imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Friday, November 12, 2004
$UHA CRIE$ FOR YA$$ER
Lucianne once described Suha as “a dead-ringer for Boy George."
HE CHECKS OUT, SUHA CASHES IN
By URI DAN and ANDY SOLTIS
Suha Arafat, who jealously guarded her husband's bedside during his final hours, brought his body home from France yesterday for burial — after sealing a deal that will make her a very rich widow.
Suha agreed to a settlement with the Palestinian Authority that will reportedly pay her as much as $22 million a year for divulging the secrets of her husband's fortune.
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French sources said yesterday that earlier this week, Suha turned down a $2 million offer. That settlement would have allowed doctors to complete medical tests to determine what illness proved fatal to the 75-year-old Palestinian leader.
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Suha is regarded by many Palestinians as a foreign interloper who convinced Arafat's doctors to allow him to go to Paris for diagnosis two weeks ago — then used French law to block anyone but her from sharing his final hours.
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Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, hugged Suha after she left the aircraft.
FINAL FIDDLE
November 12, 2004 -- SPECULATION is rampant over the cause of Yasser Arafat's death — and the mystery only deepened because the Palestinian warlord died in France, where no cause is listed on official death certificates. One rumor is that Arafat was poisoned by one of his many assassination-happy rivals for control of the billions that flow into the PLO. Another theory is that Arafat had AIDS. This would explain why he didn't sleep much with wife Suha, who lived in Paris while Arafat was directing suicide bombings — or it could be disinformation planted by Israeli intelligence. "Hairspray" star Bruce Vilanch put it in perspective yesterday, saying: "We finally know Arafat will not be going into 'Fiddler on the Roof.' "
IT’S IN HER KISS
Back in November of 1999, at a West Bank ceremony, Hillary sat mute next to Suha Arafat as she accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children. Afterwards, Hillary came back to life and planted a wet juicy on Mrs. Arafat.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
TOLD Y’SO
THE BUSH REBOUND
Only it looks like that recovery is already here. On President Bush's watch.
Last Friday's report that 337,000 new jobs were created in October is just the latest economic good news.
Ironically, it looks like Bush will end his first term with a net job gain — despite Democratic jibes to the contrary during the just-ended campaign.
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And that rebound came thanks to the president's economic policies — including, yes, his tax cuts, which he said last week he hopes to make permanent.
All the more reason to be thankful for the voters' wisdom last week.
TELL THEM YOU CARE
On this Veteran’s Day, while our troops are putting their lives on the line, let them know that we care.
See what you can do by checking out Operation Gratitude.
ON THIS VETERAN’S DAY
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all who serve in the military. I have relatives, living and dead, who have served and one who is serving now and may be shipped out early next year.
VICTORY IN FALLUJAH
By Ralph Peters
IN the Second Battle of Fallujah, military operations are ahead of schedule. Our casualties have been blessedly light. The terrorists who haven't fled are being killed by the hundreds. Our troops will soon achieve their goal of eliminating Iraq's key safe haven for terrorists.
Our Marines and soldiers have carried the ball inside the 10-yard line. The media's response? Move the goalposts.
The legions of pundits ("Will talk for food") now suggest that a win in Fallujah will be meaningless because we failed to kill or capture the terrorist leadership, because some of the thugs ran away and because Fallujah won't resemble Darien, Conn., by next Sunday.
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What's really happening?
We're winning a critical victory. Since the political decision to stop short in Fallujah last April, the terrorists had bragged to the world that the city would never fall to the infidel. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his thugs turned Fallujah into a vast dungeon, complete with torture chambers and execution halls. The terrorists stockpiled weapons and ammunition, welcoming thousands of international "Jihadis" and using the city as a base to spread terror across central Iraq.
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Guess who's dying now?
By fleeing without fighting to the death as they promised they would, the terror-masters discredited themselves. After Coalition leaders lost their nerve last April, the terrorists portrayed themselves as having faced down America's military might. This time, they ran away, leaving untrained recruits to take the bullet-train to paradise.
The swift fall of Fallujah is not only a practical disaster for the terrorists, but a massive loss of face for them throughout the Muslim world.
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What have we found in Fallujah? Hostage slaughterhouses — butcher shops for human cattle. Stockpiles of ammunition and explosives in mosques
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Of course, the terrorists who ran away will try to refurbish their image with more bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings.
