Democratic senators in liberal-infested states like California or Massachusetts don’t have much to worry about, but many Democratic senators in middle America should carefully consider supporting Judge Alito. Americans have become increasingly aware that Judge Alito is a highly-qualified candidate and think that he should be confirmed.

Our own South Bay Daily Breeze published an editorial today that joins the Washington Times in questioning the effects of a party-line vote on Judge Samuel Alito.

Party-line vote would be mistake

This week the Senate is expected to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of federal appeals Judge Samuel Alito, a former prosecutor and Justice Department attorney who won the American Bar Association’s highest recommendation. Months of digging by journalists, Democratic operatives and Senate investigators turned up near-uniform testimonials from people of all ages and backgrounds who swear by Alito’s brilliance, kind temperament, work ethic and devotion to the law. Attempts to smear Alito on extenuated guilt-by-association grounds and with wafer-thin conflict-of-interest allegations went nowhere.

Yet only a handful of the Senate’s 44 Democrats are expected to vote to confirm Alito. If this occurs, it will be unprecedented, outrageous and unfortunate.

It is unprecedented in that while nominees have been rejected or faced substantial opposition before, it was on grounds that they were too close to the White House, lacked a suitable temperament or background, or, in the case of Clarence Thomas, faced sexual harassment allegations. It was not because senators objected en masse to their judicial ideology. This is why Democratic President Bill Clinton’s liberal but highly qualified nominees — Ruth Bader Ginsburg (confirmed 96-3) and Stephen Breyer (confirmed 87-9) — won such easy approval.

It is outrageous because it is one more sign of the Democratic Party’s embrace of the blind anger of its activist wing against President Bush.

more . . .

Maybe some of you folks have already seen this. A friend sent this to me today, and I had not seen it before. I grew up in the years just after WWII, my Dad fought in it and I found it deeply touching - so keep the tissues box handy . . .

Image: Aerial View of WWII Memorial, Washington D.C. (Photo by Rick Latoff/American Battle Monuments Commission)

The elderly parking lot attendant wasn’t in a good mood!

Neither was Sam Bierstock. It was around 1 a.m., and Bierstock, a Delray Beach, Fla. , eye doctor, business consultant, corporate speaker and musician, was bone tired after appearing at an event.

He pulled up in his car, and the parking attendant began to speak. “I took two bullets for this country and look what I’m doing,” he said bitterly.

At first, Bierstock didn’t know what to say to the World War II veteran. But he rolled down his window and told the man, “Really, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you.”

Then the old soldier began to cry.

“That really got to me,” Bierstock says.

Cut to today.

Bierstock, 58, and John Melnick, 54, of Pompano Beach - a member of Bierstock’s band, Dr. Sam and the Managed Care Band - have written a song inspired by that old soldier in the airport parking lot. The mournful “Before You Go” does more than salute those who fought in WWII. It encourages people to go out of their way to thank the aging warriors before they die.

“If we had lost that particular war, our whole way of life would have been shot,” says Bierstock, who plays harmonica. “The WW II soldiers are now dying at the rate of about 2,000 every day. I thought we needed to thank them.”

The song is striking a chord. Within four days of Bierstock placing it on the Web http://www.beforeyougo.us/ , the song and accompanying photo essay have bounced around nine countries, producing tears and heartfelt thanks from veterans, their sons and daughters and grandchildren.

“It made me cry,” wrote one veteran’s son. Another sent an e-mail saying that only after his father consumed several glasses of wine would he discuss “the unspeakable horrors” he and other soldiers had witnessed in places such as Anzio, Iwo Jima, Bataan and Omaha Beach. “I can never thank them enough,” the son wrote. “Thank you for thinking about them.”

Bierstock and Melnick thought about shipping it off to a professional singer, maybe a Lee Greenwood type, but because time was running out for so many veterans, they decided it was best to release it quickly, for free, on the Web. They’ve sent the song to Sen. John McCain and others in Washington. Already they have been invited to perform it in Houston for a Veterans Day tribute - this after just a few days on the Web. They hope every veteran in America gets a chance to hear it.

