Friday, January 20, 2006

Hillary, version 3.0


Hillary Clinton, in typical, opportunistic fashion, popped up like one of the moles in the local carny's Whack-a-Mole game Wednesday. She was dispensing hawkish phrases like candy from a Pez dispenser:

...We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to Iran that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons...


Translated: "I will say anything -- anything -- to pretend to be more conservative than the President on national security, since I know that the Howard Dean, anti-war left can't be counted on to win a national election."

Funny, I did a Google search on Hillary's Iran statements prior to Wednesday. Last year, for instance, on Meet the Press, she addressed Iran with all the clarity of an Anna Nicole Smith lecture on cryptography:

MR. RUSSERT: ...Senator Clinton, if Iran just refuses to stop development of their nuclear program, what do we do? ...you would not rule out a military option?

CLINTON: Well, you know, Tim, I don't think that you either rule it in or rule it out. I think that, you know, depending upon circumstances, it's something that, you know, the American government would have to, you know, consider. But, for goodness sakes, I think we are a very long way from beginning to have that conversation, if we ever have to have it.


Well, glad that's cleared up.

The prior Clinton administration's hilarious hijinks with Iran included reportedly provisioning Iranian physicists with blueprints for nuclear weapon componentry -- and that's according to James Risen of the New York Times:

In a [bizarre] scheme that was personally approved by then-President Clinton, the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

The allegation, detailed in the new book "State of War," by New York Times reporter James Risen, comes as the Iranian nuclear crisis appears to be coming to a head, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urging that Israel be "wiped off the map" and his government announcing last week that it will resume uranium enrichment on Monday.

Reports Risen: "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first approved by Clinton."


Not to worry, Bill Clinton personally assured the West just a few months ago that Iran represented no threat at all:

Ex-president Bill Clinton urged Israelis over the weekend not to overreact to comments by newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recommending that Israel be "wiped off the map."

...[Clinton] warned Israel not to act unilaterally when reacting to terrorist threats, saying that "true peace and security can only come through principled compromise."


Someone forgot to tell Hillary the Hawk.

Like previous Democratic Presidential candidates, it's getting awfully hard to track the Clintonistas' position day-to-day. For the Iraq War, against the Iraq War, no strategy on Iran, mega-hawk strategy on Iran.

If Hillary's posturing were any more transparent, you could read the paper through her at night. And the purported base of her support is none too pleased with the new, GI Jane version of Hillary. Or, as I prefer to call her, "Hillary, version 3.0"

Joe Bin Laden wants a truce


The original bad penny just turned up again, seeking a "truce". Joe Bin Laden (oops, the sheer length of his statement made me think of Windy Joe Biden at the Alito hearing) stated:

We do not mind offering you a long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to... We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat.


Mass murder is still permitted, however.

Bin Laden also took time to complain that President Bush is ignoring opinion polls in his handling of the war (unlike Bin Laden fave Bill Clinton):

[W]hat prompted me to speak are the repeated fallacies of your President Bush in his comment on the outcome of US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq, but he objected to this desire and said that the withdrawal of troops would send the wrong message to the enemy.

...To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush's objection to them is false...


Translated: Stop killing us! For the love of... please withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq! We're dying out here... we're dying... stop it already!

That Bin Laden draws succor not from events in the combat theater but, instead, by opinion polls and calls for withdrawal by the American left (Murtha, et. al.) is telling. That's why the majority of Americans continue to ask the left, "whose side are you on?"

Of course, offering such a logical, straightforward argument to the left is like teaching quantum mechanics to a cow.

What Bin Laden's statement does clearly tell us is that Al Qaeda's only hope lies in convincing the American public to elect more Democrats to Congress in 2006.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

The Barrett Report -- Culture of Corruption


Quick: what's eleven years old and worth 23 million smackeroos? No, it's not Michael Jackson's latest play-date. Try the Barrett Report, the final deliverable of a prolonged investigation into corruption within the Clinton administration.

