The White House And the Web

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama’s promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.

That is the opening para of an article in the Washington Times, that would be all over every paper and TV news station in the country, with commentators waxing outraged over the Stalinist tactics being employed where there but a Republican in the WHite House. As it is, they’ll yawn, harumph once or twice and move on.

It has been said by more than one cynic, that no good deed goes unpunished.    In that spirit of punishment, Barack Obama intends to punish those most responsible for hie election victory. Shailagh Murray, Washington Post, admits the ugly truth about Obamacare.

Barack Obama

As health-care legislation advances through Congress, the young adults who were so vital to President Obama’s election are emerging as a significant beneficiary of his top domestic priority, but they are also likely to play a major role in funding any reform.[…]

Drafting young adults into any health-care reform package is crucial to paying for it. As low-cost additions to insurance pools, young adults would help dilute the expense of covering older, sicker people. Depending on how Congress requires insurers to price their policies, this group could even wind up paying disproportionately hefty premiums — effectively subsidizing coverage for their parents.

Doug Mataconis, Below the Beltway, summ it up nicely:

In other words, we’re going to require young people to get health insurance not so much because they need it, but because we need their money.

So to the young people of America, because you gave Obama your vote, he now intends to take both your money and your freedom.

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

• JACKASS Well, that’s what Barack Obama called Kanye West for his antics the other night, already commented on here. Now  add ABC’s Terry Moran to the mix by way of The Politico, and you’re sure to have a belly laugh. Premature? Oscar Meyer can’t generate that much baloney that quickly.  Actually, I think West to be in a position to ahve to work very hard indeed to raise himself UP to the level of jackass, but I won’t complain about the lable being applied.  Still, it interests me that ABC should be running blocker on this stuff. Just one more data point on the sheet discussing how far in the tank the MSM is for Obama, and how Obama won’t say things publicly about certain ethnic groups… things everyone already knows.
• SPEAKING OF WEST: The Daily Mail as of about 730 eastern this morning (no link as of this writeing) was confirming the street rumblings about West going to spend time at the rehab center. Meanwhile, did you see Taylor Swift’s Mom? She was some KINDA pissed. And who can blame her?
• ACORN: HOT AIR’s Ed Morressey is saying that the Senate has voted to cut off funding for ACORN. He identifies the Democrats who voted against the cutoff as:
  • Dick Durbin (D-IL)
  • Roland Burris (D-IL)
  • Robert Casey (D-PA)
  • Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
  • Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
  • Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
  • Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

  Let’s look at this one. Durbin doesn’t surpise me at all. Nor does Burris, or Casey. Not a aone of them worth the powder to blow up. Lehey, and Sanders and Whitehouse are all quite predictable as well. Gillibrand, is something less of a surpirse than she might have been when she was first appointed to the deat… you know…back when she was making all the right nosies about being centrist. Since then, she’s gone about as far to the left as you might imagine.  It’s now down to her supporting, as Ed says, Child-Whoring Pimps, with taxpayer dollars. Ah, yes. The wonders of being Democrat. And you know, all this has been so very predictable. Shannon Love at Chicago Boys has more on this one, saying in part:

  • One report from an Acorn office was a fluke. Any large organization, public or private of any creed can be infected by amoral individuals who will try to use the organization to commit illegal or unethical acts. No organization larger than a few dozen people can police the actions of every member, all the time.

  • Two reports from two separate Acorn offices was just a disturbing coincidence. The same reasoning as above applies, because in a large organizations, just as in a large installed base of computers, it’s possible for two separate bad eggs carrying out the same acts to show up in the same organization.

  • Three identical reports of the same failure from three separate offices indicates the criminality arises from the organization itself. It is highly unlikely that, out of the hundreds of Acorn offices around the nation, the journalist just happened to wander into the three offices whose managers wouldn’t blink an eye at helping to set up a brothel using children.

  This degree of organizational systemic rot has to come from the head. I think that much is obvious. Something in Acorn’s organizational culture made these people feel that it was okay and expected for them to give the criminal advice that they did. Certainly, if Acorn had been a private for-profit company, three separate and wholly unrelated incidents would have been enough for leftists to demand the heads of the corporate officers.

