Obama Dog of the Day: Patricia McGuire,

The Bits Blog Obama Dog of the Day is Patricia McGuire, via Tom Jackman, Washington Post:

The controversy surrounding the appearance of President Obama at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremonies reverberated through at least one local Catholic graduation yesterday, with the president of Trinity Washington University denouncing the “religious vigilantism” of those who opposed Obama’s visit and calling their protests “an embarrassment to all Catholics.”

The remarks by Trinity President Patricia McGuire were among the speeches given at graduation ceremonies big and small across the region.

This must be Orwellian logic.  Vigilante justice is typically associated with some level of violence, up to and including murder.   Yet McGuire sees fit to describe non-violence protester, exercising their God given right of free speech as vigilantes.     McGuire see fit to ignore that the target of the protesters, abortion, accounts for circa one million medical lynching of one million unborn Americans a year.

Hat tip and more:  Allah Pundit, Hot Air:

The perfect ironic conclusion to yesterday’s paean to tolerance and dialogue at Notre Dame: The leader of a Catholic school sneering at student protesters for practicing freedom of speech in defense of Church teachings. Rarely have liberal Catholicism and campus Orwellianism meshed more beautifully.

Note:  evidently in this new enlightened era of post-partisan politics, it is now perfectly permissible to refer to your political opponents as dog, via Gateway Pundit:

On NPR’s “Wait Wait… Dont Tell Me,” senior Obama advisor David Axelrod makes reference Miss California Carrie Prejean is a dog.
The audience loved it:

Arf, arf.

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

This is the Truck Stop Edition

• The Fairness Doctrine in Acton:  Seems Crazy Uncle Hugo has decided to shut down the last TV station that questioned his authorty. Ah, fairness. 
• Do you Copy, MoDo? Actually, I’m quite willing to give MoDo the benefit of the doubt on this one.  My guess is she is of the same habit as I… When I do these Rambles, for example, I do have a tendency to  paste clips of various places, into the body of the post, usually with links to remind me where they’re from, and to generate links from for the final product. I can see how an editing error can occur given that method. But I do find it fascinating to note she’s using Marshall as an idea source. He’s not exactly an unbiased source, after all.   For all of the woman’s supposed greatness in journalism, it appears she’s using the echo chambers of JournOList as ideation fodder.  And what were we just talking about, this morning? 
• Competence Gap? I’m not so sure I’m as ready as Jen Rubin is to call Obama’s performance as President thusfar, a demonstrated incompetency.  She makes great points, but I suggest there may be something else besides  incompetency at work, here. When we make judgements about someone’s competency at a paricular task, we’re operating from an agreed upon task. Jennifer, good American that she is, makes the assumption that avoiding the consequences of the federal government spending trillions it doesn’t have to be part of the presdiential job description. She assumes that spurring the economy is part of the presidential job description.  She also assumes an America fairly safe from the actions of terrorists to be part of the job description.  Most would make such assumptions.  But, now think; Is it possible that these things are not a part of the description, from Obama’s view, and that of the people like George Soros, who funded  his presidential run? Seems to me the job description needs to be agreed on before we make any judgements about his competence within that task. To the point; Shuould we not be looking at the idea that these seeming incompetencies, may well be intentional?
• Soak the Rich: As an example: Is Obama’s “Soak the rich” mentality  incompetency at work? Or is it an intentional move to eliminate the rich, and the economy that we’re capable of because of their efforts? The WSJ seems to think so.
• Moron:  Any further proof needed that Alec Baldisn is a moron? I don’t think so, but here you go, anyway.
• Speaking of Morons…  we may as well include Joe Biden.  Trouble is, this thing’s getting serious.   I’m somewhat more willing to accept Biden as being a walking incompetency.  Think about it, he was chosen to make Obama look good by comparison.
•  Gee, what could go wrong? Go Wong? Go Worng?  Go Gonw? You may have heard of  this  Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009. Or, perhaps  not. The stated purpose of the bill sounds good, until you consider the recent report on who it is this administration considers to be terrorists.  Vets, and conservatives, for example. See the note at the top of the page as regards the ‘Fairness Doctrine”.  Go back to your lives, citizens. Nothing to see here.
• Pinkish Hue:  Reynolds makes the suggestion that the interruption of Obama’s speech at Notre Dame over the weekend, was kinda like a Code Pink attack.  An interesting notion in light of my recent  piece at Pajamas Media. Taking the gloves off, indeed.
• Speaking of PJM:   The response to that article has been to say the least, loud.   As I say in the comments there, I had an idea it would be. Indeed, the comments there send a louder message than my peice did, I think.
• Sorry, Ed:  Ed Rasimus, with whom I usually find agreement responds to that PJM posting:
  

  I get where they are coming from. But, the basic concept is wrong.Being like the other guys in terms of spin, sound-bites and puerile name-calling won’t attract the electorate as well as being principled, logical, rational, sane and constructive. When the damage of the current policy proposals starts mounting, the masses are going to seek explanation and alternatives.

