Mini-Movie Review -- The Matrix Reloaded: I enjoyed "The Matrix" enough to rank it #40 in an article called "My Favorite 50 Movies Of All-Time". That's why I was really looking forward to seeing the sequel, the 'Matrix Reloaded'. Apparently, a lot of other people felt the same way since the movie set a record by raking in $42.5 million dollars on its opening day.

So, did the movie live up to the hype? Honestly, no it didn't. There were a few problems with the movie that kept it from being the equal of its predecessor. To begin with, the first 25 minutes or so, everything that happened in Zion, was not only deadly dull, but pointless. The new characters introduced there were all so insubstantial and lifeless that I don't even remember their names. Then there was the impossibly bad, totally pointless, and unbelievably long dance sequence in Zion that made me want to poke myself in the eyes because I was so bored. In short, the start of the movie was simply bad.

There was one other thing that annoyed me about the movie in particular and that was the seemingly endless amount of philosophical BS that characters kept spouting throughout the movie. The only movie I can think of that tried to pass off more philosophy 101 gibberish as dialogue than this movie was "Invincible".

On the other hand, the movie did have some things going for it. While there was no character development to speak of amongst the humans, the "Matrix" added a few new twists. You see, there are "bugs" in the system that sometimes work at cross purposes with the "Matrix" itself. Since they've already showed some of his new powers in the previews, I don't think I'm giving away too much by letting you know that Agent Smith is now one of those "bugs".

The action ranged from the sort of standard fare you'd see in a barely above average martial arts movies to stunningly spectacular sequences like Neo's brawl with the "Agent Smiths" & the mind-blowing "freeway scene". Of course, the special effects were superb as well.

While "The Matrix Reloaded" is a decent movie that does get a thumbs up, it doesn't live up to hype. Is it a watchable movie? Yes, but don't expect to enjoy yourself as much as you did while you were watching "The Matrix".

PS: If you wait all the way through the incredibly long credits at the end of the movie, they show a short preview of the last movie in the "Matrix Trilogy" that is supposed to come out in November.

Iraqi Minister of Tourism Advances Marketing Techniques By Marni Malarkey: The Iraqi Tourism Ministry, in an attempt to revitalize the war-ravaged country's economy, have started an ad campaign touting Iraq as the newest hot spring break destination for American college kids. "We've got it all here," said a Tourism Ministry spokesman. "Sun, sand, a half a mile of beach, sand, sand, sun, sand, oil wells, sand and of course, looting. We know American teens would love all of that, especially the looting. And let me tell you, if there's one thing we love in Iraq, it's the young people. We love the kids."

And Iraq, the spokesman was quick to point out, is not a liquor-free fundamentalist Islamic nation "yet." "Teens can get as drunk here as they would at a fraternity hazing. And since Iraqi girls are generally religious and virginal, there are a lot of sex-starved teenage boys here who would happily welcome visitors of both genders from the United States."

In an effort to promote Iraq as a tourist locale for the younger generation, Iraqi television has agreed to a joint project with MTV called "Spring Break Iraq 2003." The show will be feature top US stars -- Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Eminem have already agreed to perform -- at an outdoor venue on the banks of the Euphrates. "OhmiGod! I'm like so into the whole cradle of civilization thing," Spears told reporters about the event. Aguilera said she is hoping to export "traditional Western values" such as "sluttiness and extremely bad taste in fashion" to the newly liberated Iraqis. "What an honour," she told BrokenNewz over the phone. Eminem could not be reached for comment but according to his manager "Marshall is always happy to extol the virtues of hatred and racism wherever he goes."

Other promotions for "Spring Break Iraq" will include 3 for 1 priced "Goat's Milk and Vodka Shooters" at participating Iraqi hotels, all-you-can-steal-of-whatever-is-left runthroughs at Saddam's abandoned palaces and Iraq's Museum of Antiquities and "hot teenage chick" sex tours of Saddam's torture chambers (sponsored by Iraq's Guild of Hookers). Cincinnati teen Tyler McBean, 17, has already signed up for Spring Break Iraq 2003, saying that "a holiday where I can, like, totally have kinky sex in a torture chamber and like, also possibly bring back a centuries old Chaldean vase for my mom's Mother's Day gift would be like, totally smokin'."

If you liked this satire by Marni Malarkey, you can see more of her work at Broken Newz.