But they've lost their greatest stronghold. They've lost their sole tangible symbol of success. And they've lost their image as dauntless warriors able to stand up to the U.S. military.
Smoke Eater, at Patriotism101, says it best:
A debt I may never be able to repay.....
Lorie Byrd’s husband, who was an active duty Marine from 3/87 to 3/93, wrote The Marine Corps Birthday. I missed it yesterday, but Veteran’s Day is not too late.
SHOCK & BAWL
WK II
While I’m still getting used to Bush winning, the Libs’ uber-angst continues unabated. Here are two writers who are gradually examining their party’s problems.
Last Word in DUMBO: I Voted With My Head, But Not My Kishkes
(DUMBO = "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass")
by Michael M. Thomas
BROOKLYN, N.Y.—7:30 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 2, Hicks Street, Brooklyn Heights: Hamlet in the voting booth. My hand hovered over the Kerry lever as a small voice from within asked: Do you really want to do this?
In the end, I did, if only because I had indicated for Kerry in this space, and to have voted otherwise would have been hypocritical.
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Of course, the beautiful irony in all this is that the post-election Blue America hand-wringing in effect is saying that 2004 is the result, politically speaking, of the dumbing-down of America. But who orchestrated that dumbing-down? Who puts the crap on the airwaves and in print and in the museums and on video screens? Who preaches that everything’s relative, that if everyone’s lying, no one is? Who worships the 18-34 demographic? Who supplies the in-and-out stock-market culture that rules the economy and gave us George Soros? Where’d the people come from who really did Enron or Arthur Andersen?
Blue America, that’s who, that’s where. And why not, they’ll tell you? Blue Americans have every bit as much a right to make a good living as some schlub in a pick-up truck. More right, probably—because they went to Harvard. And if dumbing-down and bottom-line kiting pay for the Hummer necessary to make the fraught journey from Lily Pond Lane to Citarella to pick up the baby bok choy, what’s the big deal? To the superior go the spoils.
And finally, there’s this to consider: Blue America is, of course, the seat of "Blame America," the point of which, I guess, is that you reap what you sow. Well, take a look in the mirror, assholes.
Five Reality Checks For Democrats: Dump Kofi, Moore, Dopes
by Tish Durkin
Now as then, Democratic partisans seem to be more interested in coming off as wronged rather than defeated. We have lost an election—and so far, we are acting as if we have lost a contact lens, crawling around the red parts of the map in search of the speck of strategy that would have turned it blue. We are all set to keep on ridiculing the President’s syntax, when it is our message that no one can make sense of. The party of F.D.R. and J.F.K. has turned itself into the political equivalent of the woman who responds to her husband’s leaving her by living in her bathrobe for years: It’s O.K. for her to be miserable, so long as enough people around her know that he’s the bad guy.
In short, the Democratic Party is losing the American people—and so far, we aren’t even looking for them.
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Reality check No. 1: Bush is not an idiot—and even if he were, saying so, over and over again, would not be a strategy. It would be an insult to the 59 million Americans who voted for him; a gift to anyone and everyone who wants to paint the Democratic Party as a coven of elitists—and a slap in our own face. For a group of people who pride ourselves on intellectual superiority, we seem remarkably capable of ignoring the most basic questions. Here is one: If Bush is an idiot and he has beaten us twice, what does that make us?
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This isn’t rocket science: If you were a blue-collar Democrat who had voted Republican for the past several elections—whether out of national pride, or social values, or a belief that the tax cut was good for you—and then somebody came along to lampoon you and all your candidates, how would you react?
Check out Pat’s ongoing The Reality-Based Community? series, blogging at his excellent Brainster.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
S’NOT FAIR!
If conceit is God’s gift to little men, then Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and Rama-lama-ding-a-long have come and gone for a whole lotta Blue State Blowhards. Their entitlement has been revoked for another four years and they’re screaming, “S’not fair!”
Giving the Fly-Over the Olympian Flick
"You know what? Just let me make one point. You were talking about the map before. If indeed all those blue states all got together and seceded from the union, think what would be left for those red states, nothing. There would be no educational system. You would have nothing. What would be left to you? I mean, where is all of this talent in this country? It's on both sides, the Northeast corridor."
-Geraldine Ferraro to Sean Hannity on Hannity and Colmes, November 6.
A typical scream of consciousness; Oh, the angst!
