Krotchety Kegler
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.
In loving memory of my father
Donald Keith Dayton
August 4, 1930 - April 29, 2004
My father was one of the most selfless people I knew. He was always doing things for others, without expecting anything in return. I remember when I was a child, whenever we would visit Grandma (Dad's mother-in-law), Dad always spent most of his time there fixing things in her house, or helping out in some other way. At home, even at age 73, with a badly arthritic knee, and full fledged diabetes, he would cut the grass of four of his neighbors every week in the summer, and snowplow their driveways in the winter.
One neighbor was widowed about 35 years ago, and never remarried. Dad became her handyman, fixing her car whenever she needed him to, helping her around the house.
Dad made several cross country trips to help his brother deal with, first, the death of his wife, and later, Parkinson's disease.
Dad spent his whole life thinking of others before himself.
Anyone who would like to honor my father may do so by clicking the photo above to make a donation to the American Diabetes Association.
I love you, Dad.
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Pro life students forcibly dragged from Kerry's pro-abortion rally
John Kerry allows dissenters to be violently removed from his rallies, according to this report from
LifeNews.com:
Five pro-life college students were forcibly removed from a pro-abortion rally held by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Friday. The students were literally dragged off after they began leading a pro-life chant and one woman suffered injuries to her feet as a result.
...
"All of a sudden these NARAL girls appeared out of nowhere," Edmiston. "You guys have to leave right now," the NARAL women told the students.
Edmiston said the students told the abortion advocates they would leave, but wanted a uniformed official to explain why they had to leave a public event and one for which they had obtained tickets from the Kerry campaign.
After seeing the students wouldn't leave, the NARAL women told each other to link arms and began to surround the pro-life students.
...
They became angry and began to push and shove the pro-life women. One woman told Suanne that her mother should have aborted her.
The NARAL women eventually enveloped three of the students, including Suanne, in a circle and began dragging them away.
Suanne was wearing flip-flops and one of her shoes fell off as she was taken away.
"My foot is dragging on the gravel and they wouldn't let me get it," Edmiston said.
The abortion advocates dragged her barefoot over a rough gravel surface that caused her foot to bleed so much that Edmiston required medical attention afterwards.
"I have never been manhandled like that before -- pushed around, shoved and tossed -- it was ridiculous," Edmiston said. "I really felt violated, they had no right to touch me like that. So much for 'my body, my choice.'"
Both Edmiston and Stan Dai, a GWU political science major and a friend of the women, said Priscilla, another pro-life student, was dragged by the strap of a backpack. The strap began to wrap itself around her neck and she began to choke.
Edmiston told LifeNews.com that neither Kerry campaign staff nor security officials stepped in to stop the activists from dragging the students away from the rally.
"Nobody stopped it, people from [Kerry's] campaign were just standing around," she said.
Apparently, John Kerry condones this kind of behavior, since he nor his staff did anything to stop it, and they will not comment on the matter.
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Bad news for Kerry, good news for the rest of us
According to
Reuters, the new consumer confidence report was published today. The index was expected to ease a bit, from 88.5 to 88, but instead rose strongly, to 92.9, mainly as a result of increased confidence in the strength in the job market.
The Bush boom continues.
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A very interesting site
A website called
Fundrace has a lot of interesting features, including national, county, 3 digit zip code, and city maps showing where the candidates are getting their donations from; neighborhood searches to see which of your neighbors are giving, and to whom.
Very few blue states on their map!
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Attention Senator Kerry: This is a war hero
His name is Sgt. Kenneth Conde Jr., 3rd Mobile Assault Platoon, Mobile Assault Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment. He was shot in the left shoulder while fighting terrorists in Ramadi, but
refused to leave his men until the fighting died down several days later.
Over the next few days, Conde's unit participated in several other firefights until the violence died down. All the while, he nursed his wound, not giving into the pain and refusing to leave his Marines.
Only when his arm went numb, making it difficult to hold his rifle steady, did he finally give in and step out of the fight.
Back at the camp here, Marines asked Conde why he chose to stay and fight even after being shot.
"I told them that I couldn't just leave the fight when I still could keep going," he told them.
