Sunday, January 23, 2005

Biscuits and Gravy - Jan. 23, 2005

Good Ole al Reuters - Survey Finds Church-Going Americans Less Tolerant
Church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey released on Saturday.
And speaking of the usual idiots - Austria urged to revoke Arnie's citizenship
VIENNA (Reuters) - California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a citizen of both the United States and Austria, should be stripped of Austrian citizenship for allowing a convicted murderer to be executed, an Austrian politician says.
This is revealing - FROSH AGREE TO TAKE IT OFF FOR TSUMAMI-AID CALENDAR, but better not try it if any of those intolerant fundamentalists are about. Oooops, wrong kind of fundamentalists!

Concerning the right kind of fundamentalists to bash, MoDo phones another one in. As one of the Freepers observes:
Here is her formula:

1. Find something from Hollywood or television that is currently in the news.

2. Plug names of the President and assorted administration officials into the roles.

3. Mock the President for acting like some doofus Hollywood character.

She has done this with "The Godfather," "The Passion of Christ," "Titanic," and a few others that I can't recall right now.
But not to worry, when MoDo appears on FR, so does Catherine Zeta Jones.

Meanwhile, Bubba and Her Heinous do Key West to pick up a little spare change. Nominally it's for her, but maybe it's for him:
Political strategists are reportedly pondering a deal that would allow Bill Clinton to run for president again by getting Republicans to agree to a change in the constitutional ban on third terms.

Calling it "a long shot," U.S. News & World Report says the deal would work like this:

"Congressional Democrats will OK a constitutional amendment allowing naturalized citizens like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president if Republicans help kill the 22nd Amendment."
Sounds like a whole lotta wanking going on.

Mark Steyn:
I picked up the Village Voice for the first time in years this week. Couldn't resist the cover story: ''The Eve Of Destruction: George W. Bush's Four-Year Plan To Wreck The World.''

Oh, dear. It's so easy to raise expectations at the beginning of a new presidential term. But at least he's got a four-year plan. Over on the Democratic bench, worldwise they don't seem to have given things much thought. The differences were especially stark in the last seven days: In the first half of the week, Senate Dems badgered the incoming secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice -- culminating in the decision of West Virginia porkmeister Robert C. Byrd to delay the incoming thereof. Don't ask me why. Byrd, the former Klu Klux Klan Kleagle, is taking a stand over states' rights, or his rights over State, or some such. Whatever the reason, the sight of an old Klansman blocking a little colored girl from Birmingham from getting into her office contributed to the general retro vibe that hangs around the Democratic Party these days. Even "Eve Of Destruction," one notes, is a 40-year-old hippie dirge.
Ann Coulter:
In what The New York Times called Angola's "worst crisis" in "nearly 30 years" in December 1992, the country erupted into civil war. By January 1993, the streets were piled with thousands of dead bodies.

In the prior year, hundreds of thousands had died of starvation in Somalia. Millions more were still at risk.

Also in 1993, January floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless in Tijuana, Mexico.

Russia was, according to a New York Times editorial, on the brink of disaster, facing economic circumstances like those "that helped bring forth Hitler."

Nine people were killed in a volcano in Colombia in mid-January, including American scientists.

In Bosnia, according to The Times, hundreds had died of starvation and exposure in a matter of days.

"It has all been so much fun," Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd gushed in The New York Times in January 1993. It was Bill Clinton's one-week inaugural celebration. "Is it too much to ask that it go on forever?"
...
I wouldn't mention it, except for The Times' recent editorial snippily remarking that the amount of foreign aid to tsunami victims offered by the United States within the first few days of the disaster was "less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities." By that logic, why hold the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or spend money on restaurants and theater productions praised in The New York Times? That money could go to tsunami victims.

Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.
Do the anarchists dress up for their ball?
An impromptu demonstration by a crowd spilling from a "counter-inaugural ball" in Adams Morgan late Thursday turned into one of the biggest Inauguration Day disturbances, leaving windows smashed and nearly 80 people arrested.

Self-described anarchists, fans who had attended the punk-rock ball and passersby joined in a melee in the area of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, where police said they spray-painted buildings with the red "A" anarchists use as their symbol, threw a brick through the windshield of a police vehicle and smashed out glass windows and doors at a police substation and at Riggs Bank and Citibank branches.
...
Nathan Bladh, 21, a jeweler from Escondido, Calif., in town to protest the inauguration, was outside the 18th Street NW hostel where he was staying when the protesters streamed by.

"We thought it would fun to join in," he said.

A few minutes later, Bladh was kneeling in the snow, having been arrested by police who surrounded the demonstration.
Bladh is evidently not the shiniest jewel in the case.