The Gathering Darkness of the Blue State of Mind
By James Atlas
On the Fifth Avenue bus, I gazed blankly out the window. The trees in Central Park were still in their vivid autumn plumage, red, yellow, and green set on fire by the early sun. I found myself thinking that what my friend Edgar, the radical novelist, calls “incremental fascism” doesn’t seem so incremental anymore. There will be a draft, and we’ll have to leave the country: No way I’m letting our 17-year-old son, Will, be sent to Iraq. They’ll drill the Alaskan tundra for oil, and the polar ice caps will melt; Manhattan will be inundated like in The Day After Tomorrow. They’ll teach creationism in the schools; our grandchildren will scratch their armpits like orangutans and laugh, “Can you believe people used to think we were descended from apes?” Anyone who belonged to Students for a Democratic Society 35 years ago will be fingerprinted. The Patriot Act will be broadened to stifle dissent in the media—Paul Krugman will be sent to Gitmo. The deficit will mount, and they’ll loot Social Security; I’ll end up in an SRO on upper Broadway. And the Jews will be rounded up like in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. Did only Paul Wolfowitz stand between us and concentration camps in Kentucky? New York will be attacked again and . . . Wait. Maybe the guys in power want us to be attacked. What better way to get rid of all those noisome New Yorkers than to have an Al Qaeda dirty bomb explode in Grand Central at rush hour? No more need to bail out New York, because there won’t be any New York.
Tom Wolfe: The liberal elite showed it was way out of touch even before the election. I was at a dinner party in New York and when everyone was wondering what to do about Bush I suggested they might do like me and vote for him. There was silence around the table, as if I’d said “by the way, I haven’t mentioned this before but I’m a child molester”.
Now, like Chicken Licken after an acorn fell on his head, they think the sky is falling. I have to laugh. It reminds me of Pauline Kael, the film critic, who said, “I don’t know how Reagan won — I don’t know a soul who voted for him.” That was a classic and reflects the reaction of New York intellectuals now. Note my definition of “intellectual” here is what you often find in this city: not people of intellectual attainment but more like car salesmen, who take in shipments of ideas and sell them on.
Finally, from Page Six, Zell injects a bit of fresh air with another one of his zingers:
SEN. Zell Miller (D- Ga.) laced into New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd yesterday on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, saying, "The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid." Miller also suggested "that red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair." Dowd responds: "I'm not a highbrow hussy from New York. I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington. Senator, pistols or swords?"
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
“IT’S MY PARTY”
R. Emmett Tyrrell’s book is the definitive HRC primer, especially now.
And I’ll run if I want to! I am speaking, of course, of Her Royal C, and what a “c’ she is. And you thought John F’n Kerry had a sense of entitlement.
First she slid into the White House on her husband’s coattails. She refused to take the customary office of the First Lady in the East Wing. Instead, she moved into the West Wing office reserved for Algore and forced Algore into the Old Executive Office Building across the street. Then she slid into the Senate. Yes, yes, she had an opponent, but poor Rick Lazio couldn’t compete with Slick's pardons:
The town of New Square, New York offered votes rather than cash. But that was the coin of the realm for the First Lady, hustling every ballot she could nab in her quest for power. After campaigning in the Rockland County Hasidic community, Hillary beat GOP rival Rep. Rick Lazio 1,359 to 10. Four New Square residents who village elders wanted freed also won reduced sentences. What a coincidence. Their crime? Creating a fake yeshiva through which they conned taxpayers out of some $40 million in student loans, housing funds and business development capital.
Her Royal C transformed her gender into the political equivalent of “the all-purpose little black dress.” She hid behind it in 1992 when the media questioned her role as part of their “blue plate special” ticket. Back then it was “Stop picking on the woman!” Then she gave her “pretty in pink” performance in which she demurely claimed that she learned how to make her money in futures by reading the Wall Street Journal. She stiff-upper-lipped us with her “wronged woman” status whenever her husband was caught with his pants down, thereby deflecting attention to her own scandals. She was “Dragon Lady” (remember the long black coat with the golden dragon emblazoned on the back?) when she testified before Congress during Whitewatergate. Questioning Dragon Lady meant that you feared strong women. It was a ridiculous tactic, but it worked. There are other examples, but you get the idea.
She earned the distinction of becoming the first First Lady to become a senator, and now she’s aiming for the coup de grace: The first First Lady who became a senator and then president … via her own election that is.
Here’s a synopsis of Her Royal C circa 1993.
