Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

Drudge Report | OpinionJournal | FrontPage Magazine | Associated Press
 JewishWorldReview | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Other Links | Bottom

Top

DrudgeReport.com

• Hollywood Prefers Kerry

• Apple’s iTunes Sells Over 1 Million Songs in 1st Week

• Biggest Bank Robbery in History: Saddam’s Son Nabs $1 Billion

• Freed American POW Says Time in Capitivity “Sheer Terror”

• Colorado Springs Country Station Suspends DJ’s for Playing Dixie Chicks

• Wal-Mart Caves In to Religious “Right”

• British Artificial Insemination Clinic to Use Gay Men for Donors

Bottom

Hollywood stars align behind Kerry...

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean made an early splash in the Hollywood money scene as an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, but the entertainment industry gave more to Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

…

But in the battle for top billing, Dean seems to have come out a winner with financial backing from the likes of actor-director Rob Reiner, actor Michael Douglas and two-thirds of the group Crosby, Stills & Nash.

APPLE SELLS OVER MILLION TRACKS IN FIRST WEEK OF ONLINE MUSIC

Apple Computer says its new digital music service, the iTunes Music Store, sold more than 1 million downloads in its first week, Billboard Bulletin reports. The figure roughly matches the download sales to date by all other digital music services combined, sources say.

$1 BILLION REMOVED FROM IRAQI CENTRAL BANK BY SADDAM'S SON...

In the hours before American bombs began falling on the Iraqi capital, one of President Saddam Hussein's sons and a close adviser carried off nearly $1 billion in cash from the country's Central Bank, according to American and Iraqi officials here.

The removal of the money, which would amount to one of the largest bank robberies in history, was performed under the direct orders of Mr. Hussein, according to an Iraqi official with knowledge of the incident. The official, who asked not to be identified, said that no financial rationale had been offered for removing the money from the bank's vaults, and that no one had been told where the money would be taken.

Ex-POW Recalls Time in Iraq Captivity...

Recalling his time as a prisoner of war in Iraq as "sheer terror," Army Sgt. James Riley said Tuesday that the experience has left him feeling overwhelmed and confused at times.

…

When asked what it was like to be held captive, Riley said that "on a scale of 1 to 10, I rate it about 2,000 and 20 billion. It was sheer terror the whole time." He said he lost about 30 pounds during the three weeks he was detained.

DJs Suspended for Playing Dixie Chicks...

This was in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The station owner has a First Amendment right to control the songs his station plays. The fact that the Dixie Chicks are “hot” could indicate that country music fans are becoming less patriotic.

The big question, of course, is whether the First Amendment protects repeating enemy propaganda in wartime.

Country station KKCS has suspended two disc jockeys for playing the Dixie Chicks, violating a ban imposed after the group criticized President Bush.

…

"We pulled their music two months ago, and it's been a difficult decision because how can you ignore the hottest group in country music," station manager Jerry Grant said.

WAL-MART HALTS SALES OF 3 MEN'S MAGAZINES...

FOB Corporation Wal-Mart caves in to Religious “Right” and removes “racy” men’ magazines from shelves.

If they’re still stocking “racy” women’s like Cosmopolitan then they’re discriminating against visually stimulating materials.

Given the fact that it’s an FOB corporation, Wal-Mart is extremely hypocritical when they restrict publications with frank talk on human sexuality.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest retailer, said yesterday that it had halted sales of Maxim, Stuff and FHM, men's magazines that feature a mix of scantily clad starlets and bawdy humor but go to some lengths to avoid being labeled as pornography.

…

Maxim has been sold in Wal-Mart for the last three years, while FHM was added recently. The standards and general content of the magazines have not changed, but Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., has been under pressure from Christian groups in the past over its distribution of various magazines.

CYBERSPACE SPERM CLINIC TO ACCEPT GAY DONORS...

Using semen from gay men adds a risk for AIDS; the Red Cross won’t accept blood from men who have had sex with another man, even once, since 1977.

A cyberspace sperm-for-sale clinic which targets lesbians and single women was today claiming to be the first British fertility organisation to accept gay donors.

ManNotIncluded.Com has come under fire from religious and family campaigners for offering women the chance to have babies without needing a male partner.

