This is Miss Canada Natalie Glebova who was crowned Miss Universe 2005. I'm going to be in Toronto in a couple of weeks. (Call me, babe.)
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Whoa, Canada!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:47 AM 0 backtalks
"Why Movie Stars Should Shut Their Big Fat Yaps"
...is the name of this posting I saw mentioned at Michelle Malkin's place about some typical stupidity issuing from a celebrity's noise hole. This time it's the hot-and-talented Scarlett Johansson showing that underneath it all, she's pretty vacant and apparently has been too busy working to catch up on ancient history:
According to Moviehole.net, the actress, who plays a clone in the upcoming "The Island," is "very much pro-stem cell research"—apparently meaning the embryonic kind, since that's the only one that is, as the article notes, "a political hot potato."
"I think that there’s a lot of wonderful possibilities erupting," Johansson explains. "I mean, if they could eliminate diseases like Alzheimer’s and polio that would be incredible."
"Eliminate polio"! Bwa ha ha.
Someone ought to tell Ms. Johansson that while she's been in a "Ghost World," a cure for polio's been available for 50 years. It is incredible—and no embryonic stem cells were harmed in its making. The reason polio is resurging now in Africa and the Arab world is not due to a lack of available vaccine, but rather to the kind of anti-American conspiracy theories perpetuated by the actress's Hollywood colleagues.
Are their any Hollywood hotties who aren't liberal morons? (Bo Derek doesn't count.)
CORRECTION/UPDATE: As KJL on The Corner notes:
There, of course, is not a cure for polio--only a vaccine. I read that blogger's post way too quickly and apologize for that. A reader writes:
Not to be picky with the defense of trendy cause interested celebrities, but there's not a cure for polio. There's a vaccine for polio. Once the body is attacked the degenerative effects of the polio virus are devastating, both in the immediate and in the long term with the significant issues of post-polio syndrome. Having a treatment which could fix the nerve damage would be a cure, as a cure is something which heals after the disease has attacked. There is no such treatment, there is only prevention. The blogger you linked comes off more ignorant than Scarlett Johansson.
As far as I can tell, the debate over stem cell research is about a cure and about prevention, whether it be alzheimer's, polio, or the other various degenerative diseases. Those who are already victims want their own bodies to be healed. I am still not a supporter of embryonic stem-cell use, but a treatment which would cure my mother of the ravages of polio would certainly be a miracle... and is certainly not available now, let alone fifty years ago.
That reader chooses to see this is the most positive light for Scarlett. Despite my desire to kick it with Scarlett, I'm more inclined to believe that the initial impression was the correct one. Sorry, but the Hollyweird clique isn't known for knowing as much as they regurgitate. (Not a bulemia joke.)
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:42 AM 0 backtalks
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Have a Safe and Fun Memorial Day Weekend!
Don't forget to remember the brave soldiers who gave their lives thru the years so that seditious Democrats can have the freedom to encourage Islamofascists to kill even more of their Band of Brothers for political gain.
Don't forget that solidiers died overseas to make it safe for fascist police officers to pull us over for not wearing our seatbelts. They'll rob, er, fine us for "our own good".
Freedom isn't free, but if you vote for the Socialist-Fascist-Democrats, they'll tell you it is. All you have to do is get in the boxcars.
See y'all next week. Eat some meat in front of an animal rights fascist!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:31 AM 0 backtalks
Mr. Narcissus Goes to Washington
At OpinionJournal, Peggy Noonan unloads upon the media whore Stupid Party members for their treason with the Democrats. To bad the Elections aren't THIS fall. People need to lose their jobs!!!
You've heard the mindless braying and fruitless arguments, but I'm here to tell you the facts, no matter what brickbats and catcalls may come my way. Lindsey Graham defied the biases of his constituency to do what was right, not what was easy. Robert Byrd put aside personal gain to save our Republic. David Pryor ignored the counsels of hate to stand firm for our hopes and dreams. Mike DeWine protected our way of life. These men are uniters, not dividers.
How do I know?
Because they told me. Again and again, and at great length, as they announced The Deal. And I believed them, because I am an idiot. Or as they might put it, your basic "folk" from "back home."
Listening to them I thought of some of the great and hallowed phrases of our Republic. "The rooster who thought he brought the dawn." "The only man who can strut sitting down."
I know they're centrists, but there is nothing moderate about their self-regard. And why should there be? I personally was dazzled by their refusal to bow to the counsels of common sense and proportion, and stirred that they had no fear of justified insult ("blowhard," "puffed up popinjay") as they moved forward in the halls of the United States Senate to bravely proclaim their excellence.
John McCain wryly reminded us not to miss A&E's biography of his heroic Vietnam experience. Joe Lieberman referred to the group as "this band of brothers, and sisters." But my favorite was Lindsey Graham, who said, "I know there will be folks 'back home' who will be angry, but that's only because they're not as sophisticated and high-minded as I am. Actually they're rather stupid, which is why they're not in the Senate and I am. But I have 3 1/2 years to charm them out of their narrow-minded resentments, and watch me, baby."
Oh, excuse me, that's not what he said. That's only what he meant. It was the invisible scroll as he spoke. The CNN identifier that popped up beneath his head as he chattered, however, did say, "Conceited Nitwit Who Affects 'Back Home' Accent to Confuse the Boobs."
Oh wait, that's not what it said. It said, "R-South Carolina." My bad.
Actually, what Mr. Graham said was, "People at home are gonna be mad at me for a while." He said he decided to support the deal because "kids are dyin' " in Iraq, "Social Security is comin' up," and "this is a lot bigger than me." If only he knew that is true.
Back to the senators. Why did they put on that performance the other day? Yes, it was sheer exuberant egotism; it was the excitement of the TV lights; it was their sly conviction that if they laud themselves they will be appearing to laud the institution; and it was, no doubt, the counsel of their advisers that in the magic medium of television, if you declare you are a "hero" often enough people will come to associate the word "hero" with you. Advisers, you must stop telling them this. Please.
I think everyone in politics now has been affected by the linguistic sleight-of-hand, which began with the Kennedys in the 1960s, in which politics is called "public service," and politicians are allowed and even urged to call themselves "public servants." Public servants are heroic and self-denying. Therefore politicians are heroic and self-denying. I think this thought has destabilized them.
People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else--faceless taxpayers, "the folks back home"--gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn't public service, it's more like public command. It's not terrible--democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play--but it's not saintly, either.
I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.
John McCain pole-axed Bill Frist to take him out for '08 and it worked. McCain is still a media whore loser who's unsuited to be President. If he runs against Hillary!, get ready for another Clinton Crime Regime and the ceding of our sovereignty to the UN.
Yuck.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:16 AM 0 backtalks
Profiles in Flinching
Mack Daddy playa Charles Krauthammer lays the smack down on the Stupid Party with typically brilliant results:
First, the compromise legitimized the principle of the judicial filibuster. Until 2001, not once in more than 200 years had a judicial nominee been denied appointment to the court by Senate filibuster.
The Democrats broke all precedent by systematically using it to block President Bush's nominees in his first term in the hope that they would recapture the presidency in 2004. They did not, and they have continued the filibuster into his second term. This violation of Senate tradition has now been codified in writing as legitimate so long as circumstances ("extraordinary," in the eyes of the beholder) warrant.
The second sure thing is that the seven Republicans who went against their party are the toast of the Washington establishment. On Monday night they came out of the negotiations beaming. And why shouldn't they? They are being hailed as profiles in courage, prepared to put principle ahead of (Republican) party. We will soon see glowing stories in the mainstream press about how they have grown in office. (In Washington parlance, the dictionary definition of "to grow" is "to move left.") After that, the dinner-party circuit, fawning articles about their newfound stature and coveted slots on the Sunday morning talk shows.
Mike DeWine, one of the Magnificent Seven, was heretofore best known for the fact that one of his staffers (subsequently fired) published accounts of her sexual escapades while working in DeWine's Senate office. Now he might be known for something else.
Enter two latecomers, DeWine and Lindsey Graham, who were prepared to vote for the nuclear option but decided to cross the aisle and make the tough choice to join the lionized center. They both say that if the Democrats start to filibuster again, they will defect back to the warm embrace of Frist and go nuclear. Will they be willing to forfeit their newfound celebrity and stature as statesmen? That would be a profile in courage.
