Riehl World View

Edwards: I Never Said That, Did I?

He just can't help himself. John Edwards says he will accept public funding for his campaign. Unfortunately, see below, he's already on record without a mention of this new found principle.

ABOARD THE CNN ELECTION EXPRESS, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Former Sen. John Edwards Thursday said he will accept public financing for his presidential campaign, and challenged his chief rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to follow his lead.

"This is not about a money calculation," Edwards told CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley on his way to an event in Durham, North Carolina. "This is about taking a stand, a principled stand, and I believe in public financing."

USA Today February 2007. I think the word for this is ... loser.

WASHINGTON — Democrat John Edwards on Monday joined New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in saying he will not use public money for the presidential primary campaign or, if he wins his party's nomination, for the general election.

The move by the former North Carolina senator is the latest sign of trouble for the public campaign funding system, created after the Watergate scandal to set limits and disclosure rules on contributions to presidential campaigns.

Edwards said in an interview that he expects major candidates in both parties to raise unlimited private dollars rather than participate in the public system. He said he needs to do the same "to have the funds to be competitive."

Hookah Madness: What Are All These People Smoking?

I did a little searching after reading this bit from NRO: h/t Instapundit.

But this is an amazing victory. In Vancouver, infidels can't smoke but Muslims can:

Vancouver's hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver

Evidently, Hookahs have been very much in the news, including a recent New York Times piece on the dangers of hookah smoke. Miss Tuscola, IL lost her crown after being photographed in a hookah bar. It looks like Michigan is home to a new hookah bar. There was a hookah involved in the bust of a Long Island "Nazi" gal?

Hookah madness, or hookah-mania running wild? What are these people smoking?

NY Times: Target Rudy And 9/11

I'm not questioning the accuracy of a piece allegedly exposing a would be 9/11 survivor in today's New York Times. Though it is ironic that they'd use a picture of her with Rudy when no such picture was used featuring Hillary Clinton when they did a similar story on Cesar A. Borja, whose son accompanied Hillary Clinton to one of Bush's State of the Union addresses. Still, given that we are six years on from 9/11, the details of today's story coupled with a previous editorial do suggest that the New York Times is actively working to undermine the image around 9/11.

I'm not in any way supporting Ms. Head, if she is indeed a fraud. But given the record, involving employment at Merrill Lynch, alleged ties to other 9/11 families and now many prominent politicians and organizations, I'm left wondering just where was the New York Times during the six years this myth was allegedly created?

For all the apparent self-promotion of Tonia Head, there's only one reference to her in a search of NY Times archives - and that's today's story. To coin a couple of phrases, what did the New York Times know, when did they know it - and why is it that we are only reading it now in a story with a prominent picture of her with Rudy Giuliani? Lastly, let's just say I question the timing. Either that, or a news organization that professes to be one of the world's best isn't very effective, given that this story played out right under its nose for six years and they either didn't sniff it out, or kept it hidden until they could use it to play a little politics of the anti-Giuliani kind.

Given the above and their recent misguided attack on Blackwater, it's should be increasingly clear to even their supporters that the New York Times has given up the news business for a full time pursuit of its political agenda.

Much of Ms. Head’s account was posted on the Web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit organization for which she served as president and as point person for corporate donations.

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who truly died in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the gripping immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met with in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

“She never shared those details, and it was nothing we wanted to probe,” said Alison Crowther, the mother of Welles Remy Crowther, a man who died on 9/11 and who is credited with rescuing a number of people from the south tower, including, by Ms. Head’s account, Ms. Head. “I felt it was too private and painful for her.”

In recent weeks, The New York Times sought to interview Ms. Head about her experiences on 9/11 because she had, in other settings, presented a poignant account of survival and loss. But she canceled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. During a telephone conversation on Tuesday, she would not explain her reticence, saying only that she had not filed any claims with the federal Victim Compensation Fund. “I have done nothing illegal,” Ms. Head said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her. Also on Tuesday, in response to a question about the accuracy of Ms. Head’s account, Ms. Adwar said in an e-mail message, “With regard to the veracity of my client’s story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment.”

Steelworkers Unite!

Actually, given a few generations of family members who were steelworkers, I'm well aware of how few of them we actually have in America these days. Sad really. Among several stories, I remember one uncle bragging about the magic formula that gave him 17 weeks of paid vacation one year. I wonder what happened?

Honestly, I do regret that the face of work is changing so much in America as compared to what it was only a decade or two ago. But globalization cannot be stopped and manufacturing will continue to become a less and less viable occupation. In general terms, Go West if you want, but go to college young man , or woman.

DETROIT (AP) - If the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors Corp. lasts longer than a week or two, it could cost GM billions of dollars and stop the momentum the company was building with some of its new models, according to several industry analysts.

A strike of two weeks or less would not hurt GM's cash position and would actually improve its inventory situation, Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson said Monday in a note to investors. But a longer strike would be harmful, causing GM to burn up $8.1 billion in the first month and $7.2 billion in the second month, assuming the company can't produce vehicles in Mexico or Canada, Johnson wrote.

