Damn iceberg in my frap! — The conclusion

July 25th, 2005 by Vinny


Damn iceberg in my frap!

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

Many of you will remember this photo. It’s an iceberg found in a Starbucks Frap from about a month and a half ago.

Well, today, I got a letter from Starbucks Corporate. Truthfully, it didn’t surprise me one bit to get something from them; from what I’ve heard they’re good that way.

The letter read:

Dear Vincent Ferrari,

I’m sorry to hear you weren’t happy with your beverage.

Providing you with a satisfying drink, prepared just the way you like it, is always a top priority. Your comments are being shared with the store and district managers so they’re aware of your concerns and can address them directly with the baristas who served you.

Enclosed you’ll find a coupon for a complimentary beverage. I hope it will inspire you to give us another try.

In the future, if your experience at Starbucks doesn’t meet your expectations, please speak directly to the store manager, or call us at ###-###-####. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us, and always welcome your comments and suggestions.

Your continued satisfaction is important, and we’ll do all we can to ensure it.

Warm Regards,

Daniel M.
Customer Relations
Starbucks Cofee Company

And there you have it. A free frap on them. Obviously I’ll take full advantage. Can you say Venti No Whip Mint Mocha Chip Frapuccino?

I sure as hell can :-)

I should, of course, note that most of my experiences at Starbucks have been very very good and I always find the counter folk very helpful and friendly. I take my experience in this case as what it was, an exception; not the rule.

The fact that I’ve had some form of Starbucks almost every day for almost two months is proof positive that despite the bumps, I’m always happy to be on the road!



Nobody’s Asking, So Screw it; I will…

July 25th, 2005 by Vinny

One of the things the left does that drives me up a wall is that they blame the victim for what happens to them. Even after 9/11, the US State Department, at the urging of many groups (such as CAIR, a fine organization), had a little get-together in which they discussed what we did to make the poor oppressed men who blew 3,000 of our citizens into dust do what they did.

As much as it drives me crazy when they do it, however, I think I’m gonna have to borrow a play from their playbook here.

The police in London screwed up. Before I say anything else, I’m going to get that out of the way. I don’t think that killing an unarmed man wrongly is something to be taken lightly, glossed over, or forgotten. When you make the decision to pull the trigger, there are consequences if you do so incorrectly. As human beings we all need to examine our biases and such.

But there’s one question I have to ask that I have not seen one major news outlet ask yet (and I’m open to indications that somebody did). I’ve read the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the New York Post, lots of online resources (AP and Reuters mostly), The Financial Times, and watched CNN and Fox.

No one asked a very simple question.

The AP had the following opening on a story on their newswire yesterday afternoon:

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil’s government demanded an explanation Saturday for the fatal police shooting of Brazilian citizen on a London subway car. London police initially said the man chased down and shot to death by plainclothes officers was tied to the recent terror bombings, but conceded Saturday that they no longer believed that was the case.

The Brazilian government said the man, identified by British authorities as 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes, was “apparently the victim of a lamentable mistake.”

“The government expects the British authorities to explain the circumstances that led to this tragedy,” the statement said.

He was chased down.

Now ponder for a moment, the wisdom in running from the police in London on that particular day. They tell you to stop. They have guns drawn. Your first instinct is to run? Reminds me of the Amadou Diallo case, in a way. An immigrant, when told, in a really bad neighborhood, to put his hands in the air, kept reaching into his pocket despite repeated warnings not to do so. When he finally pulled his wallet out, he was shot multiple times until he hit the ground.

The tragic part of that case was that Diallo didn’t speak English.

The man, in London, however, had no such excuse:

“He spoke English very well, and had permission to study and work there,” Menezes’ cousin Maria Alves told the O Globo Online Web site from her home in Sao Paulo.

So he spoke English “very well” and yet his first instinct in a jittery city that had just been rocked by two sets of bomb explosions is to run?

The more I repeat it, the more absurd it sounds. His running away, in my opinion, is suspicious behavior, the likes of which would cause you to be shot, particularly if you decide, while running from the police, to do so into a subway car during morning rush. I almost hate to say it, but if the police are pursuing a man that runs into a subway car, in London, in the context of what had happened in the past two weeks, I’d fire any officer that didn’t shoot him and do so to kill.

All this guy had to do to save his own life was stop.

In this case, I’d have to say most of the responsibility for this man’s death lies in his grave with him.



