After surfing around to different blogs since yesterday, I'm getting the impression that liberals believe Barbara Boxer is some kind of hero because she found every way she could think of to call Condoleezza Rice a liar without actually using the "L word". 

News Flash: that doesn't make Barbara Boxer a hero. It makes her a very bitter, very stupid, very obnoxious Senator. Today Joe Biden is trying to match Barbara Boxer for stupidity and obnoxious. He's doing a very good job.

Both Boxer and Biden have the notion that in order for the Bush Administration to be acceptable in their eyes, this means the Bushies have to put on hairshirts and grovel around on the floor pleading forgiveness for making so many mistakes. This is absurd, but it's what the cratz want, and they won't stop presumably until they get it. I hope hell freezing over has some meaning for those people because that's the only time any Bush Administration official should ever subject themselves to such uncalled for behavior. 

Why is it so hard for the cratz to understand that George W Bush DID NOT LIE when he spoke about the invasion of Iraq to be for the purpose of stopping their proliferation of WMD's?  Just about the time I think, "okay, they have to get it NOW", one of them comes up with some ridiculous new take on the subject that shows one thing very clearly. It isn't that they don't get it. It's that they WON'T get it. Because as soon as they acknowledge the truth, that seems to indicate they will give up some high moral ground in debating who tells the truth and who doesn't.

When every nation on the globe believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD's because all the nations involved in intelligence gathering to determine what Hussein was up to concluded that indeed, he had WMD's, how does it make any sense to suggest that George W Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq? Based on the conclusions of intelligence agencies all over the world, George W Bush believed Iraqi WMD's existed, and he was unwilling to allow Iraq to continue to violate numerous UN Resolutions.

Everything that came after stems from that original intelligence. Add to that the continued disregard of Iraq for all UN Resolutions, there was more than sufficient reason to stop Saddam Hussein from building a larger stockpile of WMD's and pimping out his country for terrorist activity. For Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden to suggest otherwise shows their ignorance of the facts. All it would take is for both those blowhards to read a few books by people far more knowledgeable on terrorist activity than either of them will ever be. However, both of them reject any information that does not fit with the picture they want to portray of a president hell bent on lying his way through one term and doing the exact same thing through a second. They are doing their country a huge disservice with their unrelenting show of disregard of facts that are available to anyone who wants to take the time to learn them.

Just because the cratz don't want to believe the truth doesn't mean it has been either kept from them or distorted for their consumption. They are behaving like spoiled toddlers throwing temper tantrums, and it is beneath the dignity of the government positions they hold to allow them to continue with their fantasy portrayal of the Bush administration. Why should the Bush administration admit to mistakes they did not make? That's just plain ridiculous.

And besides that, I really REALLY mind.

In my travels around different blog sites, I came across one blogger who wrote about the Armstrong Williams story that hit the headlines last Friday morning. The blogger wanted to know why news like this is always held until right before the weekend because what happens is that it loses its interest over the 2 day news respite, and by Monday morning, no one cares anymore. The blogger's inplication was that because Armstrong Williams is Conservative, this is a winger trick. Hah! Not so fast!

While it's true there is a news story about Armstrong Williams accepting a contract worth $240,000 from the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act, and while it's also true that there are questions of ethics involved with what Mr Williams did, there was another story reported last Friday as well. Only this story got little to no coverage. Why? Because it was dwarfed in the liberal media by the Armstrong Williams story. If we're going to talk about deliberately releasing stories so they receive the least amount of attention and impact, then the story to which I refer would have to be noted as well since it was released BEFORE the story on Armstrong Williams. Further, it should be noted that a story about a conservative was used as a smoke screen to hide the bigger story involving a well known liberal.

Now, I know who Armstrong Williams is because I watch Fox News and MSNBC News coverage. Williams has been a guest on both news networks, and he obviously has Conservative leanings. But Mr Williams is hardly a household name. No disrespect intended because I believe Mr Williams is good at what he does, this ethics business notwithstanding, but he doesn't have the name recognition the other party in last Friday's press release has. The name of the other newsworthy personality? Hillary Clinton. Beginning to understand now, are we? Yeah, I thought we might.

Last Friday it was reported in the media that David Rosen, former finance director for Hillary Clinton, was charged with 4 counts of filing fictitious reports that misstated the contributions for a Hollywood fund raiser held on Hillary Clinton's behalf. The FBI reported that it has evidence that the misstatement of funds was deliberate so that Clinton would have more money to spend on her campaign. The business man who hosted the event, Peter Paul, told the FBI that since he had personal conversations with the Clintons during the time of this fund raiser, it is impossible to believe that neither Senator Clinton nor Bubba Clinton was aware of the costs to the campaign or the funds collected.

So why do you suppose that this story didn't receive more media attention? And why in the complaint was Senator Clinton referred to merely as "Senator A"? Before liberals start getting their dresses up over their heads about when the media chooses to release its stories, perhaps they should be more aware of the number of stories that are released so quietly with so little attention that many are completely unaware of them. This is a Clinton trademark. And Armstrong Williams is the fall guy.

I think I may have misspelled Amber Frey's last name in an earlier post. My apologies to spelling purists. I couldn't care less what Amber Frey thinks.

