Hey, Barry, What About ‘disabled’ Do You Not Understand?

“1982. John McCain goes to Washington. Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t,” says a voice-over in the ad against shots of a Rubik’s Cube, a disco ball, a massive cell phone and an old computer. “He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one president who’s out of the touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

Responding to the ad, McCain’s online outreach manager Patrick Hynes shot back: “The ad is a joke. After they hyped it so heavily in The New York Times I can only assume nervous Democrats are embarrassed for the Obama campaign.”

That from the left-leaning “Wired” this morning. Leaving aside the idea that Presidents don’t use such things because of security concerns,  there’s a reason that Obama and his minions have forgotten. There’s a range of motion issue with John McCain, involving his POW injuries. Forbes:

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the  Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S.  Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife,  Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain  admits.

It’s my guess Obama will take a serious hit off this, even from his own supporters, among the disabled. And, so he should. Who, wanting to be President, will mock a former POW for injury suffered in the service of his country? Barack OBama, that’s who. Stay classy, there, Barry… stay classy.

Numbers will be fouled for a while, but it’s working now.

Addendum: IDavid L)

Promoted from comments:

Art Smith
September 14th, 2008 at 19:32 e

They are now backing out the upgrade and returning to the old system. More at Hot Air: http://hotair.com/archives/200…..ld-system/.

Sounds like Sitemeter borrowed a few of Bill Gates’ programers or some of BO’s campaign staff.

Addendum: IBit) I’ve re-adjusted our code here, for what that’s worth. THey plan to re-try this nonsense at some future time, as I gather it. To say the least I’m unhappy. I’ll get into this in tommrow night’s Ramble.

It’s a virus — and it’s spreading. Do a Google News search for “since the Great Depression,” and you come up with more than 4,500 examples of the phrase’s use in just the past month.

But that doesn’t make any of it true. Things today just aren’t that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression — or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

Overall, the pessimists are up against an insurmountable reality: In the last reported quarter, the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent, adjusted for inflation. That’s virtually the same as the 3.4 percent average growth rate since — yes — the Great Depression.

That’s Don Luskin, telling it like it is. Go read more.

We’re back. Despite the rain that popped up form time to time, things went very well indeed. Turns out it didn’t rain nearly as much as they thought. I’ll be posting pictures tonight or perhaps tommorow. I have a few you’ll want to see. But after being out of pocket for 48 hours, I have some catching up to do.

So what do I find?

• Sitemeter is down. They sent out a note that apparently got here after I left on Friday night, that they are doing some work to the backend of heir system. They claim the scripting is working correctly to record hits, but it’s not being displayed, no is the back end reporting structure available. It doesn’t appear to be fouling things, so I’ll leave it be for now.
• Thanks to David for stepping up, while I was doing the camping number. Look for a little something in your payslip.
• David makes a great point about BO and his screams about how he’s going to ‘take the gloves off’, in his addendum to this post of mine. I can’t help but wonder if this is how an Obama administration would get tough on a motal enemy. This is another one of those cases, as I remarked in comments to one of David’s posts, that all one needs to do is say it’s so and despite all facts, it’s so.  I said before this guy’s dealing from weakness… and weakness is something we dare not show at the best of times.
• Houston wasn’t as bad as they thought. Bad enough, but seems to me the locals have a real credibility issue, now with the ‘mandatory evacuation’ order, having not been needed in nearly the breadth they called for.

Enough for just now, I’ve gotta go unpack the camper.

Well look who landed at the Weekly Standard:

Obama Reinforces McCain Campaign Talking Points

The campaign should really start sending out carbon-offset and organic soap gift baskets because every time a Democrat talks, things seem to get a little brighter for them.

Earlier this week, it was Joe Biden admitting Hillary might have been a better VP pick than him. Today, it’s Obama denigrating his all-talk service in the Senate so others don’t have to. Here he is responding to a reporter question about whether Dems have belittled small-town mayors in going after Palin’s service:

“We’ve had an awful lot of small town mayors at the Democratic Convention, I assure you,” Obama said. “I meet them all the time. The mayors have some of the toughest jobs in the country because that’s where the rubber hits the road. You know, we yak in the Senate. They actually have to fill potholes and trim trees and make sure the garbage is taken away.”

Posted by Mary Katharine Ham on September 12, 2008 06:09 PM | Permalink

The place may never be the same again.