ABC POOS

July 24th, 2005 by Vinny

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JULY 24, 2005 19:44:05 ET XXXXX

ABC ‘GOOD MORNING AMERICA’ ON DOG POO ALERT

What’s that smell coming out of ABCNEWS?

Answer: Dog Poo was found in the 6th floor conference room in mid-town NYC by an executive late last week!

“I love you all BUT give me a break,” demands GOOD MORNING AMERICA business manager Pam Tepper in an urgent e-mail to staff. “You should not bring your dog to work. Please do not let this happen again.”

The gift left behind by the mystery canine at ABCNEWS follows a growing trend of city dwellers bringing their pets into the office space.

———————————————————–
Filed By Matt Drudge

And I thought it was the stink of liberal bias. But I guess it smells the same as dog crap anyway.



At the grocery store

July 24th, 2005 by Vinny

Sure would explain the aversion so many immigrants have toward the language… They knew all along that learning it was dangerous to their health :-)



The Greatest Without Question

July 24th, 2005 by Vinny

Anyone who’s known me for more than ten seconds knows I have an almost hero-worship type relationship with Lance Armstrong. As far as I’m concerned no one will ever be able to touch his greatness.

Seeing pictures of him crossing the finish line today just solidified one thing. No matter what the organizers did to make it harder for him to win… No matter what his opponents did to train harder… No matter what equipment they bought… No matter what dope they took… No matter what rule changes, harassment by fans, personal tragedies, or team shortcomings fell in his way, here we sit at the end of his seventh consecutive Tour de France win and we can only marvel at the unbelievable accomplishment this is.

The sport of cycling will certainly not be the same without Lance. Some people in Europe will be quite happy to see him go. Rightfully so, I imagine. No one else was winning that race while he was in it.

That, no matter what you think of the man himself, is a true mark of greatness.

Thank you, Lance, for representing our country with such pride and giving us something to cheer about at the end of the Tour.



From my fortune cookie from lunch…

July 19th, 2005 by Vinny

“The view changes only for the leading dog.”

How true… How very true…



Back to Cali

July 17th, 2005 by Vinny


View From The Balcony

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

Well, tomorrow I’ll be making one of my famous trips to California for work. I’ll be there the whole week and depending on my hotel’s internet connection, blogging may be light or non-existent.

It is awfully purdy, though, isn’t it?

I’m looking forward to going, but I’ll be really glad when it’s all over.



Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

July 17th, 2005 by Vinny

Seeing as Hollywood seems utterly devoid of new and interesting ideas this summer, it’s nice to see they’re not completely crapping on time-tested old ones, particularly good old ones.

This week’s must-see movie for Beth and I was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a remake of the classic children’s movie done ages ago. Considering the director, Tim Burton, one would definitely be a bit nervous about it. After all, the original was a bit whimsical and light-hearted, and that certainly does not fit Tim Burton’s personality.

And if you were thinking it would be somewhat dark and brooding, you’d be absolutely right. Gene Wilder, in the original movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory portrayed Willy Wonka as a goofy carefree eccentric, while Johnny Depp portrays him almost as a semi-sinister anti-hero intent on getting revenge on children. Don’t let that turn you off, though. Both portrayals are great, and in some ways Depp’s portrayal is much more interesting!

The opening sequence to the movie is a magnificent trip down the assembly line of the Wonka factory done in CGI. Afterward, the story starts unfolding, and we’re brought into the home of Charlie Bucket, the co-main character. Apparently Burton was a fan of the original movie because they kept very tightly to the original look, but it still has Burton’s fingerprints on it (dark and menacing, to be specific).

In fact, most of the scenery in this movie is somewhat menacing. From the imposing figure that is the candy factory itself hovering over the small town it rises above to the massive display at the entrance of that same factory that, during the opening sequence, breaks into a spontaneous fire turning the cherub-like dolls into melted piles of plastic, there’s a creepiness to this movie that just makes it great.

The story resembles the first movie very closely, although I’m told this story is closer to the storyline from the book than the first movie was. Either way, you’d have to have a hard heart to not enjoy this movie. Here are the hits and misses:

Hits:

1. Johnny Depp: Brilliant portrayal of a classic character with a fresh “attitude.” The dark and brooding Wonka is a much more interesting character than the Gene Wilder version.

