Hugh Hewitt, this evening, says the chance of any resistance to the confirmation of SCOTUS nominee Samuel A. Alito is “over.” Slam dunk. Gone.

An immigrant dad. His son in Princeton. Hugh says the President loves to tell a story and, because of this, the President would logically make this choice.

It is becoming patently clear to me that, from day one, almost from hour one, the Dems by way of the DEMs got into the DEM vein and immediately began to self-destruct. The gang of 14 has already, somewhat, hinted that they will collectively not recommend a filibuster of this nomination and may, in fact, go for the-so-called Nuclear Option.

They have not yet totally coagulated on the issue but it was indirectly hinted there may be unanimity soon. Senator Mike DeWine (R, Ohio) so much as came directly out and said so during the Hugh Hewitt show.

The Dems appear to be drawing the line in the sand from the start. It is theorized that this will be the one nomination that may, in fact, change the face and focus of the court for decades to come. The Battle Royale is indeed coming. Will we be bled by leeches and paper cuts, or will it be from tanks, artillery pieces and the Nuclear Option?

A small aside: I just heard Alan Colmes tonight, on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes label Alito as “an extreme conservative” and ask: “is the appointment of Alito a distraction from the indictment of Scooter Libby?”

Folks, a clarion call: Let the Games Begin!

It got Really Silly (I call this RS) from moment one. Little Chuckie Schumer first had this despicable thing to say regarding Alito:

This morning, I went and visited Rosa Parks in the Capitol Rotunda, to pay my respects. Being in the presence of Ms. Parks was awe inspiring. This was a woman who changed history with one thin dime. She paid her fare, and took her rightful seat on the bus, and America was never the same again. Like Rosa Parks, Judge Alito will be able to change history by virtue of where he sits. The real question today is whether Judge Alito would use his seat on the bench, just as Rosa Parks used her seat on the bus, to change history for the better, or whether he would use that seat to reverse much of what Rosa Parks, and so many others, fought so hard, and for so long, to put in place.

This, on its face, is a ridiculous and straitjacket-moonbat comment regarding an individual that ALL his Democratic cronies confirmed in 1990. No dissenting votes. NOT ONE. Hello? For those of you just tuning in to this post: not ONE Democratic dissenting vote against confirming Alito to the 3rd USDCA in 1990.

LCS, Little Chuckie Schumer, may in fact be eligible for my very first weekly BZ Moonbat Comment Award (the BZ-MCA) — but I’ll hold that in abeyance until I finalize the graphics for this esteemed award.

Then there was the Chris Matthews comment and about it Hugh Hewitt said:

HH: I thought that would be the worst slander of the day, but then Chris Matthews began Hardball tonight, and I want to read this. I’m sitting here holding in my hands a disgusting document, said Chris Matthews, put out not for attribution, but it came from the Democrats. They are circulating it. I can say that. It’s a complaint sheet against Judge Alito’s nomination. The first thing they nail about this Italian-American is that he failed to win a mob conviction in 1988. They nail him on not putting Italian mobsters in jail. Why would they bring up this ethnically charged issue? This is either a very bad coincidence, or very bad politics. Either way, it’s going to hurt them, this document. Not abortion rights, not civil rights, but that he failed to nail some mobsters back in 1988. This is at the top of their list of what they’ve got against this guy. Amazingly bad politics.

Amazingly bad politics indeed.

What will be the Dems Talking Points?

• Alito is an Extreme Conservative
• He will, by his very nature, overturn Roe v. Wade
• He is an elitist; just look at what the GOP said about Miers; c’mon: Princeton?
• There’s a great deal of difference between 1990 and 2005
• He’s another Oppressive White Male (OWM)
• He DEMANDED that females ask for PERMISSION from males prior to abortion (WRONG!)