  So very true.And I think it actually goes to the cultural level, myself. Look once again at the supporters of the left. Look at the criminal behavior that they have been willing to suborn and look at what cultural groups tend to get arrested more. Look at the criminal behavior of the pols leftists tend to elect.  William Jefferson ring any bells, Pavlov?  How about Charlie Rangel? The Clintons? John Murtha? And who could possibly forget the overtly honorable and overtly tough on crime Elliot Spitzer are ?  You remember… Client number nine.  His replacement, too, Patterson has also gone down that same road apparently.

• AN ACORN THOUGHT: Why is it that none of the MSM.. inclduing FOX,  dared to investigate ACORN?  Journalists are mostly Democrats, is why. Ponder that for a moment, kiddies. Why is there so lttle in the MSM about the Democrats and their criminal behavior? Same answer. Barb Oakley recently did an article in Psychology Today that looked into why that’s so.
  

  As it turns out, the preponderance of journalists are Democrats.  And socialism, with its idyllic, “progressive” programs, has formed an increasingly important role in Democratic policies.  Who wants to investigate a possible dark side of your own party’s plank?

  Indeed.

Armed punk tries to rob the wrong woman.    Randi Fairly does not like being robbed and John Moses Browning agrees with her, from 15TV, Mobile, Alabama:

(MOBILE, Ala.) Sept. 10 – The lesson here is never threaten an expecting mother, especially if she’s armed with a shotgun.

[…]

Fairley is six and a half months pregnant. So, she says she yelled down at Justin Delhomme, he walked out of the house and she grabbed a shotgun. In the street, Fairley confronted the 18 year old. “He pulled a gun on me, and I told him, ‘You know, you need to put that away before I shoot you because mine’s bigger,’ and he put it back in his pocket.”

The Pundit of Poca, Don Surber, notes:

The 2nd Amendment rocks.

Rock on Randi.

Katherine Jean Lopez, National Review:

Being a parent is terrifying, with or without Greta’s show

Thomas Sowell:

There are no solutions, only trade-offs that leave many desires unfulfilled and much unhappiness in the world

Annapolis Center For Science-Based Public Policy:

Absolute Safety is Absolutely Impossible.

Myself:

A hero is a person who risks his life for a noble cause.

Should a seven year old girl who walks a block and half to school be considered a hero?  Jan Hoffman, New York Times:

To get to school, the child leaves home by herself, proudly walking down the boulevard in a suburb of a small city in upstate New York. The crossing guard helps her at the intersection. She lives only a block and a half from school. Yet she walks by older children waiting with parents for buses to the same school.

She is 7, a second-grader, and her mother, Katie, hears the raised-eyebrow remarks: ” ‘Are you sure you want to be doing this?’ ” Katie said friends ask.

The real world is full of real risks.   The child, Jane Doe can either grow up to be a woman who faces the world head on or she become an adult who is afraid of her own shadow.   I think she on the first path.  What say you?

Look at the bright side, at age seven Jane is fighting anthropogenic global warming by reducing her carbon footprint, and is engaged in healthy exercise program, to wit walking.  More power to her.

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

This is the “Next stop, Government Hell” edition

• HITLER ARGUMENTS: Billy Beck properly handles a Roger Simon column in the comments today, and echoes it here. I llike Roger but I think he’s off the mark here. I really have to wonder if Roger would feel better if the allusion was drawn to Stalin, instead of Hitler. Though, in thinking on it, I wonder if from a practical perspective there’s really any difference in the implications of the name change.
• SPEAKING OF HITLER: Let’s examine a different usage of the name.
• 9/12: Boortz has a bunch of traffic on 9.12 protests. So does the Pajamas Media home page today.
• MEDIA COVERAGE: Joyner today looks at the issue of the media coverage of such protests.Look at the comments, particularly.
• ACCOUNTABILITY: Ed Driscoll looks at the results by way of a Virginia Postrel tweet:
  

  “Per @Romenesko, Washpo lost $143 million through the first six months of this year” Which means they lose $1.10 PER COPY. Yikes.”

  Yes, but why?  Accountability. Good post, Ed.

• MORE ACORN PROSTITUTION VIDS: This time from New York. Look, gang, let’s face it, we’re dealing with a criminal org, here.

Eric quotes Dan Collins notes on the passing of Charles Johnson from the realm of the sane:

Charles Johnson’s gone completely off his rocker.