RWN Is Mentioned On C-Span: Scott Ott from Scrappleface alerted me to the fact that RWN got a passing mention on C-Span during a show on blogs.

If you want to see it, go here, click on the "Washington Journal Entire Program (05/16/2003)", and take it to 12:58. They didn't do much more mention the page and show a quick screen capture, but I'll take it.

Rumsfeld Denies He Leaked That France Has Cooties By Scott Ott: U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld today denied that there's an organized effort in his department to leak allegations that France has cooties.

Mr. Rumsfeld, whose department and supporters are most often cited as a possible source of the anonymously sourced stories, said that "Certainly, there's no such campaign out of this building. If we thought France had cooties, I would stand right here and tell you France has cooties. So shut up!"

An unnamed source close to Mr. Rumsfeld confirmed that the Secretary had publicly stated "France has cooties".

If you liked this satire by Scott Ott, you can see more of his work at Scrappleface.

9 Ways To Make America A Better Place To Live: One of the stock questions I sometimes ask in interviews is, "Theoretically, let's say you could get any five pieces of legislation passed that you wanted. These could either bills that are already in the pipeline in Congress or that you could write yourself. What pieces of legislation would you pass?" Well, I decided to crank that number up to 9 and answer it myself. I kept things short for brevity's sake...

Abortion: I don't believe the rights of any mother should include the right to kill her child unless her own life is in danger. I'd like to see a Constitutional amendment banning abortion except when the mother's life is in danger.

Balanced Budget Amendment: The ONLY way we're going to be able to get the government to spend within its means over the long-term is to force it to do so with a balanced budget amendment. If the government wants to spend more than it takes in some years, then it better start saving some money for a rainy day instead of spending it all on pork.

Fifty-One Votes To Confirm A Judge Rule: Our judicial confirmation system hasn't functioned well in a long time and now it's totally broken. Quite frankly, I think you could make a case that the Senate can't Constitutionally filibuster judges as it is, but in any case, this is what we need to be doing.

Flat Tax: Long-Term, a flat tax would do more to keep America economically strong than anything else we could do. It would give almost everyone (the poorest among us would be exempt) a stake in keeping taxes and government spending low and it would lead to a wave of economic growth.

The Glenn Reynolds' End to Racism and Segregation Act of 2003: I took this one verbatim from Instapundit. "I think the Republicans should demonstrate that they're taking the country beyond the legacy of segregation by passing the "End to Racism and Segregation Act of 2003," which would provide that neither the federal government, nor the states, nor any entity receiving federal funds may take race into account in any manner in the making of hiring, firing, promotion, or benefits decisions."

Illegal Alien Crackdown: I'd like to see us: use drones & greatly increased manpower to patrol our borders, crackdown on businesses that hire illegal aliens, refuse to let illegals have driver's licenses or go to public schools, we should use the police to help hunt down illegal aliens, and a work program that lets millions of Mexicans come her legally to work should be set up to reduce the motivation for people sneak into the US. Furthermore, to free up resources to deal with illegal aliens, we should severely cut back on legal immigration until the situation is in hand.

School Vouchers: I'd like to allow parents to vote with their feet and their money when it comes to schools. Give parents a voucher for the full amount that is being spent on their child and let them pick the school they want to spend it in. That will lead to competition and a lot of bad schools going out of business while quality schools pick up the slack.

Term Limits: Because of gerrymandering and the advantages of incumbency, many people in the House and Senate in essence have "jobs for life". That's not good for Democracy and only allowing a Congressperson to serve three terms and a Senator to serve two would make sure that we get the turnover necessary to keep our government healthy.

Tort Reform: We are the most litigious society on earth by far and it's a huge drain on our economy. Implementing a loser pays principle & setting damage caps on the amount of money that can be handed out in a case (among other things) would go a long way towards restoring sanity to our legal system.

Post Of The Day From Indy Media: I have to admit that I was in the mood for a good conspiracy theory and one of people at Indy Media came up with a doozy...

"Did U.S. Military Shoot Down "Space Shuttle" with a LASER? (english)
Whorealdo!!!

The U.S.Military has "admitted" to "Tracking" the Challenger Space Shuttle as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere and then disintegrated! But did the U.S.Military "Shoot Down" the Space Shuttle with one of theirr High Powered "LASER" Weapons? Why would they do that? Maybe they were practicing and they mis-calculated? Or....who knows?????"

