Rush Calls Out BO

From World Web:

Noun: single combat

1. A fight between two people
“in all armies there were officers who needed to prove their bravery by single combat”

Rush Limbaugh, via Gateway Pundit:

I am offering President Obama to come on this program — without staffers, without a TelePrompTer, without note cards — to debate me on the issues. Let’s talk about free markets versus government control. Let’s talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business.

Wha adds:

Of course, Obama won’t go on Limbaugh’s show to debate the ideas.
Without a teleprompter?… No way.

Rush versus BO, mano e mano.  Never happen.

Welcome to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere, the ever increasingly popular Bitsblog Nightly Ramble.

This is the “Boy are we ever LOST” edition.

WARNING: This Bitsblog entry may contain information that is
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• Between a rock and a Steele place: Interesting article from Paul Bedard this morning, entitled “GOP to Michael Steele: Quiet About Rush Limbaugh or You’re Fired”. Interesting, I say, given my response to that situation yesterday.  Almost as if they were listening. Or, perhaps the answers are obvious. Anyway, Bedard says:
  

  Of concern: For no reason, he is dividing the GOP between conservatives who like Limbaugh and moderates who don’t and jeopardizing future fundraising efforts, his key responsibility. “The general sentiment of the conference is that Steele needs to step back and get a handle on his role in the party,” says an influential congressional aide. Namely, advisers want him to stay out of the media and focus instead on hiring his staff and revamping the RNC. “He needs to hire staff for the RNC, get the operations up and running, start raising money, and understand that his role is to win elections,” says a senior party adviser. Officials are concerned that Steele either doesn’t understand his responsibilities or has an inflated vision of his role. “At this point, it is as if he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the job description. An RNC chairman who attacks Republicans and insults conservative icons is about as counterproductive as any Democrat could hope for,” says the adviser.

  And here I was thinking that the whole of the party had lost it’s friggin’ mind.  Comforting to know it’s merely a subset of the party that’s involved with this nonsense.  One really must wonder, though, what his motivations were… and if he was acting at the direction of someone, whom?  Here’s the thing; His comments mesh so well with the party as we saw it during the most recent eection campaign…. well, you get the idea.  I tell ya… we need to weed this ‘centrist’ business… this misbegotten notion that the only way Republicans are going to win is if we curb our principles, out of the party. If that means Steele goes, that’s OK, too. But let’s also target those who are only giving lip service to Conservative ideas and ideals, or the job’s not done. The name ‘Cantor’ leaps to mind, unless some changes happen with him. I’d rather have these folks with us, but not at the expense of what we stand for. And look; I’m aware that Steele is new at this job, hasn’t got a team set up yet, and is flying both blind and alone.  I know full well how that affects the look and feel of the finished product. I’m somewhat sympathetic to that argument, offered several times to me in yesterday’s email.  But I suggest that in such situations, humans usually will fall back to their inner clock, their bedrock values. Even if they leak out at inopportune moments, that leak gives us a unique and telling view of what  the values are inside. If that’s the case here, we have a serious problem on our hands… and one that his having a proper team in place will only amplify.  Time will tell.

• Part of the plan: It would appear, though, that Steele ended up playing, perhaps unwittingly,  into the hands of the likes of Carville, Begala, and so on, who whipped up this attack on Limbaugh and the Republican grassroots, last fall.  I told you yesterday that the object here is to get the Republican leadership to back away from it’s grassroots, and thereby from Republican… and yes.. conservative principles. Get the Republicans to disown Limbaugh, and you’ve disconnected them from their grassroots, thereby crippling them.  Given Steele’s comments it nearly worked. Given the article, Eric was right again. Oh…. and….. Welcome to the bigtime, Mike. 
• Study: Don’t trust studies: Over at OTB, James Joyner passes along word of a medical study done by the AMA, the conclusion of which, is, well… don’t trust medical studies. Says the report:
  

  Level of evidence provides the link between recommendations and evidence base. Although there is significant variation among individual guidelines in available evidence supporting recommendations, the median of level of evidence A recommendations [i.e., those supported by more than one randomized trial] is only 11% across current guidelines, whereas the most common grade assigned is level of evidence C, indicating little to no objective empirical evidence for the recommended action. . . . Interestingly, our findings are reflective of a specialty — cardiology — that has a large pool of research to draw on for its care recommendations. Guidelines in other medical areas in which large clinical trials are performed less frequently may have an even weaker evidence-based foundation. [emphases original]]

  Says James:

  I’ve noted for years that the standards for publication in medical journals are far less rigorous than for publication in social science journals. This, despite the former being far more important and the widespread perception that the latter isn’t really science at all.