But it his actions didn't surprise his fellow Marines.
"He always told us that he would lead us from the front, and that we would never do anything if he wasn't doing it too," Cox explained. "After being in that firefight with him, I will always know that he is true to his word."
Read the whole article. It is inspiring.
(Hat tip,
doubleplusgood infotainment and
Citizen Smash)
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Saudi Religious Police prevent girls from leaving burning school
A report from the
BBC says that the Saudi religious police prevented schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building in Mecca because they were not wearing abayas and headscarves. Firemen were also prevented from going to their rescue. As a result, 15 girls died in the blaze.
One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".
After reading this, I am thoroughly shocked and disgusted. Could it actually be true that the religious police would rather see young girls die an agonizingly brutal death than see them in the street without their abayas and headscarves? Apparently so.
(Thanks to
Muttawa for the link.)
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Leonard Pitts takes the 9/11 commission to task
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts is
taking the 9/11 commission to task for all of the useless finger pointing going on. Key quote:
Who was responsible for Sept. 11? A fellow named Osama bin Laden and a terrorist group called al Qaeda.
Also:
Because the ultimate failure of that day wasn’t in what someone did or didn’t do, but rather, a failure of imagination. Before Sept. 11, most of us simply couldn’t conceive of someone using airliners as missiles. It was the stuff of action novels and summer movies. It was too preposterous to be real.
We have since learned better. And our education has come at a ruinous cost.
That cost has left me impatient with the egos and agendas of Washington functionaries, intolerant of jockeying for political advantage, vexed by buck passing and butt covering. This is not Abscam or Iran-Contra or even the Lewinsky matter. So the response ought not be Washington gamesmanship as usual.
Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11. There is no official whose head on a pike will make us feel better about that.
So the most important thing we can do is learn the lessons of that tragedy and put them into action with all deliberate speed.
The best way to memorialize the terrorist attack that came two and a half years ago is to prevent the one that’s on the way.
Not much I can add to that, except, "Hear, hear."
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Poetry
As this year's Election Day nears,
John Kerry has plenty of fears.
He knows that it's his fate
To stay in the Bay State,
While W wins four more years!
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Kerry entering the caption contest?
Looks like John Kerry wants to enter the
Captain's Quarters Caption Contest. This week's picture shows Kerry reading to a class of 4 and 5 year olds, with HRC looking on.
Aaron's Rantblog has a link to a
NYT article which says that, while in that classroom, reading
Zoop!, a story about a magic wand that makes things disappear, Kerry said the following:
"I could go zoop! and Republicans would disappear."
This man who would be President can't even go into a classroom full of toddlers without slinging political attacks.
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More on why I stopped watching 60 Minutes
I just caught a glimpse on CNN Headline News of a
60 Minutes clip with Mike Wallace claiming that gasoline prices were currently the highest they have ever been. I guess Mr. Wallace forgot one pesky little thing -
inflation:
While an all-time high in nominal terms, the current price of gasoline is still significantly lower than the inflation-adjusted peak of $3 a gallon set in 1981, and well below the prices seen regularly in European countries. (My emphasis)
So, while Bill Clinton might agree that Mr. Wallace's statement is true enough to made under oath, the
real truth is that Mr. Wallace is either flat out wrong, or is trying to deceive us.
We could claim, using Mr. Wallace's logic, that the price of
almost everything is at an all time high. In the 50's, you could get a double feature movie with soda and popcorn for a quarter, for cryin' out loud! Just last week, it cost me $13 to take my daughter to a movie! Has Halliburton been controlling the cinema industry too?
The bottom line is that
60 Minutes used to be an excellent show, but has turned into just another lapdog for liberal causes, thanks to people like Mike Wallace.
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Wictory Wednesday (a bit late)
Sorry it's late, but here's my Wictory Wednesday post.
The Blogs for Bush blogroll keeps growing! There are over
400 blogs on the blogroll supporting our President. This shows that there are a lot of intelligent, well informed (in spite of the traditional media) people in this country. Encourage everyone you know to support the reelection of Mr. Bush. This is a critical time in our country's history, and we need the right person in charge. President Bush is that person.
