I’ve never had any desire to club baby seals, but even PETA can’t complain too much about hitting penguins like this.

The Lord of the Rings are my favorite books of all time and I really like the movies. While I nit-picked at a few of Peter Jackson’s deviations from the books, my nit-picking wasn’t nearly as thorough as this guy’s.

Has Kerry used botox? Judging from this picture that’s not all he has used.

On March 26, Joel and Ethan Coen are back with another eccentric crime comedy–Ladykillers. Check out the preview here.

Yesterday I linked to a UPI story about Saddam gives gifts to the French. Here’s more information from ABC News. ABC reports:

ABCNEWS has obtained an extraordinary list that contains the names of prominent people around the world who supported Saddam Hussein’s regime and were given oil contracts as a result.
…
All of the contracts were awarded from late 1997 until the U.S.-led war in March 2003. They were conducted under the aegis of the United Nations’ oil-for-food program, which was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods.
…
According to a copy obtained by ABCNEWS, some 270 prominent individuals, political parties or corporations in 47 countries were on a list of those given Iraq oil contracts instantly worth millions of dollars.

This doesn’t sound like bribery per se, but if Iraq is giving you millions of dollars, then why would you want to attack?

Yesterday we learned that for some unknown reason, Bush wants to increase spending the National Endowment for the Arts and today we find out that the prescription drug benefit costs 1/3 more than they told us. The Washington Post reports:

President Bush’s new budget will project that the just-enacted prescription drug program and Medicare overhaul will cost one-third more than previously estimated and will predict a deficit exceeding $500 billion for this year, congressional aides said Thursday.

Instead of a $400 billion 10-year price tag, Bush’s 2005 budget will estimate the Medicare bill’s cost at about $540 billion, said aides who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An Iraqi blogger fisks Dean about Dean’s statement that:

“You can say that it’s great that Saddam is gone and I’m sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before.”

The Iraqi responds:

I

The UPI Reports:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) — Documents from Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.

“I think the list is true,” Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. “I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted.”

Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.

This will be incredible if proven true.

Kausfiles says, “President Bush got 87% of the vote in the Republican primary. Isn’t that not so good?” In response, Jacob Levy at the Volokh Conspiracy argues that “Lots of NH voters are just contrarian” and Reagan got just 86.4% of the vote and Clinton got less than 95%. Levy also notes that:

This time most of the non-Bush votes seem to have been write-ins for Democrats. This just means that registered Republican voters got inundated with ads for the Democrats, didn’t realize that they wouldn’t get to vote in the exciting primary, showed up at the ballot booth, and wrote one in.

Personally I’m surprised that Bush got 87%. Bush has done is best to irritate his fiscal conservative base by spending like the most liberal democrat and still 87% of primary voters voted for him. I’m just surprised he didn’t turn more people off.

Earlier I linked a post with Howard Dean’s infamous yell. According to Libertarian Jackass, the sound clip doesn’t tell the whole story. Jackass writes:

ABC News ran a segment tonight demonstrating how the media outlets skewed the coverage of the “Dean Yell”. Based on videotape from the crowd at the Dean defeat rally in Iowa, Dean raised his voice in response to the noise level of the crowd. The TV and Cable outlets took a direct feed from the mic on stage. The difference? On the videotape from the crowd, you can’t even hear Dean’s voice. On the TV and Cable feed he sounds like a WWE star.