Go read it all and if you live in a state with one of these traitors, start finding a REAL conservative to run against them in the primaries. We need TWO DIFFERENT PARTIES, not one media-whoring cabal!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:03 AM 0 backtalks
Are You Free, Woman? Take This Fun, Easy Quiz!
Over at what The Cornerites have dubbed "The H-Bomb", there's a nifty quiz created in response to an Erica Jong item in which she barfs up the limousine liberal tripe that woman have it better under Islamofascist theocracies than they do here in Evil America. (Why don't people like Erica f*cking MOVE to Kreplochistan if it's so damn nice?!?)
Myself, I've never understood why women’s groups weren't out front cheering the wars against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Were there ever more feminist wars than these? You'd think the National Organization for Women would be egging the administration on to Saudi Arabia and Iran. But no, and for the same reason that organized feminists have refused to applaud George Bush’s historic appointments of women to positions of high office, including most recently his nomination of two women, one of them black, to appellate judgeships. Bush is a Republican. The organized feminists are Democrats. It's as simple as that.
Still, I wouldn’t think the feminist worldview could be quite SO simple as to equate the oppression of women who live under repressive and murderous regimes in the Islamic world with the condition of women in the United States. For HP bloggers and readers who have trouble telling the difference, I’ve prepared the following quiz:
1. Are you allowed to drive a car? Y/N
2. Must you be accompanied at all times in public by a male escort? Y/N
3. If you were to say "what the hell" and drive to the mall by yourself, would you be immediately surrounded by bat-wielding male police officers? Y/N
4. Could you be beaten for saying “what the hell”? Y/N
5. When you go outside on a hot summer day, can you wear shorts and a t-shirt? Y/N
6. You wouldn’t know what the weather was because your vision is a confined to the small slit opening in a burkha or abaya? Y/N
7. Have you ever been stoned at a party? Y/ N
8. Have you ever been buried up to your neck and stoned (i.e. with rocks) for kissing a man not your husband at a party? Y/N
9. Were you free to marry the man of your choice or, as it may be, free not to marry? Y/N
10. Did your parents force you to marry a man of their choosing? Y/N
11. If you refused your parents’ choice of husband would you be banished from the family and/or beaten within an inch of your life and/or to death? Y/N
12. Were you 11-years-old when you were married? Y/N
13. Does your husband have more than one wife? Y/N
14. Does your religion permit and encourage “moderate beatings” by the husband whenever he feels his wife is disobedient? Y/N
15. If you are unhappy with your husband, can you initiate a divorce? Y/N
16. Were you educated? Y/N
17. Were you educated for a career? Y/N
18. Was the career that of a suicide bomber? Y/N
19. When dealing with the law or facing a court case, is your word valued at half that of a man’s? Y/N
20. In a rape case in which there are no witnesses, is your word worth nothing against that of the rapist’s—and furthermore, for the admission of sex with a man outside of marriage, even forcibly, can you be put to death? Y/N
21. Can you vote? Y/N
22. Can you read any book you like? Y/N
23. Did you read the Arabic version of “Fear of Flying”? (oh, skip this one—it doesn’t exist)
24. Is fear of flying how you feel whenever you step on a plane post-9/11?
SCORING: If you answered “yes” to questions 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 22,23, and 25, congratulations! You live in the freest society for women in the history of Planet Earth. If you answered “yes” to any of the other questions, Allahu Akbar!
Interestingly, Erica herself posts a reply in the Comments section. She sounds like her batteries had died.
Hi Danielle--You seem to think that publicly applauding democracy is the same thing as creating or sustaining it. I think Ms. Bush's stated concern with women's freedom in the Middle East is a screen to hide our deteriorating women's rights at home. You take Laura Bush at face value. I don't. Many women in the Middle East don't either. They know that the Bush administration imposes Christian Right Wing values on international women's health clinics, will not support clinics that teach contraception and thereby compromise women's health care. Laura Bush, like Condi Rice, is a great tool in Bush's arsenal of PR for women's rights. But look at this administration's actions rather than its words. Words are cheap.
Can't have a American Feminist comment without the obligatory smears against Christianity and demands that we fund they Liberal Holy Sacrament of Abortion, can we?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:55 AM 0 backtalks
Friday, May 27, 2005
Little Bitch Voinovich's Bullying Past.
Saw a reminder at The Corner of something I'd forgotten, but Ohio Senator/Crying Pussy George "with a V, like vagina" Voinovich who cried a river in the well of the Senate pleading that John Bolton not be confirmed because he's such a meaniehead had anger management issues of his own back in 1995.
I'd forgotten about this incident in connection with this pathetic asstackler's weeping, but this should ring some bells:
George Voinovich likes to be seen as a man of reason. But in the governor's escalating fight with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), he's apparently lost it.
At first, when it became known he ignored FAA rules and flew in the face of President Clinton's visit to Columbus, it was just a goofy political story in a boring election year.
Now, taking his case to court could saddle taxpayers with a $20,000 legal bill. At these rates, the governor's actions deserve a serious second look.
Gov. Short Fuse blew on Oct. 20 when federal rules delayed his plane's takeoff as the president arrived in Columbus.
As it often does when the president flies, the FAA issued a Temporary Flight Restriction, commonly referred to as a no-fly order.
When this order is in effect, no planes other than essential aircraft are cleared for takeoff. That reduces the chances of a terrorist staging a kamikaze attack on Air Force One.
The order kept the governor and his plane on the ground. And he was honked.
Gov. Voinovich called it "bull"-something and ordered his pilot to break the rules and take off. He even dared the control tower to "shoot us down." That, too, would have cost. One hour of flying time for an F-15 Eagle fighter jet runs $3,399 to $4,037.
The pilot followed orders and took off. The FAA responded by slapping the governor with a standard $1,500 fine.
The governor's fighting that fine, and tax dollars are footing the bill. He has hired a Columbus law firm to fight for his right to fly the friendly skies of Ohio. We're paying his lawyers' $95-an-hour fee. Their bill could top out at $20,000.
The governor says he's entitled to the money because he was on official business. Too bad he wasn't thinking as a respected public official would, much less an adult.
"What Voinovich did was stupid. He should have his head chopped off and handed to him on a platter," says Bill Wamsley, veteran radio DJ and multilicensed pilot with 34 years' flying experience.
"When the president is in the air, the FAA sets up flight procedures that everyone must observe. Even the governor."
Rules are rules. Law-and-order Republicans should know that.
So what gives with Gov. Voinovich?
Maybe politics have addled his ethics. These days, he's busy jockeying for a shot at the vice presidential spot on his party's ticket. Perhaps taking orders from a Democrat set him off.
Still, we in Ohio are left with the spectacle of our governor challenging the feds to shoot him down, and then defending that idiocy with $20,000 of our money.
Instead of spending another public penny, Gov. Voinovich should shut up and pay the fine. Just chalk it up to the high price of being reasonable.
So, when you see and hear this loser on TV - most likely in an al Queda recruiting ad as an example of the weak American man - ranting about how John Bolton is tempermentally unsuited to be a UN sellout (a good thing IMNSHO!), remember it takes one to know one.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 3:36 PM 0 backtalks
(Tom) Cruise (and his lack of) Control
In the Page Six piece called "Eyes Wide Nut", apparently Tom Cruise has been acting the fool about his new babe/beard (depending on who you axe) Katie Holmes.
Now, she's pretty cute and I wouldn't toss her out of bed for eating a pizza - heck, I'd order the pizza - but after tagging Nicole Kidman, isn't Holmes working down the food chain? This is assuming he's actually hitting it, something heavily questioned in the piece.
HE's leaping on couches! He's smooching for the cameras! He's swearing to Reader's Digest, "I love women"! He's . . . " . . . nutso!" says an A-list celeb publicist who can't believe the embarrassing display Tom Cruise has been putting on to hawk his little-believed romance with Katie Holmes. "The Oprah segment made me want to puke."
If Cruise is going to remain one of the biggest movie stars in the world instead of a laughingstock - remember, even
Michael Jackson was on top once - he needs a quick infusion of p.r. advice, stat.
Cruise fired his longtime publicist Pat Kingsley, possibly the most feared and respected name in the business, last year only to replace her with his less experienced sister, Lee Anne DeVette, a fellow Scientologist.
Now he threatens to vaporize himself with his own p.r. death rays as he attacks planet Earth with media appearances to promote his movie "War of the Worlds."
In recent days he has:
‡ Jumped on Oprah's couch to scream, "I'm in love! I'm in love!" while throwing his hands in the air. "I can't be cool, I can't be laid-back. It's something that has happened, and I feel I want to celebrate it. I want to celebrate her." (Page Six reported that he stammered twice when Oprah asked how he met her, a charge his team denied).