And CrushKerry reminds us of what HRC has been doing lately:
The Hillary Factor
Notice … just how clever the Hildabeast has been during the hot, tumultuous debates over Iraq and other foreign policy issues. She’s been mum. This is a crafty woman who has looked at every passing controversy and decided nothing stood to gain from getting her taut-lipped mug into the fray. And she has been right.
CRUSHED-KERRY LIVES!
I love the guys at CrushKerry for their irreverent analyses and updates, such as:
Should We Hold Off Changing the Site Name? Apparently getting Crushed once is not enough. The Washington Post is reporting that just one week after embarassing himself John "Crushed" Kerry is considering another run in 2008. God's doesn't like us that much does he? That could fulfill Rove's dream of a permanent GOP majority.
Babbling Babs If anyone can figure out what the hell this dopey broad is saying please let us know. The "reign of witches"?
Today, however, they hold a special place in my heart for nailing that smarmy poltroon in Hermes ties for the selfish bastard that he is:
Falluja and Other News
Because Kerry politicized the war – a war he voted for – we are behind schedule.
SPEAKING OF FALLIJAH
For all those liberal pretentious pissants who gleefully predict hundreds’n’thousands’n’millions (OH MY!) of body bags coming back from war, here’s a primer on how real Americans get the job done. Now sit down, shut up and get the “F” outta their way! And God Bless America!
Fallujah Again
This engagement is all the more chilling because it probably happened at night. Five enemy soldiers died simply because they could not comprehend how destruction could flow from an observer a mile away networked to mortars that could fire for effect without ranging. All over Fallujah virtual teams of snipers and fire-control observers are jockeying for lines of sight to deal death to the enemy. For many jihadis that one peek over a sill could be their last.
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The battle for Fallujah illustrates the relative strengths and weaknesses of both sides. The enemy, whatever his faults, is not obviously short on courage or resourcefulness and America can expect to encounter the same tenacity anywhere he is met. But against these strengths, enemy inherited not only the weakness of a poor technological base but a fundamentally flawed concept of American determination. They wrongly assumed, as Osama often claimed, that Americans were too morally weak to fight. They believed they could use physical remoteness and terrorist tactics to wage "asymmetrical warfare" on an American force geared to fight conventional battles -- the army of Desert Storm. Both these assumptions have proved poor bets. There are now tens of thousands of Americans with a good understanding of the Middle East; there are many systems now coming online which are designed to fight the terrorist enemy. They are going to get snowed under by the same tidal wave that buried the Imperial Japanese Army and the Wehrmacht in World War 2.
Hat tip Lucianne!
Monday, November 08, 2004
NOW MORE THAN EVER
Check out OPERATION GRATITUDE and see how you can help our troops. It's our duty to let them know that we care and appreciate their efforts, now more than ever.
SACRE BLEU!
The French hate Bush! Like tell me something I don’t already know. They’d probably like to forget that WE had to liberate THEM at one time. Not to mention how Ch’Iraq has been gaming the oil-for-food UN scam, and with Bush re-elected, this scandal will hopefully receive its due. If you’re Jewish, stay out of France, where anti-Semitism is virulent.
Boy, do they hate Bush here
PARIS - It's a good thing Europeans don't vote in American elections. If they did, chances are President Bush would have been trounced.
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It's not just the war in Iraq. It is the President's very American sense of decisive, strong leadership; of placing U.S. security (and that of the entire free world) above diplomatic niceties. In Europe's twisted thinking, Bush is nothing more than the epitome of the "Ugly American," the arrogant, gun-toting cowboy many Europeans and other non-Americans love to hate out of their own sense of inferiority, jealousy, bitterness and often downright ignorance of facts and figures.
Whatever the case, no American President in recent history has been so vilified - especially by the Europeans. Even the 60th anniversary of the American-led D-Day invasion was cause for despicable attacks on Bush. One French magazine had the gall to question whether the American President should even come to Normandy for the anniversary celebrations
Yasser, that’s their bubbie (feh feh feh)
Well-wishers have created a makeshift shrine of flowers, candles and messages of support outside the hospital where Yasser Arafat is being treated.
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Photos of Arafat also hang from the wall, as do huge Palestinian flags and photos of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza.
And speaking of the diseased one …
Based on the symptoms Yasser Arafat is suffering from, as well as accounts of his rampantly homosexual past, political pundits and medical experts believe the blood-soaked Muslim terror chief is dying from complications related to the AIDS virus.