  Now, here’s something I’d like you to think about. Such studies often… heck… usually… end up influencing our healthcare by becoming a mandated treatment for insurnace purposes… or in the case of government healthcare, a law. You will follow their mandate, regardless of the whole thing being based on limited or non-existent scientific evidence.  Force of government is a marvelous thing; It is able to make people do stupid stuff, and make you think it’s the thing to do. It’s one way government getting between you and your doctor can ruin your health… for no good reason. And if you think it won’t happen that way, may I point to the increasingly draconian laws based on the supposedly scientific studies surrounding “‘global warming”?

•  Is MJ back? God, let’s hope not. But you know, there’s a lot of similarity with his history and how our government is being run just now. Think about his finances for one thing, and compare that to the spending spree Washington is now on.
• Trouble in Blue Doggieland? Not everyone is so happy with Obama’s path.
• Guess who else? The Russians are also among those less than impressed with Obama. He tried to do the water-walker number with them, and they basically told him to get lost, that they’re the ones in charge… and started dictating to him. So much for the ‘one world’ way of diplomacy. The White House is downplaying this screwup, of course.  It’s not an easy job scaraping egg of your face while trying to look presidential, but Obama’s doing his best to make it look in the press like it was intended as a beauty treatment. If it gets mentioned at all.
• I was going to comment on this, but Boortz did it already and likley did a better job, too:
  

  Some news about two of our favorites .. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The New York Times reports that more than likely, the companies will never fully return to private hands. This is a fact that lawmakers and company executives are starting to realize. Maybe that is why Freddie Mac’s CEO just resigned after six months on the job…

  There’s no question in my mind on that score. Further, I view this as the rats starting to jump ship. They know the thing is sinking. Welcome to Obama World. Can we crash the economy in 3 months? Yes, we can.

• About that; check Dick Morris’ column, today.
• Someone in Niagara Falls put on a sign up on their land saying “I rent three bedrooms [at her address to] white people Niagara Falls.”  You can imagine the reaction. Racist? Perhaps. But have you been in Niagara Falls lately? I’ll have to grab some pics of the place to show you, of the ‘better’ neighborhoods next time I’m there. And in any event, is this really fodder for the government?
• It wasn’t deregulation that destroyed our banks… it was Regulation.
•  

Me to John Hawkins, just now:

-=-=-

Magnus Anderson makes an excellent point.

Maybe we are challenged both by a general trend of “modern” relativistic thinking, which we havn’t been anaware as we should as well as a slippery slope of larger government which benefits from eroded “old” values — thus modern way of thinking boosts big government and vice versa.

Think of it this way; If we ‘update’ our ideas/ideals/principles away from conservatism, what are we really doing, but willingly changing them so as to be more like liberals?

You want fresh approaches? Well, let’s try ‘compassionate conservatism’. Oops. Been done, already, huh? What did that do except grow government?

Similarly, the movement away from our conservative values is what caused John McCain to be nominated, and what caused him to lose in the general. In a choice between socialism and socialism lite,apparently the choice is for the real thing, or nothing.

We keep getting ‘moderates’ who encourage us to move left, and guess what? Every time we do, we move farther away from where we want to be. Perhaps the change that needs to take place is moving back that 30 years that John speaks of, and thereby to a 200-some-odd year old agenda that I’ve heard of, once upon a time.

The argument should not be focused on the idea that we need to change in order to be relevant… what needs to improve is our commitment to relating how our positions are already relevant, and should never have been given up.

I see this as an ongoing process. Chesterton, I think it was, painted a word picture about a white post. If you want to keep it white, you’ve gotta keep painit or at least cleaning the thing. It’s a maintainence thing. We need to keep poinding on the principles of the thing, keep reselling them, keep the idea high in the public eye that our principles, our agenda of freedom, was, is, and always will be valid.

Online conservative activists have rallied to CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s call last week, backed by mortgage traders, for a “Nationwide Chicago Tea Party” to protest the Obama Administration’s bailout plan. Over 40 cities held Tea Parties on February 27, 2009. Now, we’d like to invite you to Rochester’s Tea Party.

