Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.
Last day of the year and all of that. We may or may not go out tonight to capture some photographs of fireworks and whatnot. We’re currently under a storm warning, after which it’s supposed to be in single digit cold, tonight. Gee, just what I need for a few days off. I’m glad I’m not DJ’ing parties anymore… it’s a sure bet I’d have to lug all my gear through this stuff.
What am I talking about? Have a look at a pic taken at about 7 this morning, local time, over in Amhearst. That’s I-290 in the background. Every cam I can see within about a 90 mile radius is showing exactly the same thing. I’ll tell you this; it’s a good thing it’s New Year’s Eve with this stuff. On a normal day we’ve had a problem with traffic and whatnot. As it is, the only people that went anywhere today where the people that have jobs that really required they be there, else people within overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Everybody else pretty much stayed home.
Now after this storm went through the temps started dropping. We’re supposed to see single digits tonight. I hear the wind chill numbers are suppsoed to be near Zero in Times Square. So, maybe we won’t go see fireworks tonight. We’ll see how it goes.
- I commented on this last night, and Tammy Bruce, as David showed us, slayed this dragon yesterday as well.. [1]. but this [2]Cynthia [2]situation just floors me; I can’t get over how she’s not in jail. Neither can the Chicago Boys [3]. Now, this is nothing new for her. But perhaps the thing that bothers me most is something I mentioned to Billy in the Ramble last night [4]; People were actually careless enough to elect this walking disaster… and more than once. How the bleep can our nation survive with such people being handed the power of government? By the way, that was a great catch, David.
[2]McKinney
- The bit with Blago, yesterday, naming Roland Burris to the Senate [5] is interesting for it’s legal aspects, if nothing else. The whole thing may end up going to the USSC [6], if the Democrats get their back up on this thing, which they may do, if Reid gets his way [7].. One gets the impression they really don’t know which will cause them more damage; Reid not seating the guy and faciung a legal fight over it, or accepting the nomination and having a crow sandwich. It’s clear that the race huxters like Bobby Rush like the guy… he’s already broken out the race card [8] in support of Burris…(Big shock, that… the man with a only a hammer operates as if every problem is a nail. Race is the only tool in Bobby Rsuh’s tote bag.) Reid is facing a real issue here, and the issue shows just how tied to the race huxters their every move is. Picture the riots that would ensue… encouraged by such as Bobby Rush… should Senate Democrats turn Burris away. OTOH, picture the mess if they accept the appointment. By the way, Glenn is running a transcript [9]of Bobby Rush on CBS’s Early Show, this morning. When someone is that intentionally stupid, as Bobby Rush demonstrates he is in the transcript, there’s only a couple of conclusions that one can come to, none of which are very complimentary; the first two are that he’s a paid spokesman, and that he’s naturally stupid that way. Frankly, I don’t know which frightens me more.
- Frankly, from a perspective of future implications, I’d like to see this dispute over Blago and Burris go to the court system. Make no mistake, I can’t stand Burris, and do not support him. That said; If the Senate leadership… of either party… can refuse to seat an appointment on these rather thin grounds, on what ground would they NOT be able to refuse an appointment? With both bodies going repeatedly 50/50 in recent years it doesn’t seem to me out of the question that at some point, someone’s going to try to reject seating an appointment because it tips the scales of power from one political party to the other. It’s for that reason at least, that I’d like to see the democrats slapped back on constitutional grounds. They made this mess in Illinois, make no mistake about it. They continued to foster it over the years since the thirties. If they need to get it under control, they’re going to need to find some way other than bypassing the constitution as regards representation. Maybe finding honest politicians wearing the sign of the Jackass, is outside the realm of possibility , particularly those in Illinois ?
- And in Connecticut as well, if this Chris Dodd thing is of any indication. The Hartford advocate is following the story there.
Sen. Chris Dodd never stood a chance at the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. But that didn’t stop the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from fleeing Washington during the prelude to the biggest banking collapse of our lifetime and moving his family to Iowa for the caucuses.