The New York Daily News reports that the Clinton administration actively covered up a tax fraud case against then-HUD secretary Henry Cisneros. Compounding matters, a Hillary compatriot was reportedly involved:

Cisneros was forced to admit in 1999 that he had made secret payments to a mistress before serving as Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Barrett investigated tax fraud charges stemming from those under-the-table payments.

Then-IRS Commissioner Peggy Richardson, a close friend of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), was involved in efforts to quash the probe, a source close to the case alleged.

But Richardson's role was cut from Barrett's report, which went through 26 drafts, because Democratic law firm Williams & Connolly successfully pressured Barrett to remove a section of the report naming her, a source said.


The Captain notes that Hillary's '06 and '08 election plans may be impacted:

The report, if the Daily News has its facts straight, will prove explosive to the 2006 re-election effort of Hillary Clinton, but even more damaging to her expected run at the Presidency in 2008. For instance, Williams and Connolly not only represents Cisneros in this probe, but also has as clients a couple named Bill and Hillary Clinton. It seems as though burying this report and getting a series of redactions helps a number of their clients out, a kind of anti-conflict of interest in this case...

...Someone has a lot of explaining to do. And while she tries to come up with an explanation, this will remind everyone what a "culture of corruption" really looks like, as this will bring up the ethical morass of the Clinton years all over again. The Democrats may well have to rethink their electoral theme for 2006 -- again.


Remember, folks. It takes a village.

What really  happened to Iraq's WMDs?


This Kenneth Timmerman article is enlightening: "Found: Saddam's WMDs." Shhhhhhh.... no one tell the mediacrats.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Some facts and predictions to make you think


From McKinsey's latest (registration required):

Total world cross-border trade as a percentage of global GDP
1990: 18%
2015 (estimated): 30%

Number of regional trade agreements
In 1990: 50
In 2005: 250

Change in Germany's population over the age of 75 from 2005 to 2015: 33%
Increase in tax burden needed to maintain current benefit levels for Germany's future generation: 90%

Change in Japan's population over the age of 75 from 2005 to 2015: 36%
Change in Japan's population under the age of 5 from 2005 to 2015: -13%
Increase in tax burden needed to maintain current benefit levels for Japan's future generation: 175%

Computational capability of an Intel processor, as measured in instructions per second
1971: 60,000
2005: 10,800,000,000

Multiple by which e-mail traffic has grown from 1997 to 2005: 215

Number of US tax returns prepared in India
2003: 25,000
2005: 400,000

Combined market cap of top 150 mega-institutions
1994: $4 trillion
2004: $11 trillion

Growth rate of the total wealth controlled by millionaires in China from 1986 to 2001: 600%
Estimated number of Chinese households to achieve European income levels by 2020 (assuming real income grows at 8 percent annually): 100 million
Total number of workers in China: 750 million
Number employed in China's state-owned companies: 375 million

Part of national GDP spent on the public sector in the United Kingdom in 2004: 20%
UK public-sector spending as a ratio of GDP when transfer payments (for example, pensions) are included: 40%

Proportion of Latin Americans who would prefer a dictator to democracy if he improved their living conditions: 50%

Muslims as a percentage of the global population
2000: 19%
2025 (estimated): 30%

Number of major violent conflicts
1991: 58
2005: 22

Number of coal-fired power plants China plans to build by 2012: 562
Estimated year China will overtake the United States as the number-one carbon emitter: 2025
Estimated year CO2 levels will hit 500 parts per million: 2050
Years since CO2 levels last hit 500 parts per million: 50 million
Average years it takes a CO2 molecule, once produced, to degrade: 100

Understatement of the Week Award


The understatement of the week award -- courtesy James Taranto -- goes to the London Sunday Telegraph for an article about Iran's nutbar president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.

He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.

This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying.


Uhmm, yeah. "Worrying".

Windy Joe Biden's Exploding Hair


Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, describing Windy Joe Biden's speechifying at the Alito hearing:

I've heard from a lot of reporters who said that when Biden started speaking, they took a break -- to go to the bathroom, get a sandwich. They took their time, because they knew that whenever they got back, he'd still be talking and they wouldn't have missed anything important... I wonder if laryngitis would be a terminal condition for him... I wonder if he could stand it if he couldn't talk. The words would just come exploding out of his hair.