  Ed, Buddy, you’re missing the point of the article.  It needs to be taken in context with the article of two weeks before.  Also, look closely at the last two quotes at the top of page one.  And ask Billy Beck about the negative value of compromise.  I’ll remind you that Bush was a centrist… a coalition candidate. So, too, John McCain.  That’s why Obama is in the WHite House just now. Explain to me what conservatives win, what the country wins, based on our experiences with those two, if we try running that same play again.

• Shake, Baby Shake:  Another 4.7 quake in LA this morning. Nothing major, damage wise, far as I know.

Being WHAM/1180 is a local station, I normally wouldn’t post this, but with WHAM’s 50kw signal, and the huge coverage it had back before the FCC decided 750 miles was enough for one station, (Half the bleedin’ country…. literally) I’ll mention it.

Harry in a 1976 publicity shot from the WHAM archives

Harry Abraham, the gent who ran the all-night Jazz show, called “The Best of all Possible Worlds”  on WHAM from 1969 to 1978,  died on May 7th. in Philly, where he ended up after WHAM, at age 64. He’d been battling Cancer for some time, apparently.

Think Fagan’s “NightFly”, here, with a lot less sadness.  Here’s a taste. (Mp3)

BBCT: Scott Fybush.

Interesting note from Don Surber this morning.

But the real inappropriate relationships in last year’s presidential campaign were between ACORN and the campaigns of both Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The Times ignored that story. Unlike the McCain affair, multitudes of reporters were not rushed to flood the zone on this game changer.

Well, of course. Don isn’t shocked by this, if I read him correctly, nor should  he be.  Nor, frankly, am I. This is simply more of the same where the Dinosaur media is concerned.

Here’s the thing; at what point does Pinch make the connection between his falling revenue and the lack of public trust that such bias engenders? 

There’s this, also; The kind of ‘fair play’ that John McCain would have had us playing under under the bill bearing his name, didn’t take into account this kind of bias, and thus gave a working advantage to the Democrats… something he claimed he was trying to avoid with McCain Finegold.  That speaks to me of a level of competency that is seriously sub-par, on the part of McCain. As Surber notes,, McCain got bit by that bias, too. I’ll bet he never figured out how, though.

McCain Finegold was supposed to get the money out of politics. Of course it didn’t. It simply shoved it further into ACORN, for example. I wonder; Can anyone put a monetary value to a Democrat candidate,  on a biased press? How much do you suppose the kind of non-coverage Don speaks of was worth to Obama, and to Clinton?

No wonder congressional Democrats are busy trying to use tax money to keep newspapers alive.

The Vice President of the United States wages war on himself. reveals location of Vice Presidential bunker, Fox News:

Vice President Joe Biden, well-known for his verbal gaffes, may have finally outdone himself, divulging potentially classified information meant to save the life of a sitting vice president.

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president.

Hat tip and more: Jule Crittenden:

Sounds bad. But I dunno. If I was a foreign enemy bent on bringing America to its knees, I think I’d leave Biden in place. He could be a critical player.*

 It seems like the best plan to bring down America would be to leave Biden in place.

Meanwhile the MSM wages war on the former Vice President, Dick Cheney, again Jules Crittenden:

Well, the former vice-president has already turned the White House and its CIA director to his will. If he manages, simply by opening his mouth in a talk-show appearance and scribbling a letter, in taking down the House Speaker, he will deserve an even greater place in American history than he already does for his uncompromising, stalwart defense of the nation and unselfish service to his president in the Global War on Terrorism. His underlying lesson for history, as Kristol notes, is that in politics and war you have to fight, and keep fighting, and fight dirty if you have to, for what you believe in.

We live in troubling times.   If Dick Cheney can rattle the Obama administration out of  its delusional Obamaland, the nation will owe Cheney a debt of gratitude, and he would rather be fishing.

Addendum:

Color me jealous.  Michelle coins a new word, Bidenrrhea.  Wish I had thought of it.

