‘Time Telescope’ Could Boost Web

Researchers have demonstrated a “time telescope” that could squeeze much more information into the data packets sent around the internet.
Read more at BBC.com Technology

Harry Potter author JK Rowling missed out on a top honour because some US politicians believed she “encouraged witchcraft”, it has been claimed.  Ream more at BBC News.

Michelle reports getting this e-mail from the Washington Post:

Aspiring pundits across the country have the chance to be “America’s Next Great Pundit” by entering The Washington Post’s political columnist competition.

Starting today The Washington Post opinions section is asking people around the country to tell us why they deserve to publish their opinions in The Washington Post and be the next Dana Milbank or Eugene Robinson. Ten contestants will be picked from among all the entrants, and then the field will by narrowed down by rounds of challenges testing the skills a modern pundit must possess.  They’ll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video, and field questions from Post readers. After each round, a panel of Post personalities and reader votes will help determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop. The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a 13-week column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post.

She asks:

Who wants to be “the next Dana Milbank or Eugene Robinson?”

My prediction: Not many.

The WaPo conflates exposure with greatness.   Exposure did not make Paul Reubens great.   Nor does it do much for Dana Milbank.    On the other hand, the WaPo’s greatest pundit, Charles Krauthammer, is hardly a product of the WaPo farm system.

Mean while in the blogosphere, William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection, posted this gem:

Thanks a Million!

Sometime early yesterday morning, I received my one millionth visit. Eleven months and two weeks after my first post on October 12, 2008.

I hope the first million is the hardest. It has been mostly fun, but not easy.

When I started this blog, I really didn’t know what I was getting into. I took to the internet out of sheer frustration and alarm at the mass delusion gripping the nation in October 2008. The modern equivalent of the tulip mania from centuries ago. But instead of tulips, the nation was gripped with euphoric hysteria over Barack Obama.

To blog you need something interesting to write about  and the ability to write it.  So what is Professor Jacobson’s secret.   Blogs hosted by law professors seem to be a dime a dozen.    Our politics is infested by lawyers  Yet law professors who blog seem to be content to observe society,  compile interesting links or write inside baseball     What Professor Jacobson does is to write about the intersection of politics and law from a conservative prospective.

Yet you don’t need to be a law professor to blog.   Just have something to say,  about which people want to read, and the ability to write it.    Publication like the Washington Post employ professional pundit to tell you what other professional pundits thinks.   In contrast in the blogosphere, find out what history teachers, homemakers and even rednecks think.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – In a long-anticipated showdown, liberal Democrats twice failed on Tuesday to inject a government-run insurance option into sweeping health care legislation taking shape in the Senate, despite bipartisan agreement that private insurers must change their ways

Michelle thinks:

Down, but not out

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary, offers a few last words, and commentary on the one:

The president spoke out in favor of a public option weeks ago during his game-changing speech before Congress—a speech that changed nothing. It took three weeks for the Senate to do what the president should have done—finally get the public option off the table. That there was so little support in the end vividly demonstrates how far Left the House and the White House have lunged in this debate. And as is the case more often than not these days, the president is a spectator, not a dealmaker.

Mean while back in the House,  Mrs. Pelosi has vowed to overcome Blue Dog opposition and bring the public option out of the House.   How ever, how willing are vulnerable Blue Dogs going to be to back an unpopular measure that appears doomed in the Senate anyhow?

Aside to you libs, look at the bright side.   The one may bring back the Olympic games from Copenhagen.   Then he may not.

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

• THINK THIS WILL HELP SALES? I do. So does Don Surber. And that’s telling in itself, I think; a measurement of how unpopular Obama really is.  And you know, for all the screaming about the Dixie Chicks, I suspect this one is of far greater weight, given the history of the thing:
  

  Williams was close friends with Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, campaigning for Kennedy ’68 for President. Williams was present at the Ambassador Hotel when RFK was assassinated in June 1968. Williams solemnly sang “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at RFK’s funeral, by request of widow Ethel. By August 1969, over a year after Bobby Kennedy’s death, Andy and Claudine named their newborn son ‘Bobby’ Williams. The Williams’ friendship with Ethel Kennedy has endured, with Andy even serving as escort to Ethel, during events in the 1970s.

  Andy may have lost a lick or two with the voice, and that’s sad, because that voice is a national treasure. However, he clearly has lost none of his ability to perceive reality.