Aside to Bit:  Micheal who”

Hat tip photo:  News Busters:

Classy Cassy Fiano links maybe the most classless, and for sure the most clueless, political ad of the season:

I think, with the selection of Joe Biden as his running mate, Obama may have inherited foot-in-mouth disease. Here we have yet another example in Obama’s latest attack ad. It isn’t a very effective ad, but it sure is offensive:

I disagree with Cass.  I think BO’s ad will very effective, for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Both Jonah Goldberg, National Review, and Ace, Ace of Spades, shoot more holes in BO’s ad than Joe Biden has hair plugs.

As for me, I note that Randi Rhoads said that the North Vietnames treated John McCain well.   Well I guess that show that Randi has about as much grip on her facts as she does on her teeth.

Color me confused.   If you listen to most leftards and were so stupid as to actually believe them, you’d think that humans had one of five genders and could change at will by simple virtue of which restroom they choose to use.   For example, Natalia Galbetti, has no problem refering to Isis as if he were a woman:

Isis, 22, was not introduced as transgendered at first when the CW announced the list of contestants for its next season. The fact only surfaced when Isis revealed she was born as a male to Us Magazine, but she does not think that it will hurt her chances at winning.

Trust me, Natalia, if Isis, what ever his name was at birth was born as a male, he still is a male.  Sex is immutable.

On the other paw, one Wendy Doniger,  who claims to be a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, thinks that Sarah Palin is somehow not a woman:

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party’s cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women,

Somehow I suspect that Sarah’s husband and five children would not agree with Doniger’s rather dubious assertion that Sarah is not a woman.   I mean if a male had given birth to five children, I suspect it would have been major medical news.    In any case, I doubt that the University of Chicago would hire a professor as stupid as Doniger appears to be.   There is ample evidence that Sarah is a woman, but scant evidence Doniger is actually a professor of anything, besides maybe bovine scatology.

Hat tip:  Dallas Morning News.

Bit rambled:

I’ve not seen it yet, but I gather the interview with Palin and Gibson went pretty well.  From the clips one gets the impression that Gibson was a little on the stiff side.  Here’s some of it. I’m sure Memeorandum will have more. I note Sister Toldjah has some thoughts, too.

One definition of a failed interview is when the interviewer, in this case Charlie Gibson, becomes the subject of discussion.  In this case, Gibson has become the subject.   It strikes me that is this were a legal case and Gibson a lawyer, he guilty of malpractice.   Alas, there are no journalistic standard of ethics.

In any case, Kristin Powers, New York Post, takes a clue bat to Charlies’ head:

At times, Palin seemed to know less than she should. On the other hand, Gibson sometimes seemed to “know” things that just aren’t so.

Speaking of clue bats, the lovely Michelle takes one to Howie Kurtz’s head.,

• By the time you read this, I’ll already be soaking up the outdoors by the lakeshore, and soaking, is the word.  Remember that 30% chance of rain? We’re now to 70%. and as of noon, the whole of upstate NY is under moderate to heavy rain.  Oh, joy.  Rapture. Still, it does give us the chance of getting out and about. And anyway, we made the reservations and cn’t back out now. I’ll have pictures up on Monday.
• I suppose we’re better off than the folks on the Texas coast. If you’re tracking that, Fox has a pretty good set of tools to help you do that. Want a quick guess as to how big this thing is now? What we’re getting up here in NY are the spinners off that big so and so. As of the time this will get posted, the storm is around 150 miles off Galveston. Since te storm is so wide, though, it’s merely a formality, stating it’s exact location. they’re already getting hit, bigtime. Say a prayer, a kind thought, thow some good vibes that way. They could use it, I’m sure.
• OK, I’ve answered this five times via email, I may as well answer it here and save the trouble. I’m the one making the Nightly Ramble Graphics, like the one to the right, here.  It’s fun, actually. I’m using a few programs to do it. Each design requires a different touch. But I figure it adds a little something to the blog. And it seems to work for other sites, like the Bleat, for example. I figure ‘Why not’?
• Oil is below $100/bbl.  Now, does anyone recall I predicted $70/BBL by winter? Does anyone recall the amount of scoffing and poking fun I took over that prediction? Well, sit back, and wait.
• My, but Joe Biden does tend toward sticking his foot in the dog leavings, doesn’t he?
• That’s OK, Obama’s already blown it. Face it, these idiots are never the first to get anything. If they’re figuring it out now, you can bet everyone else already has at least a week back.
• Of course, part of Obama’s problem: He’s been campaigning to the wrong people.
• OK, McGehee… you’ve forced me to do it. I’m gonna haul off and link you one. Funny stuff.
• I note a new film of John McCain being released from North Vietnam. You can see it here.
• I’ve not seen it yet, but I gather the interview with Palin and Gibson went pretty well.  From the clips one gets the impression that Gibson was a little on the stiff side.  Here’s some of it. I’m sure Memeorandum will have more. I note Sister Toldjah has some thoughts, too.
• Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that Former Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee has left the planet? On his best day, he was only half here. I told you guys at the time he got booted from office that it was no big loss. There’s your confirmation.
• I caught some heat in feedback for the language in last night’s Ramble. Particularly a few quotes. Yeah, I know it, guys. But I won’t apologize for it. Because look, if this kind of hate isn’t to be ruling our next four and possibly eight years, we’d better get this stuff out in the open NOW.
• Hume says, correctly, the Democrats are still trying to play on a recession happening. Of course, it’s not. He says so, too. So did we… several times. Now why on earth, during an election year would Democrats be trying to pitch that times are worse than they are?
• I was touched by Martin’s notes on 9/11. And by Billy’s noting a set of Notes Martin posted 7 years ago..
  
