August 2005 Archives

Byron York recently criticized Bush's five week "vacation" in Crawford, saying that politically, at least, it's too long. But I have to disagree. I think he's way of the mark in his criticism of Bush's sojourn in Crawford.

York says:

Even given the wonders of modern communications which allow him to stay in touch with virtually everyone virtually all the time, does the president really need to spend five weeks of the summer based at his home in Crawford?

But it is exactly because of the modern wonders of communication that the President can and should, if he pleases, spend five weeks in Crawford. I, for one, like a President that hates Washington and can't wait to leave. Aside from appearances (i.e. political ramifications), I can't think of, and York doesn't suggest, any detriment to his ability to fulfill his duties. Who cares where he does it from, other than the liberal MSM and its fans on the left?

York says there is "no doubt," but I would counter that there is "no evidence" that even from a political and communications standpoint, the President would be in a better position to deal with the various August happenings this year if he were in Washington. But York already conceded that communications-wise there's no disability inherent in being in Crawford. (See quote above). And policitically, if he wasn't in Crawford, the MSM, etc. would just find some other angle to attack the President. The picture York incongruously attached to his post is the case in point. It's being trumpted by Bush-haters as another example of Bush being out of touch -- playfully playing he guitar while Katrina ravaged the Gulf coast. But whether he flew to California from Crawford or from Washington makes no difference to the left's idea that Bush was callously indifferent to the suffering of the victims of Katrina. (And of course, the idea itself is ridiculous - the President is the President to the people of all 50 states. The idea that he should adopt some somber affect in light of the tragedy on the Gulf coast is ridiculous. Of course he's been effected by the tragedy. But he wouldn't be much of a leader if it paralyzed him.)

Why provide the left the aid and comfort of the imprimatur of an NR columnist for their pernicious meme that Bush is somehow failing as President for wanting to live away from Washington while fulfilling his constitutional duties? Bush's choice to sleep in Crawford has had no demonstrable effect on his ability to do the job that we entrusted to him.

Goodbye, Maurice.

I can't recall another single person who has made more spectacularly stupid decisions in such a short amount of time. The scope of the stupidity and the rapidity with which he sank from the next-two-time-Heisman-winner to couldn't-last-six-months-in-the-pros is truly breathtaking.

I'd feel sorry for him if he had a single redeeming quality to feel sorry for. But he doesn't. And so I don't.

Anybody have any ideas? I got nuthin' here. Haven't seen a thing in the news that interests me in the least.

Just to fill some space and give everybody something to click on, I'll post this again. Because it's AWESOME.

Sometimes you have to search your heart - reach deep down inside your soul and ask yourself a question and promise to give yourself and honest answer. The question: Am I making a good faith donation to charity, or am I just trying to get rid of junk that I would otherwise have to pay to dispose of?

Everyone knows what I am talking about when I say "hobby horse" right? The plastic horse attached to a frame with springs, right?

Like this:

Kids love them. Mine do. They can spend minutes on end on it.

Anyway - I am sure kids who are disadvantaged would love the opportunity to own such a magnificent steed as well. Their faces probably light up like the sun on a perfect spring morn when their parents are lucky enough to find one at a second hand shop.

So what kind of depravity must lurk in a man's heart to do this?

What's a kid supposed to do with this? The damn thing can't even stand up on its own! Unless the the kid wants to play "Afleet Alex at the Preakness" he's pretty much out of luck, fun-wise, don't ya think?

I think maybe she is! Here's the lede in the story about LaToyia Figueroa:

PHILADELPHIA - Police discovered the remains of a missing pregnant woman and quickly arrested the father of her unborn child Saturday, ending an exhaustive, monthlong search.

Yea, K-Lo! Her seemingly one-woman crusade starts to bear fruit! (There's an ugly mixed metaphor. Hope Taranto doesn't see this!)

Second graph:

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said Stephen Poaches would be charged with two counts of murder and related offenses for the deaths of 24-year-old LaToyia Figueroa and her fetus.

Oh. Well, keep at it K-Lo. There's work to be done.

If you are going to get your picture taken with a Siberian Tiger, I think you have to assume some risk.

This girl rolled the dice and lost. The prop I had in my senior pictures was a golf club. I survived. Her prop was a man-eating predator. She didn't.

So you plop prey down next to a carnivore predator. What did you expect to happen? Why did the Tiger have to die? What did he do wrong, exactly? I don't mean to go all PETA here, but killing the Tiger in these circumstances seems wrong.

I was playing with my new Blackberry the other day, and pulled up the local radar to check the incoming weather. Up popped a full color map of Ohio, with the familiar green and yellow blobs of rain on its way across the state.

I turned to my five year old daughter and said "How cool is that? I have a picture of the current radar map here on my handheld."