• The real issue with Wanda Sykes is she correctly identified the mindset of her audience.  why are they laughing? #TCOT #HHRS #
• @lileks Top Gun star= short subject.  #
• @divadoll123 It’s now known that cheerioes with ketchup isn’t a drug, but it is two servings of veggies.  #
• @divadoll123 Interesting question. I don’t recall if mustard is a veggie or not. This requires a federal investigation and ruling.  #
• @MelissaTweets Did U notice the new PJM article? #TCOT http://bit.ly/IVtee #
• @MelissaTweets Looks like I might have tapped into something, there.  #
• @yrtv… accurate, alas. But that will change or the GOP will continue slouching to irrelevance #
• @claytonmorris Good Morning #
• Dems credibility on Vets issues based on fake vet? #HHRS #TCOT #TBRS #RedState http://bitsblog.theconservativereader.com/?p=20570 #
• @thebuffalobean Did you see my Pajamas Media posting?  I think you’ll find it interesting. And the comments are precious.http://bit.ly/z6K1y in reply to thebuffalobean #
• @divadoll123 I’d say it’s more accurate BHO is betraying all of us. #tcot #
• Dems Credibility on Vets Issues Based on Fake Vet? #TCOT #HHRS #TBRS #readstate http://bit.ly/n82Hz #

Barack Obama verbally defecated on the former Catholic institution known as Notre Dame, from, from Julie Pace, Associated Press:

Obama acknowledged that “no matter how much we want to fudge it … the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.” But he still implored the University of Notre Dame’s graduating class and all in the U.S. to stop “reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that always has been the Notre Dame tradition.”

One of the noisiest controversies of his young presidency flared after Obama, who supports abortion rights but says the procedure should be rare, was invited to speak at the school and receive an honorary degree. “I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away,” the president said.

Mr. President, abortion is not a choice.   He is a person, albeit not yet born, but still fully human, and you favor allowing him to be killed.    It is not an attitude your mother shared.    Stanley Ann Durham supported human life, as does Norma McCorvey, b/k/a Jane Roe:

Ahead of Obama’s address, at least 27 people were arrested on trespassing charges. They included Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as “Roe” in the Roe v. Wade

Norma McCovey has seen the light.   Why can’t you?   Maybe because McCorvey is unwilling to trade human life for election votes.    The way to end the abortion controversy, is end the killing.

Addendum:

A president spoke and a hero got arrested, the hero, video:

Hat tip video:  Gateway Pundit.

Norma we salute you.

I consider this to be nothing short of a “See I Told You So” moment.

Glenn Reynolds, last night:

OBAMA IS LIKE BUSH: “I’m laughing at Obama, but I’m also thanking him for doing the right thing and reasonably tolerant of the way he’s tried to save face by pretending he’s not doing exactly the same thing Bush did.”

Plus, “I underestimated his willingness to lie.”  Always a mistake!

And this: “Meanwhile, what does it say that the Administration has resurrected or maintained the core elements of so many Bush Administration national security policies while OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen sits in limbo? And would the Administration’s policies be any different were she already confirmed?” That’s already been explained . . . .

Damned right, it has. I called this one less than a week in from Obama’s Inauguration.

For all the vitriol that has been coming from the left, and specifically out of President Obama’s mouth during the campaign, there’s a difference in tone coming out of the Obama camp over the last several weeks. There has been an abandonment of the hot rhetoric of the leftist in favor of of a liberal forced to face the reality of the world around him (i.e., adpopting existing White House policy). The change in tone is a recognition that the rhetoric that the American public was offered during the election was simply not based on reality.

As President Obama and his people are briefed on what has been happening in the world these last eight years, the insider’s view has given them a completely new perspective on what to do about the situation, resulting in completely different actions as compared to the ones they were telling everyone they would take once they were given the power.

President Obama and his fellow Democrats are now responsible for the outcome of the next four years.  They are pragmatic enough to understand that they are the ones who will take it on the chin politically after the next terrorist attack or if the current economic problems continue for long. They’re beginning to understand how wrong they were in chastising Mr. Bush and his policies. Thus, they are adopting them. That, dear reader, is vindication.

They earnestly hope that nobody, particularly on the left, will notice the change in direction.

Thing is, of course, that they’ve started to notice. They’re busy screaming ‘betrayal’, while the dinosaur media does it’s best to ignore it all.  As I told Glenn, last night, it blows my mind that so many more experienced and articulate writers than I are just now coming around to this idea.  It’s more amusing, however, how many of them are on the left.

You probably didn’t know this, because it is so seldom on calendars anymore, and the mainstream media reluctantly if ever makes reference to it.

That’s particularly interesting, given the politics of the man who established the day.  Its Armed Forces Day, today.

It was Harry S. Truman who pushed the idea of establishing a single holiday for citizens to come together for the purpose of thinking the members of our military for their patriotic service and their defense of our country.

If you see somebody in uniform wouldn’t it be a good idea to give them a smile and a wave at least, or better yet walk up to them , shake their hand, look them rightthe eye, and say “thank you”?

