Beer barrel alert!

...And Kerry's Malicious Mentor

Meanwhile, another Boston America- basher, Ted Kennedy, seems to be bucking for a job on al-Jazeera television.

John Forbes Kerry's mentor went so far over the top on the Abu Ghraib affair this week that you've got to wonder whether his brains have - finally - fallen out:

"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management - U.S. management."

Unfortunately, because such slanderous nonsense was uttered by a senator with the magic "Kennedy" name, it's impossible to ignore - even if it comes straight from Michael Moore's playbook.

If Ted Kennedy cannot tell the difference between the abuses at Abu Ghraib, disturbing as they are, and the systematic, decades-long litany of torture and torment inflicted on thousands of Iraqis by Saddam Hussein's henchmen, then he has no business sitting in the United States Senate.

The contemptible rumpot has no business sitting there in the first place. But where else can he get a "waitress sandwich"? Too bad Ted didn't save any snaps of that or his hijinks with now deceased staffers. He could have fit right in with the Abu Ghraib crowd.

But even more disturbing is that such hate-America rubbish comes from someone who occupies a senior place of influence with the Democratic Party's candidate for president, John Kerry.

Indeed, Kennedy's contemptuous libel is just as much a smear of America's troops as was Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, in which he depicted the U.S. military as little more than a collection of child-murderers and war criminals.

What did Kerry have to say about his colleague's slander?

"I don't agree with the framing of that," Kerry said on Don Imus' radio show. "He's my friend, and I respect him enormously, but I don't agree with the framing of that."

Hardly a profile in courage now, is it?

And then Kerry added this: "But I know what he's saying - and so do you."

Yes, we know what Ted Kennedy is saying - but we're a lot less certain about where John Kerry stands.

In fact, it seems like Kerry is trying to play both sides of this issue and bolster his appeal to the Democrats' nutcase-left wing.

John Kerry is the nutcase left wing. But I like the ventriloquism act - ole Ted breaks wind and Lurch's lips move.

C'mon Sugar Momma! 'Fess Up!

Kerry's patroness II

John Kerry's presidential campaign finally began releasing information about his wife's taxes this week. What drips were made available have raised more questions than they have answered. And it is clear that the senator's wife, who has ably served as his indispensable political sugar momma ever since he came within a whisker of being drubbed out of the Senate in 1996, is going to have to share a lot more information. Yes, we know that Teresa Heinz Kerry has received an extension until Oct. 15 for filing her tax return on 2003 income. So, releasing her return for 2002 income will be a good first step.

I don't think they're going to be pleased with that suggestion, since it's likely that the 2002 return wasn't "sanitized". And why does Kerry always dribble out heavily edited information? Tax returns, miltary records, the still missing medical records. One gets the feeling that he is a congenital spinner or he's got a lot to hide.

Anyhow, the thing that struck me from the available info is that ole Terry is getting a rather crappy return on her fortune:

Mrs. Heinz Kerry, whose net worth Forbes magazine estimated to be $550 million in 2002, reportedly earned $5.115 million last year in interest and dividend income. Now, that comes to less than 1 percent of her 2002 net worth. She paid $587,000 in estimated federal income taxes. That amounts to 11.5 percent of her reported income and one-tenth of 1 percent of her estimated net worth.

One reason her federal income tax bill was so low was due to the keen foresight she demonstrated by investing in tax-free state and local bonds. Those bonds generated $2.777 million in nontaxable interest income in 2003. Overall, state and local bonds yielded a tax-exempt 4.75 percent last year, a return that actually exceeded the 4 percent taxable yield on 10-year Treasuries. Thus, Mrs. Heinz Kerry's investment in state and local bonds approximated $60 million, leaving nearly $490 million of her net worth for other investments. The balance of her 2003 income — $2.338 million — was earned from dividends and taxable interest income. This would represent a return of less than half of a percentage point on the $490 million balance of her Forbes-estimated wealth. That is astonishingly low, and would get any portfolio manager the boot in a heartbeat.

Maybe Lurch ought to sign up up for the Senate Credit Union - they're paying 0.8% in Christmas Club accounts.

Huge Buzzing Cicada Alert!

Get your Weapons of Mass Cicada Destruction (WMCD) at Home Depot or buy your own cicada on eBay, but whatever you do, watch out for the biggest cicada of them all!