Place and Time

Wednesday, March 11, 2009
4:30pm to 7pm

Meet at Lawyers Co-op Park, 56 E Main Street, (next to the Southwest corner of the Main St. Bridge)

Map

Crossposted from NorthShore Journal, where you’re encouraged to check for Tea parties in your area,

From the AP:

MIAMI – An abortion clinic owner is accused of delivering a live baby during a botched procedure and then throwing the infant away.

Belkis Gonzalez, 42, was arrested Tuesday and charged with practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence, both felonies, said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office. If found guilty, Gonzalez would face at least a year in prison and up to 15 years.

The teenage mother, Sycloria Williams, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gonzalez knocked the infant off the chair where she had given birth, and then scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag, and threw it out.  

OK, I may be getting up there in years, but if we’ve decided to kill our kids, what the heck is the beef with this doctor?  Is how we kill them, and when really that important?  In for a penny, my freinds, in for 7 lbs 6 oz.  

Consider also, the lawsuit, here. Why would the (sic) mother be suing this doctor? Because he didn’t sheild her enough from the reality of what she was doing there?

No, I’m not being cold… I’m making a point, that we’re skating around the foundational questions of life and our moral responsibility for it. At some point, these questions are going to force honest answers from us.  When it does….

First it was Joe the Plumber, then Rush Limbaugh, then Rick Santelli and now it is Jim Cramer.   Call it a rant, Cramer makes some good points, video:

At some point the Obama administration has to stop trying to shoot the messenger and start dealing with the problem of a tanking economy.  The difference between Obama’s point of view and that of Cramer, is that Obama views Wall Street and Main Street as separate.  Cramer does does not.  How is your 401K doing?

Hat tip and more:  Jammie Wearing Fool:

Despite what’s obvious to everyone, Barack Obama and his socialist mob push forward, clearly inteny on destroying this country as fast as possible.

Jim Cramer woke up. When will the rest of the media?

Maybe we ought to tie executive compensation to the Dow Jones Industrial Average?   If BO doesn’t give a darn about your investments, maybe  he might care about his own paycheck?

So just who is running the show in Washington?    It sure isn’t one Barack Obama.   The worst presidential press secretary ever, Robert Gibbs, suggests that BO was looking to establish guidelines for congressional earmarks.   In response, House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, told BO that Congress, that is Mrs. Pelosi and her democrats, were running the show, and not President Obama, Deirdre Walsh and Dana Bash:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md, insisted Tuesday that Congress, not President Obama, would decide whether to put more limits on earmarks in upcoming spending bills.

Asked about a statement by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Monday that the Obama Administration was formulating guidelines for earmark reform, Hoyer said flatly, “I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do.” He paused deliberately and quipped to reporters in the room, “I hope you all got that down.”

The President has the constitutional authority to veto any congressional bills.  Hoyer denied that Obama had the ability to exercise his constitutional authority.   In other words, Hoyer deemed Obama to be merely a sock puppet.

Cassy Fiano, seems to be suggesting that BO’s supposed position opposing earmarks is mere show, and not serious:

Well, for starters, I don’t think they’re going to get much of a fight from Obama when it comes to porking bills up. He’s a willing accomplice.

I say, Hoyer’s slap down of BO was serious.

The more the clueless one, a/k/a Barack Obama talks, the more the market tanks BO seeme to think that Main Street and Wall Street are two seperate entities.  BO’s clueless is driving American wealth down.

In contrast, Bobby Jindal has a clue, video:

Hat tip and more: Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

First, no one is saying that they hope the country fails.  King equates country with Barack Obama in a weird way that suggests King has bought into the cult of personality, as though Obama has become King’s personal messiah.

Heck Ed, I’d say that Larry is too old to get Chrissy Matthews like tingle up his leg.

I wondered when these would come back again:

SSG Jason Fetty was assigned to a Provincial Reconstruction Team, which, as the name denotes, isn’t a combat unit. It is a civil affairs unit with a much different role. He was a member of the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team or PRT as they’re known, and very proud of what he’d been able to accomplish during his tour in Afghanistan.

So starts the latest tale of heroism as related by McQ over at Q&O.

You need to read this.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

David Brooks, via Tom Maquire, Just One Minute.

Brook is far from our favorite conservative, but Brooks ire is an indication of how far the one has fallen.   Rember during the debate, Obama asked which one three programs he would cut and he indicated none.    BO has seeming unlimited desire to spend other people’s money and no ability, or desire, to develope priorities.

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… to be used only for hand to hand combat…Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble.