Unfortunately for this guy, Little Green Footballs is on the warpath because an anti-semitic kookfest / message board like Indy Media has been used as a news source for Google News and Charles Johnson linked this post. Because of that, this post got a much more acidic response than you'd normally see on Indy Media...

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"Destroyed by USS Enterprise Photon Torpedos (english)
Fred JND 10:04am Thu May 15 '03 comment#319419

As usual, you idiots can't even get the name of the Shuttle right."

===

"I Know WHAT REALLY HAPPENED (english)
MDP 10:40am Thu May 15 '03

I am surprised that Indymedia readers are not keen enough to figure out that both shuttle disasters were brought down with simple mind control techniques.
After the Jews on each shuttle used telepathic methods to transfer all of the acquired information to the Zionist Conspiracy, they were then telepathically instructed to hit the brakes causing each shuttle to have a boo boo. Never mind that Challenger never got into space and that Columbia actually had communications with NASA during the mission. THIS IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!"

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"It was the VRWC not the Military, bozo! (english)
VRWC Commander 12:12pm Thu May 15 '03

If this was a humor piece it sucked. If it was serious. it still sucked. You guys appear to have the IQ of the average turnip!"

===

Now if I could only find someone else as loopy as David Ickes to feature in the ACPOTI section next week I'd be overjoyed...

We Can't Count On Canada In The War Against Terror: This is absolutely outrageous and it shows how useless Canada is in the "War on Terrorism"...

"A man who spied on the terrorist group Hezbollah for the Israeli secret intelligence agency Mossad has been branded a war criminal by Canadian authorities, who said his actions helped Israel commit "heinous" atrocities.

Mr. X was excluded from refugee protection on the grounds he had committed crimes against peace, war crimes or crimes against humanity. The adjudicator also said he was not credible."

Apparently, the Canadian government believes that simply gathering intel on Hezbollah (a group that has killed hundreds of Americans and fought against us in Iraq) & giving it to Israel makes you a war criminal. If that's what the Canadian's believe, then they must think the Bush administration is full of war criminals as well because I guarantee you that we share intelligence info about Hizbollah with the Israelis.

As far as I'm concerned, America has no friends that are not with us in the war on terrorism and Canada is not with us. They haven't been serious about border security, they didn't support us in Iraq, and now they're surreptitiously showing their support for Hizbollah. I guess as long as the planes are flying into buildings in New York and Washington instead of Toronto and Montreal, they figure it's not their problem. Well that's fine, let Soviet Canuckistan take that attitude, but don't expect any favors or special treatment from us. Favors are for friends, not for nations that can't figure out which side they're on in the war on terrorism.

The Assault Rifle Ban Makes Me So Mad I Want to Go on a Shooting Spree By Frank J: The assault rifle ban is coming up for renewal, and Bush said he supports it. That sucks, yo. Gun regulations are always made by people who don't know jack about guns (that's why they hate them), and the assault weapon ban pretty much defines an assault weapon as any gun that looks cool or has an awesome name. And all these laws are never retroactive (do you want to be the one going door to door asking people for their guns?), so they make the pre-ban guns really expensive. Soon, the ability to kill lots of people quickly will solely be in the hands on the rich. That because - and remember this - Democrats hate poor people.

Anyway, I think citizens should be able to own real assault weapons, and I mean the ones that are fully automatic rifles with large capacity clips (or belt fed). Here are ten reasons why:

THE TOP TEN REASONS REGULAR CITIZENS SHOULD BE ABLE TO OWN ASSAULT RIFLES

10. Sometimes you're too mad for just a normal gun.

9. If you see a dozen deer in one meadow, how else are you supposed to shoot them all before they run away?

8. Self-defense sometimes involves "assaulting" a fortress.

7. Keeping control of a fully automatic weapon helps build upper body strength.

6. If we're not allowed to have assault rifles, that will make us mad and we have other guns.

5. Not as impressive writing your name in the wall with a semi-automatic.

4. For elderly people with arthritis, it may be painful for them to hit the trigger multiple times.

3. What if dragons are real and one tries to mug you in a dark alley?

2. I don't how good a reason this is, but after I've had a few beers in me I'm always like, "Man, would it be cool to have an assault rifle right now."

And the number one reason regular citizens should be able to own assault rifles...

1) This is America; we don't have to give a d*mn reason for owning something.

If you enjoyed this humor by Frank J, you can read more of his work at IMAO .

A Few Things To Ponder: Here are a few things I wanted to mention that probably weren't quite developed enough to deserve their own posts...

