Nightly Ramble:Flip Your Lid Edition

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “Flip Your Lid” Edition

• IT’S A MISTAKE: I said in last night’s Ramble, that the question now with Bill Clinton going over to kiss gargoyle backside, is the price what would get negotiated away. Today, The Wall Street Journal examines that very question:
  

  But the important question going forward is whether Mr. Clinton’s visit was merely the down payment Kim extracted from the Obama Administration for a potentially larger set of American concessions.

  That question is hard to avoid given that Mr. Clinton was met at the Pyongyang airport by Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator. North Korea may have had its own propaganda reasons for putting its diplomat in the photo-op, and the White House insisted that Mr. Clinton’s mission was strictly humanitarian and that he was not carrying any messages from President Obama. We hope that’s true.

  Yet Mr. Clinton’s visit is a message unto itself. It will bolster Kim’s bid to dissolve the six-party negotiations in favor of the direct talks with the U.S. he has long sought. It will also dismay some in South Korea and Japan, which have their own hostages in North Korea and will wonder why Mr. Clinton couldn’t obtain their release as well.

  John Bolton agrees, saying in the Washington Post this morning:

  While the United States is properly concerned whenever its citizens are abused or held hostage, efforts to protect them should not create potentially greater risks for other Americans in the future. Yet that is exactly the consequence of visits by former presidents or other dignitaries as a form of political ransom to obtain their release. Iran and other autocracies are presumably closely watching the scenario in North Korea. With three American hikers freshly in Tehran’s captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance? And, looking ahead, what American hostages will not be sufficiently important to merit the presidential treatment? What about Roxana Saberi and other Americans previously held in Tehran? What was it about them that made them unworthy of a presidential visit?

  One logical answer would seem to be that these other prisoners weren’t working for Al Gore propaganda unit otherwise known as “Current TV”. Think of it this way; Would Obama have sent Clinton had another highly placed Democrat wasn’t directly involved in sending these women to the NORK border? I don’t think so, either. And as with everything else this administration has attempted, its costs not only far exceed projections, but far outrstrip benefits as well.

•  GUNS vs OBAMACARE and VOUCHERS:  John Zogby’s people are saying, this morning:
  

  An overwhelming majority of Americans (83 percent) support concealed-carry laws, while only 11 percent oppose them.

  With this polling data in mind, let’s consider Dick Durbin the other day telling the lie that a vast ajority of Americans support Obamacare. (What the hell poll was he claiming to be using to get that statement, anyway?) How is it we don’t see a massive push in legislatures across the country for CCW laws? I mean, if the will of the people is the reason they’re pushing Oabmacare…. why is the will of the people suddenly an invalid measurement when guns are involved?  Similarly, let’s consider that in poll after poll, Americans overhwlmingly support school vouchers. Yet, the Democrats won’t even discuss it, except to defeat such measures. Think about it; Is the will of the people really important to the left, or is it just another prop to be used to gain their socialist agendae?

•  CASH FOR CLUNKERS, TOO:  The vast majority don’t support cash for clunckers, and yet the Cons are going directly against the will of the people and pushing 2 billion dollars at this turkey… which oughta last about a week and a half if the way the first round went is of any indication. Something of a pattern, here.
•  THE HURICANE SEASON HAS BEEN POSTPONED: They were predicting a huge problem with hurricanes. The cause of course, “global warming. ” Now that the hurricanes havent happened, do you suppose we’ll hear them dare to question global warming at all? 
• HOUSEKEEPING:  WordPress 2.8.3 went up last night. No problems.. a bugfix release.