BULGER COLLAPSE!

        Must have been a crummy last couple of days for U-Mass
President William Bulger. The Commonwealth's former Speaker of the House had been
deposed
by victims of his brother, James 'Whitey' Bulger.
Howie Carr rubbed more salt into the wound with his radio show. His guest, Indiana congressman Dan Burton announced that THREE Congressional committees will be coming to town to ask more uncomfortable questions of the former
Senate President about his brother's relationship with the FBI and State House.
The last time Burton was in Beantown asking about Whitey, Billy, who many believed used his brother's street muscle to compliment his political power, took the fifth. The firestorm may have been better than the
questions that would have been asked.


        Small wonder he collapsed during a service for the late Globe sportswriter Will McDonough.

PARVE FOR THE COURSE!

        Do not trief-l with these consumers!

NOBODY EVER BUILT A STATUE TO A CRITIC!

          My first review is up at Blogcritics.

SHYSTER, SHYSTER & FLYWHEEL

        Kudos to Senator Bill Frist. The newly installed Senate Majority Leader was doing his normal non-senatorial activity, saving lives. He came upon a scene of a traffic accident and along, with a number of medical professionals, cared for the injured. Frist performed triage. According to Capt. Ken Kronheim of the Broward County Fire and Rescue Department, "He was instrumental in helping us sort out the critical patients."

        The survivors were loaded into ambulances, which Senator John Edwards promptly chased.

        Yeah. It was a cheap shot. But I'm much nicer than Doug Denver who declared...

GOP Senators stop at car accidents and render aid.         DNC Senators swim from car accidents and let young women drown.

        Hat tip to Insignificant Thoughts.


        Even less charitable was Opinionjournal. "In fairness to the Democrats, we should point out that they too have a physician-lawmaker, Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington state, a psychiatrist. McDermott has been known to administer not only aid but comfort."

        So, John Edwards is throwing his hat into the ring. Listening to the daytime talk radio in town I noticed the hosts and listeners focuses on his wealth, not how he earned his $14 million dollars.

There are material reasons, as well, for Republicans to go after trial lawyers: the large corporations that generally support Republicans are frequently subject to lawsuits that exact damage awards in the millions of dollars. Small businesses fear trial lawyers even more. A sizable judgment against a Fortune 500 company at most knocks down its stock price; but it can drive a small business into bankruptcy. The National Federation of Independent Business, the main small-business group instrumental in crafting the president's tax cut, is equally involved in guiding tort-reform initiatives.

        The writer falls into the fallacious liberal meme that Republican means rich. Big corporations (Like Enron and Global Crossing) have been giving more to the Democrats. Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that "In the 2000 election cycle, for example, big business gave 42 percent of its largess to the party and its candidates."

        The small business donors are finding the GOP more attuned to their needs, especially on the issue of not feeding the plaintiff's bar, a major client of the Democrats.

        Now is the time to push for tort reform, when communities are losing their doctors. (Doctors, unable to by the legislative Theodens from their shyster Grimas are resorting to the desperate tactic of saying, "If you want the gall bladder out, ask James Freaking Sokolov to do it!" And it's not just in the Mountaineer state. Even in the echo chamber of the New York Times opinion pages, concern is being voiced. An agressive push on the issue is what is needed.

        Getting back to Frist, John Hawkins must have a cast iron stomach to be able to wade through the DU sewer. Here's some of the fantasies being spewed in the fewer swamp...

"I nominate him for "Emergenc y Surgeon General"....jesus, a couple years ago he supposedly rescued a Capitol cop who had been shot...??? WTF? This guy is really Superman. He miraculously appears whenever someone is injured....gimme a f*ckin' break.."         If they can get away with killing Wellstone Two nobodies should be no sweat for KKKarl Rove and co."         "IF it's true ( I doubt it) BFD the man is a freaking doctor. that's what doctors are supposed to do. Of course , being a republican it would be amaing if he did the right ."