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:08 PM 0 backtalks
Forget guns, we need KNIFE CONTROL!!!!
Or so say some stupid doctors in England. Is it any wonder why there is no such thing as the British Empire anymore?
A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.
They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
Isn't this why they wanted to grab all the firearms?
As the socialist totalitarians attack the Second Amendment on the grounds that people are just too stupid to be allowed to defend themselves - well, people who aren't the liberal elites, that is - whenever I see some news report about people getting offed with non-firearm weapons, I always yell, "We need knife/baseball bat/guitar* control and waiting periods! You know? For the children!" Looks like hyperbole is going to become reality in the UK. No future for them. What will they ban next?
* Re: "guitar control" - a local mook bashed his mother to death with his black Epiphone SG a few weeks back. If only there were no guitars, that poor woman would be alive, right? That's why they want us disarmed - to save us, right? They aren't just setting us up like the Nazis did in the Thirties, are they?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:48 AM 2 backtalks
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Blogger Helps Solve His Own Murder!
Via Instapundit, I saw this item about a poor 19-year-old who was murdered along with his older sister by her ex-boyfriend. His final entry placed the killer at the scene.
Freaky, freaky stuff. Check out the Comments from friends expressing their sympathies to this dead boy.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:39 PM 0 backtalks
A Compromised Party Kills the Constitution.
As usual, Thomas Sowell cuts thru the bovine excrement and explains why the pathetic surrender of the Stupid Party attention whores matters.
Although the Republicans have more votes in the Senate, and also have Vice-President Cheney to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie, the Democrats stuck together. None of them went around wringing their hands in the media about how hard it would be for them to support their party if it came to a vote.
This is not a unique situation. Democrats have long understood that they are in Washington to represent the people who voted for them. Too many Republicans seem to think that they are in Washington to make deals with the Democrats.
Some people welcome all compromises, domestic or international, on grounds that these compromises "ease tensions" and "avoid confrontations."
You can always ease tensions and avoid confrontations by surrendering. You can always postpone a showdown, even when that simply lets the problem fester and grow worse.
While members of both parties are trying to put a good face on this political deal and the media have gushed about this "bipartisan" agreement, Republican Senator Charles Grassley was one of the few who called a spade a spade, when he characterized what happened as "unilateral disarmament" by the Republicans.
If it was just the Republican Party that lost in this confrontation, that would be a minor partisan matter. What is of major importance is that the American people lost a golden opportunity that may not come again in this generation.
That opportunity is -- or was -- to set in concrete both the Senate's right to vote on judicial nominees and the American people's right to govern themselves, instead of being ruled by judges who increasingly take decisions out of the hands of elected officials and impose their own personal policy preferences.
It is not just a question of the merits or demerits of particular issues and decisions by the courts. The most fundamental decision is: Who is to decide? Democratic self-rule is what Americans have fought and died for, for more than 200 years.
People who say that the Senate compromise will now enable Congress to get back to the "real" issues seem to think that whether the voters' votes become ever more futile in a judge-ruled world is less important than deciding what kind of goodies the federal government hands out.
Go read the rest of it.
I decided to wade thru Sean Hannity's repetitive yammering on his radio show last night to see how he was discussing this mess and he had Sen. Lindsey Graham and Bill Frist on and it was awesome to listen to these tools try to spin this as a victory. Sure, as long as you consider getting 3 out of 10 judges voted on and throwing the rest overboard AND leaving the option to filibuster and demagogue in the hands of the Dems a victory.
If there was any doubt that our small-D democratic republic is dead and we will be ruled by liberal judicial despots who will rule us by fiat with no recourse short of impeachment - something the Stupid Party has proven incapable of doing, even when presented with overwhelming evidence of malfeasance - it is gone now.
With Supreme Court (In)Justices like John Paul Stevens saying that it's appropriate to consider INTERNATIONAL LAW in reviewing cases - for those too brainwashed or poorly-educated to know, the SCOTUS is supposed to see if laws measure up to the U.S. Constitution, NOT what's fashionable on the Continent - it looks like the Constitution as we understood it will fade from memory and our rights will be determined by the elistist whims of a robed oligarchy.
But who cares when we're going to find out who the new American Idol will be tonight and people are concerned whether Shaq will be able to come back and stop the Pistons?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:31 AM 0 backtalks
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The Never-Ending Gubernatorial Race
Go read Peter Kirsanow on the Washington Election on National Review Online right now. Good stuff. Points include:
* Election officials employed procedures that resulted in thousands more votes being counted than there were eligible voters.
* Provisional ballots were counted without first verifying that the voters were lawfully registered and hadn’t already voted.
* The Seattle Times reports that more than 700 provisional ballots were counted in King County without first verifying voter eligibility.
* Felons unlawfully cast votes.
* Officials counted the votes of persons who had died before the election.
* Military ballots were not sent out in a timely manner.
* Different standards for counting were used from county to county.
Between the Dems stealing elections and Republicans giving away everything they manage not to have stolen, there's no such thing as a two-party system anymore, is there?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:59 PM 0 backtalks
The Stupid Party Becomes The Sell-out Party, Too.
The morning drive was marred by news that the spineless Republicans made it even more clear that they're worthless losers by caving into the Dems over the nuclear option. Check any of the VRWC sites to the right for the spin - some are actually claiming that this is a small victory (yeah, the way Little Big Horn was) - because I'm not in the mood to rant about these maroons.
Suffice to say that if you're a believer in smaller government, personal liberty and a real reading of the Constitution (not a see-what-you-wanna-make-up view), then you have NOBODY in government representing your interests. Or the country's for that matter.
Amazing that for all the Big Lie shrieking from the liberal media about how the GOP was a theocratic juggernaut forcing their views upon the land, it appears that these Big Evil Meanies were powerless to stand up to the Big Lie-spewing MSM.
I hope the seven RINO traitors like John McCain and Lindsey Graham get genuine conservative challengers in their next go arounds. We need TWO political parties, not 1.2 parties acting like they hate each other, but ultimately joining forces to steal our money and freedom.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:15 AM 1 backtalks
Monday, May 23, 2005
Are you a non-liberal female or minority? Then Democrats hate you!!!
Rich Lowry at National Review Online lays the smack down about the sexist opposition of Democrats against women and minorities who dare not be liberal fascists. I don't agree with him absolving them of their endemic -isms, but whatever.
Priscilla Owen, 50, is one of the more talented women of her generation. She finished third in her class at Baylor Law School. She had the best score in the state on the Texas bar exam when she took it in 1977. Her performance as a judge on the Texas supreme court has earned her the highest rating from the American Bar Association. It's the sort of career that liberals promoting the advancement of women should swoon over. But Senate Democrats are blocking her nomination to a federal appeals court, not just because she is supposedly too conservative, but because she is too female.
White guys who are as or more conservative than Owen have been confirmed as appellate judges, while her nomination has languished for four years. So it goes in the judicial wars. A woman. A black. A Catholic. A Hispanic. It sounds like the beginning of a bad ethnic joke, but it's the lineup of the Democrats' top filibuster victims.
If the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were reviewing the Democrats' filibuster choices, it would have grounds for a disparate-impact lawsuit. The over-representation of minorities and women...is not a coincidence. Democrats fear that a non-Protestant, nonwhite non-male might be easier for President Bush to elevate to the Supreme Court from a federal appeals court, so they want to keep nominees with the "wrong" demographics from getting on an appeals court in the first place.
But that doesn't make the Dems' racial and gender profiling any less awkward. In the filibuster fight, Democrats invoke minority rights. What they are attempting to vindicate is the right of the Senate minority to block minorities.
The logic of the Democratic position entails a kind of inverse Leninism — better is worse. The more attractive a nominee's personal story, the more imperative it is to oppose him or (especially) her. Democrats might have filibustered California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown anyway, but her fate was surely and truly sealed by the fact that she is black, was raised by sharecroppers in segregationist Alabama, and worked her way through law school as a single mother after her first husband died. This background screams "attractive U.S. Supreme Court nominee." So for the left, Brown is "a dangerous black woman."
Because Democrats have used unprecedented judicial filibusters to block the nominees, they have had to apply red-hot rhetoric to justify themselves. Priscilla Owen might have been a garden-variety conservative if she had a Y chromosome, but as a woman she is deemed an "extremist" undeserving of an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
When it comes to Owen, Brown, or presumably other compelling conservative women appellate nominees, Democrats have a simple message: "You've come a long way, baby. Go no further."