According to a story posted yesterday at the Denver Post, the Democrats are in trouble on yet another front;

WASHINGTON —Denver Post- Rick Strandlof, executive director of the Colorado Veterans Alliance and the man most colleagues knew as Rick Duncan, was front and center during the 2008 political campaigns in Colorado.

He spoke at a Barack Obama veterans rally in front of the Capitol in July, co-hosted several events with then- congressional candidate Jared Polis and attacked Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer in a TV ad paid for by the national group Votevets.org.

And the mostly Democratic candidates he supported — looking for credibility on veterans issues and the war — lapped it up appreciatively.

Now, politicians are dealing with news that the man they believed to be a former Marine and war veteran wounded in Iraq by a roadside bomb, in fact, never served in the military — but did spend time in a mental hospital.

Many of the candidates he supported won their elections handily and now say they were defrauded as much as anyone else.

“His fraud is a slap in the face to veterans everywhere and a betrayal to us all,” Rep. Polis, a Boulder Democrat, said in a written statement Thursday.

“It sounds like this man had a problem telling the truth and needs help,” said Tara Trujillo, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.

There is of course, far more to the story.  I would advise you to go and read the remainder of the article.  The comments are interesting, as well.

There does however, seem to be a pattern developing here that is disquieting to anyone watching closely enough.  We’ve been watching for the last several days the Pemocrat Party disintegrating, because the path it took to the supposedly moral high road on “torture”, was through a group of rather obvious lies. Now we see the credibility on “veterans issues” melting away, with evidence that it, too, was based on lies.

Trust me when I tell you, that there is no surprise me whatever about these revelations.  The pattern, after all, is all too well established. This time, as all too often before, the Democrats involved with this can make lots of angry noises about this and they will probably get away with it.  But the fact of the matter is they wanted so badly to believe that this guy would give them credibility, that they didn’t bother checking the story out. And just like the one to believe that their fundraisers are all on the up and up.  It’s called “plausible deniability”.  It’s a game they’ve been playing for many years now, and they’re very good at it, generally.  This year for some reason, all that seems to be falling apart.  Whether that’s due to incompetency, or tghe simple weight of the lies these people invariably wrap around themselves, I won’t speculate right now.

I will, however tell you this: At  least half of the noise is they’re making right now is not because they were angry that the guy lied, so much as he got caught at it,  thereby becoming a new obstruction to their use of government power. You don’t really think they give a damn about vets, do you, really?

I know, that sounds judgmental.  Take it is the word of someone who has been watching this kind of nonsense develop for decades.  Well long enough to identify the pattern when I see it.

The pattern shows us something else, as well.  If passed be prologue, this will probably be the last you’ll hear about this.  The mainstream media will bury this story as quickly as feasible.  Again; it fits the pattern.

(Bump text is below- Editor)

Speaker Tablecloth, a/k/a Nancy Pelosi, has done something that President Barack Obama has promised to but on which he failed to deliver, to with Speaker Tablecloth has united the left and the right. First Speaker Tablecloth, Associated Press:

Pelosi was particularly harsh in describing the CIA.

“They mislead us all the time,” she said. And when a reporter asked whether the agency lied, she did not disagree.

She also suggested that the current Republican criticism marked an attempt to divert attention from the Bush administration’s actions.

“They misrepresented every step of the way, and they don’t want that focus on them, so they try to turn the attention on us,” she said

 Video:

First fro the right, Gateway Pundit;

Speaker Pelosi [sic Tablecloth] attacked the CIA as liars and tried to put the focus back on the Bush Administration in her press conference today.
It didn’t work too well.

Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard:

Just so we can get this straight, it’s only now that Pelosi has decided the CIA lied to her, years after the controversy began and weeks after this particular controversy began? Or even giving Pelosi the benefit of the doubt about that first briefing, Sheehy still told her just a few months later, in early 2003, that she was lied to, and as minority leader, she did nothing? She didn’t look into it, didn’t raise it with George Tenet, didn’t even write a letter protesting the CIA’s conduct? It’s ludicrous. 

And from hate left, John Cole, Balloon Juice:

I still maintain that I would be flabbergasted to learn that the Democrats knew nothing. I would suspect they were told the minimum and everyone involved liked it that way, given the political climate at the time. This from the actual presser didn’t exactly inspire confidence in Pelosi’s assertion that she knew nothing:

So let me recap, the second most powerful person in the federal government, accuses an agency of that government, the Central Intelligence Agency. of lying to her, six or seven years ago, depending  which account she cites.    Yet she cites no letter she wrote to the CIA to protest any of the agency’s alleged misdeeds.     Speaker Tablecloth has been Speaker for over two years, but her House never held one hearing into the misdeeds she alleges.