-- The Hammer is going to shut down the Assault Weapon ban in the House. That's great news! That means GWB won't have irritate the NRA guys by fulfilling his campaign pledge and signing the ban and yet we'll still be able to get rid of the legislation. It's largely symbolic anyway since the number of people killed with assault weapons was minimal anyway. Personally, I'm looking forward to being able to get a bigger clip for my HS 2000 when this ban goes away.

-- You want to talk about chutzpah? The Democratic Party of Texas is calling the 53 Dems from the state House of Representatives who fled to Oklahoma, "heroes". They're even calling them the "Killer D's"! Lol, is that really the appropriate moniker for Democrats who who ran away to Oklahoma? Heck, the GOP in Texas should slap their faces on a deck of cards and give it to the Texas Rangers who are trying to hunt these fugitive legislators down.

-- My roommate just got this new dog. Well, the dog got into my room and not only does he take a crap on my Afghan War Rug, but he starts chewing on my blinds. The blinds? Out of all the things in my apartment, what is the attraction to the blinds supposed to be? I mean could see my socks or the cat's toys, but the blinds? That's just bizarre.

-- I'm still confident that we're going to find WMD in Iraq. Some of them Saddam may have destroyed, some of them he may have sent to Syria, but somewhere, buried in the desert, are WMD waiting to be found. Come on folks, you don't produce mobile weapons labs, prepare thousands of chem protection suits for your soldiers, refuse to let your scientists talk to the UN, and lose billions of dollars worth of oil money unless you have something to hide. And we will find some WMD which will be all it'll take to back up the Bush administration's claim that they had them.

-- Notice what sort of targets terrorists have been hitting across the world since 9/11. A nightclub in Bali, a theater in Moscow, apartment buildings in Saudi Arabia, & buses in Israel (among other targets). Now think about America. Do you think those types of soft targets in the US are well protected enough to stop a large team of terrorists from hitting them? Not on your life. The reality is that America's borders and society are too open to truly be protected from terrorists. That's why defense won't work and why Bush's preemption strategy and decision to go after the state sponsors of terrorism are the only way to go. Long-term, we have to cut the terrorists off at their source if we're going to stop them.

-- I've always been a big Star Trek fan and I've liked all the series (although Janeway did grind on my nerves). However, I tend to think that the Star Trek world, one where resources are nearly unlimited, wouldn't be as benign as we imagine. My guess is that you'd have a whole planet full of holodeck junkies who'd only come out long enough to replicate some food. I mean once you can create a machine that allows to shape your own reality in any way you wish, how many people would want to experience the real thing? People would spend so much time in their own private holodecks that eventually most of the human race would die out and the luddites would have to replenish the earth.

-- I've seen several columns like this one, that tell us, "don't blame diversity" for Jayson Blair. Well, why not? Blair is a poster boy for everything that people don't like about racial preferences. At every stage of his career he got promotions and breaks that he didn't deserve despite what the Times itself has admitted was a mediocre performance. If the Times had been colorblind, Blair would have been fired well before this scandal broke, the readers of the NYT would have gotten more accurate news, and the Times would have saved themselves a lot of embarassment. Too bad they cared more about diversity than excellence.

The 'Secret' JFK Tax Cuts By Xagent: Democrats and the Kennedys are once again proving to be hypocrite fools suffering from the famous case of liberal amnesia. The controversy this time stems from John F. Kennedy in advertisements that support President Bush's new tax cut plan. Senator Ted Kennedy is fuming over JFK's name and image being used to support tax cuts, something he vehemently opposes. These ads in question compare the massive tax cuts of JFK to those of Reagan and Bush, and rightfully so. This ordeal is only a small part of the larger problem; that modern day Democrats and socialists have hijacked the good name of John F. Kennedy. One of JFK's key economic plans included massive, across-the-board tax cuts, similar to those of Reagan. Much like the 1920's and 1980's, it was these tax cuts that led to the Golden Kennedy-Johnson years. (Cont)

Now The Matrix Has You -- Really!: Imagine that you scrimp and save your entire life to send your kid to Oxford. Then when he gets there, he takes Philosophy 101 and it's taught by this guy...

"...(A) philosophy professor who teaches at Oxford says there's roughly a 20 percent chance that most humans today really are software-generated beings living in a virtual reality.

Bostrom's argument appears in the book, "Taking The Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in the Matrix" (BenBella Books)."