Please follow these links to
donate to or
volunteer for the Bush campaign. Bloggers can join the ever growing blogroll by following the instructions
here.
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Democrats' leftward journey leaves some behind
This post from a lifelong Democrat at
American Digest is a must read. He explains why, in spite of having always voted Democrat except once (Rudy Giuliani), he will not be voting Democrat this year. Key quote:
Now I have come to the place where the whole sorry spectacle and circus of the Democrats over the last year has finally angered me. The party whose ideals once excited me has become a parody of itself, a dangerous parody. Instead of inspriation it delivers either numbing boredom or sheer despair at its intellectual and spiritual poverty. Instead of telling us what sort of New Jerusalem it would have us build as our City on the Hill, it takes us into the slums of the soul. Instead of waving the bright banners of how, it dons the rags and bones of defeatism and appeasement. Instead of leading the parade, it wants to make us content with following after the elephants with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. When it needs to supply us with someone to believe in, to follow, to admire and to trust, it offers up John F. Kerry and his rollicking side-kick Ted Kennedy. It’s like after sitting through the long and tedious circus of the primaries, the Party went out and chose Emmett Kelly; the saddest clown of them all.
This bodes well for the President's reelection chances, which is a good thing, but I think that this self destruction of the Democratic party will be a long, slow, and painful process, and will leave behind a lot of collateral damage.
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Al Franken off the air
Drudge is reporting that Al Franken's radio show has been taken off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles. The
Chicago Tribune is also reporting on this:
Arthur Liu, owner of Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, which owns Air America affiliates WNTD-950 AM in Chicago and KBLA-1580 AM in Los Angeles, said Air America bounced a check and owes him more than $1 million.
...
"They bounced a check today," Liu said. "It's a default. They have paid only a very small portion of what they owe us." Liu declined to say how much Multicultural is owed, but did say he is holding $1 million in checks that Air America has asked the company not to cash.
"They've been saying, 'We're going to get you the money' for the past two months," Liu said, referring to a security deposit that he said Air America was supposed to have prepaid in advance of its launch. "They're not honoring our agreement."
Air America denies these allegations with ad hominem attacks:
"That is an outright lie," said Evan Cohen, Air America's chairman, in a statement. "Multicultural Radio Broadcasting's conduct in this matter has been disgraceful.... [I]t is a clear violation of their contractual obligations."
Listeners who tuned into WNTD-950, Air America's Chicago affiliate, Wednesday morning heard Spanish-language talk radio instead of "Morning Sedition" and "Unfiltered," the network's morning talk shows.
A Chicago source familiar with the situation said a Multicultural representative showed up at WNTD's offices this morning, kicked out Air America's lone staffer overseeing the network's feed to the station from New York, switched over to a Spanish-language feed, and changed the locks on the doors.
Liu said the same thing happened at KBLA in Los Angeles.
This is the indication of the
reasons conservatives dominate talk radio: because that is what most listeners want to hear. Franken's claptrap just won't bring in the revenue
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St. Petersburg (Fla) Democrats call for assassination of Donald Rumsfeld
Drudge is reporting that a group called the St. Petersburg Democratic Club have placed a newspaper ad with the following:
We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall... and pull the trigger.
Here is an image of the ad.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, but seems to be rather typical of the more vocal John Kerry supporters. I am thoroughly disgusted by it.
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The Kerry Sloganator is up!
Thanks to
Wizbang, now you can put your very own slogan on a Kerry for President graphic, using the
Kerry Sloganator!
A sample:
Go make yours now!
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This global warming doomcrier can't even convert temperature changes
The Guardian is spouting global warming doom, but the "science editor" who wrote the article can't even correctly convert temperature changes from °C to °F.
an average annual warming in the region of 2.7C (37F) and
an average warming of 8C (46F)
The article says that European scientists have used computer models to predict temperature change effects at varying levels of carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. But a computer model is only as good as the data and programming that are entered. Dr. Joe D'Aleo (
Dr. Dewpoint at intellicast.com) believes that these models are highly dubious. He has a number of excellent articles that debunk the global warming myth, and he uses actual data from the past to make his point. (One example - doomcriers cite the warming of the 20th century as evidence of anthropogenic warming from carbon dioxide, but Dr. D'Aleo shows that most of that warming occurred before 1940, and most of the CO
2 was released in the second half of the century. I thought cause came
beforeeffect in this universe.)
