For readers who enjoyed Mark Steyn's piece in the London Daily Telegraph this morning, here is a picture of the young lass he's writing about. I understand that she is open to proposals of marriage... so long as it does not involve her actually DOING anything.I liked the picture of her and mom the best.
Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.Nice illustration of Lurch as well.
The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.
In the end, the fact that Senator Kerry covered up crucial evidence as committee chairman didn't seem to bother too many Massachusetts voters when he came up for re-election—or the recent voters in primary states. So I wouldn't predict it will be much of an issue in the presidential election come November. It seems there is no constituency in America for missing Vietnam P.O.W.'s except for their families and some veterans of that war.Hey, according to Lurch they were all baby rapers anyhow.
A year after he issued the committee report, on the night of January 26, 1994, Kerry was on the Senate floor pushing through a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. In the debate, Kerry belittled the opposition, saying that those who still believed in abandoned P.O.W.'s were perpetrating a hoax. "This process," he declaimed, "has been led by a certain number of charlatans and exploiters, and we should not allow fiction to cloud what we are trying to do here."
Kerry's resolution passed, by a vote of 62 to 38. Sadly for him, the passage of ten thousand resolutions cannot make up for wants in a man's character.
ALEC Baldwin isn't suffering from any lack of self-esteem. In A&E's "Biography: Alec Baldwin," premiering tonight, the bombastic actor compares himself to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who wrote "Soul on Ice."Did Eldridge beat his wife too?
Baldwin recalls that when he was younger, "My dad said to me, 'If you were black . . . with your personality,' he said, 'Do you think you would be Martin Luther King, or would you be Eldridge Cleaver? Would you be patient and wise, and kind, and peaceful?' He said, 'Or do you think you'd really, really get out there and . . . exert yourself a little more in order to leverage change in our society?' And I knew the answer . . . I knew the answer was the latter."Based on the picture accompanying the article, it looks like Alec's main exertion is calling over the dessert cart for another helping.
Triangle tax firms are maneuvering to capture one market that never stopped booming.Good news you say? Consider that this is the Raleigh News and Observer who wants us to "welcome the new neighbors," honor matricular consulars as identification, and can't seem to get out the words illegal alien. Here's their poster boy "immigrant":
They are moving offices into Latino grocery stores, dangling scholarships to lure Spanish-speaking job recruits, and papering Hispanic neighborhoods with handbills and coupons printed in Spanish. Volunteer tax preparers also are adding locations and interpreters to reach more low-income immigrants.
North Carolina had the fastest-growing foreign-born population in the United States in the 1990s. In Raleigh, the 2000 Census found 19,308 Hispanic residents, and the count has grown since, giving businesses a growth market even in a down economy.
Roman Acosta-Zuniga, 37, a construction worker from Honduras, followed a Spanish-language handbill and a nephew's recommendation to Liberty Tax Service's Wake Forest Road office, where he was filling out tax forms recently.Indeed.
An interpreter at the office could relieve only so much of the hassle of wrestling with taxes. It's still a trial, Acosta said. But he was expecting a refund for his trouble.
He planned to send the money to Honduras, where he has four children.
Tax firms are increasingly reaching across the language gap to capitalize on this growth, despite complications of documentation and identity that snarled many returns for Hispanic taxpayers last year.Er, there might be more than one reason for that, pal. Ever hear of phony or stolen Social Security numbers? But actually our beneficent bureaucrats have provided an alternative - IRS seminars, IDs help illegal immigrants pay US taxes:
...
The custom of writing surnames with the mother's last name after the father's last name also leads to rejected filings, she said.
"Last year we learned the hard way to never, ever go by the name on the driver's license or W-2," Borthayre said.
It's been just an hour, but tax counselors at a recent IRS seminar at an immigrant community center have already seen 100 people and are facing an overflow crowd in the waiting room hoping for tax help.And some say it's a sign that the bureaucrats and their enablers in the Donk party are completely out of control. They're probably registering the illegals to vote too.