Top

 OpinionJournal.com

• “Anti-war” Types Who Claimed Iraq Operation Would Set Back War on Terrorism Were Wrong

• Senate Wants to Change Filibuster Rules

• Bureaucratic Ineptitude of French May Destroy Prehistoric Cave Paintings

• x

• Best of the Web Today

  • Washington Times Says France Gave Saddam Officials Visas for Escape

  • Gorbachev Disputes Legality of Operation to Depose Saddam

  • Kerry Sees His Wife as “European”

  • Boise Elementary School Equates American Soldiers With Criminals

Bottom

Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham is stuck on the idea that George Bush halted the war on terror to oust Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile top terrorists keep getting nabbed around the world.

…

Clearly Mr. Graham was mistaken when he said "we need to restart the war on terror, now that the war in Iraq is over." There's no need to restart what never stopped. President Bush underscored that from the deck of the USS Lincoln by pointing out that nearly half of al Qaeda's top leadership has been killed or captured.

This is deplorable to the extreme. America wasn’t founded on the principle of the absolute rule of a simple majority. The requirement that administration nominees be confirmed by a 2/3 majority was intended to force compromises.

Because the cave had been naturally sealed for millennia, the paintings were freshly preserved in vivid yellows, reds, and blacks. But in its April issue, the respected French science magazine La Recherche sounded an alarm, announcing that thanks to bureaucratic incompetence a good part of Lascaux may be permanently destroyed.

Top

FrontPageMag.com

• Oregon Al-Quada Suspects Charges’ Similar to Treason

• British MP May Be Charged for Telling Troops to Disobey Orders

• Politically Correct Campaign Against “Racial Profiling” Hinders War on Terrorism

• LA Times Columnist Robert Sheer Went to North Korea in 1970

• British Suicide Bombers Who Attacked Tel Aviv Nightclub May Have Used New Type of Explosive

• Commanders of Repubican Guards Defending Baghdad Ordered Troops to Go Home

• Ward Connerly Will End Reverse Discrimination Crusade if Supremes Rule Against U of Michican Law School

Bottom

The charges include:

• Conspiracy to Levy War Against the United States
• Conspiracy to Provide Material Support and Resources to al Qaeda
• Conspiracy to Contribute Services to al Qaeda and the Taliban

These charges sound like a conspiracy to commit treason. However, a treason indictment requires an actual act.

Shortly after the 9-11 attacks, the aforementioned men resolutely decided to join the war on terror – on the side of the terrorists. To prepare themselves, they underwent training in the use of shotguns, assault rifles, and semiautomatic pistols. Once the US began bombing Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan in October 2001, the Portland Six traveled to China in hopes of gaining entry from there into Afghanistan, where they planned to take up arms and wage a bloody jihad against American soldiers. Miss Lewis stayed in the US, from where she repeatedly sent money – via Western Union wire transfers – to the aspiring holy warriors while they were overseas. Upon finding that they were unable to enter Afghanistan’s sealed-off borders, all but one of them returned to the US between December 2001 and February 2002. Only al Saoub actually made it into Afghanistan, thanks largely to the help of his new Pakistani wife, and he has not been heard from since.

Galloway may also be liable to criminal charges of charity fraud; this article says that Galloway converted the assets of his Miriam Appeal to his own use.

This article also says that his Jordanian wife may be a niece of Yasser Arafat.

… Now the Director of Public Prosecutions is considering pursuing him for comments during the Iraq war when, during an interview on Abu Dhabi TV, he called on British troops not to fight. Lawyers for service personnel claim his call for soldiers to disobey what he called 'illegal orders' amount to a breach of the Incitement to Disaffection Act 1934. The maximum term, if found guilty, is two years, which doesn’t sound so onerous until one remembers that no ex-convict can sit in the Houses of Parliament. And his position as a Member of Parliament is what George Galloway’s career is based on.

I believe that Arkansas passed an anti-profiling law during the 2003 General Assembly.

As Ms. MacDonald points out, the opposition to so-called racial profiling is based on the politically correct denial of the reality of disproportionate crime rates.

The anti-racial profiling movement can also be seen as another way in which the Left sees the elimination of “racism” as America’s highest goal, far more important than national defense.

"Racial profiling" has heated up again, and that's bad news for the war on terror. Maryland, New Jersey and California -- key battlegrounds in homeland security -- have recently taken measures against the alleged bias of their police officers. Ironically, such actions will cripple the unbiased policing that could prevent the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

…

Such an analysis would make sense only if lawbreaking were spread evenly across the population. It is not. Disparate crime rates do not mean, however, that the police routinely use race to find criminals -- or should. Officers observe a wealth of nonracial cues to determine whom to approach. Some of these cues are actual violations of the law, such as speeding or vehicle equipment violations. Others raise a suspicion of criminality -- resemblance to a wanted perpetrator, for example, or furtive movements, or a jerk of a waistband to conceal a gun. During a car stop, the lack of agreement among a vehicle's passengers about the purpose of the trip -- or even about each other's names -- may suggest drug trafficking.

