The Culture War And the Future

Sigh…..

“Then win it back, or do you think that the other side is forever?

{cold stare} It’s close enough, mate, for the purposes of my life, which is all that I’ve ever been interested in.

Perhaps, Billy, that’s because you don’t have kids. Do you understand the level  of commitment to the future that represents?  THEIR future.That’s the nature of them having your name.

I may not be able to fight this war to a successful conclusion in my lifetime, but it’s not just my lifetime, I’m worried about. That’s why I’ll go down fighting, if it comes to that.

Addendum: (Bit) My attempt at subtlety apparently was too effective.

Hey, Eric: go tell it to all those supine lumps out there, okay?

Once again, you under-estimate me. Did you really think that comment was solely for your benefit?

Of course you’ve been fighting the fight, I for one have never lost sight of that. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always respected you. We’ve disagreed on some points, but not most.  But one of the points that we do disagree on is your telling people that the fight is all for naught.  If I came up with a line like that, there are some who would question my integrity, and not without some justification.

Where is the fight?  It’s you and I right now.  It’s blowing the likes of Erb down with facts that run contrary to his socialist wet dreams.  It’s in offering up factual arguments to all such morons .  It’s simply keeping the discussion about freedom alive. Sometimes, it just keeping the fire of the conversation freedom burning is enough.  How else, after all, to keep those “supine lumps” moving at all?

Ineffectual? No. Consider the differences that you’ve made yourself, over the years. That’s hardly inconsequential.  I know in my own small way we’re making a difference here, as well.  Perry, for his part, apparently thinks so as well.  To my mind that explains his comment “Sorry Billy but just because you cannot see it does not means it ain’t happening.”

It’s like any other pursuit and protection of the truth.  Of freedom.  Some days are better than the others to that goal, and I have no illusions about the number of bad days in front of us on that score, but the fight has to go on.  Understand; this is a lifelong fight I’ve committed myself to. If I’ve got breath in my body,  you can bet your baseball  bat, your cowboy hat and your housecat, that I’m going to be speaking out, with whatever weapon I have to bring to bear. At the moment, the most effective one is the one in front of me , this computer of mine, and this website.    I told you, better than ten years ago, that this was going to be a multi generational fight, and even Erb understands that, by his own words, over there.  Me, I’ve never figured it any other way.

In fact, I hope it’s still going on when I finally kick. I’ll even tell you why;  Even assuming that victory came in my lifetime, the fight would still go on anyway.      Consider the words “eternal vigilance”. It’s like any war.  As soon as you win, you’ve still got a watch out for the idiots behind the ones you’ve knocked down, because they’re going to try to take your freedom away from you, too.  as I’ve pointed out to you , hell, as we have pointed out to each other, That’s human nature. when we are told that we have won something, we tend to sit back and our laurels. That, too, is human nature.   Why do you think Clinton told us the era of big government was over?  Because he wanted his opposition to relax their guard.

We have in front of us, four years worth of opportunities –  teachable moments.  A total of 1500 some odd days when examples of government excess and their results will be spoon fed to us. All we have to do is publicly note their passage, and point to the principles governing them. The most important of them, is the first two years.

I propose to be here every one of those days,  swinging for the cheap seats out in center field. I know the positive differences that I can make in this fight are small.  But I know the negative differences are going to be much larger if I’m not using the weapons I have in my hand. The path we’re on will change.

And understand me on this, if nothing else… That, mate, is what this is all about.

It’s occurs to me in looking around this morning at the news and commentary that Send to be Ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich would’ve made an ideal candidate to run Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

It also occurs to me, that he would not have turned dirty on us just out of the blue. This has been a pattern with him all along. That would be the usual way of it.  So the question becomes, what is it that suddenly triggered all of this retribution?

Blagojevich

Now, before you get all huffy on me, thinking that I am getting defensive over Blagojevich, think again.  It’s my take that he should be facing life in front of a firing squad.  Thing is, given what we now know of the man, that ship should have sailed a long time ago. The chance that his kind of activities went unnoticed for all that time approaches as close to zero as no matter.  The guy’s history is so questionable, and has been for so long, one cannot help but wonder how what is the manage to last as long as he did.  There is only one answer to that question; those around him are equally dirty.  The reputation for Illinois politics, is most certainly a well deserved one.

