Nightly Ramble:The “Change the Oil, Rotate the Tires” Edition

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

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.

In my new Pajamas Media column, I examine the feelings among the rank and file GOP. They’re itching to take on both the GOP leadership and the Democrats… and not nessesarily in that order.

Label it as you will, but the call among the GOP rank and file to take the gloves off and hit back at the Democrats and the supposedly “moderate” Republican leadership is getting louder. And the desire to take back the Republican Party from those who have so compromised it is growing to the point where even the pundits are starting to echo the call.

Go and read… and comment.

If the Obama adminstration wants to make so-called drug treatment thnir weapon of choice againt the perils of hard drugs, like cocaine, I suggest that patient one be White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, f rom Gary Fields, Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

Kerlikowske is deluded, or just strung out, if he can not see the Obama adminstration war on the American people.   The Obama adminstration is plannnig tax increases on everything to pay for ObamaCare, which now to include so-cslled drug treatment.   From Grub Street:

– The Senate is considering a federal tax on soda and other sugary drinks to pay for a health-care overhaul. [WSJ]

– The FDA issued a warning to General Mills for the health claims it makes on behalf of Cheerios, which the agency called a “serious violation” of federal law. [WSJ]

Anthropogenic global warming as an imaginary problem which exists only in Al Gore’s fevered brain, but which the Obamatards wish to bankrupt our economy fighting.     Whereas illegal street drug use destroy what thousands of live.   The Obama adminstration wishs to spend millions ignoring it.    So Obama adminstration wants to encourage cocaine use but wage war on Cheeiros.    The American people need, albeit may not deserve, an adminstration with is both serious and sober.   The Obama adminstration is neither.

Now I don’t claim the best writer on the Web, or the most read blogger.  However, if Bitsblog is good for anything,  it is that we know the difference between a small turd and big turd. 

Why kick a small one, when it is just as easy to kick a big one.  Then when it comes to turds, few are bigger than Keith Olbermann.

As Allah Pundit, Hot Air, notes, Carrie Prejean’s position on same sex marriage is hardly unique.    Among others,  Carrie’s position matchs that of both D.C  Mayor Marion Barry and the President of the United State, Barack Obama.   So if Olbermann is so stupid as to think same sex marriage is actually is a good  idea, and has the courage of his supposed convictions, why doen’t he go after Berry or Obama?   Why because Olbermann is a shriveling coward.    Then we know that.

Now I am not a Christian.   Have no idea what Olbermann profess to be.    Howver, as I understand it, the essense of bieing a Christina isn’t claimimg to be perfect.   Just trying to do right.    Carrie Prejean has the courage of her convictions.    Can’t say the same for Olberman.

Hat tip photo:  Courant.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, a/k/a Speaker Tablecloth, is not smart, runs the House like her private plantation, and is not particularly well liked.  

William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection,  wonders if the ”rats screaming for an investiagtion into alleged tortue, has gotten out of their control:Just a month ago, who would have expected this headline:

Just a month ago, who would have expected this headline:

Hoyer wants Pelosi facts out

This is the same Stenny Hoyer who lost out to Pelosi back in 2001 for Minority Whip, and who Pelosi opposed for his present position of Majority Leader (Pelosi backed John Murtha). No connection, I know. He just wants the truth to come out about Pelosi for the sake of the truth coming out.

Given the evidence, I suggest another theory. Hoyer wants to run over Pelosi with the torture bus, but doesn’t want his fingerprints on the steering wheel.    If  Pelosi has to be sacrificed in the name of a torture investigation, who would be available to play the world’s smallest violin?

 

Jim Geraghty’s Law, National Review

All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date. All of them.

The one, January 20:

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine:

It should be of concern that, after riding into office on the hope and promise to end the perpetual cycle of acrimony, Obama has intensified it through perpetual slights and jabs at his predecessor. It should be of concern that he doesn’t quite realize his job is to rise above nastiness; not to encourage it. It should be of concern that his administration has made a fetish of vilifying select media figures, a practice not seen since the Nixon presidency. And it should be of some concern, quite bluntly, that Obama thinks a joke about someone keeling over from kidney failure is a hoot.

