October 27, 2004

Arafish dying?

According to published reports, Yasser Arafat's health is deterioriating significantly -- and rapidly.

Yasser Arafat's health deteriorated Wednesday and a team of doctors went to his compound to examine the Palestinian leader, a Palestinian official said.

The 75-year-old Arafat had been ill for two weeks, suffering from what Palestinian officials said was the flu. Israeli officials speculated he might have stomach cancer, but two of Arafat's doctors said Wednesday that a blood test, combined with a biopsy of tissue taken from his digestive tract, showed no evidence of cancer of the digestive tract.

Late Wednesday, Arafat's condition worsened and doctors were sent to examine him, an official in Arafat's office said. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas were summoned to the compound to meet with Arafat, the official said.

According to LGF, he's in critical condition -- or perhaps already dead.

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October 26, 2004

Miami TV weatherman fired after child solicitation arrest

Bill Kamal, long-time chief meterologist for Miami's Fox affiliate, WSVN-TV/DT, was fired yesterday after his arrest in a police sting. 47 year-old Kamal's arrest came amid charges that he solicited sex online from what he thought was a 14 year-old boy.

It took a police officer, posing online as a 14-year-old boy, two minutes to attract the interest of WSVN meteorologist Bill Kamal, federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

Oct. 18, 4 p.m.: St. Lucie County Sheriff's detective Neil W. Spector signs on to an America Online chatroom called ``Boyzformen.''

Oct. 18, 4:02 p.m.: Kamal, 47, using a sexually suggestive screen name, instant messages Spector that he's looking for a son to have sex with.

On Sunday, police officers followed Kamal from his Miami Beach condo to a convenience store parking lot in Fort Pierce, where he had arranged to meet his correspondent, and arrested him.

On Monday, Channel 7, owned and operated by Sunbeam Television, fired Kamal and ran the report as one of its lead stories.

''We have no other alternative but to dismiss Bill Kamal for cause,'' was all that Robert W. Leider, Channel 7 executive vice president and general manager, said.

Federal attorney Marcos Jimenez said Kamal was charged with child enticement, which carries punishment of five to 30 years in prison, although the charge could be changed by a grand jury indictment. This is behind a state charge of solicitation of a minor younger than 16, which carries up to a five-year prison sentence.

Kamal had been on television extensively over the summer during the extended hurricane season in Florida, both locally in Miami, as well as on the Fox News Channel as part of it's coverage.

Station owners, upon learning of the charges, dismissed Kamal immediately. They had no other comment on the matter.

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Parker: Why there's increased black support of Bush

A weekend NY Times poll has shown that black support for President Bush, as we go into the final week of the campaign, is up to a whopping 17 percent nationally. I've said repeatedly that ANY increase in black support for the President -- regardless of the overall outcome -- is certainly a victory in terms of black political outreach.

Star Parker takes a look at WHY that increase is happening in her new column.

The black community is by and large a religious community. When surveyed, blacks respond at higher rates than whites that religion plays a "very important" role in their life.

Gay marriage, and claims equating the gay movement to the civil rights movement, has been a wake-up call. Black pastors and their congregants are waking up to the fact that the liberal agenda that they have been supporting all these years does not liberate but denigrates, dehumanizes, and enslaves. They are beginning to see the liberal agenda, the welfare state agenda, as a moral problem, undermining the dignity and responsibility that makes men and women free.

The substance of Kerry's remarks was as revealing as his behavior. Kerry knows zero about Mary Cheney's personal struggles. However, he used her to claim that there is no choice in homosexual behavior. So, in one swoop Kerry threw thousands of years of religious tradition and teaching into the garbage. We're all victims now. And, of course, from a black perspective, John Kerry will argue that an individual's sexual behavior is as pre-determined as his or her race. So, indeed sexual behavior should fall into the realm of civil rights.

Blacks are picking up on all this. This is what these new polling results are telling us. View this as a trend.

Kerry's pandering to black congregations in swing states, while looking good on camera, is starting to backfire, based on these numbers.