Got that, ladies? If you aren't hewing to the victimization cliques dependant on white male racists and mistress-killers like Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy, then you're going to be battered into oblivion for fighting the power.
Sad thing is, as long as no one touches abortion, too many women are plenty satisfied to remain chattel, literally and figuratively.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 6:08 PM 0 backtalks
It's not Newsweek's fault that Islam is a bloodthirsty "religion of peace"?
That's Diana West's thesis in "Newsweek's blunder illuminates extremists' major shortcoming" which points out that despite Newsweek anti-American propaganda efforts, it would've have been so destructive if not for the fact that Islam has a lengthy history of reacting to slights with extreme violence.
The "report" did this? Our "image" has been damaged -- only now? For no "other" reason? Something's missing. That is, Quran-gate offers more than just another example of Washington politicking or good, old-fashioned media bias.
Neither drove rioters to murder last week on the Arab-Muslim "street" any more than they drove Mohammed Atta to mass-murder a few years ago in the friendly skies. It was jihad then, and jihad now, the rigid ideology that infuses medieval bloodlust with an unlikely longevity in a post-Enlightenment, technological age. Which is why the Newsweek story is not about Us. Rather, it underscores something about Them that is much more significant.
Us and Them: the words are "divisive," the concept politically incorrect. But what Michael Isikoff and Newsweek have done with their admittedly flimsy instance of reporting is focus our eyes on the chasm that lies between the Muslim world in which a book -- one book -- is sacred and life is cheap, and the Western world where speech is free and life is precious.
At least life is supposed to be precious here, just as speech is supposed to be free. The other revelation this story brought to light is the cringe-making extent to which we are willing to censor ourselves when it comes to Islam and the Quran -- or, as our Secretary of State has kowtowingly taken to calling it, "the Holy Quran," an adjectival distinction I've never heard officially appended to the Bible.
National Review Online's Marshall suggested Newsweek probably didn't know desecrating a Quran is a capital offense in "Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere" -- with enlightened Pakistan meting out only life imprisonment. But whether American news editors are up on their Islamic law is, for once, not the issue. The draconian repression of Islamic dictatorships is nothing for us to emulate or pander to, in our policy or our coverage. Frankly, if we tolerate artwork such as "Piss Christ" and "Dung Virgin," we should be able to shrug off Commode Quran.
Whether the toilet caper actually happened -- in seeking to secure American lives, after all, not score an NEA grant -- is also beside the point; the "damage," the pundits keep saying, is done. As a Pakistani journalist told The New York Times, the Newsweek item confirmed suspicions of "a straight disrespect for the sensitivities of Muslims."
Please. We see the "sensitivities" of some Muslims blowing up other Muslims on a daily basis in Iraq. We saw the sensitivities of Albanian Muslims on a rampage in March 2004, when they destroyed more than 30 Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo. We saw the sensitivities of Taliban Muslims in 2001 when they dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. We saw the sensitivities of Palestinian Muslims when in 2000 they violently obliterated Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. In 2002, Nigerian Muslims took their sensitivities to the streets after This Day newspaper reported on beauty pageant contestants so lovely the prophet Mohammed would "probably have chosen a wife from one of them." Before you could say, "The Quran is in the toilet," more than 200 people lost their lives in riots that also left 11,000 people homeless. Also in 2002, armed Palestinian guerrillas and their sensitivities occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As the Jerusalem Post reported, "Catholic priests later said that some Bibles were torn up for toilet paper."
I don't recall riots breaking out in St. Peter's Square. Which is why the West still stands on one side of the chasm, and Islam stands on the other. From this vantage point, we can give Newsweek a pass -- but not such violently uncivilized behavior.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:05 PM 0 backtalks
I heard the news today, oh boy....
Driving in this morning, the CBS Radio News gave a tidy display of how viciously partisan and biased they are in their reporting. Sure, coming from the people who brought us Dan Rather's "fake, but accurate" memos, it's to be expected, but that doesn't mean we should enjoy it.
Stories spun included:
- Pat Tillman's family is unhappy that their son's death wasn't immediately reported as a friendly fire FUBAR. Moral of story: The military is bad.
- Afghan Prez Kharzai is upset that we may've tortured and killed some people there 2-1/2 years ago as reported by the seditious NY Times. Moral of the story: The U.S. is bad and the press will make damn sure to keep digging up stories to reinforce this meme.
- Filibuster issue, aka "the nuclear option" - talks are breaking down and those dastardly Republicans are trying to "circumvent the rules". Too bad that's a TOTAL LIE!!! The Democrats are the ones violating the Constitution by improperly using the filibuster to thwart an up-or-down vote because of their racist and sexist hatred of women and minorities that refuse to be enslaved to them.Moral of story: Republicans are bad. (Duh.)
- The fraudulent Washington gubernatorial election in which the GOP candidate won not one but TWO tallies until the Dems were able to fabricate enough fake ballots to steal the election is heading for the courts. (The irony that the Dems who can't stop peddling the myth that Ohio was stolen, yet become Sgt. Schutlz about this, has been noted.) CBS reminds us that polls say that the people don't want this looked into and that it'll backfire on the GOP.Moral of story: Only Dems can steal elections.
Is it any wonder that people are so distrustful of the press and willing to see them muzzled? More to come on this subject...
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:54 AM 4 backtalks
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Why Islam is disrespected
In the same vein is Jeff Jacoby's "Why Islam is disrespected" which includes:
Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable today for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?
Read it all.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:12 AM 0 backtalks
Why no riots for Hollywood?
In the wake of the media whitewash of Newsweek's seditious activities, we've been told that even hinting at disrespect of the Koran (or Qu'ran or whatever) justifies the violent reactions that have killed so many recently and helped foment some more hatred against Americans, as if the media hadn't done enough to get them hating us already.
As we were being lectured about being sensitive to these medieval nutcases fee-wings, I wondered WTF no one felt any need to be sensitive to Christians in the face of the 24/7 bashing they get in the media. Why aren't they rioting and killing after stunts like "Piss Christ"?
Well, it appears Brent Bozell wondered the same thing and here's a snip on the liberal hypocrisy with regard to being nice to people of faith:
The riots caused by Newsweek's story claiming American interrogators were flushing the Koran caused many Americans to be amazed by the extreme reaction in the Islamic world. Ken Woodward, the long-time religion writer of Newsweek, tried to explain to Christians just how offensive Koran-flushing is to Muslims: "Recitation of the Koran is for Muslims much like what receiving the Eucharist is for Catholics -- a very intimate ingestion of the divine itself."
There's a certain irony here. If you wanted to see the Eucharist in the toilet, you needed only to watch the NBC sitcom "Committed" in February, when NBC played for laughs the idea that two main characters thought they accidentally dropped a communion wafer in a bar toilet.
Hollywood makes lame jokes and harsh satires of Christianity all the time, figuratively and literally tossing Jesus, the Bible and church figures into the toilet. Those alleged American interrogators are pikers compared to Tinseltown. They could learn at the feet of the masters of mockery.
Last May, on Fox's "That ‘70s Show," one character explained to another: "You don't get paid to be the best man. You do it for the satisfaction of nailing the hottest bridesmaid. It's in the Bible." Religion is often mocked as fairy tales for fruitcakes. In a January 2004 episode of "The Simpsons," the daughter Lisa tells the son Bart, "The Mount Builders worshipped turtles as well as badgers, snakes and other animals." Bart replies, "Thank God we've come to our senses and worship some carpenter that lived 2,000 years ago."
Anti-Semitic riots and hate crimes were endlessly predicted when Mel Gibson made "The Passion of the Christ." Frank Rich and all the other Gibson-bashers looked pretty silly when millions of Americans saw the movie, and the impending Kristallnacht didn't materialize.
So why doesn't Hollywood produce storylines about the Koran being flushed down the john? That, they would tell you firmly, with conviction, would be religious bigotry.
Some of the examples not included here are actually kinda funny to me, but the overall point is still valid: Christians are slagged in a way that Jews and Muslims would NEVER be. I guess that's because Jews can play the Holocaust card and everyone's afraid that the Muslims will swear a fatwah - that's "holy death warrant" for those of you unfamiliar with the "religion of peace" (as dumbass Dubya said) - and get killed.