• CHILD RAPIST: So, Hollywood sets itself up to defend a child rapist. And look,, let’s get this out there since most of you weren’t here when this originally went down…. the guy drugged a 13 year old with Quaaludes and champagne, then once she was so subdued, raped her. This is what Hollywood. defends.  Does anyone wonder, anymore, how it is that Hollywood is losing popularity with Joe and Jane Lunchpail?  What in the bloody hell would Polanski have to do to earn the ire of Hollywood, short of actually hauling off and voting Republican?
• THIS IS WHERE THEY WANNA HOLD THE OLYMPICS?:  Here we see the welcoming comittee in action.  Maybe we better rethink this thing, whaddayasay?
  
• MEANWHLE: Our dear leader is abroad pitching Chicago as the idea site for the Olympics, that brutal attack as a shining example of Windy City attributes… while the request for more troops for the Afghan action… the part of the war on Terror Obama once claimed ‘we must win’ languishes. Go ahead, and tell me again how Obama dn the Democrats ever really took Afghanistan any more seriously than they took Iraq.  I stand by what I said yesterday. By their actions shall you learn their priorities.  Rich Lowry says it well:
  

  

  Rich Lowry

  We are experiencing a festival of liberal hypocrisy on the Afghan war, as all the left-wing doves who touted the war as absolutely essential for years back off now that it’s no longer a politically convenient war. Note these lines in Frank Rich’s column today:

  Obama finds himself at that same lonely decision point now. Though he came to the presidency declaring Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” circumstances have since changed. While the Taliban thrives there, Al Qaeda’s ground zero is next-door in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

  So when did circumstances change? When did al-Qaeda basically leave Afghanistan so the Taliban is the real worry there and the chief home of the terror group is Pakistan? If you read Rich literally, it must have been sometime between August and today, because Obama didn’t just come to the presidency saying Afghanistan is a necessary war, he said it at the VFW last month. But circumstances changed? Again, when?

  And on what basis? Certainly not on the basis of reports from his commanders in the field.  Remember, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, and Mr. Obama, have spoken exactly once. Apparently, PresBO was busy elsewhere.

• AND THEN IN IRAQ…. Afghanistan seems to have been set up to demonstrate failure of our actions in the region,  and meanwhile, they tend to ignore what’s going on in Iraq, since that’s looking too much like a success. Could we have here a reason behind this apparent disinterest in making Afghanistan a success?
• AND ABOUT THOSE CASKETS: Has anyone noticed that the MSM has suddenly lost interest in those caskets coming back from the region? Byron York has.
• OBAMA, ACORN AND PATRICK GASPARD: These ties to ACORN, a demonstrably criminal group, and our Dear Leader keep popping up, with fresh ones just today... and keep being ignored by the Mainstream Media, such as the NY Times, despite the recent half-hearted Mia Culpa, which we discussed here the other day.
• I KNEW I LIKED HER… I’ve long stated publicly that I’m a fan of Jenifer Rubin from Commentary:
  

  

  Jenifer Rubin

  You know things are bad when Obama’s squishiness as commander in chief is too much for Richard Cohen to bear:

  “Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.”

  Well, look, Richard… we saw the same non-stop campaigning with the Clintons, and I don’t recall you saying anything to that point at the time.

• IRAN POLICY FAILURE: I think we can label this as an example of a failure of foreign policy. This is what ‘engagement’ gets us.  And gee, I said this would happen… thing is, I was far from alone.

Great piece yesterday, at The American Thinker by Black conservative Lloyd Marcus:

I am so sick of the Left being allowed to make the rules. Imagine the absurdity of a competition in which one side is allowed to set the rules against their opponent. The Left tells us what is racist. The Left tells us what we can and cannot say. The Left published a cartoon depicting former black Secretary of State Condolezza Rice as an Aunt Jemima; another depicted Rice as a huge-lipped parrot for her Massa Bush. Neither were considered racist by their creators or publishers, or even widely condemned on the Left.

In opposition to black Republican Michael Steele’s campaign to run for U.S. Senate, a liberal blogger published a doctored photo of Steele in black face and big red lips made to look like a minstrel. The caption read, “Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house”. Not one Democrat denounced these racist portrayals of black conservatives. /blockquote>

Well, look; What Marcus so ably and aptly describes here, is the usual leftist double standard. This is something that I have often described here in not only racial and cultural matters, but any matters that the left decides it wants to hang its label on.

Marcus is correct in that for too long we have allowed the left to redefine things according to its own wishes and its own agenda.  As Limbaugh has been saying for decades now, welcome to “words mean things”.  It’s time we stopped letting the left redefine them .

