Nightly Ramble:The “With Fowa You Get Eggwoll” Edition

Welcome Weary Travelers, to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “”With fowa you get Eggwoll” Edition. Let is repair to the table and chair and this fine establishment’s board of fare.

• Global warming my butt: I’ve been telling you that the junk science behind global warming would never stand up to any serious scrutiny.  It appears that global warming fanatics agree. It should be a shock to nobody that Paul Krugman is now suddenly a climate expert.  John Hawkins has this one covered.  Look also at the report I linked this morning. We’re being lied to by this administration. I wonder how many people are listening to the implications of what Roger Simon over at Pajamas Media is saying, this  evening.
• Payback is nigh: That vote on cap and tax the other night, has left a number of vulnerable Democrats
• Coup, Coup is not a bird: There seems to be some argument as to whether not what we’re seeing currently in Honduras is a coup or not .   It wasn’t. I do notice a report from Hot Air which suggests that the White House tried a step in to prevent the Honduran president’s ouster.   If that’s true, it can only be regarded as yet another foreign policy failure for the Obama administration. The WSJ wades into this one.  You have to wonder, though about the utility of any event that Crazy Uncle Hugo complains about.  And Cuba. Leftist leaders in Honduras are complaining loudly, as well.   Essentially what happened here is that the presdient tried to alter the constitution so as to stay in power beyond the second term… rather like Chavez.  Let’s see.. as David noted earlier today… leftist leaders in Honduras, Hugo Chavez, Castro, and Obama. All on the side of ripping up the constitution in Honduras.  All of them complaining because the people in Honduras stood up for their democracy.  I told you Obama doesn’t believe in Democracy and freedom. Do the math, people; this is just another practical example of that point. Obama is about making the world safe for socialism. Period. Full stop.
• A Reminder: Interesting how this John Edwards sex tape showed up , just now.  Apparently, somebody who had the tape figured we needed a reminder of that incident.  Personally, I’d like to see somebody concentrating not on the tape itself but on the Democrat reaction to it at the time, versus the Democrat reaction to Governor Mark what’s- his- name, now. If (reax)then <>(reax)now then…..
• And the Splashback: Speaking of that, I believe I’ve already said (repeatedly) the guy is toast and should be.  Consider that to my response to the emails I’ve been getting out that particular scandal and whether not the guy should be out of office by now.  He should have been out of office as of that weird news conference.  I suppose it shouldn’t surprise anybody that The New York Times it managed to put up a fairly reasonable profile on the woman scorned. After all, it fits the pattern.  If it makes democrats looked at it doesn’t run.  If it makes republicans look bad, it runs on the front page above the fold. When does the Times do a sympathetic writeup on the wife of a Republican, under any OTHER conditions?
• PHP and other foibles: The problems that we had that kept us off line yesterday, have been for the most part solved.  Apparently, something was hitting the PHP module pretty hard , either from this site, or from one of the other sites that this particular server has on it.  There’s a few tests I want to go through later this evening, but were fine for now apparently.
• If this is the best they’ve got…. If Universal is banking on “Bruno” to save it’s sorry ass, then it deserves to be sunk.
• Kaus gets it on Healthcare:
  

  Kaus

  So if one of these promising new cancer treatments winds up working 25% of the time, but costs $150,000, will Peter Orszag give to you?

  Well that depends on who you supported in the last five elections, ya see. The first thing you’re going to have to understand about all that is when politicians run health care, health care is not about making you well. Health care is about how you affect government in general and how you affect their political careers. Every other consideration is secondary. Which is why we have situations like the one I mentioned last night, with the Parents in Hamilton being unable to get health care for their child in Canada, and shipping the poor kid to Buffalo. As I said last night, not an uncommon thing. Billy Beck addresses this, today:

  

  Billy Beck

  Sooner or later, the facts of medical production will have their ways. Medicine is an economic good which must be produced just like anything else, no matter anyone’s protestation of “rights”. It is being regulated out of production (the basic problem in Canada) right in front of your eyes. The implications will be profound for everyone’s general quality and length of life, and acute for specialized cases. The dynamic flexibility of free production will not avail in cases like this, and they will eventually be allowed to discreetly — and then not so discreetly — die.
  How soon all this becomes real-life fact depends on the alacrity and severity with which DeathCare is imposed in this country. It should be noted that every “deployment” (there’s a fnord for you) necessarily demands its own successors. This is rationale for curing the ills that it inflicts. Coercive interventions, the essential nature of government, instigate demand for coercive interventions. This makes it extremely difficult or impossible to foresee every logical extension of principles in action. The degree and rate of advance into actionable tyranny by any reasonable measure are more logarithmic than linear, and all is subject to swerves of short-range political emphasis.