Do Christians need to start killing people to get some respect? :-\
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:06 AM 0 backtalks
Friday, May 20, 2005
How Extreme Would A Judge Have To Be To Merit Opposition?
Saw over at NRO Putting Judicial Nominees in Perspective, Part III which mentions:
Imagine, if you will, that a Democrat President nominated a judge whose constitutional and policy views were, by any measure, on the extreme left fringes of American society.
Let’s assume, for example, that this nominee had expressed strong sympathy for the position that there is a constitutional right to prostitution as well as a constitutional right to polygamy.
Let’s say, further, that he had attacked the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as organizations that perpetuate stereotyped sex roles and that he had proposed abolishing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replacing them with a single androgynous Parent’s Day.
And, to get really absurd, let’s add that he had called for an end to single-sex prisons on the theory that if male prisoners are going to return to a community in which men and women function as equal partners, prison is just the place for them to get prepared to deal with women.
Let’s further posit that this nominee had opined that a manifest imbalance in the racial composition of an employer’s work force justified court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the part of the employer. But then, lo and behold, to make this nominee even more of a parody of an out-of-touch leftist, let’s say it was discovered that while operating his own office for over a decade in a city that was majority-black, this nominee had never had a single black person among his more than 50 hires.
Imagine, in sum, a nominee whose record is indisputably extreme and who could be expected to use his judicial role to impose those views on mainstream America. Surely such a person would never be nominated to an appellate court. Surely no Senate Democrat would support someone with such extreme views. And surely Senate Republicans, rather than deferring to the nominating power of the Democrat President, would pull out all stops—filibuster and everything—to stop such a nominee.
Well, not quite. The hypothetical nominee I have just described is, in every particular except his sex, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.
President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg on June 22, 1993. A mere six weeks later, on August 3, 1993, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 96-3 vote.
As you listen to the lies of fascist Democrats, like obese murderer Teddy Kennedy, as they call woman and minority judges "radical extreme ideologues", keep in mind what truly extreme judges they got without a fight.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:23 PM 0 backtalks
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Have you commited a crime today? Are you so sure about that?
There's a great piece at the Cato Institute site about The Culture of Criminalization and how the "solution" being offered to every ill of society is to make a Federal case out of it and throw more people in prison.
It's too long to sumarize here, so go read it all there. Good stuff.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:40 PM 0 backtalks
The Empire Strikes Bush or "Now, Weesa Loves Hims!"
When "Attack of the Clones" came out, the generally conservative Detroit News convened a panel of absolutely idiotic people suffering from Terminal Grievance Syndrome to have a group fantasy about all the racist imagery that George Lucas allegedly had included, like making Jango Fett a darker-hued person to express his childhood xenophobia about migrant workers in his boyhood home of Modesto, CA. Truly nutty and WRONG stuff.
Well, with the release of "Revenge of the Sith" happening tomorrow and the film's premiere at that America-bashing conclave known as the Cannes Film Festival, the media has been very kind toward the movie and its director? Why? Because the rabidly liberal press, ever eager to find anti-Dubya media to hype, has decided that Lucas has come up with a timely parable about the evils of Republican government - the Party, not the form of government (not that the Left likes anything less than totalitarian fascism) - and thus are stroking their happy spots in pieces such as The Empire Strikes Bush.
Of course, in 2010, when President Hillary Rodham Clinton suspends the Constitution, hands control of our government over to the UN and has Christians rounded up into "re-education camps" (read: an American gulag), I don't think the same media folks will be so eager to cheer these movies as timeless parables. No, they certainly won't.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:21 PM 0 backtalks
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
When Nerds Chat!!!
What follows is a verbatim transcript of a IM chat with a co-worker. Only the names have been changed.
Warhammer i find ROTS script, u want to read?
Dirk Gamespot's got a whole E3 section. Dude, I read the ROTS script over a month ago! I sent you the link even!
Warhammer http://scripts.cgispy.com/newsboard.cgi?action=view&num=2&user=script
Warhammer it's making want to fap to the space battle
Warhammer nerd overload
Dirk I copied it off the Millenium Falcon site and put it into Word and had a friend print out all 77 pages. Read it at the bar while working door.
Warhammer if it's anything like this script i'm goiing to fap in thew theater
Dirk I skimmed thru it to get the big outlines. The battles aren't even hinted at cuz it's like "They light their sabers and.....FIGHT!!!" That doesn't show you the 5 minutes of leg-chopping action in the least
Warhammer i just want to see space battles
Warhammer fuck the rest
Dirk SAber battles, bitch!!!
Warhammer SPACE BATTEL!
Warhammer bew bew bew whoosh!
Dirk SABRE BETTAL!!!!
Warhammer BOOOM
Dirk Whom whom pssst whom
Warhammer fox one I got tone! BEW BEW
Dirk woam woam
Warhammer >:(
Dirk That's Top Gun
Warhammer SPACE BATTLE!!!
Warhammer airwolf
Dirk saber battle...shhhh, you'll wake the baby.
Warhammer ok fine..space battle x INFINITY!
Warhammer HAHAHAHAHA
Dirk Chop you in have with saber and Force Push halves in different directions.
Dirk half
One more day to go!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 7:24 PM 0 backtalks
What the Racist, Sexist Democrats Really Fear.
Peter Kirsanow writes about Janice Rogers Brown at National Review Online and exposes that what the Dems fear about her isn't that she's a radical extremist, but that she would be a powerful minority woman who wouldn't serve the racist, white male fascists of the Left and could peel away more formerly-reliable voters.
As Professor Steven Calabresi of Northwestern University Law School has noted, Democrats are determined "not to allow any-more conservative African-Americans, Hispanics, women or Catholics to be groomed for nomination to the High Court with court of appeals appointments." And John Leo observes that abortion politics also is driving the opposition to filibustered nominees like Justice Brown.
As I noted in an earlier piece, pro-life minority nominees represent the perfect storm for Left-leaning opposition groups: non-conformist role models from the Left's most reliable voting blocs who may one day be in a position to reconsider Roe v. Wade. In that regard, Janice Rogers Brown could well be the Storm of the Century: A black female who has been nominated to the court viewed as a springboard to the Supreme Court and who may not view Roe as the zenith of constitutional jurisprudence.
Thomas Sowell adds the kicker: "What really scares the left about Janice Rogers Brown is that she has guts as well as brains. They haven't been able to get her to weaken or to waver. Character assassination is all that the left has left."
The biggest howler, however, is the claim that Brown "disregards the will of the people as expressed through their legislators." This, despite the fact that she dissented when the California supreme court struck down the will of the people (as expressed through their legislators) requiring parental notification in the case of a minor's abortion. Moreover, Brown wrote the main opinion upholding Prop. 209 — the referendum outlawing racial preferences that was overwhelmingly supported by the people but rabidly opposed by many of the same groups now opposing Brown's nomination. California voters duly punished Brown for disregarding their will by returning her to the supreme court with 76 percent of the vote.
Read it all, of course.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:12 PM 0 backtalks
Monday, May 16, 2005
Newsweek Sees CBS's Lies and Raises Them a Bunch of Dead People
A couple of week's ago, the ever-eager-to-blame-America-first media - this time Newsweek - printed an unsubstantiated report that American interogators flushed a Koran down a toilet in view of a Muslim detainee. (Of course, if it was a Bible, they'd have gotten an NEA grant.) More proof of Evil American behavior, right?
Wrong. Now Newsweek is backtracking and saying that they can't confirm the story, but are still trying to confirm it. All well and good, except anti-American rioting in Afghanistan has claimed at least 15 lives and fomented instability in the Afghan government. How convenient for the provacateurs in the MSM, no?
TKS on National Review Online has a good round-up of links to the reaction across the Blogosphere to this latest disgrace on the part of the so-called "real journalists".
La Shawn Barber's Corner says:
Liberal Newsweek’s anti-American bias manifested itself in an ugly way. In their zeal to report anything sinister about Americans (especially those serving/working overseas) and anything good about Arabs (the terrorist kind), they erroneously reported that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay “desecrated” the Koran.
Because of the report, Muslims started rioting, as if they needed an excuse. But our own Newsweek sure gave them one. Knowing we’re in the middle of a war with people who’ve hated us for centuries and intent on destroying us and Western culture itself, you’d think Newsweek would’ve used common sense in reporting the story in the first place. Why write and publish a story that you know will only encourage more violence? Answer: It made America look bad, and that was good enough for “objective” liberal journalists.
