Saturday, October 16, 2004

Pryor appointment upheld

Fox News reports that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has confirmed that President Bush was acting within his powers when he used a one week senate recess to make a recess appointment to the court, David Pryor, who had been yet another victim of the Daschle/Kennedy judicial freezeout. Kennedy, who is the leader of what can only be described as a crusade against Pryor, unsuccessfully attempted to invalidate the appointment in June as well, but that challenge was rebuffed by the court. Since his second attempt to remove Pryor has failed, he is challenging Pryor again, arguing a Pryor ruling in a civil rights case. It is another case of Democratic Party carpet bombing, or destruction by insinuation. They did it to Newt Gingrich (almost 100 charges were filed against Gingrich by David Bonior, only one of which stuck, and Gingrich was eventually cleared), and against Bush (the endless, and baseless, rehashing of Bush's TXANG record), and against several of Bush's other judicial nominees. Bush essentially flipped off Kennedy with the recess appointment, although he should have really made a statement by appointing somebody like Robert Bork, which probably would have caused Fat Teddy to stroke out, eliminating one of the biggest (literally) impediments to his judicial nominees.

Kennedy had a typically arrogant response to the ruling:

"It's hard to imagine a more flagrant attempt by the president to bypass the constitutional requirement of Senate consent in appointing a federal judge."

And it's equally hard to imagine a more flagrant attempt by a minority of senators to bypass the constitutional requirement of Senate consent in allowing a vote for appointing a federal judge. Never before has even one judicial appointment been filibustered, and simply on ideological grounds, rather than real questions of judicial fitness. (Owen and Estrada were unaminously judged as well-qualified by the American Bar Association, but Daschle, Kennedy, Schumer, Leahy and a few others have led the Democratic Party to filibuster them and a host of other Bush nominees.)

posted at 08:32 PM | permalink | Comments (1)

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

A little more...

Expanding on Sinclair Broadcasting (my previous post), I looked at their affiliate list (here). Sinclair has stations in five of the 25 largest television markets (#13 Tampa, #14Minneapolis, #19 Sacramento, #21 St. Louis, and #22 Pittsburgh). Their station in Tampa is channel 38, the WB affiliate. It's a UHF station for the #5 network. Additionally, they do not own this station; they only have a Local Marketing Agreement. In Minneapolis, channel 23 is also a UHF WB affiliate. Their Sacramento affiliate, channel 13 (CBS) is their only large market VHF station, and the only one on top-ranked CBS. In St. Louis, their affiliate is channel 20, an ABC affiliate. Major network, but still a UHF station. Lastly, in Pittsburgh, they have two stations, channel 53 (FOX) and channel 22 (WB). Again, both of these channels are UHF stations on smaller networks. The advent of cable TV has lessened the liability of operating on a UHF frequency, but people in outlying areas without cable are still far less likely to be able to pick them up.

posted at 09:40 PM | permalink | Comments (2)

Another quiz

This is one of the stranger ones I've seen. The scary thing is that it is plausible, except for the pink. I don't do pink or purple.

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Here is the text accompanying the results:

Sometime Marquis of Tichfield, Earl of Portland, Viscount Woodstock, Baron of Cirencester, co-heir to the Barony of Ogle and renowned as the finest judge of horseflesh in England, you took the tradition of aristocratic eccentricity to unprecedented heights. Having inherited the stately home of Welbeck Abbey, you proceeded to construct miles of underground tunnels and a ballroom, in pink, beneath it. The ballroom was complete except for one small detail. It had no floor. Despite this vast home, you lived exclusively in a suite of five rooms, each one also pink.

Having been turned down by your opera singer objet d'amour, Adelaide Kemble, in your youth, you suffered a broken heart and never married. This did not stop you from caring deeply about the wellbeing of your servants. Occasionally you would even help them muck out the stables. However, you did not neglect discipline, forcing disobedient underlings to skate themselves to exhaustion on your subterranean skating rink. Servants were given strict instructions regarding conduct: if they met you in a corridor, they were to ignore your existence while you froze to the spot until they were out of sight; and a chicken was to be kept roasting at all times in case you felt like sneaking into the kitchen for a snack.

You became ever more eccentric with age. You built another tunnel, this time to the railway station, through which you would ride your carriage. When you reached the station your carriage, with you inside, would be hoisted up onto the train in its entirety.

Upon your death, your multitude of titles passed to your cousin, who was obliged to delve into your curious domain to find your body once the servants had reported your absence. Entering your private rooms, he found that, aside from a commode in the centre of your bedroom, the only objects in the whole suite were hundreds of hatboxes, each containing a single brown wig.

