Listen to the whine

The usual suspects are rallying the flying monkeys to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Roberts. Superbly coiffed Ralph Neas, the doyen of borking, already "is extremely disappointed that the President did not choose a consensus nominee." Hugh Hewitt also points out that Chucky Schumer getting in early:

Schumer is telegraphing the strategy of the hard-left Democratic Senaors: To ask question after question which a nominee will not and should not answer, and then to oppose confirmation on the basis of these refusals.

Chucky probably has his staff working overtime coming up with hypothetical legal cases on which he will ask for a snap decision, but he needn't bother - Ralph Neas will do it for him and all the other leftoid senators who pretend to an authority they lack.

My vote for best line - Viking Pundit:

And please, enough of the “unite the nation” or “in the mold of O’Connor” or “keep the balance” blather. Don’t like it? Win an election.

And in the meantime, Bill Frist should keep the nuclear option ready.

Someone 'splain it to me

Hachem wins endurance test -- and $7.5 million prize:

LAS VEGAS -- This was the scene shortly after 6 a.m. Saturday inside Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel.

The floor was littered with empties and unconscious humans. A green mountain of cash -- bundles of Benjamins wrapped, 50 per stack, in rubber bands -- rested on an unused card table while at another three men -- Derrick "Tex" Barch of Dallas, Steve Dannenmann of Baltimore and Joseph Hachem of Melbourne, Australia -- played poker. Inside the room two men in suits toted rifles while in an adjacent room two feather-boa-clad dancers sat on chairs and waited patiently.

Just another night in Vegas, really. Except that the three men were into their 14th consecutive hour of playing Texas Hold 'Em and whoever knocked out the other two stood to win $7.5 million. The longest final table in the history of the World Series of Poker was locked in what seemed to be an interminable struggle for what would be the largest (known) prize in gambling history. Perspective? The grand prize in the main event would be worth more than the purse for the entire field ($7,154,642) at the British Open this weekend.

"That may be the gaudiest thing I've seen my entire life," said tournament director Johnny Grooms, staring at the cash cliff before him.

But by this ungodly hour, it was difficult to summon interest. The media members splayed out on the floor behind a curtain just a few yards away -- the Nap Pack, let's call them -- had already lost the battle with their own eyelids. The dancers, bless them, were killing time with two young journalists in a corner who for hours had been much more intent on sweating them than the final table.

Reading the blow by blow account of the final "action" will put you to sleep too. What puzzles me is whether there is a more boring spectator sport than watching people play poker? The cable channels seem to love it, though. I guess I can understand the folks playing at online gambling casinos or even journeying to the real thing to put money in slot machines, but watching someone else do it? Zzzzzz.

And while we're having a little United Nations fun...

Check out UN seeks to bolster ties between West and Islam:

The United Nations, acting after deadly suicide bombings apparently driven by Muslim extremism hit London, launched an initiative on Thursday to build new bridges between the West and Islam.

Never fear, the kleptocrats are here!

The campaign's aim was to "bridge divides and overcome prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace," U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Hmmm, is that like convincing Islamofascist wingnuts not to murder people?

Recent events had "heightened the sense of a widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic and Western societies -- an environment that has been exploited and exacerbated by extremists in all societies," he said.

I must have missed the Baptist suicide bombers, but tell me more - what exactly are the UN weenies going to do?

Secretary-General Kofi Annan was pursuing the "Alliance of Civilizations" initiative, at the suggestion of Spain and Turkey, after 54 people were killed in suicide bombings in London by three British Muslims of Pakistani origin and a Jamaican-born Briton.

The campaign has no firm plans yet but is expected to present recommendations and a plan of action in late 2006.

Golly! It's another UN exercise in padding expense accounts. They have that down pat.

It's a joke, right?

With the United Nations it's always hard to tell - 'Aids risk' for UN peacekeepers:

The United Nations Aids agency has warned that UN peacekeepers still do not have the knowledge and means to protect themselves from HIV/Aids.

Sheesh, this one should be a beaut.

Leaders from numerous countries have now acknowledged HIV/Aids is a serious problem in their armed services, according to a new UN report.

More than 100 countries contribute personnel to UN peacekeeping missions.