Bottom line: we don’t expect anything better from Sykes, but we do from our

All of Obama’s statements come with experation dates, even the ones the one made during his own inagruation.  Is the one too stupid to kn0w the meaning of his own words?   I mean, you don’t have to actualy understand the meaning of a word on a teleprompter, only pronounce it.   Or does Obama actually understand what he say, but just doen’t care?

Addendum:  Deleted photo.

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

This is the “Old Cafe” Edition

• The Double Standard, again: Interesting to note Camile Paglia so badly misidentify what’s going on in the country:
  

  How have we come to this pass in America where the assassination of top government officials is fodder for snide jokes on national radio?

  Well, gee, Camile… you didn’t notice when Bush was the target of such on Air America and other leftist venues? Sorry, Camile… you usually get some creds from me. This isn’t such a time. You’ve failed, here, miserably.

• More tea? I hear the Tea party folks are still planning more.  And, More.
• For anyone still taking Kanye West seriously:  You can stop now. It’s amazing what recreational drugs will do for your mental condition, isn’t it?  I’ve always called him a punk. I’ve never seen anything to alter my view on the point.
• You know you’re dealing with liberals when:  They want to make pot legal, but insist on regulating Cheerios as a drug. No, I’m not kidding. Change you can believe in.
• A surefire path to failure:  So, Obama has decided to cut Chrysler’s ad budget in half.  Leaving aside for just the moment, issues about the government making such choices, consider….This is going to sell more cars?  Some recovery we have planned, huh? Oh… and yes, the governmental involvement…. Under what section of the Constitution is this nonsense, anyway? What of the Rule Of Law that Obama spoke so glowingly of?  Ah, yes, this indeed is change you can believe in.
•  Say WHAT?!!??!?  Get this; The US is now going to pay millions to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly while on the job. Yes, indeedee doo, folks, this is change you can believe in.
• Woman, dead 40 years, gets stimulus check: Yeah? No kidding.  Thing is, I’m hearing they’ve been sending her Social Security checks about that long, too. Absent getting caught with the Stimulus thing, they’d still be going out. Explain to me again why we want the government doing healthcare?  Why do we want goverment making life and death chocies for people it doesn’t know have been dead for four decades? Not exactly the working definition of ‘personal care’ unless you’re the government.  Change you can believe in, or so we’re told.
• Democrat Corruption goes unchecked:  Big shock, that Democrats refuse to allow consdieration of an investigation.   So much for the transperency we were promised.  Change you can believe in, and all that.
• This doesn’t look like settled science to ME….  Ed Morrissey explains. At some point, the idea that the entire  pile of ‘global warming’ crap is exactly that, will be undeniable. And watch what happens when the right tries to claim the science is ‘settled’, then. Maybe Oprah will get a pass on her personal Jet, after all, huh?
• The Timing of Roxana Saberi:  David examined this yesterday, I know… but I can’t resist pointing at Roger Simon’s reading of the matter:
  

  it’s worth speculating on the timing of the release of Ms. Saberi, who originally had a one-day (closed) trial and then suddenly had a five-hour (closed, of course) appeal that turned an eight-year sentence into a two-year suspended sentence. I’m no expert on the internal workings of the mullocracy, but it strikes me they are not in as great a position as it would seem at this moment. The Arab states are getting fed up with them and are more than a little bit concerned about Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israeli PM Netanyahu is about to arrive in Washington. Conventional wisdom goes that the Israeli PM is on the hot seat with an increasingly unfriendly US administration. That is certainly true to a serious extent. But oddly enough, the Iranians, paranoiacs par excellence, may not be perceiving it that way. They may see themselves as suddenly boxed in by a burgeoning alliance between (largely Sunni) Arabs and Israel with US backing. Hence – they have sent a signal. You see, we’re not such crazies. Of course, as we all know, the subtext is – leave us alone to build our bomb. Let’s hope the Obama Administration pays close attention to this behavior.

  As David observes,  you know damned good and well that Iran didn’t release this woman of the goodness of their hearts… likely having none. Fear is a wonderful motivator. It’s not something Obama put there, certainly. But it’s still useful.

I notice Mark Steyn, this morning, chatting about the situation at the New York Times:

Over at NRO’s Media Blog, Kevin Williamson notes this intriguing item on the sharks circling the good ship Gray Lady:

The Sulzberger family will have to choose one of these rich men to bail them out—there are a lot of Sulzbergers, the family fortune has all but disappeared, and few of them have jobs. They’ll choose the rich man who mollifies or tricks or seduces them better than the others.

