Headline AP: Pope Seeks Support of Christian Family

Headline AP: Iran Says Nuke Report a Misunderstanding

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran on Wednesday dismissed a U.N. report accusing it of failing to disclose a radioactive material needed to trigger a nuclear explosion, saying the report was based on a “misunderstanding.”

But the American envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said the report “strengthens” Washington’s assessment that Iran’s nuclear program “is clearly geared” toward building atomic bombs.

Iran is playing the U.N. for a fool, which, given the history of the U.N.’s resolve to act, might not be a bad strategy. But Iran might want to check with Saddam about how far you can push the U.S. Given the current political distraction with the Presidential elections, and the Democratic protests against halting any foreign threats, Iran is probably safe to continue working on their bomb for a while longer. But it is a dangerous game they are playing.

The National Review warns that though the Democratic attacks (and media echo chamber) about President Bush being AWOL and DESERTING have died down somewhat, it is just the calm before the storm that is soon to hit. The Democrats are about to turn their Vietnam attacks on Vice President Dick Cheney.

“There’s going to be a massive attack on Dick Cheney soon,” says one source who keeps up with such matters. “The Cheney story of deferments makes Bush look like Audie Murphy” — a reference to the much-decorated World War II hero.

The sheer gall of it all is amazing. Republicans point out Kerry’s voting record and Kerry has a hissy fit.

The most recent exchange between the two campaigns was set off by a remark made by a Bush surrogate, Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. In a conference call with reporters about the upcoming Georgia Democratic primary, Chambliss said of Kerry, “When you have a 32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems, folks in Georgia are going to look beyond what he says and look at his voting record.”

It seemed an uncontroversial assertion; Kerry has been in public office for decades, and his voting record is undoubtedly relevant to his campaign for the presidency. But Kerry quickly attacked, suggesting that Chambliss, acting “on the part of the president and his henchmen,” was questioning, among other things, Kerry’s Vietnam record.

In a letter sent to the White House late Saturday, Kerry wrote, “Over the last week, you and your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam, my decision to speak out to end that war, and my commitment to the defense of this nation. Just today, Saxby Chambliss — a man elected to the US Senate on the back of one of the most despicable campaigns ever conducted against Max Cleland, a true American hero — was carrying this attack for you.”

Kerry went on to accuse the president of trying to “re-open [the] wounds” from “a very difficult and painful period in our nation’s history” — the Vietnam era — for “personal political gain.”

So, the Democrats can make slanderous, unsubstantiated, personal remarks about George Bush’s service in the National Guard during Vietnam. That is all part of campaigning, and is good, clean fun. But if Republicans point out John Kerry’s voting record from his time in the Senate, this is out of bounds. It is laughable for Kerry, who brings up his service in Vietnam in practically every speech he makes (to the extent that it has become a standard joke), to accuse others of re-opening old wounds by bringing up Vietnam for personal political gain. But now, the Democrats are going to bring up Vietnam again, with Dick Cheney in their cross hairs, hoping to score political points by demonizing him for not having served in Vietnam, like their dear John Kerry. The hypocrisy is astounding and the only thing more amazing is the media’s complicity in reporting all of this.

So, watch out, Dick Cheney. The Democrats are after you. You have been warned.

Amazon marketing: Big Baby Sale–Final Week to Save!

Source: Vinnie

Elections in Iran are a fraud, but the real extent is not being reported by major media.

The real numbers are a tiny fragment of the official ones. The overall turnout came in at about twelve percent, with Tehran a bit lower, and places like Isfahan and Qom (of all places, the headquarters of the Shiite religious elite) closer to five percent. The only major city with a substantially higher turnout was Kerman, due to a local factor: A widely hated hardliner was running, and many people judged it more important to demonstrate their contempt for him personally by voting for others than to show their rejection of the regime en bloc by abstaining.

It shouldn’t have been hard to get this story right, at least in its broad outlines. A leading member of the old parliament, Mehdi Karoubi, was asked why he did badly, and he replied, publicly: "because the people boycotted the election."

