Specter to US Airways: Work Harder

This is exactly the kind of thing US senators should not be doing, because senators are not in the business of telling businesses how they should operate:

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter sent a letter today to US Airways Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker that once again questions the carrier's decision to pull more flights and jobs from Pittsburgh in January, calling it "the latest development in a pattern of unfulfilled commitments and false expectations created by US Airways regarding the airline's presence in the region."

I don't know when politicians decided it was in their purview to try to manage "the economy" - probably back 'round the Great Depression - but this kind of idiotic meddling is ridiculous. They do this stuff just to show the people "they care" and to be able to tout this crap about during election season as proof "they care" about the economy and etcetera.

Politicians can't do anything to the economy but hurt it.

The Mile High Club

Some things are better left unsaid. That said, officials with Singapore Airlines couldn't keep their mouths shut:

The A380 may have the world’s first airborne double bed, but it won’t be put to the obvious use if Singapore Airlines has its way: “If couples used our double beds to engage in inappropriate activity, we would politely ask them to desist,” said the company’s Stephen Forshaw.

That's Singapore for you: there's a rule for everything.

The Quagmire in D.C.

Actually, whenever there's a quagmire in Congress it's generally good for America:

President Bush on Tuesday slammed Congress for not getting its work done and focusing too much on investigating his administration and repeatedly attempting to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.

“We’re near the end of the year, and there really isn’t much to show for it,” Bush told reporters following a meeting with House GOP leaders.

“The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq,” the president said.

After all, anytime these clowns in DC do anything for you, they also do things to you while taking your money and spending it on things they never campaigned on. Anybody remember anybody campaigning last year for a dramatic expansion of SCHIP? Me neither:

Democrats accused Republicans of hurting kids. Republicans howled about a heavy-handed, uncompromising Democratic majority. And another chance at bipartisan consensus slipped away.

Bipartisan consensus is really just a code phrase for creeping socialism. Every time the right cedes ground to the left on an issue, that is ground that will never be recovered. You think we'll ever get rid of the concept of a "minimum wage?" The government has its claws into so many things you'd be hard-pressed to find something it didn't regulate, tax or administer, so anytime the federal government is too busy bickering with itself to do anything is a good time.

Smoke 'em for the Children

Hey, it's for the children, people. For. The. Children.

Now, can I get my bars and restaurants to be smoke-legal again?

Free Healthcare and Voting with Your Feet

In the UK health care is "free." The government runs the health care system and those who can afford it run abroad for health care:

Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 "health tourists" will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Of course, this information won't change the minds of the socialist Democrats like Hillary Clinton and the rest of the dopes running for POTUS under the donkey label, because they somehow think they're smart enough, good enough, and, gosh darn it, honest enough to do it the right way. The fact that no state-run health system delivers top notch health care on demand and all end up with waiting lists, unavailable procedures and rationing of care will not dissuade those who are insistent on enslaving the rest of us with sub-par care, if only so that some tiny amount of uninsured people can get health care.

Better that everyone suffers together rather than some benefit unfairly, only will our elitist leaders who would impose this system on us submit to the care such a system would deliver, or will those in the government continue with benefits unavailable to the average citizen of the republic?

The War in Iraq is Lost

Bin Laden and al Qaeda admit defeat. They won't surrender, of course, so it'll take a little while longer to kill off the last of the dead-enders. Oddly, the United States won't admit victory because any future terrorist attacks in that country will be used by the socialist Democrats and mainstream media to belittle talk of victory and bolster their position that the US can't win.

Don't Know Much About History?

Ken Ilgunas went to college and graduated. He majored in history. He now lives at home with his parents. His problem:

My loan payments can’t wait much longer, and soon I must leave home to find work that doesn’t compromise my integrity. Although I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I had declared as an accounting major and got a cushy job punching numbers somewhere, I’ll take my history major, my debt and my mom’s cooking any day of the week.

Let's see if we get this straight: his loan's are coming due so he's got to find a job that doesn't compromise his integrity - whatever that means. However, in his musings on how life could have been different had he chosen a different major [because " There are no well-paying — let alone paying — jobs for history majors."], he says he'd rather be an unemployed, debt-ridden history major "any day of the week." So, not only can't this pinhead recognize reality when it bitchslaps him, he goes on to say he prefers his reality when it bitchslaps him.

