Consumer Confidence Higher Than Expected. Yes, more bad news for liberals! Here are the first two paragraphs of the AP Business story:

http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=ap&src=601&news_id=ap-d8ffqoh80&date=20060131

Americans became more optimistic about the economy in January, sending a widely followed measure of consumer confidence to the highest level in about three and a half years, a private research group said Tuesday.

The Conference Board said that its consumer confidence index rose to 106.3, the highest level since June 2002, when the reading was also 106.3. The latest reading was up from a revised 103.8 in December. Analysts had expected a reading of 105.0 in January.

Of course, our media prefers to report bad economic news, and that's what the rest of the article tries to do. Read it at the above link if you wish; those first two paragraphs are all I need to read.

Alito is sworn in as the 110th Supreme Court justice. Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senate in a vote that was mostly party-line. Liberals were unsuccessful in rallying for a filibuster against Alito's confirmation vote, and a much-predicted showdown was avoided. President Bush said:

"Sam Alito is a brilliant and fair-minded judge who strictly interprets the Constitution and laws and does not legislate from the bench. He is a man of deep character and integrity, and he will make all Americans proud as a justice on our highest court."

We never know how a Supreme Court justice will rule on issues until after their confirmation, but Alito seems like a solid choice. The former 3rd U.S. Circuit Court judge is predictably receiving praise from Republicans and criticism from Democrats. Sen. Charles Schumer (D, NY) said:

"I must say that I wish the president was in a position to do more than claim a partisan victory tonight. The union would be better and stronger and more unified if we were confirming a different nominee, a nominee who could have united us more than divided us."

Save it, Chuck. What your party wants are liberal activists on the high court, instead of judges who rule according to the law. Now that there is one more justice on the court who is not likely to legislate from the bench, liberals are further losing their ability to push their agenda through.

EarthLink Finalizes Wireless Deal in Philadelphia. This article appeared in the Associated Press yesterday:

http://www.newsday.com/technology/wire/sns-ap-wireless-philly,0,7248530.story

EarthLink Inc. has finalized a 10-year contract to provide wireless Internet service across Philadelphia, a city official said Monday.

Philadelphia was the first large city to announce plans to build a wireless Internet network and provide low-cost access to residents as a way to span the digital divide. Smaller cities already have networks in operation.

In Philadelphia, EarthLink will own the network and charge a wholesale rate of $9 a month to Internet service providers that would then resell access to the public, according to Dianah Neff, the city's chief information officer.

The contract doesn't specify the monthly rate that would be charged to consumers, but Neff said the wholesale price is low enough to enable ISPs to offer low-cost services. City officials had been trying to keep the monthly price to $20 or less.

The contract will go before the City Council for approval in February. Construction should start right after the contract is signed. EarthLink will build the network initially over a 15-square-mile area in Northeast Philadelphia to prove the system will work, Neff said. If successful, citywide access could be turned on by spring 2007.

Under the terms of the agreement, which can be renewed, Atlanta-based EarthLink will carry the cost to build the Wi-Fi network to cover 135 square miles.

EarthLink also will pay the city and Wireless Philadelphia, the nonprofit handling the project, a fee to mount equipment on city infrastructure, such as lamp posts.

Have you seen the list of Oscar nominations? It's not pretty. Brokeback Mountain, a story about a gay relationship between two cowboys, got eight nominations, including Best Picture. Felicity Huffman received a best actress nomination for Transamerica, in which she portrays a man who is about to undergo a sex-change operation. Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney's movie about Sen. Joseph McCarthy (which Clooney reportedly made in response to Ann Coulter's book Treason), received six nominations. The complete list is here:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/31/D8FFMNQ00.html

Hmmm. Does it sound to you like Hollywood has a liberal agenda? "Duh", right? I've always been something of a film buff, so I usually sit through the boring Oscar broadcast every year. But I don't think I will put myself through it this year. Something about the list of nominees gives me the feeling that there will be more Hollywood liberalism on parade during this year's ceremony than usual, and it may be more than my stomach can handle. This statement by Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee is already making me gag:

"I didn't know there were so many gay people out there. Everywhere, they turn up. More importantly, I think I'm amazed how people everywhere have had the sensitivity to want to get into the complexity of the issue, the probability of love, the illusion of love, all those things. It's not simple things you can categorize as right or wrong."

Spare me. I have the feeling that Brokeback Mountain will be the big winner this year, for the same reason that Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby won top prize last year. Hollywood has contempt for traditional values, and giving its top honors to movies about euthanasia and gay cowboys is their way of thumbing their noses at mainstream America.

