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This is Fang, one of my earlier dogs. She was hell on wheels. She once attacked a Doberman Pincher (in the defense of a snake goddess) and she won.
Saturday April 29, 2006--Public approval of President George W. Bush continues to decline. Today, for the third time in two weeks, the President's Job Approval Rating has fallen to the lowest level ever measured by Rasmussen Reports.
Just 37% of Americans now give the President their Approval, only 16% Strongly Approve. Even among Republicans, approval has tumbled and is currently measured at 66%. For most of his first term, Bush earned Approval Ratings in the high 80s from Republicans.
At the other end of the spectrum, 62% Disapprove including 45% who Strongly Disapprove. Those figures are also the bleakest for President Bush ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.
A U.S. Christian group has grown tired of escalating gasoline prices and is set to stage a national prayer rally to lower the numbers at the pumps.
Various Christian clergy from around the country will convene around a Washington, D.C., gas station Thursday at noon to pray. For those who can't attend, a live Internet site and toll-free prayer line have been established.
In a release, the Pray Live group said many people are "overlooking the power of prayer when it comes to resolving this energy crisis."
Chevron Corp.'s first-quarter profit soared 49 percent to $4 billion, joining the procession of U.S. oil companies to report colossal earnings as lawmakers consider ways to pacify motorists agitated about rising gas prices.
The San Ramon, Calif.-based company's net income, reported Friday, translated into $1.80 per share, two cents above the average estimate among analysts polled by Thomson Financial. It compared to a profit of $2.7 billion, or $1.28 per share, in the same January-March period last year.
Revenue totaled $54.6 billion, a 31 percent increase from $41.6 billion last year.
If not for continuing production problems caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer, Chevron said it would have made an additional $300 million - an amount that would have generated the highest quarterly profit in the company's 127-year history.
As it was, the performance marked the fourth consecutive quarter that Chevron has earned at least $3.6 billion as the company continued to capitalize on oil prices that have climbed above $70 per barrel since the first quarter ended.
Book Description
This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.
Hasidic king was buried Monday night, even as two of his sons fought in secular and religious courts to claim his throne.
Satmar Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum, the 91-year-old leader of the world's largest and
most powerful ultra-orthodox Hasidic sect, had been dead only three hours when thousands of Hasidim -- bearded and wearing black felt hats -- jammed into the main synagogue in Brooklyn for his funeral.
The scene was from another age -- 17th-century Eastern Europe, to be precise. Teitelbaum's sons loosened high-pitched wails and bowed again and again in prayer toward his wooden coffin. Male mourners, pressed so tightly together that breathing was difficult, surged across the floor, pushing, shoving, elbowing to get closer to the casket.
Upstairs, Satmar women watched, unseen, from behind wooden screens.
Outside the synagogue, loudspeakers pumped out the sons' eulogies and prayers into the night air, their cries echoing off the tenement walls of the Williamsburg neighborhood. More than 20,000 Satmar followers packed the streets, sat shoulder-to-shoulder on brownstone stoops, climbed trees or watched from rooftops and balconies.
The Satmar community is the fastest-growing ultra-orthodox sect in the world, controlling a $1 billion real estate and social services enterprise. It claims more than 100,000 members -- in Brooklyn; Montreal; Antwerp, Belgium; and Jerusalem. An additional 19,000 live in Kiryas Joel, an entirely Hasidic town 25 miles north of New York City.
But no one has devised a clear process for picking a new grand rebbe -- succession wars and angry splits are common among Hasidic sects. In theory, the grand rebbe anoints a successor, a rabbinical court agrees, and the choice meets with approval.
In the case of the Satmar, Teitelbaum's eldest son, Aaron -- who is chief rabbi in Kiryas Joel -- expected to succeed his father. But in his later years, Moses Teitelbaum came to see Aaron as headstrong and, perhaps, not capable of leading the entire sect.
So the father appointed a younger son, Zalmen, to run the Williamsburg congregation, splitting his empire.
Aaron never fully accepted the decision. Save for a few brief words of commiseration Monday evening, the middle-aged brothers have not spoken to each other in more than seven years, say advisers to the two men. Most Satmar Hasidim have lined up behind one brother or the other -- the sides are known as the "Zalis" and "Aaronis" -- and the past decade has been punctuated by fistfights, broken legs and arms, torched cars and homes.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
--Margaret Mead
Public Citizen has released a report [...] detailing how "18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion."
I note that the Anne Cox Chambers daughter of the 1920 Democratic Presidential nominee, James Cox and owner of the Atlanta Journal Constitution is part of this cabal along with the Waltons (WalMart), the owners of the Seattle Times, the Nordstroms (owners of the department store), Ernest and Joseph Gallo (E & J Gallo Winery), the owners of Campbell Soup Co., The Mars family (candy) and Kock Industries to name a few of the miscreants.
