EDWARDS - CREEPY, BUT ONLY ONE IN A BUNCH

I’d like to say I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like John Edwards, but I’d be lying. I don’t like Edwards and am not the least bit ashamed of shouting it from the tree tops. For a couple of takes on why, see my April 26 blog, “And the Winner Is....” You could also reference: May 8, “Waiting to Exhale,” May 21, “School Funding,..” and May 24, “Tidbits” for starters. Here’s more on the phony among phonies…

Edwards told a Google “town hall” yesterday that he had read the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the summary of evidence leading up to the war. According to his staff, that’s not true. Today, Edwards spokesman Mark Kornblau said Edwards had “misunderstood” the question and that he had not read the report.

Busted.

When Kerry interviewed Edwards for the first time for the VP job prior to the 2004 presidential campaign, Edwards told Kerry that he was going to tell him a story that he had never told anyone before. According to Robert Shrumm, advisor to the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the story went like this; “That after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service.” According to Shrumm, Kerry was stunned. Not at the story, but because Edwards had told him the exact same story, almost verbatim, a year earlier, saying at that time also, that he had never shared the memory with anyone else.

Creepy.

Before Kerry eventually tagged Edwards as his running mate, he asked him as a condition that he give his assurance that should they lose in 2004, that Edwards would not run against Kerry in 2008. Edwards agreed. That promise lasted until Edwards decided to run for president against Kerry last year.

True friend. Man of his word.

According to Shrumm’s forthcoming book “No Excuses,” Kerry has said that he wished he’d never picked Edwards. That he should have gone with his gut.

As these candidates have demonstrated with their recent views on the war…hindsight is 20/20.

Post script on Edwards: When you see Geoffrey Fieger hawking John Edwards’ virtues in campaign commercials, you know that SOB is, well, a SOB!

JD.

CHAVEZ DRAFTS BIG BIRD

Hugo Chavez, the loveable President of Venezuela, has decided to shut down the only remaining nationally broadcast and oldest privately owned television station in the country, accusing the station of “subversive” activities. You remember ole Hugo, Jimmy Carter’s friend? Jimmy loaned a hand in helping to ensure Chavez’s very questionable election was “legitimate.”

Maybe you remember Hugo’s tirades at the United Nations last year, calling President Bush Satan and the devil, before a full assembly. He got a few nervous laughs with his comments, which made more than a few world leaders uncomfortable. He hates the United States, telling the UN General Assembly that the U.S. Government was the “first enemy” of its people. He says this as he systematically strips Venezuelans of their freedom.

He launched a new channel, TVES, with artists singing pro-Chavez songs over the airways. You can call this a first step toward imposing a gag on news media in Venezuela.

Hugo says he is just giving the airwaves back to the people by turning them over to public use. He calls this “democratizing” the airwaves. You know, kind of like PBS. Actually, exactly like PBS!

Early Sunday, according to the Associated Press, police broke up an opposition protest using water cannons and tear gas. Is anyone else having flashbacks of some of the shameful uses of force by some U.S. authorities during the civil rights struggle of the ‘60s…anyone?

The AP says “The government promises TVES will be more diverse, buying 70 percent of its content from independent Venezuelan producers. It will carry sports, news and an educational program for children emphasizing socialist values, as well as foreign-made programs such as National Geographic documentaries.” He must have stolen our playbook for PBS.

Someone tell me, why do my tax dollars pay for government TV in the U.S.A? I’ve had this discussion with many people and it always seems to boil down to the same answer, at least for me. All you have to do is watch it for a day and you’ll plainly see it keeps a lot of Democrats in this Country employed. It’s a 24 hour a day campaign commercial for everything government. It relies on government, it promotes government as your friend, is a voice for its very liberal-minded management and, if you watch the “children’s programming,” it indoctrinates our kids. All while putting a great face on the Democrat Party and scowling at anything pro-tradition or conservative. Much, much like TVES, I suspect! And this isn’t an attack on Democrats or a pro-Republican view I have…it’s simply anti-Public Broadcasting Service!

PBS is also a vehicle to get crummy programming aired that private stations would not purchase for viewing because there is no commercial interest. So let’s force the junk onto the people using the people’s own money. There is absolutely nothing democratic or capitalistic about that.