Mr. Perlstein

For heaven's sake, man, just shut up. Call your Mother and see if she has your blankie tucked away somewhere. That ought to calm you down, you simpering twit. There's a perfect word for people like you, dimplef~&ck. I believe it has to do with your lack of real depth, while pretending just the opposite with your self-absorbed, congratulatory rubbish.

Bed-wetter Nation

Here's a big question that I want to start addressing in upcoming posts: what is conservative rule doing to our nation's soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

Shows Over - Let The Games Continue And The Eventual Fireworks Begin

Hot Air has edited video of Ahmadinejad at the UN. The New York Times writes it up here. Observers of this sort of an international affair know what's coming next, even if it will be interminably long in the coming.

Barring some sudden, unexpected turn, we'll hear talk, much of it bluster from Iran. ElBaradei at the IAEA will strain to have his weak voice heard, making it all the more difficult for the civilized world to eventually get around to dealing with the thugs in Iran seeking nuclear weapons.

That France is already using such strong rhetoric is a good thing, but only in as much as it keeps America from having to do that very thing. The two most frequently used expressions over the next couple of months will be all options are on the table and we want to solve this diplomatically. And they'll be about as meaningful as re-reading a boring book for the fourteenth time while not quite recalling the ending, though knowing that only the ending is actually worth the read.

Everyone has and continues to go through the motions - Columbia, the UN and its various members. And so we'll go on until one day most likely in late Spring when Matt Drudge gets to haul out his flashing light and announce that someone, America, Israel, a coalition? has begun bombing Iran.

So, let the games continue and wait for the fireworks at the end. Not much else to do, really.

Richardson's Big Play

Allah offers up a new Bill Richardson commercial featuring the nutroots all-stars. Permit me a rationale that's just a little more cynical. I've already posted Richardson is Hilly's best choice for Veep. Hillary is also already tracking toward the middle vis-a-vis her not going to bring all the troops home statements in this the Sunday's media carnival. With the nutroots on Richardson's team, it all folds nicely into Team Clinton for the general election. I'm not claiming it's coordinated. But it makes Richardson all that more desirable as her running mate for the big show. And that's the only play the man has given where things stand.

Richardson needs them because he can’t get the kind of traction on the left that Silky and Obama have notwithstanding his chopper-off-the-embassy-roof “everybody out” plan for Iraq, which logically should have made him a darling of liberals eager to see a truly catastrophic Teachable Moment happen inside the country.

The Not So Liberal American University System

Classic liberalism allows for the airing of different views, but does today's neo-liberal academic tradition actually hold to that standard? Maybe not so much.

Evan Coyne Maloney's Indoctrinate U takes a look at the topic. The film will be premiering Friday in DC - trailer here.

A recent quote from Maloney on the recent Columbia kerfuffle:

“At the same time that Columbia invited a noted nemesis of America and virulent anti-Semite, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the university cancelled a speaking engagement from Jim Gilchrist, the leader of the Minutemen, a group that seeks to enforce America's borders,” Maloney said.

It's Okay, Republicans - There Will Be White People There

I know Eric Scheie of Classical Values will be there, as will I, having accepted an invitation from the Media Bloggers Association to blog live from the upcoming Republican debate on PBS. I assume some other bloggers may be there as well. Unfortunately, that can't be said for any of the leading Republican contenders for the nomination.

One by one, the four leading candidates for the Republican nomination for president have announced they will not participate. This is not only a strategic mistake for these campaigns but also a major embarrassment for the Republican Party.

How can voters take seriously a candidate asking for their support to be leader of the free world when that same candidate is unwilling to take questions from black journalists, in front of a predominantly black audience?

While I am not big on pandering to special interest groups, given that this is October and that, perhaps more than any other audience, American Blacks need to hear and come to understand the honest, race neutral conservative, or Right-leaning agenda for America, I'm left to wonder, what are these idiots not attending thinking?

Hopefully some of the second tier candidates attending will have the courage to go into what might be construed as a less than friendly forum and speak clearly and honestly to a Republican agenda of limited government and lower taxes that benefits every American, regardless of the color of their skin.

Unfortunately, given the decision making by the front runners here, perhaps mainstream Republicans today have less in common with race-neutral grass roots conservatives and have morphed into the caricature liberal Democrats never miss a chance to portray. Whether its stupidity, or racism driving their decision-making here, it doesn't matter. Either characteristic would make one unsupportable in my view. Perhaps it's time to give Huckabee a closer look.

2008: Politics As Usual

Reading Sullivan's Queen Hillary, Empress of Mesopotamia, casting Hillary as just more of the same, and thinking about the inability of an individual Republican candidate to really catch fire, I'm left with the thought that Americans really do want change, or at least, something different in our political leadership, but none of the allegedly new offerings have come close to making that sale.

If that continues, whoever backs into the White House in 2008 may be more akin to President None of the Above than any previous occupant.