For what it's worth, my personal pick for best picture is probably Crash. I usually despise movies that preach about racism, because Hollywood practices its own brand of elite racism, and it is hypocritical for them to sermonize to us about it. Do you remember the 2002 Oscar ceremony? The two lead acting awards were won by black performers (Denzel Washington, Halle Berry), and Sidney Poitier was given a lifetime achievement award. It was clearly Hollywood's attempt to throw a bone to the black community so that blacks would stop accusing Hollywood of racism. Having said that, Crash is a well-made movie that effectively presents many different viewpoints on race relations. It is meatier and more perceptive than most modern movies.

Trump proposes a 45-story waterfront condo in Philly. The Donald said on Monday that he would build a 45-story luxury condominium high-rise along the Delaware waterfront called Trump Tower Philadelphia. It would consist of at least 250 units on Penn Street near the end of Spring Garden Street. Construction would begin this summer and would be completed in mid-2008. Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer story:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/13695425.htm?source=rss&channel=inquirer_nation

This follows on the heels of news that Trump wants to build a casino in Philly's Nicetown section. Trump is a 1968 graduate of Wharton School who says of Philadelphia:

"I went to school here. It's a great city. I know it well."

Some people think that the interest of Trump and other world-class developers in building condos and casinos in Philadelphia shows how far the city has come. It could be a good sign for the city's future, but Philly residents shouldn't jump for joy just yet. One real estate developer who is quoted in the article questions how that particular neighborhood will be able to change to accomodate the Trump Tower and its residents. I would say this goes trebly for the Nicetown section, the crime-ridden North Philly neighborhood in which Trump hopes to build his casino. In a previous post, I questioned what Trump was thinking by choosing that area. I recently had a conversation with an elderly gentleman who said that poor neighborhoods are actually the ideal places to build casinos -- because poor people are the ones most likely to gamble, and wealthy people are far less likely. Most of us are familiar with a stereotype of rich playboys who gamble the night away in riverside palaces. Such people may exist, but they are rare, and they aren't likely to be drawn to Philadelphia if casinos are built here. Poor and lower-middle-class people are more likely to gamble in hopes that they can score a windfall. Besides, the old-timer said, wealthy people are likely to protest the building of a casino in their neighborhood, because they don't want "that kind of riffraff" coming into their area. By contrast, Nicetown residents may think Trump is doing them a favor by building a big high-profile casino in their troubled area.

But I think casinos will do more harm than good to Philadelphia, and maybe even Pennsylvania in general. I realize that "Fast Eddie" Rendell is salivating over the potential state tax revenues that casinos may generate, and that others think casinos will provide good job opportunities in areas like Nicetown or Fishtown. But gambling is an addiction, and I have troubling visions of already-impoverished Philadelphia families being impoverished further by the gambling bug. I'm not so sure that the city's future is looking as bright as some people think.

51% of voters don't want Hillary for president, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The poll results indicate that 51% of registered voters "would definitely not vote" for Clinton, while just 16% said they definitely would, and 32% said they would consider it. A few more findings:

- Committed anti-Hillary voters outnumber committed pro-Hillary voters by 3-1.

- Men are especially anti-Clinton — 60 percent say there's no way they'd back her for commander-in-chief.

- 90 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of conservatives say there's no way they'd back her. This suggests that she'd have a tough time winning any red states.

- 46 percent said they would oppose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice if she ran for President. Rice has said repeatedly that she will not run.

Bin Laden "Truce" Offer Reveals Terror Network in Tatters. Richard Miniter, author of the books Disinformation , Shadow War, and Losing Bin Laden , says that the recent audiotape of Osama bin Laden reveals that the U.S. is winning the "information war" with al Qaeda, and that bin Laden is losing ground with the Muslim world. Here is the Human Events article:

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/sarticle.php?id=11750&o=DIB007

Here is key text:

It was not long ago that the propaganda arm of al Qaeda could easily get videotapes onto al Jazeera in hours. But the new tape played on al Jazeera took upwards of five weeks to move from bin Laden to al Jazeera.

Could al Qaeda's network be fraying? One thing is for certain: Al Qaeda's reliance on a network of human couriers to smuggle these tapes suggests fearfulness and potential apprehension.

I think it's become more apparent that bin Laden is no longer in operational control of al Qaeda. He merely serves as a mythological figure at this point, and one with diminishing power, at that. Here's more:

Bin Laden's offer of a "truce" to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan is actually an attempt to rebuild support among Muslim populations in those two countries, who have borne the brunt of terrorist attacks since 9/11. With Muslim opinion increasingly alienated away from bin Laden the truce and rebuilding effort is a last chance effort by bin Laden to win back the hearts and minds of his one-time Muslim supporters.