2. The Oompa Loompas: They were funny. Burton went beyond dwarves and made the Oompa Loompas a whole race of really really small people and the story even explains in detail how Wonka came across them.

3. The scenery: Grand but not too grand. Imposing and ominous, but lighthearted and dreamy where it needed to be. The boat scene and its “Fantastic Voyage”esque trip down into the bowels of the factory was kinda neat, but looked more like a kid’s toy than a boat. The candy garden was incredible and amazing, and the various elevator scenes were mindblowing.

4. The casting with the exception of one character: Veruca Salt. Every single character in the movie was well-cast and well played. The spoiled kids were pretentious spoiled little brats, the parents obnoxious and annoying, and so on. Charlie Bucket’s family was convincing as a piss-poor family with nothing going on for it except each other. All in all well done by all of them.

5. Dialogue: The dialogue was funny as hell, plain and simple. I did not expect to be that amused by it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Well-written and funny and obviously well-thought-out.

6. The music: Every single musical note in this movie was terrific. Danny Elfman is a master, plain and simple and the lyrics to the “lesson” songs after each kid gets their just desserts are brilliant and funny.

Misses:

1. Veruca Salt. I don’t blame her potrayal on the little girl. I blame it on the writing. Veruca Salt was pouty, loud, and sharp. This Veruca was just spoiled and annoying, and there were times when this little girl from Buckinghamshire England didn’t even have an accent. Didn’t like her much.

2. Some of the scenery was hokey. This would have worked if some of the rest of the scenery wasn’t so unbelievable. The boat scene, for example, was great HOWEVER at times the boat looked like a model getting flushed down a toilet.

3. Wonka’s “sadism”: In some ways, Wonka was almost too sadistic and he seemed to take too much pleasure in the kids being harmed. While I think the darkness of Wonka added a new dimension to the movie, I don’t think he needed to be that dark; although since “over-the-top” was the point anyway, maybe I just missed that aspect a bit.

Conclusion:

Go see it. If you even remotely liked the original, head out now and buy tickets. I didn’t particularly care for the original and I still loved this remake. Johnny Depp should win an Oscar for this one. Of course, he won’t, because the film is in color and English, but hey… You never know :-)



!

July 15th, 2005 by Vinny

Houston Rapper Fired As Baggage Screener
By PAM EASTON
Associated Press Writer

July 14, 2005, 8:59 PM EDT

HOUSTON — When Bassam Khalaf raps, he’s the Arabic Assassin. His unreleased CD, “Terror Alert,” includes rhymes about flying a plane into a building and descriptions of himself as a “crazy, suicidal Arabic … equipped with bombs.”

Until last week, Khalaf also worked as a baggage screener at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

“I’ve been screening your bags for the past six months, and you don’t even know it,” said Khalaf, who also said Thursday that he is not really a terrorist and that his rhymes are exaggerations meant to gain publicity.

Andrea McCauley, a spokeswoman for the regional Transportation Security Administration office in Dallas, said the agency checks criminal records before hiring screeners, but it does not investigate what people do in their spare time.

“We have eyes and ears in the workplace,” McCauley said. “Once we discovered these Web sites, we fired him.”

An Internet search of Khalaf’s name brings up Web sites that feature his obscene, violent and misogynistic raps that threaten to fly a plane into a building on Sept. 11, 2005.

:shock:



UN Massacre: The Left is Utterly Silent

July 15th, 2005 by Vinny

So while we debate whether piss can flow through and entire ventillation system and a molecule of it and can land on a Koran that just happened to be unsheathed and placed next to a vent, and we keep trying to figure out how much torture we committed in Gitmo, we have this story of some trigger happy blue-helmets:

Our delegation uncovered extensive evidence that indicates there was indeed a massacre conducted by UN military forces in Cite Soleil on the morning of July 6th. We will first present the official version of events, as rendered by the military command staff of MINUSTAH and a MINUSTAH spokesperson. We will then proceed to share the evidence we gathered that contradicts their version of events.

According to Lt. General Augusto Heleno and Colonel Morneau, a little more than 300 UN troops, led by a Jordanian contingent, surrounded Cite Soleil at approximately 3 AM on July 6th. They also surrounded the community with 18-20 Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), which appear to be like tanks, mounted with a cannon, but do not have tank treads. MINUSTAH military spokesperson Colonel Eloifi Boulbars stated that the number of APCs involved in the operation was 41, as reported by the Haitian media.