Mark Steyn

… So far Carlos Slim is, rather astoundingly, the one who is most successfully positioning himself as Arthur’s buddy… Slim’s game is to bit-by-bit secure, or indenture, increments of the company that, in not so many months, can give him control—all the while assuring Arthur that he is still running the paper.

That’s exactly the same strategy my friend Conrad Black used to gain control of The Daily Telegraph from Lord Hartwell in 1986. Hartwell assured the ancien régime there was no need to worry – this chap Black was just some provincial money man from Canada, useful as a source of cash but strictly a passive investor with no ambition to run a newspaper in London. Substitute Mexico for Canada, New York for London, and it all sounds very familiar – although Hartwell looks like a towering genius next to a bungler like Sulzberger.

Mark’s general leaning is apparently that Murdoch will have his hands in this before we’re all done, mostly because the list of people with enough moey to pour into the place is so small.   I tend to agree.  For all that, the big story here is that whatever else happens, the moral bankruptcy the Times has shown us for generations, is growing into fiscal bankruptcy, as well, and likley faster than we’re being told.

You know, there’s something about the idea that the Sulzberger Family has a lot of people in it, none of which have actual jobs, that strikes me as explanatory for the political leanings of the paper. That point strikes me as problematic for any buyer at this stage. Notice the lack of any discussion among the suitors about why the paper is in trouble, and thereby conclusions about changing the infamously left lean of the paper. Perhaps the issue here is not wanting to alarm Pinch too much for fear of nixing the sale.  Logic dictates that the paper must change to survive, and it can move nowhere but right. There’s no further left to move to.  Sulzberger’s resistance to that change is exactly the problem, however, and nothing short of that kind of change of the paper’s content, will stop the Times from circling the drain… it is simply a matter of time before it fails utterly.  That goes for any new owner, too.

Example: I mentioned in last night’s Ramble that David Geffin was considering buying the place, and that the likelihood of real change would be small under his ownership, avowed leftist that he is.  He’d be pouring good money after bad into the place, as Pinch has been doing for decades. Simply changing owners,and getting fresh cash into the place… a bailout if you will…  isn’t going to change that.   Absent a change of content… a change of political bearing away from the hard leftist lean, the paper is going down, regardless who owns the thing.  

I must admit there is a certain pleasurable reaction to the notion of Pinch and his pals sinking in their own stewpot.  That seems a foregone conclusion at this point….  Always assuming, of course,  the promise of Obama about not bailing out newspapers doesn’t have an expiration date, too. And yes, that too is still a question, as with every single promise Obama has ever made.

Rush Limbaugh

He is called the Great One for good reason.    Where some were expecting a full throated frontal attack on Wanda Syles, or, like me, an attack on the one, Limbaugh caught both his fans and critics flat footed.   In his intro on Monday, Limbaugh kept playing the words of Barack Obama, video:

Text via the Puffington Post:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics

The one certainly has his speech writers use such pretty sounding words.  Shame for the one, the pretty words which describe such lofty aspiration, are just mere word in a TelePrompter, video:

Hat tip and more: Toby Harden, Telegraph(UK):

And Obama laughing when someone wishes Limbaugh dead? Hard to take from the man who promised a new era of civility and elevated debate in Washington.

Humor is the key to unlock the secrets of person’s inner character.   A person who thinks jokes about kidney failure are somehow funny, would also sit though the hate filled sermons of Jeremiah Wright.   Barack Obama allowed the public a glimpse of his soul, and the sight was truly ugly.

The irony is that if Obamacare passes neither the Great One or the mere one will have access to a kidney machine.

What ever promoted Donald Trump to select Perez Hilton as a judge of female talent and beauty?   Only the Lord knows for sure, but     Trump’s poor judgement, thinking Hilton an apt judge of young women and his unsuccessful attemts to embrass and intimidate Carrie Prejean, may account propensity for Trump’s  failure in both his business and personal life.

As for Miss Prejean, she keeps on rolling, video:

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.

You go Carrie!

