The Empress Strikes Back!

Teresa Heinz Blames the Media

Addressing Stanford University's "Whole Earth Symposium" last week, the first lady wannabe said that the press was largely responsible for the perception that her husband ignored the environment during the 2004 campaign, according to the campus newspaper, the Stanford Report.

She insisted that John Kerry discussed energy issues every day and claimed that she frequently talked about "sustainability." But their comments were not reported.

What did get covered was the fact that the Heinz Kerrys' owned a gas guzzling private jet, a yacht Teresa bought for her husband, four SUV's and five giant mansions that burn up thousands of gallons of oil each year to heat and cool.

But Mrs. Heinz didn't address questions about how her lifestyle conflicted with her environmental beliefs.

That stuff's for the little people, dahlink!

Kofi tries to get by with a little help from his friends

C'mon kids! Dig deep for the kleptocrats!

Surprise, surprise, surprise! As Kofi's big PR offensive ambles along, who shows up but the United Nations Foundation spending some of Ted Turner's vanished billion on http://www.oilforfoodfacts.org/! If you want to know the UN party line, that's the place; but I'll save you much tedious reading of bureaucratese by providing the Cliff's Notes version.

• Nasty US reporters and Congressmen are being real mean to Kofi Annan over Oil-For-Food, but that's not fair because:


• No one has been convicted of anything yet


• And even if the UN kleptocrats were dipping into the till, Saddam was getting money elsewhere too


• Hey, Kofi Annan's a busy guy!

Sounds like an affirmative defense, fer sure! Gosh, the UN Foundation really knows how to put lipstick on the pig.

But here's even better news - it turns out that the UN Foundation is all trendy and modern, so they spent some more of Ted's bucks and now have themselves a blog with posts and a blogroll and everything! Let's see what's hot with the UN Weenies:

Climate Change Event at the United Nations

Oooh - press release time!

Student Spearheads 'Measles Initiative' Fund-Raiser

Awwww!

Darfur Latest: Annan Urges Immediate Action

Humor too!

Media Matters: FOX Special Smears Kofi Annan

Ted Turner's flying monkeys get some help from George Soros' flying monkeys!

I tell ya, I'm going to be stopping by there often for the latest poop! Of course, I'm still pining for posts on Teresa Heinz's blog too.

Testing 1 2 3

Is Blogger alive this morning or casters up? It's always an interesting question ... and a surprise.

Update: Well, it's sort of working, but it isn't exactly Michael Moore at the buffet table.

Surely they jest!

Britain a hotbed for illicit TV downloads:

Britain has emerged as the world's biggest market for downloading pirated television, driven by tech-savvy fans who are unwilling to wait for popular U.S. shows such as "Desperate Housewives."

Today's Hoot!

(Via Instapundit) Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Consider it a valuable life lesson, losers.

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said.

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”

Those guys have a pretty good emergency plan.

Irma Bunt Alert!

And in the latest SPECTRE News - Soros Funded Stewart Defense:

Billionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush's conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.

Today's Democrat party is the party of Barbara Boxer, Lynne Stewart, and Howard Dean. And George Soros is the host.

Deano - the gift that keeps on giving

"We have to never be afraid to say what we believe."

Good ole Howard Dean managed to step in it even before he was annointed - Dean Continues Dem’s Noble Racist Tradition:

On 11 Friday 2005, Dean (during his never-ending rants against all Republicans) said to the assembled members of the Democratic Black Caucus: "You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here!" The shock, here, is that they laughed! Did they not hear what their leader said? Dean then went on to say: "We have to never be afraid to say what we believe." Hmmm. What the Dems “believe” appears to be that only minorities are in the positions of “inferior” hotel staff workers. Apparently, Dean and his colleagues don’t believe that non-minorities would “lower” themselves to take these jobs. What is even more shocking and incomprehensible is that the more the Dems humiliate minorities, the more they seem to accept it. Were a Republican to make any of the above statements (or any remotely close to them), they would be tarred and feathered and run out of DC on a rail!

Ah, it's that famous Donk rapport with the "little people". Howie probably picked his up during his childhood on Park Avenue and in the Hamptons. I can't wait to hear from him on minstrel shows.

Entropy is constantly increasing

Zoo ditches gay penguin plan:

A German zoo has abandoned a plan to break up homosexual penguin couples after protests from gay rights groups.

The Bremerhaven Zoo in northern Germany had earlier flown in four female Humboldt penguins in an attempt to encourage three all-male couples to reproduce.
...
Gay groups had protested against "the organised and forced harassment through female seductresses" in an open letter to Bremerhaven Mayor Joerg Schulz and called on him to stop the program.

Seductresses! Woohoo!