Then what would become of Biden's comb-over?

Kennedy Pegs the Hypocrisy Meter


If you're not appalled, it's probably because you've been overwhelmed by the tidal wave of hypocrisy:

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy - who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women - says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women "as fast as I can."

Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Oh, that  nutjob with nuclear missiles


The arithmetic is simple, yet terrifying. A madman preparing for the apocalypse + nuclear weapons + a blinding hatred for the United States, the U.K., and Israel. That equals the situation with Iran as it stands today. Michelle Malkin points to Clayton Cramer's net net:

I do wish that the left would get over their hatred of Bush, the Republican Party, and the United States long enough to notice that there is something a lot worse out there to be concerned about -- people and ideas that make Jerry Falwell look like an ACLU member, and Pat Robertson look sensible.


On the Hugh Hewitt program, Fred Barnes weighed in with his usual Beltway-insider-but-playing-it-close-to-the-vest take:

HH: When the cone of silence comes down around Bushies, are they talking about dealing unilaterally with Iran? Can they do so after the Democratic attack on their credibility?

FB: I think at the end of the day, they're relying on Israel to attack the nuclear facilities of the Iranians, and do enough damage to set back the nuclear program of the Iranians for five to ten years. And I think that's wrong. This is something that the big powers, namely the U.S., have to deal with. But it may be up to Israel at the end of the day.


Just like clockwork, AFP chimed in today with this somewhat chilling report:

MADRID (AFP) - Israel will not allow "a totalitarian" Iran which exports international terrorism to have a nuclear capability, Israeli President Moshe Katsav said in a newspaper interview.

"It would be the first step for atomic bombs to fall into the hands of terrorists of the (Shiite fundamentalist movement) Hezbollah, the (Islamist) Hamas or Al-Qaeda for example... We don't have a conflict of interest with Iran, we don't have a common border but we cannot allow a totalitarian country which exports international terrorism to have a nuclear capability..."


Recall, if you will, last year's news reports that the US sold Israel 100 of its GBU-28 "Bunker Busters". These 4,400 pounders can rip through twenty feet of reinforced concrete or about 100 feet of earth.

Ruh roh. Repeat after me. Oil. Futures.

The war is over, you can come out now


Funny line from John Hinderaker, writing at Powerline:

The Democrats have pretty well thrown in the towel on Judge Sam Alito, and the Washington Post has come out in favor of his confirmation. But the intrepid editorialists at the Minneapolis Star Tribune are still holding out, like post-war Japanese soldiers in the jungle.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Someone pinch me: Katie Couric blasts Senator Bombast


Hold up just a second. You say, Katie Couric hounded Senator Joe Bombast on Good Morning America? What will become of the mediacratic institutions? What will become of the children? ... the children...

RadioBlogger has a great perspective on the GMA tiff:

This morning, at 7:04AM Eastern time, Senator Biden appeared with Katie Couric on the Today Show for about eight minutes. Katie grilled Biden over the personal attacks by some on the Judiciary Committee, causing Mrs. Alito to leave the hearing yesterday in tears. Biden immediately deflects, saying he wasn't in the room when she cried, and saying the system (the hearing process into judicial nominees) has broken down.

First of all, for Joe Biden to say the system has broken down is like an arsonist coming out of a burning building with a spent match in his hands, saying wood is bad because it's flammable.


p.s., The Political Teen has the video.

Unborking the Confirmation Process


Hysterical analogy on the EIB network regarding the Alito nomination:

[The Mediacrats] don't control things anymore. They do not have the power anymore. They may think it's their birthright, but they don't have it, and they realize they can't stop this stuff. Their special interest groups, their wackos, their money, they can't stop it because they can't compete with the guys intellectually. It's not a contest...

...If you've seen the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey where the apes start discovering rocks and bones and they beat the hell out of each other... The apes are the Democrats, and that obelisk that pops up out of nowhere in the middle of the ancient murk, that's Alito, and that obelisk represents wisdom... these people, they've been throwing rocks at Alito all week long, and those rocks have just been bouncing off that obelisk, boomeranging and smacking... Democrats upside the head...