History majors can't get jobs? What kind of job do you think you're going to get when you set down that path? What? He thought he'd pop out of college with a BA in "history" and get a job doing "history work" for the local "history company?" Did he spend four years in college thinking that after graduation, he'd be at happy hour in some TGIF in Buffalo, drinking a Bud Lite in his brown sportcoat with elbow patches, when some little hottie would start chatting him up and ask him what he does and he'd come back with, "I'm an historian"?

And all of this comes in an editorial about why the federal government should assume more of the responsibility for funding college educations for young people. You know, you can educate some people but you can't make them smart.

A Normal Day, Phinqy Style

The Phinqy's most recent headlines, showcasing what the editors of that news gathering organization figure defines city/metro life most accurately and importantly (link only for now):

BREAKING NEWS

Young man shot to death in Center City pizzeria

Police seek driver who killed deliveryman

More turmoil follows fatal S. Phila. fire

Suspect in double Lower Bucks killing is arrested

Let's see: murder, murder, death and murder. Sound like how your day is going to unfold?

Do Democrats Hate Propserity?

Seems likely, seeing as how a prosperous America means most folks have little use for government services. Otherwise, with a government awash in cash beyond its wildest dreams, why would a socialist Democrat like Charlie Rangel propose taxing your income before taxing your adjusted gross income?


Why don't Democrats want Americans to keep the money they earn?

Today's Top News!

Philly dot com wants you to be informed. Today's leading stories about life in the greater Philadelphia region:

LATEST HEADLINES

Tree crushes man

Arrested after 28 years as a fugitive

N.J. agency faulted in '06 slaying of infant

Police in A.C. cut off alleged thief's streak

Council airs 'stop and frisk' views

Death, crime, murder-and-government-ineptitude, crime, and "should we prevent crime with draconian measures?" Sound like the reality you live in? Be afraid, be very afraid: the world is a dangerous and scary place...

Declare Victory in Iraq? Over the Media, That Is

Maybe:

This is the way "Bush's War" will end in the media: not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Have you noticed the decreasing number of stories in the media about the war in Iraq? It's almost as if the msm hates the fact the US is winning and maybe won.

Cultural Insanity

In Vancouver, Canada, the city council has banned cigarette smoking almost everywhere inside the city. However, it's still permitting a certain grievance group the ability to smoke tobacco:

Vancouver's hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.

In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for the city's Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption.

Typically, the city council is banning smoking of cigarettes because they're evil - er, harmful to non-smokers who have to breath in the second-hand smoke (a lie) - but when Muslims complained forcefully, the city council caved and agreed to allow hookah parlors to continue to allow smoking tobacco. There's no logic at all to this.

As I wrote below, this is one of the battlespaces being fought in the cold civil war of the once great Western powers. Nannystatists and socialists bent on controlling the lives of the citizens of those countries are slowly regulating what can and can't be done, and where it can and can't be done. Odd that the Muslim community in Vancouver rose up to resist this government takeover while the non-immigrant Canadians who live there passively allowed some of their liberty to be stripped from them.

The same thing is happening here in America. Steyn has much more.

The Cold Civil War

Mark Steyn notes the peculiar nature of the political discourse in America and nails the current state of the culture:

A year before this next election in the U.S., the common space required for civil debate and civilized disagreement has shrivelled to a very thin sliver of ground. Politics requires a minimum of shared assumptions. To compete you have to be playing the same game: you can't thwack the ball back and forth if one of you thinks he's playing baseball and the other fellow thinks he's playing badminton. Likewise, if you want to discuss the best way forward in the war on terror, you can't do that if the guy you're talking to doesn't believe there is a war on terror, only a racket cooked up by the Bushitler and the rest of the Halliburton stooges as a pretext to tear up the constitution.

Americans do not agree on the basic meaning of the last seven years. If you drive around an Ivy League college town -- home to the nation's best and brightest, allegedly -- you notice a wide range of bumper stickers, from the anticipatory ("01/20/09" -- the day of liberation from the Bush tyranny) to the profane ("Buck Fush") to the myopically self-indulgent ("Regime Change Begins At Home") to the exhibitionist paranoid ("9/11 Was An Inside Job"). Let's assume, as polls suggest, that next year's presidential election is pretty open: might be a Democrat, might be a Republican. Suppose it's another 50/50 election with a narrow GOP victory dependent on the electoral college votes of one closely divided state. It's not hard to foresee those stickered Dems concluding that the system has now been entirely delegitimized.