They’ll get what’s coming to them. The blogosphere has erupted in a righteously indigant swarm (The conservative side, of course. Liberal bloggers are busy defending the rag.), forcing mainstream media to pick up the story. I hope they lose advertisers, readers, and heads over this.
Instapundit is outraged:
This was entirely predictable given that (1) Al Qaeda propaganda turns on stuff like this; and (2) Historically, such rumors have been used to stir up trouble in the region (remember the Sepoy Revolt, based on false rumors that the British greased their cartridges with pig fat?). If the folks at Newsweek are too ignorant to realize this, or too sloppy to care, then they shouldn't be in the news business.
Why should they care if innocent people die as long as the anti-American, anti-Dubya storyline gets moved along? They encouraged the insurgency and the murder of hostages and soldiers to embarrass Dubya before the Election and are now Hell-bent to make damn sure that nothing gets done and the Stupid Party gets all the blame for every ill in the world.
A comment on one of the blogs linked says:
In adddition to cancelling your subscriptions, calling radio stations and advertisers, or even sending emails (which will probably never be read), here's yet another idea:
Collect every one of those Newsweek subscription cards that you can get your hands on and mail them back to Newsweek with the words:
NEWSWEEK LIED -- PEOPLE DIED!
Newsweek will at the very least then be forced to pay the postage on these "non-subcription" cards.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:58 PM 1 backtalks
Friday, May 13, 2005
Why Those LiveStrong Bracelets Suck.
You see them everywhere - those yellow rubber wrist bands (I use mine as a cock ring) being sold to buy Lance Armstrong a second ball, thus giving girlfriend Sheryl Crow's bunghole a rest and allowing both cheeks to feel the pendulum action. They suck and so do the people who wear them for everyone to see.
Why? Because it reduces charitable giving into an opportunity to act smug and superior and demand praise because you're showing that you care. If you're giving to a cause you feel is worthy, why is it important to make a public display of your giving? Why can't you just send Lance some ball money and take satisfaction from the knowledge that you you did a good thing? Why do you need everyone else to know?
Because you're not giving for Lance's benefit - you're giving for YOURS. Gotta get that warm smooch of approval from the rabble, don't you?
Sheep. Take that stupid bracelet off if giving was the most important thing to you.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:30 PM 1 backtalks
John Podhoretz: A Sith Lord or Just Stupid?
Despite a good column properly calling the Little Bitch Voinovich to task for being a bully himself while sanctimoniously bashing John Bolton when he couldn't be bothered to show up for Bolton's testimony, pathetic dumbass John PodWhoreETz (like the Democratic Underground losers prolly spell it) is still on the Star Wars-bashing jihad with more of his assinine hate which makes him sound like he's auditioning for Hate Speech Radio (aka Air AmeriKKKa.)
JEDI WARMONGERS [John Podhoretz]
I'm getting a lot of e-mails from obsessive fanboys who insist that the good guys in the Star Wars movies didn't start the wars in question but were tricked into it by a "Dark Side of the Force" conspiracy. It's almost impossible to wade through all the nonsense on the Web to get to the bottom of this, and to be perfectly honest, I have no interest in doing so. The fact that George Lucas is such an incompetent storyteller that it's impossible to figure out who started what and when is Lucas's fault, not mine. Let's just agree to this: The Jedi know how to beat people up and how to slice their arms and hands off -- and they are not averse to blowing up a Death Star or two. Okay? Now move out of your parents's basements and join an Internet dating service before you lose all your hair.
Before we lose all our hair?!? Big words coming from someone who looks like THIS!
Fooking retard.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:19 PM 0 backtalks
...and Voinovich rhymes with "Little Bitch"!
Ohio media whore, er, Senator George Voinovich (SP) - a leech who has been a professional politician for 38 years - bashed Dubya's pick for UN Ambassador, John Bolton, in a pathetic play to get the media to like him. Apparently, Voinovich doesn't think Bolton is right for the gig because it'll send a message to the world that we don't respect the UN and blah-blah-woof-woof....
This is EXACTLY why someone like Bolton is needed there!!!
The UN is a club of thugs, dictators and tyrants that despise America and wish to bring us down. It's corrupt, ineffectual, self-dealing and generally useless and you can tell a lot about a weasel by how hard they wish to suck the UN nozzle. Bolton supposedly won't play that way - according to the liberal smear campaign - and that means he's PERFECT for the job!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:24 AM 0 backtalks
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
John Podhoretz: Stupid Jedi Hater!
On The Corner is a playa-hating sumbitch named John Podhoretz who must've been raised by Vulcans because he's been sh*tting all over Star Wars and George Lucas for a while now. He blames them for ruining film and blah-blah-woof-woof and he's proof that being conservative is NOT necessarily a sign of higher intelligence. I don't know what he's written in the past, but anything I see in the future from his will probably be disregarded out of hand because of this thoroughly retarded post:
It opens next week. I saw it, and here's the thing: It's unbelievably bad. O I'm telling you this because movie critics won't. So far all the early reviews -- all of them, from Variety to the Hollywood Reporter to Time magazine -- have been favorable. Why? Because while the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today's critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience's bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord. Since it's a foregone conclusion that the final Star Wars is going to make a jillion dollars, the safe thing for critics to do is say nice things about it. The only nice thing I can think to say about it is that it's not quite as mindspinningly wretched as its predecessor, Attack of the Clones, but it's plenty awful anyway. Even Yoda gives a rotten performance. Go see it if you must when it opens next week, but at least you got one fair warning here.
All you need to do is visit Rotten Tomatoes and see that most of the top films have gotten poor reviews. He also ignores that the ratings score for this Star Wars film is 50% more favorable than the last two prequels, both of which were sure to make money, but didn't garner as many good notices. Also note that many critic's fave pictures don't do boo at the B.O.
Podhoretz is a f*cking moron. Coward bitch doesn't list his e-mail, either. Pussy.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:55 PM 1 backtalks
To Jim Lampley and the Ohio skeptics
The HuffPost is really proving to be a fine source of Left-wing moonbat insanity as sportscaster and newly-revealed crackpot Jim Lampley unleashed the latest airing of the insane myth that Karl Rove stole the Ohio election and blah-blah-woof-woof. Nice to know that the rich and famous now have a place to publicly expose their disaffectation with reality.
Well, Byron York took a break from nuking a Hot Pocket and tossed up a thorough refutation and beatdown of this nonsense. He notes that the the top Democratic Party operatives aren't pursuing this - because there ain't no there there - but forgets to mention that they aren't doing anything to knock this myth down with the rank-and-file.
He also notes that the Left is curiously silent about the REAL voter fraud that happened in places like Washington where the Dems actually stole the gubernatorial election and Wisconsin...
By the way, if you are concerned about voter fraud and corruption, you might better spend your time examining the voting in Wisconsin, where Kerry won by just 11,384 votes, a margin far smaller than Bush's 118,599-vote victory in Ohio. In Milwaukee, five Democratic workers were charged -- not rumored to be involved with, but actually charged with felonies -- for the early-morning Election Day slashing of the tires of 25 Republican get-out-the-vote vans. According to the criminal complaint, they put on black outfits and knit caps, left Democratic headquarters, headed over to the GOP building and disabled the vans, which were out of service for all of Election Day and were thus not able to bring voters to the polls. "They won't go anywhere now, man, we got 'em, we got 'em," one suspect said as the group celebrated after returning to Democratic headquarters (the quote comes from the criminal complaint). The rest then imitated the
hissing sound of air rushing out of slashed tires.
Next time you see Lampley, be sure to ask to see his tinfoil hat collection.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:26 PM 0 backtalks
FakeHate.com
We're constantly hectored by the Grievance Pimps with the "fact" that if you're a white, male, Christian, Republican, gun-owner, heterosexual person, you are, by your very nature, little more than a thuggish oppressor of a whole bunch of designated "victim groups" and are considered guilty until proven REALLY GUILTY.
This thesis has fueled the passage of "hate speech" laws which attempt to add extra punishment to Designated Oppressors if the victims are part of a Designated Victim class. Of course, "hate" only travels one way, so if a militant Black Panther-type bigot kills himself some "White Devils" after his Nation of Islam meeting, he was clearly acting out of frustration about AmeriKKKa's legacy of slavery and not out of any racial animus. However, if a white person so happens to look at a Designated Victim askance, he's likely to lose everything and be packed off to prison to atone.