Chris Dodd
The story goes on to report that the approval ratings for dead… errr… Dodd… have gone somewhat south of 50%. Frankly, I think the real story here is that there’s still that high. I can’t imagine anybody else under the cloud of suspicion and mistrust that Dodd is currently operating under, rating nearly as well. On the other hand he does have the dinosaur media going to bat for him. That probably explains a lot of it. Does anybody remember that promise about draining the swamp? My prediction: Dodd is toast in his next election.
- Now that we’re on the subject of Democrats and corruption, and the press going to bat for them, let’s look at an article in The Swamp March 28th of this year.
[10]WASHINGTON – Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila and 12 others were indicted in a case related to his political campaign fund-raising, the U.S. Justice Department announced this morning.
Charges for the 13 defendants include conspiracy, false statements, wire fraud, federal program fraud and tax crimes.
“Our democratic system cannot function when public officials act as though they are above the law. Public officials must comply with the law and those who do not comply will be held accountable,” said Luis Fraticelli, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Juan Field Office.
The case involves Acevedo Vila’s successful 2004 gubernatorial campaign and 2000 and 2002 campaigns for resident commissioner, which is Puerto Rico’s representative in the U.S. Congress.Notice anything missing? Let’s try an AP story, posted on 12/23/08: [11]
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A U.S. judge on Tuesday denied defense requests to throw out the remaining federal corruption charges against Puerto Rico’s indicted governor, who faces trial in February for alleged campaign finance violations.
Judge Paul Barbadoro said he left five charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering intact, along with four charges related to Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila’s earlier campaigns for the island’s nonvoting seat in Congress and an alleged conspiracy to hide donations from the Internal Revenue Service.
Notice anything missing? Yep… same problem. At no point in any of the paltry number of articles I could find on the topic does it make mention of the fact that the guy is a Democrat. The trial comes up in a couple months. Keep a close watch, because if my guess if correct, the press will not make anything of this.
- Well, now, speaking of the dinosaur media going to bat for Democrats, this is interesting... Vicki Iseman has apparently filed a defamation suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond [12], against the New York Times, naming as defendants the Times‘ executive editor, four reporters, and it’s Washington bureau chief. Amount in the suit? $27MUSD. Trust me when I tell you, the woman’s got a case. The only question in my mind is what happens when she wins? Does the Times have a new owner? One can only hope. Normally, I’d suggest that this would end up being settled out of court for about half the money in the suit…, but Pinch hasn’t got the spare coin to be settling, right now. So, this story is going to go large on us before summer.
- I’ve been watching this series of articles from Dennis Prager over the last day or two, and frankly I can’t believe he hasn’t been catching hell from the usual suspects. The stuff he comes up with, is so bloody obvious, as to make one wonder how so many of them and then I’ll about this kind of thing for so long. One cannot read this without wondering if in fact the reasons listed aren’t the root cause of most of the spike in divorce rates over the last 40 years or so. Man or woman, you’ll want to read this one. [13]BBCT to Fetiche Nouvelle, at Eternity Road [14] who has her own comments to add… and you’ll want to read those, as well.
- Speaking of Eternity Road I can’t end this Ramble without commenting on this. [15]
Mark Steyn, ever ready to point out the disjunction between our opinions and reality, noted a juicy one just yesterday: [16]
Samuel Huntington’s key point in his most famous book is that the conventional western elite view of man as homo economicus is reductive – that cultural identity is a more profound indicator that western-style economic liberty cannot easily trump.This should have been obvious: If a man is a Muslim bus driver, which is more central to his identity – that he is a Muslim or that he drives a bus? Yet much of the trouble in the world comes from the assumption that economic interests will always outpunch cultural ones: The British imported a large Indian population to serve as a merchant and clerical class in Fiji. It made perfect economic sense. A century later Fiji was a coup-racked ruin split open on cultural fault lines.
