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Friday, December 31, 2004

Hate Speech From The Left

Overwhelmingly political hate speech today comes from the left. It has increasingly become a habit of leftist argumentation to simply dismiss conservative ideas as evil or noxious rather than rebut them with facts and evidence.

That is why there was no uproar when Cameron Diaz declared that rape might be legalized if women didn't turn out to vote for John Kerry. Or when Walter Cronkite told Larry King that the videotape of Osama bin Laden that surfaced just before the election was "probably set up" by Karl Rove. Or when Alfred A. Knopf published Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," a novel in which two Bush-haters talk about assassinating the president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character rages.

Bill Moyers warned a television audience on election day that if Kerry won narrowly, "I think there'd be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. . . . The right wing is not going to accept it." Chevy Chase, hosting a People for the American Way awards ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, slammed Bush as a "dumb [f-word]" and "an uneducated, real, lying schmuck."

A cartoon by the widely syndicated Ted Rall described Pat Tillman, the NFL athlete who gave up his career to enlist in the Army and was killed in Afghanistan, as a "sap" and an "idiot."

Jeff Jacoby: So many examples, so little space. A political flier in Tennessee, depicting Bush as a mentally disabled sprinter, bore the message: "Voting for Bush is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."

Once again, too many on the left -- not crackpots from the fringe, but mainstream players and pundits -- chose to demonize conservatives as monsters rather than debate their ideas on the merits.

The St. Petersburg, Fla., Democratic Club took out an ad calling for the death of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Then there's Rumsfeld who said of Iraq, 'We have our good days and our bad days,' " the ad read. "We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say, 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger."

Fantasies of murder likewise animated British pundit Charlie Brooker, who ended his Oct. 24 column in the Guardian with a plea for Bush's death: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?" Brooker later assured readers that he "deplores violence of any kind" and had meant his call for an assassin only as "an ironic joke."

But the "joke" of left-wing hate speech stopped being funny a long time ago. The violent invective so often hurled at conservatives pollutes the democratic stream from which all of us drink. Democrats no less than Republicans should want to shut those polluters down.

Pictures Of The Day

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Filibuster

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Clinton Showboating on Disaster

Washington Post: "In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a 'horror movie,' and urged a coordinated international response."

"It is really important that somebody take the lead in this," Clinton told the BBC, in a thinly veiled reminder of Bush's silence. "I think one of the problems is when everybody takes responsibility it's almost like no one's responsibility," he complained.

NewsMax: The White House is blasting former President Clinton for trying to upstage President Bush with a "we feel your pain" condolence message to the victims of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami that struck Christmas weekend.

Reacting to complaints that Bush was missing in action in the wake of the disaster, White House spokesman Trent Duffy told reporters Tuesday, "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts [before speaking out]. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.'"

The "feel your pain" reference was a direct slap at President Clinton, who had irked administration officials by beating Bush to the punch with comments on the disaster -and stealing the media limelight in the process.

Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to "hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy," the Post added.

"Actions speak louder than words," an annoyed Bush aide told the paper.

On Wednesday President Bush announced a massive aid package for victims of the tsunami disaster.

Ex-president Clinton has yet to react.

Quake May Have Made Earth Wobble

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation -- shortening days by a fraction of a second -- and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or one millionth of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch (2.5 cm) on its axis.

When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross said.

Gross said changes predicted by his model probably are too minuscule to be detected by a global positioning satellite network that routinely measures changes in Earth's spin, but said the data may reveal a slight wobble.

The Earth's poles travel a circular path that normally varies by about 33 feet, so an added wobble of an inch (2.5 cm) is unlikely to cause long-term effects, he said.

"That continual motion is just used to changing," Gross said. "The rotation is not actually that precise. The Earth does slow down and change its rate of rotation."

When those tiny variations accumulate, planetary scientists must add a "leap second" to the end of a year, something that has not been done in many years, Gross said.

Scientists have long theorized that changes on the Earth's surface such as tide and groundwater shifts and weather could affect its spin but they have not had precise measurements to prove it, Caltech seismologist Hiroo Kanamori said.

"Even for a very large event, the effect is very small," Kanamori said. "It's very difficult to change the rotation rate substantially."

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

U.N. Unqualified for Relief Effort

Did we hear correctly?

Is the United States turning over millions of dollars to the United Nations and its agencies to relieve the immense suffering of millions victimized by the 9.0 South Asia earthquake and resultant tsunami?

Joseph Farah: How is this possible given the latest scandalous news about the United Nations?

Forget the "oil-for-food" scandal in which U.N. officials and their designates received millions in payoffs.

Forget the lack of accountability this global agency has demonstrated over the years.

Forget the way the United Nations oversaw genocide in Rwanda.

Forget the fact that the United Nations has never, ever in the history of the world done more good than harm wherever it has been deployed in humanitarian efforts.

Let's just for a moment look at what the United Nations is doing right now in the Congo.

U.N. officials there have turned a relief effort into one giant sex slavery ring.

And this was no isolated incident in the Congo where there is "rampant sexual exploitation of Congolese girls and women by the U.N.'s 11,000 peacekeepers and 1,000 civilians."

Is this what we can expect when the United Nations goes to work in Thailand, in Sri Lanka, in Indonesia and other locations hard hit by perhaps the worst natural disaster since the Flood?

Yes, it is what we should expect.

So why is the U.S. turning over U.S. taxpayer dollars to an incompetent, morally corrupt, unaccountable agency?

Do we want the victims of this natural disaster to be victimized a second time?

Giving these predatory monsters our money and a new relief mission is tantamount to giving them a new license to rape and pillage people who need love and compassion.

This is why the United Nations needs to be destroyed, dismantled, obliterated from the memory of the people of the Earth. As long as it exists, it will siphon off vast amounts of money, manpower and resources that might otherwise accomplish some good.

No matter what horrors the United Nations perpetrates on innocent people, there is no accountability, no punishment, no consequence. That's why it is inevitable that we will only create new victims of this global monstrosity by sending more relief money.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Troops Blame Congress for Armor Shortage

The majority of U.S. soldiers do not blame President Bush or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for a shortage of body armor in Iraq but instead say Congress should be held responsible, according to a new poll by the Military Times.

Sixty percent blame Congress for the shortage of body armor in the combat zone, reports USA Today in its coverage of the Times survey.

In more bad news for congressional Iraq War critics, 63 percent of active duty personnel said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war.
Further confounding media attempts to demoralize the troops, 66 percent of soldiers surveyed say the war is worth fighting.

In addition, 87 percent of soldiers say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only a quarter of troops surveyed say they'd leave the service. The latter number is particularly impressive, considering that nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.

The Military Times Poll surveyed 1,423 active-duty subscribers to Air Force Times, Army Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times in late November and early December. The poll has a margin of error of +/—2.6 percent.

Pictures Of The Day

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Math in U.S.


Monday, December 27, 2004

McGovern Calling for an American Surrender in Iraq

On Christmas Day former Senator and former presidential candidate George McGovern wrote a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times (and probably many other papers) calling for an American surrender in Iraq.

David Horowitz: George McGovern has not been in the headlines for three decades and his name consequently may be unfamiliar to many. But no one has had a greater or more baleful impact on the Democratic Party and its electoral fortunes than this progressive product of the South Dakota plains.

The leftward slide of the Democratic Party, which has made it an uncertain trumpet in matters of war and peace, may be said to have begun with the McGovern presidential campaign of 1972, whose slogan was “American come home,” as though America was the problem and not the aggression of the Communist bloc.

The organizers of the movement against the war in Vietnam were activists who thought the Communists were liberating Vietnam in the same way Michael Moore thinks Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is liberating Iraq.

In 1968, Tom Hayden and the anti-war left incited a riot at the Democratic Party convention which effectively ended the presidential hopes of the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey, who was Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President was a supporter of the war. This paved the way for George McGovern’s failed presidential run against the war in 1972.

The following year, President Nixon signed a truce in Vietnam and withdrew American troops. His goal was “peace with honor,” which meant denying a Communist victory in South Vietnam. The truce was an uneasy one depending on a credible American threat to resume hostilities if the Communists violated the truce.

Three years earlier, Nixon had signaled an end to the draft and the massive national anti-war demonstrations had drawn to a halt. But a vanguard of activists continued the war against America’s support for the anti-Communist war effort in Vietnam. Among them were John Kerry and Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

They conducted a campaign to persuade the Democrats in Congress to cut all aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia, thus opening the door for a Communist conquest.

