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If you find yourself or a family member possessed by an uncontrollable urge to get hold of  Steve Jobs' most recent bit of slickly hyped and packaged technology, here are some reasons to think twice before you run out and buy this very expensive tech-toy.

Yes, iPhone's Web browser is slick. The images are wonderful and it can be fun when you are in range of a Wi-Fi network. But when you are not, waiting for pages to download on the outdated AT&T EDGE network can be a painful experience.

Do you like those Web features like Java, Flash and RSS? You know, the kind of stuff that really brings the web to life? You can forget about them for now. They do not work on the iPhone browser. And if you plan to make a phone calls while you are on the Web, you can pretty much forget about that, too, unless you are using a Wi-Fi connection.

Yes, it has an iPod built right in. But it is not exactly the top of the line iPod. For example, if you use your existing iPod as a hard drive for computer files or to play games, you will need to keep it, because the iPhone as released does not support those features. Your iPhone also will not work with many existing iPod accessories. FM transmitters do not work, and if you plug your iPhone into your current speaker systems all you'll have is a plugged in iPod, because the phone and wireless features will be shut off.

Apple of course promises new iPhone accessories in the near future. Which leaves the question, how many new accessories will you have to buy?

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Good Lord! Yet more proof of global warming, and the imminent environmental catastrophe we face! Recent bizarre weather in Argentina can only be the result of ... GLOBAL WARMING:

Thousands of Argentines cheered and threw snowballs in the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday as the capital's first major snowfall since 1918 spread a thin white mantle across the region.

Wet snow fell for hours in the Argentine capital, accumulating in a mushy but thin white layer late Monday, after freezing air from Antarctica collided with a moisture-laden low pressure system that blanketed higher elevations in western and central Argentina with snow.

"Despite all my years, this is the first time I've ever seen in snow in Buenos Aires," said Juana Benitez, an 82-year-old who joined children celebrating in the streets.

Argentina's National Weather Service said it was the first major snow in Buenos Aires since June 22, 1918, though sleet or freezing rain have been periodically reported in decades since.

Surely snow in places that normally do not get snow can only be attributed to global warming. Just like any and all floods, droughts, cold weather, hot weather, hurricanes, the lack of hurricanes, melting ice, thickening ice, shrinking deserts, expanding deserts, sunrises, sunsets, Tuesdays, barking dogs, peeling paint, and potholes in the road.

Global warming, like all half-baked crackpot theories, conveniently adjusts its terms to account for anything and everything. Therefore, it clearly explains why Argentina not only had snow in Buenos Aires, but some of the coldest weather it has ever had:

The snow followed a bitter cold snap in late May that saw subfreezing temperatures, the coldest in 40 years in Buenos Aires. That cold wave contributed to an energy crisis and 23 deaths from exposure.

Two more exposure deaths were reported on Monday.

Yep. People freezing to death in South America. Must be Global Warming.

Here is a little research I did for purposes of shutting up a leftard last week. Some of these numbers really surprised even me... especially the Clinton record, since we are constantly bombarded with the idea that the Clinton administration was the greatest era of prosperity in human history. I found it especially interesting that he took office at the lowest rate of his presidency and left at the highest. Oh, and look at Carter's numbers!

US Prime Interest Rate – Historical Dates of Purely Partisan Interest

• 1976 – Carter Elected – Prime Rate 7%
• 1978 – Rates hit 11.5%; 1979 - 15.75%;
• 1980 – March 19.5%; April 20%
• 1980 – Carter Leaves Office – Nov. 17.75%; Dec. 21.5%
• 1981 – May (1 week) and July-Sept rates spike to 20.5%
• 1982 – (Reagan Tax Cuts Become effective) - Feb. 8 – 16.5%; Nov. 22 – 11.5%
• 1983 – Prime Rate between 10.5 – 11% all year
• 1984 – March 11.5%; Dec 10.75%
• 1985 – Jan 10.5%; May 10%; June 9.5%
• Prime Rate then remained at 9% or lower (except 9.25% for two weeks in October 1987) until it again hit 9.5% in July 1988. Prime was 10% as Reagan second term ends.
• Bush I - high 11.5% (Feb 1989); Low 6% July 1992
• Prime Rate remained at 6% until March 94 (6.25%)
• Clinton – Low 6% (took office at 6%) High 9.5% (May 2000) Left office at (9.5%)
• Bush II - High 9.5% (took office at 9.5%) Low 4% (June 2003)
• May 2001 through November 2005 - 7% or under
• March 2001 through June 2006 - 8% or under
• June 2006 to current 8.25%

http://mortgage-x.com/general/indexes/prime.asp

[Originally distributed to e-mail list recipients 5-10-2007]

Rudy Giuliani shows his conservative side, suggesting that military spending levels are too low, and proposing reducing the size of the federal government by cutting the number of federal employees 20%, continuing the Bush tax cuts, and vetoing bills that include "stealth pork":

[R]udolph W. Giuliani last night said he would use attrition to cut more than 20 percent of federal civilian government employees and wants an outright cut in nondefense spending.

"The United States government right now needs an across-the-board spending decrease," the former New York mayor told the Heritage Foundation last night.