CBS has announced that they have bought the rights to Amber Frey's book and plan to make a tv movie of its contents. You know, if I were a CBS stockholder, which I'm not (thank God), but if I were, I'd be screaming my head off at the programing director of that place, because whoever it is has his/her head so far up his/her ass (s)he will never ever see daylight again.

John Danforth, US Ambassador to the UN, until he's replaced, gave a statement today that should have those who want the US out of the United Nations screaming and tearing hair. Count me among the screamers and hair tearers.

In my travels around the internet today I've run into a few blog posts about the courage and guts of Barbara Boxer, Senator from California. I ignored the first post. There's no accounting for the misguided, and there is that sometimes annoying thing about free speech. Then I saw a second entry on the subject. That got under my skin a little bit more. One more entry on the subject did it. It was either write a rebuttal or explode. I hate exploding; thus, the entry Barbara Boxer is a dick. The reason for that has to do with the deliberate and calculated disruption of the certification of the electoral college votes in the House of Representatives and Senate yesterday.

First off, could we please be clear that no one has provided one shred of proof that the election tally was either tampered with or outright manipulated in Ohio. John Kerry does not refute the fact that  George W Bush won the state. No one does. And the reason no one can do that is because it didn't happen. This past presidential election was the most lawyered-up election in the history of elections. Yes, there were problems with voting. Gee, golly, gosh, there always are. But the fact of the matter is that with all the attention given to this election, while problems may have been pinpointed in the process, the election was not... repeat WAS NOT... stolen.

That's a fact, but you wouldn't know that to hear Representatives Conyers and Jesse Jackson Jr tell it. According to them, we're back at that disenfranchised state of affairs again, and, according to them, this couldn't have been more clear than in Ohio. *Editorial Comment* -- Bull Feathers.

In the 2000 electoral college certification, the cratz tried to disrupt the proceedings by making objections to the vote count in Florida. It's certainly within their rights to do that, but without a Senator to sign the complaint, nothing but the complaint was registered.

For the 2004 election the objecting Representative cratz found themselves a Senator willing to sign the objection thus, according to a law enacted in 1877, stalling the certification process and throwing it into a 2 hour debate in both Houses of Congress. The cratz say that 6 Senators were willing to sign the complaint petition, but the names of all 6 were not revealed. Just one name was released, and that name was Barbara Boxer. She stepped up to perform another of her purely partisan acts designed to do absolutely nothing but give her an opportunity to get her name and face on the news AND create a problem where there wasn't one.

Every single time I have seen a Senate Committee meeting on C-Span where Barbara Boxer is involved, it is clear that her main reason for being is to insult, denigrate, belittle, and try to intimidate conservatives. I used to believe Maxine Waters was the most abrasive female in Congress. Nuh uh. It's Barbara Boxer by a nose. A nose which, by the way, should be entering rooms 3 hours before she does because of the whoppers the woman consistently tells. If it's conservative, she abhors it, and she is willing to make a huge pain in the ass of herself whether or not there's rhyme or reason to her argument.

It was well known before the objections to the Ohio vote were made by cratz Representatives that even with a Senator's signature to the complaint, the reult of the Ohio vote would not change, nor would the overall electoral college vote be any different at the end of the mandatory 2 hour debate. So, the only reason Barbara Boxer did what she did was to get in the face of conservatives in some pathetic effort to rail once again that George Bush is still president of the US.

The woman is a menace. It's a given, and we don't need a 2 hour debate to reach that conclusion. Just listen to the harpy for 5 seconds and her motives are crystal clear.  So let's cut the crap about Barbara Boxer having courage and being gutsy. She's a dick. Period.

I love to knit; hence the alias "Purlie Rowz" which also sounds like Pearlie Rose.  Okay, so it's hokey, but I like it.

It is being widely hyped by NBC and MSNBC that Amber Frey will be appearing on one of their hour long human interest story shows -- I don't watch any of those things so I don't remember the name of the program -- being interviewed by Matt Lauer.

Advance clips of the interview show Amber Frey in various stages of emotional upheaval. Get that everyone? Amber Frey is just torn apart about her involvement in the murder of Laci Peterson case. Yeah? If you believe that I've got a couple bridges I'd like to sell ya. Amber Frey can spout tears until she fills an entire studio... there's no way she is anything to the death of Laci Peterson but one of the biggest exploiters of it. She, under the guidance and advice of Gloria Allred, stands to profit nicely simply because she sleeps around, and as chance would have it, for a brief time, she slept with a murderer. Only in America.

I've really got to hand it to Gloria Allred. I mean Machiavelli couldn't have plotted this one better than Allred. She's kept Amber Frye virtually under wraps for 2 years while Gloria herself has had her image and her person plastered all over the damn place.  For one long stretch it was possible to see Gloria Allred before 10:00 PM somewhere on MSNBC. After 10:00 PM she was usually on Fox News. I'd venture to say that Gloria Allred did as much to get Scott Peterson convicted of his wife's death as the prosecution did. Allred became downright adept at crawling inside the heads of Laci Peterson's family to fully advise us of the anguish they were experiencing. And she knew this how? Because she represented Amber Frye. Someone who never NEEDED an attorney much less such a high profile bag of wind.