When Nixon was forced to resign after Watergate, the Democratic congress cut the aid as their first legislative act. They did this in January 1975. In April, the Cambodian and South Vietnamese regimes fell.

Within three years the Communist victors had slaughtered two and a half million peasants in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, paving the way for their socialist paradise.

The blood of those victims is on the hands of the Americans who forced this withdrawal -- John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean and George McGovern, and anti-war activists like myself.

Along with leading Democrats like party chairman Terry McAuliffe, George McGovern called for an American retreat from Iraq even before a government could be established to deny the country to the Saddamist remnants and Islamic terrorists: “I did not want any Americans to risk their lives in Iraq. We should bring home those who are there.” Explained McGovern: “Once we left Vietnam and quit bombing its people they became friends and trading partners.”

It is true that Vietnam eventually became a trading partner (“friend” is another matter). But this was not “once we left and quit bombing its people.” Before that took place, a Republican President confronted the Soviet Union in Europe and Afghanistan and forced the collapse of the Soviet empire.

It was only then, after the Cold War enemy and support of the Vietnamese Communists had been defeated that they accommodated themselves to co-existence with the United States.

The “blame America first” mentality so manifest in this McGovern statement is endemic to the appeasement mentality that the progressive Senator so typifies: “Iraq has been nestled along the Tigris and Euphrates for 6,000 years. It will be there 6,000 more whether we stay or leave, as earlier conquerors learned.”

In McGovern’s Alice-in-Wonderland universe, Iraq did not invade two countries, use chemical weapons on its Kurdish population, attempt to assassinate a U.S. president, spend tens of billions of dollars on banned weapons programs, aid and abet Islamic terrorists bent on destroying the West, and defy 17 UN resolutions to disarm itself, open its borders to UN inspectors, and adhere to the terms of the UN truce it had signed when its aggression in Kuwait was thwarted.

If the United States were to leave the battlefield in Iraq now, before the peace is secured (and thus repeat the earlier retreat), there would be a bloodbath along the Tigris and Euphrates as well. The jihadists will slaughter our friends, our allies, and all of the Iraqis who are struggling for their freedom.

To McGovern we are conquerors, which makes the Zarqawi terrorists “liberators,” or as Michael Moore would prefer, “patriots.” The left that wants America to throw in the towel in Iraq is hyper-sensitive to questions about its loyalties but at the same time can casually refer to our presence in Iraq as an “invasion and occupation.”

It wants to use the language of morality but it only wants the standard to apply in one direction. There is no one-dimensional such standard, and a politics of surrender is not a politics of peace.

Letterman

Welcome to the "Late Show”. Some of these jokes will require some assembly.

Are you in the holiday spirit? You know Flash Dancers? They’re in the spirit. Earlier today the girls were seen trimming the pole.

There’s a big celebrity birthday coming up – Jesus!

This is the time of the year when my Uncle Earl goes into stores and stages falls to get settlement money.

It was sad last year when Uncle Earl came over for Christmas. We had to take him to the emergency room. What happened was that he ate an entire bag of those packaging peanuts.

Did you all get a tree? I tried to find a tree. It’s crazy getting a tree here in New York City. I finally found one after six hours. I found the one I wanted and the price was $100! For a damn tree. And if you want it placed on your roof it costs you another $50. No, wait that’s the deal for a hooker.

Conan

According to the "Wall Street Journal” instead of presents lots of people are giving gift certificates for plastic surgery for Christmas. What more of a perfect way to say to someone you love them on Christmas by saying, "You’re ugly!”

Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve and our show won’t be on because of Pope John Paul II and the televised Midnight Mass. I can’t wait for the end of the mass when the Pope says, "Stay tuned for Carson Daley!”

Health experts say that during the time between Christmas and New Years people gain weight. Which in the case of Reuben Studdard you gain weight from New Years until Christmas.

In Florida a 96-year-old woman is running for mayor. When asked if she knew who she was running against she said, "Time.”

The other day Michael Jackson had a big Christmas Party at the Neverland Ranch which was attended by a lot of children. Afterwards Jackson was visited by the Ghost of Don’t You Ever Learn!


Sunday, December 26, 2004

Ice Cream For Dogs Launches

A Belgian company is producing ice cream specifically for dogs.

Ananova: Three young marketing students from Edingen are confident their Dog Ice - which will be in the shape of a big bone - will be a huge success.

"We'll start with vanilla flavour but I think in the future it might also be possible to develop a special meat flavour", one of the producers, David Decroix, said.

His business partner Didier Murena said they came up with the idea when they noticed dog-owners sharing ice creams with their pets.

The ice cream will cost 3,99 euro (around £2.80).

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Four-Year-Old Boy's Christmas Prayer

(Sent to us by Taylor Reeves of Ga)

A four-year-old boy who was asked to return thanks before Christmas dinner. The family members bowed their heads in expectation.

He began his prayer, thanking God for all his friends, naming them one by one. Then he thanked God for Mommy, Daddy, brother, sister, Grandma, Grandpa, and all his aunts and uncles. Then he began to thank God for the food.

He gave thanks for the turkey, the dressing, the fruit salad, the cranberry sauce, the pies, the cakes, even the Cool Whip.

Then he paused, and everyone waited ... and waited. After a long silence, the young fellow looked up at his mother and asked, "If I thank God for the broccoli, won't he know that I'm lying?"

Thanks to Taylor Reeves Of Milledgeville Ga.

Don't Mess With Grandma At Christmas

(Sent to us by Taylor Reeves of Ga)

This is a true story.

An elderly Florida lady did her Christmas shopping and, upon returning to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her vehicle. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at the top of her voice, "I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of the car!"

The four men didn't wait for a second invitation. They got out and ran like mad. The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into driver's seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition. She tried and tried, and then it dawned on her why.

A few minutes later, she found her own car parked four or five spaces farther down. She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the police station.

The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale men were reporting a car jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun. No charges were filed.

If you're going to have a senior moment at Christmas, make it a memorable one!

Thanks to Taylor Reeves Of Milledgeville Ga.

Friday, December 24, 2004

America the Greedy and Cruel?

CNN CROSSFIRE - Aired December 23, 2004 - 16:30 ET (See Transcript)

BEGALA: The Bush administration is cutting its contributions to food aid for poor people. Ever the compassionate conservative, President Bush has decided to break his word to charitable groups like Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children, welshing on at least $100 million of food aid to help feed the world's most impoverished people.

NY Times
U.S. Cutting Food Aid That Is Aimed at Self-Sufficiency

Mona Charen: The Times does not tell readers that the United States is the world's largest food aid donor by far. In 2004, the United States provided $826,469,172 -- almost a billion dollars -- to the United Nations World Food Program.

The next largest donor, the European Union, contributed $187,102,068. This, despite the fact that the European Union has a total population of 453 million, compared with the USA's 281 million, and a gross domestic product that is larger than that of the United States.

Japan was third on the list, giving $126,906,097, and the United Kingdom was fourth, with donations totaling $109,247,050. Iran gave $40,000. The Saudi Kingdom gave $3,345,325 -- about the cost of one trip to Paris for the Crown Prince. And Kuwait, the OPEC fund and the Russian Federation gave nothing.

Those huge sacks of American wheat, corn, soybeans and legumes have been traversing the globe for more than 50 years, since Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954. Kennedy renamed it Food for Peace, and it has undergone numerous changes since. But the essential generosity of the American people has remained intact.

Whether it is a famine in Ethiopia, a civil war in the Balkans or Somalia, or genocide in Sudan, the United States is always the largest donor of food and other humanitarian relief.

In this season of peace, it is useful to remember that we live in a very generous and humanitarian country -- even if The New York Times does its best to obscure it.

Pictures Of The Day

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Christmas In Iraq

Leno

The holiday season is full of tradition. My favorite one is when you're driving over to your relatives and you start asking your wife what she bought everyone so you can look like you were somehow involved.

Here's a Christmas shopping tip. A lot of you know this already. When you leave the department store, make sure you have a bag in both hands. This way, you have an excuse for not reaching into your pocket to give a donation to the guy ringing the bell. Makes it easier for you to sneak by. "Sorry, I've got a lot of stuff."

Another holiday tip. You know the best time to mail your Christmas gift? Two weeks ago! You're screwed!

According to a new poll, 72 percent of pet owners buy their pets a Christmas present. In fact, in Las Vegas, Siegfried gave his cats a chew toy. Roy.