GOD BLESS every veteran…and thank you !

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO HEAR THE SONG AND SEE THE PICTURES:

Dr. Sam and the Frivolous Action Blues Band

Lottery: a tax on mathematically-challenged people.

I found this concept to be interesting. From SPACE.com:

A Space Lottery: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

I suggest a National Space Lottery as a new way of funding space flight systems, promoting space tourism and paying for the tickets of those who would fly. Many have spoken of our goals in space, but few offer ways to pay for them. The following proposal offers a possible solution.

The National Space Society should promote creation of a National Space Lottery. Ideally, this might become an International Space Lottery, and would offer the possibility of space flight, as a prize, to every man, woman and child on earth.

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A Space Lottery would generate enormous worldwide publicity, a new fascination with space. Prizewinners would be followed like those of modern “Reality TV” shows. An International Space Lottery would be ideal. People all over the world, rich and poor, would share in the possibility of a ride into space. Space tourism could soon become a reality. Men, women and children everywhere sense that the destiny of humanity is elsewhere, and want to be part of the dream.

Just what does the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post (and a number of other liberal rags) expect will happen when they constantly filter the news and blatantly lie about current events? Thanks to a few conservative outlets, Fox News Channel in particular and the bloggers, newspapers are being exposed for their bias and are in a slump. We believe that network televised news like CBS, ABC and NBC will follow suit unless they get the bias out of their reporting. MSNBC, CNN and other left-slanted cable outlets already dwell in the ratings cellar.

From Dow Jones News:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The nation’s newspaper companies are expected to end 2005 on a weak note as the industry grapples with a persistent advertising malaise and declining circulation.

Newspapers will see a median drop in profit of about 10.9% from a year ago, according to a forecast from Goldman Sachs. That would mark the third consecutive quarter of earnings declines, with a slump of 10.6% in the third quarter and 3.2% in the second quarter, Goldman said.

Newspaper companies began reporting their latest quarterly financial results on Wednesday with Lee Enterprises Inc. (LEE), which posted a 16% drop in its fiscal first-quarter earnings, hurt by costs associated with its June acquisition of Pulitzer Inc. Other newspaper companies will start reporting their quarterly results next week.

Newspaper ad revenue will probably gain a scant 1% to 2% in the fourth quarter, its weakest performance of the year, said Peter Appert, who follows the publishing industry for Goldman.

“It’s pretty much the same variables that we’ve seen all year: softness in the retail ad category and very disappointing auto ad trends,” Appert said. “National has been a mixed bag.” Help-wanted and real-estate advertising have seen some strength, but not enough to offset the weakness elsewhere, he added.

Circulation, which accounts for roughly 20% to 25% of industry revenue and is an important metric for setting ad rates, also is expected to drag on results.

Circulation revenue has been “declining hard,” said Fred Searby, publishing analyst at J.P. Morgan.

Part of the drop is because many publishers have been cleaning up their circulation practices in the wake of scandals involving falsified figures at a handful of papers, which have resulted in steeper than usual declines in reported circulation figures across the industry.

“That’s a one-off hit,” Searby said. But the trends in circulation “are bad anyway,” amid competition from the Internet and 24-hour news channels, he added.

Of course, the left will ignore the hard science and embrace the “blame US industry” and “blame Bush” for not signing up for the flawed Kyoto Accord.

Unusually high solar “X-flare” activity may explain the unusually intense 2005 hurricane season. The numbers and intensity of the flares since the last solar maximum have relentlessly bombarded the Earth with high-energy particles and magnetic flux. The effect of these flares includes a high number of hurricanes, and lightning in the eyewalls of the most intense storms.

