40 Comments

1. Kyda Sylvester:

Ah, Roger, don’t disparage weasel words. If it weren’t for weasel words, some people would have nothing to say.

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:53 am 2. iceman:

great article on blogging implications for the MSM

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3771/is_200504/ai_n13498906

from little green footballs

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=15549_Bloggers-_The_Light_at_the_End_of_the_Media_Tunnel#comments

Apr 21, 2005 - 4:35 am 3. Hermie:

Lies, misdirection, character assassination, corruption, and willful blindness..

The true nature of the UN and yet, the MSM continues to cover for these crooks. The NYT seems to be able to find ‘conspiracies’ and ’scandals’ when it comes to Republicans, but can’t seem to find real corruption standing only minutes away from their offices.

The UN corruption and inept bureaucracy has lead to real misery throughout the world. They let people starve in Iraq because Saddam was bribing officials and middlemen, so he could construct palaces and rebuild his army.

They still can’t admit that there is genocide in the Sudan.

While this almost criminal enterprise goes on, there are US Senators who are holding up Bolton’s nomination to the UN because they heard from someone who has an axe to grind, that he was not very nice at times.

I had heard that Melvin Purvis and Eliot Ness were not real nice guys in person, but they did their jobs and helped get the bad guys off the streets.

We need someone who can do the job and point out the corruption and hypocrisy that resides at the UN.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:11 am 4. yama-arashi:

Given the number of investigations going ahead outside the purview of the UN’s spin-machine, I am wondering if Mr. Parton (Barton?) is willing to be helpful somewhere else. Hopefully the likes of Mr. Goldstone will force his hand, if but to preserve his reputation.

As for being willing to testify under oath, someone should contact Sen. Coleman’s office on Roger’s behalf. Or rather, on the truth’s behalf. An appearance before a Senate committee is in order.

And last, let me congratulate Roger’s most excellent surgeon. He removed Roger’s gall bladder, yes, but seems not to have upset the delicate balance of humours contributing to his fine disposition, and appears to have been most successful in saving Roger’s spiritedness, which has been shining through in his reporting on the UN scandal. Keep at ‘em Roger.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:14 am 5. charlotte:

…There’s a lot of garbage on the blogosphere, but there is a high tier where the product is superior and is drawing mass readership. On those blogs, correcting error is part of the culture.

It has to be, explains mystery novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon on his blog rogerlsimon.com. “Bloggers-at least those with sizable audiences -are subject to more editing and fact-checking than virtually any mainstream media journalist. . . . I have written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle-among others-and received nowhere near the amount of editing I get on here. I make a factual error on this blog, and I am often corrected within minutes.” Phil Boas

And now Roger is doing some hard-hitting investigative journalism; he’s not just a superior blogger, anymore!

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:21 am 6. Kyda Sylvester:

Spot on editorial at WJS: The Bolton Mugging

As for the White House, we trust Mr. Bush’s advisers are waking up to the fact that if Mr. Bolton loses so does the President. The U.N. will take it as a sign that it can move ahead with Potemkin reform, while Democrats will be emboldened to take down other nominees. Mr. Bush’s appointees will also understand that defending his priorities against the bureaucracy is a bad career choice. If this is how Republicans and the White House are going to fight on judges, they might as well roll over now.

Just so.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:33 am 7. Oyster:

The Volcker commission has been their salvation rather than their nemesis so far. It’s so easy for them to deflect any questions by saying, “It’s being investigated.” Then turn around and block any “real” investigation. When this is over most of them with come out of it only a shade darker than lily-white and claim it was blown out of proportion. And MSM will blame the bloggers.

I’ve been reading this blog for over a year and always found Roger to be completely upstanding. If he says they’re lying, I believe it.

Apr 21, 2005 - 5:47 am 8. Kyda Sylvester:

Odd that there’s no quote from Barton/Duncan (or their representatives) nor any indication that one was sought (”Barton/Duncan declined to/could not be reached for comment”). Or perhaps an explanation that they are under gag orders. Are they?

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:05 am 9. JJay:

Do any doubts remain that in the absence of any intelligible policy apart from full-bore support for the UN that the feminized, touchy-feely Democrats are using the Bolton nomination to inflict one of the thousand tiny cuts the Bush administration can expect over the next four years? It’s reached the point where directness in language, not to say playing hard ball in a building stuffed with the cronies of thuggish dictators, cannot be allowed for fear of offending delicate sensibilities.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:05 am 10. Mr. Davis:

Thank you and contratulations for the results of your perseverence on this matter. You are getting up there with Claudia Rosetti.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:05 am 11. thibaud:

Where’s Spitzer? Time to go after Paribas. Subpoena them and get to the bottom of the money transfers. Threaten to revoke their banking charter.