The armed forces at the bottom of the list mostly consist of glorified street gangs. Nice to know that Uncle Sugar foots the bill for their foreign vacations. But there's bound to be problems, right?

A new UN report says uniformed service personnel are considered one of the high-risk groups for contracting HIV/ Aids and this could jeopardise the world's ability to generate future UN peacekeeping missions.

Gosh, that's my big worry too!

The head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehnno, said they had reduced the risk of peacekeepers contracting or transmitting the virus while on mission.

Told them to forego the usual UN practice of raping the natives?

UNAids chief Peter Piot said there had been some progress over the past five years, but more needed to be done.

He said peacekeeping operations now had Aids advisers, trainers and counsellors, while troops were given awareness training.

The peacekeeeping tab just went up. No word on when we have to foot the peacekeepers' tab for toilet training and literacy.

Tis a puzzle

Mark Steyn in the Telegraph:

One of the striking features of the post-9/11 world is the minimal degree of separation between the so-called "extremists" and the establishment: Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, gives $130,000 to accomplices of the 9/11 terrorists; the head of the group that certifies Muslim chaplains for the US military turns out to be a bagman for terrorists; one of the London bombers gets given a tour of the House of Commons by a Labour MP. The Guardian hires as a "trainee journalist" a member of Hizb ut Tahir, "Britain's most radical Islamic group" (as his own newspaper described them) and in his first column post-7/7 he mocks the idea that anyone could be "shocked" at a group of Yorkshiremen blowing up London: "Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks" - or the bus blows, or the Tube vaporises. Fellow Guardian employee David Foulkes, who was killed in the Edgware Road blast, would no doubt be heartened to know he'd died for the cause of Muslim "sassiness".

I'm sure it's a comfort to his family too.

But among all these many examples of the multiculti mainstream ushering the extremists from the dark fringe to the centre of western life, there is surely no more emblematic example than that of Shabina Begum, whose victory over the school dress code was achieved with the professional support of both the wife of the Prime Minister who pledges to defend "our way of life" and of Hizb ut Tahir, a group which (according to the German Interior Minister) "supports violence as a means to realise political goals" such as a worldwide caliphate and (according to the BBC) "urges Muslims to kill Jewish people". What does an "extremist" have to do to be too extreme for Cherie Booth or the Guardian?

Good question. And here in the USA, the Democrat establishment like Senators Barbara Boxer and Dickie Durbin have adopted "Screw 'em" Kos and his Kosmonauts as their pets.

Today's Hoot!

Polipundit:

It is 36 years today since Ted Kennedy thought his car was a submarine.

And he decided to take Mary Jo to the submarine races.

Is that cool or what?

Andrew McCarthy has been spending some quality time with the court filings of the paladins of our glorious mainstream media in the Plame case and discovers they are two faced crapsacks:

Have you heard that the CIA is actually the source responsible for exposing Plame's covert status? Not Karl Rove, not Bob Novak, not the sinister administration cabal du jour of Fourth Estate fantasy, but the CIA itself? Had you heard that Plame's cover has actually been blown for a decade — i.e., since about seven years before Novak ever wrote a syllable about her? Had you heard not only that no crime was committed in the communication of information between Bush administration officials and Novak, but that no crime could have been committed because the governing law gives a person a complete defense if an agent's status has already been compromised by the government?

No, you say, you hadn't heard any of that. You heard that this was the crime of the century. A sort of Robert-Hanssen-meets-Watergate in which Rove is already cooked and we're all just waiting for the other shoe — or shoes — to drop on the den of corruption we know as the Bush administration. That, after all, is the inescapable impression from all the media coverage. So who is saying different?

The organized media, that's who. How come you haven't heard? Because they've decided not to tell you. Because they say one thing — one dark, transparently partisan thing — when they're talking to you in their news coverage, but they say something completely different when they think you're not listening.

You see, if you really want to know what the media think of the Plame case — if you want to discover what a comparative trifle they actually believe it to be — you need to close the paper and turn off the TV. You need, instead, to have a peek at what they write when they're talking to a court. It's a mind-bendingly different tale.

I'm sure surprised, aren't you?

Today's Hoot!

