Fact Challanged Donkey Still Trying to Blame Bush for Enron?

Debra Saunders points up, among other things the overall strategy, here:

” There was no Republican in charge when blackouts hit Northern California in June 2000, but if the Dems can tie Lay to Bush, voters may forget.”

In fact, when the blackouts began, Gray Davis was governor. Bill Clinton was president. Clinton played golf with Lay. ”

She also points up at the lead of the amen chours for the Democrats in the press on this one as in many other points, is a name you’ll know.. and what do you know, there’s an Enron connection, here…

“But I forget the columnist who, before joining The New York Times, received $50,000 to serve on an Enron advisory board. He later gushed about Enron in a Fortune magazine piece, without disclosing his Kenny Boy connection. His name is Paul Krugman.”

Amazing how the facts change things, isn’t it?

Bill Hobbs over at HobbsOnline is one of many who over the weekend, posted notes regarding the liar, Joe Wilson. the AP report Bill links to, says in part:

“French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien officials, the report said. ”

Dan Drezner is following this one… a little outside his usual realm… but he tackles it with his usual fine talent. He quotes a WaPo write up:

“Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address….

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.”

“Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the ‘dates were wrong and the names were wrong’ when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have “misspoken” to reporters. The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger. ”

So, not only are the conclusions WIlson projects inaccurate, it’s proven he flat out lied about it. But of course, what do the Democrats trust? Ah, yes, the word of a proven liar.

I really don’t have much to add, here.
Then again, I don’t really need to, do I?
All I need to say is:
Another “Bush Lied” myth dies.

Barista Action Figure

Not even gonna go here.

Fortune.com is running a story that interested me… about one John “Winter” Smith:

Winter is on a mission to visit every Starbucks in the world. On this day alone, he has mapped out four more stores around Phoenix and two in El Paso that he needs to hit. A contract computer programmer, Winter works just enough to fund his obsession, for which he has laid out specific rules: He stops only in Starbucks that the company owns… eliminating the more than 3,000 licensed spots in places like airports and grocery stores… and he has to drink caffeinated coffee in each. In the seven years that the 32-year-old has been on his quest, he’s been to 4,122 stores in North America (including some that have since closed), 114 in Britain, and 53 in Japan. Starbucks operates 4,025 stores in the U.S. and 846 internationally. So Winter is doing pretty well. Except for this one problem: The company opens an average of 10.2 new, company-operated Starbucks a week around the world and has no plans to slow down”

Gotta show this to my wife Donna, who thinks I drink too much of the stuff.

Personally, I’ve found that I generally don’t like Starbuck’s regular coffee as much as I do some others… “Seattle’s Best” as an example.  when I do Starbucks, I generally get a Mocha… perhaps a few times a month. Their regular bews tend to need the help.

The Seatle’s Best French Roast on the other hand, is flat-out astounding for it’s richness. File it right next to a loud explosion under one’s bed for waking one up in the morning. 

I’ve found that I don’t buy the Seatle’s mixed stuff very often… with their regular brews being so good, you hardly need it.

Only two problems; Seattle’s Best only has 130 stores, or so last I knew… I’ve only ever seen three… one in Toronto, just off Bloor in the subway (Last I was up there the place had closed for the day, darn it!) and in Rochester, inside Midtown Plaza… about three minute’s walk from this desk….apparently a licenced outlet.. and one I found in the Pasadena area when I was out that way some years ago.

The other problem is that the place as bought up by Starbucks some time ago, which makes me wonder if I’ll be getting my usual French Roast here in Rochester much longer. Starbucks claims they’ll continue to produce the seperate branding.

I’ve tried Torrefazione Italia, as well… they have a few outlets on the New York Thruway, and they’re pretty good, but Starbucks has snapped them up, too. A decidedly Italian twist to that one.

But can you imagine the buzzing noise coming off this guy as he makes his journeys? If I’m Starbuck’s I’m hiring the guy both as promo material, and as a kind of Quality Control person. 

Dr. Sowell’s new one is called Political malpractice, the point of which being Kerry’s lying to us.

“Senator Kerry has been busy posing for the media shooting guns, playing hockey, declaring himself as having ‘conservative’ values, and even saying that life begins at conception. The point of all this is to counter any attempt to depict him as a limousine liberal, out of touch with the values of mainstream Americans.
It is an insult to our intelligence to act as if posing with guns is as significant as how the Senator has voted on gun control laws during his 16 years in Congress. It is an insult to our intelligence to claim conservative values when both liberal and non-partisan organizations have rated John Kerry’s voting record as the most liberal in the Senate, more liberal even than Ted Kennedy’s.
What matters is not what Senator Kerry says during an election year about life beginning at conception. What matters is how he has voted on bills involving abortion — and how he has declared that he will block the appointment of any judges who are not pro-abortion. ”

Read it.

Ann Coulter has her new column up. It’s called:In Desperate Move, Kerry Adopts Puppy. A tidbit from it that caught my eye right off the bat:

“Despite the overwrought claims of Edwards’ dazzling legal skills, winning jury verdicts in personal injury cases has nothing to do with legal talent and everything to do with getting the right cases — unless ‘talent’ is taken to mean ‘having absolutely no shame.’ Edwards specialized in babies with cerebral palsy whom he claimed would have been spared the affliction if only the doctors had immediately performed Caesarean sections.
As a result of such lawsuits, there are now more than four times as many Caesarean sections as there were in 1970. But curiously, there has been no change in the rate of babies born with cerebral palsy. As The New York Times reported: ‘Studies indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury long before labor begins.’ All those Caesareans have, however, increased the mother’s risk of death, hemorrhage, infection, pulmonary embolism and Mendelson’s syndrome.”