If  Speaker Tablecloth is telling the whole unvarnished truth,  which nobody seems incline to accept, she should resign in disgrace for sheer impotence.   According to Speaker Tablecloth, the CIA misled, or lied to her, she has know about this for six years, but never did anything.   There is an expiration date on credibility and it has long since expired.

Update and Bump I: Eric

Look, whatever else might be said about all this, it has become emblematic for what the Democrats offer America. It goes directly the heart of what credibility issues the Democrats bring to the table. It’s obvious that Pelosi knew what was going on, and that she’s been caught lying to the American people.  It’s equally obvious why she would lie about this; she needed to not know to give her claims against the Republicans on Iraq any credibility at all.

Pelosi’s claim that the CIA lied specifically to HER is laughable on it’s face, given the number of other people who were briefed when she was.  Even absent that, why would the CIA lie specifically to her, alone, and not also to the remainder of Congress?  Even assuming it wold be desirable.. or even possible… to do so, she wasn’t even in a particularly powerful position when the briefings took place. So why bother?

There is a larger problem, here; one that Pelosi apparently hasn’t accounted for. Her multiple accounts on the happenings of that time frame tend to incriminate other members of Congress at the time. The likelihood of other congress critters leaping to Pelosi’s defense , thereby seems rather small.

And yet, if Pelosi actually sticks to her story,  and the Republicans actually grow a spine and press the matter tothe point of congressional hears..(Which I would urge them to do) the other people in the room for such briefings would end up being called for their testimony about what was said, who knew what, when, and so on.  The result of that testimony will certainly be damaging to the credibility of the Democrats as a whole, not just the speaker herself, given that they were the ones who made a campaign issue of water boarding, apparently on the false pretext that it was done without their knowledge or approval.  That credibility issue will undoutedly come up during the run up to the 2010 midterm elections, just when the Democrats can least afford such revelations. Given the polling data we’ve repeatedly seen that indicates an approval of the vast majority of Americans  that waterboarding was used under those conditions, that can only play against the Democrats.

My take based on all this is that Pelosi will be walking the plank sometime over the summer. The Dems will want to… will desperately need to… cut their losses, both in the interests of their urrent agenda and for the 2010 midterms. The likely replacement being Stenny Hoyer, someone who already ahs been luke-warm at best on the notion of defending his current boss.

The way this is playing, though, has wider implications than just Madame Speaker, and will be problematic for the Democrats regardless of Pelosi’s future.  Again, look at the number of Democrats other than Pelosi, who also knew about what the CIA was doing, yet didn’t raise objections at the time. The credibility of these has been damaged, each to the degree to which they signed on to the overall Democrat strategy of painting the Republicans’ the ‘party of torture’.  However Pelosi’s future develops, the image of the Demorat party as a whole, being the party of liars, has been reinforced in a way unlikley to be washed away in the next two election cycles.

Update and Bump II:  (David L)

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich  from ABC News:

“I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

“She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowist of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior.”

“Speaker Pelosi’s the big loser, because she either comes across as incompetent, or dishonest. Those are the only two defenses”

Pelosi claimed the CIA lied to her in either 2002, or 2003, yet she only now raises the complaint.   Call it what you will, Pelosi story in not credible.

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

This is the “Future Camper” Edition

• I have the POWER…. So now Arlen Specter is willing to compromise on “Card Check”?  I keep telling you, and perhaps now you’ll understand me when I say it again: It’s always been about remaining in power.
• SITYS:  Remember that Pajamas Media article I wrote saying Obama would vindicate the policies of Bush on the War on Terror? Here’s another case in point.
• Starting a Fire:  Speaking of PJM, that article I ran yesterday has really got things going, in ways I can’t even calculate.  Thanks to all who dropped me feedback. If the response this thing is getting is of any indication, I under-estimated the anger out there. What are they angry about?
• Glenn Beck says it well: Let’s see where we are after only a few months of Obama being in power.
  

  There’s defense: Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Israel and neighbors like Iran at their throats; the War on Terror that apparently no longer exists, don’t worry about that, even though Pakistan is about to be taken over by the Taliban and Somalia is being overrun by Muslim insurgents. Meanwhile, Gitmo is being closed, but we have no plan for the prisoners.Then there’s the economy: The unemployment rate is at 8.9 percent and the underemployment rate is 15.8 percent.

  And what about the bailouts? It’s not like the Obama administration is sitting back. They already fired the CEO of GM and now they’ve cut Chrysler’s ad budget in half. What’s next, are we going to have Harry Reid supervising the agents in the Citigroup call center?

  Then you’ve got our long-term structural issues: We found out Wednesday that Medicare will now be insolvent in just eight years. Meanwhile, we’re leveraging our future by monetizing our debt, which basically means we crank up the printing presses anytime we need more cash.