(Link found buried in the archives over at The Volokh Conspiracy.)

posted at 03:48 PM | permalink | Comments (3)

Thoughts on Sinclair

By now, everybody knows that Sinclair Broadcasting, a company with 62 TV stations, is going to run a 90 minute movie critical of John Kerry's actions upon his return from Vietnam in the early 1970's. Every news article (and the histrionic press release from the DNC in an attempt to prevent its broadcast) makes note of the significant chunks of cash donated by Sinclair Broadcasting's employees (about $55,000). Even articles that are neutral or somewhat sympathetic to Sinclair raise this point, as if it were an indictment of some type—They contributed money to Bush, so they must be partisan. Well, I took a look at some figures from the Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org) and found some interesting numbers. Let's look at employee contributions to Bush, Kerry, the DNC, and the RNC this election cycle. This does not include contributions to other Democratic presidential candidates, to congressional candidates (overwhelmingly Democratic offerings), or to 527 groups such as MoveOn (which are again overwhelmingly Democratic adjuncts).

ABC:
Kerry—$16150
Bush—$2000
DNC—$28450
RNC—$0

CBS:
Kerry—$20700
Bush—$1000
DNC—$34954
RNC—$0

NBC:
Kerry—$34450
Bush—$1500
DNC—$4450
RNC—$0

Time Warner (owns CNN, the WB, and AOL):*
Kerry—$31729
Bush—$29300
DNC—$29490
RNC—$1300

Viacom (owns UPN and many cable channels):
Kerry—$35305
Bush—$7400
DNC—$76950
RNC—$750

Yahoo! (Major web portal and search engine):
Kerry—$45800
Bush—$11700
DNC—$52750
RNC—$50250

Google (Major web portal and search engine):
Kerry—$35750
Bush—$3250
DNC—$59000
RNC—$0

*Some of you probably noticed that asterisk next to Time Warner. I noticed as I sifted through the data for them that there was a distinct disparity in donations from the cable side of the house, IRT to the rest of the company. I re-sorted the data and came up with this:

Time Warner (excluding T-W Cable):
Kerry—$29229
Bush—$12850
DNC—$27340
RNC—$500

Time Warner Cable:
Kerry—$2500
Bush—$16450
DNC—$2100
RNC—$800

These numbers bring Time Warner's figures in much closer to the other companies listed above.

So, what does all this mean? If Sinclair is biased simply because of their donation pattern, all of the above companies are similarly tainted, only in the opposite direction.

Some will complain that Sinclair is attempting to influence the election. If so, then why are they not going after newspapers that endorse candidates? After all, both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have endorsed Kerry; using McAuliffe's logic (and I use the term loosely) they should be getting the same treatment from the Republicans. Additionally, these people are not upset about Michael Moore's plan to run Fahrenheit 9/11 the night before the election on pay-per-view. It's not quite the same thing, as pay-per-view requires a conscious effort on the part of the viewer to seek it out and pay $10 to see it, but people who do not want to watch Stolen Honor will be able to change the channel. The Democrats are taking the arrogant approach (again) that the people are mindless sheep, unable to change the channel because they can't find The Gilmore Girls that night. Apparently, they feel that viewing anything that is not pre-screened by the Democratic Party will bring about the downfall of the nation. In this case, the only thing that will fall down is John Kerry's already shaky stature. It also bears noting that Sinclair's channels only reach 24 percent of the country; Moore's pay-per-view thing will be nationwide. In both cases, however, the First Amendment protects their right to free expression, and the Fairness Doctrine is dead and buried, so the "equal time" demands emanating from DNC headquarters is just empty partisan sniveling.

posted at 11:57 AM | permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday, October 10, 2004

What a disappointment

...the Spanish have turned out to be under their lousy new socialist government. Bill Quick links to a New York Post column from John J. Miller that notes that what appeared to be a new tradition between the United States and Spain was summarily ended by the anti-American government now in power in Madrid.

French soldiers have been invited to march in tomorrow's annual procession marking Dia de la Hispanidad, which is the Spanish version of Columbus Day. They're replacing U.S. Marines who have been disinvited from participating.

Three years ago, in a gesture of solidarity following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Spain asked the Marines to take part in this annual celebration. They were invited back in 2002 and 2003. It looked like a new tradition was in the making.

But Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has put a stop to that. "What does not continue," explained Defense Minister Jose Bono, "is subordination and getting down on our knees on orders from a foreign government."

It sure didn't stop them from bending over for their partners-in-appeasement from the north, however. As noted by CGHill in Bill's comments, Madrid has no problem servicing Islamofascists, because they don't have a governmental mantle.

In seven months, Spain has gone from our second-strongest ally in Europe (behind only Britain) to a virulently hostile nation. I had not been actively avoiding buying Spanish goods (as I had been for French, Belgian, German, and Greek goods), but they're on my boycott list now. After all, the Spanish electorate nominated these scumbags; they can find someone else's money to take. Spanish olives and wine can be replaced by Italian, Californian, and Australian equivalents.

posted at 04:21 PM | permalink | Comments (1)