Alas poor Charles.   He did some great work exposing Dan Rather.    For which we owe Charles an eternal debt of gatitude.    However with or without Charles, conservatism marches forward.  Exit Charles Johnson, enter Andrew Breitbart, and his blog Big Government.   Andrew exposes Bertha Lewis, chief organizer of the criminal enterprize known as ACORN, as a resident alien from Mars:

Statement from Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN Regarding Recent News Reports:

Big Government ran the same video sting operation in ACORN offices in Baltimore, the District of Columbia and New York City.    ACORN is a criminal enterprise and Big Government has the goods to prove it.   The Reverse Allinsky continues to work

No, the truth is, I didn’t watch the MTV VMA’s. Mostly because I’d have to make a serious effort at caring less about something than I care about what MTV thinks about much of anything. The fact that they allow a slimeball like Kanye West to be within miles of the hall the awards are being handed out at should give you a clue as to just why.

I’ve been speaking up about this clown for years, and frankly, nobody should be surprised by these antics: (Fox news)

Taylor Swift seemed pretty surprised herself to have won the VMA for Best Female Music Video on Sunday evening, but the real shock came when Kanye West suddenly burst onto the stage and rudely stole the microphone from the country crooner during her acceptance speech.

“Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time,” West said. “One of the best videos of all time!”

A clearly embarrassed Swift stood motionless, not knowing what to do as West continued his rant. Eventually, audience members rose to their feet and booed the rapper down as cameras captured a mortified Beyonce. West took his seat (to make matters worse, time was up and Swift didn’t even have a chance to fire back) and controversy continued to ensue as a multitude of celebs told him off, prompting security to circle the area.

Pop Tarts learned that Swift was comforted by her friends and family immediately afterwards and was upset by the whole incident. An inside source told Tarts that West was asked by a big-wig at MTV to immediately leave the show.

Too little, too late.
Now look; In all honesty, I haven’t seen the video that they’re referring to.  Either one of them, for that matter.  I really don’t care.  I don’t much care for either artist, and frankly, such matters are beside the point.

The fact of the matter is, this guy has been totally out of line for years.  And it would appear, that given the reactions within the hall, even people who don’t necessarily appreciate my point of view on things, generally, seem to agree with my assessment of West.

Want to know why music sales are plummeting lately?  It’s this kind of situation.

And the next person that holds up this moron as the quintessentially successful black man, one of the better example s of “the new black man”  (And yes, that’s happened several times over incidental to my previous rantings about this moron) I’m going to point you to this article.

Word on the street overnight is that West will soon be moving his address to a drug/alcohol rehabilitation center. Like that’s going to help.

Bill Cosby in his early 80’s movie, “Himself” which was essentially just him doing his usual routine (And thereby worthwhile) mentioned drugs repeatedly. At one point, he explained how someone had told him that the drugs being taken made the person more like himself. To which Cosby asked “But what if you’re just an asshole?”

I can’t help but wonder if ol’ Cos had morons like West in mind.

Dan Collins rates a bit higher this morning on my yardstick for his recognition of the obvious:

Charles Johnson’s gone completely off his rocker.  I wondered, when I started writing at my own site, where all the commenters were coming from accusing Stacy McCain of being a neo-Nazi crypto-racist, and now I’m pretty sure I know, because Charles has made that accusation towards Stacy.  All of those visitors had one thing in common: when I pressed them for evidence, they didn’t have any.

Dan Riehl writes about this invidious libel here.

He goes on, to say:

Meanwhile, Charles has apparently swallowed hook, line and sinker the view that resistance to the policies of The One is prima facie evidence of racism, a canard voiced by pothead pseudo-intellectual Bill Maher, for which he’s receiving kudos from the sycophantic worshippers of Baracky (scroll down at News Busters for more allegations of racism).  I will remind you that it is Barack’s Department of Justice that dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers for menacing people at the polls in Philadelphia.  The New Black Panthers are regarded as a racist group by, of all people, the Southern Poverty Law Center.  I’ll also remind you that the recently semi-departed Van Jones regarded himself as a Black Nationalist, and that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was, until her vetting, a member of the separatist group La Raza.  Nor did Obama’s immediate response to the arrest of Skip Gates allay concerns that he sees everything through the prism of race, which, if anything can be said to be characteristic of a racist, suggests that there’s rather a beam in his eye, the clueless, ideologically blinded numbskull.  I’ll merely mention that the Reverend Wright also screeched out against Whitey, accusing him of concocting AIDS in a laboratory in order to visit a holocaust on the Black Man.  What’s that, you say?  George Bush’s AIDS policies has saved over a million in Africa?  It was all a PR stunt, like the one that was perpetrated on ACORN by the hidden camera stingers, who are naturally raaaaacists for having done so.