Like most doomcrier articles, this one has very little supporting the causes of warming, and deals mostly with what would happen "when" (not if) it does.
Dr. D'Aleo has found that the primary cause for long term climate change is changes in the output of the sun. (Let's see the Kyoto people come up with a treaty to prevent
that.) He shows that the length of the 11 year sunspot cycle is not constant, but is variable. When that cycle shortens, the individual peaks in the sunspot number rise, and the earth grows warmer, indicating a more active sun. When the 11 year cycle lengthens, the earth grows cooler. He cites the Maunder Minimum ( a period from about 1600 to 1750) when the sunspot cycle virtually disappered. This period was also known as the Little Ice Age in Europe. He also cites evidence that Europe was significantly warmer from about 800 to 1300. He has found historical evidence of olives being grown in Germany, and wine grapes being grown in England. This also coincides with the period when Greenland was colonized by the Vikings.
Dr. D'Aleo believes that shorter term climate change (decades) are driven by changes in the El Niño/La Niña oscillation in the Pacific, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic and Arctic. He shows that from about 1950 to 1979, the LA Niñas were stronger than the el Niños, and the earth cooled a bit. He also notes that about 1980 the "next ice age" fears peaked. (These fears are probably better founded in fact. Evidence has been found for an "Ice Age Cycle" that lasts about 100,000 years, with a 12,000 year warm phase in between. The current warm phase is about 11,000 years old.) From 1979 to 1998, the El Niños were stronger, and the earth warmed. He believes we have recently entered another cool phase, and predicts colder winters in the near future.
(Hat tip:
Bastard Sword)
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A view of the other side
The loony left held a protest across from the White House. Then some
Iraqi counter protseters showed up!
INDC Journal has the story and pictures.
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An interesting web site
I just found a website called
GoogleRace. On it you can type in a word, and it will seaqrch the web for associations of that word with the various presidential candidates (including some who have dropped out). Here are a few words I tried:
Resolve - George Bush first, John Kerry seventh
Honest - George Bush first, John Kerry dead last
Liar - George Bush first (must be the constant Kerry/Kennedy attacks) John Kerry sixth
Leader - GWB first, JF'nK fifth
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What would have happened if we had preempted 9/11?
The New Republic has one alternate scenario. I would say that it is a plausible one, too.
While reading this article, keep in mind the atmosphere of the 9/11 commission, and all of the fault finding and finger pointing going on. President Bush is being faulted by many on the left for not preventing the 9/11 attacks. (We'll leave Clinton and his eight years of incompetency out of it for now.) Given the rabid hatred of the President by the far left, how would they have reacted if Mr. Bush had sent troops to Afghanistan, had arrested 19 Arabic flight school students who had merely overstayed their visas?
Read the
Easterbrook scenario, then decide.
(Hat tip:
Blogs for Bush.)
UPDATE: Here is another report from this alternate universe:
Mohammed Atta sues the government and the airlines for racial profiling and harrassment.
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Found this at DumptheDoubters.com
Click the image to see who this message is addressed to.
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What liberal media?
Mensnewsdaily.com has a very interesting column up about the media bias. This time, it is the Yahoo! News from April 7. Out of the first ten articles listed, eight are either pro Kerry or anti Bush , one was (grudgingly) pro Bush, and one had nothing to do with either Kerry or Bush - except that the picture linking to the article was one of Kerry! I wish they had done a screen image.
UPDATE:
Rizzay checked out Yahoo! News today, and
found the same thing. His post has screen images.
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Rice 1, Clarke 0
Bloomberg is reporting that a growing number of Americans believe that the Bush administration did everything that could be expected to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
A Time/CNN survey taken yesterday showed that 48 percent of Americans said they believe the Bush administration did all it could to prevent the attacks, up from 42 percent in a poll taken March 26-28. A CBS News poll, also conducted yesterday, showed 32 percent of Americans said the administration did everything possible to stop the attacks, up from 22 percent the previous week.