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October 25, 2004

Pretty Boy Edwards gets endorsement from black church in Cincinnati

Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, continuing the religious pandering to black congregations that John Kerry is pushing across the nation, attended Allen Temple AME Church in Cincinnati yesterday, and accepted their endorsement.

John Edwards got a surprise Sunday at Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bond Hill.

He was introduced by the church pastor as not only the Democratic vice presidential candidate, but also as a future president.

"I know he is going to be president of the United States," Rev. Donald Jordan told a cheering capacity congregation of 1,200. "The Republicans have no one who can compare to him. I ask your support of him."

John Kerry continued his round-robin tour of black churches yesterday, attending and speaking at Mount Hermon AME Church in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

MA Sen Ted Kennedy also hit the black church circuit, visiting Philadelphia's Mount Airy Church of God in Christ to stump from the pulpit for Kerry.

I've got a basic fundamental problem with any candidate or political group that passes out political fans in the middle of a church service. At the same time, I have to truly wonder whether a church that ALLOWS such a practice is truly a place where the pastor is thinking of spreading God's word, or that candidate's word.

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Kerry GUARANTEES no further terror attacks if elected

John Kerry had a brain fart of monumental proportions on NBC's Today Show this morning. Kerry told host Katie Couric that he guarantees no further terrorist attacks anywhere in the world if elected.

George Bush and Dick Cheney have said to you, it is not a matter of if we're gonna be attacked. It is a matter of when...do you know that the-- that the President just the other day in an interview with Hannity and Combs said-- do you know what he said? He said he doesn't know if America will ever be safe. Well, I do know that America will be safe. Under my leadership.
I don't think that even hardcore Kool-Aid-drinking leftists can comfortably subscribe to that kind of statement.

Couric had issues with it off the bat.

But can you really...Senator make that guarantee -- that America will be safe under all circumstances?
Ketchup Boy is losing it. Big time.

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UN Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

The story that the blogosphere was abuzz about over the weekened was one that in the eyes of some could be a "blockbuster," but what to me looks more like a non-starter.U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred. So Ketchup Boy lied. Again.

What else is new?

Personally, I think that some of the newspaper endorsements -- some rather surprising (Hartford Courant, Palm Springs Desert Sun, Chicago Tribune & others) are far more significant.

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October 24, 2004

UK's Guardian encourages Bush's assassination

The Guardian has printed an incendiary editorial which excoriates the Bush Administration. This, in and of itself, is not outside the norm for the British newspaper.

The problem with the piece in question is a quote near the end.

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
You want to encourage people to vote, that's one thing. You want to support one party or another, that's perfectly fine. I'm all for expressing your opinion regarding the political process.

But to beg for (or encourage) an assassin to take out the sitting President, regardless of political party is not only out of line, but something that in this country at least is borderline illegal.

I'm sure they wouldn't feel very good if someone her wished for a sniper to take out the Queen or the British PM.

They ought to give some serious thought before they go out of the way to become the non-official organ of terrorists and assassins everywhere.

UPDATE: The Guardian has since posted a retraction and apology of sorts.

Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind.
I hope you'll excuse me if I find this half-assed "apology" a bit hard to swallow.

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October 23, 2004

New problems for Kerry campaign by Monday?

Powerline Blog is quoting unnamed sources today, pointing toward a front page story in a major newspaper for Monday morning that "could create a serious problem for the Kerry campaign."

We don't yet have any details, but it relates to a foreign policy issue, and it will call into question--amazingly enough--John Kerry's truthfulness.
Stay tuned.

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Monsters behead yet another Iraqi

AQ-affiliated terrorists beheaded yet another one -- this time, an Iraqi accused of the crime of "collaboration" with US forces.

As usual, The Jawa Report is on top of the story with still pictures and the streamed video. (WARNING: LINK CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES!)