The Black Panther Party© has a Web Site. Unfortunately, there is no link to the newspaper.

The phrase “liberation struggles whether they be inside or outside the U.S. indicates that they considered their “struggle” was part of the Soviet “wars of national liberation” strategy.

This brings to mind the Ogden Nash line: “When called by a panther don’t anther.”

From The Black Panther (the official party paper), August 8, 1970:

A delegation of Americans headed by Eldridge Cleaver arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea, on July 14, 1970. They were in North Korea at the invitation of the 'Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland.'

Organizations represented in the American delegation included "the Black Panther Party, the San Francisco Red Guard, Women’s Liberation, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military. The purpose of this U.S. people’s delegation is to express solidarity with the struggles of the Korean people and to bring back to Babylon information about their communist society and their fight against U.S. imperialism."

A message from the American delegates included the following statement:

"The Pentagon has a global strategy for dealing with liberation struggles whether they be inside or outside the U.S. This strategy will increasingly apply to any anti imperialist movement.

Two British suicide bombers who attacked a Tel Aviv bar last week smuggled plastic explosives into Israel from Jordan inside copies of the Koran, Israel's defence minister said last night.

Israeli officials investigating how Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif were able to penetrate tight border controls suggested that they could have used a new kind of explosive that is more difficult to detect.

Thousands of Iraq's elite Republican Guard troops were ordered by their commanders to desert their posts rather than defend Baghdad, according to one of its former high-ranking officers.

The officer told Time magazine that he saw with his own eyes "a group of high-ranking officers moving through different units asking them to leave their arms aside and go back home" and "not to use weapons against enemy airplanes" just three days before Baghdad fell.

This may be the result of a CIA operation.

Connerly, who is black, has made the fight against racial quotas his mission over the last eight years. If he doesn't like the court's ruling, he will continue on. If he likes it, his mission will be complete.

Top

Bottom

No articles today.

Top

Jewish World Review.com

Bottom

No articles today.

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 (Subscription Site)

• In the news

  • California Policewoman Uses Real Gun on Suspect Instead of Stun Gun

  • American of Palestinian Descent Pleds Innocent to Trying to Fight With Taliban

• Saddam Laundered Billions from Oil Revenue Skimming

• Palestinians Resist Using Force to Restrain Terrorist Groups

• Ark Dept of Education Tells 66 Student District to Prepare to Merge

• Huckabee Tells Legislators Services More Important Than Fiscal Restraint

• Morris S. Arnold Discusses State’s French Roots at LR Library Lecture

• Frank Fellone: What a Reporter Should Be

• Letters

  • John Lee of Rogers Attempts to Exculpate John Kerry’ “Regime Change” Remark

  • America Should “Atone” for Supporting Anti-Communist Dictators

  • State Doesn’t Need Tax Increase If State Revenue Forecast Is Correct

• California policewoman Marcy Noriega will not face criminal charges for using a real gun instead of a stun gun to subdue a suspect.
• U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent Maher "Mike" Hawash pled innocent to charges of trying to join the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Bottom
ArkDemocrat

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales.

The new Palestinian government will first try persuasion rather than force to subdue militant groups, a senior Palestinian official on Monday told a U.S. envoy preparing the ground for a new Mideast peace plan.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested he would not accept anything short of a Palestinian crackdown on the militias, saying, "We cannot make compromises when it comes to terror."

If the Palestinian authorities can’t control their own citizens why should they be considered to be a government?

What’s the point of having a Republican governor if he’s going to be a tax collector for the Democrats? State spending has been rising at three times the rise in the state’s population; this is hardly fiscal restraint.

Nevertheless, the Natural State’s Gallic heritage will be the focus Wednesday of Judge Morris S. Arnold’s "Exploring Arkansas Before the Louisiana Purchase."

Morris S. Arnold is a judicial taxation judge and husband of a FOB corporation lobbyist.

This column is most amusing when you consider the poor quality of the news in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

 Other Links

Top | Drudge Report | OpinionJournal | FrontPage Magazine | Associated Press
|  JewishWorldReview | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Other Links