Arafat has been hospitalized outside of Paris for more than a week with blotchy skin, a low platelet count that is affecting his immune system, decreased mental capacity and a considerable loss of weight – all indicators of the presence of AIDS.
His homosexual tendencies have been attested to by numerous sources, including a now infamous set of surveillance videos taken by his former communist allies in Romania showing Arafat in perverted encounters with his bodyguards
Sunday, November 07, 2004
CAPITOL HILL CRONE
I'm linking this to L.com so you can howl over the comments. They're classics!
Helen Thomas says Bush is afraid of her
Now that President Bush has won reelection, maybe he'll feel secure enough to restore the First Lady of the Press to her front-row seat. "No," predicted Helen Thomas on Friday when she keynoted the 9th Annual WomenVenture Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. "He's still afraid of me. He can't take my questions. Mine are very simple."
IT’S SAFE TO COME OUT NOW
I never watch local or network news, but I do watch Fox. I particularly love Brit Hume’s discussion roundtable; I live for the days Charles Krauthammer is on. However, about a week prior to the election, I ceased watching even Fox. I watched reruns of FRIENDS instead, but mostly I lived on cable if I watched TV at all. I just couldn’t tolerate the spin, the Bush-bashing; I couldn’t stand the wait until this sausage-making process was fini. It’s not like I thought he’d lose, because I’d maintained this firm belief all along that Bush would win. On the other hand, I had had the same unshakable belief in ’92 and again in ’96, although in retrospect I have to wonder why. Having my political underpinnings yanked out from beneath me those two times shook me badly.
All day Tuesday I refused to watch TV, but I was online all day. I logged onto Drudge just once; that was it. From then on it was HughHewitt who told me that everything would be all right, don’t believe the exit polls, the numbers are skewed. Tuesday night around 9:45 I tuned into Fox. No answer! So I went to bed with a book and was amazed I was actually able to concentrate. By 5:30-ish Wednesday morning I scrounged up enough courage to peek at Fox, and it looked good.
I didn’t realize just how, what’s the word … anxious? No, too weak; try tied up into ittybitty strangulating knots and frazzled beyond any recognition. I didn’t realize how bad off I was until my intestines began to ever-so-slowly unravel, beginning on Wednesday after John L’Fraude Kerry finally admitted that the numbers would neverever support him winning, no matter how many lawyers he had employed. And how’s ‘bout that speech of his? Man, he was actually emotin’! Can y’dig it? And did I detect a speck of ocular moisture? A tremble in his voice? A slight sniff-sniffing? The most emotion he has ever displayed, and it was all for him. Whadda guy!
Friday I was still experiencing delayed reactions. Out of nowhere I’d stop whatever I was doing and think, “Bush won!” Hey, I’m still getting used to the idea.
The thing about presidential elections is that I miss my favorite time of year: autumn. I love the fall. I even love it when the trees are bare and it’s cold’n’blustery, like late last week. I’ve added the featherbed to my bed, plus the flannel sheets. I think of comfort food, like pork and sauerkraut. I love Halloween, too. It’s just about my favorite holiday next to Thanksgiving. Christmas, by comparison, is almost anti-climatic. By Christmas Day at noon it’s basically all over, except for the burping and the cleanup. And New Year's Day is the pits; it sucks! I wish I could go to bed on December 31st and wake up on January 2nd; just skip that God-forsaken day altogether.
The election has taken its toll on me. This week I found a couple of actual gray hairs in my naturally luxurious brunette locks! And the Halloween candy? I buy a couple of bags, never knowing how many kids will come to the door (I live outside of town). This year I bought a bag of Bazooka bubble gum and a bag of those crappy Smartees, because I hate them, which means I’m not tempted. I answered the door four times, so I was left with most of the candy. Normally, I’d toss the candy, but this was an election year. All of the crappy Smartees and half of the Bazookas were gone by Tuesday night; I’d down a couple of rolls with a Bazooka chaser.
I’m finally back to watching Fox once again.
GET OVER IT
ONCE-trendy pro-John Kerry New York organization Downtown for Democracy is taking his defeat harder than most. After the fruitlessness of persuading such celebrities as Lou Reed, Jonathan Safran Foer and Marc Jacobs to support their doomed mission to oust President Bush, they have sent a sour grapes e-mail to their supporters, saying, "You'll hear a lot of talk about how George Bush won more popular votes than any president in history. What you should remember is that more people also voted against Bush than any other president in history." Yes. And?