Apr 21, 2005 - 6:36 am 12. Eric_R:

Does anyone know if the Richard Goldstone quoted in the CNN article is THIS Richard Goldstone? If so, I am quite disappointed in the man. To have gone from courageously exploring South Africa’s apartheid history to protecting the corruption at the UN is quite a step in the wrong direction.

If anyone knows for sure, please clarify!

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:04 am 13. Buddy Larsen:

The WSJ article is short and very concise, a two minute read, here’s a snip discussing Bolton’s oppo:

“…the testimony of career analysts who disagree with Bush Administration policy and want to show that any official who disagrees with the bureaucracy will have his own career ruined in Senate confirmation.”

“All of this is being orchestrated by Senate Democrats Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, who represent the foreign-policy views that lost the last election. More than that, they are carrying water for a foreign-policy establishment that tried desperately to defeat Mr. Bush and failed, but now wants to pin an embarrassing defeat on the President by humiliating a nominee closely associated with his policy.”

link

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:07 am 14. Lola:

Meanwhile, it seems that Bush is upping the ante over Bolton . . .

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&ncid=716&e=14&u=/nm/20050421/pl_nm/bush_bolton_dc

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:16 am 15. Buddy Larsen:

“This smear campaign is all the more offensive because it is designed to avoid a genuine policy debate. Mr. Bolton, who has worked as a diplomat in two different Administrations, is being sent by Mr. Bush to lead a reform of the U.N. that desperately needs it if it is going to be effective. His skills helped repeal the U.N.’s “Zionism is racism” resolution in the early 1990s, and more recently he ran the successful and innovative Proliferation Security Initiative that helped put Libya out of the WMD business. But Democrats don’t want to debate that record, because they know they’d lose. So they have set about to destroy Mr. Bolton personally instead.”

(ibid.)

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:19 am 16. Buddy Larsen:

Biden and Dodd are walking, talking advertisements against the bicameral system.

Two ‘party-first, humankind-second’ talentless moral morons from two states the size of one of my state’s 254 counties, diligently saving the cancer inside the UN, because it’s their “thing”…it’s “what they do”.

These two have been so wrong so often about so many things so gravely important, that any normal human being would’ve resigned in shame at least a dozen times in either career.

But no, these guys know no shame. They really are shameless individuals.

Apr 21, 2005 - 7:36 am 17. Bruce W.:

I’m glad I was wrong about the possibility that the President might be sacrificing Bolton (as I had wondered aloud in a comment string yesterday).

My strongest support for that course was that perhaps Bolton might actually be too undiplomatic for diplomacy.

Apparently I was experiencing a respite from the general nausea caused by the putrid state of the U.N. Thanks to Goldstone (and the reasonable conclusions to be drawn from the resignations of Parton and Duncan), I’m back to my queasy self.

The U.N. has the lost right to enjoy the niceties of diplomacy. Harsher medicine is required or the sick child has no chance for recovery. Perhaps, in the longer term, it ought to expire, but we may as well try radical resuscitation efforts first.

Good Luck, Bolton…Give ‘em Hell.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:03 am 18. charlotte:

Such stuff and nonsense these days. Bolton’s been accused of stealing tarts by madhatter Dems and a Queen of Hearts (D-CA), and the UN has come to be nothing but a pack of cards, marked cards, used for bluffing and cheating people as long as they believe it’s something more than it is.

We are all Alice. We can’t wake up too soon.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:32 am 19. Rick Ballard:

Bruce W.,

Can you name an appointment that W has withdrawn except for true cause? The only withdrawal that I can think of at the moment is the NY police chief who was nominated on the basis of Giuliani’s assurances.

There is a strong possibility that W has explained to Frist and Lugar that either Bolton is going to be the Ambassador or the executive is going to take a very long time in picking someone else. Both Frist and Lugar bear responsibility in not having adequately enforced discipline. Voinovich will be bought off rather quickly but it should have occurred quietly rather than publicly.

Sausage making in public sure cuts down on the market for sausage.

Apr 21, 2005 - 8:43 am 20. notherbob2:

Compliments to the commenters. Some of the best on the net. Me? I think the Bolton situation is an opportunity for Bush to send a signal. I hope the ducks are lined up so that he can. If he succeeds, ugh, best if he doesn’t don a beret and appear in the U.N. Plaza under a sign that says: “Mission Accomplished”.