That answer, however, leads us back to the question of:  What changed? What is it that triggered all this retribution against Blagojevich now?  A logical answer would be; “He made too many political enemies on his way up”. Even that doesn’t seem to explain the intensity of what he’s facing, however.  Absent all that fury, all that fire and smoke, we come to the conclusion that I mentioned at the head of this column; that he would most certainly have been involved in some quasi governmental agency with a mega dollar salary, such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or he would have been involved at some level of the Obama administration.  That would have been political payback as he would’ve expected it.  After all, both he and Obama share the same routes in terms of their political career.  They both come from the Chicago political circle.

I have begun to wonder, however, if Mr. Blagojevich would be facing impeachment, absent Obama’s rise to power? Would he be facing these problems if someone other than Obama were involved?  I doubt it. Now, of course one of the bigger sins, supposedly, involves Obama’s Senate seat.  But I begin to think it beside the larger point. After all, we started hearing the name of Blagojevich’s corruption (and learning to spell and pronounce that name) well before the controversy of the Senate seat being sold to the highest bidder came to the fore.

Think about it; But for all the investigations into the stinking mess that is Obama’s background, Mr. Blagojevich would have remained under the radar, and therefore remained Governor Blagojevich, his corruption unabated .  As it is, the case against Blagojevich achieved its critical mass, and became a staple of newspapers across the country only once Barack Obama achieved political prominence on the national stage, and before his prowess as a Senate seat salesman was known.

Blago with Obama

This exposes to us, two ideas at once. First, that Illinois is going to have work an awful lot harder than simply outing Blagojevich before its politics are seen as something other then a bad 1930’s gangster flick. Blagojevich may be the current prize, but he’s hardly the entire problem.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to the nation, the possibility that Obama or his people had something to do with this particular distraction showing up so prominently on cable news channels every night.

While it could be argued, that Mr. Obama or his people having something to do is the political demise of Governor Blagojevich, is performing a public service, one would have to question the timing.  As I’ve already pointed out, this guy’s been dirty forever.  On that basis the current prosecution of the governor takes on the appearance of a prosecution of political convenience. He has certainly prove an appointive and Paris meant to Obama, who has repeatedly demonstrated that he has little tolerance for being embarrassed.  As we’ve said here several times before, Obama is someone who is used to the idea of managing his own spectacle.  Blagojevich became an impediment to that, clearly.

The question of whether are not Obama and his people have anything  to do with the Blagojevich matter in terms of its prosecution also bears on whether or not Mr. Obama was involved with Mr. Blagojevich’s misdeeds. Do we have some backside covering going on here?   In short, we come to the question of what did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it? And indeed, there are a few investigations going on out there just now attempting to determine just that.

It’s my belief they will fail to answer that question. Frankly, the chances of our getting that particular question answered any time soon approaches a factor of zero. no great feat for someone who was so used to the idea of managing his own spectacle.

We’ve recently watched as Israel and Hamas have slugged it out.  As always, when Israel seeks to defend itself, there have been many saying Israel’s response to Hamas has not been “proportional”. 

What is, in fact, a proportional response?.  Any other country suffering under the weight of literally thousands of rockets landing indiscriminately on their territory would not only have responded with harsher and more deadly methods, but the world community would have likely agreed with their doing so. Yet Israel has to defend its right to survive in the court of world opinion. That’s a discrepancy I’ve never understood.

Some historical perspective is in order. Let’s take World War II, Japan. The Allied offer at Potsdam was rejected. Pottsdam demanded surrender. Japan refused and kept fighting.. Nothing short of total Japanese defeat was going to end the war, So, the only way out of this fight was to win it.

As a direct result of unrestrained force.. (What, after all, is nuclear warfare but unrestrained force?) resulting in defeat of Japan, the war ended years short of where it would have, and with far less loss of life than a conventional invasion would have cost us.

I dare suggest to you that given the experiences in WWII, the demand on Israel to wage a “proportional” war is counterproductive to the stated goal of peace, and further, that our many attempts to broker peace between Israel and her neighbors, are also counter-productive, having extended the war from weeks into decades, and added to an already gruesome death toll.

Consider more recent history. . Jimmy Carter pushed Israel to the bargaining table and pressured her to give up both strategic and cultural assets that she had no business giving away if survival was it all on the agenda, in the interests of peace. For reasons that Jimmy Carter has yet to explain to us, mostly because he hasn’t got a clue, peace didn’t come. 