The zoo came up with the ingenious idea of trying to convert the males by flying in some exotic birds from Scandinavia.

Swedish bikini team alert! But there was some bad news.

"The relationships were obviously too serious," Ms Kueck said of the same-sex penguin couples. Instead of flirting with the opposite sex, they seemed to prefer sitting on the stones, which substitute for the eggs they will never be able to lay.

The zoo, which promotes itself with the slogan "encounters of a special kind", initially wanted to wait until spring 2006 to see if their international matchmaking efforts spawned results.

Now the gay penguins are being allowed to live the way they want.

As for the Swedish females - new male penguins have been drafted in to attend to their heterosexual needs.

All's well that ends well.

I'm looking forward to the part where the virgins go in the volcanoes!

Wizbang! slaps the ecoweenies and Drudge for purveying their nonsense.

Time out for sports

Blogger has been sucking rather a lot for the last few days. Posting will be slower and formatting glitches will eventually be corrected.

An odd specimen indeed

And Tim Blair bags it:

The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall seems delighted that someone has finally stood up to democracy’s brutal progress.

Sheesh, Mugabe fans are hard to find.

Tim also points to JunkScience.com who have put up real time counters showing the amazing efficacy of the Kyoto Protocol which went into effect today for those who are sufficiently gullible.

Still operating under the same old misconception

WHO IS THIS "GOVERNMENT"? And where do they get their walking around money? The WaPo's Sara Goo provides the clip and Orrin Judd says:

If you miss it the first time, try reading that sentence again.

Good thing for us they aren't real bright

Mam"do'h!" Habib

It's all turning rapidly to sh*t for former Australian Gitmo resident Mamdouh Habib, freshly returned to this wide brown land under what appears to be some sort of US military "catch and release" program for suspected terrorists.

Upon touchdown in Sydney, the Egyptian-born Habib promptly followed the Al Qaeda training manual and the Green Party manifesto (not that there's much daylight between them) by alleging torture. He did this on Channel Nine's "60 Minutes"program, and the Australian Left, as is their natural Pavlovian response, declared Habib a saint, a family man torn from the bosom of his family and savagely beaten by the Bushitler reigime for the crime of being a Muslim.

But in the last 48 hours, the script has started to veer dangerously off-message, and things are starting to look rather bleaker for Mr Habib, who shortly may wonder if he'd have been better off staying in Cuba.

Ruh Oh! Lots of low comedy by following the link. Gosh, I was thinking they just should have shot the punk, but maybe releasing him is really a sneaky ploy!

Wipe Out!

Toilet paper suppliers in a flush

SHANGHAI - Surging demand for toilet paper in China has some of the nation's suppliers in a flush, state press said.

"I'm happy to see many young people adopt paper tissues for the convenience, which is a sign that reflects our social development and has helped improve our industry," Wang Yueqin, vice-director of Shanghai Paper Trade Association, said.

But Wang, quoted in the China Daily, said he was "beginning to worry about the large wood consumption" and the industry needed to consider other technologies and uses.

Yeah? Do tell.

"We are trying to encourage the application of new materials and technologies," he said, pointing to one factory in Jiangsu province now making toilet paper from straw.

Another in southern Guangxi has managed to produce tissues from sugarcane.

I don't think Mr. Whipple is worried.

One textile merchant said he hoped the pressure would reinvigorate use of the handkerchief, at least for runny noses.

I was worried a bit until he added the qualifier.

Unfortunately, the article leaves an important question unanswered which makes one a tad bit nervous about running down to Wal Mart to pick up some fine Made in China goods.

Legal wankfest alert!

Tsunami victims to sue French hotel chain Accor, Thai govt, US authorities

VIENNA (AFX) - A group of Austrian and German victims of the Asian tsunami disaster are to file a lawsuit demanding that Thailand, French hotel chain Accor and US forecasters prove they reacted adequately to the disaster, their lawyers said.

The suit, naming Accor and the US-run tsunami early warning system in the Pacific as well as Thai authorities, will be filed in a New York district court this week, the lawyers said in Vienna.

'We found that serious lapses were committed,' said Herwig Hasslacher, one of the three lawyers for the group.
...
The NOAA is accused of having registered the earthquake but failed to alert Indian Ocean countries of the impending tsunamis as the Hawaii centre covered only the Pacific.

The lawyers said that if the NOAA and Thai authorities, which had their own information, had passed on their alerts in time, it would have enabled people on shorelines to flee inland.

'We have evidence they did not warn us, even though they knew a quarter of an hour later about the strength and location of the quake, and although there is supposed to be a tsunami warning' from 6.5 on the Richter scale, Hasslacher said. The quake measured 9.0.