Apr 21, 2005 - 9:01 am 21. Knucklehead:

There are a number of things at work here.

Yesterday (or recently at least) somebody mentioned that the UN is a form of church or religion to some people. A good portion of the Left believes that they have rejected religion as adle-brained superstition. They’ve done no such thing. What they have done is replaced a God-centered dogma with a political dogma and the UN is their Vatican and UN-SG is their pope. They cannot accept their Pope as crook, their Church as corrupt, or their Religion as superstitious bunk.

The Democratic party is interested only in their own political position. The interests of the nation or the world at large are of no concern to the party. The Party is all that matters and they will do whatever they deem necessary to enhance their own position and/or damage whomever they perceive as their enemy. They are very similar to the French in this regard and it explains their fascination with all things French.

The international kleptocracy is a crime syndicate. The fact that they are under investigation or that some of their “lines of business” have been damaged or even shut down is no reason for them to get out of the business of crime. They will do everything they can to protect their income and the syndicate.

Last, but not least, I recall something once attributed to Saddam Hussein. I’m too lazy to go and try to dredge up the precise quote but paraphrasing it was, “It’s cheaper and more effective to buy journalists and politicians than tanks and airplanes.” Some portion of the MSM (and politicians the world round) have been bought and paid for. If their whole stinking mess created by the folks who bought and paid crumbles they will go down with it. They must continue to do what they were paid to do.

The day the UN corruption story begins to be of interest to the unwashed masses is the day that great portions of the whole stinking mess start to come unglued. Anyone want to place any bets on whether Saddam comes to trial or not? If he does, and it begins to look bad for him during the trial, there will be some VERY interesting revelations.

Thank you, Roger, for doing what you can to keep the light shining toward the cockroaches. If we can’t extermite them then at least you are helping to keep them scurrying for cover rather than defouling the kitchen unmolested.

Apr 21, 2005 - 9:11 am 22. lawhawk:

The eye of the storm relating to UNSCAM and various Canadian indignities appears to be Maurice Strong.

This is the same Strong who’s involved in UNSCAM, as Annan’s advisor. He appears to have a hand in the withholding of $425 million that was supposed to go to tsunami relief in Sri Lanka. The Canadian government was going to match its citizens’ contributions on a dollar to dollar match, but the money never got to Sri Lanka.

Even as the association of Canadian Maurice Strong with “Koreagate Man” Tungsun Park was coming under world limelight, Sri Lankans were starting to demand answers about where the $425 million promised by Canada to tsunami victims is.

Four months after the tsunami hit, Sri Lankans still donít have their money. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin rushed to the scene for a weeklong photo op. Generous Canadians donated record amounts of money on line.

The Canadian government promised to match dollar for dollar, donations from the public.

But the promised mega millions never arrived.

According to veteran newsman Garth Pritchard, in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of last Decemberís tsunami, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is allegedly holding the $425-million.

Kofi Annanís special envoy to Korea Maurice Strong, also a senior advisor to Prime Minister Paul Martin, was the founding president of CIDA.

“Through his creation and direction of CIDA, Strong controlled the implementation of aid programs on the ground–including who was hired to do the work, and through the newly-created IDRC (International Development Research Center), Strong controlled the issuance of tax deductible certificates and the distribution of both private foundation money as well as government money.” (Henry Lamb, Maurice Strong, The new guy in your life, 1997).

Apr 21, 2005 - 9:15 am 23. jedrury:

Bolton is Cheney’s guy and the president wants him. This type of wishy washy Senate leadership from Frist does not bode well for the judicial nominees coming down the road.

When the likes of Hagel, Voinovich and Chaffee start quivering, the Lyndon Johnsons of the Senate would start closing bases and post offices.

Forget anger at the Dodds, Kerrys and Bidens, check out your supposed GOP allies.

Apr 21, 2005 - 10:00 am 24. thibaud:

Feckless Frist is Finished (as a presidential hopeful). I can’t imagine him staring down dictators as prez when he can’t even stare down Voinovich or Dodd.

Which means Giuliani has the inside track for ‘08.

Apr 21, 2005 - 10:19 am 25. Buddy Larsen:

Of the three big headline personal attacks Big Democrat is making in the congress at the moment, ‘Bolton’ is getting some factual info out finally (thank you Roger and a few others).

The other two are still popular mysteries. The ‘nuclear option’ in the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s a story that needs to be limned and promoted.

In the House, same with the recent rules changes in the Ethics Committee. The Dems throw charges at Delay, but refuse an actual formal hearing, because, they say, they ‘don’t like the rules’.