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

This is the Travel Trailer Edition

• Flailing About: You know, watching this Pelosi thing is rather like watching someone who is drowning, desperate to find something that will keep them afloat. Let’s not lose sight, though, of the fact that she’s not alone in this game of hers. If she knew… and she did know… about the scope of the ‘Water boarding’, then everyone else knew as well. Take the number of Democrats involved in those meetings… Queen Nancy wasn’t the only one, after all… and multiply that number by their staffs and their close associates. This whole thing  exposes the Democrat objection to it now as pure political opportunism. The Democrat party, I’m sure, would like this whole thing to go away, and to that end the news coverage and party statements… what there are of them… focus on Queen Nancy. Queen Nancy, for her part,  is apparently destined for an attempt by Democrats to use her as a scapegoat.  We shouldn’t let them.  All of this is one major reason the approval ratings for Democrats are dropping.  Others in on this one include Jules Crittenden, Don Surber, NO QUARTER, The Sundries Shack, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and  Pajamas Media 
• He’d have voted for torture:  He who? Who He? Harold Ford Jr.  Hardly a right wing sycophant, that.
• Why is Oprah Getting a pass? Imagine the response had Donald Trump said this.
• Calls for Steele to go? I’m not sure I agree with any of this from Jay Cost at RCP. First, I’m still… still… not getting a clear picture of the direction Steele wants to take the party.  That studied ambiguity  is disturbing  because I still don’t fully have a handle on Steele’s being worthy of my support, thereby.  I’m also less than pleased with Cost, because he so apparently feels  that lack of a clear direction on the part of the RNC leadership is desirable:
  

  There is a reason why your average party chairman is a lousy television guest who rarely strays from the talking points: that is what’s good for the party.

  Not a party that has a solid philosophical base, it’s not.  Not a party that operates from principles and has nothing to hide, it’s not.  I made the point in my “Grabbing the Wheel” article of the other day that there is a brand clarity issue… and that it’s particularly important when rebuilidng is the desire.  Trouble is, the question is still out there; Will the Republican Party represent it’s base, or not? Do we really need to wait until mid-terms to get the answer to that simple and important question?

•  The Second Coming of Crist: … may not be the success he’s hoping for.  Florida Gov. Charlie Crist declared for the US Senate this morning, but it looks like the base he’s been ignoring is about to remind him who’s in charge down there.   Of course, this bucks the NRSC, who endorsed Crist.  (For which, I note with Amusement, John Hawkins calling for John Cornyn’s head as NRSC chair … a point I tend to agree with him on.) This goes directly to the lack of direction I spoke of regarding Steele. Given the split we see inside the party, just now, I’m unclear on Steele being behind the endorsement. Crist, you may know, has made no bones about being a McCain style moderate, and has in fact been on the short list as McCain’s VP nominee. My leaning here? Marco Rubio (Vid).
• We Exist:  Memeorandum has been noticing… and linking our work again, here at BitsBlog. Apparently, we exist again.  Nice to see.
• YOU…. NOT…. FUNNY…..  Interesting, that the White House is now backing away from Wanda Sykes and her performance there, faster than one would back away from someone yelling Alu Akbar!!! at the top of his lungs in a public place.  They’d like you to know they think Sykes wasn’t funny.  And forget about the video we have of Obama laughing his ass off.  By the way, someone better grab that vid before it disappears from the web, like so many other stories not favorable to Obama have done. Cold Fury has more, and so does The Wall Street Journal.
• Change? Not really:  I’ve often said to get the NY Times to change it’s left leaning ways a new ownership has to happen. this wasn’t exactly the change I had in mind.
• Health care: I note Megan McArdle, talking about Healthcare issues. Worth the read, but let’s shorten this. First go back to this morning and read the quote I put up by Carol Negro.  Particularly the first para in the quote. Then consider; when the government is in charge of your healthcare, it comes down not to what is best for you, but what is best for the government… and those currently in power, and how you affect those.  As I said to the gang at Q&O just now… We have discussed on this blog many times, the lack of respect government as a rule has for individual rights. Think they’re going to have any greater degree of respect for your health, when it comes down to a question of your health, or their retaining power? 

Some amazingly succinct comments from Carol Negro at The American Thinker this morning:

Growing government is the real reason Progressives are pushing socialized medicine. They know perfectly well it doesn’t work. They are neither blind nor stupid. They don’t care about your health, or what healthcare costs you now, or about rationing or low quality care. No arguments about the inadequacy of government-run healthcare will move them. Socialized Medicine grows government, and gives it total power over our bodies. They will literally, with the stroke of a pen, have life and death power over every single person in the country. It doesn’t get more totalitarian than that.