        Keep up the hate and paranoia, folks. It'll make your political immolation all the more delicious.

ANOTHER GOOD ONE GONE

        Hall of fame coach Sid Gillman is dead, according to the NFL. He was a pioneering coach in both the AFL and the NFL. His San Diego Chargers won the AFL with a (pun intended) electrifying passing game.

HAPPY NEW BEERS!

        Gonna go to Kaiju Big Battel tonight, with some friends. I'll try to write it up for Blogcritics. I wish you all a happy and healthy new year. Hopefully that bottle of 151 won't disappear like it has the last couple of years. (2 point ref)

DRAFT FEARS ON TAP

        Charles Rangel (D-NY) the very liberal Harlem Congressman has been the first to bring up the D-word. Of course, being a liberal Democrat, cynical political calculus and not honorable strategic thinking is behind the pronouncement.

        Some observers, including Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Jack H. Jacobs have warned our troops are being spread too thin. As Colonel Jacobs noted on MSNBC.com.

[O]ur military force is only a fraction of what we had a decade ago - and nothing near what is required to fight. We have only about a million men and women under arms in the entire active service, but we have commitments as geographically diverse as Bosnia, Korea, Iraq and homeland defense. With numbers like these, the United States will find it difficult to amass decisive and overwhelming military force to combat any but the least significant of threats, and we require all the technological edge we can get. We rely very heavily on National Guard and reserve augmentation of active units, but we have no system of National Service.

        I fear a draft may be necessary. And I'm scared as hell that it will come through. Now don't get me wrong. Even back in the day when I was a prime demographic for the draft, during the Persian Gulf War, I had no qualms about serving if called upon. I was not sure I'd survive boot camp, but that's another matter. While all my friends were talking about fleeing to Canada or bragging about their flat feet, I was thinking of enlisting in the Navy if called upon.
John Stryker, after slamming Rangel's motives, points out the basic problem with reinstating the draft.

A draft will weaken and diminish the military, because anyone with the least amount of talent, skill or money will be able to legally dodge the draft, leaving only the worst this society has to offer to fill our ranks. Right now, we have the most powerful military force this world has ever seen and it's manned solely by volunteers.         (Emphasis in the original)

        Even though America may need the manpower, the draft is still a bad idea.
After the Vietnam War, the armed forces were a hollow shell because of the unpopularity of the draft. Because the armed forces had to lower their standards, the 70s became a time when they were beset by low retention, poor morale, racial tension, inefficiency, poor equipment, combat unreadiness and rife crime and drug abuse. It took Reagan to cure that.

        Even if those loopholes Stryker described are closed, do we WANT the slackers, faux bohos, pierced idiots, Barbie dolls, PC androids and other assorted nitwits from the college campuses in the Armed forces? After the 60s, the liberals took over the educational institutions, leaving the armed forces to the conservatives (despite some busybody oversight attempts).

        The results? Universities are increasingly expensive PC farces where standards are constantly lowered and ignorance and arrogance are as common in the faculty as in the student body. Free inquiry and free speech have been crushed by the quasi-totalitarian party line. And every day we read new stories of the 'dumbing down of America.' The parents who can, or who care, flee the public schools for pricey private schools or home schooling. Meanwhile the teachers unions fight viciously and rapaciously to keep their monopoly and ensuring the ignorance of those they live off of.

        Meanwhile, the US military is a colorblind meritocracy, with proactive thinkers and an efficiency and strength that even they underestimate!

        As tempting as it is to see the Berkley Yahoos getting very acquainted with the underclass and proles on the confidence course, let's not mess up a good thing.

PULLING A BONER

        When will I learn? I was posting a comment on Free Republic about Spike Lee's firm making ads for Pepsi. I wanted to be acerbic and imply that Lee's presence would hurt Pepsi's business. However, given my propensity for typos... No. Read it for yourself.