Clinton, by way of efforts of James Carville, the managed to get Ehud Barak into the Israeli prime minister’s chair. Clinton insisted Israel offer the Palestinians 98% of what they wanted. They were offered just about all of the West Bank and Gaza plus East Jerusalem and even Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. The Palestinians responded by turning it all down and by waves of Palestinian protesters tossing a few zillion rocks at Israeli police, by Palestinians sending their armed forces euphemistically called a policeman to shoot the Israelis, apparently hoping for an excuse to tell the rest of the world how Israel was such a war mongering nation.

These should’ve been a signal that the Palestinians really didn’t care about a brokered peace. A brokered peace deal, you see, requires a point of view on all the parties on both sides, that sees peace as desirable. The events surrounding the presidencies, and the foreign policies, of both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are similar, from the Israeli perspective, in that it’s a lesson Carter and Clinton never understood.

Nor have the people involved with those administrations learned the lesson. Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbignew Brezinsky over the last weekend issued a comment to the effect that Israel and their neighbors will never come to a piece on their own.  The thrust of that comment was intended to make the case that the west should get involved and broker a peace deal. Trouble is, we’ve already done that many times over.  Those efforts resulted in us being no closer to a real peace than we were 60 years ago.

Contrary to what Mr. Brzezinski says I suggest to you that were we to leave Israel and her neighbors to their own devices, instead of insisting on a ‘measured’ and “proportional’ response, that the issue would have been solved decades ago, the death toll would have been much lower, and that region of the world given the wealth that has a natural resources and natural talent would have been a far better place than it is today.

All the insisted- upon negotiated settlements, have done is prolong the war and increase the number of dead, and serves to give legitimacy to the Islamic extremists ensuring that they attain the power they seek by our winning their war for them, at the peace table thus ensuring further blood shed. Meanwhile, Israel’s neighbors break hose agreements before the ink is dry.

No surprise then, that when Barack Obama, whose stated foreign policy is in the mold of Carter and Clinton and involves the same people came along in November Israel, remembering her immediate past, wanted none of it. From Israel’s viewpoint, it’s bad enough that they have to suffer the slings and arrows from the Palestinians who are chanting “death to Israel” and insisting that the only path to peace is the destruction of Israel, it’s worse yet when western liberals come along, offering the Palestinians both support and legitimacy in that effort.

And so, we have the action we see before us. And Israel catches flak from the world community for not responding in a “proportional” manner.

So again I ask the question, exactly what do they mean by “proportional”?  In the cases in WWII that I’ve mentioned, we waited for more or less five years before responding with Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel, has waited ten times that….50 years and more. How are Israel’s actions not ‘proportional’?  How long do we propose to hold Israel to that myth of proportionality? 

It is long past time for us to disabuse ourselves of the notion that this business with Israel and its neighbors is going to come to some kind of mutually agreeable end, anytime soon without the full weight of warfare being brought to bear against the Palestinians.  It’s time to dismiss the notion that civilization is going to ultimately have any sway whatever over a group of people who insist on remaining in the fourteenth century and who are by their own words willing to kill a thousand of their own people for the purpose of killing one Jew.

It’s time to let Israel handle this without our interference.  I will doubtless be told that what I propose will cause the deaths of innocent people. Again, I point to the examples from WWII. Certainly, in the cities we destroyed, then, there were a lot of innocents who died. Yet, who can deny that as many and more have died on both sides in this conflict in the last 40 years while we shielded the Palestinians from the full consequences of their war waging?

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

Disgusted, would be the word of the day. Grab your ankles, America, here it comes.

• Yestrday’s Obama speech. What can one say about it? (Remembering this is supposedly a mainstream venue, which blows away whatI’d like to say about it at the off.)  It was clearly a message to those of you who still hold onto the outdated,quaint and , yes, racist notions of common sense, and thereby haven’t gotten the message yet:  Big government is back, and in a big way. We’re going to spend out way to prosperity… but we can only do that, if we spend as directed by government. Ignore the concept that spending as directed by government is exactly what landed us in this soup pot in the first place, when they tried to alter housing priaces by waving a governmental magic wand. The speech of course was, as is Obama’s wont, long on panic creation and short on specifics.  He has no clue what he’s going to do, but he’s certainly convnced he’s going to need  more of your  money than government has ever managed to spend previously, to do it. 
• Oh… and next on that path of waving a government wand over things, in the hopes of conrtoling prices? Government Healthcare.  Does anyone suppose that’s going to be any different than what happened with their efforts at “Housing for all?” Do you have the foggiest idea how screwed we are?
•   Oh, just in case you weren’t feeling pressured enough, we now find Obama wants to talk to Hamas. Does he really think giving these animals credibity is the way to go? Bruce doesn’t. Nor do I. As Bruce says:
  

  — contact with a terror organization, even at a low-level, only accomplishes one thing – it legitimizes them. And that legitimization will only harden their intransigence, not soften it.

