An unending series of March snowstorms pasted the Sierra in white, with one Lake Tahoe ski resort reporting more snowfall than during any other month over the last 35 years.

At least 13 tremors jolted the mountainous region throughout the night, Tehran University's Geophysics Institute said.

From Boortz.com: Cynthia McKinney (D) Leftist, appears to have a reputation for punching and shoving white folks she considers beneath her:

Now we're hearing reports from others on Capitol Hill that Cynthia McKinney has a reputation for treating people whom she considers beneath her status with disdain ... and especially white people whom she considers to be beneath her.  One former staff member on the House International Relations committee, Richard Stafford,  is now talking about an incident where McKinney struck him and pushed him aside when he tried to stop her from entering a closed-door, members-only meeting with a friend and two small children.  He wanted to press charges then, but figured it would end his career.  

It's Society's fault. If I'm picturing the right person, I always thought she was kinda cute for a crazed, conspiracy driven leftist.



Then again when she sports a hairdo like Phil's (pictured above) it's hard to tell.

 Some leftists probably feel the same way about Michelle Malkin. More of the same in Gaza: BOOM! Antarctica's temperature is now that of Sub Saharan Africa. All because of one man...

"Kill me! Kill me!" 

The 20th hijacker appears to be  trying to get executed. Those 72 virgins are probably starting to look good about now.



Give the man his wish, it'll probably end up like this. Hopefully. Cheney's Halliburton Orbital Laser Platform test: Success!!  Insensitive? Yes. Sorry, I couldn't resist. 

Up in Smoke:

Nairobi, Kenya (AHN) – Police say an incinerator, where one of Africa’s biggest narcotics seizure was set ablaze earlier today, has exploded.
No one was hurt, but the eight-hour process is now delayed with only one incinerator left to burn 1.1 metric tons of cocaine.
The campaign is aimed at dispelling rumors that some of the drugs were leaked into the international market. Suspicions arose almost immediately after police seized the $88 million worth of coke in Dec ‘04.Foreign journalists, diplomats, members of the judiciary and suspects previously arrested for drug trafficking are on site to witness the burning.
Officials say no one should be affected by the smoke. (Yeah, right)!
Director of public prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, says the operation is running smoothly despite the blast.

There are probably some Zebra's who's stripes are about to change color. The blaze will probably contribute to Global Warming. Condoleeza Rice fends off liberal PC talking points:

In a major foreign policy speech, Ms Rice said the US had no desire to be the world's jailer, referring to the detention of inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

Name a war where there weren't thousands of errors. Canada's liberals vent their frustrations in hot, new video game..

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should hope life doesn't imitate art.

A new top-selling video game kicks off with a bang -- a few bangs, actually -- with the assassination of the Canadian prime minister, sparking continental turmoil that only an elite group of soldiers can undo.

Reminds me of the book released in '04 regarding how to assassinate Bush. As long as the target is a conservative, it's fair game, even celebrated as free speech, target a liberal, it's hate speech. Just an observation. Any spelling errors in today's Review are the intellectual property of Barbra Striesand. Until Monday.

There was no letup in the prosecution's insistence that the 37-year-old Frenchman could have prevented the hijacked plane strikes on New York and Washington in 2001, as closing arguments in the death penalty trial started.

In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott violated the rights of House Majority Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call involving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

McDermott is probably screaming his damn fool, florid nosed, hypocrite head off about the NSA program. Fucker. Notice how his (McDerm ott's) party affiliation is not mentioned in the opening paragraph. In fact, maybe they use the word "Rep." so some gullible folks will think he is a republican. I know, it's paranoid. Hitler's Propaganda Minister resigns in Reichstag shake-up. Karl Rove (spelled with a Nazi-like "K" instead of the more soft, pleasing looking"C") is still at large. Senate to Lobbyists: Starve. Talking in your sleep? Be careful.

An Indian Muslim man has reportedly been ordered to separate from his wife after saying 'I divorce thee' in his sleep.
Aftab Ansari was told to leave Sohela, his wife of 11 years, after he said ‘talaq’ - the Arabic equivalent of 'I divorce thee' - three times while asleep.

Hitchens: Our soldiers were greeted as liberators:

Christopher Hitchens was on top of his game as usual in debunking some of the myths about Iraq that have pervaded the national consciousness via the media:

 

 

Matthews was running through a litany of what he termed "strike-outs" for the Bush administration in Iraq. When he got to "strikes out on the fact that we were going to be greeted as liberators," Hitchens interrupted:

HITCHENS: No, no. We were greeted as liberators. I saw it myself.

MATTHEWS: The pictures, yeah.

HITCHENS: No, no, I was there. I saw it myself, many many times. American soldiers and British soldiers were greeted by hundreds of thousands of people with real joy. I saw it myself. I can't believe people say it didn't happen."