[...]

According to the eyewitness account from a Haitian (who shall remain anonymous for this report) who was present in Cite Soleil during the operation and who did get some film footage of the operation as it unfolded, a very different picture emerges. Like the official UN account, he reported that UN forces surrounded Cite Soleil, as stated by UN military command staff, sealing off the alleys with tanks [APCs] and troops. He reported that UN forces concentrated on the Cite Soleil districts of Boisneuf and Project Drouillard. He further reported that not one, but two helicopters flew overhead.

From this point on, his account diverges considerably from the official UN account. He reported that at 4:30 AM, UN forces launched the offensive, shooting into houses, shacks, a church, and a school with machine guns, APC cannons, and tear gas. The eyewitness reported that when people fled to escape the tear gas, UN troops gunned them down from the back.

UN forces shot out electric transformers in the neighborhood. People were killed in their homes and also just outside of their homes, on the way to work. According to this account, one man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he got ready to go to work in a local sweatshop and subsequently died from a stomach infection. A woman who was a street vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly. One man was shot in his ribs while he was trying to brush his teeth.

Another man was shot in the jaw as he left his house to try and get some money for his wife’s medical costs; he endured a slow death. Yet another man named Mira was shot and killed while urinating in his home. A mother, Sonia Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home, reportedly by UN fire after UN forces lobbed a 83-CC gas grenade into their home.

The video footage taken by this eyewitness during the operation shows many of these killings while they were occurring. While it does not show images of the UN troops as they were firing into the community, one can view at least 10 unarmed people either in the process of being killed or who were already killed. Many were killed by headshots, such as 31-year-old Leonce Chery moments after a gun shot ripped off his jaw. Chery was clearly unarmed. There are audible machine gun blasts occurring in the background. The video footage also depicts the bodies of Sonia Romelus and her two young children, lying in blood on the floor of their home. Apparently, Sonia was killed by the same bullet that passed through the body of her one-year old infant son Nelson.

The conclusion of the report is utterly chilling…

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the evidence of a massacre by UN military forces in Cite Soleil is substantial and compelling. The eyewitness account of the operation, and the film footage shot by Haitian human rights workers who were on the scene during the operation; the extensive videotaped testimony by community members themselves on July 7th, coupled with tangible, physical damage to their homes and infrastructure; the bodies still on the scene that we have on video; the intense fear of the UN military forces evidenced by hundreds of residents of Cite Soleil; the statements by the local Red Cross; and finally the registry records of the relevant hospital — all of these pieces of evidence indicate that UN military forces in Haiti today are not engaged in the work of “peacekeeping” as much as they are in the business of repression.

Clearly, further investigation is required to determine the exact number of victims from the operation, their identities, and the reasons for their deaths. One can only wonder why UN forces in Haiti have not, apparently, contacted the relevant hospital or dispatched their own human rights team into Cite Soleil in order to assess the true “collateral damage” resulting from this and other armed incursions by the UN military forces.

I wonder how many Democrats are going to bother getting up in arms over this?

Or for that matter, how many Republicans?

Seriously, this needs to be investigated and soon.

Make no mistake, I’m not expecting it to. The left is more interested in hanging Karl Rove and determining how much teleporting piss landed on a Koran.

Source: American Realpolitik



Plame Case Undermined By Joe Wilson’s Own Book

July 15th, 2005 by Vinny

CIA ‘outing’ might fall short of crime
By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - The alleged crime at the heart of a controversy that has consumed official Washington - the “outing” of a CIA officer - may not have been a crime at all under federal law, little-noticed details in a book by the agent’s husband suggest.

In The Politics of Truth, former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes that he and his future wife both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997. Neither spouse, a reading of the book indicates, was again stationed overseas. They appear to have remained in Washington, D.C., where they married and became parents of twins.

Six years later, in July 2003, the name of the CIA officer - Valerie Plame - was revealed by columnist Robert Novak.

The column’s date is important because the law against unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a “covert agent” must have been on an overseas assignment “within the last five years.” The assignment also must be long-term, not a short trip or temporary post, two experts on the law say. Wilson’s book makes numerous references to the couple’s life in Washington over the six years up to July 2003.

“Unless she was really stationed abroad sometime after their marriage,” she wasn’t a covert agent protected by the law, says Bruce Sanford, an attorney who helped write the 1982 act that protects covert agents’ identities.