UPDATE: Pediatrician Warns Parents About Cicadas. Based on the article, the doc should be warning parents about stupid kids.

Circling the bowl alert!

More bad news for Air America

Air America, the tottering monument to liberal hubris in the talk radio industry, may be about to change hands again, according to the Chicago Tribune. Its internal state of chaos is so great that employees, who had the cost of health insurance coverage deducted from their paychecks, were apparently never enrolled in a health insurance plan.

This must certainly be an oversight, rather than fraud. The devotion of liberals to health care coverage for all is so well-known that it is inconceivable that this could be deliberate. Incompetence, not criminality, must be at work.

Major hat-tip to Michael Nadler, who points out that while intent is critical to assessing criminality in a case like Air America's failure to pay for health insurance, if Air America also neglected to pay the I.R.S. the withholding taxes it deducted from employees' paychecks, as they did with health insurance, they would be "toast."
...
Strangely enough, the left-leaning press outlets like the New York Times, which devoted enormous attention to Air America when it was a pending venture, are curiously uninterested in the troubles being experienced in the actual operation of the business. Usually, liberal journalists take delight in business scandals. Imagine the headlines if an Enron or Halliburton pocketed employees' health insurance deductions without actually covering them with health insurance!

But it's good news for Al Franken - he finally did something funny!

Today's Hoot

Over at c|net, Charles Cooper waxes lyrical about the computer industry - The rebirth of high-tech gabathons:

I was recently invited to a Silicon Valley kaffeeklatsch billed as the gathering for folks who want to find out what will define the next phase of the computer industry.

The conference fee ranges from $1,695 to $2,790, depending on whether I select the "invitation price," the "standard price" or the "walk-in" price. Besides absorbing the received wisdom of the dot-com headliners who are the big draw, I'm entitled to a free book the organizers are throwing into the package because, hey, they are just great sports.

Expensive mini-conferences fell out of fashion during the bust, but now that the tech business is on the mend, they are back with a vengeance.

I suppose that's a promising harbinger for the greater technology business. In any case, these slick e-brochures are flooding my in-box. One promises that I'll walk away with deep insights into the next stage in the development of the Internet; another claims to be the only venue that brings together the real movers and shakers. And so on and so forth.

Whether these gabathons are truly worth the price of admission is another matter. The answer may depend on whether you find yourself in a swanky resort, an exotic locale or some burg with a reputation for exceedingly naughty entertainment. Des Moines in December? Make mine Cannes in June.

But before bugging your boss for permission to jet off to Big Thinker's 2004 in Cancun, ponder Cooper's Law of Bloviation--which posits an inverse relationship between the number of speechifying multimillionaires on display and the improbability of deriving any benefits from sitting in the audience (besides logging quality snooze time).

There's more (including a blogging reference) by following the link, including this gem:

...most tech confabs follow a predictably rigid routine. A procession of chubsters follow each other on stage to yammer on about this or that. "Hey, we're rich, so (presumably) we know." It is not long before at least half the attendees slip into the corridor, where the conversation is infinitely more interesting. Plus, there's coffee.
...
In the meantime, I think I'm about to get uninvited to that kaffeeklatsch.

Er, probably not if you ante up the conference fee.

And while I get a laugh out of this stuff, the best part is that, unlike most things I complain about, it's fundamentally harmless. No one is making anyone attend these bun fights and no taxpayer dollars were consumed to make them happen.

Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?

The Kids Deserved to be Killed?:

In perhaps the most distorted coverage of the brutal murder of a pregnant Israeli mother and her four young daughters, NPR’s Julie McCarthy blamed the victims for their own slaughter.

That's why the taxpayers fund NPR, I guess - to give us coverage we won't find anywhere else.

And on this morning's Today Show, perky Katie Couric was looking up her butt again - Couric to [Chris] Matthews: "It's a Question of Who is the Lesser of Two Evils" in Iraq [US or Al-Qaeda]"

And then there's our usual chums in big media - American's beheading old news for media elite:

The Washington Post, for example, ran two prison-abuse stories on the front page yesterday, plus three related stories elsewhere in the A-section. A single story on Mr. Berg was relegated to page A21.