SIGN OF THE TIME

        I was in Harvard Square Saturday- I had walked from my Brookline apartment, seeking to see something other than the same four walls. While there, I noticed on the Hudson News side of JFK street a sign urging motorists to 'Honk to say No to War in Iraq.' The sign (complete with stick, making it look like a leftover from some demo or another' was taped to a lamppost.

        Now this was in ultra liberal Cambridge, on the last Saturday before Christmas. And you know how Boston drivers are, especially in jaywalker territory like Harvard Square. So you will also know why it was so remarkable that nary a beep could be heard. And in the time it took to enjoy a pot of Moroccan Mint at TeaLuxe, someone tore the sign down and pitched it into the trash.

THE VOICE POINTS THE WAY

        Kudos to the Village Voice for contradicting my rant below. Normally I snarl the only good thing in the paper is Nat Hentoff. But on last week’s issue the cover story, by Tom Robbins, was an excellent look at the cadets at West Point. Refreshingly the tone of the article is not sneering or accusatory. Instead there is a tone of careful respect as the author clearly is putting aside many of his preconceived notions.

       For the National Review, that would be an ordinary article. For the Voice it is an act of courage.

MAKING MOCK O'UNIFORMS THAT GUARD YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP

        Since I've brought up liberal prejudices, let's look at their biggest focus of contempt- the military. The hatred the post Vietnam left has for our servicepeople is shocking. Here it is at its sleaziest at the Fark Forums.

MC_500foot_Nietzsche: Anyone who risks their own life for Bush's moronic personal vendetta are idiots. Harmonia:Osama says "thanks for missing me and recruiting lots of new members of my organisation, keep up the good work in 2003" EmJSea: Dear Soldier/Soldierette, Sarcastic: Thanks for being so homophobic and p*ssified that the thought of someone checking out your @ss in the showers makes you so scared that you can't perform your duties. Heartfelt: Thanks for getting in the way of bullets for me so that I can suck d*ck in relative comfort and enjoy films such as "Marine Barracks Gloryholes Parts 1-6" in relative comfort and security. Love, EmJSea Speedyj: good luck in Iraq! Don't kill *too* many innocent civilians while you're out there risking your @ss for Bush's oil. Jochem: hope your death in Iraq will be quick and not painful.

        Fortunately the sensible parties on Fark are flaming back against the blockhead pinkos. But it shows how clueless, loathsome and disgusting they remain. These gobs of idiotic venom demonstrate how little the left's paradigms have changed since the days of bell bottoms. That's why the lefties so love speech codes and 'campaign finance reform'. They know their warmed over ideas would lose out in the marketplace of ideas. So they need captive audiences.

        Courtesy of John Hawkins.

GENDER SAUCE FOR THE GANDER

        TV ratings poison Bryant Gumbel may join on Harold Rraines' anti-Augusta bandwagon, but according to the New York Post's Page Six, he comes with baggage- membership in an all male club.

Martha Burk, who chairs the National Council of Women's Organizations, said Gumbel admitted to her off-camera that he was a member of the exclusive Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Md., while profiling her on "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," in an installment to air Tuesday on HBO.         "I told him it was wrong and he shouldn't [belong to the club]," Burk said. "He mentioned it to me and I said, 'Bryant, you're wrong to do this. It's the wrong kind of statement to make not only to the public but also to your own daughter. I think you need to reconsider what you're doing in terms of the public statement that it makes.' "         The HBO show will not include Burk's tirade against Gumbel because it happened off-camera. Burk says she wanted to bring it up but, "he had control of the interview."

        In the world of the liberals, the one true evil is hypocrisy and they mercilessly assail conservatives who fail to live up to the standards they espouse. Avoiding hypocrisy is easy if you have few standards for yourself. So a preacher who has an affair is worse than a terrorist for a correct cause. Of course they rarely attack those fellows on their side who fail to live up to liberal ideals (CF Hymietown).

QUOTE OF THE WEEK!