In an April 22 column touting a new book by Carrie Lukas -- director of policy for the conservative Independent Women's Forum -- conservative radio host and columnist Doug Giles slurred feminists as "misogynists with vaginas" and praised "lassies" who "[d]on't want their vagina turned into a sexual turnstile."
Giles wrote that in Lukas's upcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism (Regnery Publishing, May 2006), Lukas "shreds the lies which the female chauvinist pigs (FCP) have sold our nation's fair ladies" and "shows the women who would be women the true identity of postmodern day feminists: misogynists with vaginas ... womyn who not only hate men, but women also."
...
Another cool thing about The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism is that it was a young, accomplished woman, who also happens to be a happy wife and mother, who penned this work of non-fiction. These are not the crayon scribblings of some repressed, backwoods, barefoot, unenlightened Ellie Mae Clampett, but rather a girl who got her bachelor's at Princeton, her Masters at Harvard and did it without drinking the lesbians' -- I mean the feminists' -- Kool Aid.
This book is going to liberate ladies to be ladies; and contrary to the propaganda belched forth via our universities and MSM, there are a whole lot of lassies who:
1. Like being a woman, in a traditional sense. *I'll take a Katharine McPhee over a Hillary any day.
[...]
5. Look to their husband's to provide rather than looking to the feminists' sugar daddy, Uncle Sam.
Yeah, mom and dad, if . . . if . . . you dare to raise your boy as a classic boy in this castrated epoch, then you've got a task that's more difficult than getting a drunk Ted Kennedy to hit the urinal at Chili's.
Get it right, mom and dad—you are rowing against the flotsam and jetsam of Sally River. I hope you have a sturdy ideological paddle and some serious forearms, because postmodernism is determined to keep your boy and his testosterone at bay. Yes, they will attempt at every turn to either drill it or drug it out of him.
Parent, if you're groping for a creedal oar to help you stem the increasingly stem-less effete environment, I've got a novel idea: Howzabout going back to the Bible, in particular the book of Genesis, and see what God the Father created His initial kid to be. Check this out.
Gen.1.24-28.
Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind"; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Born to be Wild.
First off, parents, please note that the cradle God created for His firstborn was rough country—a thorny, critter-laden and butt-kicking badland. God wanted His boy brought up in undomesticated surroundings. The feral fashioned something in God's first boy, Adam, that Xbox, the mall and cell phones just couldn't provide to the charge under His tutelage.
Yeah, God's earthy 2IC was directly connected to the Spirit of the Wild. Adam lived in primitive partnership with untamed beasts, birds, big lizards and monster sharks. This is the way it was. And God said, "It is good!" Imagine that: good being equated to having no anti-bacterial gel, no bike helmets, no Trans Fatty acids, no poodles, no motorized scooters, no concrete and no Will and Grace. I know this doesn't sound like "paradise" for postmodern pantywaists that are immoral, lazy, stupid and fat, but it was God's—and His primitive son's—idea of "Yippee Land."
The day has come when you, as a parent, are going to have to be defiant for your son's masculine rights and upbringing. The man haters have an ideological agenda and some prescription med's ready to rid your boy of all his distinct behavioral traits—and it's your job, mom and dad, to make certain these jack asses don't lay their gloves on him. Pink Floyd's "Hey, teacher, leave these kids alone" line from "Another Brick in The Wall" takes on a whole new meaning in this new millennium as far as sons are concerned.
One great source for rebellious inspiration comes from the Bible. The scripture is a great font for prissy, culture-defying fodder. In the scripture you see the men being men, and the demons being scared. You don't have to wade very far through the holy text before God starts laying down His blueprint for the boys. You find God's plan in book one, chapter one.
Gen.1.26-28.
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
What does God want His kid with the gonads to be? Well, here are six of the characteristics: a kid who is comfortable in the wild, who's ready to rule, is a savvy steward, is a dragon slayer, pursues wisdom and reflects the image of God. Having covered the necessity of the wild in your kids' upbringing in last week's column, let's check out God's desire to make him a conqueror.
Born to Rule/Take Dominion.
God's initial earth boy was born to dominate creation and to exercise authority over the planet. God designed His first terrestrial son to be a leader, to take charge, to exert influence. Yaweh didn't construct Adam to be a passive clod, some indolent handout addict who abnegates his responsibility to other people or institutes; but rather, Adam was to be a bold and imaginative chief. This is the very thing the misandrists hate in men and are trying desperately to curb in your kid, namely, this can-do spirit.
But if Bush is being punished for high energy costs, he has only himself to blame. This May 7, 2001 response by then press secretary Ari Fleischer captures the malign neglect that is the Bush energy policy:
Q: Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Tribune.
Gen. George Casey ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor. Human brokers and subcontractors from South Asia to the Middle East have worked together to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries.