This sure sounds like their old game of preferring the issue to the solution (part of their endemic disrespect of their own constituency–not to mention of the nation at large).

Apr 21, 2005 - 11:17 am 26. Buddy Larsen:

Naturally, forgot the nut graf: What Ethics Committee rules changes did the GOP supposedly shove thru, that make this Delay street-mugging the only fair modus-operandi?

Apr 21, 2005 - 11:23 am 27. charlotte:

Are you talking about this rule change that deLays the decision to decide?

…the Republicans voted for a new procedure under which the House party leaders would have 30 days to deliberate if one of their colleagues were indicted on a felony charge. At the end of the 30 days, the leaders would decide whether to ask the person under indictment to step aside at least temporarily.

The new rule supplants one that required a leadership member facing a felony indictment to step aside immediately.

Guess the Dems don’t think they can mug someone still protected a bit by position.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:14 pm 28. charlotte:

I mean, the Dems think they have to mug someone protected by position and its attendant advantages.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:19 pm 29. asher:

Roger, thanks for keeping us posted on the latest developments on this.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:22 pm 30. Kyda Sylvester:

If I hear Barbara Boxer say one. more. word. my head will explode.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:26 pm 31. jedrury:

Governor Arnold would best describe the GOP members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee as “girly men,” which they are; Lugar, Hagel, Voinovich and Chaffee. Incredible whimpiness.

You have to give it to the Dems; they see the Bolton nomination as a cause to fight for, while the GOP has no conviction. From Chairman Limp **** Lugar on down; “the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:32 pm 32. Buddy Larsen:

That was it, Charlotte…thanks. Draw your own conclusions as to why that 30 days is grave enough to let such an arch-criminal go without an official chastisement. It just don’t add up, do it, sister? In all three of these cases, the infernal cauldron-masters have rhetorically so over-seasoned they can’t bear the taste of what they want the nation to eat whole.

Apr 21, 2005 - 12:56 pm 33. Michael B:

R. Goldstone’s dissimulation is of a piece with so much of the specious, if well crafted, apologias pro UN. Here’s another example featuring similarly well crafted elisions, occlusions and dissimulations in the service of the UN entitled Oil-for-Food: Facts. Worth referencing nonetheless as it does contain some valuable facts, the interim reports for one, even if it often finesses them as well.

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:28 pm 34. Mike_Nargizian:

Listen, is anyone really surprised, wey’re talkin world geo-politics here. And don’t be surprised if the State Dept and Bush’s team as well had them ignore or make it difficult for them to find certain incriminating pieces on Koffi…. and gang so they could use it as leverage. I don’t think we really want Koffi and a house cleaning there – because the new guy is probably going to be worse. Maybe not…

I just know there’s all kind of machinations going on behind the scenes here… the kind that would make a Senate Investigation look apolitical…. this is after all literally a ‘world government’ unelected and completely bureaucratic.

Mike

Apr 21, 2005 - 1:40 pm 35. Terrye:

Sometimes I wonder if the some prominent Democrats have gotten some of that food for oil money, otherwise why go to such lengths to protect the UN?

Can anyone think of any major Democrat, other than Lieberman, who has shown half the outrage in regards to UN thievery as they have at the mere notion that Bolton put his hands on hips and pursed his lips?

Apr 21, 2005 - 2:59 pm 36. charlotte:

So, how long now until the Roger and hammerSteyn Broadway hit about Kofi and cronies, “The Bling and I”?

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:10 pm 37. charlotte:

Didn’t post what the preview showed. Someone’s out to stop us… Will try again (but it’s not worth it):

So, how long do we have to wait for the Roger and hammerSteyn Broadway hit about Kofi and cronies, “The Bling and I”?

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:17 pm 38. Kyda Sylvester:

Roger and hammerStyne–that’s great.

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:21 pm 39. Buddy Larsen:

“Choklahoma!” ? tried for “Showboat” but couldn’t improve it.

Apr 21, 2005 - 3:41 pm 40. Buddy Larsen:

Here’s a great two-stage laff;

First, go here and (scroll down) read the April 21 3:00 PM posting of John Kerry’s speech from the Senate Chamber; then

Second, go here and read what he’s doing when he’s NOT making appeals for sweetness and light.

Senator “What is Botox?” Strikes Again!

Apr 21, 2005 - 10:03 pm

Write a Comment

Name:	(required, displayed)
Email:	(required, not publicized)
URL:	(optional, displayed)
Comments: