This is Just Too Juicy to Pass Up

This one has been making the rounds, and I can’t let it pass without opening the editor.BBCT: Q&O and the Jawas
The picture strikes me as a demonstration of willful ignorance, for one thing. I mean, isn’t that the usual charge when we misspell or mispronounce the unpronounceable Arab and Persian names that cross our desk? 

For another it demonstrates a certain lack of openness to negotiation.
To that point, tell me; Is this the individual Hillary Clinton and her minions are to be negotiating with starting next month? I ask because it appears obvious, that regardless of who she negotiated with, if this inDUHvidual isn’t satisfied with the outcome of the negotiation, we’ve still got a problem.

There seems only one way of satisfying that individual, and surely, that solution is as unacceptable as it was when Hitler tried to implement it some years ago.

(Yes, I know, Godwin has been invoked. Shut up.)

The real answer to this dilemma, is as I said yesterday; pave Gaza. About the time the Israelis are putting the parking stripes on the place, someone will notice that it’s awfully peaceful.

And before you ask “how was that answer any more acceptable than eliminating the Jews?” …the answer is, the Jews were not the aggressors, here. They’re not out to kill all Arabs, they’re just trying to live, and absent the 1000 rocket attacks during the most recent attempt at peace, there would still BE peace. Given what we see in the picture, that seems a major difference.

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I’ve been saying it for years now, and this case and that Michelle speaks of today, is just one more example.;

Via RMN:

A one-time resident of this city who had been bitter over its transformation into a playground for the rich left four gift-wrapped bombs downtown in a bank-robbery attempt, turning New Year’s Eve celebrations into a mass evacuation, police said Thursday.

The dangerous bombs were made of gasoline and cell phone parts and came with notes warning of “mass death.” The 72-year-old man suspected of placing them in two banks and in an alleyway on Wednesday shot and killed himself a short time later, police said.

The body of James Chester Blanning, who grew up in Aspen and lived in Denver since 2003, was found Thursday, police said.

Blanning walked into two Aspen banks about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday and left packages wrapped in holiday paper along with notes saying the boxes contained bombs, police said. The notes threatened “mass death,” demanded $60,000 cash and included criticisms of President George W. Bush, Assistant Aspen Police Chief Bill Linn said at a news conference.

Blanning’s notes said he was targeting four banks, police said, but only two — a Wells Fargo Bank and a nearby Vectra Bank — received the packages.

So, let’s get a tally going here, so we can get a picture of this. He’s on about ‘the rich’, about President Bush, the local constabulary, and doesn’t mind killing off innocents to make his point.

I don’t think there are many people who wouldn’t agree that this guy probably had some kind of a mental aberration going on. and have you ever noticed when people go over the edge their list of targets is quite similar? There is no question in my mind; these people are sick and need serious help.

At what point, I wonder, and given the constant connection between the barking mad and the frothing attacks on Bush, when are we going to accept that such attacks on the president are a sure sign of a mental disorder?

Geez, that wipes out the entire left end of blogdom, doesn’t it?

For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post.

Fifty years Castro’s Cuba, Damien Cave, New York Times:

Here in South Florida, where roughly 850,000 Cubans have settled over the years, repeated waves of painful exile and family separation define the Castro era. The revolution never met their hopeful expectations, the island they love has slipped into decay, and for many, this week’s golden anniversary provides little more than a flashback to traumas, old and new.

The former Soviet Union only lasted seventy-four years.

Roland Burris is a disagreeable mediocrity as a politician.

Voters have rightly rejected him numerous times in his bids for higher office—governor, U.S. senator, mayor of Chicago—because he’s at least six parts ego to one part performance, a charmless, presumptuous irritant on the stump and at the debate lectern.

Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune

Israel’s iron fist:  death of a senior Hamas leader has been confirmed:

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed a senior Hamas leader in an air attack on his home on Thursday, striking its first deadly blow against the top ranks of the Islamist group in a Gaza offensive that has claimed more than 400 Palestinian lives.

Nizar Rayyan, a cleric widely regarded as one of Hamas’s most hardline political leaders, had called for renewed suicide bombings inside Israel. Medical officials, confirming his death.

And velvet glove, VOA News

Israel’s foreign minister says there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, despite international concerns about a rising civilian death toll.