Now, most of the people in this country are totally outside of this political struggle for the control of the country and won't start tuning in to the "debate" until sometime late next year just before the elections. That's when today's socialist Democrats will tuck the socialist aspects of the party in a closet and pretend to be populist Democrats out to help the little guy.

And that's the nature of the struggle: those in favor of liberty versus those who want to turn the country into a social welfare state. This struggle has been going on for about 40 years, although it was all set in motion when FDR began redistributing the wealth of the nation with his various public works projects. But the 60s generation of political radicals that took over the Democratic Party and started dragging it into socialist totalitarianism have reached the zenith of their power over the past decade and are in decline. So, in the last gasps of their ideology they are trying to make permanent their legacy by remaking the country into a workers' paradise.

The left has lost control of the narrative and the information is flowing to the people. Not nearly fast enough, as was witnessed by the 2006 elections in which the Democrats ran as Washington reformers bent on fiscal restraint and honest government, which they have not delivered nor attempted to. But as more people tune to talk radio and the blogosphere, more people will come to understand that there is a news narrative at work hand-in-hand with socialists disguised as Democrats and "progressives." Indeed, the country would not be in the position it is today were it not for the nation's news media outlets hiding what the Democrats have been up to for the last four decades.

So, what you have is an ideological war at work in America, with the left working furiously to undermine the Constitution and impose soft-totalitarian socialism on the country, enforce multi-cultural political correctness rules and re-distribute the wealth of the nation as they see fit. Fighting back are some in the Republican Party - though not all, the party is not nearly as ideologically unified as the Democrats - and a "coalition" of similarly-interested people disgusted with both parties. Most of the people in the United States of America want the government to stop taking their money and leave them the heck alone.

Now, just because most of the people in the country don't want to go the social welfare state route doesn't mean the republic won't fall and become one. Already, it is well down the path to that destination and probably has no hope of undoing what has come to pass. My hunch is that every step taken forward is irrevocable: government is about doing things, not undoing things.

Will the Cold Civil War turn hot? Only if those on the left actually succeed in doing away with actual civil rights, such as in banning or severely limiting access to guns. Or actually forbidding some types of speech. Otherwise, it will be fought on the airwaves and urls, with one side trying to cloud voters minds and the other trying to focus light on the actual issues. The S-CHIP debate is emblematic of this struggle, with Democrats arguing that the program is designed to help poor children get medical care and Republicans arguing it is merely the latest incremental step by government into controlling the nation's health care system by expanding the scope of citizens able to enroll in the program to include those who are neither poor nor children.

Steyn has gotten it exactly right in that we live in a country in which the opposing political sides do not agree on the fundamental facts of the debate. What he doesn't say is that one side [Dems] spends all its time lying to the people about the other side [Repubs]. So, not only do the two sides not agree, one side won't even play fair and debate the issues honestly.

And the truly frustrating thing about this ideological cold civil war is that America is also in an ideological struggle and actual hot war with radical Islamists who, out of convenience, are allied with the Democratic Party. But the socialist Democrats are so totally focused on taking over the country that they are ignoring the threat to the country and, on occasion, aiding and abetting the enemy.

So, you've got to hope, at the end of it all, there'll still be a country at all.

The Lefty Test

Are you a "liberal Democrat" or something else (socialist, Stalinist, enviro-totalitarian, anti-humanist, anti-West, & etc...)? Via Tim Blair via Andrew Bolt:

If you think Bush is a fascist and Castro is a progressive, you are not a democrat. If you think cultural traditions can trump women’s rights, you are not a feminist. And if you think antisemitic rants are simply an expression of frustration with American and Israeli policy, you have learnt nothing from history.

There are so many more tests, too. If you think the Bush Administration is shredding your civil rights, find the civil rights you no longer have and describe how you lost them. And etc...