  And what about corruption? Nancy Pelosi and waterboarding; Chris Dodd and his sweetheart deal with Countrywide; Tim Geithner and his taxes; you’ve got ACORN, a organization charged with fraud that’s seemingly connected right to the White House.

  You’ve also got climate change, illegal immigration, failing schools, universal health care, Russia, China… the list goes on and on.

  Can you imagine the screaming going on from the left is Republicans were at the helm of all of this? Why are Republicans so damned complacent?  Well, based on the reax to my PJM article, yesterday, perhaps that’s not true, anymore.

• Check out the Conservative Grapevine: Lots of stuff going on over there.
• Checks for Industry… Checks for the Dead… With apologies to Firesign Theatre,  it appears to be the pattern for this administration. The checks for the dead thing I mentioned yesterday is far larger, now that they’re actually looking at it.   And we want to turn our health care over to this crew, why, again?
• Unsustainable? NOW, he tells us…. The Chosen one has finally gotten around to the idea that the current level of spending can’t be sustained. Like, haven’t we on the right been saying that since January? What the blink does Obama think those tea parties were all about, anyway?  Now, we both know that cutting spending is never in the mind of a Democrat, including Obama.   Never, never, ever.  Guess what this Obama statement means? Yep… Tax increases.
• Let’s imagine:  the left likes to ride Sarah Palin for a lot of reasons that don’t really exist. Let’s imagine that it was President Palin. How would she fare, if she’d pulled what Obama has so far?  Victor Davis Hanson looks at that question, and lets you decide the answer..
• Delayed reaction:  Scrappleface says Pelosi first heard of the 9/11 attacks in 2003.  Well, yeah, I guess that’s about at believable as her saying the CIA lied to her.  As I predicted in my update to David’s piece, I suspect the Democrats are going to try and cut their losses, lest other Dems get dragged into the spot light. The story they’re offering isn’t going to hold up under oath, which is why they’re resisting all attempts to get a hearing going on the subject.
• Krauthammer:  OK, speaking of Pelosi, go re-read the comments of David and myself, and then read Krauthammer’s comments.  There’s no longer any doubt Pelosi is lying. The only question now is at whose direction?
• Let the screaming commence: Carrie Prejean has a new gig at Fox News.  I can hear the screaming from the left, already. Know what? I really don’t much care.  Here’s an idea… in deference to the Keith Olbermans of the world, maybe “Perez Hilton” can get a job at MS-NBC. It’s my guess that the majority of MS-NBC’s viewers including Olberman, would find that pink wig very attractive, indeed.  Indeed, perhaps Ol’ Keith can die that lettuce he calls “a Toupe”,  pink, eh?
• Hey, Neighbor:  Bruce McQuain notes the threat of a trade war with Canada hasn’t gone away. Ah, yes. Hope and Change.
•  Socialism 101: How socialism works in the real world. Oughta be required reading  in High School.
•  The Automobile and this administration:  Ever wonder why the Administration doesn’t seem overly worried about the 150 thousand jobs that the dealership closings are going to cause? 
• Ya knew it was gonna come out: Already, we’re hearing locally here in the Vampire state, complaints that some dealerships are being closed because of the race of their owners.   I’ll quote a little because the site I’m pointing at may not leave the story up for long…
  

  The owner of Webster Chrysler Jeep has a similar idea.”The last to the dealership table are the first to be told to leave,” said attorney H. Todd Bullard.

  Bullard represents Randy Henderson, the owner of Webster Chrysler Jeep and the only minority Chrysler dealer in New York State. Bullard says it is no coincidence the auto giant wants to shut him down.

  “Part of our theory is that this was going to have a disproportionate impact on those dealers last at the automotive table, which in this case is the minority dealers,” said Bullard.

  The financial world is burning down around these morons and they’re claiming they were singled out because of race? Oh, please. File under ‘things we’d like to see’, Henderson taking it up with the new CEO of Chrysler… Barrack Obama.   Go ahead, Henderson, charge him with closing you down on account of your race.  God, what an idiot.

• Welcome to the party, guys:  It’s amazing what the threats of bankruptcy will do for a paper’s morals. When even the NY Times decides Murtha’s dirty, you know there’s a lot of other things going on under the surface of the thing.  Or maybe they’re just trying to divert attention from the list Beck mentions above, eh?
• Bogus marketing?  Michelle looks at the Cheerios thing I mentioned yesterday, and says maybe we should apply that standard to the government.
  