Accor is named in the lawsuit because the plaintiffs say the chain did not properly inform relatives of the victims after the disaster and had built its Sofitel hotel on the island of Phuket on a quake fracture line.

I guess we need to have warning stickers posted everywhere that state "Stuff happens. Deal with it. We're not your nanny." But what would we do with all the unemployed lawyers?

It wasn't all bad news in Davos for Eason Jordan!

Ex-CNN boss has Sharon covered

Former CNN exec Eason Jordan - who abruptly resigned amid a storm of controversy over his claim that U.S. soldiers had allegedly targeted journalists in Iraq - has a new bombshell.

A blond one.

Word is that Jordan is dating Sharon Stone.

I'm told that the 46-year-old movie siren hooked up with the 44-year-old news executive during the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland.
...
Apparently sparks flew between Jordan and Stone, because the following week, I'm told, a lovestruck Jordan was excitedly referring to the actress as "my girlfriend."

Woohoo! But isn't Eason still married? And what happened to Daniel Pearl's widow?

Stone, whose relationship with L.A. entertainment lawyer Bernie Cahill recently ended, is on the rebound. Ditto Jordan, after his breakup several weeks ago with Mariane Pearl, the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The year-long Jordan-Pearl romance raised eyebrows - and inspired wagging tongues and a couple of headlines - after the father of two left his wife of 16 years, Susan, for the thirtysomething Pearl.

Eason's a busy lad, I guess. When he isn't defaming American soldiers.

Mark Steyn on my favorite subject

UN forces – just a bunch of thugs?

It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: in the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.

And, of course, corrupt organisations rarely stop at just one kind. If you don't want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food programme, don't worry, whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits - in West Africa, it's Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it's drug dealing; in Kenya, it's the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves.

But you get the general picture: on a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.

And the (largely American) taxpayers get to pay for it.

In Congo, the UN has now forbidden all contact between its forces and the natives. The rest of the world should be so lucky.

Indeed. Much more by following the link.

Kofi Annan's big PR offensive staggers on

And it's a real blitzkrieg fer sure!

UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said that the global security scenario is changing fast and the global collective security system including, United Nations, must be transformed as soon as possible.

"Next month, I will be placing before the member states of the United Nations a blueprint for the most far-reaching reform of the international security system since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945," he said in his address to the 41st Munich Conference on Security Policy.

He also said that in just seven months, world leaders would be called upon to make some momentous decision, which has been in the pipeline for several years.

Hmm, a big decision at the United Nations is which 5 star restaurant to go to tonight, so what could a "momentous decision" be? What world renowned resort to choose for the next big conference?

He indicated that his report would draw heavily on the recommendations of the 16 eminent men and women who served on the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

I wonder if there was also a Low Level Panel? Anyhow, if you don't mind some bureacratese, you can wend your way over to the UN web site where you can read the big report. Frankly, it made my eyes glaze over, so in short order I retreated to the brochure version. After the UN weenies finished patting themselves on the back, I learned all sorts of neat stuff about how much better the UN could be! Did you know that:

... the total supply of available peacekeepers is running dangerously low. Just to do an adequate job of keeping the peace in exisiting conflicts would require almost doubling the number of peacekeepers around the world. The developed States have particular responsibilities to do more to transform their armies into units suitable for deployment to transform their armies into units suitable for deployment to peace operations. And if we are to meet the challenges ahead, more states will have to place contingents on stand-by for UN purposes, and keep air transport and other stategic lift capacities available to assist peace operations.

I guess Kofi wants his own army. Hmm, besides blue beanies, I hope he remembers to request some condoms too.

It urges negotiations for a new arrangement which would enable the International Atomic Energy Agency to act as a guarantor for the supply of fissile material to civilian nuclear users at market rates...

That ought to be good - kind of like the Oil for Food program but with a bigger bang! Which reminds me - Senate Investigators Say Iraq Bribed Inspector in U.N. Program. Yeah, real good.

Of course, there's the usual blather about sending more bucks, but I liked some of the other "big changes":

The report recommends strengthening the Secretary-General's critical role in peace and security.
...
He currently has one Deputy Secretary-General; with a second, responsible for peace and security, he would have the capacity to ensure oversight of both the social, ecomonimc and developmental functions of the UN, and its many peace and security functions.

Another bureaucrat on the take - that'll help!

To be more effective, the Secretary-General should be given substantially more latitude to manage the Secretariat, and be held accountable.

You mean he isn't now? How soon can we cut these useless wastes of oxygen loose?

It's not too late for leftoids to get their sweeties a Valentine's Day gift!

Drudge has the details and SondraK looks for the union label.

And in the early lead for Today's Hoot! is ...