These people aren't in a quandary over new tax laws or changes to the code. These are illegal immigrants who – up until today – have been using false social security numbers to work in the United States. Immigrants like them are flocking in record numbers to IRS offices and seminars such as this one to learn how to become legal US taxpayers.
The IRS has been quietly supporting this activity since 1996 when it created an individual taxpayer identification number designed for anyone who doesn't have a social security number.
This program has gained momentum as immigrants become aware of this option – and more fearless about their position in the US workforce.
It's an example of the tension over the growing acceptance of illegal immigrants in this country. While US Border Patrol agents play cat-and-mouse with those trying to enter the US illegally, other federal agencies are creating ways to accomodate the 7 million to 8 million illegal immigrants who are already here.
Some say the federal government's acceptance of this new tax ID number – as well its myriad other immigrant services, from education to health to housing – is a clear sign that the country has reached a certain comfortable level with illegal immigration from Latin America.
Judi Dench, known to cinema audiences around the world as James Bond's spy chief "M," received a special award in recognition of her contribution to British theater."Judi"? I guess I haven't seen a Bond film lately. I thought that M was always played by Bernard Lee.
So the race has come down to a weak default candidate v a glamorous insurgent who is not quite glamorous to insurge sufficiently. Other than that, there is not much to choose between them. Both men are enormously wealthy. Kerry was a blueblood of relatively minor means who married a woman worth $300 million and then traded up to a woman worth $500 million. If I were Teresa Heinz Kerry I'd be worried, now Massachusetts is introducing gay marriage, that hubby may start giving the come-hither look to some of the state's elderly bachelor billionaires.Only if he gets a percentage.
By contrast, John Edwards had a dirt-poor hard-scrabble childhood but managed to sue his way out of poverty. He has made 25 million bucks just from suing tobacco companies. His is an inspirational message: If I can do it, the rest of you haven't a hope in hell. But fortunately I've got a thousand new government programmes and micro-initiatives that will partially ameliorate your hopeless mediocrity. (I paraphrase.)
My favourite line in the Edwards spiel comes about two-thirds in, when, after outlining the regulatory hell in which he is going to ensnare banks, the pharmaceutical industry, etc, he confides: "But I'll be honest with you. I don't think I can change this country by myself." It's good to know the other 280 million Americans aren't entirely redundant. His basic pitch is that the entire electorate are victims, and his candidacy is the all-time biggest class-action suit on your behalf.
Edwards is condescending. Kerry is far too grand to condescend. But both are agreed that America is a vast wasteland of unemployed, shivering, diseased losers. For single-issue guys like me, Edwards barely says a word on Iraq and the war, though I am inclined to think he'd be better than Kerry. The latter seems eager to do whatever Chirac and Kofi want, whereas with Edwards there's always the possibility he will wind up suing the UN Security Council for emotional distress.
Top brass flew to Baghdad with publicity-shy empowerment businessmanRunning an "empowerment" business sounds like a good gig! I wonder how you start one up?
Two of the ANC's most powerful officials travelled to Iraq with a controversial Johannesburg businessman just weeks before he landed a R1.2-billion state oil deal.
Sandi Majali is one of about 270 people around the world who have been named in an alleged sanctions-busting scam involving oil from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.
The names appeared in Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation documents found after the fall of Saddam.
Majali, 41, who heads the media-shy empowerment company Imvume Resources, has for the past two weeks been reluctant to talk about his business dealings.
Barry Aaron, an attorney acting for Imvume and Majali, said his clients were precluded by a pending lawsuit from responding to questions.
The Sunday Times has established that Majali had close ties with former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and senior members of the ANC.
Majali accompanied ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe and the party's treasurer-general, Mendi Msimang, to the Middle East from November 9 to 17 2001. Just two weeks later, on December 1, the Iraqi government allocated Majali's company two million barrels of oil.
