Open Threads

I bought a new fruit tonight called a Grapple, which is a special apple that has been soaked or something to have the texture and juiciness of a Fuji Apple and the taste of Concord Grapes. Enough of the science- on to my review.

It was awesome. I always refrigerate my apples for about 2-3 hours beore I eat them so they are crunchy and cool, and I did the same with this one.

They were pricy- four for $4.00, butI wanted to try something new. Since my favorite fruits are Bosc pears, Asian pears, and Red Delicious Apples (close runners up are raspberries and pineapple, followed by peaches, and strawberries), and, this was a real treat- the taste of grape with a texture I really like.

In short, go out and buy some, so they will begin to really mass produce these babies and the price will fall.

BTw- in case you are wondering- my favorite fruit/vegetable in the world is the tomato. I could eat 3-4 fresh tomatoes every day. I like em with salt and pepper, I like tomato sandwiches with mustard, tomato sandwiches with mayo, tomato salad, tomatoes with mozzerella, fresh basil, and olive oil. Don’t get me started, or I will started to sound like Bubba from Forrest Gump.

Oh- and take a slice of bread, throw two thick slices of tomato on it, cover it with a piece of cheese, and toast it in the over for a few minutes. Heaven on earth. I can’t wait for summer.

Bio-FoodsPost + Comments (15)

Good:

A Ramona man maliciously ticketed over five years by California Highway Patrol officers has been awarded $4.5 million by a Superior Court jury.

Attorneys for Steve Grassilli, 44, said he was targeted by the officers after he lodged a complaint against one of them.

After yesterday’s verdict, several jurors said they hoped the millions of dollars in punitive damages would send a message to the CHP. The CHP was not named as a defendant in the case, but the agency typically pays monetary awards when its officers are sued, said Greg Garrison, one of Grassilli’s attorneys.

“We caught them in so many lies. I hope this shakes up the CHP like you can’t believe,” said juror Saudra Swanson of El Cajon. “I was totally insulted by it all.”

Grassilli’s attorneys, Garrison and Michael Strain, said the six-week trial revealed a pattern in which CHP officers were told to lie in court to protect their fellow officers. Two officers refused to lie, and their version of events supported Grassilli’s case, his lawyers said.

Grassilli filed a complaint in March 1997 after hearing that a CHP officer had removed the catalytic converter from a pickup truck the officer owned, Garrison and Strain said.

After that, the officer, Richard Eric Barr, began ticketing Grassilli and a supplier who worked with him. Barr and Grassilli had never had any contact before Grassilli filed the complaint.

The ticketing was so frequent that Grassilli’s supplier stopped working with him, ruining Grassilli’s business installing 10,000-gallon water tanks for new homes.

Grassilli was stopped 13 times over five years for smog violations, having an obstructed view in his vehicle, or improperly hauling the water tanks, he said. The CHP is responsible for traffic enforcement in the unincorporated areas of the county.

Garrison said that instead of giving Grassilli a courtesy notice about an improperly registered vehicle, Barr’s supervisor, Michael Toth, told officers to hold off on ticketing Grassilli for six months. Then they impounded Grassilli’s truck.

Is there anything worse than corrupt cops? Maybe pedophile priests. Or Terry McAuliffe.

Justice ServedPost + Comments (3)

Really, now. The Democrats are now such spinmeisters and liars they are sucked into their own deceit:

Like many people, I’m puzzled that the Bushies have decided to unleash the attack dogs on the issue of John Kerry’s Vietnam service. It’s possible, of course, that they know something I don’t and have some devious trick up their sleeves that I can’t figure out, but the most obvious consequence of doing this is that it gives the press an excuse to revive the issue of George Bush’s military service, which until now had been allowed to die a conveniently quiet death.

Ok, Kevin, here is your challenge.

Show me one newsclip, interview, presss release, commercial, or quote from Bush, Cheney, anyone in the White House, or anyone at the Bush/Cheney HQ, or anyone at the RNC who has either questioned Kerry’s patriotism or his military record. Just one.

There have been afew rogue Republican congressmen who are also Vietnam vets who are pissed about Kerry’s post-war antics, and Karen Hughes mentioned Kerry’s lie about his medals, but that is it.

On the other hand, I can show you volumes of quotes from Terry McAuliffe and the DNC, Kerry himself, and hundreds of Democrats attacking Bush and calling him AWOL.

No one has questioned his service or patriotism, but you, under the guise of faux amazement, are bringing up this strawman to launch another ham-handed (should I just say typical?) assault on Bush’s record. You are also now resurrecting your ludicrous ‘file-cleansing meme.’

It is clear that Kevin’s goal is to create so many lies that not all of them can be refuted in a tiely enough fashion, and therefore might do some damage. Of course, once they are refuted, Kevin will just age them a few months and bring them back up again. Heya Ezra- fill me in on you moderates, again, will ya?

Kevin Drum- Master of Straw.

The Lies Just Keep ContinuingPost + Comments (11)

Janet Reno does not inspire confidence.

GoodnessPost + Comments (3)

The Dodd remarks have received no press other than Fox News, Roll Call, and the Washington Times, which, given the belated media response to the Lott comments, is surprising. Well, maybe it isn’t- that (D) at the end of an elected official’s name really can serve as a remarable shield.

What is surprising, however, is that I have not seen one liberal blogger comment on the affaiir, which leads me to pose this question:

If a liberal congrssman yells N—-R in the woods, would Atrios and Josh Marshall hear it?