When asked whom they were more likely to believe, respondents chose Condoleezza Rice over Richard Clarke by a 43-36 margin.
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Thank you, Mr. President
Sunday, April 11 is Easter, but it is also
Tax Freedom Day for 2004. This is the theoretical day, as calculated by the Tax Foundation, that Americans get to start keeping the money they earn, rather than giving it to the government.
This year's Tax Freedom Day is the
earliest in 37 years, thanks to President Bush's tax cuts. According to Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge, the drop in the tax burden since 2000 is the
biggest drop in America's tax burden for at least a century.
Figure 1: Tax Freedom Day, 1963 – 2004
Thank you, Mr. Bush.
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Democrats, take heed...
...of the words of your icon,
John F. Kennnedy. These words apply to today's world as much as they did in 1961:
Now we are face to face once again with a period of heightened peril. The risks are great, the burdens heavy, the problems incapable of swift or lasting solution. And under the strains and frustrations imposed by constant tension and harassment, the discordant voices of extremism are heard once again in the land. Men who are unwilling to face up to the danger from without are convinced that the real danger comes from within. They look suspiciously at their neighbors and their leaders.
And:
So let us not heed these counsels of fear and suspicion. Let us concentrate more on keeping enemy bombers and missiles away from our shores, and concentrate less on keeping neighbors away from our shelters. Let us devote more energy to organize the free and friendly nations of the world, with common trade and strategic goals, and devote less energy to organizing armed bands of civilian guerrillas that are more likely to supply local vigilantes than national vigilance.
Let our patriotism be reflected in the creation of confidence rather than crusades of suspicion. Let us prove we think our country great by striving to make it greater. And, above all, let us remember that, however serious the outlook, the one great irreversible trend in world history is on the side of liberty -- and so, for all time to come, are we.
Ted Kennedy, this is your brother speaking. Are you going to listen?
(Hat tip:
Joefish)
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The media would have us believe that all Iraqis hate us. But
this tells a different story:
Military officials said they got an unexpected assist from some Iraqi civilians who offered their cars and, in one instance, a bus to take wounded troops to safety.
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What you don't see in the news: progress in Iraq
Donald Sensing links to
Blackfive, who has a post about the progress in Iraq, as reported by a soldier serving in Iraq with the U.S. Army's 16th Combat Engineer Battalion,
Joe Roche. A small excerpt:
The reality is we are accomplishing a tremendous amount here, and the Iraqi people are not only benefitting greatly, but are enthusiastically supportive.
Read the whole thing. This is the kind of news that is being kept from us by the liberal media during an election year.
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Native Americans could cost Daschle his seat
Bruce Whalen, a Lakota Sioux and Republican Party Chairman in Shannon County, SD, is
trying to encourage his fellow native Americans to vote Republican this fall.
"I see how the social programs are devastating the people around here," Whalen, a 41-year-old college student and Lakota Sioux Indian, said during a recent break from classes at Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota College. "The Democrats are hurting us."
Also:
[Republican challenger for Daschle's seat, John] Thune has picked up key support from Indian activist-turned-politician Russell Means, who is campaigning for Thune. The Democratic Party helped establish a system that makes Indians beholden to the federal government, and Daschle helped create such an environment, Means said.
"I mean it's pure communism, and it's an abject failure. Just like it was in the Soviet Union. It's failure. You've created a dictatorship by the Bureau of Indian Affairs," Means said.
Daschle said that people on reservations would like to be on their own but that that was not possible without help. Treaty obligations require the government to provide health care, education and housing, he said.
"We have Third World conditions," Daschle said. "Those treaty obligations ought to be respected and fulfilled."
More
here.
It looks like it will be very interesting to watch this race develop, especially with native American Democrat Tim Giago running for the seat in the general election as an independent. I would love to see Tom Daschle become the Senate analog to Tom Foley of 1994.
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The Perky One is still cheerleading for Saddam
Katie Couric is still a fan of the Butcher of Baghdad.