Sunday, January 15, 2006

MIT Reports: The Worst Spyware Bundles

MIT's Honey-Monkeys report in: "When we first started crawling the Web looking for bad downloads last year, we weren't sure what we'd find. I can say with equal confidence that there's also plenty of train wrecks waiting to happen to your PC..."

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Stephen Hayes and the HARMONY documents


The indefatigable Stephen Hayes has latched onto the Iraqi regime's captured documents like a pit-bull on filet mignon. The documents number in the millions and -- a couple of years after their capture -- only 50,000 have been translated. Most are unclassified. Hayes has been pursuing their release for months.

Those that have been disclosed point to stunning revelations regarding pre-9/11 cooperation between Hussein and Al Qaeda. And, as you might expect, the mainstream media couldn't. care. less.

The former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000...

...It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals...

...Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: "There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection..."


Drink deeply from the chalice of wisdom and read the whole thing.

Iran and our uncomfortable options


A single sentence from Victor Davis Hanson's latest is all I need to entice you to read the whole thing.

If Iran can play brinkmanship now on just the promise of nuclear weapons, imagine its roguery to come when it is replete with them.

Jack LaLanne Quotes


Fitness godfather Jack LaLanne turned 91 a few months ago and, in honor of the occasion, I've collected some of his more noteworthy quotes.

LaLanne at 81:

"Coaches told some of the pro athletes who wanted to come to me to stay away or they'd get thrown off the team. They said I'd make athletes muscle-bound. One time... it was during World War II, I took the entire University of California football team out to the sand dunes near Cliff House in San Francisco. I grabbed the heaviest guy and put him on my back, and I ran up the dunes. Then I made each of them do it. Nearly killed them! They were heavin' all over the place!"

"I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest... How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth--and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years."

"Have you seen some of the crap they're selling as exercise equipment now? ...How about that Suzanne Somers? She should have been thrown in jail for selling the piece-of-crap Thigh Master. It just develops a little muscle on the inner thigh. What good is that? And have you seen Tony Little, the guy who screams on TV? He's like an imbecile. He says you need this little thing to hold you while you do a sit-up. Why does the government let him get away with it?"

"You seen my new book? It's a very understandable book, because the average person has an IQ of about two."

"My speaking career is just huge, and I have plans to do some soups and salad dressings for Hunt and Wesson. Jake just called me about doing something with him and Jane Fonda. Everybody wants me for something. It's making it hard to find enough time to train for the 20-mile underwater swim."

"Don't talk age! Age has nothing to do with it. One of my guys who started out at my gym is 87 now, and he still does ten bench-press reps with a hundred-pound dumbbell in each hand. He's training to set a leg-pressing record. I put things in the guy's brain way back when, and now he'll never get away from it."


LaLanne at 84:

"Thoughts are things. Negativity is what kills you... It's tough to do, but you've got to work at living, you know? Most people work at dying, but anybody can die; the easiest thing on this earth is to die. But to live takes guts; it takes energy, vitality, it takes thought. . . . We have so many negative influences out there that are pulling us down. . . . You've got to be strong to overcome these adversities . . . that's why I never stop."

"...most Americans these days—they want to overeat, overdrink, smoke and not exercise, and then they go to the doctor saying, "Give me a magic shot, doctor, so I can feel better and look better." They all want that, but as I said, there is a price to pay. Living is tough, it's hard, and most people, especially religious people, spend too much time on their spirituality, hoping that this spiritual thing is going to do something for them. It doesn't work that way!"