[…]

She says as a result, Israel keeps the humanitarian situation “completely as it should be.” She also says Israel has increased shipments of humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip in recent days.

Good news, Moonbat McKinney doesn’t need buy fuel for the Minnow.   Israel is trying to to foment a divorce.    Israel wants to the Palistinia people to divorce Hamas.   Israel is both punishing Hamas while providing food and medical aid to the Palis.

I begin to think that my body is reacting out of habit. I woke up this morning with a headache that would kill most mortals, my tongue had gone cashmere, my stomach was threatening a violent rejection of anything resembling food, and what little light was filtering through the curtains this morning resembled nothing so much as a 6000 Klieg light. All this despite the fact that I had absolutely nothing to drink last night save for a cup of tea. Either I’ve gotten too old, or my body has developed the knack of the hangover every 365 days. Of course, in this case, most of it was the common cold. But the morning my body takes to doing this, still strikes me as a little more than happenstance. I think next year all try and confuse my body by having a few too many. Maybe the usual drunk and hangover routine will cancel out age and infirmity. At least, I’ll have fun trying.

-=-

In looking back on 2008, the first thing that occurs to me is that as yet I have not purchased a 2009 calendar. On the other hand, it also occurs to me that I haven’t purchased a calendar for the last fifteen years, anyway. All my stuff ends up on my computer. I wonder at that change, just a little. Not a change in me, so much as changes in the world around us, driven by events, driven by technology, and just plain new habits. I only mention it, because that’s one of the things that was a major event that happened every year at the end of it as I was growing up, and I assume for decades before that. It was part of the preparation for the next year. It also gave you a chance to look ahead and look back simultaneously. Mostly, because the birthdays and other annual events in your life need to be copied from one to the other, and in doing you ended up remembering the events that it happened from the year before. The mechanical necessity of the thing forced you into the mental process of both review and looking forward. We no longer have that mechanism for the purpose anymore. At least, for the most part.  Still, on this first day of 2009 it seems a reasonable thing to do to look back at 2008 and take inventory. Habit, perhaps. Military types will understand what I say when I call this a battle damage assessment. Admittedly, my brain is trying to imitate a deep shag pile carpet this morning. On that basis my observations may or may not make any sense to you. But here goes;

Whatever else it was, 2008 was certainly not a year for conventional wisdom.  Certainly nobody following conventional wisdom saw the economic downturn, and, nor the idiotic response to it from the Federal government. In fact, there were few among the unconventional wisdom school who saw it coming, either. However that maybe, it certainly ended up being centered on government.

Perhaps that’s the big lesson here; 2008 was the year of government. For anyone who is a believer in freedom and the freedom of markets to operate, 2008 has been nothing short of total disaster. The problem is, the people that are in power in a few weeks are not freedom types either. And so for the next couple of years, we’re stuck with it,a dthe repercussion on freedom will be felt for decades.

Certainly the economic downturn was a culmination of years of governments forcing banks into providing loans to people who couldn’t afford it. People like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, to name two, doubled down, pushing Congress into appropriating by conservative estimates $700,000,000,000.00 of our money and then promptly losing track of every cent of it. They have not a bloody clue where any of that money went. At least, so they tell us. Oh, and they want more.

I said this the other day, and I’ll say it again, we’d been far better off if the Federal government had simply said “Okay we’re not gonna take any taxes for six months.”  No question in my mind whatever that that doesn’t help the Federal deficit. On the other hand, it would have ended up costing us far less money in the long run, and would have far more direct effect in terms of a recovery.  As it stands, with Democrats in both houses of Congress and in the White House, we stand a snowball’s chance of seeing a recovery before the next four years go by.

Speaking of the White House, I pretty much predicted that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t win the nomination, but I never figured Americans would be quite so stupid as to elect Barack Obama. I, like many other Americans, figured that if Hillary Clinton lost the nomination the race was John McCain’s to lose. What I didn’t count on was John McCain working toward that particular end.

Not that he didn’t have help along the way, with the other “Republican” candidates vying with him in a contest of who could say the most non free market things. We decried these points at the time, did  BitsBlog. Wildly, and repeatedly. To no avail, of course.