There's a 20% chance we're actually "living in a virtual reality"? How could he possibly come up with that number? I mean you might as well say that there is a 20% chance that we're living in some giant's ant farm or that our entire lives are only the dreams of Koala Bears.

On the other hand, maybe the "Matrix theory" is an improvement over the standard drivel that you get in Philosophy anyway. You know, if a tree falls on Yassir Arafat in the forest, does it make it a sound and is suicide bombing a greenhouse the proper way to respond? Then there's, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Obviously the answer is that there were two hands attempting to clap for someone who was against Bush's filthy war and one of the hands was silenced by Ashcroft's brownshirts! Then there are other important philosophical questions like, "Why do I always get funny looks at job interviews when I tell them I'm a Philosophy major?"

So I guess it doesn't make a big difference what this guy is teaching in his Philosophy course. Want to save some money on college classes? Just read a couple of Ayn Rand books and spend 10 minutes paging through an Objectivist web site and you'll get a more out of it than taking a Philosophy 101.

McDonald's to Offer Drive-Thru Litigation Service By Shamus Young: OAK BROOK, IL -- Fast food giant McDonalds Corporation is rolling out a new "McLitigate" drive-thru service, which promises to give customers a faster, more convenient way to sue the company.

Participating restaurants will add a third window to the drive-thru process, where customers can negotiate a settlement for any ill effects they may experience from the food they've just purchased. Each settlement window will have a McDonald's judge and a menu of different payout types.

The new McLitigate offers a variety of payouts for all sorts of afflictions as a result of visiting McDonald's. The highest payouts are for people with life-changing problems, such as those who pour hot coffee all over themselves or who keep eating McDonald's food when they really should go out and get some exercise. These payouts can range from just a few hundred thousand to several million. Lower end payments are for people suffering from discomforting or embarrassing gas, or from unsightly cars filled with old wrappers. Payouts for these customers usually consist of expired McMillions game pieces and some ketchup packets.

Said Mike Roberts, president of McDonald's USA, "We hope that new McLitigate will offer customers a fast and profitable alternative to a lawsuit. This will save both parties time and money that would be wasted on lawyers and expensive legal proceedings. Most customers have their money even before they've finished their meal. That's service, and that's McDonald's."

If you enjoyed the satire by Shamus Young, you can read more of his work at The Lemon.

The Roadmap To Murderville: We're getting ready for the latest round of futile peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Abu Mazen is claiming that terrorism isn't the way to go, Ariel Sharon is issuing work permits and letting Palestinians out of prison, and the State Department is abuzz with excitement. It all sounds exhilarating...until you realize that it's all destined to end in tears like every other attempt to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The reason I see little reason to get excited about the peace process is because I see little being done to address even the most fundamental issues that need to be dealt with. There are at least three things that need to happen before the Israelis and the Palestinians even start to seriously discuss creating a Palestinian State. (Cont)

Roommate Troubles: I've had a lot of interesting roommates over the years. One of my roomies was from Turkey and he had a habit of getting drunk and turning the heat all the way up and then falling asleep, which meant it would be 90 degrees+ when I woke up in the morning. He also ran up hundreds of dollars worth of phone bills which he never paid me for and cooked chicken directly on the rack in the oven with nothing under it.

Another was a neat freak who WENT NUTS because I accidentally dropped a noodle on the floor. Of course, I wasn't always easy to live with. There was one roommate who had a refrigerator I coated with mustard and ketchup because he wouldn't help us clean. With another roomie, I took an alarm clock, set it to 4 AM and hid in a huge pile of junk under his bed. I bet it took him 10 minutes to figure out what was going and get to it to shut it off. A lot of these people screwed me out of rent, some of them I loathed, and of course there were plenty of roomies I got along with as well. But none of them as crazy as this guy...

"A man thrown out by his roommate returned to the home and hid in an attic crawl space for nearly six weeks, spying on the roommate through a telephone tap and hidden baby monitors, police said.

Police also found baby monitor transmitters had been hidden throughout the house with a receiver in the crawl space, suggesting that Lewis tracked Smith's activities and roamed the town house freely while Smith was at work."

But hey, that's child's play compared to hiding in the house for weeks, spying on your roommate, and then coming back to leave a note that say, "I will always be watching you." Whoever this poor guy's housemate was has the king of all bad roommate stories to tell. Heck, I could even see adding a couple of fictional twists on the end and making it into an HBO original movie. It couldn't be worse than "Laura Croft: Tomb Raider" right?