Coming Soon: Calls for Impeaching Bush

Iran is pretending to be considering for calling for the Republican Party to be charged with war crimes. Or something. Let's see if I get this straight: the Democratic Party is aligned - unwittingly - with Iran, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, al Aqsa, and Fatah in trying to unseat Bushitler and bring the Republican Party to its knees. Or worse.

Tell me again, who's running Congress? Bush Derangement Syndrome is in worldwide pandemic mode.

A Typical Day in Philly - Philly dot com Style

The top stories of the day as of now:

LATEST HEADLINES

Girl, woman die in S. Phila. fire - 6 min

Ex-Penn student’s murder trial heading to jury - 28 min

Student recants rape claim, accused man released - 41 min

Del State victim dies of her wounds - 43 min

Housing inspectors' day: Guns and bribery

» More headlines

Death, murder, rape, death and scary guns and corruption. This is what the mainstream media sells every day as normal life. Ask yourself, how much of that narrative is in your life on any given day?

Hollywoodland and America

Hollywood doesn't get it:

Audiences continued to choose merriment over misery as the latest crop of sober Academy Awards hopefuls, among them Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone," Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal's "Rendition" and Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro's "Things We Lost in the Fire," debuted with so-so to dismal numbers.

Whether it's the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, deadly news out of Pakistan and Myanmar or Friday's stock market tumble, moviegoers seem disinterested in more bad news at theaters with films about child-kidnapping, torture, widowhood and heroin addiction.

Now, the instant Hollywood makes a pro-America movie about soldiers killing terrorists and saving the day, that's the day Hollywood makes a billion dollars. People know all these "Oscar movies" suck and are boring, and the average person doesn't want to sit through a two-hour lecture on what a bad place America is. Plus, who wants to watch movies about "child-kidnapping, torture, widowhood and heroin addicition?" NOBODY.

Although, you have to hand it to the a-hole AP reporter who thinks audiences aren't turning out for these lousy ideas for movies because of "Iraq and Afghanistan, deadly news out of Pakistan and Myanmar or Friday's stock market tumble." Not a single issue on that list kept a single person out of a single theater over the weekend.

If anything, Hollywood needs to collapse and turn to dust so that it can rise again from its ashes and, maybe, deliver something other than 90% recycled formulaic uninteresting crap. The kind of groupthink that goes on in that industry is saddening.

Idiot's Rule

In San Fransisco the city is taking steps toward creating rooms across the city where people will be able to use illegal drugs under the supervision of a nurse. No, seriously:

City health officials took steps Thursday toward opening the nation's first legal safe-injection room, where addicts could shoot up heroin, cocaine and other drugs under the supervision of nurses.

That said, it is illegal to use a perfectly legal substance - cigarettes - in bars because the idiots who rule the state think second-hand smoke is dangerous. It's not. Nobody ever died of breathing second-hand smoke. Nobody ever overdosed smoking cigarettes

Still, those addicted to illegal drugs receive the official compassion of the state while those who are addicted to legal cigarettes are shamed, over-taxed and regulated into the margins of society.

Movie 'Redacted' Gets "Redacted"

I couldn't care less if the photos that were cut from the film Redacted were left in. But this idiot can't be serious if this is what he truly believes:

But De Palma says he is upset that the documentary-style drama -- its name derived from his view that news coverage of the war has been incomplete -- has been censored.

Obviously, De Palma thinks not enough bad news has been reported when, in fact, it is the good news that the mainstream media has been unwilling to report. His film will be seen by few and many more will understand the events depicted in the movie are an aberration of what normally goes on in Iraq, not common practice.

Keeping them Clueless

The biggest job of the mainstream media in modern America is to keep the public from knowing as little as possible about a host of issues, mainly those connected with Democratic/socialist party agenda items and politicians. Additionally, the mainstream media has endeavored to confound the common person's understanding of the events that led to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. One way this is done is to say that Bush lied about why we invaded Iraq and to point out that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 while inferring that Bush has linked Iraq with the 9/11 plotters.

And complete buffoons like Dick Polman are to blame for subtly pushing this linkage along with phony outrage over it:

But even though Rudy Giuliani continues to have problems with the religious right, there is ample polling evidence that he is a popular with another sizeable segment of the population:

The ignorant.