The reason for gun registration is not the safety of citizens, they know perfectly well that most legal gun owners are responsible and, in fact, have fewer accidents with firearms than most police departments. They don’t care if you get shot by a criminal. They don’t care if criminals are the only people with guns. They don’t care if the streets are safe or not. They don’t care if criminals get brazen and bold like they are now in England & Australia where they have confiscated legal guns. What they do care about is that registering guns gives government more power over more people in more ways. And they know guns in the hands of citizens is a direct threat to their power-lust ambitions.

They don’t care about the “Earth”. Controlling energy gives them total control of the means of production. Which translates as total control over food, shelter, goods and services. It’s the perfect, undercover communist/fascist coup…as they wrap themselves in virtue for “saving the planet.” Hitler was an “environmentalist” too.

They don’t care about endangered species. They care about being able to control private property, the single most important bulwark against government tyranny.

The entire article is worth your time and I commend it to your careful reading.

 Roxana Saberi, the American repoter kidnapped by the  moo-las of Iran, has been released, Wall Street Journal:

TEHRAN — Roxana Saberi, a 32-year-old Iranian-American journalist detained here for more than three months, was freed on Monday after an appeals court suspended her eight-year sentence on espionage charges.

The court upheld the spying charges against Ms. Saberi, but reduced the sentence to a two-year suspended prison term, according to her lawyer

[…]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was “heartened” by Ms. Saberi’s release but that the U.S. continued “to take issue with the charges against her and the verdicts rendered

Nice to see that Saberi has been freed, but kidnappers only release their victims after they recieve their ransom.    Is Mrs.  Clinton really so dumb as to believe that Iran simply released Saberi out of goodness of their hearts, or the result of some Obamatard smart diplomacy?    Can we see a show of hands?

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

This is the “More Tea, Vicar?” Edition

• The face of Socialism: I’ll bet you didn’t know that Crazy Uncle Hugo decided that it’d be a good idea to use the military to take over oil service companies in the country… including a couple of US natural gas firms.  Interestingly, the White House has been pretty much silent in the affair.  They could, I suppose feign shock or disbelief, but who would believe it? See, here’s the thing as Rich Galen, looking at all of this, points out:
  

  If the Obama administration can put the United Auto Workers on Chrysler’s board of directors, negotiate the terms of its bankruptcy, give a third of the company to Fiat and can even decide how much marketing it should do … does anyone see a functional difference between Hugo Chavez’ and Barrack Obama’s views of private companies?

  Not I. Which is perhaps why Obama isn’t moving to protect the investments of those companies. But as Reynolds notes about Chavez‘ move over the weekend:

  “The move is the latest sign of the deepening cashflow crisis that has bedeviled the state oil company for at least two years as it has become overburdened with responsibilities far removed from its core business – in particular funding and running the massive social programmes that have become the bedrock of Mr Chávez’s support.” And capital is being scared away, because of “regime uncertainty.” .

  Gee, no similarity there, either, is there? Tell me again about the Recovery, Barry. And the rabbits.  

• Whither National Review?  They seem to have been suffering under an Internet connection issue that had all the markings of a Denial Of Service attack… a co-ordinated one. I’ll be interested to see the forensics on this one.
•  Mrs Edwards hid the truth from herself. But are we doing the same thing?  The really big story here is the press and their distortion of the election by covering for Edwards, says Mickey Kaus. He’s right, of course. It’s a given that Edwards was busy with an affair on the side, while his cancer suffering wife supposedly didn’t know. OK, the People magazines of the world are making a lot of money on those points just now, and tugging  at all the correct emotional strings to sell magazines.  But maybe we should expend just a little effort finding out how Edwards managed to keep this under wraps for so long, and who in the press was helping him do so, and why.
• Cutting the Mustard:  Of course, Edwards isn’t the only place such hiding by the press has been happening. We’ve all seen the Mustard Muck-up. (Thank you, David)  Stacy McCain points out that this kind of press cover up for Democrats is still happening.
• I’m with Cheney By now, you will have heard that Dick Cheney says he’s take the judgments of Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell. The leftards are in an uproar over that, of course.   Of course the reason they’re upset is, he’s right. As I said over the weekend, people, the left will always go after the person that is most effectively arguing for conservative values.
• The ‘Global Warming” gig is up:  Turns out that the Arctic ice is in fact “twice as thick” as scientists estimated.  So, Polar bears aren’t drowning because of your SUV, after all. Maybe now we better understand why Obama let stand a Bush era ruling about excluding the Polar bear from global warming statutes, huh? Maybe this is what Obama meant when he said he’d be transparent? You can read through all the scam attempts.
• Tea Parties remain: There were more of them over the weekend. 
• Double Standard? No….  Reynolds points out that the reason the tea parties weren’t around under Bush and his deficit spending, is the under Obama there’s four times more deficit .
• Say what you will about Gingrich….  He’s got Queen Nancy pegged. Meanwhile, some speculation about the CIA vs Pelosi from Billy Beck:
  