He did manage to get lots of moolah.
And that’s all that matters, huh?

VDH seemingly adds to my comments on Rall and Moore as regards their effects on the Democrat’s chances in November:

“Only belatedly has John Kerry grasped that his shrill supporters are often not just trivial but stark-raving mad. If he doesn’t quickly jump into some Levis, shoot off a shotgun, and start hanging out in Ohio, he will lose this election and do so badly. ”

Read the whole thing.

I’m a little annoyed; Blogroll appears to be down again.

“(Bloomberg) —:

” Democratic candidate John Kerry’s standing against President George W. Bush didn’t improve following his pick of North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his running mate July 6, according to a Zogby International poll. ”

UPDATE:

It gets better.
Captain Ed cites an AP report that the President is pulling away from Kerry, in spite of what AP calls a small southern bump in numbers, and he says:

Kerry may have already peaked, especially with most of the bad news in Iraq heading into the rear-view mirror now that sovereignty has been successfully transferred and some perspective can be gained by the electorate. Nader has been hammered, losing half of his support in a month and appearing to have almost faded out of sight.

For Democrats who assumed the Edwards selection would boost their popularity, it appears it only impressed the faithful. Democrats should be concerned that even with the news breaking Kerry’s way. most of it positive, he lost ground.

The Captian also cites Hugh Hewitt who in noting the same poll, says:

“I guess Michael Moore is having an effect on the electorate –they don’t like him or the Democratic Party that has embraced him.”

Exactly so.  And my comments on Ted Rall of yesterday apply here, as well. I said on “Blogs For Bush” yesterday as regards Rall and his outrages:

Rall is not being outrageous for it’s own sake, he’s simply being a mainstream Democrat. That connection between Ralls outrages and the Mainstream Democrats needs to be hammered home.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.

And once the American people really see this bigotry for what it is, not only will Rall be on his back looking up, but so will the political party he speaks so well for.

I make the argument that the same goes for the fat liar, Moore. These connections are real. Rall and Moore are not off the left end of the Democrat scale, they’re mainstream Democrats. All we need to do is to point them out to the Ameircan public. 

Remember those bumper stickers a few years ago…”I’m the NRA”?

Well, here’s your TV ad: Picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, The Great Rotundo, and Rall, Splash Kennedy, etc,etc, with anti-American quotes by each…(There’s lots to choose from) with a line on the bottom of the screen:

….This is the Democrat Party…
The gag factor will take over from there.

Michelle Malkin is right pissed off at the well-known bigoted idiot, Ted Rall.

“I am not going to call for a boycott of Rall’s work. No. I want Universal Press Syndicate and the Washington Post and all his other “mainstream” media outlets to keep publishing his pathetic scrawls and scribbles.

Ted Rall, you see, is a very useful idiot. Whereas most on the Left attempt to conceal their liberal racism in the drapery of “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” Ted Rall is an ideological streaker. His impulsive naked bigotry is so butt-ugly, you can’t help but gawk. It is raw and it is real and it is, quite helpfully, all hanging out there for the world to see.”

Well, boy, howdy, and welcome to the party, Michelle.

We on the right side of Blogdom have been calling this idiot out for months. The establishment left has been silent as you’d expect.
We’re glad to have you on board… and you’re one of my constant reads… But do us a favor… put this reaction on Rall’s bigotry not just on your blog, but in your print column. Syndicate this stuff. This guy is mainstream Democrat… the kind of person who supports Kerry…and needs to be identified as such, on as wide a basis as possible.

We know that identification will hurt Kerry because Kerry doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to run away from Rall and merry Marxists for fear of losing the Democrat Base.

And that’s what Rall represents; the Democrat Base in all it’s uglyness.

Oh?
You think not?
Let’s see some Democrats denounce this idiot.
I await a reaction which will doubtless be a silence of monsterous proportions.

WSJ has an interesting writeup today… this ought to be enough description:

“My Job
What Bill Clinton left out of his memoir.
BY KENNETH W. STARR ”

Dick Morris this morning, suggests there’s a lot on Edwards past…. stuff that didn’t show up in that huge post I put up yesterday:

“There is evidence that Edwards may have circumvented the campaign-finance law by bundling contributions from law clerks and paralegals who did not actually make the donations from their own funds.

Tab Turner, for example, the eminent Little Rock trial lawyer, donated $200,000 to Edwards’s campaign and his 527 committees. Investigators interviewed the clerks in his firm in whose names many of the donations were made. Slate magazine reported, on Aug. 29, 2003, that “one clerk who gave $2,000 to Edwards said that Turner had asked for people to support Edwards and assured them that he would reimburse us.

Edwards had to return $10,000 to several Turner employees and attorney Tab claimed that he did not know it was illegal to reimburse his employees for their donations.”

Yeah, right.

Little Rock? Trial Lawyers?

Wow…. DejaPooh…..
The feeling we’ve seen this poop before.

The Financial Times:

“A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain’s spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein’s regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.

The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government’s claims about the threat from Iraq.”

Another “Bush Lied” claim fails.
At what point does the left have the courage to stand up and suggest that Bush wasn’t lying? James Joyner over at OTB notes the FT report, and apparently has noticed others finding the same thing… and they all seem more of less of a mind on the subject of the left admitting the gig is up…

“Jon Henke predicts, “It will not be noted by the DNC. No retraction will be forthcoming from the appropriate corners.” Glenn Reynolds guesses the story is “unlikely to make the front page of the New York Times tomorrow.” Probably not.”

AP is quietly reporting:

“The Energy Department says gasoline prices have inched downward again. They now average just over $1.89 a gallon nationwide”

Good News from Iraq

Nuff said