BROADSIDES

October 30, 2003

An Atypical Democrat
There's at least one Democrat who refuses to undermine America's war on terrorist nations for partisan reasons. Zell Miller, a Democrat senator from Georgia, has endorsed President Bush for reelection in 2004. Fred Barnes reports:

The next five years "will determine the kind of world my children and grandchildren will live in," Miller said in an interview. And he wouldn't "trust" any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates with governing during "that crucial period," he said. "This Democrat will vote for President Bush in 2004."

When Vermont senator Jim Jeffords switched parties shortly after being reelected as a Republican, the press coverage bordered on the orgasmic. Will Zell's endorsement of Bush's reelection receive the same giddy coverage? Yeah, right.

B. Sides @ 8:26 AM

October 29, 2003

Spell Inept
While Googling a few topics today, I came across a labor union report entitled At the Millenium: An Historical Overview. And what union has difficulty correctly spelling millennium? The Ohio Federation of Teachers.

B. Sides @ 6:25 PM

The National "Pryority"
Slow-witted, pathologically self-centered, lazy, envious, racist, unhappy and resentful. Most Democrats fall into one or more of those categories. Their self-absorption is boundless.

Take for instance Tom Pryor. In a letter to the editor of Salon (via James Taranto), Pryor weighs in on U.S. aid for Iraq:

I'm as big a liberal as the next guy, but I've been out of work for a year now and my unemployment insurance is long gone, and frankly, I couldn't give a flying f--- about the plight of the Iraqi people. I've got my own problems. What the hell have they ever done for me? Why should I subsidize their healthcare when I can't even afford my own?

I was against this war and this president from the beginning, and since nobody seemed to want to listen to me, I really do not feel any personal responsibility for the plight of the Iraqi people. I say let the Republicans choke on their mistakes in Iraq--or better yet, let Fox News, Halliburton and the Trireme Group pay for the costs of reconstruction. If these clowns love privatization so much, let's see how they handle it. Then, after they f--- up, let's let the U.N. handle the rest of it, so we can bring the troops home and start worrying about dumping Bush and fixing the economy, healthcare and the national debt.

If Packer and Berman (and their ilk) still want me to support $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction, how about they pony up $87 thousand for my own personal financial reconstruction?

Behold the Pryor Doctrine. The Pryor Doctrine holds that urgent matters pertaining to national survival and security cannot be addressed until Tom Pryor is provided a job and his living expenses are covered by taxpayers.

Do you care that thousands of innocents were murdered on September 11, 2001? Tom Pryor doesn't.

Are you worried that terrorist nations may attack America again? Tom Pryor isn't.

Do you care if Iraq resumes sponsoring terrorist attacks on the United States? Tom Pryor doesn't

Why?

Because -- his fellow Americans be damned -- Pryor's only priority is himself. In other words, he's a typical Democrat.

Interesting, though, that someone complaining of being unemployed and broke for so long has a computer, internet access and time to read online magazines and write whiny letters to the editor.

B. Sides @ 4:01 PM

October 28, 2003

The Saudis' Man In Washington
Here's something you won't hear on any network newscast. The intrepid Mark Steyn offers a disturbing revelation about an "adjunct scholar" of "the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute", one Joe Wilson:

Remember him? He's the fellow at the center of the Bob-Novak-published-the-name-of-my-CIA-wife scandal. The agency sent him to look into the European intelligence stories about Saddam Hussein trying to buy uranium in Africa. He went to Niger, drank mint tea with government flacks, and then wrote a big whiny piece in the New York Times after the White House declined to accept his assurances there was nothing going on. He was never an intelligence specialist, he's no longer a "career diplomat," but he is, like so many other retired ambassadors, on the House of Saud's payroll. And the Saudis were vehemently opposed to war with Saddam.

Think about that. To investigate Saddam's attempted acquisition of uranium, the United States government sent a man in the pay of the Saudi government. The Saudis set up schools that turn out terrorists. They set up Islamic lobby groups that put spies in our military bases and terror recruiters in our prisons. They set up think tanks that buy up and neuter the U.S. diplomatic corps. And their ambassador's wife funnels charitable donations to the 9/11 hijackers.

But it's all just an unfortunate coincidence, isn't it? After all, the Saudis are our friends. Thank goodness.

Saudi Joe is also openly scheming on behalf of the presidential campaign of Mr. Teresa Heinz née Kerry. It would be more than naïve to assume that Wilson's recent shit-stirring in the press about his CIA-employed spouse was motivated by anything other than presidential campaign politics.

Let's hope that President Bush sees this mess for what it is: the consequence of his leaving Clinton appointees such as CIA director George Tenet in place.

B. Sides @ 8:58 PM

October 22, 2003

Life Is A Slap A Day, Ol Chum
David Gest, the husband of Liza Minnelli, has filed a $10 million suit (that's a civil suit, not an Armani suit) against his estranged wife. Gest alleges that Liza routinely slapped him around.

I always figured Liza was a lush but I never for a moment thought she was a wifebeater.

Ahem.

B. Sides @ 11:51 AM

Albright "Not Good" For America
Madeleine "Not At" Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, was shooting her mouth off again last week undermining America's war on terrorist nations. Nothing new about that. But this time she was in France hawking her pompously titled autobiography "Madam Secretary".

Memo to Madeleine: It's cute and all that you're the first woman secretary of State. Beyond that, no one really cares.

In an interview with a French television network, Albright carped, "It's difficult to be in France and criticise my government. But I'm doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world."

Is Albright suggesting that Clinton's foreign policy was good for the people who were at work in the WTC and the Pentagon on September 11th? Was it good for the passengers aboard the four hijacked airliners?