• Oh… and I should thank those of you who took the time to feedback me on my comments yesterday.  It interests and annoys me that we’ve let so much of the lessons of 9/11 slip by us. James seems to think so too.
• An Honorable Mention at OTB’s caption contest.
• Hey, Megan:
  

  Sandra Tsing-Loh is shocked and hurt that Obama sends his daughters to an expensive private school rather than the local public schools.In Obama’s defense, the public schools in Chicago are terrible. My parents struggled with the same decision–my father worked for a Democratic city administration at the time, and they had both ideological and political reasons to want me to go to public school. But the catastrophic condition of New York’s public schools at the time was too much for them, and at considerable personal sacrifice they ended up putting me in private school.

  What is intolerable to me is when parents who have exercised school choice for themselves then oppose it for everyone else. Of course, Obama has little choice; the teacher’s unions have far too firm a grip on the Democratic party for any of their politicians to buck its wishes.

  Yeah, well, then again, he never tried. Not once. He has more choice… and more voice… in that process than we, and he held his silence. That’s what he’s supposed to be THERE for.  Some agent of change, this guy.

I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems

Mark Penn, via Jonan Goldberg, National Review..

Sister Toldjah:

In a page 1 story on Gov. Palin, the WaPo headline reads: “Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush.”

Unfortuntely for them, they got it wrong – again – as Bill Kristol points out here.  Not only that, but in an update to that post, John McCormack writes that the WaPo tried to “correct” their error … and that they still got it wrong.  Bob Owens and Tom Maguire are both all over the Post for misrepresenting Gov. Palin’s remarks, which she delivered yesterday at a deployment ceremony for Alaskan troops who are getting ready to head to Iraq.

Well, look, Sis; There’s only one way they could get things so dramatically wrong so very frequently…. by intent.

So, Obama has been losing ground as he gets more shrill. What’s his solution to the problem? Get even more shrill.

Senator Barack Obama will intensify his assault against Senator John McCain, with new television advertisements and more forceful attacks by the candidate and surrogates beginning Friday morning, as he confronts an invigorated Republican presidential ticket and increasing nervousness in the Democratic ranks.

…

After back-to-back attack ads by McCain, including one that misleadingly accused Obama of endorsing sex education for kindergarten students, the Obama campaign is planning to sharpen attacks on McCain and Palin in an effort to counter McCain’s attempt to present himself as the candidate of change with his choice of Palin. The new tone is to be presented in a speech by Obama in New Hampshire and backed up by new television advertisements and appearances across the country by supporters.

In addition, advertising themes will be pay equity for women, an issue that has particular resonance as the campaigns battle for female voters, and a more pointed linking of McCain to President George W. Bush and Republicans in Washington.

…

“The Obama message has been disrupted in the last week,” said Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama. “It’s a time for Democrats to focus on what the fundamentals are in this election.”

Phil Singer, who was a press secretary for Clinton in her primary campaign against Obama, said, “The Obama people need to reboot and figure out ways to make the McCain-Bush argument newsworthy again.”

Well, look… the Democrats have lost… permanently, I think, the ability to define the fundamentals in this election. That accounts for the level of desperation we’re seeing. Their own fault. They based their entire campaign on the buildup of a personality cult around Obama. At that point all that was needed to beat him was a stronger personality, wrapped around someone who can deal with what the Obama campaign has not; The issues of the day. Both McCain and Palin have been dealing with that, and Obama, for all his complaint on the topic, has not.