Source: USA TODAY.



Are you watching “The Cut?”

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

I am. And I love one of the contestants…

1. She’s damn cute.
2. She’s damn smart.

If you’re watching it, who’s your fave?



He did it, dammit! BELIEVE ME!

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

“He claims the e-mail from Matt Cooper didn’t say it outed her, but it did. In the e-mail, he says Mr. Wilson’s wife, and that’s my wife’s name; Valerie Wilson.”

-Joe Wilson to ABC News on the subject of the Matt Cooper E-mail and Rove’s denial of mentioning her name.

It just gets better, folks.



Damn good point, Pam

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

You know, I damn near forgot about how non-partisan hack Joe Wilson did some work on a certain campaign…

Spouse of outed CIA officer signs on with Kerry
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Joseph C. Wilson, a former Clinton appointee whose unsubstantiated charge that senior White House officials leaked the identity of his CIA officer wife and prompted a grand jury probe, has taken a prominent role in the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry.

The career diplomat and senior director for Africa policy for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration has campaigned for the Democratic presidential front-runner in at least six states. Mr. Wilson has also been offering the Massachusetts candidate speechwriting tips.

Non-partisan my ass.



Non Partisan My Ass

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

Joseph Wilson is having a joint press conference at 3:00 pm with Chuck Schumer to request that Karl Rove’s security clearance be revoked until the investigation into the leak that Wikipedia made of Valerie Plame’s ID.

Surely it’s just a coincidence that he’s not showing up alone or with his super secret top secret agent spy wife whose name and face everyone knows, but instead he’s showing up with a Democratic Senator.

This case stinks, folks.

Now, since they realize they probably won’t get Rove fired, they’re gonna turn his security clearance into an issue.

And he shows up, as an “independent” “non-partisan”, at the right hand of Chuck Schumer, who’s ready to destroy anyone who dares think abortion is wrong.

The smell is overwhelming. Wonder how long they were planning it?



Awww… How cute!!!

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

Oh wow. Super-top-secret-my-life-is-in-danger-because-Karl-Rove-outted-me Super agent Valerie Plame is really doing wonders to shield her identity.

Nice publicity photo for the husband. Really nice.

Now tell me… Why would you allow that picture out into the world if you thought your life was in danger?

Why would you let your real name be attached to it if you thought your life was in danger?

If you truly believed the outing of your name and face would be deadly to people you formerly worked with, wouldn’t you do a better job of laying low?

Thanks to RKB to pointing me to Wikipedia so I could read about what a bastard Karl Rove is. Without him, I never would’ve found this super secret undercover top confidence classified file photo from the CIA that’s only been shown on a site that’s seen by millions of people a day.



Good damned question…

July 14th, 2005 by Vinny

…why is Judy Miller in jail? She can’t be protecting Rove as a source if Rove has been outed by Time’s Matt Cooper and if he signed a waiver freeing her to talk, which he did. Therefore, whatever source she is protecting isn’t Karl Rove. So who is it?

She knows. Her bosses at the NYT know. And they know that fingering her real source would probably lift some of the burden off of Rove…

A damn good question… One we’re not likely to get the answer to, unfortunately…

Of course, you have to wonder if this really matters at all, seeing as Ms. Plame, who plastered her mug all over any camera that would come near her after the outing that supposedly endangered her life, gave up the goods on what she did for a living to, for all intents and purposes, a stranger during their fourth date in the midst of some teenage petting and fondling.

“Meeting in Paris, London and Brussels, [the relationship between Plame and Wilson] got very serious, very quickly. On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a ‘heavy make-out’ session when she said she had something to tell him.”

At that point Wilson told VF that his undercover enamorata interrupted their tryst and came clean.

“She was, she explained, undercover in the CIA,” VF said. Wilson told the magazine that the revelation “did nothing to dampen my ardour. My only question was: Is your name really Valerie?”

Sorry, but something’s rotten in this story, and it ain’t some mythical Rove leak.

Like why is Wilson out there defending Judith Miller’s right to keep her source a secret? Bryan makes a great point in his piece (based on what John Podhoretz wrote) that if someone had endangered your super-secret top-clearance hiding-in-the-bushes CIA operative wife’s life, would you defend their right to not disclose who risked her life?