JD.

Ps. Please support this blog by sharing the URL with some of your friends and family. Who else untangles a lot of these little nuggets for you and puts them into plain-speak? Thanks.

NEPTUNE JOINS GLOBAL WARMING CLUB and THE NEW YORK TIMES SUCKS

To bring yourself up to speed on today’s item, you may want to see my April 29 blog “’An Inconvenient Truth’ Plays on…Mars?” to see how global warming has caught up to the red planet.

If the Martians had Laurie David on their side, they just may stand a chance. Without Leonardo DiCaprio to save them, the poor Martians, like us hapless humans, will surely become extinct.

Now we have it on serious authority that Neptunians are screwed also! Scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona have been measuring visible light from Neptune and the measurements indicate Neptune has been getting brighter since about 1980. Infrared measurements show the planet has been warming since about the same time.

Researchers have learned that the correlation between solar irradiance, Neptune’s brightness and changes on Earth is nearly perfect.

Seems it kinda goes like this, folks: When the sun’s energy increases, Neptune seems to warm up…as do Mars and Earth. At least that’s the poop appearing on World Climate Report, a climate change blog.

That news, like so much other news contradicting how humans are causing a global warming "crisis" will never make it to the Williams, Couric or Gibson nightly circuses, though. They have way too much invested in convincing us, on a daily basis, that the human species has singlehandedly wiped out an entire planet circling the Sun, the core of an entire solar system, buzzing about in the entire Milky Way galaxy in our little corner of the entire Universe. Wow, we’re powerful!

And there’s so much money to be made on global warming! In this country alone, over a quarter of a trillion dollars has gone from our purses and wallets to global warming research. That’s trillion with a “T”! One more time, that’s 250,000,000,000 dollars from U.S. taxpayers alone!

That quarter of a trillion dollars goes to anyone supporting the global warming agenda by virtually any and all means. If your company says it will research building cogs to be more “environmentally friendly,” then your Congressman will be happy to steal the money and give it to them…In return for a few votes and a campaign contribution, of course.

If your local university has a department dedicated to global warming research, in rolls the grant money. Grants being money taken from us and other possibly productive government projects and given to the school. More votes for your local, selfless Congressman.

Or how about this scenario: The community of Demersville, its governing authority being a responsible, global warming sympathetic group of citizens, paid for by your tax dollars, hires a lobbyist. Said lobbyist is paid for with your tax dollars. Lobbyist goes to the State or Federal government , funded by your tax dollars, to lobby for money, pulled from your pocket, for a project in Demersville that, though unneeded, will go for an environmentally friendly project, funded by you, of course.

So we’re paying a local government (no doubt extremely smart and hard working public servants) paid for by you, to hire a lobbyist, paid for by you, to go to the next level of governments, paid for by you, to get funding, paid for by you, for a project, paid for by you, that obviously isn’t necessary, or it wouldn’t require a lobbyist, paid for by you. Think about it for a minute. You just paid a lot of money to secure several people and things that need to be paid for by a lot more of your money.

And the benefactors? The local government officials who just bought your vote with your money by bringing your money in from the State or Federal government you are funding to pay some contractors for building the “project,” who, in return will send a few bucks to the campaign coffers of your locally elected officials.

Think more than twice when voting for that next new little millage and those tiny increases in the existing millages that populate virtually every election ballot with fuzzy words like Green, Parks, Conservation, Wildlife, Elderly, Education, Rights, Human, Clean, etc.


In a fashion that is actually easily predicted, the New York Times will publish a story on Memorial Day dealing with the dissatisfaction of some troops fighting in Iraq. These stories are legitimate to report and fair game, but in what context? In a piece that tries to paint a picture of discontent among most of the soldiers of Delta Company, The Times goes out of its way to give the impression that most of our troops have doubts about their mission. I could go on and on, but I won’t. I hope most of the public understand the New York Times’ agenda. The Times never seems to appreciate the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform except to exploit them for their own readership. And to choose Memorial Day for this piece…? Unabashedly self serving. It’s easier and easier to understand why their readership is tanking.

How many spirits will they kill today?

I pray all our men and women in arms will have a safe Memorial Day.

JD.