During an interview with Senators Joe Biden and John McCain on Monday, she said that while the Butcher of Baghdad may have been "deplorable," at least he "kept the Sunnis and the Shiites apart and from killing each other."
Actually, Couric's partly right - though she failed to mention how Hussein accomplished his amazing peacekeeping miracle: by exterminating the Shiites who dared to rise up against him, including the father of the Iraqi imam who's currently leading the latest insurgency.
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John Kerry calls Muqtada Al Sadr a legitimate voice
Muqtada Al Sadr has been inciting anti-Americanism in Iraq since the war started, and apparently wants to establish an Iran style mullahocracy with himself in charge. He is the one responsible for the latest attacks on American and coalition forces. THe Iraqi Governing Council has had a warrant for Al Sadr's arrest out for months. And
John Kerry calls him a "legitimate voice" in Iraq.
John Kerry has demonstrated again and again that he is not qualified to lead this country.
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Wictory Wednesday
The
Washington Times is reporting that the 9/11 commission will reexamine Richard Clarke's testimony that fighting Al Qaeda was a top priority of the Clinton Administration, in light of the fact that Clinton's final report to Congress on national security didn't mention Al Qaeda even once.
This demonstrates once again that Richard Clarke and the Democrats have no clue as to how to fight global terrorism. John Kerry has already said that he would go back to Clinton's failed policy of pursuing terrorists as law breakers. We need to ensure that that doesn't happen.
President Bush is fighting this war the way it needs to be fought. We need to give him the chance to finish the job.
You can do your part by
volunteering, or
donating to his campaign. Bloggers are encouraged to join the
Wictory Wednesday Blogroll:
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New blogger sees Ted Kennedy as he really is
New blogger
Random Numbers has posted a response to Ted Kennedy's latest besotted rant.
Welcome to the blogosphere and to Blogs for Bush, Random Numbers!
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Kerry accuses Bush of flip flopping
John Kerry has
acccused President Bush of flip flopping on whether or not Condoleezza Rice would testify under oath before the 9/11 commission. I am sure that Kerry knows about the negotiations that went on about this, but Kerry stillll tries to exploit it as a "flip flop". With all of Kerry's experience with flip flopping, I would think that he would recognize it when he sees it. Sorry, Senator, but this ain't it.
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Kerry shows again he can't handle dissent
A small group of people greeted Kerry by
clapping together sets of flip flops, and Kerry responded, "Obviously some young Republicans are proving that they're very rude and they have no manners. They don't want to hear the truth."
He might as well have said, "Don't you commoners know your betters?" I think it would be a good plan to have groups of people like this wherever Kerry goes, to get him to expose his arrogance and self-importance. All the better to truly know this man who would be President.
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I wonder how Zapatero feels about the terrorists now
From
Voice of America:
Spain's acting interior minister says the suspected ringleader behind the March 11 train bombings in Madrid killed himself as police closed in on him. He and others who blew themselves up were preparing to carry out more terrorists attacks. (Emphasis mine.)
Now the terrorists that blew up the train in Madrid have been stopped. But not by Zapatero's pledges to exit Iraq. They have been stopped by the only sure thing that works against terrorists - death.
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Iraqis shocked at behavior in Fallujah
The Daily Kos (I will not link to his blog) says "Screw you" to American civilians killed in Iraq, but
many Iraqis are shocked.
"It was completely un-Islamic to treat the bodies in that way. The people who did this were acting like animals," said Ali Khaled, 29, an electrician who sat drinking tea with four friends at a coffee house in Baghdad's old quarter Thursday afternoon. "They committed an unforgivable sin, and they will be punished by God."
Many Sunnis reacted the same way, but not as strongly:
Several Iraqi Sunnis interviewed Thursday also expressed shock at the killings, but not as strongly as Shia. Sunnis spoke of the U.S. crackdown on insurgents in and around Fallujah, where there have been more attacks against U.S. forces than anywhere else in Iraq. Fallujah, a city of 500,000 people about 30 miles west of Baghdad, was well-treated by Saddam Hussein because it is dominated by Sunnis, like his Baathist regime.