What prompts this is the recent revelation that a lesbian high school student who was the "victim" of gay-bashing vandalism turns out to have done the deeds herself in order to get attention. Nice. What was that story about crying wolf? What impact does this have when the occasional REAL crime occurs? How about the backlash that is justifiable when people get sick of being treated as thugs when they've done nothing to harm others?
Over at La Shawn Barber’s Corner he's announced FakeHate.com which I presume will become a repository for biased, unfair and false accusations against those of the Designated Oppressor stripe.
That a black man is behind this means only one thing (according to liberals): He's a self-hating, sellout Uncle Tom!!!
Of course, to say that about him isn't a hate crime because he's not true to his oppressed brethren, don't you know?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:15 PM 0 backtalks
The Great Satan: First Day Fiasco
A blog with a name ALMOST as cool as mine runs the numbers on the HuffPost's first day and comes away unimpressed. A snip:
Number of posts by Liberal Hollywood Power Elite/Moguls: 7
Number of posts by Liberal East Coast Pseudo-Intellectuals/People who the NY Times would have no problem quoting: 16
Number of posts by Vapid Hollywood Twats: 7
Number of posts about lefty pet causes (aka, Animals, Environment, Children, Healthcare, Gay Marriage etc); 17
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:52 AM 0 backtalks
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Is the Huffington Post Just This Year's Air America?
Sure sounds that way in Nikki Finke's smackdown in LA Weekly, "Arianna's Blog Blows". In fact, she wonders what the scam is and whether this Zsa Zsa impersonator is, in reality, a Republican mole.
Judging from today's horrific debut of the humongously pre-hyped celebrity blog the Huffington Post, the Madonna of the mediapolitic world has gone one reinvention too many. She has now made an online ass of herself. What Arianna Huffington's bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree conservative-to-liberal conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn't accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly. This Web-site venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable, because of all the advance publicity touting its success as inevitable. Her blog is such a bomb that it's the box-office equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven's Gate rolled into one. In magazine terms, it's the disastrous clone of Tina Brown's Talk, JFK Jr.'s George or Maer Roshan's Radar. No matter what happens to Huffington, it's clear Hollywood will suffer the consequences.
It almost seems like some sick hoax. Perhaps Huffington is no longer a card-carrying progressive but now a conservative mole. Because she served up liberal celebs like red meat on a silver platter for the salivating and Hollywood-hating right wing to chew up and spit out.
[cutting to the end]
But not only is Geffen not an investor, he's not even a blogger. "I asked him, ‘Are you going to be doing a blog for Arianna's thing?' and he said no," a source informed me. At the time, Geffen didn't want to attract attention to himself by going public with his denial, I'm told. Besides, a source close to Geffen said to me, "He sends me two-word e-mails. He's not going to write a blog for her or anyone."
Yep. Certianly sounds like Hate Speech Radio for people who can read, doesn't it?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:27 PM 0 backtalks
How Liberal Men Treat Woman. (Hint: With threats of violence and anger.)
Take a look at this tolerant liberal guy:
Now go read why he looks like he's getting ready to punch Cathy Seipp out for daring to disagree with him.
And these people like to bag on Ted Nugent for being a Neanderthal?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:16 PM 2 backtalks
100 Days Later, Kerry is Still a Lying, Phony War Hero.
As PoliPundit.com notes, the Feckless Crapweasel who tried to ride a mythical war record into the White House in order to sell out America to the UN and his European masters lied 100 days ago about releasing ALL of his military records.
So, what else is new? :-\
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:08 PM 0 backtalks
Google Ads = WTF?!?
When I checked my traffic and realized that I was up a ton over a short while ago - did I get listed somewhere? - I decided to get into the Google Ads racket and pick up a few pennies like a good capitalist shoud. So, you Commies, you're making me rich(er) by simply reading this!!! Muhahahahahahhaa!!!! Click away! CLICK AWAY!!!
Well, I just noticed what the automatic scan-and-place-approriate-ad program decided would be most appropriate for my content and see ads for:
* www.dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
* Liberal is not a Bad Word
* www.DemocraticPeopleMeet.com
Too funny.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:18 PM 0 backtalks
Liberal Economic Fantasies and the Need to Pave the World.
While driving my UAV* to work this morning, I heard a couple of things on NPR and my local Hate Speech Radio affiliate that brought the utter inability of the Left to even keep their own hypocrisy straight sometimes home.
The local liberal host woman had Lou Dobbs from CNN on and they were talking about how the problem with GM and Ford isn't that the UAW has painted them into a corner over benefits, but that Evil Foreign Companies (liberal xenophobia, dontchaknow?) are building plants in low-cost, right-to-work states (as opposed to expensive, union states? Duh!) and thus have an unfair advantage.
The solution? Why force these companies to tack on surcharges and benefits to make their cars just as expensive as the domestic cars saddled with union contract bloat and grift! Tada!!! Consumers get screwed in the name of "fariness".
This is the same hypocrisy that make the same liberals who howl that gas prices were too low compared to Europe and that we should be taxed into the same $5.00/gal. level as the Socialist Utopias like Germany and France. Now that gas prices are north of $2.00/gal., what does the Left whine about? Gas is too expensive!!!
When is $2 too much when $5 was too little? Because under their scheme, the GOVERNMENT would reap the windfall of tax gouging as opposed to those Evil Oil Companies and Saudis. It's not that you're paying too much - it's that it's not their till the largese is flowing to.
On NPR, I caught the end of a piece about "green" consumers (read: hippies) being catered to by GE for being Earth-friendly. The guest was burbling on about how we need to "protect the planet."
Here's a news flash, kiddies: Planet Earth doesn't even know we're here and won't notice when we're gone.
Why can't these mossy doofs honestly say what they mean and say that they're trying to protect to PEOPLE, not the planet. If the air and water and soil get ruined, it's the HUMAN RACE that'll die, not the planet. When forests burn, it's only a problem when people live in the woods or wherever the flames are spreading too. What impact can we have on the planet that a good tsunami can't trump back?
George Carlin had a bit in the Eighties that said that the Earth evolved Man to create plastic and now that it has plastic, it doesn't need us anymore. The Earth wanted plastic. Extremely profound when you consider it and a reason why Carlin is an all-time great commentator.
* Urban Assault Vehicle
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:52 AM 0 backtalks
Why does the world do nothing about REAL misery happening today?
In a token of balance, The Huffington Post is allowing a handful of non-liberals a chance to blog but that'll surely end when they realize that the non-liberals are pasting the Annointed Ones over, under, sideways and down with pieces like Joe Scarborough's "Sudan Suffering in Silence". It's eye-opening, but only to those who've been living under the illusion that the UN, AI and Democrats really give a crap about the brown people of the world, not that it's gotten any better under the current management. In toto...
It is hard to turn away. It is even harder to keep staring.
The daily images that stream out of Sudan are heartbreaking. The scale of suffering seems unprecedented.
But it is not.
This has happened in Africa before. A million Rwandan citizens were hacked to death in the mid-1990's.
But the United Nations did nothing.
A few years later, genocide struck the African continent again in Sudan.
That's right. The same Sudan that is once again in the grip of a brutally efficient killing machine.
The situation got so bad by 1997 that I worked together with human rights groups and former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal to get the word out across America that millions were being persecuted.
Once again, the United Nations did nothing.
Reports out of Sudan eight years ago told of children as young as eight years old being crucified for their parents' beliefs. Other young boys and girls were sold into slavery for as little as $15.
Things became so bleak that the United Nations and the Clinton Administration did, well, nothing.
In fact, when I tried to pass a resolution through Congress calling for sanctions against the murderous regime, Clinton's State Department fought it with all their might.
The Congressional Black Caucus fell in line with the White House by refusing to endorse my Congressional act that condemned slavery in Sudan.
Can you imagine that?
We still hear many members of this caucus tying challenges in the African American communities to a system of slavery that ended 160 years ago but when faced with supporting the abolition of a slave system existing in their lifetime, they showed the moral courage of Thomas Jefferson.
Amnesty International was so concerned about the two million Sudanese victims that they did, well, nothing.
An Amnesty representative told me they could not support my bill because it concerned Christian persecution. They said they didn't take sides in such disputes.
Huh?
Fast forward eight years and you find that little has changed.
President Bush has called the crisis in Sudan genocide, but he has done little to stop it.
The United Nations has muttered about how the Sudan situation is unfortunate, but once again Kofi Annan has refused to do anything that will end the suffering on his home continent.
The European Union claims to be interested but too many member states have economic interests in the country.