  History does indicate exactly that.  That Obama can’t reckon with that fact, tells me all I need to know about his vaunted decision making ability.

• Personally, I’ve begun to think that this whole affair with Hamas, this time,  is a diversion, designed to turn watchful eyes away from Iran, and it’s Nuclear ambitions. Daled Amos thinks so, as well.  Obama will of course claim he was blind-sided by Iran when they finally move.  No question that we’re still going to hear from those claiming Hamas isn’t being both fed and driven by Iran, even after all that goes down.
• As for the honesty and ethics of those making such chocies for us, Fox News this morning asks what the bleep happened to the Rangel investigation? I’d be interested in knowing where the investigatin is for the cause of Indy Bank failing, what the status on Jack Murtha is as regards his slander of our troops, what the status of the investigation, and arrest of William Jeffferson is, what the status on the investigation into links between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojovich, and Bill Richardson. Jesse Jackson Jr, and his funding sources and what he offered  for that Senate Seat. Why Spitzer isn’t in jail.  All that for openers.
• If there’s one thing all these scandals show, it’s the desperate need for limited government. To that point, a great article from Colleen Carroll Campbell
  

  The steady drumbeat of scandalous revelations since Election Day has been dispiriting, but it may be a blessing in disguise. For a nation gripped by economic anxiety and desperate to believe that a change in administrations will prove a panacea for our economic woes, these daily dispatches remind us that the men and women we entrust with our tax dollars do not deserve blank checks or blind loyalty. They are flawed, fallible and prone to overspending, overpromising and misusing their power for selfish gain. They are politicians, not demigods or Santa Claus.Given how poorly many of our national political leaders handle the perks and purse strings they already control, we should think twice before giving them free rein to exponentially expand government and manage even more of our money. At a time when a $1 trillion stimulus package barely raises eyebrows inside the Beltway, it’s worth remembering that no political party or leader is immune from the temptations that accompany absolute power. And no populace is as vulnerable to granting that absolute power as one racked by fear and seeking a savior.

  Ask the Germans about that. (BBCT:Billy) And the Japanese  too, for that matter.  And the Cubans. And the Argentinians. Or, the folks in  Zimbabwe. The comaprisons are quite apt, and frightening, if you’re paying attention at all. But limited government is exactly what we’re not going to get out of this crowd.  Truth be known, what Obama calls his “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” is in reality a list of stuff he’d have been spending our money on anyway… it’s just that now he’s got less resistance to it because it’s under the guise of an emergency. He’s figured out he can spend more than he would have had the country not been panicked into letting him do it. Proving I’m not alone n this perception, Boortz points out one facit of this, this morning:

  Again, can someone please explain to me how switching all of America’s medical records to computers is going to provide an immediate stimulus to our economy? Anyone? I didn’t think so. It isn’t going to. But this was one of Obama’s great promises on the campaign trail. Which allows me to reinforce my point .. PEBO is going to capitalize on America’s economic crisis in order to enact his agenda. Pretty clever, huh? Anything that Obama proposes will, from here on out, be part of his efforts to “stimulate the economy.”

  Exactly so. What happened to these other places I’ve mentioned, is happening to us, and right now. 

• Those of you hoping for a bit of resistance to thee plans of Obama’s on the grounds of limited government, had best recalculate. Congress is complaining all right, but they’re doing so because taxes are being cut.  Oughta tell the tale all by itself, that should. But more, even the resistance to Obama’s Cabinet appointments that’s materialized is because they’re not leftist enough.
• I said Obama was going to govern from the extreme left, and I was taken to task for saying so. I’ll consider myself vindicated now, thank you. That Congress tilts even further left than Obama the moment they’re given the chance, alters the validity of my prediction not at all. Not that I’m all that happy about accurately predcting our country sliding into John Crapper’s elegant device, but there it is.