Obama’s Achilles heel is that he’s a douchebag.

(Shrug)  Accepted. All of it… But to paraphrase Obiwan Kenobe: Who is the bigger douchebag? The douchebag, or the douchebag. who follows him?  Therein, I think, lies he larger issue… the followers. As you will not in one instance in Collins’ comment section.

• THE MASTER OF THE DOUBLE STANARD, Saint Andrew the Incontinent Sullivan, won’t have to face charges for a pot bust. Others: Dan at Riehl World View and Stephen Green over at PJM.
  
• LET”S SEE THE LEFT TALK THIS UP:A pro-lifer gets gunned down. Bruce McQuain correctly labels it Left Wing Terrorism
• A MEASURE OF SUPPORT:
  

  (CNN) — Less than a day after Rep. Joe Wilson formally apologized to President Obama over his “you lie” outburst, a campaign aide confirms to CNN the South Carolina Republican has raised “more than $200,000? in the wake of the now-infamous moment.

  Well, that answers the question of how many people think Wilson’s right on this one. THe press can scream all they want, but the fact is Wilson has the support of his voters, and far more.

• MORE ON ACORN  from Boortz. I gather the Washington DC office had a similar situation pop up, and they went the same way as DC. Something of a pattern developing here.
• 9/11 STUFF: From Ralph Peters, John McWhorter Ryan MauroMichele Catalano, Michael Ledeen James Joyner

Curious, from Fox News:

A well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed Friday morning in front of a Michigan high school, and another man was shot and killed just miles away in what police are investigating as related incidents.

Owosso police chief Michael Compeau said Jim Pouillon, 63, was outside the school Friday morning with a sign when a man drove by and shot him. No one else was injured

I don’t know the motivation behind the murder of Jim Pouillon.    For all I know it could drug related gangland violence.    However, I venture to say that if Mr. Pouillon had been an abortionist,  Barack Obama would  have already blamed the evil forces of talk radio, and Speaker Pelosi would be calling it a hate crime.

Rest in peace Mr. Pouillon.

Nine Eleven was a day which made me feel humble but proud to be an American.   It was a day when off-duty firefighters went into the burning towers knowing full well they would never come out.   It was day when passengers of Flight 93 decided that that while they were doomed, they were free to choose the place of their death, and they did.    In short, on Nine Eleven,  we were badly wounded,  but we were Americans and we showed our resolve.    On Nine Eleven we showed that we were still a nation of heroes

I wonder what the Todd  Beamers  and Barbara Olson’s would think of the country they departed eight years ago today?   Ralph Peters, New York Post,  suggests that we have dishonored the memories of all our fallen heroes of Nine Eleven:

We’ve dishonored our dead and whitewashed our enemies. A distinctly unholy alliance between fanatical Islamists abroad and a politically correct “elite” in the US has reduced 9/11 to the status of a non-event, a day for politicians to preen about how little they’ve done.

We’ve forgotten the shock and the patriotic fury Americans felt on that bright September morning eight years ago. We’ve forgotten our identification with fellow citizens leaping from doomed skyscrapers. We’ve forgotten the courage of airline passengers who would not surrender to terror.

We have not all forgotten, but alas too many of us have.    The site of the Twin Towers remains a hole in the ground.   The memorial to the heros of  Flight 93 does not exist.     For too many have surrendered to forces of darkness.   You may prove me wrong by showing me the words the President of the United States delivers from Ground Zero today.