I will suggest now, as I have previously, that it’s time that conservatives and centrist stop swallowing the line that lies and double standards are not invariably attached to the Liberal agenda, that they”re somehow an aberration. and must understand that these are not mere oversteppings, mere excess in pursuit of a political goal.  They are, rather, part and parcel of what liberalism is.  Unless and until such time as centrists and conservatives understand this point, they will forever be on their heels, reacting defensively, instead of moving forward. Which of course is precisely why such arguments get used.

I would also suggest to you that it’s time for blacks on both sides of the aisle to start rebelling against the use of the “racist” argument… the one that gets dragged out every time a leftist gets opposed, who also happens to be black.  The standard argument about “you’re only opposing me because I’m black” deserves scorn from all corners.  The color at issue here, after all, is not black, but rather, red.   The cause of black equality is not well served by such mislabeling as the left has been employing.

“New York’s iconic Empire State Building will light up red and yellow Wednesday in honor of the 60th anniversary of communist China.  The Chinese consul, Peng Keyu, and other officials will take part in the lighting ceremony which will bathe the skyscraper in the colors of the People’s Republic until Thursday, Empire State Building representatives said in a statement.”  Read more at Empire State Building

Eric rambled about the old Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:

THE RETURN OF THE VWRC: Monica’s boyfreind still thinks the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is to blame, even for Obama’s current problems. I’m telling you, folks, it’s gotten to be a knee-jery reaction.

Steve Gilbert, Sweetness & Light,  was nice enough to remind the ‘sphere about the reason Mrs. Clinton coined the term:

For, lest we forget, the phrase “vast right wing conspiracy’ was originally coined by Mrs. Clinton to explain the pernicious lies about Mr. Clinton having had an affair with Miss Monica Lewinsky.

Which of course turned out to be all too true. So the “vast right wing conspiracy” has a pretty good track record.

Follow the link to get full details of the Mr and Mrs. B.J. Clinton’s pathogical lies.

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

• ANNOYING: One of the more serious annoyances involved in this operation called BitsBlog is the serious lack of time remaining to balance among other necessities.  Family, Friends, and the occasional crisis among them, along with the need to attend to more personal matters than these, have rendered this site less full of new material than it should be.Thank heaven for David L and now for Mel Douglass, our most recent newcomer, or things would be far worse than they are. Of larger annoyance, perhaps, is my inability to write seriously to the readers at Pajamas Media. This is particularly annoying to me because it’s a task I genuinely enjoy. The trouble is again my schedule of late. Once I get myself up to speed sufficiently to write a column to a topic there, the topic’s already been covered, and the idea, or the article if I get the time to write one, ends up in the trash bin.Not that of itself that’s all that unusual… even in my more productive streaks, around 60% of what I write ends up either stored for future use, or trashed outright,  either way never seen again, for the most part. It’d be nice, though, if I wasn’t throwing away quite so much of it.
• 49 of 50 STATES NEVER SAW ELIGIBILITY CERTS FROM OBAMA: So says The Canada Free Press. Here again, we have stories the Mainstream media is slow to respond to, just as for example, they were in the case of ACORN.  All of which are stories that were a Republican at the root of such stories, they’d be in wall to wall scream mode over them. You know it, I know it.
• UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS: John Hinderaker over at Powerline reports that they’re grim in a historical perspective.  He’s got charts and pictures an arrows with a paragraph on the back of each one, to be used as evidence against … someone.
• HERE WE GO AGAIN: Does anyone not understand that the current situation with Iran is a direct response to the perception of weak leadership on the part of the US?
• HONORABLE MENTION: at  OTB’s Caption Contest
• THE RETURN OF THE VWRC: Monica’s boyfreind still thinks the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is to blame, even for Obama’s current problems. I’m telling you, folks, it’s gotten to be a knee-jery reaction.
• OBAMACARE FAILURE: Support for Obamacare now at 51%… opposition is at 56%, says Rasmussen. Now, go ahead and waffle on about Rasmussen’s supposed leanings. But tell me then how these numbers aren’t right online with what we’ve been seeing.

Does being of  the left mean near endless suffering from pseudo-medical political aliments?  

After over eight years of BDS, Bush Derangement Syndrome,  is the left fated to suffer from over three years of OFS  (Obama Fatigue Syndrome)?   Howard Fineman, writes for Newsweak, but here sounds like Rush Limbaugh:

president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

More, Mike’s America, Flopping Aces:

Yikes! Is the “Mainstream” Media Starting To Sour on Obama?

In Newsweek Howard Fineman is saying what many of us have from the start. But when he says it, other libs listen!

While there is an “I” in guilty, there is no “I” in leader.

