Author Archives: BZ

Imus Gone

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Don Imus, pretty much an overpaid, little-account radio host for years, has no more radio to host. By the way, Imus was making $8 million dollars a year.

First he lost advertisers (GM, Ford), then his MSNBC simulcast.

Losing Imus will be a financial hit to CBS Radio, which also suffered when shock jock Howard Stern departed for satellite radio early last year. The program is worth about $15 million in annual revenue to CBS, which owns Imus’ home radio station, WFAN-AM in New York, and manages Westwood One, the company that syndicates the show across the country. CBS Corp. is also the parent company of CBSNews.com.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson met with Moonves to advocate Imus’ removal, promising a rally outside CBS headquarters Saturday and an effort to persuade more advertisers to abandon Imus.

DON IMUS: When will Al Sharpton be apologizing to them? (Duke lacrosse team)
CARLIN: I’m unaware of such a press conference.
IMUS: I’ll be darned . . .
Okay, Sharpton & Jackson; you’ve nailed Imus. The radio world is quaking, wondering: me next?

What about Tawana Brawley?

In my opinion, however, there are two things upon which most of us can agree:

1. Don Imus was stupid.
2. Note to aggrieved blacks: perhaps people will respect you when respect yourselves culturally.

BZ
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Hillary In Trouble

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According to Dick Morris in his newsletter:

Hillary and Bill have made an unpleasant discovery over the past three months: Without the ability to pass out coveted goodies, like over-nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, invitations to White House coffees and state dinners, trips on Air Force One, weekends at Camp David, lucrative government contracts, top appointments, and the power to sign or veto legislation, their ability to raise money is far less than it once was.
That’s one of the key reasons why Hillary came in second in fund-raising for the first quarter. For years, people have wondered whether the Clinton money machine was based on ideology and personal loyalty, or just the plethora of presidential perks at Bill’s disposal. The first quarter results give a resounding answer: It’s the perks, stupid.
Coming from nowhere, without any strong pre-existing donor base, Senator Barack Obama’s sensational showing in the first quarter — amassing $25 million in campaign contributions — has left the Clintons sputtering. And his astonishing bottom line is only part of his surprise upset in beating Hillary. While she narrowly edged out the new kid on the political block in the total amount raised, Obama outscored Hillary 2:1 where it really counts: the number of individual donors. This is a big win for Obama and demonstrates both the depth of support for an attractive alternative to Hillary, as well as the finely tuned organizing skills of the first term senator.

MoveOn.org also recently held a straw poll, and the results were displayed in The Hill. Witness:

What candidate ‘would be best able to lead the country out of Iraq?’

  • Obama: 27.87%
  • Edwards: 24.84%
  • Kucinich: 17.18
  • Richardson: 12.26%
  • Clinton: 10.7%

Oh. Ouch. That really hurts.

The question in the Camp of Hillary Handlers: when do we pull out our own Night Of The Long Knives, and how deep do we go in attempting to inflict wounds on Obama? Do we make them superficial? Sufficient to require transfusion? Mortal?

Obama recently on Letterman: considering Hillary for VP. Yeah right, as if . . .

BZ
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PBS: Wrong About Islam

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PBS has decided to kill a film, financed by your federal tax dollars, because there isn’t sufficient pro-Islamic influence:

The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide.

Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state. Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.

Concerning on its face, but read more:

Burke wrote that his documentary depicts the plight of moderate Muslims who are silenced by Islamic extremists, adding, “Now it appears to be PBS and CPB who are silencing them.” A Jan. 30 news release by the corporation listed Islam vs. Islamists as one of eight films to be presented in the opening series.

And therein is the Large Deal: the perspective of the film — because it seeks to portray “moderate Muslims” who are “silenced” by Muslim extremists.

Because PBS, as we must know, cannot even remotely envision such a thing as an “extremist” Muslim — that would, after all, be judgmental.

Hypocrisy at its best — and your tax dollars used to fund the film — then not allowed to run? Whom are PBS deluding?

Another reason to know why we are taking steps down the same road as Europe with regard to Islam.

POSTSCRIPT:

2. Note to aggrieved blacks in re Don Imus: people will respect you when you respect yourself culturally. You figure it out (and that’s about all the space in my blog this issue deserves).

BZ
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Not the end of the world. . .

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. . . but we almost could have seen it from Geneva recently.