  As I’ve been saying here for years, now… Canada.. and to a lesser degree, the UK… lesser due to the physical distance, mostly… are the coalmine canaries, gang. And they’re shipping their acute cases south when they can. I sit and watch this stuff happening from some 40 miles distance, and I look at the current move toward government healthcare and I wonder.  The implications on this stuff are much broader than just health care, of course.  Consider Cap and Trade, as an example of these same principles being applied elsewhere.

• Remember that middle class tax hike Obama promised he’d never do?  He’s doing it.  One more promise past it’s expiration date. I mean, leaving aside, of course the Cap and Trade monster which is in reality the largest tax hike in history.
• Madoff: I’ve already commented on madoff today… but it amuses me that he got 150 years for running a ponzi scheme… and yet nobody’s seeing any jailtime for Social Security. Telling, that.

• Conservative?  Dr. Thomas Sowell looks at why it is that most Americans consider themselves conservative, and yet the Republicans are on the outs.  I’ll give you the short answer… While most Americans consider themselves conservatives, the Republicans are not conservative. As I’ve been telling you guys since the late 80’s when Bush 41 got into office, back when I was writing on the old GT network.
• Lest we forget:  The crackdown in Iran continues apace.
• Pop Culture dies:  Well, let’s see. MJ. Farrah. Ed McMahon. Carradine.  Now, Billy Mays, too.  All gone, and all in a very short time.OK, I more than grant tacking Mays onto that list is somewhat incongruous, but pop culture is like that. And yes, that’s the point here. In the trivial world of the pop culture, there is seldom a hard and fast rule for what is and is not popular.  It becomes a matter more than anything else, of what can capture the public attention span, which is notoriously short to begin with.?The depth of the talents of the people on that list are variable at least. Yet the passing of each of them provided a diversion.  When the trivial pushes the reality off what passes for ‘the news’, as MJ’s passing did, for example, you know the reality is by far harder to face.  Jackson’s demise was fairly easy to predict,  He was on an easily identifiable self-destruction course. Apparently so was Carridine if I read the signs aright.  Farrah Fawcett’s passing while tragic at such an age, was predictable… we know it was going to happen soon… The story there, far as I was concerned was not her having cancer and her death but how she faced it all. Oddly, it’s the part of the story that wasn’t told very much. (Too much reality, perhaps?)And then, Mays. Not outstandingly popular, yet well known… and his passing is enough to hold the attention of the public for a few days. The ability to be manipulated into creating a diversion is the one thing they all had in common.  I wonder… what would ahve happened with the Cap and Tax thing, had there not been quite so much on the way of dversion showing up in the news?  No, I don’t think it was at all intentional… but it can’t be denied that there was a curb on our attention to such matters offered by these diversions… 

  You know, I posted an RIP for Mary Lou Forbes earlier today. I would argue that she did more with her writings for the human condition than any of these others, by a longshot. And yet, her passing will be hardly noticed by the folks busy playing trivial pursuit. If there is any indication our priorities are hosed, it’s that.

Eric already blogged on Ricci, but Ace  brings up an amusing point.    While the decision was five to four, along coservative liberal lines, the count was actually nine to zero against the Wise Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, via Ace:

Wise Latina Overruled 9-0? [ace]: Ed Whelan at Bench Memos argues the decision is actually 9-zip against Sotomayor — because even Justice Ginsburg says (though only in a footnote) that the appellate court should have remanded the case back to the district court, not summarily affirmed the lower decision.

The one’s so called moderate is not mainstream.   She not even a mainstream liberal.

Bernie Madoff hit the jackpot at sentencing, today… getting the maximum 150 years. The Guardian:

The disgraced financier Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to the maximum 150 years in prison for masterminding a $65bn (£38bn) fraud that wrecked the lives of thousands of investors.

The US district judge Denny Chin described the fraud as “staggering” and said the “breach of trust was massive” and that a message was being sent by the sentence. There had been no letters submitted in support of Madoff’s character, he said. Victims in the courtroom clapped as the term was read out.