I know that sounds harsh. But, as I mentioned several weeks ago, there is still a huge pool of people who inexplicably persist in believing - despite all the massive empirical evidence to the contrary - that Saddam Hussein plotted 9/11. Last month, a New York Times/CBS News poll determined that 33 percent of Americans believe Hussein was “personally” involved. And last June, a polling firm sponsored by Newsweek put that percentage at 41.

This clown Polman has a newspaper column and a blog and this is all he's ever willing to say about this. Never does he write a column de-linking 9/11 and Saddam Hussein and then laying out the actual links to terrorism Saddam Hussein had and link that to why the US invaded Iraq. Polman isn't interested in informing his readers, only confusing them.

Polman needs the masses kept ignorant or else they won't for Democrats/socialists.

Ruining Chicago One Nanny Law at a Time

They always say it's for the health of the people, but never, ever does any governmental body that bans smoking from somewhere show any scientific or medical proof that second-hand smoke is dangerous [it's not]. Now, Chicago is banning smoking from certain outside areas. Outside. You know, where all that fresh air is that immediately dilutes second-hand smoke and carries it away on the breeze, fracturing it into billions of tiny particles unnoticeable to anyone.

But it guess worse for Chicagoans as the parks board is now pitting citizen versus citizen in the enforcement of the law:

Enforcement relies on citizens to turn smokers in to police.

How many fistfights will this law start? And, will police officers actually respond to a 9-1-1 call from a hysterical anti-smoker trying to "enforce" the law?

9-1-1- Operator: "Hello, what's your emergency?"

Idiot: "I'm in the park on second avenue and there's a guy smoking a Camel Light, and that's against the law."

9-11: "Did you ask him to put it out and point out that it is now illegal to smoke in city parks?"

Idiot: "Uhh, no, I thought we were supposed to call the police."

Once you let idiotic nitwit nannystatist liberals run your cities, this is what you get, with an ever-tightening noosed of restrictions and forbidden activities that no politician ever ran a campaign on and no citizen ever asked for.

Brazil Nuts

Does anybody really like them? I swear the nut companies that make cans of mixed nuts only put them in there to piss people off. What, are they supposed to be good for me so the nut co's think they're doing me a favor by making me eat them?

Now, a hazelnut is a nut I could get behind as a replacement. Who doesn't like hazelnuts?

Alternate Reality America

Democrats, leftists, socialists, journalists and a lot of other ists have spent most of the Bush years spinning any and all economic news as bad or about-to-get-bad or not-as-bad-as-expected or worse-than-predicted. Almost never is economic news reported as "good" or "better." So, is anyone surprised by this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Nearly half of Americans feel the U.S. economy is in a recession, marked by a significant decline in economic activity, according to a survey released Thursday.

The poll by the CNN-Opinion Research Corporation found that while 46 percent of Americans hold that belief, 51 percent don't.

This despite the record stock market gains, low unemployment, low inflation, and low mortgage interest rates.

Reality Check

According to the Phinqy:

WASHINGTON _ Is Arlen Specter the funniest celebrity in Washington?

Celebrity? I thought he was a politician. Now, if only he really were a celebrity instead of a politician...

The Dirty Bomb Hypothesis

Interesting analysis of the future dirty bomb attack.

Finding the Cloud Above the Silver Lining

You have to wonder what the hell is wrong with journalism when it comes to the war in Iraq:

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Too much death is bad; too little death is bad. Lose, lose. For America. Is the media totally staffed with complete and total idiots?

Good Question, Easy Answer

Andrew Bolt asks:

How is it that most of the Western media covering Iraq never saw success coming?

Well, first off, the Official Vietnam War Reporting Template requires journalists to assume the US is on the wrong side and will/must lose; second, since the war effort is headed by a Republican, the media must work against the effort.

For the media, victory was never in the cards. At least, not for the United States.