While America slept:

A recent poll has shown that Americans are more concerned about medical care than they are about the possibility of another terrorist attack on their country.  This would go a long way toward explaining why President Bush's approval numbers are so low.  Bush is focused on the war on terror; on protecting this country from the jihadist goals of Islam.  Americans, being Americans, have noted that there has not been an attack on their country since 9/11, and therefore the threat of a terrorist attack is all but over and we're all safe.  Now it's time for the government to do something to relieve them of the onerous responsibility of providing for your own medial care.  After all, your health and your medical care is the responsibility of either your employer or the government, right?  Because of this attitude socialized medicine is all but inevitable in this country, and you aren't going to like it even one little bit.

I read recently that in Canada, doctors are arguing before the Canadian Supreme Court to privatize Canada's Health Care system. Apparently, people are dying waiting in line to get treated....

cheat.

The police arrested a Queens woman yesterday, saying she had falsely claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina and had taken thousands of dollars in aid from state and federal agencies.

The woman, Donna Fenton, 37, was charged by Brooklyn prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long record of fraud, arrests and legal disputes stretching from Mississippi to New York.

WAR AND PEACE: Some interesting numbers:

While every lost serviceman and servicewoman is certainly tragic and should be mourned, the actual statistics tell quite a different tale from the MSM and Democratic doom-and-gloom outlook. Comparing the numbers of lost US military personnel to past years, and past presidential terms, may even be a shock to supporters of the war.

Take a look at the actual US Military Casualty figures since 1980. If you do the math, you wil find quite a few surpises. First of all, let's compare numbers of US Military personnel that died during the first term of the last four presidents.

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)

Even during the (per MSM) utopic peacetime of Bill Clinton's term, we lost 4302 service personnel. H.W. Bush and Reagan actually lost significantly more personnel while never fighting an extensive war, much less a simulaltaneous war on two theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). Even the dovish Carter lost more people duing his last year in office, in 1980 lost 2392, than W. has lost in any single year of his presidency. (2005 figures are not available but I would wager the numbers would be slightly higher than 2004.)

In 2004, more soldiers died outside of Iraq and Afghanistan than died inside these two war zones (900 in these zones, 987 outside these zones). The reason is that there are usually a fair number that die every year in training accidents, as well as a small number of illness and suicide. Yet the MSM would make you think that US soldiers are dying at a high number in these zones, and at a significantly higher number than in past years or under past presidents. This is all simply outright lies and distortion.

You'd think this would get more attention.

UPDATE: John Kluge emails:

 

The guy at red state gets it about half right on military deaths. He is absolutely right that soldiers die in accidents and of natural causes when they are in garrison. What he doesn’t take into account is that the military was much larger under Carter, Reagan and Bush I than it has been under Clinton or Bush II. Clinton and Bush II are really the only two comparable numbers. Looking at those numbers, it appears that the Iraq, Afghanistan wars have resulted in an increase of 885 dead over what could have been expected through normal garrison operations in Bush II’s first term. That is not too bad when you consider that Bush has liberated two countries and fought a prolonged insurgency in both and that America lost over 1,000 dead in taking Vichy French North Africa in 1942 (that was before we even so much as fired a shot at the Germans).

 

Good point.

The Senate Minority leader was quick to blame the Bush Administration, the Bush Tax Cuts, lack of universal health care, the NSA, the CIA, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Wolfowitz, Art Bell, No Child Left Behind, the "Republican Culture of Corruption", Halliburton and Jack Abramoff who financed the trip. Boy George was unavailable for comment.

 "I look forward to a full hearing, debate and vote in committee on this important matter," Feingold said in a statement late Monday. "If the Committee fails to consider the resolution expeditiously, I will ask that there be a vote in the full Senate."

Although it's been an incredibly busy week for me, with nary a free minute to even update my blog, I at least made an effort to sit down and watch the Oscars last Sunday night. That’s more than I can say for the rest of America, though. The ratings for this year’s Academy Award ceremonies were the lowest in recorded history, second only to the pilot episode of the Discovery Channel’s Magical Journey Through Phil Donahue’s Digestive Tract. Donahue, of course, insists that the series was sabotaged by right-wing network execs at the behest of the Bush administration. Perhaps so. But with box office numbers continuing to tank as well, one can’t help but wonder if America has somehow lost touch with Hollywood, and how future generations will ever find their way without talented actors and actresses to guide them.

There was a time when the American film industry was little more than an instrument for spewing jingoist propaganda. Fascists like John Wayne and Henry Fonda poisoned millions of young minds with their pro-American cowboy filth. But since the 1960’s, Hollywood has become our moral compass. More than just performing monkeys, actors have become the better angels of our nature, leading us along the path of social progress in ways that people with less perfect hair never could. Schindler’s List taught us about the horrors of death camps years before Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Eddie Murphy’s wonderful performance in Coming to America brought the civil rights movement out of the Alabama swamps and into the American mainstream. Jane Fonda’s brilliant work in Barbarella dared us to question the pointless futility of the Vietnam War. Through the medium of film, Hollywood has been a force for positive change in America - an evil nation with a bloody past, but a promising future if it would simply follow the loving guidance of the Beautiful People. I’m sure Martin, Coretta, Rosa, and the rest of the cast of The Jeffersons would agree.