And she looked at me blankly, like "Yea, so?" And it occurred to me that she has no perspective for how amazing that is. Of course you can check the local radar with your handheld wireless device!

I didn't get my first computer until is was 15 or so (An Atari 520ST - 512k RAM, and a blazing fast 8mhz processor, thank you very much), and I thought it was the most awesome piece of machinery ever invented. (Damn, I wish I had kept that.)

And I realize that the hand-me-down computer I gave to my daughter when she was two (!) -- which I couldn't use anymore because it was waaaaay too antiquated -- was more powerful than anything NASA had to use to land people on the Moon, much less my own first computer.

When I got my computer in 1986, there wasn't much to do with it other than word processing, basic gaming, and if you were really advanced and into exotic computer geekdom: creating BASIC programs. WOO! Good times. (I actually met Woody Hayes while attending a summer computer camp at OSU when I was in high school - but that's another story.) Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet, so it's not like I was cruising the net. The rudimentary BBS's didn't exactly hold my attention.

And this is all when I am already 15 years old! So, every new advance -- like, say, a wireless handheld browser that displays real-time local radar -- is understandably appreciated by my generation with amazement.

But my five year old rolls her eyes when I exclaim the wonders of a handheld wireless web browser.

Kids.

Hey Kids! Pretend to slide to your death down the deck of the sinking Titanic, just like the real passengers! Except the real passengers weren't pretending! They really did die! But don't let that ruin your fun!

[Update: Welcome Cornerites! Stick around and browse the main page!]

I love Rome. But I gotta agree with Derb about Paris. I think my French-bashing credentials are fairly well established, but I think Gay Paris is fantastic (I also like the He-Man parts too). I'm a big fan of great cities and it's unavoidable that Paris goes on the list. We love to criticize the French "social model" but the truth is it's great so long as you have a well-paying job, lack initiative, love to lounge around in cafés, shop, eat well and don't want to work very hard. That may be a terrible way to organize a society, but it's a wonderful way to set-up an occassional vacation spot.

Kinda makes me want to visit.

Still sore, Clarett goes in for MRI

This is a classic New York Times hatchet job. It manages to dredge up the completely dead Plame investigation, smear Bush once again with falsehoods about the intelligence prior to 9/11, and ironically equate Bush with the French, all while dripping with contempt for the heartland.

After explaining that other WH staffers were off to places like Maine, Florida and Greece, Elisabeth Bumiller notes that

Mr. Bush, of course, was in the less exotic blast furnace of his Texas ranch, settling in for a five-week stay on the prairie that will be his longest time away from Washington as president.

Get it? Bush is an absentee President. Lolligaging at his ranch for 5 whole weeks!! A little bitter Liz? Didn't bring enough moisturizer or what?

But in his first days away, Mr. Bush was relatively busy. He gave a speech on Wednesday in Grapevine, Tex., and met with the president of Colombia at the ranch on Thursday. He is to travel to New Mexico today, meet with his economic advisers and hold a news conference at the ranch tomorrow, travel to Illinois on Wednesday, meet with his foreign policy team and hold another news conference back at the ranch on Thursday, go to a Republican fund-raising lunch at a neighboring ranch on Friday and attend a Little League championship game in Waco, Tex., on Saturday.

Wait a sec. That means Bush is good! He's not really on vacation! He's working from Crawford! Good Bush! George is the Best! Right?

Noooooooooo. Because the reason for all the work is EVIL. Because whereever Bush is, even if it's Crawford, Texas, evil is afoot. Worse than evil, its a COVER-UP!!!!

One reason for the activity might be the desire to be in purposeful motion on another anniversary of the now-infamous C.I.A. briefing that Mr. Bush received at the ranch on Aug. 6, 2001. That briefing, which informed the new president that the terrorist network Al Qaeda had maintained an active presence in the United States for years and could be preparing for hijackings here, created a political uproar when its contents were eventually made public.

Critics have long called it a symbol of the administration's complacency in the slow summer days before the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001. Administration officials have countered that there was no specific information to act on, and that the briefing never warned that planes could be used as missiles.

So, to recap, the reason he went to the Little League game is to deflect attention from a briefing he got four years ago that may (according to the President's critics) or may not (according to sane people the world over) have provided warning of the potential of something that no one in their right mind would have comtemplated would be on the order of 9/11.

And not only that, but Liz takes her opportunity to rehash the non-story of the decade, providing yet another sinister reason behind Bush's August vacation. I feel silly for even putting this part in, because of course you all know the real reason Bush is in Crawford this month. It's because he's (lets all say it together):

...fleeing Washington to escape the federal investigation into who leaked the name of a Central Intelligence Agency officer to reporters, a potential crime.