Now, Steyn’s point, as irrefutable as it is when applied to Muslims, loses some force if we change focus just a bit. What about a “Christian bus driver?” Or a “Jewish bus driver?” Or, to be maximally provocative, a “militant-atheist Canadian bus driver?” In those cases, whether the religious affiliation — yes, atheism is a religious affiliation — or the economic affiliation would predominate is more individual, harder to predict from the few facts given.
Fran, I don’t know if this is occurred to you, but that entire equation gets a little bit more than fuzzy, when you start shifting the focus to the Christian bus driver or the Jewish driver in your argument, because Judaism and Christianity, like it or not, are central pillars of the western culture, as much as Islam is to their part of the world at least, and therefore, their cultural identity has not altered that much by membership in those sub groups. Consider the Muslim bus driver in Iran. If you ask him in his identity would you hear that he was a bus driver first, or that he was Muslim? Given the location, and the culture in that location, you would probably hear that he was a bus driver first, and the fact that he was a Muslim would probably be considered as obvious. If you’re really sharp, here, you will probably have noticed that to be exactly the same reaction as the Christian bus driver in the states. The point I’m making here is that the religious affiliation of an individual is pretty much assumed based on the culture their living in. Religion Fran, I don’t know if this is occurred to you, but that entire equation gets a little bit more than fuzzy. when you start shifting the focus to the Christian bus driver or the Jewish driver in your argument, because Judaism and Christianity, like it or not, are central pillars of the western culture, as much as Islam is to their part of the world at least, and therefore, their cultural identity has not altered that much by membership in those sub groups.
Consider the Muslim bus driver in Iran. If you ask him in his identity would you hear that he was a bus driver first, or that he was Muslim? Given the location, and the culture in that location, you would probably hear that he was a bus driver first, and the fact that he was a Muslim would probably be considered as obvious. If you’re really sharp, here, you will probably have noticed that to be exactly the same as your postulated reaction in the Christian bus driver in the states.
The point I’m making here is that the religious affiliation of an individual is pretty much assumed based on the culture their living in. Religion after all is a cultural driver. (Yes, you should pardon the pun )
In fairness, the remainder of your comments are dead on. Christianity is not a totalitarian religion nor is Judaism. Islam, however, in most of it’s forms, and particularly in it’s more literal forms, is. Thereby, so too, that cultures that spring from each. Say what you will about the dwindling number of churchgoing people in the western world. The fact remains that even for lapsed believers the cultural influence of Christianity is still there.
Our cultural nature , largely drawn from the Judeo-Christian ethic, is one of acceptance, the screams of naysayers on the American left notwithstanding. As such when the Muslim bus driver makes his demands, (Insisting as you say,that no one carrying alcohol or pork, or accompanied by a dog, come anywhere near “his” bus) they are not rejected out of hand . I confess to wandering at times if that instinct to openness even in such basic situations, isn’t a fatal flaw of the culture. After all, the squeaky wheel is the one who gets the attention of the man with a grease gun.is after all a cultural driver. (you should pardon the pun ) In fairness, the remainder of your comments are dead on. Christianity is not a totalitarian religion nor is Judaism. Islam, however, in most of it’s forms, and particularly in it’s more literal forms, is. Thereby, so too, that cultures that spring from each. Say what you will about the dwindling number of churchgoing people in the western world. The fact remains that even for lapsed believers the cultural influence of Christianity is still there. Our cultural nature is one of acceptance, the screams of naysayers on the American left notwithstanding. As such when the Muslim bus driver makes his demands, (Insisting as you say, that no one carrying alcohol or pork, or accompanied by a dog, come anywhere near “his” bus) they are not rejected out of hand . I confess to wandering at times if that instinct to openness even in such basic situations, isn’t a fatal flaw of the culture. After all, the squeaky wheel is the one who gets the attention of the man with a grease gun.
OK, that does it for this year for the Nightly Ramble. Have a nice night tonight, and be safe. We’ll see you next year.