This is the “More Snow” edition.  Scientists agree that reading these daily updates… well, nightly updates… can make you a very smart man. Unless you are, in fact, a woman. That’s handy information to have, particularly if you’re looking for the men’s room.

• Glenn mentions today:
  

  HEY, WASN’T HE CALLING WASHINGTONIANS SNOW-WIMPS JUST THE OTHER DAY? Barack Obama cancels press conference with Gordon Brown “because of snow”.

  Yeah, well,remember why Brown came here; He was here to remind Obama his call for protectionism isn’t very popular in the UK and elsewhere. Can’t imagine why Obama would cancel under those conditions.

• The Dow is off again today.  How much is that now that Obama’s taken office? 3000 or so off? Eventually, Obama’s going to run out of excuses. The WSJ thinks so, too.  At which point, like Brown’s visit, we won’t hear much about it again. And why is it so down? Might the two years of Democrats… Obama included, talking down the economy, and going to war against the rich… might that have anything do do with it?  He may be talking it up now, but the damage is done, I think. And what we see Obama doing now isn’t geoing to help. If Obama’s policies were with a bucket of used spam snot, we’d have seen some rebounding n the market already.  The administration is at this point out of ideas and too idealogically landlocked to apply something that will really work.such as eliminating mark to market, dumping Sarbanes-Oxley, making the Bush tax cuts permanant, and so on.
• Check VDH’s column today.
• Blago got six figures to write a book?   The question becomes whether not making their money back was ever the object in the first place. In looking at his recent record, one almost has to figure that Blagojevich does everything he does for reasons of political and monetary gain. One also gets the impression that he doesn’t see any differentiation between the two. On that basis, one might assume that the six figure salary for the book that nobody’s going to read is in fact political payback for something or another. I suspect if we look closely will find that the publisher in question, while Hollywood based, has some of it’s operations in Illinois. Out another way; There’s more going in here than a company getting stupid about the amount of money they’re paying for a book.
• A third place at OTB’s Caption Contest reveals a Dick Tater.
• Ho, hum, just another tax cheat appointed by Obama.  Starting to look like cheating on your taxes (at least) is a prerequisite for appointment in this administration.
• Barry Manilow sings “Back in Black”

I’ve been watching this grudge match between Michael Steele and the grass roots, including Rush Limbaugh, with a jaundiced eye. I’ve seen this developing before, and frankly I see it as a part of the anti-Republican-grassroots  efforts I’ve commented on in other forms and other forums. It’s why I’ve not commented on it here before now. Steele has since apologized for his comments, and that’s a start. But it’s not nearly the whole thing.

 It’s interesting; Just today, I posted an article over at Pajamas Media as regards a rift between the grass roots and the Republican establishment.  It certainly appears to me that the takeaway from this  Steele v Limbaugh exchange, whatever else might be said, is that Limbaugh is not as the Democrats have been trying to cast him, a part of the Republican leadership. He is, in fact, part of the much Republican maligned grassroots, albeit one of the more visible members.

Why would the Democrats try to mislabel Limbaugh as the leadership of the Republican party? The answer is fairly simple; They’re trying to get the Republican leadership to back away from it’s grassroots, and thereby from Republican… and dare I say.. conservative principles. Get the Republicans to disown Limbaugh, and you’ve disconnected them from their grassroots, thereby crippling them.  Given Steele’s comments it nearly worked.

It would be understating the thing on an order of scale to suggest that I’m disappointed with Steele in this. He has but one choice to overcome this. He needs to understand first that Limbaugh is as popular as he is because he speaks what is already on the minds of the Republican grass roots, not because he does their thinking for him or that he is particularly entertaining.  He would thereby be far better learning from Limbaugh and not disowning him as the Democrats have been demanding of late. Growing a pair and an ability to stand on conservative principles wouldn’t hurt matters, either.

  There seems a disturbing similarity of attack here, that I’d like you to notice.

 When Democrats attack, they tend to attack the Republican grassroots, not the Republican establishment. That’s because all too often, the Republican establishment is knee-jerk willing to bow to the Democrats on grassroots issues as Steele himself got caught doing.  I said in that Pajamas Media aarticle, as regards the Republican establishment, so eager to silence the grassroots:

 The main reason for the objections to many grassroots heroes is not that people like Wurzelbacher lack forceful, clear articulation. Rather, it’s that they espouse traditional conservative positions. The suggestion by the elites is that those principles need to be ditched if Republicans want to regain power. The major critique is not whether they are effective spokesmen for the cause.