I’d personally show up at her door with a gun and pound it until she told me, at which point, I’d find the bastard who did it and kick his/her/its ass.

Then there’s the question of why Rove is under heavier fire for telling the truth to Matt Cooper (as recounted in the Newsweek story last week) than Joe Wilson is for being a filthy politically motivated liar

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize–perhaps the next iteration of the “Truth-Telling” award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

The WSJ really nails it home here:

The same can’t be said for Mr. Wilson, who first “outed” himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous “16 words” on the subject in that year’s State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. “Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip,” said the report.

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn’t even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain’s Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: “We conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that ‘The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa’ was well-founded.”

In short, Joe Wilson hadn’t told the truth about what he’d discovered in Africa, how he’d discovered it, what he’d told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.

As I said, this case stinks. Leftists the world over can hang their hat on Wilson’s honesty and integrity if they want to. I think it does a great job of illustrating their “get Bush at all costs no matter what” attitude. First it was Trent Lott, whose comments about the late Strom Thurmond pale in comparison to some of the whoppers from Patti Murray, Hillary Clinton, and Dick Durbin. Then it was the Tom DeLay “ethics violations,” the investigation of which was halted after congress sheeple realized that every single one of them had a closet full of skeletons (particularly Democrat leader Harry “Bush is a Loser” Reid).

Joe Wilson is an utterly discredited liar. Valerie Plame, for all her distress over her name being outed has done absolutely nothing to lay low since then (witness the Vanity Fair layout with her mug all over it). Odd behavior for someone who realized their life was in danger. Even odder reactions from Wilson. He wanted Rove “frogmarched out of the oval office in handcuffs” because he was so mad. He just “knew” it was Rove who outted his precious “I’ll tell you while I grope you” wife’s identity.

But here’s Miller with the actual information he needs to find out once and for sure who, as he put it, endangered his wife’s life, and yet he defends her right to keep the leaker a secret.

Maybe he’s the one who leaked her name in the first place?



I get the impression…

July 13th, 2005 by Vinny

I get the impression that certain people are waiting with baited breath for an attack of the London sort to happen here so they can say:

1. “See? The war in Iraq did nothing to make us safer.”

2. “See? It’s all Bush’s fault.”

If a London-style attack happens here, it would be interesting to see the range of reactions. I have a funny feeling there will be a lot less blame placed on the people who do it than the President.

You know… Like the attacks in London?

I guess we’ll have to just wait and see.



The rules…

July 13th, 2005 by Vinny

Here’s how IT works:

1. If you post a comment with an invalid email address, it gets deleted instantly, so don’t bother. E-mail addresses are not published and not shared with anyone, but they are required. If your e-mail is fake, your post is gone.

2. If you use an e-mail that’s from an open proxy OR you post a comment from an open proxy, WordPress will automatically delete it.

3. If you’re gonna post something just to sling insults and it’s off topic, it will be deleted instantly, if it makes it to IT at all.

4. If you post something completely off-topic regardless of its “insult factor,” it will be deleted instantly.

5. The first time you leave a comment, it will be held in moderation automatically by WordPress. Them’s the breaks. Please don’t keep posting the same comment 50 times with words slightly altered in an attempt to “get it in” as soon as possible.

6. Comments are not deleted simply because the commenter disagrees with me or my readers (ask Balbulican, Stageleft, Jeff, RKB, Spencer, Geoff, Gordon, or any of the other myriad of people who have taken issue with things I’ve written in the past).

7. Don’t bother trying to communicate with me through comments if you’re constantly being moderated. I promise you nobody is paying any attention if the comment is in violation of any of the prior rules.

If you don’t like these policies, go troll elsewhere or pay the hosting bill. Your choice.



Those peaceful muslims…

July 13th, 2005 by Vinny

Suicide Car Bomber Kills Iraqi Children
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 30 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber sped up to American soldiers distributing candy to children and detonated his explosives Wednesday, killing up to 27 other people, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. One U.S. soldier and about a dozen children were among the dead.

At least 21 others, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded in the attack, the second major suicide bombing in Baghdad this week. A suicide attacker killed 25 people Sunday at an Iraqi army recruiting center.

Targeting children is nothing new, obviously. Doesn’t make it any less disgusting. I wonder if the idiots that post that stupid Iraq Body Count toteboard will even express the slightest bit of outrage over this?

Source: Yahoo News