Bin Laden's threat to strike inside the United States is not as frightening as it once was. More than 600 individuals linked to Islamic terrorism have been deported from the United States since September 2001. And al Qaeda cells from the Virginia suburbs to Bly, Ore., have been dismantled or disrupted. Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have killed or captured more than 5,000 al Qaeda operatives in 102 countries, and more than two thirds of its senior leadership has been killed or captured over the same period.

And one more thing:

This tape explodes the myth that bin Laden died in the recent Pakistani earthquake.

This tape should caution analysts who repeatedly predict bin Laden's demise, based solely on the fact that "we haven't heard from him in a while."

Good point. But did anyone really believe Sen. Harry Reid's baseless speculation that bin Laden supposedly died in the earthquake?

It gets better: at least two other al Qaeda leaders are believed dead, and one of them is al-Zawahiri's son-in-law. Here's the Reuters story:

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-01-19T012818Z_01_SP13150_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-PAKISTAN-QAEDA.xml&rpc=22

Pakistani intelligence sources on Thursday identified three of four al Qaeda members believed to have been killed by a U.S. airstrike last week, though they have yet to recover the bodies.

One of the dead was said to be Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, a son-in-law of al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri.

Another was Midhat Murfi al Sayid Omer, an expert in explosives and poisons who carried a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.

The third man named was Abu Obaidah al Misri, al Qaeda's chief of operations in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province.

U.S. Strike Killed Al Qaeda Bomb Maker. ABC News reported the good news today:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1517986

ABC News has learned that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan.

Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of three known al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit conference in the village of Damadola.

The United States had posted a $5 million reward for Mursi's capture. He is described by U.S. authorities as the man who ran al Qaeda's infamous Derunta training camp in Afghanistan, where he used dogs and other animals as subjects of experiments with poison and chemicals.

"This is extraordinarily important," said former FBI agent Jack Cloonan, an ABC News consultant, who was the senior agent on the FBI's al Qaeda squad. "He's the man who trained the shoe bomber, Richard Reid and Zacharias Mousssaoui, as well as hundreds of others."

Pakistani authorities tell ABC News they have confirmation that Mursi was among those on the guest list for the late-night meeting. The authorities say al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was also expected to attend but apparently changed his mind.

It's great to hear that an "extraordinarily important" member of al Qaeda has been taken out. It would have been even better if al-Zawahiri had been present at the "dinner" (the word which the media has used until now to describe the apparent terror conference), but we'll get him another time. Al Qaeda operatives cannot be allowed to feel safe anywhere. The media has been focusing on Pakistanis who opposed the American missile strike. No one likes to hear about innocent casualties in operations like these; there were reportedly women and children killed along with the terrorists. But this should put everyone living in a terrorist-friendly region on notice that they are in harm's way. The best thing they can do to protect themselves and their families is to avoid contact with known terrorists and, if possible, turn the terrorists in. I realize this is dangerous for them, but so is living too close to a terrorist's home or meeting place. I remember President Bush saying, in an address to the nation shortly after 9/11, that any country that "feeds" terrorists is our enemy in the war on terror. He may not have meant it literally, but this missile strike demonstrates what can happen to anyone who invites terrorists over for dinner.

Elisabeth Shue is reportedly pregnant -- so what? Maybe I'm overreacting to this news story from AP Entertainment about the actress Elisabeth Shue's reported pregnancy:

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-people-shue,0,5796435.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

Here is what the headline says:

Elisabeth Shue Reportedly Pregnant Again

And here is the first line of the article:

Elisabeth Shue can leave Las Vegas but apparently she can't get out of the nursery.

Now, is it me, or does this opening line make it sound as if the actress is churning out children like a baby factory? But here's the next line:

Shue is pregnant with her third child, US Weekly reported Friday on its Web site, citing her manager, David Seltzer.

OK, and now we skip to the last line of the article:

She and her husband, Davis Guggenheim, have an 8-year-old son, Miles, and a 4-year-old daughter, Stella.

So, what's the big deal? Pardon my ignorance, but is it so unusual for a 42-year-old woman to have three children that were each born four years after the other, all by the same father? Apparently it is unusual in Hollywood, especially when the father of all three children is the woman's husband!

Don't get me wrong; I know why Shue's pregnancy is making headlines. News sources like Us Weekly and AP Entertainment specialize in reporting on such things as celebrity pregnancies. And it does have some relevance to the industry, because the article notes that Shue has dropped out of a Joel Schumacher film project called Number 23 because of her pregnancy. So, I understand why it is a newsworthy item within these sources.