So nothing gets done.
Meanwhile, children are slaughtered, young girls are raped, and entire communities are wiped out in minutes.
While the world does nothing.
How pathetic.
If all these organizations are so worthless, why do so many swear fealty to them?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:52 AM 0 backtalks
Gary Hart reminds us why he's still nobody.
Remember Gary Hart? He was like Bill Clinton except his bimbo was actually passably attractive and he suffered political consequences for his inability to avoid having pictures taking with his ho on his lap in front of a boat named "Monkey Business". (Nice.)
Well, as part of the star-studded liberal celeb whine blog The Huffington Post - covered and dismissed earlier here at Dirkworld - the former Mr. Hartpence offers an argument that was as insipid TWO YEARS AGO as it is now.
Short form: Is America an Evil Empire? To him, we probably are.
And he wanted to rule us? Hmmm....
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:44 AM 0 backtalks
Saturday, May 07, 2005
PETA Sez, "Eating meat is like killing Jews!"
A friend used to say that PETA meant "People Eating Tasty Animals", but I think a better, more accurate, version would be "Pathetic Ethicless Terrorist Asstacklers". Go read about the ongoing stupidity of PETA's "Holocaust on your plate" campaign on National Review Online.
The purported equation between the Holocaust and normal practices of animal husbandry wasn't presented between the lines by PETA. Nor was it implied subtly in the hope that the viewer would infer a similarity. Rather, comparing Auschwitz to your corner butcher shop was the explicit and unequivocal theme of the entire international pro-vegan campaign.
First there were the photographs. PETA juxtaposed pictures of emaciated concentration-camp inmates in their tight-packed wooden bunks with chickens kept in cages. Worse, in a truly despicable comparison (on several levels), a picture of piled bodies of Jewish Holocaust victims was presented next to a photograph of stacked dead pigs.
The text of the campaign was even worse. In a section entitled "The Final Solution," PETA made this astonishing assertion:
Like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps.
It's old news that the fascist Left says all sorts of nutty things, but why do people who consider themselves "progressive" (yes, that's it, not totalitarian wannabes, nonono) allow this sort of crap to go unquestioned?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:28 AM 0 backtalks
Government Doing Great Things For Us: Raising Gas Prices!
The Corner leads us to The Volokh Conspiracy where we can read about the helpful Maryland regulators who are forcing gas stations to raise prices and stop giving away free coffee for....well, I'm not sure what for. In the middle of the piece is this snip of a column by the great Walter Williams:
A couple of weeks ago, heading down to George Mason University, I pulled into my favorite Wawa gasoline station just off the Bel Air, Md., exit on I-95 South. At each of the 20 gasoline pumps, there was a sign posted that Wawa would no longer dispense free coffee to its gasoline customers. Why? The station was warned that dispensing free coffee put it in violation of Maryland’s gasoline minimum-price law.
Here’s my no-brainer question to you: Do you suppose that Maryland enacted its gasoline minimum-price law because irate customers complained to the state legislature that gasoline prices were too low? Even if you had just 1 ounce of brains, you’d correctly answer no. Then, the next question is just whose interest is served by, and just who lobbied for, Maryland’s gasoline minimum-price law? If you answered that it was probably Maryland’s independent gas-station owners, go to the head of the class.
Next time someone bothers you with their "we need government to protect us from rapacious corporate greed" blather, ask them how they figure such nonsense. Thanks.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:19 AM 0 backtalks
Friday, May 06, 2005
The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster
Darth Vader has a blog, too! KILLER!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:15 AM 0 backtalks
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
How Democrat Racism Fuels the Filibustering of Judges.
Saw a link at Power Line to "Minority Rule?" at the Weekly Standard which explores the REAL reasons behind the unconstitutional tactics the Dems are using to smear and block Dubya's nominees.
You've heard the lies (they're "extreme" and similar rot) but have you noticed that the Dems - the folks who CLAIM to have nothing but love and compassion for women and minorities - are attacking mostly women and minorities and only offering compromises on WHITE MEN? Read on...
Senate Democrats also reportedly proposed a "compromise" of their own: Filibusters against Thomas Griffith and William Myers, nominated for the D.C. Circuit and Ninth Circuit respectively, would be dropped if Republicans would withdraw the nominations of Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. But this bad deal just shows how afraid Senate Democrats are of Brown and Owen.
Why are Senate Democrats so afraid of conservative judicial nominees who are African Americans, Hispanics, Catholics, and women? Because these Clarence Thomas nominees threaten to split the Democratic base by aligning conservative Republicans with conservative voices in the minority community and appealing to suburban women. The Democrats need Bush to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court whom they can caricature and vilify, and it is much harder for them to do that if Bush nominates the judicial equivalent of a Condi Rice rather than a John Ashcroft.
Conservative African-American, Hispanic, Catholic, and female judicial candidates also drive the left-wing legal groups crazy because they expose those groups as not really speaking for minorities or women. They thus undermine the moral legitimacy of those groups and drive a wedge between the left-wing leadership of those groups and the members they falsely claim to represent.
Thus the driving force behind the Democrats' filibuster of conservative minorities and women is political--driven by a desire to protect the party's advantage with minority and women voters and cater to left-wing interest groups. Democrats are also driven in part by their odd belief that "real" African Americans and Hispanics and women cannot be conservative.
The Democrats are the Party who hold a former KKK recruiter in their highest esteem - this fool whose job was to sign people up to oppress and kill minorities - and want to make damn sure that women and minorities are chained to heel, totally dependent upon them and thus programmed to vote for them, lest predation set in.
Slavery will never truly totally end until women and minorities shirk off the mental and figurative chains the Left has placed on them.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:38 PM 0 backtalks
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Bai Ling: Hot, But Dumb...
For someone who was supposedly all excited that she was going to be in a Star Wars movie, Bai Ling really strains credulity with her comments in this Page 6 Celebrity Gossip item in the New York Post.
The sexy Chinese-born Ling, who was supposed to play Senator Bana Breemu in the final installment of the "Star Wars" series, burst into tears at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of "The Beautiful Country" the other night while she was describing how her scene was snipped:
"I just found out that my part has been completely cut out of the upcoming 'Star Wars' movie. I do not know what happened," Ling said.
"I posed for Playboy and it may have been doing that which upset [director] George Lucas. I did not know when 'Star Wars' was going to be released when my manager came to me and said that Playboy wanted me to pose topless."
Ling, who appears in the June issue, continued, "I did not know that Playboy was going to come out the same time as 'Star Wars.' I saw them as separate projects. I see the human body as beautiful and not pornographic, but maybe the 'Star Wars' producers did not see what I did. I am in shock."
LucasFilm spokeswoman Lynn Hale told us that Ling's sole scene was cut more than a year ago. "It was just one scene," she said.
1. Oh, puh-leeze...who DIDN'T know when the release date was. Hasn't that been known since last summer?!?
B. She must not have seen last month's Playboy which had in it's "In Next Month's Playboy" section the mention of the Star Wars babe who's naked. It didn't say who it was and the face wasn't in the shot, but a quick trip to Google to type in "bai ling playboy" got the news that it was her.
3. Even though horny fanboys were excited to see she was going to be in it, it was evident early on that she was going to be just sitting around and talking and I've seen a photo that backed this up. Since Lucas clearly is going to make ROTS more action and less yackingm that the scene got whacked is a no-brainer. We'll see if it turns up on the DVD.
UPDATE: The Head Jedi responds.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GEORGE LUCAS RESPONDS TO ACTRESS BAI LING'S CLAIM THAT HER SCENE WAS CUT FROM THE LAST "STAR WARS" INSTALLMENT BECAUSE OF HER PLAYBOY PICTORIAL
Lucas: "My Daughter Was Cut As Well"
BURBANK, Calif. – May 4, 2005 – In an interview with "Access Hollywood's" Tony Potts, director George Lucas responds to actress Bai Ling's claim that her scene was cut from the final installment of his "Star Wars" tale, "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" because of her spread in Playboy. The interview air[ed] on "Access Hollywood," Wednesday, May 4, 2005 (check local listings for time and station) and can be viewed at http://www.accesshollywood.com.
"My daughter is in that same scene," said Lucas. "My daughter was cut as well."
To further illustrate that cutting Ling's scene was purely an editorial decision, the famed director added, "My other daughter was in another scene and that was cut as well."
Memo to Bai - stop being dumb, it's unattractive.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:41 AM 0 backtalks