Do I thnk America can do better? That is, perhaps, the most frustrating part of all this; We can do better. No question. But that’s not going to happen…not with these power thirsty idiots at the helm. Think, now… Scandal, out of control spending, and a prolonged recession, if not a depression as a direct result of turning theur backs on the free market system. And they’re not even sworn in, yet.

From the too little, too late department, the Associated Press  is reporting:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Driven by anger and politics, the Illinois House has voted to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The unprecedented action sets the stage for a Senate trial on whether he should be thrown out of office for corruption and abuse of power.

Who knows what jokers in the Illinois Senate will do.

Addendum(Bit):

Too little, too late and in the wrong direction, too, as James Joyner reminds us:

The committee on Thursday unanimously recommended impeachment based on the criminal charges but other allegations as well — that Blagojevich expanded a health care program without proper authority, that he circumvented hiring laws to give jobs to political allies, that he spent millions of dollars on foreign flu vaccine that he knew wasn’t needed and couldn’t be brought into the country.

This is the right outcome but the wrong process. While impeachment is not a criminal trial and the Illinois House can, in practice, impeach for whatever it wants, the intent was that it be reserved for criminal conduct. While I have little doubt that Blagojevich committed crimes, he was impeached for unpopular policies. That’s a decidedly bad precedent.

Just so. That’s particulrly true when the people passing judgement are demonstrably  no better than he in terms of integrity. About time to call in an airstrike on Springfield, isn’t it?

And given the nature of the healthcare issues, one wonders how this is going to play on the forthcoming “Hillary-Care round two” debates?

Here’s David Freddoso at The Corner, upon hearing Kit Bond (R) Missouri is retiring at the end of his term:

That will open up a tough seat for Republicans to defend. They have had a bad streak in Missouri statewide races, beginning with Sen. Jim Talent’s loss in 2006 and Rep. Kenny Hulshof’s (R.) disastrous run for governor last year. (John McCain did narrowly carry the state, however.)

The first Senate retirement announcement came earlier, from Sam Brownback (R.) of neighboring Kansas. He will be leaving Washington next year to run for governor.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that in addition to Bond and Brownback, Mel Martinez of Florida called it quits earlier. That makes three Republicans retiring from the Senate in 2010 so far, at least two of whose seats will be quite difficult to defend. 

Ehhhh… I’m not convicned.  Nor, at the moment, am I much worried.  First of all, that McCan carried that state, by a slim margin IMV has no connection to how much conservative support Reublicans are getting there, since McCain isn’t a conservative…. that’s why he lost the election.

More,  Congressional Democrats are busy chewing on data given them shortly after the last election that says they’re going to be losing on the order of 50 seats in the House and a similar percentage of seats in the Senate, in the mid-terms.   That projection, mind you, assumes the Recession doesn’t get turned into an outright depression by the combo of Obama and Congressional Democrats… as seems likely, based on Obama’s speech yesterday.

That projection, was also issued before most of the corruption details of Rangel, Dodd, Blogo, Schumer and the rest came out. (Yes, Schumer too… Indy Bank isn’t going away soon.) 

I can’t imagine that the backlash from all of that isn’t going to be far worse than their internal numbers are suggesting.

Jim Geraghty, National Review, 4 August last: 

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

Barack Obama, a/k/a messiah, a/k/a One, April last, via Stop  the ACLU and Allah Pundit, Hot Air:

“We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements.”
“Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian(UK):

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group

Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrug:

Hamas boobytraps civilian homes, boobytrap dolls, fire missiles from schools, use mosques as arsenals, and fire machine guns into a party of Gazan revelers playing music and Obambi is going to talk to these blood hungry neanderthals? Strap yourself in folks …… this lefty maroon is going to get our asses kicked. Big time.

Some change we can live without.   Some change will not allow Israel to suruve.

Ok, I was, and night yet, going to take a bite out Peanut for Brains Carter.   However Andy Barr, Politico, has put up absolutely delightful extract of an interview with Sarah Palin, video:

My favorite line, “the momma grizzly rises up in me.”   You go Forty Five.

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere: BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.

Lots of snow up here the last couple days… and most of it coming from Washington, DC. Let’s have at it.

• Over at US News, James Pethokoukis says he thinks Obama will “Own” this resession.
  