But something about the article's tone is bugging me. The writer (presumably a Hollywood liberal) seems to think it is strange that Shue would live her life this way. Dear Sir or Madam: lots of people live like this in mainstream society (which, I realize, is often viewed with contempt by Hollywood). Of course, I think much of contemporary society places more importance on work than on family, which is a sad thing, because it used to be the other way around. People used to get jobs and build careers in order to support their families; now it seems like people build and plan their families around their careers. That goes trebly for Hollywood, where actresses have a reputation for putting off having children for the sake of their careers. I don't know how many times I have read interviews in which 40-something actresses have said that they were trying to have children before it was too late, and that they regretted not having children sooner. Well, Shue is one actress who did not make that mistake, and I applaud her for not putting her career before her family. (Maybe she doesn't want my praise -- Hollywood stars sometimes act insulted when they are praised by conservatives -- but I applaud her anyway).

I know. Maybe I read too much into these things. I'll calm down now, and let you go back to reading Us Weekly.

Tom DeLay gives up his post as House Majority Leader. The story is here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180965,00.html

It's a shame that the Democrats succeeded in bringing down an effective leader. The prosecutor Ronnie Earle, who brought the indictment against DeLay in September, has a history of partisan vendettas. On September 28th, DeLay's spokesperson Kevin Madden had this to say:

"These charges have no basis in the facts or the law. This is just another example of Ronnie Earle misusing his office for partisan vendettas. Despite the clearly political agenda of this prosecutor, Congressman DeLay has cooperated with officials throughout the entire process. Even in the last two weeks, Ronnie Earle himself had acknowledged publicly that Mr. DeLay was not a target of his investigation. However, as with many of Ronnie Earle's previous partisan investigations, Ronnie Earle refused to let the facts or the law get in the way of his partisan desire to indict a political foe. This purely political investigation has been marked by illegal grand jury leaks, a fundraising speech by Ronnie Earle for Texas Democrats that inappropriately focused on the investigation, misuse of his office for partisan purposes, and extortion of money for Earle's pet projects from corporations in exchange for dismissing indictments he brought against them. Ronnie Earle's previous misuse of his office has resulted in failed prosecutions and we trust his partisan grandstanding will strike out again, as it should. Ronnie Earle's 1994 indictment against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was quickly dismissed and his charges in the 1980s against former Attorney General Jim Mattox-another political foe of Earle-fell apart at trial. We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks. Ronnie Earle began this investigation in 2002, after the Democrat Party lost the Texas state legislature to Republicans. For three years and through numerous grand juries, Ronnie Earle has tried to manufacture charges against Republicans involved in winning those elections using arcane statutes never before utilized in a case in the state. This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat."

DeLay may be acquitted as well, but Earle has unfortunately succeeded in removing an effective leader from his post, if not from Congress. Hopefully the new House Majority Leader will be just as effective as the Hammer.

Chronic Returners May Be 'Bulimic' Spenders. This ABC News story affirms what I believed for years while I worked in retail: some people make a constant habit of returning the items they buy, and have no intention of keeping the items. I've never been able to understand such people, but this story provides good insights:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=1481435

It says:

There are an estimated 15 million shopaholics in America and many of them are chronic returners. Some are driven to return the things they just bought because they feel guilty, or some make the purchase for the high and never really intend to keep the items.

Some compare it to the eating disorder bulimia — also characterized by binging and purging.

Many consider it a harmless habit, but a woman who asked to remain anonymous said she spends 20 hours a week returning items. Shopping once cost her home and 401K fund. Returning is her way of fulfilling the emotional need to spend.

"One hundred percent of the time I have regret, remorse, guilt," she said. "It can make me physically ill."

It's been estimated that one in 20 Americans struggle with compulsive shopping and 70 percent of Americans visit the mall once a week.

Dr. April Lane Benson, a psychologist who authored "I Shop, Therefore I Am," said serial returning is a well-kept secret because it carries so much embarrassment and shame.

It's "something people don't tend to talk about because the person who is the compulsive returner is often very perfectionistic and feels that they should be more in control," said Benson, a psychologist who specializes in treating compulsive shoppers.

Benson said dopamine levels rise during the anticipation of the buy and then crash afterward.

And here is something I have no trouble believing at all:

It has been estimated that retailers lose billions of dollars a year to bad returns.

Nothing personal against any "serial returners" who may be reading this, but such a habit is a burden on society as well as the individual. Such people should heed this advice offered in the news story:

Benson said people should ask themselves a few questions before they buy: Where am I? How do I feel? Do I need this? What if I wait? How will I pay? Where will I put it?

"Those questions slow you down so that you really begin to think about what you're doing and what are the consequences," she said.