[Giuliani vowed] to continue the Bush tax cuts and to veto spending bills that include pork-barrel projects without listing their sponsor or purpose ...

He coupled his economic message with his push for staying "on offense" in the war against terrorists ...

As for military spending, he lamented the fact that it has fallen to 4.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, compared with 6.2 percent under President Reagan.

In a speech this weekend to The Citadel ... Mr. Giuliani proposed increasing the size of the Army. Yesterday, he said there would be no shortage of volunteers to fill out the force.

To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070507-112346-7158r.htm

Well, at least the Democrats in congress have got their priorities in order. They won't fund troops in the field unless they get to run the war, a notion unique in U.S. history and directly contrary to the U.S. Constitution, and they'd rather spend intelligence money on global warming research than on stupid stuff like, say, gathering intelligence on terrorists and other enemies.

From the Washington Times:

     The House next week will consider the Democrat-crafted Intelligence Authorization bill, which includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security.
    "Our job is to steal secrets," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
    "There are all kinds of people analyzing global warming, the Democrats even have a special committee on this," he told The Washington Times. "There's no value added by the intelligence community here; they have no special expertise, and this takes money and resources away from other threats."
    Democrats, who outnumber Republicans on the committee, blocked the minority from stripping the warming language from the bill.
    Intelligence panel Chairman Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat, said the climate-change study is one of several shifts his party has made to intelligence policy.
    "We're concerned that global warming might impact our ability to maintain national security," he told The Times, describing the idea as "cutting edge."

"Cutting edge." Yeah. There's a Warner Brothers cartoon where Foghorn Leghorn describes somebody as being "about as sharp as a sack of wet leather." Shifting intelligence policy from gathering intelligence to studying global warming. Yep. About as sharp as a sack of wet leather.

UPDATE: As of Friday, May 4 the continued rise in the market made this the longest "Bull Run" in 80 years.

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Even virulently anti-Bush CNN, which has spent years either ignoring the economy, burying positive economic news by leading with scare stories warning about why economic collapse is imminent, or continuing the outright falsehoods Kerry campaigned on, like the "jobless recovery" or "McJobs", has a lead story today about the phenomenal recent performance of the stock market.

Not just a new one-day record high, not even the fact that the market has steadily remained above 12,000 - even though CNN and the rest of the MSM were all over the "huge" one day drop a few weeks ago, barely mentioning the fact that the market was still over the 12,000 mark AFTER that drop. No, the news is that this is the strongest performance by the stock market in over FIFTY YEARS.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Dow Jones industrial average hit another record high Wednesday, capping its longest winning stretch in almost 52 years as investors welcomed strong earnings, lower oil prices, media merger news and a strong reading on manufacturing.

The Dow (up 75.74 to 13,211.88, Charts) rose 0.6 percent to close at an all-time high for the fifth time in the last six sessions. The Dow also hit an intraday record high of 13,256.33 during the session before retreating near the close.

The blue-chip indicator has now risen in 21 of the last 24 sessions for a gain of 7.4 percent. That's the best streak since the summer of 1955. Back then, the Dow climbed about 10 percent, rising in 22 of 25 sessions.

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The Bush administration just can't do anything right.

First, all numbers have demonstrated that his "tax cuts for the rich" in fact resulted in the rich paying more taxes, the middle class paying less taxes, and millions of lower-income workers being dropped from the tax rolls completely. Of course, that's what the administration said they were trying to accomplish, but you know whatever they say is a lie, and they really meant to cut taxes for the rich.

Now come more numbers that show that Bush's plan to cut the deficit in half by the end of his second term, which, of course, we all know was a lie to cover up the "skyrocketing" deficit, is also a bust. In fact, Bush's "skyrocketing" deficit has dropped from $455 billion in April 2004 to $145 billion. And without raising taxes! In fact, unless someone intervenes - and quickly - to slow economic growth by, say, raising taxes, at this rate the deficit will disappear entirely by 2009. Clearly, this administration is completely incompetent, if not criminal, in their handling of the economy.

The U.S. Treasury Department reported a gusher of tax revenue last week.  Tuesday alone, the Treasury received $48.7 billion from individual taxpayers as their final tax payment for 2006, an all-time single-day record, and one-third higher than the same day last year.

Based on information available through Friday, we estimate federal receipts at about $390 billion in April.  This would be the largest tax take for any month in American history, up 25% versus last April, and up 18% versus the previous record high in April 2001.

With incomes and profits growing rapidly, the U.S. budget deficit will fall to about $145 billion during the twelve months ending in April.  To put this in perspective, the deficit was $455 billion as recently as three years ago (the twelve months through April 2004).

These trends increase our confidence in the lonely forecast we made back in early February that the budget deficit would drop to $115 billion for the 2007 fiscal year, and disappear in Fiscal 2009, possibly before.  In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a deficit of $177 billion this year, with the White House at $244 billion.  Expect major revisions to these numbers.