Christmas shopping is a lot easier for President Bush this year. Sure, every year he has fewer allies to buy for. Just get England a little something and then we're fine.

It's a nice day here today, but it's freezing back East. Talk to your parents? It's freezing in Philadelphia. ... It was so cold back East, even some red states turned blue.

Man, are the stores crowded. In fact it was so busy at Wal-Mart, they've had to hire people with green cards.

I sent a christmas gift to Donald Rumsfeld – a pen.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, the majority of Americans want Donald Rumsfeld to step down. Today Regis Philbin said, "Hey, I'll fill in! I'll do it!"

According to the Census Bureau, the most populous state is California, with 35.9 million people. And over a thousand which speak English.

Here's an update on the Robert Blake murder mystery. There's no mystery. He did it! Case closed!

Today in a Christmas message, Martha Stewart called for reforms in sentencing guidelines. She said sentences should be reduced for first-time non-violent offenders ... especially if they're rich, white and can make a kick-ass creme brule.

Nearly 75 percent of elderly Americans approve of the legalization of medical marijuana. And you thought grandpa used to forget stuff before!

Senior citizens smoking dope. How slow are they going to be driving in Florida now?!

The Webster's New World College Dictionary has a new word – "adultescent." Have you heard this word? It's an adult who lives and acts like a child ... or, as women call that - men!

Letterman

It's winter now and I'm getting sort of sluggish and have a cold. The flu is going around. I was out walking through Central Park today and I saw a squirrel putting Vicks VapoRub on its nuts.

I was Christmas shopping and ran into a guy on the street. I noticed his watch and said that it runs slow. He said, "So does the guy I stole it from."

Do we have any baseball fans here? A big deal between the Yankees and Dodgers did fall through. The Yankees were supposed to get Randy Johnson. But it did fall through because it turns out Randy Johnson has two mistresses and an illegal nanny.

It was a complicated deal. The Yankees were to get Randy Johnson, and three pitchers were to go to Arizona and I was to go to the "Tonight Show."

You can tell it's Christmas in New York City. Stores are trying to sell off all their expired milk as egg nog.

You know the big tree at Rockefeller Center? I went by there today and the tree was laying by the curb.

The Clintons are getting ready for Christmas up in Chappaqua. It's the same thing every year. Hillary comes down the stairs on Christmas morning to find a surprise under Bill.

Conan

The University of Arkansas has bought the house that Bill Clinton grew up in and plans to make it into a museum. The university has also bought the doghouse that Bill spent most of the '90s in.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Tone of Mosul Attack Coverage

Pentagon Briefing - Aired December 22, 2004 - 14:58 ET (See Transcript)

QUESTION: If you do think it's unwise, are either one of you or both going to sound off to Generals Casey and Ham or take them to the woodshed?

MYERS: These are the calls that the combatant commanders make, and any judgment that General Ham is up there not worried about force protection is ludicrous.

We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body, apparently him, and go into a dining hall. We know how difficult this is to prevent people bent on suicide and stopping them. We understand how difficult that is.

But I think -- this was the insurgents that did this. So it's not General Ham that attacked his dining hall.

We have no front lines. The front line can be the dining hall, it can be the road outside the base, it can be the police station or the governor's office or the mayor's office down in Mosul.

That's their territory. They operate all over that. They can wear, and they do wear clothes like every other Iraqi.

MYERS: This attack, of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents whose attacked in Beirut, the same type insurgents who -- or type of insurgents to attacked the Cole and Khobar Towers. And the list goes on.

So the way you prevent this is you win the war against the extremists. So the way we prevent this is we win. And that's what we're going to do.

Rush: The coverage of what happened in Mosul yesterday and today is a classic example of liberal bias in the media. It is a classic example, and I got an e-mail today for a soldier in Mosul who was eating in a mess hall very close to the one that was hit.

Dear Rush:

I'm a soldier currently stationed in Mosul...

I was reading much of the coverage on the Internet, and I have to say that I am disgusted with what I am seeing. It seems to me that the liberal media is just thrilled this happened so it gives them a good headline to make Bush or Rumsfeld look bad.

Don't these people get it? This is not just about politics in America. In fact, it was never about politics, until liberals -- notice I don't say Democrats, Mr. Limbaugh, but liberals -- was never about politics until liberals made it that way.

I spent a little time in Israel when I was growing up, so I knew about the growing problem of extremist Islamic terrorism before September 11th. September 11th just brought a whole new dimension to it.

We are at war with people who want to kill us. They are not noble or brave. There is no honor in killing yourself for your religion. A real hero would rather live for what he believes, but someone who kills himself along with others for it is just a cowardly murderer. And we were at war with these people.

We were attacked first. And to see the liberals use what happened yesterday as an excuse to make America look bad is just -- well, I can't put it into words. I coulda died. Many of my fellow soldiers did die. Don't they get the seriousness of this? To use their deaths to further their political agenda now?

How can these people who claim to support the troops support us when they seem excited at the political opportunity this attack has given then.

Rush: It didn't matter what network I switched to watch the coverage of this attack, it was clear that the tone here was, "See why this is an unjust war? See why this is wrong? See why we shouldn't be here? American soldiers have died. We don't need to be there. There's no point to this."

The never ending wall-to-wall coverage of this that made it appear as though it was the worst tragedy in the history of American warfare, and the reason they wanted to make it look like the worst tragedy in American warfare is because they are intent, still, on proving to people this is an unjust war.

Well, the audience is much more sophisticated today, and if the recent election results do not tell the left anything, they ought to tell them this.

The American people support this war. The American people support the troops. The American people don't like seeing this. The American people hate it, the American people cry over this, and sob, and everything else, but at the same time it doesn't make the American people think that what we're doing is wrong.

Pictures Of The Day

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Bethlehem


Leno

As you know, Time magazine named George W. Bush the person of the year. I’m not sure Bush understands it. In fact, Bush said he can’t decide whether he wants the free travel clock or the tote bag.

You know who else was being considered? Michael Moore. Michael Moore was also considered for Time person of the year. But unfortunately he didn’t fit on the cover.

Welcome to NBC – or, as we call it, "a series of unfortunate programs."

The weather in L.A. has been terrific, but back East it’s been freezing in Philadelphia. Snow everywhere. In fact, in New York City, it was 5 below Hillary.

It was so cold in New York, Bernard Kerik got in bed with his own wife.

Actually, in San Francisco it was so cold that Barry Bonds got in a snowball fight and killed three people.

There’s a big funeral home out here that’s suggesting giving cemetery plots as Christmas gifts. Oh yeah, what better way to say Merry Christmas than "I was thinking about you being dead."

Nearly 75 percent of older Americans say they’re in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. You thought Grandma’s house smelled funny before ...

Have you heard about this new book out this week? It claims that Abraham Lincoln was gay. In fact, they’re saying he not only had a Gettysburg address, he had a West Hollywood address also.

Letterman

Today is the shortest day of the year. The longest day of the year is of course Christmas, when you spend the whole day with relatives.

I was out shopping today. It was crazy, it was nuts, I was getting pushed, there was so many people – it was like an Arafat funeral.

More bad news for Bernard Kerik. He’s been put on Santa’s naughty list.

President Bush is standing by Donald Rumsfeld. You know what that means? He’ll be gone in a week.

Conan

Time magazine has announced its person of the year and it was President Bush. Doing Time magazine has also announced their person of the year as being Martha Stewart.

Did you see USA Today today? They had a nice pie chart. No, Donald Rumsfeld wrote an editorial defending the War in Iraq. You could tell it was written by Rumsfeld because it started with "Shut your pie hole and listen!"

A cold wave has hit Florida. Yesterday, temperatures in Orlando reached the low 40s. It was so cold that the giant ball at Epcot Center shriveled to half its size.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Wrong John Kerry Gets N.Y. Electoral Votes

Thanks to a typo, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has gotten even fewer electoral votes than he thought he had.

That's because an error posted New York state's 31 electoral votes over to somebody named "John L. Kerry."

Sheepish state officials say they're rushing out corrected copies of New York's electoral documents. They admitted the mistake earlier today, after the official "certificate of vote" appeared on the National Archives Web site.

A New York state official says the ballots themselves are correct. But nobody noticed the document error.

Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry carried New York as the Democratic nominee for president, but lost the national election to President Bush.

Pictures Of The Day

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Five 1st FSSG Marines Received Purple Heart


Leno

Congratulations to President Bush. He has been named Time magazine’s person of the year. Of course when President Bush heard the news, he was stunned. He said, "I don’t even subscribe to Time magazine."

I still don’t think Bush gets it. Like today he kept asking people, "So where’s Ed McMahon with my big check?"

In a related story, Senator John Kerry was given a free copy of Entertainment Weekly.

How many people like catalog shopping? Do you like to do that? Did you know this? A lot of times when you call in they have prison inmates answering phone. A lot of companies do that. So that means if you order from Martha Stewart Living.com, the person you’re talking to could actually be Martha Stewart.

Macy’s department stores have ordered their workers to say "Happy Holidays," not "Merry Christmas," so as not to offend people who might be atheists or other religions. Not only that, you know that classic movie "Miracle on 34th Street"? Now they have to call it "Coincidence on 34th Street."

It’s December 20, which means exactly five days from now kids all over Los Angeles will be visited by the older man who visits once a year bearing gifts: their divorced father.

Here’s something, I thought this was really nice. About 140 U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan got front row seats to the Dallas Mavericks game over the weekend. In a related story, prisoners from Guantanamo Bay will get front row seats for the New Orleans Hornets game.

Here’s the latest on retirees and Social Security: Donald Rumsfeld is about to start collecting it.

The big question is, who will be the next Homeland Security chief? President Bush’s nominee Bernard Kerik, of course, had to withdraw his name because questions arose over a former nanny’s immigration status. Apparently she was working here illegally. And today Wal-Mart said, "So?"

Tomorrow is the official change of seasons – it’s the day we go from the Scott Peterson trial to the Robert Blake trial.

As you know, things are not looking good for Scott Peterson. His future is now worse than an NBC program executive's.

As you know, Scott Peterson is now on death row. So let’s see how he likes being married to a psychotic killer, for a change.

Mexico has launched a million-dollar ad campaign to encourage Mexicans in the United States to come back to Mexico on vacation. I love their slogan: "The hole in the fence goes both ways."

That shows you how non-threatening our Border Patrol is. People who are here illegally can sneak in, go home for a vacation if they like, and then just sneak back in again.

The Kia Spectra was recently given the insurance industry’s lowest safety rating in a crash test for any car since 2001. In a 40-mile-an-hour frontal crash, the crash-test dummy's head, chest and legs were all crushed. I’m stunned. A Kia can hit 40 miles an hour?

A German researcher says that for eight years before he became chancellor of Germany, Adolph Hitler never paid taxes. Paid no taxes at all. Well, that sure changes my opinion of that guy.

The American Medical Association says that sweet-flavored alcoholic beverages are luring more and more teenagers into drinking. They say 31 percent of teens have drunk these beverages - and the alcohol industry is disturbed by this. They were shooting for at least 50 percent. "That’s all? With all the advertising we do, we only hit 31 percent?!"

Letterman

You sound like I’m up for Time person of the year!

I was on the list for person of the year. I was right in between Bernard Kerik and Chemical Ali.

Are you cold? It was cold in New York City today. We’re under a cold wave or a cold snap, something. Here’s an idea of how cold it was today. I was up on Park Avenue and I saw a poodle that had to be chiseled off a fire hydrant.

It was so cold out that the hookers were handing out flannel condoms.

It was so cold that Bernard Kerik was happy to be in hot water.

Republican senators are urging Donald Rumsfeld to resign. When Rumsfeld out who was behind everything, he found them, stripped the down, put them on a leash and is now parading them around naked.

CBS is considering Katie Couric to replace Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News. That’s a bombshell. Who would leave a successful show on NBC for something on CBS?

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Nuclear Option

WASHINGTON -- A scenario for an unspecified day in 2005: One of President Bush's judicial nominations is brought to the Senate floor. Majority Leader Bill Frist makes a point of order that only a simple majority is needed for confirmation. The point is upheld by the presiding officer, Vice President Dick Cheney. Democratic Leader Harry Reid challenges the ruling. Frist moves to table Reid's motion, ending debate. The motion is tabled, and the Senate proceeds to confirm the judicial nominee -- all in about 10 minutes.

Robert Novak: This is the so-called "nuclear option" that creates fear and loathing among Democrats and weak knees for some Republicans, including conservative opinion leaders.

Ever since Frist publicly embraced the nuclear option, he has been accused of abusing the Senate's cherished tradition of extended debate. In truth, during six years as majority leader, Democrat Robert C. Byrd four times detonated the nuclear option to rewrite Senate rules.

Thus, Frist would set no precedent, would not contradict past Republican behavior and would not strip the GOP of protection as a future Senate minority. The question is whether Republican senators will flinch from the only maneuver open to confirm Bush's judges.

Frist drew a line in the sand Nov. 11 in addressing the conservative Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end." The way he indicated was a rules change -- the nuclear option.

That generated speculation that, when the new Senate convenes on Jan. 4, the Republican leadership will propose a rules change. Reid, the Senate's reigning master of parliamentary tactics, has promised to "screw things up" by bringing the chamber's activities to a standstill.

Frist would only tell me he wants "a full set of options, ready and available." However, Senate sources believe Frist will bide his time on opening day and wait to make a point of order to change the rules.

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Marines with Bravo Company

Leno

Wal-Mart announced they have fired several of their top executives. Do you know how you can tell when a Wal-Mart executive is out of a job? You see him shopping at Wal-Mart!

Yesterday in a speech, President Bush said, "This nation must never settle for mediocrity." Then he said, "So Dick Cheney will now be giving the rest of the speech."

They say Scott Peterson spends his time quietly in his cell reading. I think he's reading that new inspirational best seller, "The Five People You Meet in Hell."

On the news they keep saying that Peterson will now get in a line of about 650 people here in California who are waiting to be executed. That's gotta be the politest line in history, huh? "You want to go ahead?" "Oh no, I wouldn't think of it." "Please." "Oh no, you stay where you are."

According to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, married people are healthier than single people. That's why people in L.A. are so healthy. A lot of them have been married three, four times.

Did you see this? A truck turned over in Las Vegas and spilled millions of angry bees on the road. And - what are the odds of this? - they attacked Roy.

Kobe Bryant was all over ESPN this week trying to repair his negative public image. I don't know if it'll work. Right now Kobe's approval rating is 3.

Letterman

Today is the last day to send out packages if you want to make sure they are broken by Christmas.

Next week on NBC it's a special Christmas "Fear Factor." All of the contestants will bob for ornaments in a bucket of reindeer crap.

President Bush had his annual physical. He's in great physical shape ... no word on the mental part.

The president's body fat has increased. He's gotten heavier. To tell you how heavy he is ... if he was a woman, Bill Clinton would hit on him.

Conan

The stores are crowded this year. Retail experts say that if you go shopping expect to wait 30 minutes in lines – or to avoid crowds go see "Alexander."

Monday, December 20, 2004

Rumsfeld's Questioner Wrong About Unit's Armor

In a Dec. 8 exchange during a question-and-answer session in Kuwait, Spc. Wilson asked Rumsfeld, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Unaware that Wilson's questioned was based on false information, the Defense Secretary replied, in part: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Pitts later admitted that the idea to question Rumsfeld about the unit's armor was his, and that he thoroughly coached the National Guardsman on what to say.

The reporter who managed to get a National Guardsman serving in Iraq to question Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about why his unit's vehicles lacked sufficient armor coached the soldier using false information.

In fact, by the time Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts rehearsed Spc. Thomas "Jerry" Wilson on what to say to Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had already up-armored 97 percent of the vehicles in Thomas' 278th Regimental Combat Team, senior members of the Army's combat systems development and acquisition team said Thursday.

Further undermining the premise of Pitts' question, orders to up-armor the last 20 of the 278th's 830 vehicles were already in the pipeline when he engineered the bogus inquiry.

According to the Maryville, Tenn., Daily Times - a rival to Pitts' paper - Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes and Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said during last week's Pentagon briefing that routine pre-deployment preparations before proceeding to Iraq included adding protective armor plates to the last 20 vehicles of the Tennessee-based 278th Regimental Combat Team's 830 vehicles.

"When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point," Gen. Speakes said, in comments completely ignored by the major media.

"We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day," he said. "In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked," Gen. Speakes added.

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Person Of The Year

Sunday, December 19, 2004

You Can't Fix Stupid

Tom Quinn heads up the Federal Air Marshal Service under the Department of Homeland Security. Quinn has mandated a dress code for air marshals which, as T.J. Bonner of the Border Patrol describes it, "makes them stick out like a sore thumb." Nevertheless, agents have reportedly been told, "You wear a sports coat, or you wear a suit coat, or you look for another job."

