And in Hollywood - Where reality is just another thing you fake

Evidently the only thing the current crop of anti-American / anti-military flicks is good at is laying eggs at a theater near you - if they’re still playing that is. The latest bomb to open is Brian De Palma’s nasty little vindictive against the military “Redacted.” This sucker didn’t even earn pocket change when it opened last weekend. The total till in this country was a measly $25,628. And rumor is that during screenings, the audiences kept murmuring ‘Where’s a Writers Guild strike when you need one!’

Fresh from giving presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) a nice bridal shower at her Santa Barbara estate in September, Oprah Winfrey now plans to do some campaign stomping with her favorite candidate. She and Obama will shake hands and kiss babies in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Dec. 8, then dash off for a couple of quickies - first in Columbia, S.C. then Manchester, N.H. on Dec. 9. But Mark Halperin is not impressed. In Time Magazine’s “Why Oprah Won’t Help Obama” he wrote, “But don’t expect those events to do anything productive to allow Obama to get over the biggest hurdle standing between him and the White House. American voters are not looking for a celebrity or talk show sidekick to lead them. Obama is an intelligent and thoughtful potential President, but Winfrey’s imprimatur is unlikely to convey those traits to many undecided voters. In that respect, Winfrey’s events might even be - dare it be said - counterproductive.” Well it’s an interesting campaign strategy. Hoping to get into the White House on the backs of a celebrity worshiping constituency - most of whom believe the alphabet was invented by Campbell soup.

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Inconvenient Quotes

“And on the seventh day God rested. That’s when he asked me to take over.”

Today’s pundit: Napoleon Bonaparte (French General, Politician and Emperor (1804-14) 1769-1821)

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

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News Fit to Quip Remember - no one is perfect - until they write their campaign literature of course

Pull their visas and they won’t come. Putin is in a snit at the USA saying we’re meddling in Russia’s elections December 2. Seems the international election monitors (OSCE, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or ODIHR) cancelled their planned monitoring of Russia’s elections right after visiting Washington, DC and Putin smells a KGB-like rat. “According to information we have, it was again done at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department and we will take this into account in our inter-state relations with this country. Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal.” Spokeswoman for OSCE, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, said it ain’t so Vlad. “This was a decision that was simply based on the fact that we were not receiving any visas and time had run out. The only consultation that took place was within our office with the people that plan these observation missions and carry them through. They have 150 observation missions under their belt. They know by now what needs to be in place to do this.” Understand there’s a scandal brewing in Russia over another attempt to “delegitimization of the elections.” Seems some of the country’s election workers just tested positive for traces of integrity.

It’s a new trend in campaigning for office in Russia. Beat up and jail the opposition and their supporters. White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, “We are troubled that Garry Kasparov and other leaders of the opposition have been arrested and detained.” Boris Nemtsov, running in the December 2 election told a crowd before he was arrested. “They have forbidden us from discussing Putin. But we have come here today to ask Mr. Putin and the authorities why is there so much corruption in the country?” When he was released Nemtsov reminded the crowds that it’s against the law for police to detain candidates. “Putin has total disregard for the country’s constitution and laws. He is afraid the people will find out the truth and so he hides behind the riot police.” Hey Boris, lighten up. You KNOW with Putin in charge honest and fair elections are just around the corner - and that you’ll get mugged trying to get there.

Russia ain’t the only one holding elections Sunday. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez wants to be prez for life but first he has to ‘fix’ the constitution. And anybody who votes against such a lovely thing - why they’re a “traitor.” A modest Chavez then went on to blush, “if you approve the referendum -I will stay as long as God wills! Until the last bone of my skeleton dries out!” Former best bud and the military commander who helped put Chavez in power Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel, said it was “in effect a coup d’état… nondemocratic imposition that would put us into tragic retreat.” Chavez says what’s your beef Raul? I steal elections fair and square!