The sentence, which means the 71-year old fraudster will end his days in prison, was handed down at an emotional hearing in a lower Manhattan courtroom, where victims were given the chance to tell how the fraud had destroyed their livelihoods.

Ya know, there’s no question in my mind the guy deserved it. And more, in my view.  But, I have to tell you, I wonder of the sentence would be so stiff, but for the current ‘kill the rich’ message coming from our government of late.  There seems to me a desire on the part  of some to label all the well- to- do as criminals, (the only way one can be rich is if they’ve stolen it) and this case will serve as a reinforcement for that effort.

The democratic portions of the goverment of Honduras have acted to preserve their constitution and oust a wanna be dictatator for life, Mel Zelaya.    So which side does President Barack Obama’s Secretaray of State take?   The same side as Hugo Chavez and Castro.   From the Wall Street Journal:

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground

Allah Pundit, Hot Air has more:

In a nutshell, Zelaya wanted another term as president so he decided to hold a popular referendum on whether he should be eligible. Minor problem: The Honduran constitution can’t be amended by popular referendum so the country’s supreme court ordered the vote canceled. Zelaya tried to go ahead with it anyway. Literally every other arm of the Honduran government — judiciary, legislature, military — was against him, to the point where the troops who arrested him this morning were evidently acting on a court order. Why such strong, unified opposition?

Is this all we can expect from the Oama’s administration so-called “smart diplomacy?   It is sure hard to have smart diplomacy when your Secretary of State acts like a moron.

Call Mrs. Clinton’s action what you will.  They are neither smart, nor consistent with American values.   We can and should expect more from our Secretary of State.

The Washington Post website is reporting:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

It will also cause people to look seriously at why Sotomayor has been nominated.

I note with sadness, the passing of  Washington Times editorialist Mary Lou Forbes.  I got the news by way of Quin Hillyer, who says:

Mary Lou was a legend in the conservative journalism world. Way back in 1959, a full half century ago, she won the Pulitzer Prize. For the past 27 years, she has worked like a dervish to make the commentary pages of the Wash Times a lively and essential outlet for conservative opinion — one that was especially important in the 15 of those years before the Internet opened more doors. For all those years, her Times pages (along with the companion pages that were the province of Tony Snow, Tod Lindberg, Helle Dale, Tony Blankley, and Deborah Simmons) were an oasis of unimaginable comfort and great information and inspiration for conservatives struggling to be heard. So many conservative opinion-mongers got their first big breaks on the op-ed/commentary pages of the Wash Times, through Mary Lou’s services!

Remarkable that at age 83, she was still in the traces… (If you will allow an allusion to the writings of Jack London). 

(Blogged from the Palm Treo)

… is here.

Gee, I can’t imagine why the EPA wouldn’t want you to know that their own internal report shows clearly that AGW is a crock of bull feces,  as was metntioned the other day can you?

Television pitchman Billy Mays — who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets — died Sunday.

Mays, 50, was found unresponsive by his wife inside his Tampa, Fla., home at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Tampa Police Department.

Police said there were no signs of forced entry to Mays’ residence and foul play is not suspected. Authorities said an autopsy should be complete by Monday afternoon.

“Although Billy lived a public life, we don’t anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days. Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times,” Mays wife, Deborah, said in a statement on Sunday.

So says Fox News.

I’m quite sure I’ll have more comments on this later.

We’re still working on the issue…. we appear to have something with PHP going. Unclear what.

Isn’t this FUN, kids?

Twitter links are down for the moment. I’ll be putting them back up tommrow night, I hope.

There’s a few other background things I’ve got offline, too, until we get this thing figured out.