Chuck Muth: Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Quinn made a surprise visit to Reagan National Airport in DC and reportedly grew considerably angry upon discovering, as the Washington Times reports, that "29 or 30 deplaning air marshals were dressed in varying states of compliance with the conspicuous marshal dress code."

Doggone it! They looked just like...um, regular passengers. I'll have somebody's head for this!

Even if that means "blending in" with passengers decked out in Jimmy Buffet shirts and Panama hats on a plane bound for Miami in July?

The fact is, few passengers travel in business clothes any longer...which is why air marshals attired in their Sunday-go-to-meetin' suits are easily picked out in the airport crowd. Quinn's dress code is, for want of a more accurate Word...stupid.

Good grief. If Osama is indeed sitting in a cave somewhere having a good chuckle at our expense, it's not without cause.

We have airport screeners who can fondle buxom blonds, strip-search grannies-in-pearls and give tykes-in-diapers a "full wanding"...but who aren't allowed to "profile" for additional scrutiny Middle-Eastern young men from Muslim countries.

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Intelligent Design

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Clinton Cut the Military

"U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe said Thursday that cutbacks during the Clinton administration resulted in the lack of armor and other material faced by U.S. troops in Iraq."

There were the genuine cuts in the Clinton years and all during that time Rumsfeld was not there. But I'll tell you who was: Half of these senators that are bitching and moaning about this were there, and they had a chance to stop this and didn't.

Rush: Now they come to this late in life and they act like they got bamboozled again, like Rumsfeld was a one man show running the war and making sure our troops don't have armor because he doesn't care.

You had McCain piling on, you had Susan Collins piling on; Norm Coleman is the latest to pile on, from Minnesota. Lott piled on. It's frustrating here because these guys were all there. These guys were all in the Senate when all these cuts were made. I didn't hear any complaints about the Clinton administration back then. I didn't hear one complaint about it.

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Driver's License

Leno

Happy holidays, everyone. Here’s a little tip: This is the time of year the mailman appreciates getting a little something extra. At least that’s what Karl Malone told Kobe’s wife.

I tell ya, this Kobe Bryant-Karl Malone thing keeps getting uglier and uglier. Now Kobe claims Karl tried to kiss his wife. Kobe says he has proof. It looks like Karl left some Super PoliGrip on his wife’s blouse!

Anybody have this problem? My tree’s only been up a week and it’s already completely dried out. There’s needles everywhere – my living room looks like the floor of a Major League locker room ...

It looks like Major League Baseball is finally going to adopt a tougher steroid policy. Starting this season, they’re going to cut off steroid use after the seventh inning.

Senator John McCain says he’s worried that steroid abuse in professional sports will spill over into the fans using them. Isn’t that a good thing? Fans on steroids? At least that way, then when athletes go into the stands to beat them up they can defend themselves.

There is good news for Major League Baseball - they said attendance grew 5 percent last year and Barry Bonds grew 30 percent.

I’m starting to have my suspicions about Barry Bonds. He went bowling today and rolled a 400.

According to the New York Daily News, the White House has 41 Christmas trees up this year. Forty-one trees. One for each of the red states!

President Bush was asked today if he has a plan to make the U.S. dollar stronger, and President Bush said, "We’re thinking maybe two-ply."

The Bush administration is sponsoring a two-day economic summit in Washington, D.C., and one of the panels is focusing on "jobs in the 21st century." Of course, that panel is meeting in India.

A new study says that moving to the United States can make you obese. They say only 8 percent of immigrants are obese when they come to the U.S., but after staying a while, 19 percent are obese. In fact, that’s why illegal immigrants stay here. After they’ve been here a while, they’re too fat to fit back through that hole in the fence.

Whitney Houston rear-ended a city bus with her sports car, but no one was hurt. She said she didn’t know what happened. One minute she was concentrating on the big white line, and the next, boom!

When police got there, they said Whitney was wandering around dazed and confused, so they knew she was OK.

Martha Stewart is telling people that they can’t imagine how hard it is during the holidays to be a woman in prison. And today Scott Peterson said, "Tell me about it."

As you know, Scott Peterson got the death sentence. So our electric bills may be a little higher here in California, but at least it’s all going to a good cause.

Letterman

Last night we had an ugly audience. About halfway through the show they tried to get me to eat Ukrainian soup.

Are you in the holiday spirit? It’s exciting. Just this morning I hailed a cab and a nice man got out, he got the door for me and he put all my packages in the trunk – and then he drove off, leaving me standing there!

Due to security issues, you can no longer have cameras in the subway. Well, that’s a big problem. How many times have you been on the subway and thought, "If only I could capture this scenery on film?"

How about Bernard Kerik? I think he would have been a great secretary. He was going to be the secretary of Homeland Security. Then he had three wives and two mistresses. He’s used to fighting terrorism!

Even though Kerik has some troubles, he’s still in the holiday spirit. Today he went Caroling ... then Michelling and later he’s going Racheling.

Conan

Tonight was the finale to "The Apprentice." It was three hours long. Donald Trump said he was nervous because it aired live. The last time he did something live, his hair got scared of the lights, jumped off his head and ran away.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Gutless Republicans in the U.S. Senate

The pile-on of Donald Rumsfeld continues. "U.S. Senator Trent Lott does not believe that Rumsfeld should resign immediately, but he does think that Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime in the next year."

Lott said, "I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld." He mentioned this to the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce yesterday morning. "'I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."

Rush: What Lott means is he's not listening to us in the Senate. He is listening, but he is a leader, he's not an order taker. Senators are not secretaries of defense and they are not secretaries of state and they are not presidents of the United States.

The fact of the matter is, Senator Lott, that Donald Rumsfeld is the first secretary of defense in a very long time to try to change the environment at the Pentagon, to retool, to shake up the bureaucracy, to build a military for future threats, et cetera, instead of relying on the same old military of the past.

And this is very common, folks, when somebody comes in and starts shaking up the old guard -- and it's been that way for a long, long time -- the people getting shaken up don't like it, and they start leaking things, and they start trashing, and they start buzzing and whispering behind people's backs.

Talk about an old boys club, the Senate. Any senator can't get anything out of that body, can't get any legislation out of there that makes any sense. A senator, to sit there and talk about anybody else not doing a good job.

This is the place, Senator Lott, where three Democrat senators blew up and committed a potential criminal felony by releasing the details of a covert, super-secret satellite spy plan. This is a criminal felony. Criminal referrals have been handed out to these three, Jay Rockefeller, Durbin, and Ron Wyden.

They're all sworn to secrecy, they're all told what the ramifications are if they blow up secrets of some super-secret plan like this.This is worse than a leak. These are criminal acts, these are felonies, what these three senators did, subject to criminal referral. Criminal referrals have been sworn out by the White House on these three senators. They are fit to be tied over there.

Now, if the Republicans in the Senate had any gonads they would be on the prowl here trying to get these guys strung up for what they did, because you want to talk about defense and you want to talk about security, take a look at what's coming out of the U.S. Senate on the Democrat side.

Instead of piling on Rumsfeld, why don't you and the Senate leadership get together and realize it's the Democrats in the Senate who are the enemy, and not Rumsfeld. That it's Al-Qaeda who is the enemy, and not Rumsfeld. And just because McCain decides to fly off the cliff for personal reasons doesn't mean you have to follow him.

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UN - Oil For Food

Leno

Experts say that during the holidays jury verdicts tend to be more lenient. What would Scott Peterson have got otherwise, then? Death by rats in a sewer?!

As you know, Scott Peterson has been sentenced to death. Isn’t it nice, after all the talk about steroids in baseball, that we’re all happy about someone being injected?

Scott Peterson did get a call from the governor today. He said, "Hasta la vista, baby!"

Peterson could be on death row for a long time, maybe 20 years even. It’s so slow that the guy next to him was the guy that stole the Lindberg baby.

President Bush had his annual exam over the weekend. He’s good, but the doctors said that he should look out for his colon. Bush replied, "Oh don’t worry about that, he’s already gone."

The president’s daughter Jenna, the blonde one, is going to be a teacher in Washington, D.C. She’s going to be an English teacher. In a related story, Dick Cheney’s daughter is going to teach phys ed.

America’s trade deficit reached a record high in October. Now at $55 billion. Do you realize that the only product left that's made in America is steroids?