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Report From Liliputian Land - Where it’s the ANNOYING who inherit the earth

“There is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for — our next president. That could be the costliest job training in history. Every day spent learning the ropes is another day of rising costs, mounting deficits and growing anxiety for our families. And they cannot afford to keep waiting.” Guess who said that? Why Hillary ‘Look ma no training wheels’ Clinton. But ‘Oh Mama’ Obama sees it differently. “I think the fact of the matter is that Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn’t work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it. There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in her and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle, if there were issues. On the other hand, I don’t think Michelle would claim that she is the best qualified person to be a United States Senator by virtue of me talking to her on occasion about the work I’ve done.” You know Hil, we’d be a lot better informed on your past leadership experience if we had more info. Do you think you could release your First Lady Papers a little faster than one comma at a time?

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) sucked his thumb during an interview on FOX News and whined ‘you don’t LIKE ME!’ Well actually he said, “for you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn’t do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There’s a lot of other opinion out there.” Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday” who was pushing Fred’s buttons denied it but countered with “Do you know anybody who thinks you’ve run a great campaign, sir?” Later, FOX News’ John Gibson put a little more salt on Fred’s wounded pride in his daily “My Word” comments. “I like Fred. I’m inside FOX News, and I don’t think FOX News is against Fred. But speaking for myself, I must inform the senator that a lot of us who have liked him have been a bit disappointed in his performance so far. Just for instance, this program has tried to book him so many times we’ve lost count. He’s not available. And like I said, I like Fred.” Well Fred, maybe you should rethink your campaigning strategy. Keep it up and people will start to think your desire to be president is phoney. And that the only real thing about you - is your make-up.

Want money with that? Seems the Happy Hollywood Dems elected in 2006 come from well-to-do areas of the country. Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation nosied through the IRS’s income data and found “the pattern across the board to be very interesting. That pattern shows the likelihood of electing a Democrat to the House is very closely correlated with how many wealthy households are in that district. The demographic reality is that the Democratic Party is the new ‘party of the rich.’ More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households.” Maybe that explains why lately every bill passed by the 2007 Congress has had so much pork, it goes sooo-eee all they way to Bush’s veto pen. These big spenders have been trying to go through the country’s money like a sailor when he’s drunk. Or Paris Hilton when she’s sober.

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Sleaze-noid News With two sides to every story - Local and Network

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw is on the road pitching his new book, “Boom!” and was interviewed by Laura Ingraham who took exception to Brokaw saying Talk Radio caters to a mob mentality. “My problem with the whole spectrum [of talk radio] is there is not, you know what Rush’s, what his whole drill is. He doesn’t want to hear another point of view. Except his. That’s my issue.” Seems Brokaw is basing his opinions on hear say evidence as he has never listened to Rush Limbaugh and the variety of callers - liberal and conservative - he chats with during his broadcasts. So Ingraham hit one out of the park for old Rush. “But he’s not an objective person. He doesn’t say he is. That’s the difference between him and anchors on some of our networks who have a political agenda, but then pretend that they’re objective.” Which left Brokaw muttering, “We’re never going to resolve this. You know you have your point of view and I have mine.” Yep Tom, in your world view it takes a village - idiot that is. When one village idiot does it - it’s stupid. But if every village idiot across the country does it, it’s called broadcast news.

Speaking of old media journalistic standards, NY1 News weekend anchor Gary Anthony Ramsay called NY1’s live call-in show “The Call” to vent about former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, his 16-count federal indictment, his effect on Giuliani’s run for president and rumors that the Clinton camp had a hand in stirring the waters about it all. “So which is the real Bernie Kerik? Is it the one who pleads not guilty before or is it the one who pleads guilty after he cuts a deal that he’s comfortable with?” But it wasn’t trashing Kerik and the Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories that got him in trouble. It was using a phoney name to try and blind side host John Schiumo. Problem is Schiumo recognized his voice and called Ramsay back to tell him so. Claiming he never before deceived viewers, Ramsay told Schiumo “What disturbs me is that this lapse in judgment - and that’s what you can call it, a lapse in judgment - is going to undo more than 15 years of hard-charging, quality journalism in New York and abroad.” Now Ramsay’s contract is up with NY1 News and so maybe is his journalism career. But he’s ready to switch gears. He’s been offered a job teaching political science and he’s already working on the lesson plans. First thing he’s gonna do to is show his students how politics really works. He’s gonna make them bribe they way into his class.