So now we have Obama. Here’s a guy who seemingly is intent on rebuilding the depression of the nineteen thirties.  Make no mistake; FDR prolonged the depression of the thirties.  The only thing that saved our backsides in that case was WWII.  But that’s OK, look at it this way ; we’ll probably end up with WWIII shortly, the way things are looking for in policy wise, and with Hillary Clinton and as Secretary of state. As was demonstrated going into world war two, the naiveté of the antiwar left is a surefire guarantee for getting us into war, that by the time they’ve been in power a few years, we are ill prepared to fight.  Ill prepared, because the entire were left made us so, seeking and said to spend our defense dollars on social programs.

I think I’ve finally figured out, though, why it is that Obama is so much trying to invoke FDR. He sees FDR as a figure that was universally loved. Obama is deluded in this, of course, but there it is. The thing is, being universally loved is where he wants to be. His ego demands it. And that is why, quite frankly, he spends most of his time playing to the gallery. Watching them, watching him. I will point out to you with a certain amount of trepidation that the last time we had someone in the White House with that kind of ego, was Richard Nixon. Given what we saw of him in this election, Obama’s ego makes Nixon’s look minuscule by comparison. The result of all that is quite predictably disastrous. Let’s just say, we won’t have any shortage of things to write about here at BitsBlog for the next few years. But I think I can pretty much guarantee you that economic recovery is not around the corner.

And who, a year ago, would have predicted that gas prices would tumble as they have?  Even I took until mid June to make such a prediction. All it took was the mere threat from the White House to start opening up offshore areas to drilling, and pop goes the bubble. I can’t help but think that that entire scenario could easily have been avoided, had Mr. Bush and his minions had the courage and foresight to make that move seven years ago. Looking forward, I can’t help but think that what price progress we’ve made on oil, will all go down the tubes before the echo from Obama’s oath of office dies. We’re about to see I think the biggest load of manure ever shoveled on to the American people coming from DC. “Green jobs”. More global warming nonsense. The insanity of oil companies running advertisements encouraging people not to use their product. Congress’ micromanaging finally getting to the point where they are dictating to the American people what kind of cars they can and cannot buy. It’s at that point, of course, that we notice the economic collapse, and a lot of politicians wondering what the hell went wrong. Screaming about global warming, in the midst of the coldest year in many, with the evidence telling us that we are in a downward spiral in temperatures. The Democrats, meantime are telling us that we should be dealing with global warming, People are actually buying this nonsense… And frankly, I have no indication that it’s going to get anything but worse.

I happened to watch the ball drop in New York City last night, and the overly warm and friendly way the media gave bill and Hillary Clinton their usual tongue bath treatment. Is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t understand that that appearance was in reality trying to get Bubba into the New York Senate seat his wife abandoned? In sitting there and watching that spectacle last night I couldn’t help but think that Caroline Kennedy suddenly started looking like a reasonable choice for the Senate appointment. Alas, given the last election, these are the kind of choices, distasteful as they are, we are forced into making for at least the next couple of years.

I think 2009 will become the year that we started seeing some are repercussions for the corruption we’ve seen the last several years.  All of the targets will be Democrat. A goodly number of those doing the finger pointing, too, will be Democrat.  The reason of course for this is simple; in cleaning house at this point as opposed to six months ago, they don’t stand to lose their power.  On the other hand, I’m already hearing chatter from some Democrats party sources that suggest some 74 or so house seats will be lost to the Democrats in the next midterm election, with a similar percentage being lost in the Senate.  Apparently, the Democat leadership is seriously worried. Reid, particularly, since his is one of the seats they’re seeing as a loss just now.  But that’s 2010.  2009 is the setup for it, and what we’re going to see is the Democrats suddenly interested in ridding themselves of the image that they’ve created of themselves over the last several years, of being a gang of corrupt thugs.  The separation effort will fail, resulting in 2010.  But between now and then, what we’re going to be seeing is Democrats circling the drain.   While that will on some levels be very satisfying to see, unfortunately it invariably ends up in as some of the worst government possible.  I have no reason to believe this is going to be any different.

Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich

Speaking of corrupt Democrats, this business with Rod Blagojevich will continue to play in our headlines for at least the next six to eight months. The Democrats are going to have absolutely no choice whatsoever about seating Roland Burris. It’s my view that they should be slapped down on constitutional grounds if they try.  But if they were really smart, given the history of Blagojevich on demanding cash transfers for any action he might take as governor, does not stand a reason that somebody should be investigating whether not there was a cash transfer from Burris to Blagojevich, or some kind of political favor having been made there?  My guess is we’re going to see that subject, over the next three to four months.  At which point this whole thing will be stuck in our headlines for the next year at least whilst everyone haggles this one out. And the question of Obama’s involvement in the political machine in Chicago has yet to be fully fleshed out. We’ll see that come up again and again.