Notice, please, how Obama’s complaints about ‘the issues’ only started showing up after McCan chose Palin for his VP. THat’s because prior to that, he wasn’t worried about issues, spending all of his time and money on personality.  Along comes Palin… and with her, comes a refocused look on the personality that is McCain, and suddenly, Obama, not doing so well anymore in the polling, has to switch focus to an area he wanted to avoid; The issues.

That’s because Obama never WAS strong on those. The Obama people… and for that matter, the Clintonistas as well, chose that path because personality was supposedly their strong suit. Issues their weak side.

What’s caught Obama and his people off guard about Palin is she’s a stronger personality than Obama. The disoginization and confusion you’re seeing among the Obama camapign is that because of Palin’s stronger personality, they’ve had to shift to an issues oriented campaign they simply were not ready for.  So far in this campaign, Obama’s issues were never really defined, before this in the campaign, particularly among his following.  That Obama now is forced to attach an actual message to his message,  to define his positions on actual issues, he’s not going to do as well. He knows this. Read again that article in the Asia Times I linked the other day::

Speaking to Obama supporters on the periphery of the big event, I was startled by the rapturous devotion elicited by the junior senator from Illinois. He is no symbol for identity politics, no sacrifice on the altar of white guilt, but the most gifted persuader of individuals that I have encountered in any country’s politics, as well as a powerful orator on the grand stage. This is not a crowd phenomenon nor a fad, but the response of hundreds of people to an individual.

I sat in on a session with three leaders of Veterans for Obama, a group of retired young officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of the New Republic’s writer on the scene, David Samuels. With passion and enthusiasm, these young people spoke of their hopes for nation-building in Iraq. The George W Bush administration should have put twice the resources into the beleaguered country, they harangued me – not just soldiers, but agronomists, traffic cops, lawyers, judges, and physicians. The Department of Agriculture should have mobilized, along with the Department of Justice.

Nation-building? Doubling down on the US commitment to Iraq? Isn’t that trying to out-Bush the Bush administration, while Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq and spending the money on programs at home? Unblinking, one of the soldiers said, “That’s what we think Barack will do.” They believed in a more expensive version of the administration’s program, and faulted Bush for half measures – and somehow they believed that Obama really agreed with them, all the public evidence to the contrary. And they believed in Barack with perfect faith.

From Obama’s perspective, the issues really were never defined and in the end really didn’t matter. Similarly, what exactly the change was that they proposed, also didn’t matter, and was never really defined. They had their support from ardent followers, not only without such mundane things as defined policy statements, but in fact BECAUSE of that lack. Being forced into talking about their position on the issues has the Obama people trying to pitch extreme leftist mantra to a an electorate which has repeatedly rejected such iwith overwhelming force in the last several cycles.

And so now, instead of hitting on actual issues, being a non-starter for Democrats, and given the quest for personality has failed, Obama will commence hitting McCain/Palin with attack ads. So much for thew new politics Obama advertised.

All because the Democrat ticket doesn’t have the personality needed to carry off a personality oriented campaign. Then Obama, with his VP pick, made the situation worse. Has anyone noticed the near-invisibility of … (What’s his name? Oh, yeah)… Joe Biden?

America's perception

One comes away with the conclusion that the reason Obama would have been better with Hillary Clinton is at least she provides some strong personality to the ticket. Again, Spengler:

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain’s choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain’s selection was a statement of strength. America’s voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

And so Obama’s getting still more shrill than he has been recently, trying to show strength.   Yeah, start screaming, that’ll convince ’em. It worked for John Kerry and Al Gore, didn’t it?

The polling we’re seeing just now, with Obama in comparative free fall,  would seem to have something to report on how the American people are reacting to the pathetic sight of someone who has exposed himself as a wimp, making cheap schoolyard taunts to the guy who went through 5 years of being a POW and a woman who can feild dress a moose.

(edit, -Bit)

Addendum:  (David L)

Jake Tapper, ABC News, does not seem all that impressed by BO(‘s latest vow:

But just so you know — this is by my count the 4th time Obama’s campaign has officially or unofficially made such a declaration that Obama will “take off the gloves” and fight back.

That’s a lot of pairs of gloves

BO’s vows of “taking the gloves off”, kind of, sort of, reminds of O.J.’s vow to find the ‘real killer or killers” even if he has to to look at every golf course in America.