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The Chicken Little Report - The weather - brought to you by Bossy - and a good MOOO to you!

Don’t you just hate it when you can’t find a parking place? There you are in Bali, a beautiful tropical island paradise. You’re ready to save the world from Global Warming. And there’s NO PLACE TO PARK YOUR PRIVATE JET! How RUDE! Bali’s Airport’s operational manager Azjar Effendi plans to only let our Global Warming Saviors attending the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (December 3-15, 2007) to disembark and then he’ll have to shoo their jets off the island. After reading the article below, I’m beginning to believe that saving us from Global Warming is just a sneaky way of getting my money before I do.

The Big Secret: Climate Bills Result in No Meaningful Impact on Global Temperature
November 20, 2007

Three bills have been introduced to Congress which have as a goal to slow the rate of global temperature rise, and in doing so, avert some type of putative global climate catastrophe. They propose to do so by reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases.

At the request of Senators Bingaman and Spector, the EPA has analyzed the effectiveness these bills as measured by the net impact each will have ameliorating the rise of global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations (and thus global climate change) by the end of this century. What they found was certainly not encouraging, at least for anyone who thinks that the U.S. alone can have any impact on global climate via new regulation of emissions.

The three bills whose impact the EPA assessed were:

1. Lieberman-McCain, ‘Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act,’ (S.280),
2. Kerry-Snowe, ‘Global Warming Reduction Act,’ (S.485),
3. Bingaman-Specter, ‘Low Carbon Economy Act,’ (S.1766)…

The EPA stopped short of telling us what we all really want to know’which is how much the U.S. emissions reductions will help slow down global warming.

So, we’ll step up and run the numbers ourselves.

We’ll use as our basis the landmark study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Dr. T.M.L. Wigley that was published in 1998 to assess the impacts of the CO2 emissions reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on global average temperature. For those of you unfamiliar with Wigley’s results, he found that if the entire world (including the United States) fully met their emissions reduction obligations laid out in the Kyoto Protocol (which, by the looks of things, few if any countries will actually achieve) that the amount of future global warming that would be ’saved’ would amount to about 0.07′C by the year 2050 and 0.15′C by 2100. (We define ’saved’ in this context as the difference in projected temperature increase from the reference scenario to the policy scenario). How much of a CO2 reduction produced the whopping 0.15′C temperature savings by 2100? About 40ppm. That’s right, Wigley calculated that a complete adherence to the Kyoto Protocol by every country involved including the United States would result in ~40 ppm less CO2 than otherwise was projected to be there in 2100 and that this decrease would result in a global average temperature rise that was 15 one-hundredths of a degree Celsius less than projected to otherwise occur’a reduction which was scientifically meaningless and bordering on the limits of detectability.

And the three Senate climate bills would do even less!

Recall that EPA calculates that the climate bills will reduce future atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 23 to 25 ppm. That is about 60% of the reduction calculated by Wigley for his global Kyoto scenario. Since the temperature savings scales roughly with the CO2 concentration savings (especially at these small quantities), the climate bills ’save’ about 60% of 0.15′C or just less than one tenth, that’s 0.1, degrees Celsius.

One tenth of one degree Celsius for an enormous economic hit’the EPA calculated that S.280 (Lieberman-McCain) would lower the U.S. GDP annually by 1.1% to 3.2% ($457 billion to $1,332 billion) by the year 2050. EPA’s analysis of the economic effects of the other bills has not been completed yet (see here for updates).

That’s a lot of lost capital to produce virtually no climate impact. No polar bears are saved, no droughts averted, no hurricanes tamed. Nada. Except, a lot less cash in the pocketbook.

Excerpted from
WorldClimateReport.com

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And in Hollywood - Where reality is just another thing you fake

Want to see a stunned Kirk Douglas? Take a look at his face when John Travolta plants a big wet one right on the aging actor’s kisser. The legendary Hollywood star was in LA to give Travolta an award for excellence and versatility. Guess the emphases was on ‘versatility.’ A lot of Travolta’s roles these days include wearing D-cup bras, so maybe he just got caught up in some out of control method acting. Yep, give Travolta enough rope - and he’ll become a bondage freak?