As for the mainstream press, I think the story for the next year is going to be Vicki Iseman. She of the $27 million lawsuit against the New York times who falsely spread the story that she and John McCain were an “item”. If nothing else, that story will serve very well indeed to shine a light on press bias against conservatism. So desperate were the “reporters” and editors at the New York Times to paint John McCain in a bad light, that they got careless and got themselves caught in a flat out lie in that effort.  The odd part about it is, given John McCain and who he is, the New York Times needn’t have bothered.  He’d lost the election all by himself, without their help, by spending all his time trying to be a Democrat.   What will happen with the New York Times at that point that the suit comes into play, is anybody’s guess.  But it’s pretty well known just now that Pinch doesn’t have the coin to be paying her off just now.  Going to be interesting to see how that one plays out.

As for the Middle East, I see no major changes in our situation for the next 4 years or so.  After all, we’ve gone to the last 40 years with no major changes, and the cast of players currently in power here in these United States are quite prone to insisting that Israel back down again, rather than see their enemy actually defeated.  As I stated the other day, I think that until such time as their enemy is actually defeated, Israel will be subject to the kind of attacks she split up with its inception of the country in 1948.  The logical thing to do would be to pave Gaza.  About the time Israel started putting parking stripes on the place, somebody would notice that things were awfully damned peaceful.  Peace, you see, is not a product of negotiation but of having won the war and having soundly defeated your enemy.  Negotiation only leads to what we’ve seen in that region all these years.  Sorry, that is the facts.  The current cast of players leaves me no indication that that’s going to change in the next year.

In sum, I am not encouraged by what I see on the horizon.  With different leadership, I could be so convinced.  But that’s not going to happen within the next year, now, is it?

The Jerusalem Post, reports on the Israeli Air Force attacks the Gaza Strip:

The air force struck Wednesday at more than 25 targets throughout the Strip, including a Gaza City mosque that the army said was being used to hide Kassam rockets. The IAF reported several secondary explosions following the strike. [emphasis added]

Hamas has chosen to disregard the Geneva Convetions.   Sobeit.

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

Last day of the year and all of that. We may or may not go out tonight to capture some photographs of fireworks and whatnot. We’re currently under a storm warning, after which it’s supposed to be in single digit cold, tonight. Gee, just what I need for a few days off.  I’m glad I’m not DJ’ing parties anymore… it’s a sure bet I’d have to lug all my gear through this stuff.

What am I talking about? Have a look at a pic taken at about 7 this morning, local time, over in Amhearst.  That’s I-290 in the background. Every cam I can see within about a 90 mile radius is showing exactly the same thing. I’ll tell you this; it’s a good thing it’s New Year’s Eve with this stuff.  On a normal day we’ve had a problem with traffic and whatnot.  As it is, the only people that went anywhere today where the people that have jobs that really required they be there, else people within overdeveloped sense of responsibility.  Everybody else pretty much stayed home.

Now after this storm went through the temps started dropping. We’re supposed to see single digits tonight.  I hear the wind chill numbers are suppsoed to be near Zero in Times Square.  So, maybe we won’t go see fireworks tonight. We’ll see how it goes.

• I commented on this last night, and Tammy Bruce, as David showed us, slayed this dragon yesterday as well... but this Cynthia situation just floors me; I can’t get over how she’s not in jail. Neither can the Chicago Boys. Now, this is nothing new for her.  But perhaps the thing that bothers me most is something I mentioned to Billy in the Ramble last night;  People were actually careless enough to elect this walking disaster… and more than once. How the bleep can our nation survive with such people being handed the power of government? By the way, that was a great catch, David.
  