Here's a foreign policy and defense record that Albright apparently deems good:

* Gutting the defense and CIA budgets
* Supporting the Kyoto Treaty
* Barely retaliating when Saddam attempted to assassinate former President Bush
* Not retaliating when state-sponsored Islamist terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993
* Blaming talk radio for the OKC bombing and ignoring credible reports that agents of Iraq were involved with McVeigh and Nichols
* Looking the other way as China stole America's most sensitive nuclear secrets
* Accepting campaign contributions from China
* Helping North Korea in building nuclear power plants in exchange for Pyongyang's obviously false assurances that it would abandon efforts to acquire nuclear weapons
* Subordinating American troops to UN command in Somalia
* Changing the American mission in Somalia from humanitarian to nation-building without providing the resources to implement the new policy
* Refusing three offers to hand over Osama bin Laden to the U.S.
* Doing nothing when Islamist terrorists bombed two American embassies in Africa
* Repeatedly allowing Saddam to circumvent the terms of the Persian Gulf War surrender
* Appeasing PLO sludgemeister Arafat
* Ordering cruise missile attacks on innocent people in The Sudan and ob deserted terrorist training camps in Afghanistan to divert attention from domestic scandal and quietly paying reparations to the Sudanese.
* Forcibly taking Elian Gonzalez from his Florida relatives and shipping him back to Darth Castro's island concentration camp.
* Doing nothing when state-sponsored Islamist terrorists bombed American troops at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia
* Doing nothing when state-sponsored Islamist terrorists bombed the USS Cole
* There are plenty more examples but I have a limited bandwidth here.

That's the kind of foreign policy record one expects from a president who had the audacity to dismissively tell the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee that "no one cares about foreign policy."

Bill Clinton's foreign policy, which Albright implemented, is a monument to carelessness. And yet Albright sees no problem with labeling Bush's foreign policy record--substantially dismantling al-Qaeda, liberating Iraq, liberating Afghanistan, assembling a large coalition of nations to fight state-sponsored terrorism and, most recently, gaining unanimous Security Council support for Iraqi reconstruction--as not good for the world. Either Albright has a twisted sense of good and bad or she'll say anything to sell that shitty book.

B. Sides @ 11:49 AM

October 15, 2003

Bad Headline, Good News
Note the tone of this Reuters headline: "US forces attacked on Syrian border".

Sounds bad, doesn't it?

You'd never guess from the headline that the U.S. Army repelled a band of thugs who, with guns blazing, tried to enter Iraq from Syria. The thugs could not be reached for comment due to fact that each is dead.

There were no American casualties. However, Reuters points out that a US helicopter landed after "suffering a hydraulic leak." The suffering helicopter is expected to make a full recovery.

B. Sides @ 7:58 PM

October 14, 2003

George Lucas Must Be Stopped
Why must George Lucas keep altering scenes in the Star War movies? Here's his latest revision of the scene where Princess Leia kills Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. Enough, George, enough!!

B. Sides @ 10:03 AM

October 08, 2003

Worst ... Reporting ... Ever
"California Race Too Close to Call as Polls Open" -- Reuters, Tue Oct 7, 1:29 PM ET

Wishful thinking, perhaps?

B. Sides @ 12:02 AM

October 02, 2003

Well, Well, Well!
Drudge links to a very interesting AP report:

Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.

The pro-Government Al-Siyassah, quoting an unnamed security source, said the suspects had been watched by security since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested "in due time." It did not say when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested.

The paper said the smugglers might have had accomplices inside Kuwait. It said Interior Minister Sheik Nawwaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah would hand over the smuggled weapons to an FBI agent at a news conference, but did not say when.

The "unnamed" European country? My guess is it's either Russia or France.

B. Sides @ 12:00 AM

October 01, 2003

Bloomberg Gets Tough On Ashtrays
New York City's economy is in what economists call the shitter. Overtaxed, overregulated and still reeling from a massive, state-sponsored terrorist attack, the Big Apple is stalled.

And what is Mayor Mike Bloomberg's prescription for economic growth?

Tax cuts? Nope.

Deregulation? Nope.

Fining New York businesses for having an ashtray in the office? Yep.

The New York Post reports on the fate of bartender Lisa-Marie Dallas, another victim of Bloomberg's highly selective jihad against tobacco. (Cigar Aficionado functions and other high-brow smoking events are exempt from the snobby mayor's anti-tobacco wrath.) Dallas was fired from her job at a TriBeCa pub for twice ignoring a smoking-ban inspector. The Post reports that "Dallas didn't seem too disappointed with being fired because she, like many other bartenders in the city, has seen bar sales plummet since the smoking ban went into effect. 'Business is bad anyway and it's going to go down even more.'"

It's bad enough that Bloomberg's bullying bureaucrats are dispatched throughout the city to harass smokers at politically powerless businesses. (It's a certainty that you'll never see a report about the smoking-ban getaspo making busts at Nobu).

But now the presence of a mere ashtry is grounds for levying a fine. The Post reports:

Other restaurant managers and owners find many of the inspectors to be nit-picking when it comes to issuing tickets. "I don't disagree with the smoking ban," said Steve Lopez, 28, a manager of Upper East Side bar Tavaru. "But getting tickets for little things you didn't even know about is not fair." Lopez claims inspectors ticketed him for having an ashtray in his office, which is located upstairs from the public bar.

It boggles the mind . . .

New York City is in economic turmoil . . .

Every New Yorker is in the crosshairs of terrorists . . .

And New York's mayor is fining people for having ashtrays.

Does the city charter provide for a recall election?

B. Sides @ 9:25 AM