Better The Kids Be Ignorant Than Held Back: Do people think they're actually helping kids when they do this sort of thing?

"Florida church leaders and community activists are threatening an economic boycott of key state industries unless officials reassess the weight of Florida's high school standardized exam.

About 12,800 of Florida's high school seniors, many of them either black or Hispanic, have yet to meet the requirements of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, meaning they potentially will not be allowed to graduate.

In response, a group of about two dozen pastors, lawmakers and community leaders said Sunday they will begin boycotting Florida's sugar, citrus and tourism industries on May 22 unless Gov. Jeb Bush (search) amends the test standards."

I'm sure that these "pastors, lawmakers and community leaders" (at least most of them) honestly think they're actually helping these kids. They don't want them to be stigmatized or discouraged by being held back so they'd rather turn a blind eye to these test results or worse yet, pretend that they're not fair, biased, etc. You see this same sort of mentality when it comes to Affirmative Action in colleges. It's, "sure they may not deserve to get into college X based on their performance, but why can't we give them a little extra help?" This excerpt from my interview with Walter Williams explains what's wrong with that sort of thinking...

"You find the same thing at MIT. Black students in the engineering department, they score in the top 5% nationally in the quantitative portion of the SAT. However, close to 50% are on academic probation or flunking out at MIT. What's the problem? Well, the rest of the students in the engineering department are in the top 1%, which puts the black students at MIT near the bottom of the student body. So those black student who are being turned into failures at MIT, if they'd gone to engineering school at University of Pennsylvania or Cornell, they'd be on the Dean's list.

So it's kind of like you're saying to me, "Walter, would you teach me how to box?" Then, the first fight I get you is with Lennox Lewis. Now you might have the potential to be a good boxer, but you're going to get your brains beaten out before you learn to bob and weave. So, the question for black people is, "do we have so many youngsters who score in the top 5% nationally that we can afford to have them turned into failures at MIT in the name of diversity and multiculturalism?" For me, my answer is no."

Replace MIT with "their first job" and you have in many ways the same issue with these high school students. A kid who might wash out of a job after the education system winked at his poor performance might very well excel in the same job if he had another year in high school to mature and improve his skills.

Whether people realize it or not, giving kids a pass on their mediocre performance is not something that people who care about what happens to them would do. To the contrary, the best thing we can do for these kids is to demand that they earn everything they get in school. To do otherwise is to set them up for failure when they move into the real dog eat dog world of American Capitalism.

Up And Coming Blogs: As all of you must have figured out, I have to sort through a tremendous amount of material every day to put together the daily news and come up with fresh topics to discuss. Because of that, I often come across a lot of quality blogs that haven't really made it to the "big time" yet (let's call 700 - 800 uniques per day "big time"). Well, those blogs deserve a little more attention and who better in the blogging world to give it to them than me? Yeah I know, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks, Sean Paul Kelley, etc, etc, -- in short any of the bloggers who pull more traffic than me. Still, I'm sure none of these blogs will complain about the traffic and if Andrew, Glenn, James, Sean-Paul and company (along with anybody else who takes a notion) link this post on RWN, then maybe I can get more traffic they can help these deserving bloggers as well!

Some of the blogs are "linkers", meaning that they focus on belting out a lot of posts with minimal commentary. Betsy's Page, Crooow Blog, Inoperable Terran, & Joyful Christian all fall into that category. Pages like this can become very popular, but it can also be hard for them to get traction at first because they don't have a lot of content for other bloggers to link directly.

Others seem to have been around a for a long time...well at least for the internet...without getting the credit they deserve. Crooow Blog, The Daily Rant, Curmudgeonly & Skeptical, & Ipse Dixit all probably fall into this category.

I almost decided to leave out some of the blogs that advertise with me, but heck, why should they be penalized for that of all things? Especially when I gave Electric Kate & Zogby Blog free advertising last month because I liked their blogs and had unsold space available. On the other hand, they both bought slots this month (last month was the only time I haven't sold out the button ads) so I guess it worked out for the best. Solomonia & Ravenwood's Universe (who has improved his blog a lot recently) both deserve to be mentioned as well.

Then there's The Lemon. I liked what they were doing so much I asked and received permission to use their material. I'm telling you, they're funny and they're going to grow. Take it from someone who said the same thing about IMAO & Scrappleface before they took off.