  McKinney

• The bit with Blago, yesterday, naming Roland Burris to the Senate is interesting for it’s legal aspects, if nothing else. The whole thing may end up going to the USSC, if the Democrats get their back up on this thing, which they may do, if Reid gets his way.. One gets the impression they really don’t know which will cause them more damage; Reid not seating the guy and faciung a legal fight over it, or accepting the nomination and having a crow sandwich.  It’s clear that the race huxters like Bobby Rush like the guy… he’s already broken out the race card in support of Burris…(Big shock, that… the man with a only a hammer operates as if every problem is a nail. Race is the only tool in Bobby Rsuh’s tote bag.)  Reid is facing a real issue here, and the issue shows just how tied to the race huxters their every move is. Picture the riots that would ensue… encouraged by such as Bobby Rush… should Senate Democrats turn Burris away.  OTOH, picture the mess if they accept the appointment. By the way, Glenn is running a transcript of Bobby Rush on CBS’s Early Show, this morning. When someone is that intentionally stupid, as Bobby Rush demonstrates he is in the transcript, there’s only a couple of conclusions that one can come to, none of which are very complimentary; the first two are that he’s a paid spokesman, and that he’s naturally stupid that way.  Frankly, I don’t know which frightens me more.
• Frankly, from a perspective of future implications,  I’d like to see this dispute over Blago and Burris go to the court system. Make no mistake, I can’t stand Burris, and do not support him.  That said; If the Senate leadership… of either party… can refuse to seat an appointment on these rather thin grounds, on what ground would they NOT be able to refuse an appointment?  With both bodies going repeatedly 50/50 in recent years it doesn’t seem to me out of the question that at some point, someone’s going to try to reject seating an appointment because it tips the scales  of power from one political party to the other.  It’s for that reason at least, that I’d like to see the democrats slapped back on constitutional grounds.  They made this mess in Illinois, make no mistake about it.  They continued to foster it over the years since the thirties.  If they need to get it under control, they’re going to need to find some way other than bypassing the constitution as regards representation.  Maybe finding honest politicians wearing the sign of the Jackass, is outside the realm of possibility , particularly those in Illinois ?
• And in Connecticut as well, if this Chris Dodd thing is of any indication.  The Hartford advocate is following the story there.
  

  Sen. Chris Dodd never stood a chance at the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. But that didn’t stop the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from fleeing Washington during the prelude to the biggest banking collapse of our lifetime and moving his family to Iowa for the caucuses.

  

  Chris Dodd

  The story goes on to report that the approval ratings for dead… errr… Dodd…  have gone somewhat south of 50%.  Frankly, I think the real story here is that there’s still that high.  I can’t imagine anybody else under the cloud of suspicion and mistrust that Dodd is currently operating under, rating nearly as well. On the other hand he does have the dinosaur media going to bat for him.  That probably explains a lot of it.    Does anybody remember that promise about draining the swamp? My prediction: Dodd is toast in his next election.

• Now that we’re on the subject of Democrats and corruption, and the press going to bat for them, let’s look at an article in The Swamp March 28th of this year.
  

  WASHINGTON – Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila and 12 others were indicted in a case related to his political campaign fund-raising, the U.S. Justice Department announced this morning.

  Charges for the 13 defendants include conspiracy, false statements, wire fraud, federal program fraud and tax crimes.

  “Our democratic system cannot function when public officials act as though they are above the law. Public officials must comply with the law and those who do not comply will be held accountable,” said Luis Fraticelli, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Juan Field Office.
  The case involves Acevedo Vila’s successful 2004 gubernatorial campaign and 2000 and 2002 campaigns for resident commissioner, which is Puerto Rico’s representative in the U.S. Congress.

  Notice anything missing? Let’s try an AP story, posted on 12/23/08:

  SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A U.S. judge on Tuesday denied defense requests to throw out the remaining federal corruption charges against Puerto Rico’s indicted governor, who faces trial in February for alleged campaign finance violations.

  Judge Paul Barbadoro said he left five charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering intact, along with four charges related to Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila’s earlier campaigns for the island’s nonvoting seat in Congress and an alleged conspiracy to hide donations from the Internal Revenue Service.

  Notice anything missing? Yep… same problem. At no point in any of the paltry number of articles I could find on the topic does it make mention of the fact that the guy is a Democrat. The trial comes up in a couple months. Keep a close watch, because if my guess if correct, the press will not make anything of this.