        A mass, crybaby adolescence has infected the Middle East.

        Victor Davis Hanson

LILEK'S GEM

        James Lileks continues to prove why he is one of the best phrasemakers writing in his latest screed.

You know, if every "Woman's Studies" department was closed, and the student loans were used to create businesses that hired women instead of studied them like tragic butterflies impaled on the patriarchal pin, we might be better off.

        Give that man a MacArthur Grant!


        But seriously, folks, I had pointed out a mention of Little Green Footballs in this bleat...

For approximately 10 hours, nearly every single fever-induced plotline, image, character and non sequitar was funneled through the metaphor of the Little Green Footballs webpage. That's what my poor overclocked brain used to sort and process all the gibberish. New plotlines were understood as new blog entries. There was also running plot about buying large chunks of space on LGF for $500, and whether the website could be used to smuggle antiquities. This went on, as I said, for ten hours.

        Charles Johnson credited me with being the first to bring it to his attention and suddenly, my blog, which had been getting less than ten hits a day now has a burst in the triple digits. Well, now, as my cousin Danny noted, I have to update this sucker more often. Like daily.

UN-WISSE STRATEGY

        In this otherwise solid examination of the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college campuses, Professor
Ruth Wisse offers the following advice in combating the plague.

The last thing university authorities ought to do in addressing this latest outbreak of what has been called "the longest hatred" is to enforce the kind of speech codes that have been invoked to protect other sensitive minorities.

        With all due respect to Professor Wisse, who has been tremendous on this and many other fights, she is dead wrong here. Like a dog who has defecated on the Persian carpet, the PC mafia needs to have their noses shoved into their filth while being smacked with a rolled up paper.


        Okay. That metaphor clunked. But the best way to stop speech codes is to enforce them against the pack members of the PC movement. If the anti-Israelis veer off into old fashioned Jew baiting, charge them. If the administration comes down on those creeps then the Pinko McCarthites get the proverbial taste of their own medicine. If the spineless administrative weasels refuse, then the college gets sued for denying equal protection (if a public institution) or discrimination (if a private institution receiving federal funds). Actual, equal, stringent and honest enforcement of the abominations called speech codes will shatter their popularity even in the most small minded university denizens. Our ultimate objective remains tossing the One Ring into Mount Doom. But we can still use that sucker to whack the odd Nazgûl and maybe save Gondor.


        (Take a guess what flick I saw Tuesday at midnight. That's why I have 3AM posts.)

ARAFAT FINDS THE FRIGGING OBVIOUS!

        The old joke about the Palestinians being like the Bourbons- forgetting nothing and learning nothing- has taken an interesting twist. The Palestinians chose Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and now Osama. They cheer for the bloodthirstiest goons who promise them dead Jews. And every time they end up worse off.

FIRST REFUGE OF A DIMWIT

        Sean Penn is using a new word these days...

        In Reuters...

"I'm here for a simple reason, which is because I'm a patriot and an American who has benefited enormously from being an American, and because I had areas of personal concern and conscience that led me to come to Iraq.

        And the Washington Times...

"As a father, an actor, a filmmaker and a patriot, my visit to Iraq is for me a natural extension of my obligation - at least, attempt - to find my own voice on matters of conscience."

        This is 'Patriotic' Penn in 1991 about his directorial debut 'The Indian Runner,' as quoted in Michael Medved's Hollywood Vrs. America.

I don't think it scratches the surface of the rage that is felt, if not acted upon, by most of the people in the country where I live... I was brought up in a country that relished fear-based religion, corrupt government and an entire white population living on stolen property that they murdered for and that is passed on from generation to generation.

        Sean, Baby, why don't you give up your stolen property. I'm sure the Native Americans not benefiting from the casinos would appreciate your mansion.

        Jackass.

HEY BUD, LET'S JIHAD!

        Annoying actor Sean Penn is in Baghdad for three days. That's a short window to begin bombing!