"What the people did to those bodies was not excusable in any way," said Khalil Hassan, 69, a retired teacher and a Sunni, as a puff of white smoke rose over his head. "But the Americans have also committed crimes against people in Fallujah and other Iraqi towns."
"In 1958, July 14th, some members of the royal family were killed and mutilated. Iraqis were ashamed for decades at this barbaric event," Samir Sumaidi told reporters. "Now after this, I feel that again Iraqis will hang their heads in shame."
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A moment of honesty from one anchor
Peter Jennings, after returning from Baghdad:
“One of the really strong impressions I had, having been there for only 10 days, is this strange ambiguity because life is improving for people in Iraq in many, many ways, and the U.S. influence in Iraq is having, in many ways, a very significant influence. Our focus on the loss of American soldiers and now civilians on a sometimes almost daily basis, it gets so intense, somewhat I think overshadows what has been happening, in more general terms, in restructuring or structuring the country."
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File this under "Nightly News Anchors for Kerry"
The
Media Research Center is reporting that Dan Rather says that Americans are accepting dangerous jobs in Iraq because the economy here is so bad that it is the only job they can find.
Hogwash. Some might defend Rather by saying that his report on this came two days before the March employment report. But any economist worth his salt knew the jobs were coming.
Rather must be hoping that his viewers, what few of them are left, have missed all of the news about the robust economy lately.
Other reporters are just as bad.
Read the whole report.
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Economist Larry Kudlow on the economy, jobs and outsourcing
Larry Kudlow writes that the payroll survey for March "puts the lie to political charges by the Kerry Democrats that the U.S. is in a jobless recovery."
More:
Undoubtedly, Greg Mankiw calculated the numerous benefits of the 2003 Bush tax cuts when he first released his bold estimate. With tax rates slashed across-the-board on personal incomes, small businesses, investor dividends, and capital gains, both investors and workers now get to keep significantly more of what they save and earn. And when it pays more, after-tax, to work and invest, people do so. This is the incentive-reward effect that changes economic behavior. Since the tax cuts were implemented, the economy has grown at better than 5 percent annually, and the unemployment rate has dropped to 5.7 percent from 6.3 percent.
At the same time, broad stock indexes have gained roughly 35 percent, creating about $3.5 trillion of new wealth. The market value of all mutual funds has surpassed the prior peak reached in 2000. Along with rising home prices, family net worth has surpassed the record hit in early 2000.
This is beginning to look more like a traditional post-recession employment recovery. The March jump marks the seventh consecutive payroll jobs gain, for a total of 759,000 new hires, with 61 percent of U.S. industries reporting payroll increases — the highest percentage since July 2000.
Even the gap between the lagging business payroll survey and the stronger household survey of all people working is beginning to narrow. The household survey appears to be more sensitive to self-employed workers who have started their own Subchapter S or LLC (limited-liability corporation) businesses. Responding to lower income-tax rates, these entrepreneurs have registered 1.8 million new jobs since the end of 2002.
The day before Friday’s big jobs announcement, a widely-followed manufacturing index published by the Institute for Supply Managers registered its highest level since the end of 1983. Every industry group, including cars, electronics, and business equipment, cited increases in new orders and production.
Despite all this, economic pessimists keep talking about the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries as a major obstacle to employment and economic recovery. They’re dead wrong. New data from U.S. international trade accounts show that there are more foreign companies investing in the U.S. to create new jobs here at home — a process known as insourcing — than there are American firms sending jobs overseas.
There is so much ecenomic good news, it is hard to fit it all into one blog. Read the whole column.
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Kerry is desperate for bad news
The report of 308,000 new jobs created in March was great news. But not for John Kerry and his media lapdogs. He was quoted on the evening news today pointing out that there were no new jobs in manufacturing. Kerry ignores the rebound that the manufacturing sector is currently experiencing. He ignores the 308,000 new jobs. The news report focussed on a guy who took a second job as a cab driver to make ends meet. They are trying to portray the economy as still in the dumps.
Kerry and the media are desperately waiting for, I would go as far as to say, hoping for, any kind of bad news to use against Bush. To me this is a telling indicator of how little Kerry really cares about us commoners. He is so blinded by his own ambition that he can't see anything else.