 Indeed, I submit to you that the Democrats deride the Republican grassroots for exactly the same reason. They try to label Limbaugh as the leader of the party for the same reason. Their objection isn’t that these are not ‘serious’, that they’re not forceful, passionate speakers, it’s that they’re conservative, and are speaking up for conservative values.

 Consider the rather “wink,wink, nudge nudge” relationship so many Democrats had with John McCain. They got along with him rather well, until such time as he actually threatened leftist power. Why? Simple; He was willing to play the ‘bipartisanship’ game. He was and inexplicably remains overtly willing to lay down his conservative principles, thus making the left look good, and- (unwittingly I’m sure, wink wink, nudge nudge)  – helping them to succeed.

 So, here’s the message for McCain… for Eric Cantor, and for Michael Steele, and anyone else who is uncomfortable with the Republican grassroots: I want the policies of this administration to fail, because I want this country to succeed. Allowing Obama to succeed in his plans means America fails. Those two points are directly linked.  If you cannot get your mind around that concept, and state it flatly and publicly, and adopt it as your position, and the position of the party, and the motive behind everything you do in your leadership role in the party, then I want you out of the leadership of the Republican party.

Thing is, I’m far from alone.

(Edit, clarity, Bit)

Mrs. Clinton, Reuters:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged $300 million for Gaza reconstruction and $600 million to support the authority’s budget shortfalls, economic reforms and security and private sector projects run by the PA.

She was adamant that none of the money, which has to be agreed by the U.S. Congress, would go to Hamas.

Maybe Mrs. Clinton really did believe B.J. whan he said he would be faithful to her.

Hat tip and  more, Jammie Wwaring Fool:

For all the blather about how intelligent the left supposedly is and how Mrs. Clinton and Obama will be projecting smart power, is there anyone alive naive enough to think that by throwing billions at Gaza that Hamas is not going to get their hands on the money? Really, this just insults the intelligence of anyone with a functioning brain

Hamas doesn’t wnat to live in peace with Israel.   Hamas wnat to live in peace with no Israel.

Over at Pajamas Media, this morning,  I examine the apparent rift between Republican grassroots and the Republican elite at CPAC.

One such respondent placed his objections within the framework of the Republican Party being the middle-class party and therefore not needing “gimmicks” to prove their middle-class bona fides. The problem, of course, is that once those middle-class symbols are removed, or limited in their impact and exposure, the Republican Party leadership tends to forget the values of the middle class that they claim to represent. The results are predictable:

• In election seasons, such omissions lead to the near suicidal nomination of people like John McCain for president. McCain tried to sell us on the idea that he was a “maverick” when it came to bucking the party establishment. All too often, however, he was a very public rebel against true conservative values. Back in the day, the description we used for such people was “Rockefeller Republicans.” These days, the most apt description is RINO (“Republican in Name Only”). The nomination of McCain resulted in the spectacle of Palin and Wurzelbacher gathering more people at their appearances than John McCain drew to his.
• Under these conditions, when Republicans are in power they tend to spend more time in “go along to get along” mode than they do governing on conservative principles, essentially guaranteeing a loss at the next electoral opportunity.

In both situations, forgetting the grassroots is destructive and — as with the most recent election cycle — downright suicidal. It amazes me that this lesson has yet to be learned.

There’s already a healthy collection of comments, over there.

Jim Gehaghty, National Review, 4 August 2008:

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

Econosphere, 6 Janauary:

Just incredible. Breaking news on CNN right now, President-Elect Obama has said his budget will eliminate all “earmarks” going forward, sometimes called “pork” or “pork barrel spending.” These are usually spending items inserted by congresspeople into wholly unrelated bills that never come up for review before a bill is passed, earmarks included. Usually the earmarks benefit the home district of the congressperson sponsor, and there has been a long-standing gentleperson’s agreement in congress not to block or interfere with each other’s earmarks.

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – The White House played down massive deficit spending and President Obama’s pledge not to sign legislation laden with billions in earmarks yesterday, amid Republican criticism that he was recanting on a campaign vow.

The administration’s top budget official, Peter Orszag, said Obama would sign the $410 billion spending bill despite a campaign pledge that he would reject tailored budget requests that let lawmakers send money to their home states. Orszag said Obama would move ahead and overlook the time-tested tradition that lets officials divert millions at a time to pet projects.

If BO can’t keep a promise as simple as eliminating earmars, a process he does undertand all so very well, Obama has no chance to create or save some two millions jobs in economy which does not understand.