Seven Diamond Spitzer: Ready for a VP Slot?

NY Governor Linked to Prostitution Ring

NEW YORK (AP) - Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the crusading politician who built his career on rooting out corruption, apologized Monday after he was accused of involvement in a prostitution ring. He did not elaborate on the scandal, which drew calls for his resignation.

Spitzer's involvement in the ring was caught on a federal wiretap as part of an investigation opened in recent months, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry.

The New York Democrat, identified in legal papers as "Client 9," met last month with at least one woman in a Washington hotel, the law enforcement official said. The prostitution ring, identified in court papers as the Emperors Club VIP, arranged connections between wealthy men and more than 50 prostitutes in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, London and Paris, prosecutors said. Four people allegedly connected to the high-end ring were arrested last week.

The club's Web site displays photographs of scantily clad women with their faces hidden. It also shows hourly rates depending on whether the prostitutes were rated with one diamond, the lowest ranking, or seven diamonds, the highest. The most highly ranked prostitutes cost $5,500 an hour, prosecutors said.

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Looks to me like Spitzer has all the qualifications for the VICE president slot on the Democratic ticket: rich, Jewish, debauched, and hypocritical. Plus he can pull the New York vote.

Prince Hairy Returns from Woodstock

Hard to say what army this “soldier” belonged to and what war he supposedly went to. Maybe the whole thing was a hoax.

Natural-Born Morons

The liberal pinheads at the New York Times are pretending they are puzzled about John McCain’s citizenship because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Is he really an American citizen? Can he legally be elected president? Obviously the NYT has raised these weighty legal questions because their candidate is an African Muslim of uncertain parentage and upbringing. Just trying to even the playing field, I guess.

Let me give the NYT a hand here: What could the constitutional phrase “natural-born citizen” possibly mean? Well, in the context of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the phrase can only mean someone born in the original 13 colonies! (Either that or anyone who is not a clone.)

Writing Off the Rednecks: Another Cluster Fluster

Bernanke: U.S. Banks Solid, Some Small Ones May Fail
February 28, 2008 11:16 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday that some small U.S. banks might go under during the current stress prompted by housing market problems, but the U.S. bank system overall remained solid.

"I expect there will be some failures," Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee, referring to smaller regional banks who became heavily invested in real estate. [But most of those will be in Montana and other similar places that don't count!]


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According to recent research, in the last depression banks failed in “clusters.” Approximately 21 bank-failure clusters have been identified, almost all of them involving state banks. The average time between one cluster of failures and the onset of the next cluster of failures was about four to five months. (“Failures” include both banks that shut their doors permanently and banks that suspended operations for months or years. Of those banks that suspended operations, when they finally did reopen, they paid off depositors at a rate of 20 to 30 cents on the dollar.)

Gravel as Highest Use

The enviro-weenies and liberal control freaks in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle are complaining again about the gravel pit between Bozeman and Belgrade. Something must be done! Our implied aesthetic of unmarred landscapes is under attack by this abomination of modern techno-rapine! The air, the air—it’s everywhere!

Oh yeah. You got a four-lane interstate on one side of the gravel pit and the main east-west Burlington Northern train tracks on the other side. Meanwhile, as the exhaust fumes rise upward, airliners spray aviation fuel down on all the cars and trains and all the little houses below as the jets take off and land nearby.

Oh yeah. That gravel pit is a real problem, all right. Maybe they should move it to Livingston. That way the cost of concrete for all the new foundations in Bozeman and Belgrade, and the cost of pavement for all the new subdivision roads, will skyrocket and end the building boom in affordable housing.

On the other hand, maybe they should extend the gravel pit to cover the entire distance from Bozeman to Belgrade and just tell everybody it’s the Largest Barrow Pit on Earth. They could run the tourists through the pit by the busload. Maybe even rent them dune buggies for a self-guided tour. Everybody knows tourism is the future of Montana—and tourists are awfully dumb.

The truth is the gravel pit is the highest use for that land. In any free or semi-free economy, resources always gravitate toward their highest use. Who would be mining, screening, and washing gravel at that site for a few bucks a ton if the place were worth anything?

Reversion to the Mean

Another tough break for the Warmers. Better luck next year, girls!

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National Post (Canada) -- Climate change could be the next subprime meltdown.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

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But, hey, alarmists are never premature. They’re just immature!

Proof Allah Hates America

“Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Snow forced helicopters carrying U.S. Senators John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden to make an unscheduled landing in the mountains of Afghanistan early today, a Kerry spokesman said. David Wade, the spokesman, said NO ONE WAS HURT and that U.S. troops evacuated the lawmakers to the American air base at Bagram, near the capital, Kabul.” (Emphasis added)

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Well, at least the troops support the politicians…