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Financial Times on outsourcing
Porphyrogenitus links to a report from the Financial Times on outsourcing. Key quotes:
The first mistake of many politicians, argues Matthew Slaughter, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, is to assume that a job created overseas is one not created in the US. "An overseas worker is sometimes a substitute for a US worker but very often they are a complement for a US worker," he says. "Expanding an overseas network frequently means you have to hire more workers in the US too."
Also:
Economists also argue that while the job losses caused by offshoring are conspicuous, the benefits are larger. Although the gains are hard to quantify, some analysts are now attempting to do so.
Assuming that companies shift staff overseas partly to save money, economists argue that the effect of offshoring is to lower prices in the US. This raises the purchasing power of US consumers and, on the margin, helps keep interest rates lower. This in turn should lead to higher consumer spending and stronger economic activity, which creates more jobs.
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"Insourcing" outpaces "outsourcing"
This report from
ContraCostaTimes.com states that more jobs are insourced into the US from foreign companies than are outsourced overseas by US companies.
While U.S. companies including Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second- largest computer maker, and AIG Life Insurance Co., the world's largest insurer, have transferred white-collar work to low-wage countries such as India and China, more jobs are coming the other way, according to government estimates and trade analysts.
Another Kerry argument, shot down by facts. They are stubborn things, aren't they.
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The wages of appeasement
More terrorism.
From
Reuters:
Spain sent in the army to guard its railways Friday after finding a bomb under a high-speed track that contained explosives similar to those used in last month's Madrid train bombings.
Will the Germans, French, and now Spaniards ever learn that appeasing the terrorists willl never stop them?
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308,000 new jobs
The report of 308,000 new jobs is great news for the economy. But this
Business Week article points out that, with all of the other indicators so positive, the job growth is inevitable.
A month's worth of information about jobs at this point doesn't tell economists anything they don't already know. In his Mar. 31 report, Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City, calls the excessive attention on the payroll number "Labor Market Myopia."
Remember, the economy is growing nicely. It's not expanding as fast as it did in the second half of 2003 (when gross domestic product climbed at a 6.1% annual pace), but it's still likely growing at a rate above 4%. Richard Hoey, chief economist at Mellon Financial, believes the 2004 GDP growth rate will be in the 4.5% to 5% range.
...
Even if [the jobs] hadn't shown up in the Apr. 2 report, they would have started appearing soon after. "Companies are only taking on workers if they're compelled to do so," says Lonski. But as the economic recovery continues, they'll be forced to.
The article also implies that the 308,000 figure might well be low:
Indeed, signs of job creation are so numerous that a few economists are starting to wonder if something is wrong with the government's methodology. Prudential Equity Group's chief investment strategist Ed Yardeni issued a report on Mar. 31 titled, "Quality of Data, Not Jobs, Is Poor." He described a strong tendency for first-reported payroll-employment numbers to dramatically understate job creation in an expanding economy.
The good thing abou this report is that it has received widespread coverage in the media. While economists have known all along that job growth was coming, the electorate wasn't so sure, mainly because of the media and its coverage of the Kerry campaign. MOre reports like this one in the coming months will convince the electorate that the economy has indeed turned around.
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Bush signs Unborn Victims of Violence law
NewsMax reports today that
President Bush signed into law today the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
The law makes it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.
"As of today, the law of our nation will acknowledge the plain fact that crimes of violence against a pregnant woman often have two victims," Bush said. "Therefore, in those cases, there are two offenses to be punished."
The bill passed by a 245-163 vote in the House and by a 61-38 margin in the Senate.
Kerry voted against it.
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Kerry voted for Campaign Finance Reform, now is allegedly violating it
Blogs for Bush is reporting that John Kerry is violating the Campaign finance Reform law that passed last year.
He voted for the law, now he's coordinating ad efforts with the notorious "527" groups - groups who make their pitch for donations by stating it'll be used to either defeat President Bush, or boost Senator Kerry - and therein, it would seem, lies the violation - the un-regulated 527's can't advocate for a specific candidate's defeat or victory.
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