Max Boot in this morning’s LA TIMES:

During last year’s campaign, Barack Obama stressed that while he wanted to withdraw from Iraq, he was no pacifist. “As president,” he said on July 15, 2008, “I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

He began to make good on his word on March 27 when he announced a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” that included 21,000 additional troops. The goal, he said, was to “reverse the Taliban’s gains” and “prevent Afghanistan from becoming the Al Qaeda safe haven that it was before 9/11.”

On Aug. 30, the president’s handpicked commander in Afghanistan delivered a plan to do just that. Implementing his counterinsurgency strategy, Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote, “requires more forces.” If extra troops are not sent, and soon, the “likely result” would be “failure.”

One would expect, based on his past statements, that Obama would rush to give McChrystal the forces needed to win what the president described in August as a “war of necessity.” Yet that’s not the case. The White House has been sitting on the general’s report for a month, refusing to allow him to submit his resource request or testify to Congress and leaking to the news media that the president may decide to downsize the entire war effort.

Yes, well, look. I called Obama a liar of the first magnitude when he made that claim. I did so loudly and without reservatio.  I said at the time that playing different theaters of the very same war as completely different situations was a political ploy for the consumption of these here in the states.  The far left even admitted as much recently. Witness digby over at Hullabaloo, for example

The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides when they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”

So it was as I said back when the leftie tripe about Afghanistan vs Iraq was originally offered… they lied.  Interesting that he admits Obama lied in many other f his campaign pledges as well, and thinks that’s OK, eh?   The fact of the matter is that they’ve been lying all along on this stuff, and nobody should be surprisedin the least by that. It is in fact, the only explanation for yet another of Obama’s campaign promises disappearing.  He lied.

The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, one of the two printed dailies that I read, has done some work to revamp the Politics section of their web site.  As part of that effort, they have added “Featured Political Bloggers”, providing perspectives from the Right, the Left, and Across the Spectrum.  Yours truly is one of the “From the Right” bloggers.  More information about these changes will be included in the Sun

Although I’m pleased to be included in this project, more importantly I’m impressed that the Register is providing a forum that allows more established bloggers an opportunity to present opinions on topics that are important to everyone from such a variety of perspectives.  Most people in Central Iowa recognize that the Register’s editorial positions tend to lean to the Left (although they occasionally surprise us).  It is an exceptional publication that works with people from an opposing perspective as actively as The Des Moines Register is at this time.

Bloggers featured (all from Iowa) include:

From the Left:

• Conner Anderson (the cman blog)
• John Deeth (John Deeth Blog)

From the Right:

• Katie Koberg (VP of Iowans for Tax Relief)
• Shane Vander Hart (Caffeinated Thoughts and occasionally here at The Conservative Reader)
• Art Smith (The Conservative Reader)

From Across The Spectrum:

• Graham Gillette (twitter)
• Steffen Schmidt (InsiderIowa.com)

All of these folks have great ideas and I’m looking forward to interacting with them and Des Moines Register readers.

Radio Gig

This coming week will also be the beginning of four weeks of filling in for Tim Albrecht on his internet radio program “The Beanwalker Live!” on the Macs World Live internet radio station (“Des Moines Local, Live!”) .  On Tuesday September 29th, I will be filling the 4:00 to 5:00 PM time slot.  On Octobers 6th, 13th and 20th, I will be doing the entire two hours from 3:00 to 5:00 PM.  I plan to have some great guests in October, so please check it out!  And if you can’t catch it live, podcasts will be available!

Cross-posted from The Conservative Reader.

The World’s most famous pervert and fugitive from justice has been arrested in Switzerland,  DRJ, Patterico’s Pontifications:

Director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland after he flew in to attend the Zurich Film Festival.

Patterico  has included the victims grand jury testimony.   Reader discetion is advised.

More Patterico.

Aside to Ms Applebaum, thirteen olds can not consent, even thirty years after the fact.

Big Russ has passed:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The father of the late “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert, the inspiration for his son’s best-selling book about their relationship and lessons learned, has died.

The family of Timothy Joseph Russert issued a statement saying he died Thursday of natural causes at age 85.

The elder Russert, known as Big Russ, grew up in south Buffalo and worked two full-time jobs, driving a city sanitation truck and a Buffalo News delivery truck, to support his family.

Phil Fairbanks, Buffalo News:

“He was an aggregate of all the great attributes you want in a father,” Dr.  Michael Hanzly said. “Hard working. Honest. No hidden agenda. Never put on airs.”

Timothy J. Russert was, as one of his oldest friends suggests, the consummate South Buffalo dad.

Rest in Peace Mr. Russert.

The New York Times is reporting:

William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.