Conflicting reports indicate that the man murdered by the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah in a new beheading video was named either Yassar Musil or Seif Adnan Kanaan. The following AP story, as well as the Reuters story in the extended entry, also miss some other crucial facts about the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah. For instance, just yesterday I reported that the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah praised John Kerry for his criticisms of the Bush administration. In the same communique, the group calls Osama bin Laden 'our sheik'--a reference of devotion and loyalty indicating an al Qaeda connection. Further, the group has solidified it's ties to Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad terrorist organization which has recently pledged loyalty to al Qaeda. During the taped beheading of Turkish truck driver Ramadan Elbu on October 15th by the Army of Ansar al-Islam, one of the murderers identified himself as a follower of Zarqawi [information, video, and images here]. On October 11th, another individual claimed to be a member of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group on a beheading video released by the group--the victims were a Turkish truck driver and his Iraqi translator [information, video, and images here].
The AP story Dr. Shackleford refers to comes to us from Australia's National Nine News.

Hopefully, the monsters will soon meet their own eternal (and suitably painful) punishment.

(More coverage from Sortapundit & others)

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October 22, 2004

Happy 6,000th birthday, Universe?

British geologists are celebrating the 6,000th anniversary of the birth of the universe today.

At 6pm tonight at the Geological Society of London, scientists will raise their glasses to James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, who in 1650 used the chronology of the Bible to calculate the precise date and moment of creation.

Working from the book of Genesis, and risking some speculation on the Hebrew calendar, he calculated that it began at 6pm on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC.

Actually, he put the date at October 23, and then pedantically realised that time must have begun the night before, because the Bible said that "the evening and the morning were the first day."

Of course that takes the Biblical description literally as opposed to allegorically, as many people believe.

One thing that this does not take into account, is that 6,000 years after 4004 BC is actually 1997AD -- seven years ago.

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AQ hostage Margaret Hassan begs for life in new video

In a scenario that is unsettlingly reminiscent of the Paul Bigley kidnapping a month ago, CARE International's senior worker in Iraq, Margaret Hassan, kidnapped less than a week ago, was shown pleading for her life on a video released to Al Jazeera earlier today.

"Please help me. Please help me," said a terrified Hassan, breaking down in tears and burying her face in a tissue. She said she might be killed like British hostage Kenneth Bigley, who was beheaded by his captors earlier this month.

"This might be my last hours," she said in the video aired by the Arabic television station Al-Jazeera. She begged the British people to "ask Mr. Blair to take the troops out of Iraq, and not to bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like Mr. Bigely and myself are being caught. And maybe we will die like Mr. Bigley. Please, please, I beg of you."

Hassan, seen from the shoulders up only in the video, directed her pleas toward British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Hassan implored Blair to prevent British troops from coming to Baghdad.

Unlike past kidnappings, no deadline has been set for Coalition forces to respond to the kidnapper's would-be demands and Hassan's pleas. However, many fear that Hassan may become the first Western woman to be beheaded by the monsters as the days progress.

(More coverage from The Jawa Report & others)

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Ketchup Boy looking more like Elmer Fudd

John Kerry, looking more like Elmer Fudd than American Sportsman, went goose hunting yesterday in Ohio.

Kerry stepped out of a field in a camouflage jacket and toting a 12-gauge shotgun, but with someone else carrying his goose.

"I'm too lazy," Kerry joked. "I'm still giddy over the Red Sox. It was hard to focus."
He was referring to the Red Sox ALCS win over the Yankees the night before. Kerry stayed up late watching the game, then got up for the 7AM hunting trip at a supporter's farm in Boardman, OH.

The GOP and the National Rifle Association criticized Kerry's obvious 2nd Amendment photo op.

Campaigning in Ohio, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) on Thursday criticized Kerry's hunting excursion, saying, "The second amendment is more than just a photo opportunity."

The National Rifle Association said it bought a full-page ad in Thursday's Youngstown newspaper that says Kerry is posing as a sportsman while opposing gun-owners' rights. Kerry has denied NRA claims that he wants to "take away" guns, but he supported the ban on assault-type weapons and requiring background checks at gun shows

"If John Kerry thinks the Second Amendment is about photo ops, he's Daffy," says the ad the NRA said would run in The Vindicator. It features a large photo of Kerry with his finger on a shotgun trigger but looking in another direction.