The ads feature dolls, dressed as secretaries and maids, who have to put up with leering and groping from male colleagues.

Officials say the aim of the campaign is to make clear that women are not sexual objects.

No. But blow-up dolls are. The gaping maw should be a very effective tool in combating the plague of Mexican machismo...more like an invitation for a fresh display of Mexican machismo!
Mexico's "Rosie the Riveter."

 That's not surprising. CIA Director George Tenet in October 2002 told Congress of "growing indications of a relationship with al-Qaida." And of course evidence of contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime went back to the 1990s and were cited, without murmur of dissent, by President Bill Clinton.

 So why do these Democrats and these government professionals seem to have such a conviction that there must have been no collaboration between al-Qaida and Saddam? The Democrats fear that more Americans would support Bush and the war effort if they believed there was. The career professionals, with their many years of training in the subtleties of the Middle East, have developed a vested interest in the notion that religious Wahhabis like al-Qaida could never collaborate with a secular tyrant like Saddam. If alliances could be formed across religious lines, what use would all their learning be?

 The Minnesota Democrats cite the 9-11 commission's report that it found no evidence of "operational" cooperation between al-Qaida and Iraq, although it did find evidence of many contacts. But, as Donald Rumsfeld likes to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Neither al-Qaida nor Saddam operated under a Freedom of Information Act. Any collaboration between them on 9-11 would have been kept very secret -- al-Qaida did not want to leave a return address. We do not know that there was such collaboration. But we also do not know that there was not.

 Going back to the days before our military action in Iraq, it would have been irresponsible for any president to have assumed that there was no relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq, given previous contacts between them and their proven hostility to the United States. President Clinton, responsibly, did not assume that, and neither did President Bush. Nor was there any information that intelligence could have been acquired that could have assured us, with 100 percent certainty, that there was no such relationship.

 Light on the Saddam regime's collaboration with terrorists will almost certainly be shed by analysis of some 2 million documents captured in Iraq. But, as the intrepid Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has pointed out, almost none of those documents has been translated or released either to the public or to the congressional intelligence committees. It appears that career professionals and, perhaps, political appointees have been blocking release of these documents.

 Why do their superiors not order them released? Many Americans cling with religious intensity to the notion that somehow Saddam had no terrorist ties -- a notion used to delegitimize our war effort. We should bring the truth, or as much of it as is available, out into the open.

Bush is going to pay a heavy price for his inability (or reluctance) to explain his actions. This time next years the democrats will have both houses and they will be voting to impeach this president, as they (the democrats) have presented no other ideas that I've been able to grasp...

It turned out to be Harry Reid's "mission accomplished" moment. Yesterday the Patriot Act sprang back to life as the Senate voted 89-10 to reauthorize it. The dissenting votes, all Democrats except nominal independent Jim Jeffords, came mostly from states like Iowa, Vermont and West Virginia, which have few A-list terror targets. Among those voting for the Patriot Act: Harry Reid.

Another pro-Patriot Democrat turned out to be ultraliberal Barbara Boxer of California. This Angry Left heartthrob is causing heartache for Daily Kos diarist "awater":

I feel so betrayed by her and by the Democratic party in general on this issue that I don't quite know what to do. Why should I even live in this country anymore when those that say they are here to fight for the good--just sell out because they are afraid of appearing to be "soft on terror"? What is the point of voting or being here at all?

No, awater, don't do it! You have so much to live for! Like Russ Feingold, and Pat Leahy, and John Kerry* . . . Oh, wait. Sorry. You're right:

On top of this betrayal, there is John Kerry who also voted in support of the Patriot Act. A man that had the incredibly bad taste to ask for donations on this site a day or so go--to then go forward and vote for the Patriot Act--Skull and Bones indeed.

Indeed. But buck up! It turns out Kerry voted against the Patriot Act before he voted for it.

* "A whole bunch of folks in America are concerned about the way the Patriot Act has been applied. . . . People's rights have been abused. . . . Now, I voted for the Patriot Act. . . . Now that's not a flip-flop."--Oct. 8, 2004

Some clarification  from the AP:

Clarification: Katrina-Video story
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) _ In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

"We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said shortly after noon on Aug. 29 — the day the storm hit the Gulf coast.

"We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee," she said on a video of the day's disaster briefing that was obtained Thursday night by The Associated Press. "I think we have not breached the levee at this time."

The AP asserts that "federal officials...were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster." But nothing in the article supports that claim. The AP alleges further:

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

This is simply untrue, as the reporters would know if they read Power Line. For a far more thorough and balanced look at the Katrina response, see Popular Mechanics:

In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

 Why don't we just pass a law making everything Bush does an impeachable war crime and have him executed? Let's quit lollygagging around. Sheeit! He didn't ignore the threat, he just thought the government was prepared to handle it. He was wrong. Or was he? Nagin and Blanco will take this to the bank as exoneration. Day-oh! Bush's fault again. Bush lied people died? Maybe not. Youngins': Don't try this at home:

A relative discovered a 23-year-old man dead in the front seat of a car Friday still embracing a dead 17-year-old girl.