Mark Steyn:

One reason I was looking forward to Election Day 2004 was so I could stop being viciously partisan. I loved Campaign 2000, couldn't wait to get up each morning and do another dozen cheap cracks about Al Gore's earth tones, inventing the Internet, being "raised" on a "farm." But my heart wasn't really in it this time round. Oh, to be sure, John and Teresa were a veritable production line of great material — going into Wendy's and inquiring what "chili" was, etc. — but, to be honest, I was going through the motions. It seemed unworthy of the epic times in which we live to beat up John Edwards. I longed to put aside the ketchup-heiress gags and get back to the great geopolitical sweep of history.

I assumed the Democrats felt the same. But evidently they don't, as was made painfully clear by their decision to mark inauguration week by getting Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden to do their bad cop/bad cop routine on Condi Rice. I'm loath to admit it, but one of the dopier sentences of my entire oeuvre was some mawkish pap written in the days after 9/11 saluting the sturdy Biden, the rock of Delaware, for his robust support of the president. He reverted to his usual showboating poltroonery about ten minutes after the first edition hit the streets. What the hell was I thinking?

I'd probably award the coveted trophy now, but the link is just a teaser for the National Review dead tree edition.

Just when you think you've seen it all

EASON JORDAN BOFFING DANNY PEARL'S WIFE. Not a joke. The key link at the Dinocrat is here.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus has more (2/13 12:26 post).

Biscuits and Gravy - February 13, 2005

Yeehaw!

The joke being whispered around the Democratic Party meeting this weekend is that when Howard Dean thinks of the South, he thinks of New York.

On the other hand, he does know where to find the professional victims.

Not sure if it's real, but it sure is funny.

Mark Steyn: On culture front, we're losing war

A trio of itsy-bitsy little stories from the foot of page 27 of your daily paper, if they made it at all. But they're as revealing about the course of the war as anything going on in Iraq. The Germans, in the bad old days when their preferred field of combat was France rather than Fraulein Helga's government-regulated bondage dungeon, used to talk about ''wehrwille'' -- war will. America, Britain, Australia and a select few other countries have demonstrated they can just about muster the ''war will'' on the battlefield. On the broader cultural front, where this war in the end will be won, there's little evidence of any kind of will.

But there's sure evidence of a massive fifth column.

And speaking of fifth columns - U.N. chief starts PR offensive. Let's roll, eh Kofi? And he began by claiming credit for the Iraqi elections. Of course, it's little hard to get off to a good start with stuff like Explicit Photos Fan U.N. Sex Scandal:

A scandal about the sexual abuse of Congolese women and children by U.N. officials and peacekeepers intensified Friday with the broadcast of explicit pictures of a French U.N. worker and Congolese girls and his claim that there was a network of pedophiles at the U.N. mission in Congo.

ABC News' "20/20" program showed pictures taken from the computer of a French U.N. transport worker. The hard drive reportedly contained thousands of photos of him with hundreds of girls. In one frame, a tear can be seen rolling down the cheek of a victim.

I must have missed the snaps on the evening news. I guess no one was wearing panties on their head. But it's not all bad news:

MUNICH, Germany (AP) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered support Sunday for reforms to strengthen the United Nations, but also had a world of personal appreciation for U.N. chief Kofi Annan.

"I also thank him for giving my husband a new job," she said, smiling.

No word if Bubba is planning to visit the Congo.

But the job scene isn't so rosy for every Donk. They even had to stage a Democrat job fair in Washington:

Clutching leather briefcases packed with resumes and letters of recommendation, young men in suits and women in stockings and heels stood in the rain outside H20, a waterfront nightclub.

Inside, more lines formed in front of tables, where employers conducted five-minute interviews. Many organizations at the recent Democratic job fair didn't even have jobs to offer, but they came anyway to get names of possible future applicants.

About 1,500 out-of-work Democrats sought jobs from 100 employers. Some had initially been turned away, then put on a wait list to get inside.
...
Matt Chiller worked for Rep. Peter Deutsch, a Democrat from South Florida who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. It has been six weeks since he lost his job.

Now he spends much of his time, unshaven, watching old action movies, including The Great Escape, in his apartment just outside Washington.

He has been on some job interviews, but it hasn't gotten much further. Meantime, Chiller applied for unemployment benefits.

"No one has left the city," he said. "This is what we do. We can't imagine doing anything else."

More sad tales by following the link. My initial reaction was that these folks should get a real job, but then I read the FReepers take on it. Excerpt (lightly edited):

Customer: "I'd like an order of fries with that."

Donk Clerk: "Are you sure you want fries? They are bad for you and for the environment."

Customer: "Say what?"

Manager: "You're fired!"

Donk Clerk:"You're violating my right to free speech!"

Call it the "chilling effect" of real employment.