Let’s do a quick rundown. Lott’s remarks about former Kluxer and separatist Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond:

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Dodd’s remarks about former Klan member and current Senator Robert Byrd:

“It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time,” said Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

I guess someone will have to explain the nuance and show me how these remarks are appreciably different.

Oh, and not that I am counting, but Mr. Talking Points penned not one, not two, but TWENTY-FIVE (25) pieces about the Lott affair (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25). Oh, and btw, those 25 pieces were written in an eight day period. To be honest, after 16 December 2002, I quit counting Marshall’s bloviating.

Fair and balanced, indeed. For extra giggles, here is a fun quote for you to chew on:

“If a Democratic leader had made [Lott’s] statements, we would have to call for his stepping aside, without any question whatsoever.” – Senator Chris Dodd, (D-CT)

Fair and balanced.

*** Update ***

More on the issue…

The Democrat Credo: Do as I SayPost + Comments (22)

By now you have heard Teddy Chappaquiddick’s speech blasting President Bush, which, I must admit, was rather uneventful for me. it contained the same rhetoric the senior drunk driver from Masachussetts has employed for about the last two years, and was in my mind rather unremarkable except that it inspired the folks over at Tacitus’s site to come up with a minor quip, as they labeled the speech the Ted Offensive. If you have not seen or heard the speech, here is a bit, with the relevant part in bold:

By going to war in Iraq on false pretenses and neglecting the real war on terrorism, President Bush gave al-Qaeda two years — two whole years — to regroup and recover in the border regions of Afghanistan. As the terrorist bomings in Madrid and other reports now indicate, al-Qaeda has used that time to plant terrorist cells in countries throughout the word, and establish ties with terrorist groups in many different lands.

By going to war in Iraq, we have strained our ties with long-standing allies around the world — allies whose help we clearly and urgently need on intelligence, on law enforcement, and militarily. We have made America more hated in the world, and made the war on terrorism harder to in.

The result is a massive and very dangerous crisis in our foreign policy. We have lost the respect of other nations in the world. Where do we go to get our respect back? How do we re-establish the working relationships we need with other countries to win the war on terrorism and advance the ideals we share? How can we possibly expect President Bush to do that. He’s the problem, not the solution. Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam, and this country needs a new President.

Predictably, the Vietnam reference has created quite a stir, and when I heard the Vietnam line- it was immediately clear what Kennedy was attempting to do. Kennedy wanted to call Bush a liar, and Kennedy wanted to invoke the failure, humilation, and loss of America’s worst debacle. With a reference to Vietnam, he accomplished both.

Not so, says Mark Kleiman– he was just trying to say that Bush was deceiving the country in the manner that LBJ and others did during the Vietnam era. Now granted- Mark typed this, so I don’t know if he did so with a straight face, or maybe he just wanted another chance to join the chorus of those attacking the Instapundit at every opportunity, but the notion that Kennedy invoked Vietnam simply to raise the notion of a credibility gap is just absurd.

Vietnam wa/is a complex era, and for a Senator of Kennedy’s prominent stature (pun intended) to invoke Vietnam is to conjure up a large number of memories. Chief among them is not deceit. Chief among them is the loss of 50,000 Americans in a war that many later came to believe was wrong (as many believed it was wrong at the time, as well). If kennedy wanted to conjure up the image of deceit, betrayal, and dishonesty, there is another standard-bearer that he could have chose from the same era:

Watergate.

But he chose the words he used for a reason, and despite the best efforts of his spinmeister’s in the blogosphere, people understood what he meant. And, I might note, others overseas understood what he meant:

Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric, warned the United States on Wednesday that Iraq would become another Vietnam-like conflict if Washington did not transfer power to ”honest Iraqis.”

The cleric whose militia followers have battled coalition and Iraqi security forces across the country for days accused members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council of being ”collaborators” and said ”they do not represent the Iraqi people.”

”I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis,” al-Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the southern city of Najaf.

”Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers,” the statement said.

Kennedy’s careless rhetoric is now being used as a rallying cry for a despicable Islamo-fascist who represents the opinions of an extremely small minority of the population of Iraq, and whose troops are currently engaged in hostilities with our men abroad. Of course, I fully expect that by pointing this out, I will be accused of trying to ‘stifle dissent.’

Hardly- Kennedy had his say, he said what he meant and presumably meant what he said, and now it is being used as agitprop in a battle against our men and women. No number of excuses from Kleiman and Kennedy can evade that.

*** Update ***

I just finished typing this- and then the Fox News panel has the same discussion.

Useful IdiotsPost + Comments (35)

I am about as anti-tax as is possible, but this sure does stick in my craw for some reason:

More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn’t pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000, years when the economy boomed and corporate profits soared, Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal reported, citing the investigative arm of Congress.

The disclosures from the General Accounting Office are certain to fuel the debate over corporate tax payments in the presidential campaign. Corporate tax receipts have shrunk markedly as a share of overall federal revenue in recent years, and were particularly depressed when the economy soured. By 2003, they had fallen to just 7.4% of overall federal receipts, the lowest rate since 1983, and the second-lowest rate since 1934, federal budget officials say.

Fix the damned tax code. Pronto. If I am way off base here- explain to me why these corporations shouldn’t have to pay SOMETHING.

Corporate WelfarePost + Comments (43)