Israpundit deserves a mention too. There are several well written Israeli blogs, but only Israpundit is updated enough these days to really deserve to make the list.

I also can't forget Balloon Juice, Conservative Commentary, Hootinian, & Little Tiny Lies. All of them deserve a plug.

So if you're looking for some excellent new reading material on the web, today's your lucky day. I'd encourage you to take a look at all of these blogs and see if they're worth a bookmark.

Dixie Spits: An Interview with Natalie Maines By MJ: As all of RWN's readers know, we here at Right Wing News are nothing if not, "fair and balanced". That's why we were thrilled that MJ, our Conservative correspondent from Hollywood, managed to get this exclusive interview with Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks...ehr, so he says at least. Of course, we've also interviewed the cartoon characters from Dragon Ball Z so take it with a grain of salt. (Cont)

Can Even Michael Moore Actually Believe This?: Oh how the left loves Michael Moore. Heck, even I'll admit that he's witty and talented (I can hear my readers gnashing their teeth) even though I think he's egregiously wrong on just about everything that matters. But, I have to ask, can even the lefties who love him continue to defend him when he's saying things that you almost have to have a mental disorder to believe (and yes, I mean that)? Just look at what he had to say in an interview with Bob Costas on Friday...

"During the pre-taped interview, Moore asked Costas: "What happened to the search for Osama bin Laden?"

Costas tried to nail him down on culpability: "Including, at least by extension, the United States, he's under the protective watch of the United States?"

Moore confirmed: "I think the United States, I think our government knows where he is and I don't think we're going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon."

I'm sorry, but that goes way beyond any ideological differences into wearing a tinfoil hat on your head, ripping out your own fillings with pliers so the CIA can't send radio signals through them, crazy as a football bat, raving moonbat territory. For most people, saying something this bizarre would mean no one, friend or foe, would take them seriously again. But, will this even hurt Mikey's popularity on the left? Somehow, I doubt it...

How Many Other Jayson Blairs Are Out There?: Is it any wonder that so many bloggers have torn into the "Jayson Blair story" like a German Shepherd into a mailman's thigh? Here we have a story that features the "Old Grey Lady", the much hated New York Times taking the beating of a lifetime because one of their reporters engaged in "journalistic fraud" on a massive scale. How bad was it?

"Times journalists have so far uncovered new problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles Mr. Blair wrote since he started getting national reporting assignments late last October. In the final months the audacity of the deceptions grew by the week, suggesting the work of a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction."

Here's a little sample of the sort of thing they're talking about...

"After the Hunt Valley article in late March, Mr. Blair pulled details out of thin air in his coverage of one of the biggest stories to come from the war, the capture and rescue of Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch.

...It now appears that Mr. Blair may never have gone to West Virginia, from where he claimed to have filed five articles about the Lynch family. E-mail messages and cellphone records suggest that during much of that time he was in New York. Not a single member of the Lynch family remembers speaking to Mr. Blair."

Although all of his fabrications weren't this audacious, Blair got away with this phantom journalism for YEARS at the Times and was actually PROMOTED and given breaks over and over again despite what the Times itself points out was a mediocre performance. That has led some people to ask if Blair was given a free pass by the diversity conscious NYT because he was black? The New York Times largely tried to sidestep that issue, but here's a very relevant passage from the article...

"In January 2001, Mr. Blair was promoted to full-time reporter with the consensus of a recruiting committee of roughly half a dozen people headed by Gerald M. Boyd, then a deputy managing editor, and the approval of Mr. Lelyveld.

The publisher and the executive editor, he said, had made clear the company's commitment to diversity - "and properly so," he said. In addition, he said, Mr. Blair seemed to be making the mistakes of a beginner and was still demonstrating great promise. "I thought he was going to make it."

When you're promoting people who are still "making the mistakes of a beginner", there's definitely something going on. Maybe Blair is someone's cousin, maybe he has pics of Howell Raines in tutu, or maybe he got promotions he didn't deserve in the name of "diversity", but in any case this guy got a free ride that he didn't deserve and everybody at the Times paid a price for it.

All of that is worth pointing out, but I wonder how many other Jayson Blairs are there? I mean let's face it, the New York Times is the standard by which other newspapers are judged and if they're not even doing rudimentary fact checking, how many other papers and magazines are doing it?

