Dow Hits 31-Month High, Rises 134 Points

AP says: “Dow Hits 31-Month High, Rises 134 Points”

It was the index’s highest finish since June 21, 2001, when it closed at 10,715.43.

If you’re into the screen saver thing, you may want to check out the MER Screen Saver. Says the site:

Explore – Every time your screen saver is activated, the latest daily status reports and image updates will be brought automatically to your computer. Every day you’ll read status reports prepared by the mission control team and see a new picture relating to a story of interest for each rover.

I qualify this by saying I’ve not tried it myself.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

— Bill Clinton, 1/26/98

Yahoo! News – Howard Dean Says Iraqis Worse Off Now:

Let’s dismantle him with a few of his own quotes on the subject.

“‘You can say that it’s great that Saddam is gone and I’m sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone,’ said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq (news – web sites). ‘But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before.’ “

Well, yes, Howard, the life of some is far worse than it was before. But are you really so concerned about the Sunni minority, who enslaved the remainder of the country? So much for ‘the party of the little man’.

“Would there not have been a better way to get rid of him in cooperation with the United Nations?”

Well now they’d been working on that for over two decades. How many more had to die in Saddam’s torture chambers, and his genocidal attacks, (Kurds, marsh people etc etc) before we decide the UN isn’t up to the task? In short, Duck, how many more people ahve to die so you can claim your supposed moral high ground?

365Gay.com is running a story regarding what they think is a serial killer, who seems to targeting male homosexuals in the Tampa area.

Now, how quickly, I wonder, will this stuff fall off the front pages when the killer turns out to be a homosexual himself, and can’t be used as an example of hate?

Bill Hobbs points out, via HobbsOnline:

“What the press – and Democrats seeking to unseat Bush – will be discussing in the hours and days ahead is the CBO’s projection of a $477 billion deficit for the year, which is, in fact, larger in actual dollars than any previous year’s deficit.”

But Hobbs points out that if you factor in inflation, that:

“To be a record in the modern era (since 1940) the federal budget deficit for this year would have to top $3.49 trillion.”

Uh… that’s about 7 times the current levels, gang.

Bill goes on to point up:

“The Democrats have an excuse for not presenting a meaningfully accurate analysis of the CBO projection – they’re spinning the data to try to wrest the White House from President Bush. But the news media has no excuse.”

Sure they do, Bill… You need to understand… and you should… their aims are one in the same with the left; The press IS the left.

Apparently, the Democratic Underground is getting nervous. Check the new Terms of Service just posted over the weekend:

8. If you make a factual assertion about a candidate that is not generally accepted to be true, you must provide a link to a reputable source to back up your claim. Allegedly “innocent” questions which are actually an underhanded effort to spread rumors are not allowed. If you really need to know the answer to your question, try Google.

This is a totally laughable effort to control political dissent, even from within the party.

Matt Hoy asks a question as regards Kerry’s constant blather about a ‘fraudulant coalition’.

“Sen. John Kerry again repeated his mantra that the United States went to war in Iraq with an ‘illegitimate coalition.’ Kerry has also used the term ‘fraudulent’ to describe the 34 nations that have sent troops to Iraq, including Great Britain, Australia and Poland.

But why isn’t anyone in the media asking this question? “

Matt; it’s the same reason nobody’s been asking a miriad of questions about this slimeball.

The Telegraph says this morning that:

“David Kay, the former head of the coalition’s hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein’s secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.”

What have I been saying for months, now?

The Wall Street Journal has up today, an article by Stephen Sherman which goes into some of the details I mention in this week’s BIT about John Kerry.  Says SHerman:

In his book “Stolen Valor,” B.G. Burkett points out that Mr. Kerry liberally used phony veterans to testify to atrocities they could not possibly have committed. Mr. Kerry later threw what he represented as his awards at the Capitol in protest. But as the war diminished as a political issue, he left the VVAW, which was a bit too radical for his political future, and was ultimately elected to the Senate. After his awards were seen framed on his office wall, he claimed to have thrown away someone else’s medals–so now he can reclaim his gallantry in Vietnam.

I admit not having read that book; a situation I will soon enough remedy. Strong stuff.

(Update: Powerline has this one too, along with some other interesting links on the topic.)

HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST

John Ray goes into some serious detail.
A good read.

For this week’s Bit’s Bit, I’ve decided to take a look at the record of the current Democrat front runner, and found him easier to beat than Duck Dean. The resulting bit is called…What about John F’ing Kerry?

“Here it is: Kerry KNEW about the threats posed against us, KNEW Flight 800 was an act of terrorism. Yet, he not only covered the facts about 800 up, but also then proceeded to distort the facts as regards the terrorist threats against us once Mr. Bush was in office. All for his own political gain, and that of his party.”

Better read it before the press catches on.

AP is reporting:

“PASADENA, Calif. (AP) – NASA’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars late Saturday, arriving at the Red Planet exactly three weeks after its identical twin set down, and prompting whoops and cheers of delight from mission scientists.
‘We’re on Mars everybody,’ Rob Manning, manager of the entry, descent and landing portion of the Mars mission, shouted as fellow scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory burst into wild applause.”

We watched that on the NASA feed last night.
Nice to see.

What the beep was Gore doing there?

As for Spirit, it’s twin, looks like they may have that one coming back.looks like they may have isolated the problems on that lander to the ‘flash’ memory. Says AP:

Despite its woes, scientists said there is still a chance Spirit can take up where it left off when it began malfunctioning. JPL Director Charles Elachi said other NASA spacecraft, including Voyager, Magellan and Galileo, have recovered from even graver problems.

“I am completely confident, without any hesitation, that I think we will get that rover back to full operation,” Elachi said

Nice to hear.

Well, if you’d planned to go to Tikrit to grab a gander at the spider whole they pulled Saddam out of, hang it up. Apparently, they’re going to destroy the thing so it doesn’t become a tourist attraction, or so says
The Seattle Times.

Can’t you just imagine the kind of tourist trap stuff they’d sell?
They’d have a SPAM consession….You’ll remember that he had a few cases with him…Can’t you imagine the TV spot with Saddam hollering “MORE SPAM!!!”

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times is reporting :

Black Hawk helicopters destined for Iraq began arriving Friday at the Port of Corpus Christi. Truckloads of heavy Army equipment also arrived this week, according to port officials.  The equipment will be loaded onto the USNS Shugart and shipped to troops overseas, said Al Speight, manager of military deployments for the port. “

I guess with all the focus on the troups in the action, we forget sometimes the activity behind the scenes.