Athletes use steroids to make their muscles bigger. Doctors also say that steroids cause the testicles to shrink. That has to be embarrassing if you’re a baseball player, don’t it? In your uniform you look like a major leaguer. Out of it you look like a little leaguer!

Bad night for the Lakers last night. They lost. And then when Kobe called home, Karl Malone answered.

More schools are now teaching children Chinese. Hey, I took Chinese when I was in high school. It was called algebra then.

Harrison Ford is going to star in another "Indiana Jones" movie at age 62. Sixty-two years old. There’s one exciting moment in the movie where he claps and the lights turn on.

Letterman

It was cold today! It was so cold that the Bush twins switched their margaritas for Irish coffee.

It was so cold that Paris Hilton made a video with her clothes on!

When it’s cold like this, I don’t know what to do when I’m in the cab. Do I roll the window up to stay warm? Or do I roll it down to air out the driver?

Dick Clark won’t be hosting the "New Year's Rockin’ Eve" on ABC this year. He had a mild stroke earlier this month. He’s OK, but apparently not well enough to host a TV show out in the cold. Instead Regis [Philbin] is going to host the show – that’s assuming that there’s no problems with his nanny.

Do you remember Chemical Ali? We caught him and now he’s on trial. He doesn’t have a very good alibi, though. He says he was out fishing with Scott Peterson.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

We're the 'lose-lose' people!

Lawyer Mark Geragos should go into business with political consultant Bob Shrum and defend Sen. Arlen Specter's claim to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They should advertise exclusively on MSNBC. Maybe they could even get Al Gore to endorse them and hire Howard Dean as their spokesman. Our motto: "A HUMILIATING DEFEAT EVERY TIME – OR YOUR MONEY BACK!"

Ann Coulter: Shrum's losing streak obscures the fact that he is also a swine. This year, Shrum racked up his eighth loss in an unblemished 0-8 record of losing Democratic presidential campaigns.

He's the embodiment of the Democratic Party ideal: Screw up, keep getting hired or promoted. One more loss and his last name officially becomes a verb, as in "we were ahead by 6 points but we ended up 'shrumming.'"

At least Shrum's client only has to go back to the Senate. Geragos' client Scott Peterson has been sentenced to death.

This came as no surprise to those who have followed the fate of Geragos' other hapless clients throughout the years. Among Geragos' clients are:

Clinton crony Susan McDougal: spent 18 months in federal prison. In his defense, at least Geragos didn't get Susan McDougal the death penalty.

Gary Condit: suspected (but never accused!) of involvement in Chandra Levy's disappearance. Condit was never charged with any crime. But he hired Geragos to manage a media campaign to defend his reputation.

The next thing Condit knew, he was kissing his 30-year political career goodbye when he lost to his Democratic primary opponent by a whopping 18 points. Condit got "shrummed" by 18 points. The only way Condit could have lost by a bigger margin would be if Bob Shrum had managed his campaign.

Winona Ryder: convicted of grand theft. Instead of having her throw herself on the state's mercy and beg for a plea bargain, Geragos took the case to trial, where the jury had to balance a videotape of Ryder caught in the act of stealing against Geragos' argument that the store security guards were mean to her.

Michael Jackson: fired Geragos almost immediately after hiring him. Jackson has sterile facial masks that lasted longer than this guy. I guess he figured, hey, it's no skin off my nose. As we go to press, Jackson remains a free man.

The only reason to hire Mark Geragos is if the only other attorney left on Earth is Mickey Sherman, aka the "Mark Geragos of the East Coast." And that's only if Long Island gunman Colin Ferguson, who famously represented himself at trial, is not taking new clients.

Leno

Here’s a holiday shopping tip. Here’s what I do and it works pretty good. When you’re buying your Christmas tree, be sure to bring along a pair of scissors, so when you find the perfect tree you can just cut that little tag off that says "sold."

You know, I was Christmas shopping over the weekend and I noticed something. Have you noticed most Americans are now as big as Santa? Santa is now an average-sized guy. Remember when we were kids, Santa was huge? Now he’s smaller than half the people waiting in line.

Retailers are very disappointed in holiday sales this year. Holiday sales are not at all what they wanted them to be. In fact, in Beverly Hills Saks had a sign: "Come back, Winona Ryder. All is forgiven."

You know, the big thing in Hollywood now is a personal shopper. You have a personal shopper do your shopping for you. That way you can focus on what’s important this time of year: Themselves.

President Bush had his annual physical over the weekend. And Dick Cheney had his annual autopsy.

The doctor told Bush his health was A-OK. And Bush told him, "Don’t give me the medical jargon, give it to me in language I can understand."

Bad news: America’s trade deficit swelled to an all-time high of $55.5 billion in October. You know what our biggest export is now? National Guard troops.

Yesterday the jury sentenced Scott Peterson to death. Not only that, they said they think Michael Jackson is guilty as hell, too.

It keeps getting worse for Scott Peterson – today Kobe accused him of making a pass at his wife.

Scott Peterson is on his way to San Quentin. Scott Peterson’s new home will be a 41-square-foot death row cell overlooking the bay. Or, as he tells Amber Frey, "a gated community with a view."

That’s what they said, Scott’s cell has an ocean view. How come death row has the best view? Do the other inmates go, "Who do I have to kill for a view like that?

Scott Peterson will have 20 years to think about the big mistake: not hiring Johnny Cochran.

But the good news is Scott Peterson is still a young man. In fact, he’s so young he may live long enough to be executed.

According to the latest international study of test scores, America’s 15-year-old boys don’t do nearly as good in math as students in 20 other nations. However, our 15-year-olds do much better with their math teacher.

Hey, Kev? How did Mike Tyson spend his day today? Fighting traffic.

It looks like Mike Tyson is getting more environmentally conscious. Today he beat up a hybrid car.

Regis Philbin will be filling in for Dick Clark this year, hosting the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. This could be the first time the crowd will be telling the host: "Will you settle down? ... please ... calm down!"

Letterman

Today I was walking down Fifth Avenue and that apartment building hawk swooped down and snatched my toupee.

It was cold in New York City today. It was so cold that Bernard Kerik was happy to receive heat from his wife.

Are you getting all the cards in the mail? I like Christmas cards. You get the pictures of the kids. Fifteen years ago it was pictures of kids: There’s Larry, there’s Kenny ... but now it’d be nice if you stopped once the kids reached age 38!

Today is the sixth anniversary of Bill Clinton being impeached. I think we can all remember the place we were when Clinton was being impeached. Bill, for example, was in the Oval Office having sex.

Conan

Lots of changes in baseball are being made right now in the off-season. The latest news is that Pedro Martinez will leave the Red Sox for the Mets. When asked why Pedro was going to the Mets, he said, "I’d like to get out of professional baseball."

Mike Tyson is in the news again. Last week Tyson jumped on a hood of a car and started attacking it. Not surprisingly, the car knocked Tyson out in two rounds.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has released their list of the worst-dressed, and Star Jones is at the top. Turns out the one fur coat Star Jones wears eliminated three species.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Open Season on Christians

According to Andy Williams, it is supposed to be "the most wonderful time of the year." As Christians, we celebrate the miracle birth of our Savior, the Son of God. It's the Christ part of Christmas. One wouldn't know that these days, however.

Kay R. Daly: It is the only religious holiday I am aware of that the meaning, history and significance is discussed only in hushed whispers for fear of offending somebody somewhere.

School children everywhere spend several classroom hours discussing Kwanza, Hannakah and Ramadan, but heaven help the teacher who discusses Christmas, teaches Christmas songs for a Christmas pageant that mention the baby Jesus, or even whisper the words "Merry Christmas."

Instead of nativity plays at school with sweet renditions of "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger", there are "Winter Pageants" with secular themes or religious themes celebrating every religion except Christianity. Nary a chorus of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" to be found today.

From school auditoriums kicking baby Jesus out of the manger to Macy's embracing only the innocuous "Seasons Greeting" message to ripping the Ten Commandments off of any visible surface, it is a short jump to the judicial confirmation battle.

People of faith who are nominated to the federal bench are subjected to a kind of purgatory, persecuted simply because of their beliefs. When Senators Chuck Schumer or Ted Kennedy demand that President Bush nominate judges who are "in the mainstream", what they really mean are judges who agree with them.

That so-called liberal tolerance seems to cover all bases but the Christian ones.

The secularization of America has been going on for quite some time and it would seem that the persecution of Christians will continue until we are forced to meet in secret talking hushed whispers and drawing the sign of the fish as a signal to other Christians. Oh wait, we've already been there, done that.