Obviously. Because with Bush hunkered down in Crawford instead of Washington, no one would ever write a story about the Plame investigation. (OMG. I used her name - I hope I don't get deposed.) And God knows the federal investigator would never think to look in Texas if he had to ask Bush or his staff any questions.

And of course, Karl Rove will be joining the Pres-- What? You don't know who Mr. Rove is? I can't believe it. Luckily, Liz is here to clue you in. Turns out he's the same Mr. Rove

who has testified to a grand jury in the leak investigation

Thanks for clearing that up, Liz (or is it "Lis"?) Because I had forgotten that aspect of the story. Certainly an essential detail not to be ignored in this story about how hot it is at the ranch and how much you - I mean all civilized people despise it.

If it weren't so pathetic and seriously off-putting, this story would just be a laugh riot!

Bonus Taranto metaphor alert: Ever wondered why it's like a "blast furnace" in Crawford? It's because of the "blistering sun."

And for what it's worth, the forcast for tomorrow:

Washington, D.C.:

Clouds and sun with a t-storm High: 87° F RealFeel®: 95° F

Some sun with a thunderstorm High: 93° F RealFeel®: 100° F

So, if you are a NYT reporter, and you are lucky enough to get off the Crawford beat and get to head back to Washington, better take a sweater.

Nothing confirms it more than their ridiculous decision to ban schools from using Native American derived mascots during post-season tournaments. What's worse here? The stupid PC genesis of the idea, or the half-assed implementation? I mean, come on guys - if you are going to take a stand, have the balls to go all the way. This I guarantee - if the NCAA had control of the football post-season, this dumb-ass idea would have been dead on arrival. Put another way, if Florida State were a basketball power, this dumb-ass idea would have been dead on arrival.

At first I thought this story was stupid beyond words, and so I decided to refrain from reducing my thoughts to the written word. But then this piece by Bob Ford caught my eye, with a classic quote from the spokesman (sorry - spokesperson) for the San Diego State Aztecs:

[The NCAA] has already let San Diego State off the hook after the school argued that the Aztecs culture was not a "North American culture, but a culture based in what is now Mexico," according to a university spokesman.

That's a neat piece of scrambling, even if it doesn't say much for the geography department.

For all of you who graduated from SDSU, here's a map of North America:

For instance.......

Coach reprimanded for licking players’ cuts

and

Seattle man dies after sex with horse

Do I have a comment on either of these stories? No I do not.

There's an interesting debate among the conservative potentates at NRO about the push to have 16th Ave. in Washington, D.C. named after the late, great Ronald Reagan. (And I bet you thought conservatives would never debate the wisdom of naming something after RWR! Here's an insight: Change is not readily embraced by most conservatives.)

Anyway, my favorie comment comes from Mark Levin:

NEVER ENOUGH REAGAN. [Mark R. Levin]

If it were up to me, Maryland itself would be renamed Reagan.

Indeed.

Sometimes, having the good fortune to survive a plane crash just isn't enough.

Hours after the crash and rescues, at least one passenger was less than complimentary about the work of some of the flight attendants during the accident.

Gwen Dunlop, a Toronto resident who was on the flight returning from vacation in France, said when the plane first touched down the passengers believed they had landed safely and clapped with relief.

“Only seconds later, it started really moving and obviously it wasn’t OK,” said Dunlop. “At some point the wing was off. The oxygen masks never came down; the plane was filling up with smoke.”

“One of the hostesses said, ‘You can calm down, it’s OK,’ and yet the plane was on fire and smoke was pouring in,” Dunlop told The AP. “I don’t like to criticize, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared.”

Dunlop said some passengers went down emergency chutes, while others jumped out on their own. “We were all trying to go up a hill; it was all mud and we lost our shoes. We were just scrambling, people with children.”

She said the pouring rain, lightning and thunder added to the drama. “We were just thrown into the weather.”

Yes. How rude of the flight attendants not to be waiting with an umbrella at the bottom of escape chute. The indignity!

And I hate to shatter your illusions, ma'am, but methinks that you do, in fact, like to complain.

On the way home from work today, I saw a lovely young lady in front of me driving a Toyota Celica with two bumper stickers:

Save the environment - Plant a Bush back in Texas.

Cute. And...

When in doubt, start a war.

Not cute, and facile to boot.

Those kinds of bumper stickers make me want to interview the driver.

Me: Why do you think we are at war?

Driver: Well, the war is just about oil.

Me: How do you feel about oil exploration in ANWR?

Driver: I'm against it. It destroys the environment.

Me: How do you feel about nuclear power?

Driver: I'm against it. It destroys the environment.

Me: O.k. Then shut the hell up, please. And while you're at it, why not do your part and get yourself a Prius?