The New York Times featured three prison-abuse stories on the front page, with a single story on Mr. Berg, which emphasized that "federal officials" failed to protect him. Three more prison-abuse stories ran elsewhere in the A-section.

That's a puzzlement, fer sure!

"Everything is going according to plan"

As expected, FEC Won't Limit Political Groups' Spending . Sorry Georgie, but not everyone is going to roll over for SPECTRE.

I guess being a hard working "man of the people" has its rewards

From the New York Post - How Pols Bag Sex Interns:

ALBANY - The latest Assembly sex scandal is just the "tip of the iceberg" of a far wider system of aggressive exploitation of young women in the state Legislature's intern program, a former official has told The Post.

"The Assembly intern program is like a 'canned hunt' for these young women," said the ex-Assembly official.

"Office assignments for these interns isn't done at random, with interns just being sent to different offices by chance," added the former official, who has firsthand knowledge of the intern program.

"Assembly members make calls prior to the arrival of the interns in January, or send out scouts to look them over, and then they put in their 'orders' with the staff for the type that they want."

The source spoke in the wake of the claim by a 19-year-old college intern that Harlem Democratic Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV plied her with booze and, possibly, raped her last week.

"These young women, and in some cases young men, don't realize that they are nothing but fresh meat to these charismatic politicians, who bag them and then brag about it after the interns leave town in May," the source said.

"What you've been hearing about is only the tip of the iceberg."

The former official described an annual January ritual of sizing up the interns when they first arrive.

"Either the [Assembly] members or their aides do that annually, go on a scouting expedition," he said.

Another source said lawmakers regularly bet with one another on whether they can "bed" individual interns.

The New York State Assembly, controlled for eons by the Democrat party, is always a class act.

Ahem! Who's been trolling the pr0n sites?

Boston Globe publishes bogus GI rape pictures :

Boston residents got more than they bargained for this morning when their copy of the Globe came complete with graphic photos depicting U.S. troops gang-raping Iraqi women.

Problem is the photos are fake. They were taken from pornographic websites and disseminated by anti-American propagandists, as first reported by WND a week ago.
...
WND contacted the Globe to question staff about the photos.

Asked whether the photos were the same as the porn photos WND already investigated, reporter Donovan Slack said, "I have no idea. I'm surprised the editor even decided we should write about it."

She added: "Oh my God, I'm scared to answer the phone today."

"It's insane," said Slack. "Can you imagine getting this with your cup of coffee in the morning? Somehow it got through all our checks. Our publisher's not having a very good day today."

Slack sent the photos to WND, which immediately confirmed they were the same porn photos reported on last week.
...
The photos accompanied an article about Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, who distributed the graphic photographs yesterday at a press conference with activist Sadiki Kambon.

More hilarity by following the link including the statements of the two wingnuts who apparently have a continuing role as village idiots in Boston. But here's where it gets interesting:

The Globe published the photos despite the fact a skeptical Slack had raised serious doubts about them and was not able to verify their authenticity. Slack was assigned to report on the press conference and did not approve of the photos being published. The photos were approved for publication by three Boston Globe editors.
...
A source with the Globe said the controversy already had reached the president of the New York Times, who reportedly is furious. The Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times Co.

Guys, you're supposed to make the spin look plausible!

Wizbang! has a scan of the article with the picture of the two buffoons holding their rather rumpled dirty pictures. I'm sure those had them stroking, er, their beards.

Where are the usual suspects?

It must be tough. There you are, rollicking merrily along loudly proclaiming that some doofs that the US military is all over for arranging nude pyramids are somehow equivalent to Saddam's boys who liked dropping folks in shredders. Then your pet monkeys leave a huge steaming deposit in the front hall. What to do?

Well, if you are really delusional, you can claim the CIA did it. But what's appropriate for the liberal paladins of the blogosphere? Here's an idea, you can ignore it. Don't step in anything icky, kids!

Which brings us to the US media who are being really shy about Berg's beheading. If everything is so equivalent, why doesn't the snuff video rate equal time with the nudies? It must be that it's Sweeps Month and nude sells better than violence. Or something. But you can't help but notice that they haven't got much of a track record on documenting Islamic nutjob barbarity. I hope no one is still waiting for some snaps of Saddam's victims or even the people who jumped out of the WTC to avoid burning to death. I wonder why that is?