BO’s problem with getting tough is that the only card he can play without getting trumped is that McCain is the McSame as Bush.  Whatever you think of the McSame card, it hardly like BO hasn’t played it, alot.

When BO opens up any other door, the McCain campaign drives a truck through it.   BO complains about Sarah’s support for Pat Buchanan.   Fred hits BO with Bill Ayers.    BO argued that McCain wanted to eliminate the Department of Education.   The  McCain campaign hits back with the fact the BO supported comprehensive sex-education for kindergardeners.

• Looks like we’re going to get the camper out this weekend. The weather models are saying a 30% chance of showers Saturday and Sunday, so we’re going to take off early on Friday night and run to Golden Hill State Park, which is about equidistant between Rochester and NIagara Falls.  Apparently the site we’ve reserved is right along the southern shore of Lake Ontario…. and I mean within spitting distance. I’ll have pics on Sunday to show you. Just as well; I need a break from the hate. Examples abound. So before I get outta dodge, I suppose I’d best go ver some of it in my usual gentle way…
• So, this Sad Sack Sally Field Wannabe, working for the all too leftist CBC has puked up a gem of leftist bile. I cannot believe what I’m reading, here….
  

  It’s possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. They’re unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

  But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I’m a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

  Apparently, she’s unaware that the number women is perhaps 20% higher for McCain since Palin was appointed and nominated. Some bile, though, huh?  Oh, it gets better.

  Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade’s woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the “pramface.” Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi “I’m a fuckin’ redneck” Johnson prodding his daughter?

  Ya know, if we were to make such comments about Obama, the leftards would have the writer on fire in a heartbeat, and not without some justification.  What the blink is bothering this being anyway? (I refuse to call it a she) It’s the idea that Palin, and a lot of other women have completely happy healthy and productive lives, without bowing to the edicts of the left. Palin represents a question mark for every value this thing holds valuable. And it (I refuse to call it she)  needs to vent this bile on all of us to maintain her personal illusion that it and what it “thinks” has actual value. Well, there is. I’ll be keeping this one on file, and re-posting it after the elections.  Oughta be fun. In the meanwhile, this is the kind of sheer hate you’re up against, people.  Meanwhile, Heather, do us a favor; Drive north.  Somewhere north of Yellowknife would be good. Or better yet, try driving about 200 miles north of the town that bears your name… Mallik Station, out on the ice road. (I note McQ has his own comments, worth a read-Bit)

• Alas, Mallik is not the only being suffering from the desperate hate we’ve been discussing here the last few  days. St Andrew the Incontinent is one such case.  All the guy (And I use the word advisedly) does, anymore, is find different ways to sell the same nonsense. Same for Steve Benen. And Josh Marshall. It’s an amazingly efficient echo chamber.  It’s amazing what some people will do for money… and they whine about the charachter of Republicans?
• 

  Half the Folwer tag team

  And then there’s Carol Fowler

  South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate ” whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

  Oh… and I should note that this is the wife of Don Fowler… the former DNC Chair, who caught hell last week for getting caught on tape saying that Hurricane Gustav was a gift from God to the Democrats. I’m telling you, though I don’t really need to… all that pushes these people is hate, anymore. They’re desperate. There’s no other way to take this, anymore.

• Which is not to say there’s no brighter spots in this fog. Camille Paglia, is apparently one:
  

  Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it. …*… It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.

  So wrapped up are the left, however, in winning this election for reasons even they can’t define any longer, though, that Paglia’s last point here is lost on them. Essentially, Palin is what they’ve been fighting for all along. Their problem, of course is that they didn’t do it the liberal way. Her feminism is real, not a set of ‘values’ imposed by liberals whose only concern over women is their vote. There’s a political litmus test at work, here, one that must be passed to meet with the approval of the faux feminists. She didn’t pass the test and yet she succeeded in ways that the Birkenstock wearing, Bra burning abortion encouraging crowd never will. That of itself is suggestive that all the leftist mantra they’ve been attaching to feminism all these years was all naught but cow squeeze. And because of that she must be silenced. Based on the numbers I’ve seen, and what internals I’ve managed to get my hands on, I’d say they’re going to be totally disappointed.