        Link via Drudge.

BUY SOMETHING DAMN IT!

        Attention anti-idiotarians shoppers, especially in the Boston area... the bastards are at it again and we need to use our wallets to tell them to shove off.
See, a band of self-hating Jews calling themselves 'Jewish Women for Justice' have been picketing Wordsworth, one of the best bookstores in the region. Why? Because the proprietor, Hillel Stavis stopped giving to NPR (AKA National Pinko Radio, AKA National Palestinian Radio) because of their incessant anti-Israel bias. Stavis joined in the boycott in reaction to... well, see for yourself.

        Typically, these protestors hypocritically accuse others of 'censorship' when they support NPR's incessant one sided reporting.


        Stavis is not taking this sitting down.

Stavis fought back, standing next to his opponents on the sidewalk. As patrons entered his store, he distributed fliers of his own with a bold red headline: "These Anti-Israel Demonstrators Are Preparing The Next Holocaust."

        So this is a call to all anti-idiotarians. Support Stavis. Buy at Wordsworth! Defy the idiotarians! Buy online if you are not in Beantown. And if you can get to the People's Republic of Cambridge go there!

YET MORE PINKO ONANISM

        September 11th 2001 the New York Times had a front page puff-piece about convicted 60s terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers attempted to bomb the Pentagon and was unrepentant. "I don't regret setting bombs.... I feel we didn't do enough." The Times wound up with a great deal of egg on its face that the sympathy Pulitzers did little to wipe off.


        Well, Raines' rag is at it again. Today, front page, below the fold is more drool over the detritus of the Weather Underground.

As with the other triumphs of his young life, Chesa Boudin was unable to celebrate with his parents on Saturday afternoon when he was named a Rhodes scholar. He could not even share the good news.         As maximum-security inmates in the New York State prison system, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert are barred from receiving telephone calls or e-mail messages.

        Gee, why do the establishment meanies keep this bright, precious lad from his parents?

His parents, members of the 1970's radical group the Weathermen, have been in prison since he was 14 months old, for roles in a 1981 Brink's robbery in Rockland County in which two police officers and a guard were killed. They missed his Phi Beta Kappa award, high school graduation, Little League games.

        That is the extent of the discussion of the crimes. The victims are unnamed. Their murders are less relevant than the fact that Chsea does not have easy access to his parents. So long as prisons have visiting hours, he'll have more access than the families of the three people his folks helped to murder. Not 'killed.' Murder.



        I do not give a damn about this twerp. His parents can be Simon Adebisi's catamites for all I care. 'Reporter' Jodi Wilgoren may coo over his 18 tattoos (including the Weatherman logo) and his neat pinstripe suit. As a reader, I would have been far better served by an article about the families of the cops and security guard. There must be a segment at the Times whose main horror about 9-11 is that it made policemen into respected heroes. How they must pine for the days when they could yell 'Pig' to the delight of the rest of their cocktail party going crowd.


        Of course these same clowns wonder why their readers increasingly ignore the New York Times, instead turning to the Fox News, the New York Post, Washington Times, Matt Drudge, Glenn Reynolds, the Weekly Standard and Rush Limbaugh.

 

        Speaking of stupidity in the pages of the Times, letter writer Hilary Dunst screeches...

It was not Bill Clinton's "preoccupation with the Monica threat to his future" that "diluted his focus on the Qaeda threat to our future" but rather the Republican obsession with what was, and should have remained, a misguided but meaningless sexual peccadillo.

        I know the mythology has created an impenetrable force-field around your skull, but the issue was Paula Corbin Jones was denied a fair shot at justice. And the law that made the 'peccadillo' relevant was signed into law by Bill Clinton. My America provides equal justice for all. Even in a case pitting 'trailer trash' against the highest lawmaker in the land.


        Far too many of the Times' readers and writers curse the proles for making dents in the speeding limos as they barrel recklessly though life.