A few more Moonbat TPs:

• He defended NC in re: Sasquatch v. Northern Cascade logging;
• He believes in Global Warming and the eradication of thousands of local ports
• He thinks that the UN should be the final arbiter of the United States

I suspect that the Dems and the DEMs are absolutely apoplectic because Bush made 1) an End-Around Appointment and 2) the Libby Issue is MAAN: “Much Ado About Nothing.”

We Don’t Hand Over American Soldiers To Spanish Judges
This Spanish Judge sounds more like he’s trying to win plaudits on the cocktail circuit than get to the bottom of a “crime”:
“A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman, a court official said Wednesday. Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, which is based in Fort Stewart, Ga.
Jose Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell on Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where many journalists were staying to cover the war.
Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed.
Pedraz had sent two requests to the United States — in April 2004 and June 2005 — to have statements taken from the suspects or to obtain permission for a Spanish delegation to quiz them. Both went unanswered.
He said he issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial cooperation from the United States regarding the case.
The warrant “is the only effective measure to ensure the presence of the suspects in the case being handled by Spanish justice, given the lack of judicial cooperation by U.S. authorities,” the judge said in the warrant.
The Pentagon had no immediate information and said it was looking into it.
U.S. officials have insisted that the soldiers believed they were being shot at when they opened fire.
Following the Palestine incident, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said a review of the incident found that the use of force was justified.
…De Camp, who is now an adjunct mathematics professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said three investigations into the incident — two military investigations and one by the Committee to Protect Journalists — had exonerated all three men.”
What this judge in Spain wants or thinks about what happened is irrelevant. It’s a settled matter as far as we’re concerned and we don’t recognize his right to even question those men. He has no more right to demand that our soldiers answer his questions than the manager of a Burger King in Germany does.
Furthermore, may I add that this is exactly the sort of thing we’d see all the time, despite assurances we’ve been given to the contrary, if we signed up for the International Criminal Court. An American soldier accidentally killed a journalist from Belgium in a war zone? Well, he’ll have to be tried in Europe. Oh, this time an Air Force bomber killed some Iraqi insurgents, but their friends claim they were innocent, so let’s put him in front of some ultra-left wing judge from France.
No thank-you to that. We investigate our own troops, in our own country, and if we decide that they’ve done something wrong, we’ll punish them for it. That’s how it is and how it should continue to be.

There are Dems and there are DEMs.

We all know the Dems are Democrats. What’s a DEM? My new name for the MSM (Mainstream Media), the DEMs: Defeatist, Elitist Media.

The world is cracking; Bush’s approval rating is the lowest of anyone, ever (a lie). Global Warming will cause oceans to rise a foot next year (a lie). Everyone in the Bush Administration is being indicted (a lie — and Libby’s indictment is pretty flimsy — like I can remember what I had for dinner last Thursday). Everything is BAD and getting worse! It’s all because of that evil, deadly, uncaring, contemptuous, arrogant, warmonger Bush! Arrggh! We’re all gonna die!

What a load. How about this:

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) – Growth in the U.S. economy picked up in the third quarter to a 3.8% annualized rate, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Or:

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting GDP to increase 3.6% in the third quarter.

Economists said the report shows the economy in good shape before the hurricanes struck the Gulf Coast. But they said the jury was still out on the impact of the storms.

Stocks rose after the report was released.

Bonds were initially lower on the faster-than-expected growth rate.

Inflation cooled down. Core consumer prices increased at a 1.3% rate in the quarter, the slowest quarterly increase since the second quarter of 2003.

That report was issued Friday, October 28th. Today, US incomes grew by 1.7% in September. Per gallon gas prices have dropped, in Sacramento, Fornicalia, by 15-cents in the last week, to an observed $2.62.

My question: were you aware of this? Did the DEM alphabet networks scream it? Big newspapers make it their top of the fold headline?

Aw, heck no; that would give some kind of credence to the Bush Administration and, for gosh sakes, we sure can’t have that!

DEMs: Defeatist, Elitist Media.

By the way, steal my DEM logo and use it everywhere applicable.