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No introduction for this one.  Just read for yourselves and contemplate what may have been our fate had we lost WWII:

Dog-Gone Wrong

Apparently, Al Qaida in Iraq and their brand of hard-core Sunni Islam have become too much for some of their former insurgent allies.  Fighting has ensued between rival Sunni groups and Al Qaida and the flash point may have been at the veggie stand:

"It's happening daily," Lt. Col. Keith Gogas said Thursday in an interview at an Army base in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. "Our read on it is that that the more moderate, if you will, Sunni insurgents, are finding that their goals and al-Qaida's goals are at odds."

 American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

 

             http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4734393.html

I guess that the Al Qaida guys are not big salad fans.  Or is the mixing of veggies of different genders okay once they are all chopped up?  Just another one of the mysteries of Islam.

Everyone has by now heard that Harry Reid, Senate Democrat leader, has announced the surrender of the modern civilized world to the forces of dark ages savagery. Harry, apparently now a military expert, has declared that the "war is lost".

General Giap said that the anti-war movement (Fonda, Kerry, and their pals) rescued his collapsing military effort from the brink of defeat. (For those of you who don't "get" this reference, as the insane Rosie O'Donnel says, "google it!")

Congratulations Harry, for your prodigious efforts as causing history to repeat itself. And for what? Cheap partisan hackery.

From Neil Boortz:

How's this for supporting our troops? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat (of course) has now declared that the United States has lost the war in Iraq. He told President Bush that the war could not be won through military force ... in effect saying that the U.S. military is incapable of defeating the Islamic fascist enemy.

Know this ... there is no way in hell that you can say you support our troops when you say that our troops cannot win the battle. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it well: "I can't begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost,"

I might put it a bit differently. What do you call a political leader in this country who declares a war to be lost while our men and women in uniform are putting their lives on the line to win that war. What do you call a highly placed political leader who puts a smile on the faces of the Islamic terrorist bastards who are out there trying to kill our soldiers. There's a word for it .. and it's a word that those of you who listen to my show will know that I don't use. That word is traitor. Dictionary.com has a few definitions for the word. See how you like them:

1. A person who betrays another, a cause or any trust. 
2. A person who commits treason by betraying his or her country

So ... what is treason? Giving aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war. Did Reid's comments give aid to the Islamic fascists trying to kill our soldiers? How can anyone not say that Harry Reid's words did just that? The only question then is whether, in the definition of treason, we can be said to be at war.

This may be Reid's escape. For my part, he has not only given aid and comfort to the enemy, he has emboldened them. I feel certain that American men and women in Iraq will die as a result of Reid's words encouraging the people who want to kill them.

Bastard.

Know this .... Democrats are absolutely invested in our defeat at the hands of the Islamic insurgents in Iraq. Good news in Iraq is bad news for the Democrat Party MoveOn.org crowd. They watch the news every day looking eager for more stories of violence in Iraq aimed at innocents and our soldiers. The absence of those stories makes them sad. The presence of those stories lift their spirits.

Never in the history of this country has a political party been so dedicated to our defeat in armed conflict.

Boortz has pretty much summed it up.

Well, let's see, which is it? Because it has to be one of the three. When asked at one of her "chat" sessions with the public whether she had read the intelligence report underlying the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a resolution the NY senator of course voted in favor of, the following exchage took place:

Clinton said she had been briefed on the report, and the woman screamed back, "Did you read it?!"  Notably uncomfortable, the Senator repeated that she had been briefed.  This exchange went back and forth about three times.

The woman sat down and Clinton explained, "If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give this President the authority." Clinton also said she believed she was giving the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq.

So Clinton now denies ever having actually read the report, and not understanding the contents of the resolution. That would be pretty darned irresponsible, if you believe her.

She also claims she thought the resolution was to "give the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq". Well, the US President doesn't send UN Inspectors, anyplace, ever, and congress can't confer that authority upon him. In addition to which, UN inspectors were already IN Iraq. Remember that whole discussion about how long to let Saddam keep playing games with the inspectors? Remember Hans Blix?  Hillary was somehow unaware of that whole business, and had no idea about the function of the UN and the limits placed on congress and the President by the US Constitution. And that would be pretty dumb, if you believe her.

On the other hand, you could just accept this as another example of Clintonian wriggling, trying to re-write history on the fly while never admitting or taking responsibility for anything. But that would be dishonest.

All in all, I don't believe she was so irresponsible she didn't know what she was voting for. And I've never believed she's dumb.

Guess I'll have to go with dishonest.

When you are the liberal Democrat Speaker of the House, and even the reliably liberal Washington Post says your antics are unconstitutional and foolish, maybe it is time to get a grip on reality. This WaPo editorial, reproduced here, makes it clear that even some in the liberal press have a passing familiarity with the Constitution of the United States, and a much more grown-up view of world affairs than the power-mad Nancy Pelosi and her amateurish - and unconstitutional - forays into foreign policy:

Pratfall in Damascus
Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy

Thursday, April 5, 2007; A16

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. What's more, she added, Mr. Assad was ready to "resume the peace process" as well. Having announced this seeming diplomatic breakthrough, Ms. Pelosi suggested that her Kissingerian shuttle diplomacy was just getting started. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria," she said.

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. "What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

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