George H. W. Bush 77 times; Bill Clinton 140 times; and now George W. Bush 105 times.

That's 565 recess appointments in 25 years -- hardly "seldom exercised".

Why is it that the Journal's "news" reporters feel compelled to portray this relatively common end-around on Senate obstructionists to be some kind of extra-constitutional usurpation of power? And, don't the guys who write the Journal's editorial pages know what these dim-wits on the news pages are doing?

Just a Reminder ...

... this clown could have been president!

"A High Standard of Service and Duty to God and Country"

Poor weather prevented Pres. Bush from addressing the Scouts at their Jamboree the other day, so he had to take a rain check. He took a rain check and made it out to the Jamboree yestersday, giving a great little talk to the 30,000 assembled Scouts.