The soon to be ex-Mrs. Paul McCartney is a Global Warmest which might explain her - uh - behavior. Like all Global Warmest, Heather Mills wants to save us by telling us what to do. Her current solution is for us little people to drinking rats milk in order to save the planet. (Anybody here THAT fond of this planet?) Anyway, she drove her gas guzzler to Hyde Park to deliver this ground breaking solution then left her Mercedes’ engine running for hours. Guess we’ll have to drink even more rat’s milk to make up for it. You know, I want to give Heather something special this Christmas for all her valiant efforts as well as her trial and tribulations. Do you know where I can buy Valium helper?

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Inconvenient Quotes

“And on the seventh day God rested. That’s when he asked me to take over.”

Today’s pundit: Robert Benchley (Humorist 1889-1945)

In America there are two classes of travel - first and with children.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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News Fit to Quip Remember - no one is perfect - until they write their campaign literature of course

Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo made a tiny blip on the media radar screen last week when his Iowa campaign ad aired. Tame by Hollywood’s gore flick standards, the ad shows a terrorist leaving a backpack bomb at a mall that goes boom as well as aftermath pics from several European terrorists bombings. According to The Associated Press, this makes Tancredo anti-immigration. While YouTube upchucked their milk and cookies at the thought of some tender young darling under 18 seeing it. But it’s border security Tancredo is peddling and has been for years. “There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, jihadists who froth with hate, here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia. The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.” Well the media may not like his nasty attitude towards illegals of all stripes but there’s one thing you can say about Trancredo, he didn’t have to reinvent himself like so many candidates in order to run for prez. And you can be sure that if you write him, your letter won’t automatically be forwarded to ‘Sadie’s House of Fun.’

Ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice ‘cause when he had a chance to take immunity and come clean about using performance-enhancing drugs, he just kept on lying. Or so the FED’s claim. But Bonds says he’s innocent and that everybody is misinterpreting his remarkable change in physique, his ballooning head and that new found power bat-whack that put him in the home run record books. His fans are buying Bonds version of events of course saying, who are you going to believe? Bonds or your lying eyes!

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Report From Liliputian Land - Where it’s the ANNOYING who inherit the earth

It started small. A little illegal immigration. One tiny sham marriage to get citizenship. A couple of top-level security jobs at the FBI and CIA grilling al Qaeda sympathizers. Then it escalated. Taking a few (or maybe lots and lots) of classified documents home for a look-see and then giving them to uh - don’t know yet. Snooping into classified FBI computers to see if the FEDs were on to her, her brother-in-law and sister’s terrorist ties. But the tale of Lebanese national Nada Nadim Prouty just keeps on getting bigger and sillier. Her third husband, Gordon Prouty, is a State Department foreign service officer who has been stationed in Egypt and Pakistan. And her gal pal, Samar Khalil Nabbou Spinelli, who came to the USA with Nada Nadim Prouty in order to buy couple of husbands and gain citizenship, is now a Marine officer stationed in Japan. Guess the translator need a translator. ‘Cause Prouty’s interpretation of ‘Living by the Golden Rule’ - was a robbery attempt at Fort Knox.

Guess it’s something Venezuelan ‘president’ Hugo Chavez doesn’t get. Being lawfully elected that is. Chavez is usually busy either rigging elections or securing his post as ‘president for life.’ But last week Chavez took a little R&R and tried to disrupt the Ibero-American Summit in Chile. Chavez first tried to butt in by saying former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was a fascist because of his friendship with George W Bush saying, “fascists are not human. A snake is more human.” Current Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero shot back “Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people.” But it didn’t stop Chavez who continued to try to interrupt the meeting. That goaded the King of Spain into leaning over and telling Chavez, “Why don’t you shut up?”. Now the king’s shut-up sound-bite is a best selling ringtone in Spain, appearing on mugs, t-shirts and even has its very own website. One Venezualan student who has downloaded the ringtone says, “It’s a form of protest. It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.” Chavez has his own ideas about those protesting students of his. He wants to help them. You know, provide free school lunches - like nice tasty knuckle sandwiches.

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