• Well, now, speaking of the dinosaur media going to bat for Democrats,  this is interesting... Vicki Iseman has apparently filed a defamation suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond, against the New York Times, naming as defendants the Times‘ executive editor, four reporters, and it’s Washington bureau chief. Amount in the suit? $27MUSD.  Trust me when I tell you, the woman’s got a case. The only question in my mind is what happens when she wins? Does the Times have a new owner? One can only hope. Normally, I’d suggest that this would end up being settled out of court for about half the money in the suit…, but Pinch hasn’t got the spare coin to be settling, right now.  So, this story is going to go large on us before summer.
• I’ve been watching this series of articles from Dennis Prager over the last day or two, and frankly I can’t believe he hasn’t been catching hell from the usual suspects.  The stuff he comes up with, is so bloody obvious, as to make one wonder how so many of them and then I’ll about this kind of thing for so long.  One cannot read this without wondering if in fact the reasons listed aren’t the root cause of most of the spike in divorce rates over the last 40 years or so.  Man or woman, you’ll want to read this one. BBCT to Fetiche Nouvelle, at Eternity Road who has her own comments to add… and you’ll want to read those, as well.
• Speaking of Eternity Road I can’t end this Ramble without commenting on this.
  

  Mark Steyn, ever ready to point out the disjunction between our opinions and reality, noted a juicy one just yesterday:

  Samuel Huntington’s key point in his most famous book is that the conventional western elite view of man as homo economicus is reductive – that cultural identity is a more profound indicator that western-style economic liberty cannot easily trump.This should have been obvious: If a man is a Muslim bus driver, which is more central to his identity – that he is a Muslim or that he drives a bus? Yet much of the trouble in the world comes from the assumption that economic interests will always outpunch cultural ones: The British imported a large Indian population to serve as a merchant and clerical class in Fiji. It made perfect economic sense. A century later Fiji was a coup-racked ruin split open on cultural fault lines.

  Now, Steyn’s point, as irrefutable as it is when applied to Muslims, loses some force if we change focus just a bit. What about a “Christian bus driver?” Or a “Jewish bus driver?” Or, to be maximally provocative, a “militant-atheist Canadian bus driver?” In those cases, whether the religious affiliation — yes, atheism is a religious affiliation — or the economic affiliation would predominate is more individual, harder to predict from the few facts given.

  Fran, I don’t know if this is occurred to you, but that entire equation gets a little bit more than fuzzy, when you start shifting the focus to the Christian bus driver or the Jewish driver in your argument, because Judaism and Christianity, like it or not, are central pillars of the western culture, as much as Islam is to their part of the world at least,  and therefore, their cultural identity has not altered that much by membership in those sub groups. Consider the Muslim bus driver in Iran.  If you ask him in his identity would you hear that he was a bus driver first, or that he was Muslim?  Given the location, and the culture in that location, you would probably hear that he was a bus driver first, and the fact that he was a Muslim would probably be considered as obvious.  If you’re really sharp, here, you will probably have noticed that to be exactly the same reaction as the Christian bus driver in the states.  The point I’m making here is that the religious affiliation of an individual is pretty much assumed based on the culture their living in.  Religion Fran, I don’t know if this is occurred to you, but that entire equation gets a little bit more than fuzzy. when you start shifting the focus to the Christian bus driver or the Jewish driver in your argument, because Judaism and Christianity, like it or not, are central pillars of the western culture, as much as Islam is to their part of the world at least,  and therefore, their cultural identity has not altered that much by membership in those sub groups.

  Consider the Muslim bus driver in Iran.  If you ask him in his identity would you hear that he was a bus driver first, or that he was Muslim?  Given the location, and the culture in that location, you would probably hear that he was a bus driver first, and the fact that he was a Muslim would probably be considered as obvious.  If you’re really sharp, here, you will probably have noticed that to be exactly the same as your postulated reaction in the Christian bus driver in the states.

  The point I’m making here is that the religious affiliation of an individual is pretty much assumed based on the culture their living in.  Religion  after all is a cultural driver.  (Yes, you should pardon the pun )

  In fairness, the remainder of your comments are dead on.  Christianity is not a totalitarian religion nor is Judaism.  Islam, however, in most of it’s forms, and particularly in it’s more literal forms, is.  Thereby, so too, that cultures that spring from each.  Say what you will about the dwindling number of churchgoing people in the western world.  The fact remains that even for lapsed believers the cultural influence of Christianity is still there.