Gloria Allred has been pimping for Amber Frey for 2 years, and it's finally going to pay off.  Poor Greta VanSusteren who gave Gloria plenty of air time got shafted in the end when the exclusive, first-ever interview with Amber went to NBC.  But then Gloria wouldn't want Amber interviewed by a fellow attorney AND a woman at that. Instead have the dirty deed done by a sympathetic man far more likely to be taken in by the fake tears and the well-rehearsed testimony. Allred's had 2 years to prepare her client for this moment, and I'm sure Amber was a model student.

I don't know if there's any interest in Amber Frey. What I do know is how I feel, and I don't want that poor excuse for a victim to make one cent off the exploitation of a woman's death. It is obvious to anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to this case that Amber Frye has been biding her time until just the right moment to make her move with her tell-all book.

It's unavoidable. Some books will be sold. But I do hope that anyone who has a shred of compassion and respect for Laci Peterson's memory will refuse to help Amber Frey get rich off Laci's dead body. It's just a disgrace.

And I mind.

I thought when it was announced that Dick Clark would not be hosting New Year's Rockin' Eve this year it meant we could safely assume that we wouldn't have to see Dick Clark at all on this night. That in itself was enough reason to pop the champagne corks and gulp down large quantities of the bubbly.

Unfortunately this was not to be. Since Dick, who is not the nice man he likes to pretend he is, was still confined to his hospital bed, ABC included lots of film clips of Dick from previous years. Suddenly that bubbly just didn't have quite the zing it had before.

So, I'm starting off 2005 with a grouch on. And since that's my frame of mind, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell all those liberal conspiracy theorists AND all those ungrateful morons who want to beat up on the US because we just don't do enough to help those in need to go soak their heads - preferably in some of that filthy water that covered far too much of Asia after the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis.

I went to see the new movie about Howard Hughes, The Aviator, last weekend. I wasn't going to bother doing a review of it because frankly there's just not much to say after saying I saw it. It wasn't what I'd call a TERRIBLE movie, but it certainly wasn't a top notch, edge-of-your-seat Oscar award winner either. Last night while I was doing the usual blog surfing, I came across someone else who'd seen the movie, and he or she just LOVED it. So I read the review and really couldn't get the thought out of my mind that we saw entirely different movies.  Except the movies we saw had exactly the same cast, exactly the same title, same director, and same plot. Since I don't believe in coincidences THAT much, I figured that yeah, we did see the same movie.

So, here's my take on The Aviator. If I were you, I wouldn't stay away because of what I thought, but I wouldn't go rushing off to plunk down my money to see this flick in great anticipation of seeing a film classic either. The best I can rate it is... It Was Okay.

The Aviator is about Howard Hughes. It is directed by Martin Scorsese. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, John C Reilly, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Frances Conroy, Gwen Stefani, and a whole bunch of other people with and without name recognition. In other words, this movie has everything it could possibly have going for it from a top notch director to a star studded cast. So how could it go so horribly wrong? John Logan may want to answer that since he's the guy who wrote it. And whoever did the casting may want to check in with an answer as well because instead of having celebrity name characters blend into the story, instead they called immediate attention to themselves which distracted from the job they were supposed to be doing in moving the film along.

And this film did need to be moved along. It's nearly 3 hours in length, and you'll have to trust me on this, but that last hour makes you start thinking about anything and everything BUT Howard Hughes and what he does next. It is during the last hour that Howard Hughes comes face to face with a man who wants to destroy him, Senator Ralph Owen Brewster. That could have been one of the highlights of the movie just because both actors were outstanding in the movie. Instead it came off as flat and dull and frankly, Scarlett, I didn't give a damn. I just wanted the movie to be over.

Much of the attention for this movie has been directed toward Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Katherine Hepburn. I've read of a particularly engaging scene in which Hepburn takes Hughes home to meet the parents. I was supposed to be highly entertained by this meeting, particularly because of Frances Conroy's portrayal of Hepburn'g mother.  This scene has repeatedly been highly overrated. The reality is, it was not engaging, Frances Conroy had very little to do with the whole thing, and Cate Blanchett looked more than ever like a horsey imitation of Katherine Hepburn which did nothing but distract from her role. As a matter of fact, I was constantly drawn to looking at Blanchett's teeth and being in awe that all that enamel fit into one person's mouth. If her teeth were a mere centimeter larger, they'd need their own zip code. Some critics say Blanchett is a shoo-in for the Best Supporting Actress category when the Oscars roll around.  If she loses, she should immediately slap her dentist with a defamation of orthodontics suit.

The bottom line here is that The Aviator was very good in its first hour. It was semi-interesting during the second hour. But by the third hour it was limping along at a crawl, and I just simply no longer cared about Hughes or anyone involved with him. Had the movie been more cohesive in its plotting; had the editing been stronger, and had the entire movie chosen a point of view to reflect and then stuck to it, this could have been a very good movie. Howard Hughes was a fascinating man. The Aviator does nothing to convince anyone of that.