  “The interesting thing for me here is not that a politician might choose to dissemble over an embarrassing revelation, but that an arm of the federal bureaucracy would so deliberately impeach one of the most powerful (and vindictive) members of the political branch. CIA could have chosen to let sleeping dogs lie and give Pelosi a pass, but instead the spooks chose to publicly confront her with inconvenient facts.”

  Yes. This whole thing has felt to me like old-timey Sovietology and watching the shadows on the wall in order to figure out what’s really going on. It is quite rather curious to me that Leon Panetta’s house has gotten involved in this fight like this.

  It almost feels like someone is trying to put her in her place.

  Not to me, it doesn’t.  You’re correct, Billy it’s a curious thing… and unusual at least. Fact is, the CIA never does anything in the public eye it doesn’t have to. Particularly unusual given Panetta’s Democrat history… he’s unlikley to target another Democrat without a damn good reason.  this whole thing sounds like someone who is trying to repel an attack with a preemtive move.  There is, though, something that would explain all of this…. or most of it, anyway… My take is that even a cursory investigation would have revealed that Pelosi was lying… there were already a number of clues being mentioned in the Dinosaur Media. All the CIA did was confirm what would have come out under direct examination, either by the press of by Congress.  I suspect that the CIA released what they needed to release to quell the problem, while making sure that nothing additional got released (or brought out in a show hearing, which would certainly follow if the CIA hadn’t acted)  that would have actually embarrassed the CIA. What that particular is, I’ve no idea. Clearly, though they consider it more important than sielnce on Pelosi.

• Air Farce One:  Ann Althouse points out that the photo released from the panic inducing flyover of Manhattan are awful. I mean bad to the point of making one wonder if photography was the reason for the flight.  Yeah, I’m with Ann on this one. There’s a fish in the pickle barrel somewhere.

I wonder if Wanda Skyles was born stupid or just took too many stupid pills?   It is hard to tell.   Gateway Pundit is attributing this quote to Skyles:

“You’ve had your fair share of critics. Rush Limbaugh said this administration fails. He just wants the country to fail. To me that’s treason.”

Now I am not a juris doctor, but even I know, or can google, the definition of treason, Legal Dictionary:

The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.

[…]

Under Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution, any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them Aid and Comfort has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.

Treason is defined as an act.  What Skyles attributed to Rush Limbaugh was a thought.    A thought is not an act, except maybe in Obamaland.    Pity for Skyles she too stupid to tell the difference.

Addendum: (Eric)

The bottom line is that Wanda Syskes is on the down side of an overlong career, and figured the best way to deal with her issue was to play to her audience. I submit that the reason she came up with these lines isn’t so much that she actually thinks that way, but that her audience agreed with it. A sense of what each particular audience will find amusing is after all a comedian’s bread and butter. In the case of the people there that night, she’s read them correctly.

A lot of the discussion we’re going to hear about this event will lay the whole thing on Sykes… and doubtless, she’s an idiot, acting in desperation to re-kick her carreer. The real issue, however, the one nobody will mention is how many people in her audience… the Democrats and the press… agree with her… how correctly she identified the way her audience thinks .   In answer, The Weekly Standard notes Obama was yukking it up pretty good at Sykes’ statements. Has vid of it, too. Based on the vid, I’d say she nailed it pretty well.

Sykes has done us a service, the degree of which I suspect she doesn’t understand herself. She’s identified the real problem for us.

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