So what's next? Feeding us to lions? No, that's been done too.

Leno

Happy holidays everybody! I am so happy. I didn’t tell you this Kev. Today I crossed the first person off my Christmas list….Scott Peterson!

I guess you heard the jury has decided on the death penalty for Scott Peterson. This Peterson guy still doesn't get it - while the judge was reading the sentence he was on the phone with Amber Frey saying he was in Las Vegas.

Kind of ironic - you know what the jury said after the verdict? "We’re going fishing.”

But I thought this was nice, after the verdict of death, Mark Geragos, his attorney, turned to Scott and said, "I’ll knock 10% off.”

Mark Geragos also represented Winona Ryder. She was found guilty. Now he represented Scott Peterson. He was found guilty. Maybe we should take up a collection and get Mark Geragos to represent Robert Blake, Phil Spector, and Saddam Hussein. Keep this thing going. He’s got a roll going.

Nothing is going to happen to Scott Peterson for a long time. You know California has 637 prisoners on death row, more than any other state. Most of them have been there more than a quarter century. In fact, California has the only death row where you not only get a last meal, you get a gold watch too.

Our good friend Adam Sandler has a new movie out called "Spanglish”. Where hires a housekeeper who can’t speak English and this causes a lot of problems. No, I’m sorry that’s Bernard Kerik the Homeland Security guy.

President Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, Bernard Kerik, has withdrawn his name. He says it's because of nanny problems, but the "New York Daily” news says that Kerik cheated on his wife and he also cheated on his mistress with another woman. So now Bush thinks he might secretly be a Democrat.

Kerik says he withdrew because questions arose over a former nanny’s immigration status. Apparently she was working here illegally and he didn’t know it. He had no idea she was illegal. And today Kerik was offered security chief at Wal-Mart. They said he’s their kind of guy.

According to a new report, terrorists may try to use laser beams, like a laser pointer, to blind pilots and bring down jets. They say this is impossible to defend against. Unless the pilot has a pair of sunglasses.

Mike Tyson’s fight last night was stopped early. Apparently the airbag went off.

As I’m sure you heard, Mike Tyson was arrested last week in Phoenix, Arizona for jumping on a guy’s car and punching it. It looks like they’re going to make a movie out of it called "Boys on the Hood”!

Here’s an odd story - because the price of scrap metal has quadrupled in the last few months, people are stealing manhole covers around the world and selling them for scrap metal. The manhole covers are then melted down and then sold to companies that make manhole covers to replace all the stolen manhole covers.

Over in China, this Saturday, they are holding the world’s first Miss Plastic Surgery Contest. Or as we call that over here, the Oscars.

According to a new study just released today, fewer American teenagers are getting pregnant. Teen pregnancy is down. Apparently a lot of the kids we thought were pregnant are just obese.

One of the world’s most famous atheists, 81 year old British philosophy professor, Antony Flew said he came to his conclusion that he now believes in God based in part on science. And in part on the fact he’s now 81 years old! If your 81 it’s a good time to believe in God.

Kobe Bryant went into the stands at the Lakers game last night. Did you see that? Not to fight anyone, he was looking for Karl Malone.

Did you hear about that? Kobe is now accusing Malone of hitting on his wife at a Lakers game. Kobe said Malone made a pass at his wife. I guess Malone figured, "Hey somebody has to.

Kobe was furious. And if you’ve ever seen Kobe play, you know there’s nothing he hates more than making a pass.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

'Oil-for-Food' Bankrolled Clinton Library?

The investigation into the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal has turned up evidence that places Pardongate fugitive Marc Rich at the center of the probe, the New York Post revealed in its Monday editions.

"We -think [Rich] was a major player in this - a central figure," a senior law enforcement official told the Post.

NewsMax: The bombshell development raises new questions about whether some of Saddam Hussein's Oil-for-Food cash may have found its way into the hands of Rich's ex-wife Denise, who contributed heavily to Bill Clinton's presidential library during the years now under investigation.

A 2001 report by the House Government Reform Committee on the Rich clemency deal established that the fugitive billionaire had been dealing with Saddam since the early 1990s - a fact well-known to the CIA and other U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Investigators told the Post they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, put together deals between Saddam and his international supporters as part of the Oil-for-Food scam.

When it became known in January 2001 that the ex-president had pardoned Rich, probers immediately zeroed in on his ex-wife Denise, who had donated more than $1 million to Democratic campaigns - including Hillary Clinton's first Senate race - during the same period that Rich was doing business with Saddam.

Rich's ex also ponied up $450,000 for Clinton's library and donated the max to the Clintons' defense fund.

During public testimony before Congress in February 2001, Denise Rich invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, raising prosecutors' suspicions that she was covering up the money trail between her husband and the White House.

But new probes into Rich's role in Oil-for-Food could put the spotlight back on Clinton, who said during a recent interview about the opening of his library that the only thing he regretted about pardoning the fugitive billionaire was that it was misconstrued by the media.

Rush: One of the reasons that Marc Rich did not come back to the United States and didn't want to, is he didn't want to be served with a bunch of civil lawsuits. This guy, folks, Marc Rich is as dirty as you can possibly imagine.

I also recall one of the reasons why he needed the pardon from Clinton, there was an Interpol arrest warrant out on him. Remember, he was staying in one little country, and he couldn't flee, couldn't leave that country, couldn't move around.

Once he gets Clinton's pardon and gives enough money to Clinton organizations and what have you, the Democratic Party, bammo! It's back on the crime social circuit, traveling all over there arranging these oil-for-food deals. This is the single biggest scandal... It's up to 24, $25 billion now.

Monday, December 13, 2004

Liberal Bigotry, NYT-style

On Friday, the New York Times took Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to task for comments he made last Sunday about future Supreme Court nominations on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press." Trouble is, the NYT gave Mr. Reid a pass over his patronizing treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Nevada Democrat belittled Justice Thomas' record on the court as an "embarrassment," without providing a single substantive example of his supposed malfeasance. Moderator Tim Russert uncharacteristically let him get away with it.

Mr. Reid described Justice Scalia as "one smart guy" that he might be able to support. This was unacceptable to the liberal party-line apparatchiks who run the NYT editorial page, so Mr. Reid needed to be put in his place.

By failing to denounce Justice Scalia's "ultraextreme record," the paper solemnly intoned, Mr. Reid has "stepped on his first hornet's nest as leader." The paper expressed hope that Mr. Reid has been re-educated by orthodox Senate liberals, and that he now realizes "that flashes of brilliance hardly justify Mr. Scalia's retrogressive record on constitutional law."

What is most striking about the comments Mr. Reid made about Justice Thomas and the NYT made about Justice Scalia is how glibly they describe their targets as an "embarassment," or "retrogressive" or "ultraextreme" without providing any evidence to substantiate their attacks.

Their attitude is one of supreme arrogance: Mr. Reid and the NYT are liberals, they are smarter than the rest of us, they are morally superior to the rest of us, and they don't have to lower themselves to explain why conservatives are inferior and backward. Is it any wonder that people who behave this way lose election after election?


Leno

John Kerry has announced that he will go to Iraq next month...I guess he heard they’re having their presidential elections next month and Kerry thinks he’s got a shot this time.

I noticed that applause sounded stronger than normal. Have you folks been using that new Barry Bonds hand cream? Is that what it is?

Horrible news today for Barry Bonds, did you hear about this? It seems last night he got his steroid cream mixed up with his hemorrhoid cream an now they’re huge!

Mike Tyson was arrested this week in Scottsdale, Arizona, after punching out some guy’s car. For no reason, Tyson jumped on the hood and just started punching the car. The guy said having Mike Tyson punching his car wasn’t so bad. But when he bit off the side mirror….not good.

I got a new hood ornament on my car. Mike Tyson.

Hey Kev, did you hear Mike Tyson has a new show? It’s called "Pimp-Slap My Ride!”

They think this little incident will cost mike Tyson the job at the car wash.

Tyson now is demanding a rematch with the car in February.

I finally got my Christmas tree the other night. Remember when you had to tie the tree to the top of your car to get it home? Remember that? Well these new cars are so big, most trees fit inside. In fact, the new Cadillac escalade actually has a Christmas tree holder right in the dash.

Scientists now say if you want you Christmas tree to last longer and look better, put vodka in the base. Isn’t that a waste? Giving your tree vodka to make it look better? I saw drink the vodka yourself and then everything will look better.