Getting the Story Wrong - As Usual

The WaPo reports on a speech by Gen. Sanchez in which he denounces the press coverage of the combat ops in Iraq, and somehow the WaPo reports that Sanchez gave a speech denouncing Bush and his management of the war efforts. Amazing. Here's the first half of the speech's transcript, and here's a taste of what the general actually said:

YOUR UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCURATELY AND PROMINENTLY CORRECT YOUR MISTAKES AND YOUR AGENDA DRIVEN BIASES CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CORROSIVE ENVIRONMENT. ALL OF THESE CHALLENGES COMBINED CREATE A MEDIA ENVIRONMENT THAT DOES A TREMENDOUS DISSERVICE TO AMERICA. OVER THE COURSE OF THIS WAR TACTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT EVENTS HAVE BECOME STRATEGIC DEFEATS FOR AMERICA BECAUSE OF THE TREMENDOUS POWER AND IMPACT OF THE MEDIA AND BY EXTENSION YOU THE JOURNALIST. IN MANY CASES THE MEDIA HAS UNJUSTLY DESTROYED THE INDIVIDUAL REPUTATIONS AND CAREERS OF THOSE INVOLVED.

And still, the MSM blunders on.

NYT Wants to Keep Illegals Poor and Segregated

Let's see, cracking down on illegal aliens in the workplace creates more and better-paying jobs for citizens of America:

Across the country, the federal effort to flush out illegal immigrants is having major effects on workers and employers alike. Some companies have reluctantly raised wages to attract new workers following raids at their plants.

After several hundred immigrant employees at its plant in Stillmore, Ga., were arrested, Crider Poultry began recruiting Hmong workers from Minnesota, hiring men from a nearby homeless mission and providing free van transportation to many workers.

So far, Smithfield has largely replaced the Hispanics with American workers, who often leave poorly paid jobs for higher wages at the plant here.

Of course, for the New York Times, there has to be a dark cloud to this silver lining:

Several of the newly hired workers in the van — they pay $40 a week for the ride — said they were thinking of quitting, unhappy about having to commute so far and work so hard. At the plant, where the pay averages around $12 an hour, many spend hour after hour slitting hogs’ throats, hacking at shoulders and carving ribs and loins. At the end of their shifts, many workers complain that their muscles are sore and their minds are numb.

So, these jobs are perfect for illegal Mexicans, but only so long as the pay is low and the commute short. What's not racist about that?

And the Winner Is...

Al Bore, err... Gore. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Previous winners here: illustrious company or notorious?

Now, how does making a fauxumentary about "global warming" affect "peace"? More peace, less peace, any peace? Indeed, what the hell is "peace" anymore?

Getting it Bass Ackwards

Will Bunch, in an effort to continue the ongoing belittling of Bushitler, now blames the Bush administration for leaking the last video of "bin Laden" while it was still a state "secret:"

The question, then, is this: Why would the Bush administration -- which has set new low standards for secrecy on so many other matters where the public has a right to know -- be so eager to get this new bin Laden video out into the public domain? Well, in the big picture -- crazy as it sounds, given his 2001 pledge to catch bin Laden "dead or alive" -- rare public appearances by the al-Qaeda leader have tended to boost Bush here at home. Many think that bin Laden's prior video -- released just three days before the 2004 presidential election -- gave Bush the victory over John Kerry by reminding voters of the terror issue.

In this case, in particular, Bush was clearly eager to use the bin Laden video -- just hours after it was leaked to the media -- to make political points on the issue that dominated the news that week, the run-up to the report by General David Petraeus, and Bush's campaign for a long-term troop presence in Iraq.

It takes an amazing amount of chutzpah to blame Bush and his administration with leaking the video when the Bush administration has, so I've been constantly told, fought to keep everything secret and it's only been the brave dissenters in the government who've leaked out secret stuff that has fought the Bushies. Here, Bunch assumes, and he knows better, that only the Bush cronies knew of the video - that nobody else anywhere in government knew but Bush's best and most trusted compatriots - and that Bush leaked the video himself to boost his case for the war in Iraq.

Shameless, is Bunch. More likely it is that an anti-Bushie in the CIA or state department leaked the video to try to shame Bush and devalue Petraeus' testimony by showing the uncaptured bin Laden taunting the US on the 9/11 anniversary. That Bush mentioned the video in a speech shortly after it was leaked is not evidence of Bush's culpability, but of his adaptability in the PR war against al Qaeda and the Islamofascists.

California Town Declares Martial Law

Well, almost:

Thought to be the first of its kind in California, the ordinance declares secondhand smoke a public nuisance and extends the city's current smoking ban to include multi-unit, multi-story residences.

Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont is the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.

You see that? The governments of the country are now giving up claiming that second-hand smoke is dangerous, it's now enough to be a "public nuisance." Of course, we already know that second-hand smoke is essentially harmless, so the anti-tobacco fascists have to go this route, being unable to prove their claims of health ills.

Did anyone elect anybody in Belmont, Calif. to tell them they should be forbidden from smoking in their homes?

Black Enlistment in the Military Keeps Declining

The alternate reality black Americans live in:

Though the Army would likely consider them ideal recruits - young, fit, high school-educated - each said the Iraq war and Bush's presidency, particularly after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, has kept them out of uniform.

"Why would we go over there and help them [Iraqis], when [the US government] can't help us over here?" he said, referring to the cleanup after Katrina.

The war "is unnecessary," Jackson said. "It's not our war. We got our own war here, just staying alive," he added, noting his hometown of Philadelphia has racked up more than 200 homicides so far this year, most involving young black men.

Blame the media and the Democratic Party for creating a false America which blacks don't want to defend by enlisting in the military.

Pittsburgh's Choices

Will Pittsburgh ever separate itself from the ruinous reign of the Democratic Party? Who knows. Tonight there's a mayoral debate with the four candidates seeking the job. Only one is a serious candidate, the others are kids, two of whom are still rebelling against "the man."

Sucker, Minute ... Birth

Proof there's no shortage of idiots willing to separate themselves from their cash:

Stephanie Wegman wanted a puppy, and the cash-strapped college student thought she had found a bargain on the Internet.

The senior at Santa Clara University in California exchanged e-mails with James Moore, who was offering his puppy free to a good home because as a missionary recently assigned to Africa, he was too busy to properly care for his long-haired Cavalier King Charles spaniel.

Ms. Wegman could have the puppy if she promised a loving home and sent $300 to cover shipping, Mr. Moore wrote in an e-mail.

You can go to the local pound and get a dog for a tenth that. But, c'mon, who ships a dog to a customer? From Africa. Are people really this stupid.

Oh, right, this chick is.

The Fed's Semi-Secret Database

At the local grocery store pharmacy, I wanted to buy some generic Sudafed to fight this nasal cold I've got going on. The stuff I had on hand at home used a different chemical that did squat and I couldn't find my travel kit bag to root out the emergency/travel supply, so it was off to the store. Sitting where the boxes of Sudafed and fauxdafed were little cards that said, "Take card to pharmacy for product."

I thought, "What the eff?"

"What's this about?" I asked as I handed the card to the pharmacist.

Turns out that the soft totalitarianism of the coming welfare state was at work making it difficult to purchase legal pharmaceutical products because, in this case, you can turn Sudafed into crystal meth. Apparently, you need a lot of it to make meth, but that didn't stop the federal government from imposing new laws on the law abiding public to hand over an official ID for the feds to use to create a database to cross reference purchases to see who's buying fauxdafed and whatnot.

It's the never-ending, never-winnable War on Drugs creeping totalitarianism slowly working to strip you of your rights and liberties.

The Federal Funding of Airwaves Conundrum

Wesley Clark believes the lie that Rush Limbaugh smeared the troops when he called idiots like Micah Wright and Jesse MacBeth "phony soldiers" because they faked their military records. Sounds phony to me. Clark says Rush should be taken off the Armed Forces Network airwaves in punishment because those airwaves are federally funded.

Okay, but only so long as we stop federal funding of NPR. Let's see if those leftist hacks can make it in the commercial world.

Pouring on the Tax Burden

When bureaucracies attack:

Everyone agreed that public transit deserves stable funding. Nobody likes to see property taxes increase.

What bothers local restaurant and bar owners is that the state legislators' menu of solutions for Allegheny County lists only two other choices -- a tax on poured drinks and a tax on rental cars,

What's at stake is some funding issues with the local public transit system - and in Pennsylvania, every public transit system is facing severe budget shortfalls. How do the various governmental bodies try to solve the problem? Do they increase the fares to make the riders pay for the system? Hah, no, of course not. In all cases, governments look elsewhere.

And realizing they've pretty much taxed the hell out of just about everything, some "clever" bureaucrat came up with the idea to tax beverages that are poured. If you let them, they'll tax anything.