• Other stuff: We may be about to find out if the Democrats are willing to shut down to the government to prevent offshore dilling.  And, oh, yes, they’re already talking about it. Have we on record, ever been witness to such an effort to thwart the will of the people before?  And remember, guys, all this is going to come to a head prior to the election.
• Obama is saying he’s going to create 5 million “green jobs” whatever that means … John Stossel doesn’t think so, and neither does Steve Verdon…. and that’s one of the first times I’ve had serious agreement with the latter in recent months.
• Billy:
  

  Terrific. She knows how to exert herself in the contest of political pull, and can play the inside-angles. This is a recommendation? To whom?

  “Her rise from parent-teacher association to city council gave her a natural political base in her home town of Wasilla. Going on to become mayor was a natural progression. Wasilla’s population of 9,000 would be a small town in Britain, and even in most American states.

  But Wasilla is the fifth-largest city in Alaska, which meant that Palin was an important player in state politics.”

  “A natural political base.” The home-town herd rallies around a lead-cow, and this is supposed to be a political value.

  Well, yeah. Look, there’s a line you’re not drawing here. Of value to the country and to the individual may or may not be another matter, and is dependent, I think, on how she uses that ability your quote cites. But political value? Hell, yes. Follow?

• All this argument about ‘change’, though… has nobody noticed in all of that, that Obama never once challanged the kind of dirty, corrupt Chicago Machine politics that gave birth to his political carreer?

08:37am— 

I’d come into work just like any other morning.

Where I was working at the time is closed, now, and so is the department that I was working for. But I can see he layout of the place in my mind, and can even taste the coffee I was drinking that morning, from the Seattle’s Best down on the second floor. ( French Roast so strong you could stand a fork up in it.)  Oddly, I remember too about the conversation with the guy running the place about how I was glad I didn’t have to fly to get to work. You know the kind of meaningless nonsense people engage in to pass the time. Little did I know.

By about a half hour ago, I had grabbed two new HP 8150 printers …huge boxes…and was installing them on the 4th floor printer room.  My cell phone went off; my boss.

” Eric”, he says, “how you doing on those printers?”

“Just about physically installed”, I told him, “though I’ll have to tell the servers about them.”

“Fine.” he says. “That was fast… By the way, you may want to come up here, to the meeting room; someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center”.

“Oh? OK…. be up in a few”.

I went up to my office on the 7th floor, firguring some small private plane had made a course error or some such thing. I got up there in time to see the scope of the issue, and was there only a few minutes when we noted a second plane hitting the second tower.

It was of course at that point that my vauge understanding that this was no accident became a full-on conclusion that it most certainly wasn’t.

I remember calmly going back to my desk, and checking the internet connections to the outside world, and noting that my traffic indicators were screaming that internet traffic was peaking pretty wildly…  and making appropriate notes to my supervisors, since the workflows would be affected… my gates to the west coast for example were well into the red, and the POP in NYC was apparently not responding at all.  My supervisors of course being occupied with the news, would never read them.

Looking back, I suppose I was looking for some rational way to respond…. some way to apply normalcy to all of what I’d just been witness to. Of course, my response was more mechanical than rational. But you fall to the mechanical, I guess, in situations like that. All you can do is continue, while you sort things out.

By 2pm that afternoon, though,  what became this blog had been fully registered at Blogspot, and I was writing. As it turned out, BitsBlog wasn’t made public until the next day, due to an error on my part.  But I didn’t much mind. I was writing for ME, that day. An outlet for what I’d seen. What I was feeling.  It’s a cold fact that I became an activist for my own viewpoint, that day. By the way Blogdom increased that week, I’d say I wasn’t alone.

But you know… It’s the big occasions you recall with that kind of clarity. The morning JFK was killed for example, I remember being annoyed that the family TV… an old RCA black and white monster my dad had bought used somewhere, took so long to warm up. I wanted to know what was happening, right NOW, beep it, and this thing wasn’t helping.

And what happened 7 years ago, is certainly a large event, if by no other measure than the way we usually measure such things. “Where were you when…”

I note Sister Toldja has a list of links of people who remember.

I awoke this morning to a disturbing note passed along by a reader, pointing me to this from Rasmussen:

Thirty-two percent (32%) of likely voters say the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% give the Honorables poor ratings (crosstabs available for Premium Members).

But on what are these opinions based?

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

So, Obama’s supporters don’t think, as a rule, that the Constitution should be the basis for USSC rulings. I’ve been saying Obama supporters are not basing their support for him in fact and thereby cannot be argued off of that support by facts, either. Looks like that phenom is a little wider than I originally figured.

Doesn’t that frighten you a bit? It ought to make you consider again who will be appointing the next few judges to the nation’s highest court.