  Now today’s Obamacrats are apparently going to try and Hooverize President Bush in an effort to shield themselves from the potential political fallout of a prolonged recession. It will take years to fix the American economy, Obama says, and years of trillion-dollar budget deficits to do it. And everyday it seems that Team Obama tries to lower economic expectations, such as bearishly predicting that unemployment would hit double-digits.The not-so-subtle message in the middle of all these pessimistic prognostications: When ya’ll go to vote in 2010 and 2012 and a) unemployment is still as high as it’s been in decades, b) income growth is sluggish at best, c) the budget deficit is running at a trillion bucks a year, and d) stock prices remain stubbornly low — hey, don’t blame us, you can’t rebuild Rome in a day or even in a first term. Remember, Bush really left us a mess.

  I think that’s correct. The policies Obama’s been touting… including that supposedly major speech today…  will do nothing but serve to lengthen and deepen the recession. Indeed, given his lack of commitment to a free market economy, Obama has a better chance of making an outright depression of all this, than a recovery with what he’s offered up. And the American voter will be figuring that part out. Democrats are already worried about losing at least 50 house seats and possibly more in the next mid-terms.  they know already who is going to get the blame. Rightly so. Mikey Kaus meanwhile, points to yet another reason for resentment aganst Obama and the Dmeocrats… and I suspect this is one that’s going to build till it blows up in their faces.

• Oil went up a bit over the last couple days, resulting in some price spikes at the pump… the wholesale club gas price around here went up a dime or so yesterday. But then the price turned around and went down by the largest percentage in seven years, yesterday. I wonder what I’ll see on the BJ’s sign in the morning? (And, yeah, that’s an old picture.)
• Global warming, meanwhile, strikes again: They cancelled the sled dog race in Minnesota because of too much snow.
• Bill Clinton has a special place in his heart for a White House rug. You can’t help but think you know why. TMI! TMI! Like we needed THAT reminder.
• A great article I meant to get to in last night’s Ramble, from the Wall Street Journal, and Karl Rove:
  

  Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation.

  Like most myths, this is entertaining but fictional. In reality, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the principal culprits of the housing crisis, and Mr. Bush wanted to rein them in before things got out of hand.

  Rather than a failure of capitalism, the housing meltdown shows what’s likely to happen when government grants special privileges to favored private entities that facilitate bad actors and lousy practices.

  Indeed.  And here’s the thing about that; Rove is correct as regards F&F, but that also applies to other governmental agencies… for example, school districts:

• We keep hearing about how Government schools are doing so poorly. Example, Detroit government schools struggling to keep toilet paper and lightbulbs in the place.  Yet, we keep seeing items like this bit with Chicago  where they spent on the order of  $70,000 of educational funding on cappuccino machines… . Bill Ayers had nothing to say on this suject? He’s such a hero in Chicago, and such a supposed expert on educational matters…. Let’s hear it, Bill…
• Uh-ohh… word on the democrat corruption front now is that Blago gave money to Bill Richardson. There seems no end to this corruption… and they’ve not even been sworn in, yet.
• Gotta love her. We mentioned Ann Coulter here yesterday, and how she got banned form NBC for life. Amazingly, NBC invited her back, apparently for a little damage control.
  

  MATT LAUER: Let me just get to this little controversy. You’ve been all over the blogs in the last day or so. We cancelled your appearance here on Tuesday. And from what I’ve been reading you thought you were banned for life from the show. Did, were you behind that report?ANN COULTER: No, I didn’t say that. That was from a reliable news report that, by the way, had never, has never had to retract a report on exploding GM trucks

  (Snicker) It gets better from there. Go and read.

• Finally, since my first article went up over at Pajamas Media, I’ve gotten a  lot of really great feedback. Thanks for that, all of you, and a BBCT to Rick Moran, who is the Chicago editor of PJM, as well. I had a lot of fun doing it, and will do so again. Even for that minimal involvement with PJM (thusfar), I admit to taking a certain pride when I heard the news yesteday, that Joe the Plumber is now doing work for PJTV.  Good show, PJM. This pleases me no end. Among other things, it lets me know I’ve fallen in with people I can appreciate.

Unless those two countries are giving these things away, Hamas has been buying them. So instead of spending money for food and humanitarian supplies, apparently Hamas opted for weaponry and aggression. Somehow, however, it is Israel’s fault that the humanitarian flow of goods into Gaza is down to a trickle, in the face of an average of 361 rocket and mortar attacks a month of imported weaponry.