First, the cause:

NASA - Solar Minimum Explodes

[On September 7, 2005] a huge sunspot rounded the sun’s eastern limb. As soon as it appeared, it exploded, producing one of the brightest x-ray solar flares of the Space Age. In the days that followed, the growing spot exploded eight more times. Each powerful “X-flare” caused a shortwave radio blackout on Earth and pumped new energy into a radiation storm around our planet. The blasts hurled magnetic clouds toward Earth, and when they hit, on Sept 10th and 11th, ruby-red auroras were seen as far south as Arizona. (Photo: the skies above Payson AZ on Sept. 11, 2005. Photo credit: Chris Schur.)

. . .

“That’s a lot of activity,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Compare 2005 to the most recent Solar Max: “In the year 2000,” he recalls, “there were 3 severe geomagnetic storms and 17 X-flares.” 2005 registers about the same in both categories. Solar minimum is looking strangely like Solar Max.

One unusual effect:

NASA - Electric Hurricanes

January 9, 2006: The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.

Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms–Rita, Katrina, and Emily–did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.

Right: An infrared GOES 11 satellite image of Hurricane Emily. Yellow + and - symbols mark lightning bolts detected by the North American Lightning Detection Network. The green line traces the path of the ER-2 surveillance aircraft.

Lightning has been seen in hurricanes before. During a field campaign in 1998 called CAMEX-3, scientists detected lightning in the eye of hurricane Georges as it plowed over the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The lightning probably was due to air forced upward — called “orographic forcing” — when the hurricane hit the mountains.

“Hurricanes are most likely to produce lightning when they’re making landfall,” says Blakeslee. But there were no mountains beneath the “electric hurricanes” of 2005—only flat water.

For more about our opinions on global warming and for more reference articles, see this article.

Twenty-five years ago today, one of our greatest presidents took the oath of office and began changing America, and the World, for the better. The Iranian embassy hostage crisis ended that day with the release of Americans held for 444 days by the terrorist government of Iran, including the current Iranian president, one of the four most dangerous men in the world.

Under President Reagan, “Reaganomics” was born, and prosperity ensued. Indeed, prosperity persists today under President Bush, who has the same perspectives on the economy.

President Reagan’s foreign policies helped to end the cold war, thus changing the world for the better. Many nations formerly enslaved by communist oppression, threw off their bounds to become allies of America.

These websites offer additional coverage of this important anniversary: Blogs for Bush, GOP Bloggers and Opinion Journal.

Today, the New Horizons spacecraft was launched from the Cape Canaveral Launch Complex. It looked spectacular on NASA’s streaming video!

From NASA:

NASA - New Horizons

After launch aboard a Lockheed-Martin Atlas V rocket, the New Horizons spacecraft set out on a journey to the edge of the solar system. Liftoff occurred Jan. 19, 2006 at 2:00:00 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. New Horizons is headed for a distant rendezvous with the mysterious planet Pluto almost a decade from now.

Space artist Dan Durda was commissioned to do artist’s renditions for the project and thinks that New Horizons could encounter this view of Pluto and Charon while looking back toward the Sun when it arrives in a decade:

After some rain moved through the area the day before, we took a drive to Palos Verdes last weekend and stopped at the Wayfarer’s Chapel on a spectacular day.

Wayfarers Chapel

With its breathtaking Pacific Ocean view and original Lloyd Wright architecture, the Wayfarers Chapel was conceived as a respite for all wayfarers on the journey of life. Here all people may sit and be nurtured by the beauty of nature and enjoy peaceful meditation. No one realized that this simple idea would produce a world-renowned sacred site. The power of Wayfarers Chapel is a blend of the sacred purpose and beauty that people experience. This quiet beauty is emphasized by the openness and echoing of nature in the elegant glass structure.

Senator Hillary Clinton (Dingbat - NY), when appearing before a black audience on MLK day, sold out America in a divisive attempt to identify the Congress of the United States as a racist organization. My opinion is that Ms. Clinton is a manipulative and deceitful person, bent only on her personal success, with little regard for the black, or any other community. A closer look at the inner properties of such a person, may reveal the true nature of that person’s character.

This little tribute to her underlying character is dedicated to those who speak the truth about Ms. Clinton’s actual agenda: bloggers and responsible journalists.