  Well, how about the bogus marketing of the fiscal “stimulus?” President Obama and the Democrats promoted the trillion-dollar package as job creation salvation. The White House claims 150,000 jobs have been “created or saved.” But since February, the nation has lost more than 1.3 million jobs. The current 8.9 percent unemployment rate in the wake of stimulus passage is worse than the 8.8 percent unemployment figure Obama’s economists darkly predicted if Congress didn’t immediately adopt their recovery plan. (See Innocent Bystanders.)

  The “stimulus” was supposed to provide aid to the country’s neediest areas. It’s not. The Associated Press reported after reviewing 5,500 planned transportation projects that “states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest.” 

  … and so on… you get the idea.  She’s got a point, ya know.  At what point does Obama admit the failure of big government, much less take action to stem the failure?

• A lesson in free market: Newsweek  isn’t selling enough copies to pay for itself. Do they change content? No. Do they cut staff? Well, yes, but not enough. No, they raise the price to $6 or so a copy. Yeah, that’ll sell more magazines. Right?

Larry Kudlow, National Review, asks some hard questions:

Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least.

So let’s be serious when evaluating President Obama’s goal of universal health care, and the idea that it’s a cost-cutter. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Costs are going to explode.

Think of it: Can anyone name a federal program that ever cut costs for anything? Let’s not forget that the existing Medicare system is roughly $80 trillion in the hole.

 Of course the Obamatards could be right that Obamacare will somehow lower costs.   There has to be a first time for everything.

Michael Yon on the canning of Lieutenant General David D. McKiernan:

However, General McKiernan did make some statements about additional troops to Afghanistan, and when he made those statements I remember thinking, “He’s going to get fired.” And so those statements were the first thing that came to my mind. McKiernan has been saying we need more troops than are already on the way. I do not have the training or experience to say how many troops we need in Afghanistan, but I know we could use a lot more than we have there now. Yet it did seem like General McKiernan was pushing the envelope. That doesn’t make him a bad general in my eyes. His envelope-pushing speaks of professional courage and honesty, but also one can imagine that leadership might want to keep some opinions in-house.

 Is the one looking for military victory in Afganistan, or just another scapegoat?    The Obama adminstration has collected a lot of scalps but has little to show for it.

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

BitsBlog... The Early Days

This is the “Change the oil, rotate the Tires” Edition

• Men are from Mars and Earth Girls are Easy… or something: John Hawkins has an interview up you’ll want to see,  with Shaunti Feldhahn, one half of the couple who wrote, “For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women” and “For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men.” An interesting read, anyway.
•  Unsustainable: If there is any better indication of the unsustainability of Union-dominated industry, than GM auto production moving to China, I can’t imagine what it would be. 
• The Spanish Language version of the Hitchcock Thriller “Cinco“: Honorable mention at the OTB Caption Contest
• We’re only paranoid because…. McQ says it well:
  

  -Democrats decry waterboarding as torture and claim it occurred because of lack of Congressional oversight (on the Republican watch).

  -CIA releases 40 separate documents that chronicle key Democrats, to include Nancy Pelosi, were aware of the use of EIT, to include waterboarding, for years.

  -Democrats claim the CIA is out to get them and that becomes the story.

  The comments are priceless.The Democrats have been thoroughly exposed as hypocrites on this stuff.  Indeed, if there was any more damning evidence that everything to the Democrat party is political,  I don’t know what it might be.  I’ve already commented on this several times, of course.  But Bruce said such a great line here, I couldn’t resist swiping it.  Besides, I figure he deserves a little link love for it.

• From Little Acorns, big fraud grows: I’ll be interested to see the denials being issued over this one from ACORN.  God bless Glenn Beck who’s been all over this one:
  

  Our guests went on to explain how these people are basically forced to meet quotas, which led to some of them registering “Mickey Mouse” or other fake names over and over again. When ACORN got caught, these people were thrown to the wolves. They explained that this was the protocol for two reasons: First, even if the form said “Mickey Mouse,” they still got paid. And second, if the person they threw to the wolves was black, they could always pull the race card. That could help them raise money in these communities by saying, “Look at the evil, conservative, white man keeping the black man down.”

  Then we unraveled the fact that while ACORN claims not to accept government funding, $10 million in federal money was funneled to them through other organizations just last year.

  But ACORN receives a lot more money than that and most of it is virtually impossible to trace. Because of that, the “ACORN 8” started asking questions and they didn’t like what they found:

  (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

  REID: ACORN doesn’t need to be funded with any more taxpayer dollars until we find out what happened to the last taxpayer dollars that ACORN was funded with.

  (END VIDEO CLIP)

  While we don’t yet know what’s really going on, we do know these ACORN affiliates have powerful friends, like the SEIU — the Service Employees International Union. Actually, they’re even more than friends; they’re swapping so much spit they’re riddled with mono.