Meanwhile, labor unions have been circulating fliers among workers that say Kerry won't take away guns. "He likes his own gun too much," says one of the fliers from the Building Trades Department of the AFL-CIO that features a picture of Kerry aiming a shotgun.

This begs the obvious question: Is Kerry's shotgun photo-op (sans goose, of course, lest he piss off the PETA crowd) every bit as stupid as the Dukakis tank photo-op in 1988?

It sounds like the Kerry campaign is in meltdown with stupid (Kerry's "gay" gaffe in the final debate) quote after stupid (Teresa Heinz-Ketchup's insult of teachers and librarians this week) quote after stupid (Kerry's "Elmer Fudd" photo op yesterday) image.

How long before he pisses off yet another group of Americans with his obvious pandering and idiotic statements? I'm sure he "has a plan" to prevent himself from looking stupid. But of course, he'll never let us in on what his plan is.

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October 21, 2004

Martha Stewart: Helping fellowing inmates with microwave cooking

Martha Stewart is taking up her time in prison by helping her fellow inmates with their microwave recipes. Meanwhile, her lawyers are working on her appeal.

"She's making the best of what's necessarily a difficult situation," lawyer Walter Dellinger said on NBC's "Today." "There is no freedom. It's regimented. She has no privacy. They are subject to strip searches. But she's so resilient."

the appeals brief, made public Thursday, argues prosecutors and the trial judge kept the jury from understanding the difference.

"A barrage of pre-trial leaks and in-court accusations left the indelible impression that she was guilty of that offense," it says. "Tarring Stewart with an uncharged, highly inflammatory crime was fundamentally unfair."

Because inmates can only use a microwave to do their own cooking, Stewart is working with fellow prisoners to "come up with some creative recipes" based on the limited number of ingredients available at the prison commissary, Dellinger said.

"She has a group that is cooking," he said. "She is trying to figure out innovative ways to do microwave cooking which is all they have."

Stewart is serving a five-month sentence at the minimum-security federal women's prison in Alderson, WV.

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October 20, 2004

Why Black Voters Will Cost Kerry The Presidency

The Horserace Blog has a detailed dissertation as to why black voters will cost Ketchup Boy the White House.

Regular readers are well aware that I think this election is over, that George W. Bush will be reelected. There are two reasons why I think this is the case:

1. Kerry is going to under-perform badly among black voters relative to GoreÂ’s performance in 2000.
2. Bush is going to over-perform among Catholics relative to his performance in 2000.

Two weeks ago, the latest Pew Poll came out showing Kerry enjoying 70% support among blacks. Just today The Center for Policy and Economic Studies announced that in their poll, Kerry enjoyed 69% support among blacks compared to 18% for Bush. They conducted a similar poll at the same point in the 2000 race. It showed Gore 74%, Bush 9%. According to this poll, then, Kerry is underperforming among blacks by roughly 14% of the vote, a statistically significant difference. What would that mean if these numbers hold for the next month?

Further analysis on the black electorate and the remainder of the election process can be found at The Horserace Blog, which has now found a place in the blogroll.

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Edwards & Joker, separated at birth

 

'Nuff said.

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Kerry says he'll discontinue terror alerts; head in sand works better

John Kerry says that he'll quit using the color-coded terror alert system that's been in use since shortly after 9/11, in a new Rolling Stone interview by publisher Jann Wenner being published late this week.

"I think Americans, sadly, laugh at it," Kerry said, referring to the alerts in an interview to be published Friday in Rolling Stone. "They don't know what to do."
The interview includes a response from Kerry to the Swift Boat Veterans group that has put commercials opposing his candidacy on television.
Kerry said he felt "a sense of bitter disappointment" by the ads run by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that questioned his conduct and the medals he received as a naval lieutenant during the Vietnam War. But he insisted he and others had dealt effectively with the ad controversy, despite widespread criticism that his campaign had been slow to respond.