Mark Steyn, of course:

Back when Woodrow Wilson was running for president, he had a campaign song called ''Wilson, That's All.'' If only. With Joe Wilson, it's never all. He keeps coming back like a song. But in the real world there's only one scandal in this whole wretched business -- that the CIA, as part of its institutional obstruction of the administration, set up a pathetic ''fact-finding mission'' that would be considered a joke by any serious intelligence agency and compounded it by sending, at the behest of his wife, a shrill politically motivated poseur who, for the sake of 15 minutes' celebrity on the cable gabfest circuit, misled the nation about what he found.

Joe, your 15 minutes are long gone. Time to hit the bricks.

Morning jollies

Via Dave Barry, I'm entranced to discover the next two items:

Eating Disorder Expert Collapses at Market:

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - An expert in eating disorders collapsed in a supermarket after inhaling propellant from whipped cream cans, according to police.

Lisa G. Berzins, a prominent psychologist who has been on national television and radio shows and in newspaper articles, was arrested on a warrant Friday charging her in the May 29 incident, The Hartford Courant reported.

Berzins, 49, has a practice in West Hartford. She has written and lectured on eating disorders, female development, sex roles and self-esteem, according a speaker's biography from the American Psychological Association.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, West Hartford police responded to the Farmington Avenue Stop & Shop and found Berzins lying on the floor and bleeding from her head. Berzins, the affidavit says, told police she did not know what happened.

Police interviewed witnesses and collected evidence, then determined that Berzins apparently inhaled from three cans of whipped cream containing nitrous oxide, known as laughing gas, the affidavit says.

Perhaps she was doing field research? But I mostly want to know if she was putting the "used" cans back on the shelf.

It's 'Homo Light' - the gay softdrink:

NORWEGIAN homosexuals are set to launch their own soda brand, "Homo light", at an upcoming gastronomic festival, in the hope that it will help promote tolerance, one of the authors of the project said.

"The goal is not for us to make money but to make us more visible and accepted," Oeystein Mauritzen told AFP.

Pear-flavored and pink, "Homo Light" will go on sale as a one-time offer at a stand at a gastronomic festival in the southwestern town of Stavanger between July 27 and 30.

Along with the soda, which will be sold in half-litre (about a pint) bottles for 20 kroner ($4.70), the group will sell rainbow-colored pasta salads.

Yep, that'll do it.

Ace clears it up for me, at least:

* You're a mouth-breathing troglodyte if you suggest that Ward Churchill should be removed from his unearned tenured position, inter alia, advocating the fragging of American military officers, plagiarism, falsification of sources, falsification of qualifications, and for comparing the victims of 9-11 to Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann.

* But you're a rising star in the Democratic Party for suggesting that a legislator be "removed from office" for (correctly) pointing out that you are advocating an economically disastrous tax-and-spend policy.
...
Everyone clear on the rules?

Who knew he did stand-up?

"PRESIDENT CHIRAC sought to regain favour with his worried nation yesterday by telling the French that they are far better off than the British and have no reason to take lessons from across the Channel."

Here's a good idea:

For some years now, I've been pondering a little amendment to the Constitution. Nothing too grand, mind you. Just a little something that could fit on a cocktail napkin, yet at the same time provide more legal clarity than 100 Sandra Day O'Connor opinions.
And, so, without further ado, here it is, my 28th Amendment:

Amendment XXVIII.

AND WE MEAN IT!!!

The crapwaesels would still try to nuance it.

VALERIE PLAME: "PLEASE STOP LEAVING ME ALONE!":

Plame: I don't want to hurt your feelings, honey, but you're a loser. You were ambassador to Gabon. Hell, Shirley Temple was ambassador to Ghana. You were such a zero, you were drummed out of the Foreign Service. That's like being too crazy for the Scientologists. The only way a cipher like you could get a book deal is with the right packaging.

Ole Joe Wilson still has a big career ahead endorsing bagged manure.

What if you gave a party and nobody came?

Check out zombie's report on the "big" United Nations 60'th Anniversary hoedown in San Francisco. Gosh, they had everything - good eats, actors in period costume, and a stunning array of UN bigs!


(Hat tip: LGF)