Keep in mind that the reporters knew full well that all but a handful of polling sites in Tehran — the only place they were able to observe, thanks to the usual clampdown on information — were virtually dead. They knew, or should have known, that the regime had trotted out more than 10,000 "mobile voting booths," that is to say, trucks driving around inviting people to vote. They surely heard the stories — widely repeated on Iranian web sites — of thousands of phony ballots, and of citizens being forced to turn over their identity cards, thus making it possible for others to pose as legitimate voters. They must also have heard that high-school students were warned that if they did not vote they would never get into the universities.

But they did not report any of this. The Washington Post’s Karl Vick wrote an upbeat report, as if the hardliners had won a normal election, and CNN’s legendary Ms. Amanpour stressed that Iran was changing for the better since the dress code for women had loosened a bit in the past few years. Neither seemed to know that there were violent protests throughout the country, that several people had been killed and scores wounded by the regime’s thugs, and that highways were blocked because the regime was afraid the protests would spread. There was enough electoral fraud to fill any Western news report, had the correspondents wished to do so.

But of course, the major media do not want to report the truth of what is going on in Iran any more than they wanted to report what was really going on in Iraq prior to Saddam’s overthrow. As CNN revealed after the fall of the Iraqi dictator, they knew but refused to report many atrocities because they wanted to be able to keep their reporters in country. And they want to keep their reporters in Iran as well. Strange to say, but for the major media, reporting the truth is not as important as being able to report from on site.

Headline AP: Greenspan: Households in ‘Good Shape’

A New Mexico State Legislator has proposed a bill requiring all cars sold in New Mexico be equipped with blood alcohol testing device attached to the ignition system. The bill passed the House, but was not brought to the floor of the Senate before the end of the legislative session, and so it is dead for now.

The irony here is that New Mexico already has on the books a law requiring convicted drunk drivers have blood alcohol testing devices installed in their cars, but the state is not enforcing the law.

Timothy Hallford, CEO of Santa Fe’s Adobe Interlock, which installs interlock-ignition devices, described the provisions of HB126 as “wishful thinking.” He blames the judicial system for New Mexico’s drunken-driving epidemic. His research indicated that only 2,000 of the nearly 14,000 drunken-driving convictions in 2003 resulted in the installation of interlocks, despite laws requiring them.

Here’s a novel idea: Why not try enforcing the law you already have instead of writing new laws? But I guess legislators have to earn their money somehow. And so the Nanny State grows. And grows. And grows….

Body-builder turned actor turned politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling for a Constitutional amendment to allow foreign born American citizens to become President. He even refers to Sylvester Stalone’s movie, Demolition Man, where Sly wakes up in the future and finds the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. When he questions how that can be since Arnold wasn’t born an American citizen, Sly is told that they amended the constitution for Arnold.

But in the same interview, our hopeful future President calls for George Bush to throw him some federal money in the present.

“If the federal government does great things for California this year, I think there’s no two ways about it: President Bush can have California and he can be elected. I’m absolutely convinced of that,” he said.

So, Arnold thinks that the federal government should bail California out of its financial crisis. What, pray tell, is the constitutional basis for the federal government to get involved in this purely state affair? As the Constitution itself says in Amendment X:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Before we talk about amending the constitution, I really think we ought to start enforcing the one we currently have. That means, Arnold, you will just have to fix your own financial house and don’t ask Washington to do what the Constitution does not allow. After you learn that lesson, we can talk about changing the Constitution to allow you to become President, but not before.

Q.78. What does the ninth commandment forbid?

A. The ninth commandment forbids anything that gets in the way of the truth or injures anyone’s reputation.

A-Rod shows up early to Yankee training camp and leaves a trail of physical damage behind him. Cue the Darth Vadar theme as A-Rod walks out onto the field.

TAMPA, Fla. – Several swings into his first Yankees workout, Alex Rodriguez already had done damage — to a car parked too close behind the center-field fence, that is. Early into Saturday’s session, New York’s newest star launched a long drive that was followed by a loud bonk. The home run ball left a 2-inch dent and blue smear on the hood of a silver Mazda, a rental driven by a reporter from Japan. "I didn’t think Alex would be hitting today," Masanori Hirose said. "My mistake."….

At one point, the reigning AL MVP borrowed young Eric Duncan’s bat and promptly broke it, sending the shattered barrel flying down the third-base line.

"Eric, there’s your wood," Rodriguez called out, smiling. "That’s that minor league wood."