"When I opened my first official health club in 1936, I'd go to Oakland High School at noontime. I'd pick out the fattest kid I could find, and I'd get his phone number and his address and his name, and I'd pick out the skinniest kid I could find, and get his phone number, his address and his name. I'd go to fifty kids' homes, and I'd sign up fifty out of fifty—I never missed. I'd tell their parents, "I'm going to save this kid's life, he's going to have the greatest life anybody can have, and if he doesn't sign up, he's going to miss out on it." Then I'd tell those kids, "If you wear clean clothes, you're not going to be a follower, you're going to be a leader. I want you to cut your hair, I want those clothes to be neat and clean, and if you get lower than a C grade in school, you're OUT." Come to think of it, I was their guru—I was their mother, their father, their best friend, their everything. I knew about their sex life, about how much money they spent, their aches and pains and all their problems. They came to me, I was their consultant, and we were family. And I worked those kids, I'll tell you you wouldn't believe it. It's a wonder some of them didn't die!

So that's how I get my reward. Can you put a price on a life? If you can save somebody's life, get that person to reduce their weight or get these older people working out, well, look what you've done—you've saved a life, the most precious thing there is!"

"Now a lot of people say, "Oh, I don't have the time." Or, "Oh, but I don't like it, Jack." But you know, I try to get to the gym by five in the morning, and I work out for two hours. To leave a hot bed and a hot woman to go to a cold gym—now that's dedication! And I've never heard this once—knock, knock, knock on the window in my gym: "Jack, this is Jesus, I'll work out for you today!""


LaLanne at 90:

"I get so ticked off. People are so misinformed these days. They tell you to eat no starch, no fats, to sell a diet, to make money. Where can you get a better food than nuts and grains? ...Would you give your dog a cigarette and a doughnut for breakfast every morning? People think nothing of giving themselves that for breakfast, and they wonder why they don't feel good."

"The average person who is 70 or 80 is over the hill... They're fat, they're racked with aches and pains. Then you get people over 90 who are running marathons, because they worked at living. I have a lot of energy and you know why? Because I use it. It's use it or lose it, and it's believing in something. Most people just go through life existing, waiting for retirement. That's the death knell."

"If you can't afford a half hour three or four times a week taking care of the most priceless possession, your body, you've got to be sick. You're stupid."

"It's a pain in the backside. I hate to work out. I hate it but I like the results."


LaLanne at 91:

"My whole career, doctors and so-called experts called me a crackpot and charlatan... But I was right."

"I train two hours every day. I do an hour and a half of weight training, then maybe a swim or a walk. I like change. I change my program every 30 days. You know, you get bored. The only thing I don't change is my wife."

"Sitting around on your big fat gluteus maximus talking about the good old days. The good old days are right this second. You've got to exercise VIG-OR-OUSLY! Life is tough. Life is a challenge. Life is a battlefield... . Life is an athletic event, and you must train for it."

"It is unconscionable what's being done to kids. It's a sin. Kids have to be taught to have pride and discipline. Exercise has to be compulsory. What's a good education and making good money if you don't have your health?"

"If man makes it, I don't eat it. I practice what I preach. I eat 10 raw vegetables, 5 pieces of fruit, egg whites and fish for protein, and whole grains. Finally, if you can't have a sense of humor, you're dead."

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Video of the most powerful bomb ever constructed

The device was code-named "Ivan"; it was a multi-stage hydrogen bomb built in only fifteen weeks by engineers in the USSR, using off-the-shelf nuclear weapon components. It was detonated over the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Sea...

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Jack Bauer's Gun-handling Skills


The ever-entertaining MassBackwards notes that Jack Bauer's gun-handling skills have improved dramatically since the show's pilot.

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up


Ted Kennedy is releasing his own children's book:

Meet the latest children’s author, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash, his co-protagonist in “My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C.” Scholastic Inc. will release the book in May.


Bloggers throughout the world have proposed titles for the book and The Lone Star Times even has a draft of the cover. Some of the suggested titles (and, no, none of them are mine) include:

"A toast to man’s best friend"
"It Takes a Car Bridge"
"Mary Jo and Ted's Excellent Adventure"
"Driving Ms. Teddy"
"Ted Swift and His Amazing Flying Car Boat"
"The cow jumped over the moonbat"


Too harsh? Note that Kennedy has -- in real life -- named his dog "Splash". Mary Jo Kopechne remained unavailable for comment.

Brain Calisthenics


Time Magazine features some mental exercises to keep the brain young. Don't hurt yourself.