Carter is correct that this war could have been avoided, but not for the reasons he’d have you believe. All Hamas has to do is disavow aggression, violence and its stated mission of the destruction of Israel. All it has to do is spend its money on food and medicine instead of rockets and mortars.

The reason this war wasn’t avoidable is Hamas has an intransigent position that refuses all efforts at a peace accord with Israel. Until they change that position and enter into good faith peace negotiations then, at least as I see it, the onus of the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza rests solely and squarely on them and no one else. 

Exactly so, Bruce.

And, I’ll tell you this; Carter’s self-justification exemplifies what I was talking about the other day, when I indicated that Israel was reacting at least in part to another follower of Carter Foreign Policy heading to the WH.

There are some cold, cold people in this world….

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (Charlotte Observer)  When his wife needed a kidney transplant, Richard Batista gave her one of his, attorney Dominic Barbara said.

Now that Dawnell Batista has filed for a divorce, Richard Batista wants his kidney back as part of his settlement demand. Or, Barbara said Wednesday, his client wants the value of that kidney: an estimated $1.5 million.

Could he really do that? Well, I guess physically, there’s no issues for him… though his ex wife could very well die. See, as a donor, the ex husband was uniquely matched.  And anyway…

Medical ethicists agreed that the case is a nonstarter. Asked how likely it would be for the doctor to either get his kidney back or get money for it, Arthur Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, put it as “somewhere between impossible and completely impossible.”

First and foremost, said Robert Veatch, a medical ethicist at Georgetown University, “it’s illegal for an organ to be exchanged for anything of value.” Donating an organ is a gift – “when you give something, you can’t get it back,” he said.

You wonder what motivates some people.

Even the leftards are forced to admit that George W. Bush kept the nation safe.   Dubya may not have been as nice to illegal combatents as the left migbt have prefered, but he kept the nation safe.    Well the one who ran on the mantra of change, plans on scrapping the Bush Adninstration domestic security program,  Peter Baker, New York Times:

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to scrap the way President Bush oversaw domestic security in the White House and name a former Central Intelligence Agency official to coordinate counterterrorism, people close to the transition said Wednesday.

Catch this:

Democrats close to the transition said Mr. Obama’s choice for that job was John O. Brennan, a longtime C.I.A. veteran who was the front-runner to head the spy agency until withdrawing in November amid criticism of his views on interrogation and detention policies. His appointment would not require Senate confirmation.

If Brennan is too fricking toxic to be trusted dealing with foreign terrorists, he too frapping toxic to be trusted to protect the rights and lives of law abiding Ameican taxpayers and citizensSure BO is going to deliver change, but change is no synomous with improvment.    During the Clnton admintration our nation suffered a major terror attack each year.  Now BO busy reassembling the sane team of  idiots that failed to protect us the first time around.

This morning’s Washington Post tells us far more than it intends:

As a top official at the White House in 1996, Richard A. Clarke was looking for an ally after concluding that the CIA and FBI needed an additional $1 billion for counterterrorism programs. Officials at the Office of Management of Budget were dismissive of the request, so Clarke sought an audience with Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta.

Clarke said he made his case to Panetta, who queried him closely about the need for the funds and whether the agencies were prepared to spend them. As Clarke recalled yesterday, Panetta then gave the go-ahead for the initiative, disappointing a large retinue of hostile budget officials who had gathered in the chief’s spacious West Wing office expecting the onetime budget director to skewer Clarke.

“He was in the small handful of people who knew there was a terrorism problem long before anybody else had heard of al-Qaeda,” Clarke said of Panetta.

Interesting, then, that that information wasn’t transmitted to the incoming Bush administration in any substantial way. Of course, Panetta was gone years before Bush came on the scene. One must wonder if Mr Panetta’s early exit involved misgivings on the part of the Clintons regarding his trumpeting the terrorism situation as he knew it. Certainly, the Clintons didn’t publicly make much of terrorism following his departure in 1997. The suddden drop off in information coming out of the White House in those years, in retrospect does seem to mesh rather nicely with Panetta’s departure.