Reposted from 9/13/01

Fleet Admiral Yamamoto

It is recorded in our history books that when he looked down at the ship full of smiling, victorious faces… faces of his flyers, just having returned from Pearl Harbor, Japanese fleet Admiral Yamamoto was quiet, pensive, even apprehensive. He later wrote in his private diary,

“I fear all I have done is awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

As this column is written, it is the second night after the dastardly attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and the Pentagon. In that amount of time, I have heard, on the news channels, and on the internet, a phase batted about several times, in various refinements, when discussing these attacks: “Like Pearl Harbor”.

Something in that phrase struck a deeper chord with me. It was, at the same time, unsettling, and reassuring. And about 20 minutes ago, my memory finally coughed up that quote from Yamamoto, and with it, my entire thought process about these events crystallized. In that revelation, it occurred to me I’d already written about what I was feeling.

In that column, I wrote of my worry that our influence on the world stage had suffered seriously, under the weight of Bill Clinton’s international bumbling. Well, Bumbling isn’t the right word. Bullying, is perhaps more accurate, yet still not spot-on.

I said, then:

“From Oslo to Camp David, Clinton has pushed Israel to the bargaining table, and pressured her to give up vital strategic and cultural assets she has no business giving away, if survival is at all on her agenda. Ehud Barak, by his giving into Bill Clinton (who, along with his staff including Jim Carville, did much to put Barak into office), has done little more than demonstrate just how empty the Palestinians’ peace talk really is, and how desperate Clinton was to be seen as a good President, his crimes against his oaths not withstanding. Consider….

At Clinton’s insistence, Barak offered Arafat the keys to the kingdom; just about all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus East Jerusalem and even Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. How do the peace loving Palestinians respond? Yasser Arafat turned it all down, and gave us another few nights of headlines, filled with kids in the street throwing stones, and being shot, occasionally. He also sent his armed forces, (You recall, they’re supposed to be policemen?) to fire at the Israelis, apparently hoping for an excuse to tell the rest of the world how Israel is a war-mongering nation.

Of course that should have been a signal to about anyone with a brain that he didn’t give a damn about peace. All he and his followers are interested in is the destruction of Israel. It should have also been a signal that Clinton’s attempt at a legacy backfired, big time, and more, that it didn’t have a chance to start with…. something that Clinton should have known, did he have any understanding of the
situation at all. You will recall, perhaps that back in 1992 , Clinton more or less bragged he had no understanding of matters of foreign policy. This was never quite so clear as during this monstrosity Mr. Clinton unleashed on the world.

For Israel’s part, all of this has been laid at the feet of Ehud Barak, perhaps unfairly. No, I don’t think he was the man for the job, and clearly was only in the PM’s position because Clinton’s people worked so hard to get him there, apparently hoping to set up Clinton’s brokering a of peace deal. Easy to do when you have the PM of Israel owing you his election. But Barak apparently was under pressures he had no control of, having nothing to do with politics at home, or the Palestinians… both of which were quite out of his control to begin with, in any event.. He was concerned with Israel continuing to get support from the US. In this concern, he saw Israel as being on the controlled end of the puppet’s string… and knowing that if he did not capitulate to Clinton’s demands, that vital US support would wither as quickly as Benjamin Netenyau’s prime ministership did, when it became clear he wasn’t going to buckle to Clinton’s concession demands.

And Barak wasn’t alone, nor was the left in Israel, in this perception of US control versus Israel’s survival. Yitzhak Rabin, hardly a liberal even by American standards and certainly not under Bill Clinton’s extortion based control to the extent that Barak was, saw the same problems. His longtime friends, according reports I’ve seen,
tell us he was deeply troubled over the prospect of losing US support… and therefore bought into the ‘land for peace’ deals being brokered by the liberals in the US. This was something I predicted he wouldn’t have done.

Israeli voters, seeing this happening, and clearly annoyed with the US control over Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, trounced Barak in the polls. Unless one considers this anger, the election of Ariel Sharon, his replacement, is hard to fathom, since he has never been overly popular, as best I can tell. But perhaps the people of Israel are finally figuring out what the real story is.. that in truth, there is no dealing with the Palestinians, and Arifat.

One hopes that they’ve not been too late in coming to this conclusion. If they are, world war seems fairly certain to me… possibly nuclear in nature.”

When I re-read that, I knew I’d found what I’d been feeling, and why the Yamamoto quote had been nagging at me. I was feeling a deep anger. Justifiable, deep and abiding anger. Anger not only at the terrorists who arranged and executed the events of September 11th, but anger at the policies which here at home led us to this pass.