On December 5 2001, South Africa's Strategic Fuel Fund put out a R1.2-billion tender for four million barrels of Basrah Light oil. Majali's company snatched the deal.
The Sunday Times has uncovered several overseas trips on which Majali accompanied Motlanthe and Msimang. Imvume also paid a R40 000 bill in July 2002 for the ANC to host a dinner in Johannesburg for Aziz, who was in South Africa as a special guest of Deputy President Jacob Zuma.I believe that is called "splitting up the loot". Kind of gives a new perspective to all that South African "holier than thou" whining about the USA picking on poor widdle Saddy, doesn't it?
Msimang said this week that the ANC had not helped Majali broker the oil deal and said there was "no special relationship" between them.
Msimang also said that Majali, "like all those who have the interests of the country at heart", had made "contributions" to the ANC, although Motlanthe denied any knowledge of any such contributions.
The Sunday Times has established that Imvume is owned by "charitable" trusts and unnamed businessmen.
One of the owners is the Research and Security Development Trust, founded in June 2001 with a symbolic donation of R1 000 from Daniel Lengosane - now a director of Internal Security in the President's Office.
Motlanthe this week confirmed that he had accompanied Majali to Iraq at least twice. "My job as the ANC secretary-general is to do party-to-party negotiations to strengthen our relationships with other parties.An understatement.
"We had a good relationship with the Baath party in Iraq."
If a new class action lawsuit forces Anheuser-Busch Inc. and Miller Brewing Co. to pay billions of dollars in damages for alleged marketing to underage drinkers, it will be because the nation's two largest brewers were linked with an advertising icon-turned-villain: Joe Camel.If it's a cartoon, it must be targetting tykes! Bad news for animators, good news for the "Swedish Bikini Team." Hmm, maybe they're directed at kids too? How about Dr. Ruth for Miller Lite?
That animated figure became a potent symbol of Big Tobacco's selling of cigarettes to minors and was dropped as the result of a lawsuit. Now, Anheuser-Busch and Miller face claims that TV ads starring cartoon frogs that croak "Bud . . . weis . . . er," the introduction of malt-based drinks with sweetened citrus flavors, and other actions are proof of a concerted marketing effort aimed at people younger than 21.
"This is about pitching your product expressly or implicitly to underage people," said Robert Carey, an attorney with the Hagens Berman law firm, which filed the suit earlier this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The Seattle-based firm has built a reputation as one of the nation's top tobacco litigators.It would save a lot of time all around for serious people if we just had a national "sin tax" on booze, butts, fast food and other designated sins and transferred the money directly to a slush fund for lawyers. Then let them sue each other to divvy it up.
NORTHFIELD, MINN. -- Former President Jimmy Carter delivered a Saturday sermon to a standing-room-only crowd at St. Olaf College, condemning the American people as much as their leaders for what he called their indifference to the disease and despair that prevail in much of the developing world.Nice to see that the mooncalf is bleating the same old song. And he had a receptive audience:
He was greeted with foot-stomping rapture, applauded not only in the college's Skoglund Center gymnasium but again in the lobby by audience members who disobeyed a request and sneaked outside to watch him be escorted to his car."I saw Jimmah get into his car!" Must have been tasty Kool-Aid.
He said he believes that the Bush administration has squandered the opportunity offered by the global outpouring of goodwill after Sept. 11, and it now needs to exit Iraq with as much dignity as it can manage, while remaining responsible for the security of that nation's people.Typical Jimmy moonshine, but hey, he's an expert!
Although Carter is remembered for his emphasis on human rights and peace, he also emphasized, in a question that challenged him on the need to maintain military strength to maintain peace, that he is a veteran. Indeed, among presidents since the Civil War, he said, he ranks second only to Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander in Europe in World War II, for his number of years of military service.Based on his record as president, we're lucky he didn't blow up the submarines he served on. Or turn them over to the locals in some pest hole to use as a greenhouse.