All that to one side, the piece in the Post this morning, seems to be trying to sell the reader on Panetta as a good pick for CIA.  They call it a ‘report’ I call it a ‘sales job’.  Given the locus of the paper, it’s a fair bet that an article like this has as it’s target, Congresscritters. The implications of that point, particularly as regards who had input to the story, I’ll leave to you.

In a broader sense, I’ll tell you what we have in Panetta; Someone who is used to the idea of being subserviant to the Clintons.  Given the relationship of the CIA and the State Dept, particularly as regards handling of intel, and given Clinton’s history with classified matters (Can you say 900 FBI files? -Ed)  it doesn’t take a great genius to figure out what will be happening there.   Indeed, what chatter I’m getting from inside the agency (Indirectly) reflects that rather grave concern. If I’m in the CIA, I’m looking for the exit, just now.

My take is that this is a pick that Obama had not thought all the way through… or if he did, that the consequences of not making that pick were higher than making it and putting up with fellow Democrats publicly bitching about it. 

What consequences?   Well, I suggest that Panetta was Hillary Clinton’s pick for the post, and not Obama’s per se’.  If you’ll recall, I asked here a couple months ago, what all the negotiation between Clinton and Obama was about… Clearly, both Clinton and Obama were laying out their conditions…I’ve started to think Panetta at CIA was one of Clinton’s conditions. Given the way this appointment was publicly (mis)handled and the way Obama’s usual processes were bypassed, it makes far more sense than it being a whim appointment on Obama’s part. He’s many things most of them deplorable, but Obama’s simply not that stupid. I suggest Panetta  was rammed through because of Hillary Clinton and her preconditions. It’s exactly why Obama is not suffering the debate over Panetta’s appointment well, and went so far out of his way to cut off debate on the issue, to the point of not informaing the Intel comittee leaders in either house… members of his own party.

Pattern? Let’s not forget the Deputy Atty General appointment I mentioned a couple of days ago… David Ogden… who served under Janet Reno.  One of many Clintonistas appointed by Obama.

Is anyone detecting the pattern, here, I wonder?  These are all people Clinton has worked with in the past, and clearly has some personal sway with today, and all of them in key positions.

OK, admittedly,this is speculation. But it does fit the known facts, and I doubt that even a lot of Democrats would put it past Hillary Clinton.

Michael Calderone is passing on word that Chris “Tingles” Matthews isn’t going to be running for the Senate, after all:

Before “Hardball” today, Chris Matthews informed the show’s staff in a production meeting that he’s not running for Senate, according to a network source.

Matthews’ flirtation with running in 2010 for the Pennsylvania Senate seat held by Arlen Specter has captivated political and media watchers for months.

As Politico reported, Matthews held meetings with political operatives to discuss the possibility of hitting the trail, and looked into housing in the state. Matthews also talked about running with friends, family, and colleagues. Several told Politico that Matthews seemed torn about what to do next.

But recently, the buzz died down a bit in Matthews’ home state.

Several leading Pennsylvania Democratic operatives who recently held serious conversations with Matthews about him running for the Senate hadn’t heard from him in a while.

Yeah, well, big shock. If you’ll recall, I pretty much predicted this outcome when the possibility first arose.  I judged at the time the man isn’t serious about much of anything, and certainly doesn’t have the kind of commitment needed to dive into such a job… on either side of the isle. Based on Calderone’s story, it looks like those who know him better than I, concur.  Example:

Also, top NBC executives like Phil Griffin publicly raised doubts about him leaving the network, and Matthews’ brother told PolitickerPA this week that he’d be “stunned beyond words” if he ran.

Be glad he’s not running.  Someone with that lack of commitment  (and I mean to suggest a lack of commitment to much of anything at all)  in that kind of a role, will invariably take the easy way out of any problem. That being , throwing tax money at whatever problem presents itself.  That’s true, regardless of party. We’ve seen it all too often before.   And in this case, Matthews and his liberal leanings tend to make that situation even worse.

Of course, that does mean, of course, he’ll still be spreading his manure on the tube for the forseeable future.

It’s true; from CNN we get all the important news. 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Let’s be fair about this.  They’ve been in serious financial doldrums ever since Bill Clinton left office, and Eliot Spitzer got busted.  So much for the myth that sex is the only recession proof “industry”.  Time was, you could drag a twenty around a trailer park and not have any problem at all with working up a little action.  Jim Carville remembers.  These days, according to Elliott, those girls… even the ones just taking pictures… they ask for real money.