I said, back in February:

“Others learned the lessons, painful as they tended to be. Chaimberlin’s England, for example,along with the remainder of the free world, learned about appeasement of a mortal enemy the hard way. The American left, apparently not having leaned the lesson taught by the infamous socialist, Hitler, was taught the lesson again, by another band of socialists, as Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan 40 or so years later. “

What’s this leading up to?

Well, dear reader; the conclusion that we are now paying the price for Clinton’s presidency. One can only hope we have paid the full price…. But I doubt it.

A rash statement, say you? I think not. Consider the timing of this attack on the US.

Clinton, far from being firm with the Arabs, was giving them just what they wanted, following the World Trade Canter bombing in 1993; legitimacy, to use as a tool against us. Ironic; he’s supposed to be representing US. And to boot, we were ripping Israel apart for them.

I have stated several times, that Clinton’s sole purpose here was to save his legacy. But how to achieve his goal? By bowing to Arab terrorists, and bullying Israel into giving in. So, while that’s going on, everything is sweetness and light. America decides to elect George W Bush, who will (rightly) support Israel and the Arabs aren’t too happy.

And since Clinton also decimated our military, you ability to mount a credible defense is so laughable as to encourage attack…

Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
And, splat.

Likely 20 thousand people dead, and as many injured, all in one afternoon, along with the likelihood of many more to follow.

Oh, I hear you squirming already… particularly those on the left… those who have always defended Clinton before, regardless of any fact. I hear you saying:

“Shouldn’t we be concerned with catching, and dealing with the people who ordered and financed all this? And as Americans, shouldn’t we be sticking together?”

Oh, certainly. String them up. Cut off all relations with the Palestinians, and do it now. No question. And Military action isn’t out of the question, either.

And yes, I think we all as Americans should stand together in times like these. And, no, I’m not trying to gain political points, here… this problem affects every one of us.

Logic dictates that actually solving a problem, necessarily includes that both the problem, and the causes of that problem which can be controlled, be identified, so that action can be taken to ensure that such problems cease to exist.

Now, like it or not, we can’t do much about extremist causes. But we CAN control them to the point where they don’t cause us nearly the concern, by not acceding to their demands, as Chamberlain did, and as Clinton did. We can support our longtime friends in the world. Clinton ran fast and loose with that requirement, in an effort to be remembered for something better than the long list of shady dealings and downright criminal acts, and what happened to be running down his leg at any given moment.

Trouble was, and remains, that Clinton was dealing with Yassir Arifat. Arifat’s comments, following the attack, as compared to the reactions of his people, (dancing in the streets at our losses) show him to be a liar of the first order, or that the Palestinian people are not under his control, or both. As a result, Arifat’s commitments were useless to us, and yet useful to the Arabs who wish and work for the destruction of America,her citizens and her friends.

Would it not have been simpler, would it have not cost less life, I ask, to elect a president who can keep his pants on, rather than get us into international trouble because of half-baked efforts at obscuring his own history? Something we should consider at the next election. As I said in February; Our future, assuming we have one, depends on it.

In any event;

My heart and my prayers go out for the persons lost, the persons yet trapped, and their families and loved ones.

My great respects go out to those rescue workers, paid and otherwise, who carry on the fight that all will not be lost. Your wounds from this, I fear, will be greater than the wounds on those you struggle to save, because it is a cold fact that you will not succeed in saving all of them, and you know it going in. To you falls the task from which no sane person could walk away unaffected… and yet you go in, willingly. And that is a wonder to all Americans, and most people in the rest of the world.

My respects also go out to the many law enforcement and military officials who are working to gather information toward the capture of those who ordered and executed this attack… at times risking THEIR lives.

We each, all of us, need to take out own kind of action in times of crisis. We feel we have the need to accomplish something to help to solve the issue. The people I mention above are doing that, certainly.

But my personal resolve is to work hard toward making sure we have Presidents who actually respect and want a strong Israel. As a start, that means making sure we never again have a president of the lowly in-the-gutter presence of a Bill Clinton.

Yours should be as well.

I only hope it’s not too late.