Two memos obtained by the Tribune indicate that Casey's office concluded that the practice of confiscating passports from such workers was both widespread on American bases and in violation of the U.S. trafficking laws.
...
Although other firms also have contracts supporting the military in Iraq, the U.S. has outsourced vital support operations to Halliburton subsidiary KBR at an unprecedented scale, at a cost to the U.S. of more than $12 billion as of late last year.
KBR, in turn, has outsourced much of that work to more than 200 subcontractors, many of them based in Middle Eastern nations condemned by the U.S. for failing to stem human trafficking into their own borders or for perpetrating other human rights abuses against foreign workers.
KBR's subcontractors employ an army of workers to dish out food, wash clothes, clean latrines and carry out virtually every other menial task. About 35,000 of the 48,000 people working under the privatization contract last year were "Third Country Nationals," who are non-Americans imported from outside Iraq, KBR has said.
"Pipeline to Peril," which was based on reporting in the U.S., Jordan, Iraq, Nepal and Saudi Arabia, described how some subcontractors and a chain of human brokers allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned by the State Department as human trafficking.
The newspaper retraced the journey of 12 men recruited in 2004 from rural villages in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Jordan and Iraq. Most of the men had contracts filed with their government falsely promising them positions at a five-star hotel in Amman, yet all 12 were sent into Iraq in August 2004. They were ultimately kidnapped from an unprotected caravan traveling along what was then one of the most dangerous roadways in the world: the Amman-to-Baghdad highway.
All 12 men were subsequently executed by militants in likely the single worst massacre of foreign workers in Iraq since the American-led invasion more than three years ago.
Poland's TVP public broadcaster is to ban television adverts containing erotic and violent scenes during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the country next month, officials said.
"Programmes of masses will obviously not be accompanied by publicity," Zbigniew Badziak, the TVP official responsible for publicity, told AFP.
"For other programmes linked to the pope's visit, we will eliminate all advertisements that could hurt religious feelings, particularly those containing violent or erotic scenes."
Badziak also said TVP would avoid transmitting adverts for products such as beer and intimate hygiene items during the pope's visit.
While waiting for my clothes to dry, I did something I do much less often these days: Read the Sunday Inquirer - on paper. The front page of the Currents section (the former News & Views, I think) is themed "Can we live without newspapers?" and includes the piece Jeff Jarvis did on the norgs conference, something from Hugh Hewitt and from Rick Stengel, CEO of the National Constitution Center.
Inside was this snippy little piece from staffer right-wing hack Jonathan Last.
If I were his editor, I would have made him rewrite it. (But then, I always was conscientious that way.)
But the biggest evil of blogs is that first flaw, blogging's original sin: the discounting of news-gathering in favor of news analysis. Bloggers are forever telling us how easy journalism is, yet very few of them have ever really practiced it. Sure, they may have written opinion pieces that compare favorably to the work of Molly Ivins or Ann Coulter, but opinion writing is a tiny - and let's be honest, inconsequential - corner of the journalism world. Real journalism - the practice of adding to the store of public knowledge by reporting news - is a difficult, thankless, and often unpleasant task. Bloggers want no part of it. Everyone wants E.J. Dionne's job; no one wants to be Michael Dobbs.
There is really no excuse for this kind of "straw man" silliness, and part of the problem is that Last makes no distinction whatsoever between the left and right blogosphere. This is akin to confusing professional wrestling with the Olympic event.
Plus, it's such lazy, half-assed writing. (Maybe his laundramat has wifi, too. Maybe he had one eye out for an open dryer as he wrote this extended pout.) "Bloggers are forever telling us how easy journalism is"? Which bloggers, Mr. Last? How many? When? Can you find any on the left side of the top-ranked blogsphere who say journalism is easy? (I know I've pointed out how a story should be done on many occasions - but then again, I'm an award-winning journalist with 20 years' experience.)
Another worry is that, as a medium, the blog does not value well-crafted writing. Except for Mark Steyn and James Lileks, it's hard to pick out even three beautiful writers from the millions of bloggers.
And here's where we figure it out. Mark Steyn? James Lileks? (Yes, that James Lileks.)
Don't get out and around the liberal blogosphere too often, do you, Jonathan? (Which bolsters my perpetual argument about the sheer laziness of reporters. It's been a few years since conservative blogs truly dominated the landscape, and yet some journalists are still referring to the same old bookmarks. See, once you're in their Rolodex, virtual or otherwise, that's it.)
If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.
There is, however, the possibility of another terrorist attack, and if one occurred, Americans would again rally around the president - wrongly so, since this is a presidency that lives on fear-mongering about terror, but does little to truly address it. The possibility that we might both suffer an attack, and see a boost to Bush come from it, is truly a terrifying thought.