  The head of ACORN, Wade Rathke, is the founder and chief organizer of SEIU, which donated $33 million to President Obama’s campaign last year. We also know that the place the main ACORN affiliate calls home in New Orleans, is supposed to house about 270 related organizations, a mix of corporations and non-profits from California to Louisiana.

  Does that former funeral home look big enough to you to house 270 organizations? The owner of the building is a company whose partners are — oh my gosh! — Wade and Dale Rathke (name sounds familiar?)

  As I told you earlier, Wade also happens to be the president of ACORN and he and his brother Dale — who’s accused of embezzling $1 million — are listed as president or partner in dozens of companies based in that building in New Orleans.

  Of course, we know very well that nothing in New Orleans is ever corrupt, right?

  Beck says this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there is something even more major going on here.  I think he’s right about that.  He also suggests this is not about a party on party thing.  I disagree.  Unless, of course, somebody can come up with Republicans involved in a ACORN, and the SIEU, and the Tides group.  Anyone? Yeah, I didn’t think so.    The Democrats, the SIEU, ACORN, and the Tides organization, (the name of which you will possibly remember from John Kerry’s candidacy ) are all wrapped up in this.  The President of the United States is involved here too.  There’s a lot of funny money going on here, and I think I begin to see why the Democrats are desperately closing down any investigation into campaign funding, and ACORN, that they can. 

• Das Cans: Glenn Reynolds mentions his Sennheiser PX-100 headphones he picked up for his IPod use. Glenn’s right, I’ve tried them, they’re pretty good. ‘Course, now,  Sennheiser has always have been good with this stuff.  Back in the day (Mid 70’s to early 90’s)  it was pretty much a toss-up between Sennheisers and a set of Koss Pro-Ones for my broadcast work.  (I actually had a set of Koss’s rebranded for Radio Shack… used the same elements and basic design) I tended to prefer the Pro-One’s because they had some heft to them, and they provided better isolation, by way of those fluid filled ear cups.  Important when you’re running a mike a couple inches away from them.  Sennheiser, though was  very good at this stuff even 25-30 years ago… One of my favorite mikes of the day for combo use was a Sennheiser 444 mike. According to the literature of the day, you could shove the thing down the throat of a jet engine, and it wouldn’t overload. It’d melt the case, of course, but that’s another matter. And the 444 loved my voice on AM like few mikes I’d ever used, particularly with am Optimod in the proc chain. Good gosh, what a sound.  I almost bought a 444 to take with me to whatever station I worked at. An EV 667 was a close second, but tended to ‘pop’ easier… you had to watch your distance.  But as for the cans, it amazes me, the technology involved with this stuff anymore. We’re getting performance out of a set of ‘phones sold for $10, that we’d not have seen in cans costing ten times that much a few decades ago. Like anything else electronic, I guess.
• Gotta Love Ann: She’s a fighter.
  

  Christians are supposed to be fat, balding sweaty little men with bad complexions. It’s liberals who are supposed to be the sexy ones. (I know that from watching “The West Wing” and all movies starring Julia Roberts.)But sadly for liberals, in real life, the fat, balding sweaty little guy with the bad complexion is Perez Hilton and the smoking-hot babe is Carrie Prejean.

  LOL….  Of course she oughta know about things like that. I dunno how many times I’ve seen liberals complain that Ann is a guy in drag.  On what basis they make that claim is an open question. Of course, these are the same morons who will blindly leap to defend the fat guy in the pink wig, pictured here. Consider the kind of mindset involved, and reasoning behind the attacks on Ann and on Carrie, for that matter, come into sharper focus. And we abdicated the rule of the country to this mentality? What in hell were we thinking?

• Cheerios with Ketchup:  Yeah, I know David and I have both commented on the story on the government trying to classify Cheerios and a drug.  But I had to slip in a link to this post at The Corner by John Miller who caps us both, I thnk, reminding us of the screaming liberals did with Reagan’s administration trying to suggest ketchup was a vegetable. (Of course it IS all tomato, but never mind that. )
• Childhoods:  It’s interesting, Billy, that you and Martin should be discussing such matters.   I was just jotting such thoughts down last weekend, for future use. Specifically, I was recalling being down to my Grandmother’s place in farm country, where I essentially had run of the place at a very early age.  Around home wasn’t much different. It wasn’t unusual to see me riding my bike 20 and 30 miles away at 12 and 13. I easily identify with the kind of upbringing as you describe it in your piece, along with the adult interactions.  You’re right, parents these days tend to get arrested and otherwise harassed for that kind of ‘expectation enforcement’, which I saw a fair amount of myself..  At the same time, though, I had a good deal more freedom, which parents today are also getting arrested for.