"Look, when people hold up something that's a complete and total lie, it takes a few days to show people and convince them. We did. They've been completely discredited," Kerry said. "I was surprised that the media, even when they knew it was lies, continued to cover it and treat it as entertainment."

Rolling Stone is on the record as supporting the removal of President Bush by any means necessary. The magazine's support of Kerry is well known, and has had several articles supportive of the candidate over the course of the year.

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Proof that Jimmy Carter is ready for "Shady Pines"

Former President Jimmy Carter, appearing on MSNBC's Hardball on Monday evening, uttered words that I would never have though I'd hear from a president, sitting or former.

I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.
I think it's time for Jimmuh to consider that retirement home down in south Georgia.

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"It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim; dead, Jim; dead, Jim..."

When's the last time anyone heard from the elusive Osama Bin Laden?

To be exact -- and if you even believe it was him -- it was the May 7 audio tape offering gold for the assassination of Jerry Bremer.

Prior to that was the European "truce" offered by audio tape that showed up in the wake of the Spanish train bombings, which, if memory serves, was unauthenticated by the CIA. Then was an audio tape that surfaced on Al Jazeera in early January.

Last time we SAW him? A year ago -- October 19, 2003 -- a video of Osama with no sound, looking hale and hearty (in stark contrast to the frail-looking Osama from the Tora Bora bombing era of December 2001) picking his way up a slope in an unidentified rocky region.

Gregory Djerejian points out the signs that are becoming increasingly obvious: that Osama is as dead as Elvis, lest he show up at your corner 7-Eleven.

Folks, bottom line: we have to go all the way back to December 26th 2001 to see a video of UBL that really seems to get close to passing a smell test evidencing that's he actually, you know, alive (and he didn't look too smashing in it either).

Now, does anyone seriously believe that UBL wouldn't, if he were alive, be doing his very damnedest to release a tape, soonest, rubbing Bush's nose in it for not having caught him--dead or alive? Just as a little pre-election present, say, maybe to give the opposition a little assist in hyping the disingenous Tora Bora meme? Doubtless, he would, no? Unless, of course, he's dead. Which, I'm beginning to feel pretty comfortable concluding, may well be the happy reality as we sit here today.

But then again, I guess if Osama were truly dead, it would completely torpedo the Kerry arguement of military attention to "the target."

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October 19, 2004

Are you crazy? Take the test and find out here

Click the link to take the Insanity Test:

•Turn on the Speakers and allow the page to load fully
• Stare at the Picture without laughing for 60 seconds
• If you start laughing consider yourself legally insane
For the record, I made it for about five seconds.

Then I lost it. Completely.

I'm still wiping tears out of my eyes.

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Kid swallows cocaine & dies, mother sues police

Parents of a 16 year-old boy who died after swallowing cocaine are suing the city of Dearborn, MI's police department for $50 million dollars.

Lawyers for the family of Quantrell Pryor claim that police saw Pryor swallow the cocaine, yet did not take him to the hospital until it was too late to save the boy.

"The doctor said if he would have gotten here in 30 minutes or earlier, or even an hour earlier it would have made such a difference," said LaTanya Pryor, the teen's mother.

Dearborn police stopped Pryor last Tuesday outside the JC Penney department store at Fairlane Mall when they noticed the left rear window was broken out in the vehicle he was driving.

Pryor panicked and swallowed cocaine he had in his possession, according to the station's reports.

Pryor was taken by squad car to the Dearborn police station at about 5 p.m. Police said he repeatedly denied that he had ingested any drugs when questioned by officers.

Pryor was transferred by ambulance to Oakwood Hospital from police custody after going into convulsions inside an observation cell at about 6:20 p.m., police said.

Several questions beg to be asked here: firstly, if police officers did see him swallow the cocaine, does normal procedure suggest they automatically take him to the hospital? Secondly, the mother appears, at least from the published reports in the local press, not to deal with any of her son's guilt. It's all the fault of the police, in her mind.

It sounds like she's more concerned with the money, her claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

I'm sorry. The cops, nor the city, are not responsible for her son's stupidity.

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