• RT@jaketapper internationla biz times reports mosques have been banned from memorial services for Neda http://is.gd/19eSn #
• @pinkelephantpun RT It's good. Is he seriously saying that gov't HC can run like the Mayo Clinic? me: But Mayo is soooo fattening.  in reply to pinkelephantpun #
• Say whtUwil about Sanford& I'll sign it. But does it strike anyone else as odd that all these republicans suddenly got Randy after 1/210/08?  #
• @jaketapper How many Republican sex scandals since 1-20-08?  in reply to jaketapper #
• who stole Sanford's emails? isn't that a felony?  #
• #tcot Is Pajams Media having server trouble this morning?  #
• if cap and tax doesn't cause people to rethink the dems what will?  #
• BITSBLOG!!!!  Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate?  @TCOT#HHRS #RLRS @Talkmaster http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? #TCOT http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• Bitsblog having server trouble. Should be back up tonight sometime #

• RT@jaketapper internationla biz times reports mosques have been banned from memorial services for Neda http://is.gd/19eSn #
• @pinkelephantpun RT It's good. Is he seriously saying that gov't HC can run like the Mayo Clinic? me: But Mayo is soooo fattening.  in reply to pinkelephantpun #
• Say whtUwil about Sanford& I'll sign it. But does it strike anyone else as odd that all these republicans suddenly got Randy after 1/210/08?  #
• @jaketapper How many Republican sex scandals since 1-20-08?  in reply to jaketapper #
• who stole Sanford's emails? isn't that a felony?  #
• #tcot Is Pajams Media having server trouble this morning?  #
• if cap and tax doesn't cause people to rethink the dems what will?  #
• BITSBLOG!!!!  Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate?  @TCOT#HHRS #RLRS @Talkmaster http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? #TCOT http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• Bitsblog having server trouble. Should be back up tonight sometime #

• RT@jaketapper internationla biz times reports mosques have been banned from memorial services for Neda http://is.gd/19eSn #
• @pinkelephantpun RT It's good. Is he seriously saying that gov't HC can run like the Mayo Clinic? me: But Mayo is soooo fattening.  in reply to pinkelephantpun #
• Say whtUwil about Sanford& I'll sign it. But does it strike anyone else as odd that all these republicans suddenly got Randy after 1/210/08?  #
• @jaketapper How many Republican sex scandals since 1-20-08?  in reply to jaketapper #
• who stole Sanford's emails? isn't that a felony?  #
• #tcot Is Pajams Media having server trouble this morning?  #
• if cap and tax doesn't cause people to rethink the dems what will?  #
• BITSBLOG!!!!  Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate?  @TCOT#HHRS #RLRS @Talkmaster http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? #TCOT http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• Bitsblog having server trouble. Should be back up tonight sometime #

• RT@jaketapper internationla biz times reports mosques have been banned from memorial services for Neda http://is.gd/19eSn #
• @pinkelephantpun RT It's good. Is he seriously saying that gov't HC can run like the Mayo Clinic? me: But Mayo is soooo fattening.  in reply to pinkelephantpun #
• Say whtUwil about Sanford& I'll sign it. But does it strike anyone else as odd that all these republicans suddenly got Randy after 1/210/08?  #
• @jaketapper How many Republican sex scandals since 1-20-08?  in reply to jaketapper #
• who stole Sanford's emails? isn't that a felony?  #
• #tcot Is Pajams Media having server trouble this morning?  #
• if cap and tax doesn't cause people to rethink the dems what will?  #
• BITSBLOG!!!!  Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate?  @TCOT#HHRS #RLRS @Talkmaster http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• BITSBLOG!!!! Remember That Canadian Healthcare We were Supposed to Emulate? #TCOT http://bit.ly/11NYaD #
• Bitsblog having server trouble. Should be back up tonight sometime #

From The Canadian Press:

HAMILTON— A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature.

A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

Her parents Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson couldn’t follow their child because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States.

Now of course, from our own left we’re going to hear about the passport situation being stupid.  It goes without saying, however, that that entire situation would not have come to pass but for a substandard health care system in Canada.

What we have here, is a graphic example of what happens when we limit access to health care. Fortunate for that baby, and those parents, there is no such system yet here in these United States.  And being in Hamilton, they were close enough to the border to get to a stateside hospital.

I live near Buffalo myself.  Trust me, dear reader, when I tell you that this is not an unusual occurrence, in terms of people coming across the border because the Canadian system turned them away .

Just something to keep in mind as we listen to the Democrats trying to sell us  on government health care.

Some of you, earlier this evening, will have noticed some strange goings on with the look and feel of the blog.

What happened was that  was tinkering, trying to set up a user-level theme switcher.  It’s not working, yet, but I’m close. I’ve got the basic functions, but not the look I want in each case. The issue is the stuff I”ve added to each theme, has to be dealt with differently. It’ll take some time. I’ll let you know…