Initial “heads-up” from Paul Harvey today:

In Geneva, Switzerland, at the CERN particle accelerator complex, a $4 billion dollar project, scientists made some basic errors in their mathematical computations. The mistake lifted a 20-ton magnet off its moorings, filling the tunnel with helium gas. Now that circular accelerator is 17 miles around, and it now must be stripped down, repaired and upgraded. How close were we to triggering a big bang? Oh, I mean The Big Bang? They won’t say.

CERN is the world’s largestparticle physics laboratory . … where the web was born!

The magnet supports are made of a material called G-11, a glass cloth-epoxy laminate. The specifications for the magnet designate 20 atmospheres as the design pressure criterion and 25 atmospheres as the acceptance test criterion. However, computer-aided engineering calculations completed independently by Fermilab and CERN on March 28 show that the G-11 support structure in the magnets was inadequate to withstand the associated longitudinal forces. CERN and Fermilab now know that this is an intrinsic design flaw that must be addressed in all triplet magnets assembled at Fermilab.

CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest particle physics centre. It sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. CERN is a laboratory where scientists unite to study the building blocks of matter and the forces that hold them together. CERN exists primarily to provide them with the necessary tools. These are accelerators, which accelerate particles to almost the speed of light and detectors to make the particles visible. Founded in 1954, the laboratory was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and includes now 20 Member States.

Just thought you all might like to know, wondering — perhaps — why you happened to wake up dead one morning, your molecules scattered to the universe.

BZ
P.S.
The photo above indicates the actual size of the particle accelerator at the CERN site.
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What Does Defeat Look Like?

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Allow me to throw this out on the table for your perusal:

Let’s say the Democrats press the issue and manage to force President Bush, somehow, into setting a timetable for leaving Iraq shortly. Maybe they cut the funding, maybe they rally the country.

And let’s say we do leave Iraq.

I have a few questions:

Then what?

  • What do we do with our military? Do they come directly home? Stationed in an adjacent country? New airbase(s) built? Completely deactivated? Held on standby?
  • When the Iraqi Civil War starts in earnest, do we react? Or sit and watch the bodies pile up and float by en masse?
  • When foreign American targets begin exploding, how do we react?
  • When domestic American targets begin exploding, how do we react?
  • When Iraq is not the focal point of the War On Terror, what is?
  • Or should we simply wait until another American building goes down, our own “Madrid Bombing?” Our own “London Tube Bombing”?
What form will defeat take?

What will defeat look like?

Some in the Blogosphere have indicated this not defeat, but a logical result.

I would ask: there is retribution for Bush’s mistakes and there are the overarching consequences from various policies. Balance “getting out of Iraq” vs. what I call “the logical extension.”

And that’s only the threat from without — the external threat. What about the threat from within?

Already we in the US are being corrupted from within. Already Muslim taxi drivers in Minneapolis, Minnesota are refusing service to fares who carry alcohol with them. Already the scope of demand made by Muslims in Minneapolis is expanding:

Beryl Dsouza was late and in no mood for delays when she stopped at a Target store after work two weeks ago for milk, bread and bacon. So Dsouza was taken aback when the cashier — who had on the traditional headscarf, or hijab, worn by many Muslim women — refused to swipe the bacon through the checkout scanner.

“She made me scan the bacon. Then she opened the bag and made me put it in the bag,” said Dsouza, 53, of Minneapolis. “It made me wonder why this person took a job as a cashier.”

In the latest example of religious beliefs creating tension in the workplace, some Muslims in the Twin Cities are adhering to a strict interpretation of the Qur’an that prohibits the handling of pork products. Instead of swiping the items themselves, they are asking non-Muslim employees or shoppers to do it for them.

This situation is happening in America. Now. This is a major American city. And already the prevailing cry isn’t: “let them find other jobs.”

The prevailing cry is: “we capitulate.”

Note to self: one very popular Democrat presidential candidate is a Muslim.

Where do we draw the line? Is this the beginning of a New Dark Ages, when Islam finally succeeds in overtaking Europe due to prevailing demographics (refute, if you will, that this isn’t already occurring) and has that same goal for our country?

Is it merely a simplistically-pat statement to say that terrorism will do no more than follow us back to our own country?

If you aren’t smart enough to figure this out already . . .


Never forget.
BZ
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