You know, it must be very tempting for some of these reporters to make things up. Just think about what a rush it must be for a reporter to make a juicy quote from a non-existent source and then watch the fur fly. Suddenly they're talking about your story on the Sunday morning news shows, Ari Fleischer is being asked questions about it, and you're getting pats on the back all around the office. You don't even really have to worry about getting caught. Your editor doesn't fact check you and it's unsourced so no one can talk to your subject.

That's why I always take it with a grain of salt when I see juicy unsourced quotes. You should too. Want some examples of what I'm talking about? How about this short article that originally appeared in Time? It says that, "the President "wanted to take a big swipe" at Gingrich during the interview--but Brokaw never brought up the subject." The source for that sensational piece of gossip is "a Bush friend". So how do we know that someone at Time didn't make that up? To be honest, we only have Time's word that it really happened. So can it be believed? Maybe, maybe not.

If you want another example of that sort of thing, you have only to look to Seymour Hersh who has a habit of quoting anonymous sources in the intelligence community that have acidic things to say about military operations in progress. During "Gulf War 2", Hersh quoted an anonymous official as saying, "The only hope is that they (the troops) can hold out until reinforcements arrive". Well of course, that turned out to be spectacularly wrong and it's not the first time that Hersh's supposedly in-the-know sources turned out to be badly off. So is there anybody going behind Hersh and checking his work to make sure he's not just making all of these quotes up? They certainly should be, but who really knows?

The point of what I just said is not that you shouldn't trust Time or Hersh -- well actually, in my opinion, you probably shouldn't trust Hersh -- the point is to take anything that's unsourced or disputed by a source with a grain of salt. There are journalists out there making things up and deliberately misquoting people and the fact that they work for reputable papers & magazines only means that it's easier for them to get away with it. Jayson Blair is a great example of it, but he's not the only one and you shouldn't forget it.

Misc: A few things of note...

-- I've added some new forms of advertising to RWN. Of course, RWN still has the $15 88x31 buttons that stay up for a month. But, we now have advertisements that go in the daily news section and on the the main page. So if you're looking to get the word out about your product or blog, there are some VERY affordable ways to do it on RWN.

-- My email address is changing from webmaster -at- rightwingnews.com to johnhawkins -at- rightwingnews.com. That is reflected in the new contact section.

-- As regular readers of RWN know, I take week-ends off. That means there are no daily news updates on the week-ends. Rather than leave up Friday's news until Monday, I have decided to start linking 10 "retro" articles from RWN each week-end. I have a VAST amount of material archived on this page and I might as well start getting more of it in front of the new readers.

-- Speaking of archives (and a search function), I am still attempting to get those features up and working for RWN. We do have accessible archives (click on the time on one of my posts and you're in). However, I'm trying to put things into an easier to use format. Movable Type has a search and archives function, but unfortunately I had to strip MT down to the bones to fit it into my blog and I have been unable to get those functions to work. If you know of anyone who fixes that sort of thing, even for a reasonable fee, let me know.

Last but not least, why don't you show our current advertisers that they made a smart decision by signing up with us? You can do that by taking a look at their websites. Our advertisers are Between The Coasts, Zogby Blog, Electric Venom, Those Shirts, Ravenwood's Universe, Solomonia, & The Politiblog. Thanks for advertising with RWN!

Greens and Other Loonies Attack America By Alan Caruba: The one abiding goal of both the Greens and animal rights lunatics is to attack America's economic base in every way possible. This is why, for the past few decades, they have sought to undermine every kind of industry in the nation, from timber to energy, from agriculture to fast foods, from mining to ranching.

Whole books have been written on this subject, but it is instructive to take a quick look as just some of the recent headlines that reflect the myriad ways Greens and Animal Rights people engage in an endless war on America. Cont).

A Blogger Symposium On The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: I got together a stellar crew of bloggers yesterday afternoon to discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Our group consisted of...

-- Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs.

-- John Little from Blogs of War.

-- Damian Penny from Daimnation!

-- Ben Shapiro, a syndicated columnist with Town Hall among other publications, who also runs Ben Shapiro Online.

-- Allison Kaplan Sommer, an Israeli who wrote for "The Jerusalem Post" for 12 years and now runs An Unsealed Room.

After discussing the "Roadmap to Peace", the "Right of Return", "Transfer", among other things, I edited the chat down and posted it to RWN. Believe it or not, I think I qualified as a moderate in this crowd. Read and enjoy...(Cont).