You know the hot gift this Christmas? Chemistry sets. Especially if your kid wants to play Major League Baseball.

Get him one of these. He can make his own steroids.

Earlier tonight the WB will broadcast the Christmas classic "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. It was followed by a rebuttal from Mark Geragos on how the Grinch really wasn’t that bad a guy and he was always punctual.

Things are not looking good for Scott Peterson. The judge was talking to the jury about whether or not to do the death penalty, and it looked like the jurors were all taking notes – turns out they were playing hangman.

The Scott Peterson jury is having trouble finding the right punishment for him. The problem is; you can only kill him once. And that doesn’t seem like enough.

A Washington state supreme court has ruled it’s illegal for a parent to eavesdrop on their children’s phone conversations without their consent. So the state is telling parents they can’t listen to "their” kids on the phone they pay for. And of course once the kid commits a crime, who does the state blame? The parents.

Dick Clark had a mild stroke, or as Dick calls it, a blooper.

We want to give our best to Dick Clark. Doctors say he should make a full recovery. In fact the doctor listened to dick’s heart with the stethoscope…said it had a good beat…gave it a 10. And you could dance to it.

Man, I saw a really bad holiday special on TV last night: "Michael Jackson’s Barely Legal Christmas”. Horrible thing that was.

The latest in the Michael Jackson case seems to be that police have found Michael’s fingerprints and the 13 year old boy’s fingerprints on Michael Jackson’s pornography collection suggesting he was reading pornography with the child. If only Michael had worn that other glove, huh?

Sunday, December 12, 2004

News Media, Hollywood and Academia

They dominate the news media, Hollywood and academia. They teach us, tell us the news, show us their documentaries, television programs and movies. And yet, they can't get us to vote for their guy, the Democrat. Why not?

Paul Jacob: If space aliens approaching our planet were informed that liberals — supportive of Democrats and hostile to Republicans — control the media, academia and the entertainment industry, the aliens might reasonably expect Democrats to be popular and in power.

They would be badly mistaken, of course. But why? What has allowed conservative Republicans to overcome so much public chattering against them? Republicans are on the ascendancy and now control all three branches of the federal government.

Yet, the Democrats have somehow retained the mantle of the party of government — a VERY BIG government, largely unpopular with the American people. (And, shhhhhhh, run by Republicans.)

First let's demonstrate that liberals, progressives, Democrats, whatever-you-call 'em, control these institutions of mass instruction. Survey after survey of the media shows its leaders and workers are overwhelmingly liberal and vote for Democrats, often diametrically opposite the public's majority viewpoint.

As for a liberal slant in Hollywood, well, Hollywood has "progressed" even beyond most progressives. And those who doubt the slant need only turn on their TV set or go to a movie.

In higher education, the liberal bias is even greater. In a recent column, entitled "The Left's last paradise," George Will writes, "One study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring."

Republicans will continue to win as long as Democrats remain the first party of big government. That wouldn't be so bad, if only Republicans would stop being the second party of big government.

Life Explained

(Sent to us by Martha Branson of Ga)

I love it when things are simplified!

On the first day God created the dog. God said,
"Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in
or walks past
. I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said, "That's too long to be barking. Give me ten years
and I'll give you back the other ten." So God agreed.

On the second day God created the monkey. God said,
"Entertain people, do monkey tricks, make them laugh.
I'll give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said, "How boring, monkey tricks for twenty years?
I don't think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that's what I'll
do too, okay?" And God agreed.

On the third day God created the cow. God said,
"You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and
suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support
the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said, "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live
for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I'll give back the other
forty." And God agreed again.

On the forth day God created man. God said,
"Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I'll give you twenty years."

Man said, "What? Only twenty years! Tell you what, I'll take my
twenty, and the forty the cow gave back and the ten the monkey
gave back and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?"
"Okay," said God, "You've got a deal."

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and
enjoy ourselves
; for the next forty years we slave in the sun to
support our family
; for the next ten years we do monkey tricks
to entertain the grandchildren; and for the last ten years
we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.

Life has now been explained to you.

Thanks to Martha Branson of Ga

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Republicans Outbreed Democrats

Democrats' endless and often clueless stewing over the GOP's latest election triumphs just keeps getting funnier. Now they're worried, with some justification, that fertile young conservatives are replacing dried-up old liberals.

David Brooks summarizes the issue: "They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do."

"Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling."

Oh, the agony of missing Hollywood's "sophisticated movies." Heavens, could there be people who'd rather raise their children than catch a double bill of "Kinsey" and "Saw"?

"People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast," Brooks says.

"You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates."

In Orlando today, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., hectored the aging members of Democratic National Committee that "you aren't doing enough to replace yourself when you are too old and tired to keep going."

Yet the liberal New Republic frets: "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales [such as] San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

USA Today notes that President Bush won 474 of the nation's 573 fast-growing micropolitan areas (places too urban to be rural but too small to be metropolitan).


Leno

I did the dumbest thing last night. I was buying my Christmas tree, and I let the salesman talk me into the three-year extended warranty. Uhhh! Idiot….so stupid. I don’t really need it.

I guess the jury is now in deliberations for the Scott Peterson trial and people say that Scott Peterson jury has a tough choice ahead of it – regular or extra crispy.

Strange thing happened last night….I didn’t tell you this Kev…I rubbed some of Barry Bond’s skin cream on my Toyota. Now it’s a muscle car.

As you know, steroids have become a huge problem in professional sports. Like look at the Lakers. Apparently they aren’t taking enough of them.

I think these baseball players on steroids set a bad example for young fans. It’s not like the good old days, when kids could lookup to alcoholics like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. Wife beaters, where are those guys?

Now the baseball players union and the league have outlined a new drug testing program. It’s totally new. This time they’ll actually test for drugs.

In one of Washington’s great ironies, President Bush passed the intelligence bill; that’s like Bill Clinton passing the celibacy bill.

As part of the new intelligence reform bill there are guarantees of huge changes in immigration enforcement. From now on no one can get in without a proper visa or a good curveball.

I read in the paper today, that a lot of Americans when they travel to avoid trouble claim to be Canadian. In fact they also do it when they’re looking for prescription drugs.

Today the supreme court of Canada ruled in favor of gay marriage. To which President Bush said, "I got out of there just in time.”

Yesterday, Senator Joe Biden announced that he will decide whether he’s going to run for president in 2008 in about 2 years. What kind of announcement is this? He holds a press conference to basically say he made an announcement that he had no announcement. He just wanted to announce that he had nothing to announce for 2 years.

A couple in Deltona, Florida have gone on strike against their 12 year old daughter and 17 year old son. The parents have actually moved out of the house and into a tent in the front yard. Is that supposed to be some kind of punishment? Every kid in the country is going "hey, why won’t you do that mom…”

Mike Tyson came out of a nightclub in Arizona, attacked some guy’s Toyota Solara and started punching the front end. He pummeled the front end of the car. You know what he was charged with don’t you? Assault on a battery.

After fighting the Toyota, Mike said he’s going to move up to a different weight class. He wants to fight an SUV.

Carl’s Jr. announced a new burger called the pastrami burger. It’s pastrami on a hamburger. That’s when you know we’re getting too fat when we’re using meat as a condiment for other meat. "Let me put a little pastrami on that for you.”

This week in Bogota, Columbia a comedian has set a new world record for telling jokes for 65 hours straight. Gee I wonder how a guy in Columbia was able to stay awake for 65 hours straight?!

More problems for Michael Jackson. Today his inner child filed a restraining order against him.

The "National Enquirer” says the police found Michael Jackson’s stash of porn in a briefcase at the Neverland Ranch. See, that just shows you how truly strange Michael Jackson is – what guy hides his porno in a briefcase. You hide it in your sock drawer like any good American.

"Indiana Jones 4” is going to happen. Sixty-two year old Harrison Ford is returning to the starring role. Sixty-two? I think the new one’s called "Indiana Jones: The Quest for Fiber”.

"Indiana Jones”? Sounds more like "Barnaby Jones” doesn’t it?

In fact, I understand there’s a big chase scene on a Rascal scooter.

Anybody watch the Barbara Walters special last night, "Ten Most Fascinating People”? In her interview last night with Barbara Walters, Paris Hilton said that she reads books. Well that’s pretty amazing for a 23 year old, huh? I understand she reads at a 24 year old level.

Only in California are people impressed that a 23 year old would read a book.

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