At 5 AM PST, 8 AM EST, President Bush will officially submit the name of Samuel A. Alito to fill the SCOTUS position vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor — the second time, I hope, being the proverbial charm.

In blogging, it’s all about timing so, silly me, I got up very early to begin checking the internet for leaks and hints, and came up with the above AP story. In doing a bit further research, one particular paragraph warrants reproduction from the story here:

So consistently conservative, Alito has been dubbed “Scalito” or “Scalia-lite” by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But while Scalia is outspoken and is known to badger lawyers, Alito is polite, reserved and even-tempered.

Unnamed “insiders” within the Bush Administration were supposedly saying that Alito, 55, was “Bush’s favorite choice of the judges in the last set of deliberations” but that Bush wanted someone outside the courts first — hence the nomination of Harriet Miers.

Okay: bit of a heavy sigh here; it isn’t Janice Rogers Brown — I was so hoping for that fight. But at the outset, though this person is outside my meagre purvey of judicial knowledge (like I’m a judicial scholar; not), it still appears that the Dems are girding their loins for a fight. And I am so hoping, in reverse, that Bush goes the distance. Alito isn’t JRB or Luttig or McConnell. He’s still in his 50’s, so that’s a plus. And he currently sits on the 3rd US District Court of Appeals and has been so sitting since 1990 following an appoint by GHWB.

At the outset, Alito appears of serious consideration. I want to see where this goes. And boy, do I sense a backyard brawl coming. . .

A buddy of mine back in Brunswick, Georgia said that, immediately following the Hurricane Katrina debacle, his local gas stations were charging $6 a gallon — because they could. I trust this man. And it didn’t make the news, that I’m aware.

The prices later went down. Because they had to.

In a capitalist society, it is in fact literally about supply and demand.

So how about this.

Exxon Mobil Corp. rewrote the corporate record books Thursday (10-27-2005) as the oil company’s third-quarter earnings soared to almost $10 billion and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion. Anglo-Dutch competitor Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) wasn’t far behind, posting a profit of $9 billion for the quarter.

The article continued:

Thursday’s outsized earnings are a result of surging oil and natural gas prices that pushed pump prices to record territory after Hurricane Katrina. They come on the heels of similar eye-popping gains reported this week by BP PLC (BP), ConocoPhillips Inc. and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) Chevron Corp. (CVX) reports its earnings on Friday.

Is this simply reaping the profits of a singular situation, or is this price-gouging on an heretofore-unprecedented basis? There have been arguments made for both sides at this point. In Fornicalia, I have seen the price of 87-octane gas dip to $2.62 a gallon this weekend at my local Arco — your basic cheaper cash-only outlet.

How about this:

Chafee Votes to Keep Gas Prices High; Senate Democrats, sensing what they hope will be an opportunity to blame Republicans for the high price of gasoline, voted in unison Wednesday in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to help defeat a bill that would have streamlined the building of new refineries.

To continue:

Senate Democrats, sensing what they hope will be an opportunity to blame Republicans for the high price of gasoline, voted in unison Wednesday in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to help defeat a bill that would have streamlined the building of new refineries. The eight committee Democrats won over liberal Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.), whose vote against Chairman Jim Inhofe’s Gas PRICE Act (S 1772) means Republicans will have to take other steps if they want to push a refinery bill through the Senate this year.

Further:

Environmentalists opposed Inhofe’s bill for its provisions to expand refinery capacity, streamline refinery permitting and simplify so-called boutique fuel requirements. It also would have provided federal assistance for the construction of refineries on closed military bases, which could have been producing gas in about two years, Inhofe said.

Where do we get the bulk of our imported oil? Are you prepared for a surpise? The top four suppliers are:

1. Canada
2. Venezuela
3. Mexico
4. Saudi Arabia

Bet you thought it was the Middle East — wasn’t it?

Ponder this for a time; where should we go next?

Building refineries? Building tanks? Building storage and refining capacity?