Editor’s note: That was written in one of the very first posts on this blog.  It was that event which caused me to start this blog, in fact, and so today marks the start of Bit’sBlogs’ 8th year of operation as such.  The older post I refer to was one of a weekly series I did at one of my old websites, and that text was echoed at the time on Usenet, though I doubt many of us have access to that anymore.  Still, that old post still reflects my hope that we are not too late to prevent such slime from entering the White House again. But in looking at the statements and the track history of Barack Ovama, I am again reminded that the chances are always high that we’ll fall under the spell of such people again.

That can only happen, however, when we forget the lessons of that terrible day. Which is why Obama and his supporters invest so much time and effort into separating that day from the people who gave it to us, and their at best misguided, pacifist policies.

I can only urge us to Never Forget, knowing that all too many have. Well, here’s a reminder.

• THE OBAMA SPEECH: FAIL Art Smith looks at the Obama speech last night and asks if the speech changed your mind. So does Hinderaker. They both came, of course to the same conclusion. And Byron York notices somehting in the speech last night… a sliding scale of uninsured. And even Congress isn’t putting up with it. ANd before the dems get to high on moral outrage, let’s remember how it was back in 05, shall we?)
• WHY ARE JEWS MOSTLY LIBERALS? Jonah is one who examines that question here. It does seem to be a self-destructive path, given the decades-long anti-Jewish push within the left…
• ACORNS DON’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE: Child Prostitution? Is there anything that’s beneath ACORN? They deny it, of course.  Not convincing at all, but there it is.
• DOLLAR IN DECLINE: Lowest point in a year. Hope and change.

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

This is the “Now you’ve got no excuse” edition

• LIBERAL FACIST: Jonah takes the theme of his recent book, Liberal Facisn, and runs with it here:
  

  Thomas Friedman writes:

  Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

  One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

  Our one-party democracy is worse….

  So there you have it. If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.

  I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s.

  Well, precisely. And don’t think for a moment that Overly romantic view of turning our future over to a select few who would make all our decisions for us died out when they hung Mussolini by his heels, either. Consider Donald Fagen’s “IGY . (International Geophysical Year)”.. an ode to the view from 1958:

  A just machine to make big decisions
  Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
  We’ll be clean when their work is done
  We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young

  Gee… sounds like the vision of “Change” we were supposed to be so fond of a mere 8 months ago. The reason we as a people fell for it was that we fell for it back in 1958… and despite the rather stark example of what happens when we’re run by fellows with ‘compassion and vision’, from a mere 12 years of so earlier. History is rife with examples of such ‘leaders’… and yet we keep falling for their line….

  And John at Power Line suggests the press at least hasn’t learned those lessons still saying:
  “Yesterday it was Adolf and Fidel, today Hugo.  Will our journalists ever learn?” John points out, the entirety of the left is completely unable to learn from history. They will of their nature invariably go for shallow egalitarianism. they will go for the easy answer. As I have been recently reminded through some observations of a friend’s problem, the easy answer is usually the easiest way to get screwed worse.

• AS AN EXAMPLE: Via Facebook, Lori Bird points out Mental Midget Bill Moyers, claiming the Republicans are trying to ‘slit Obama’s throat’.I won’t even comment on the sheer level of projection that Bill Moyers has always used. This example is certainly no different.  It does suggest though, that the situation is unlikely to change had any point in the near future.  They will even ignore the massive defeat that they’re about to be handed in the midterm elections.
• WHY THEY REALLY HAVE SEX:  Since it’s Hump Day, I’ll pass this one on.A few weeks ago, I passed on an article about why women have sex.  Another article with a rather different view, popped up down under yesterday, and I thought I’d share. According to the article, she’s just not that into you.
  

  FOR every woman expecting the earth to move, there are two with more practical motives.

  From relieving boredom, to keeping the peace or curing a headache, women have sex for many reasons but romance and passion come rather low on the list, a new book has revealed.

  One woman even admitted to having sex just so her husband would put the rubbish out.

  “Research has shown most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all,” Why Women Have Sex authors Cindy Meston and David Buss said.

  …
  But mostly the explanations were far more mundane, with 84 per cent admitting to having sex just to ensure a quiet life or to bargain for household chores. One woman said: “I have sex to relieve the boredom because it’s easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do.”

  Gee, that’s encouraging.  Pardon me. I need to have a word with my wife.