  Our cultural nature , largely drawn from the Judeo-Christian ethic, is one of acceptance, the screams of  naysayers on the American left notwithstanding.  As such when the Muslim bus driver makes his demands, (Insisting as you say,that no one carrying alcohol or pork, or accompanied by a dog, come anywhere near “his” bus) they are not rejected out of hand .   I confess to wandering at times if that instinct to openness even in such basic situations, isn’t a fatal flaw of the culture.  After all, the squeaky wheel is the one who gets the attention of the man with a grease gun.is after all a cultural driver.  (you should pardon the pun )   In fairness, the remainder of your comments are dead on.  Christianity is not a totalitarian religion nor is Judaism.  Islam, however, in most of it’s forms, and particularly in it’s more literal forms, is.  Thereby, so too, that cultures that spring from each.  Say what you will about the dwindling number of churchgoing people in the western world.  The fact remains that even for lapsed believers the cultural influence of Christianity is still there. Our cultural nature is one of acceptance, the screams of  naysayers on the American left notwithstanding.  As such when the Muslim bus driver makes his demands, (Insisting as you say, that no one carrying alcohol or pork, or accompanied by a dog, come anywhere near “his” bus) they are not rejected out of hand .   I confess to wandering at times if that instinct to openness even in such basic situations, isn’t a fatal flaw of the culture.  After all, the squeaky wheel is the one who gets the attention of the man with a grease gun.

OK, that does it for this year for the Nightly Ramble. Have a nice night tonight, and be safe. We’ll see you next year.

A great, great writeup in the Wall Street Journal, today, by Holman Jenkins.

Like all regulatory schemes, Congress’s hallowed Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules froze in place a conception of the auto industry as it appeared to the simple minds of Congress in the early 1970s, when three manufacturers dominated the U.S. market, making full lines of vehicles. Today, more than 25 companies sell vehicles here, and the corollary of such diversity, normally, is specialization.

The Big Three, left to their own devices, would surely specialize in those vehicles on which they make money — i.e., those with hefty price tags and markups relative to their man-hour content. Even at the peak of gas prices, half the vehicles sold in the U.S. were light trucks. In November, amid a collapsed home construction industry and with $4 gasoline fresh in mind, what were the two top sellers? Pickups by Ford and Chevy — and the Dodge Ram was No. 7.

Shouldn’t this be telling us something about how to make the Big Three “viable”?

Indeed, Clearly, Americans don’t want the tin thimbles the Congress wants us to buy, and automakers to make.

And before you start about how that applies to the foreign cars, too…

The fuel-economy rules apply equally to foreign brands, of course, some of which also specialize in big, powerful vehicles. But they afford themselves an out. BMW paid $230 million in CAFE fines from 1983 to 2007 to avoid building small cars at a loss to please Washington. Volvo paid $56 million. Daimler paid $55 million.

Why don’t the Big Three take this out? Explains the Government Accountability Office, because they fear the political repercussions of being tagged with “unlawful conduct.”

….

This year, Daimler paid one of the biggest CAFE fines ever, $30 million — or $118 per car, a pittance to Mercedes buyers. By dumping Chrysler, meanwhile, it avoided its share of an estimated $100 billion in unremunerative investments the Big Three will have to make to meet the new fuel-mileage rules.

It doesn’t take a great deal to see the locus of the problem for domestic automakers is government.  It’s time to get the government out of the business of cars.  They could make it without the bailouts, if the congressional micromanagement of cars would disappear. A good place to start would be the CAFE nonsense. corps, given that there is a Democrat in the White House and Democrats are in control of both houses of Congress we have a snowball’s chance of seeing that happen. The obvious solution is letting Detroit build vehicles it can sell.  The left and it’s solution demands government regulation , ignoring of course, the fact that it’s been the cause of the problems, all along.

So, bye bye big three.

Been doing a lot of stuff in the background today.

Updated a few plugins, tape backups, added some functionality, did some database cleaning.

Out of all of that, about the only thing you’ll see… you may not even have noticed… the Bitsblog Icon on the URL line has changed to more correctly match the theme.  If it’s blue, it’s the new one.

Roland Burris is more qualified to be undemocratically appointed to the Senate than Caroline Kennedy is.

Jonah Goldberg, National Review.

Nice way to end the year, tying together two recent blog theme.    Good snarks  run in the Goldberg  family.

OTB’s James Joyner says he’s got a new daughter. He’s got pics up, too.

Many congrats, James. Now at the very least, you’ve got another reason to party tonight.