Wisconsin Democrat Now Publicly Supports McCain

Washington -Journal Sentinal- As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton’s defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

“I’m sure people are going to be upset with me,” said Bartoshevich, a 41-year-old emergency room nurse from Waterford in Racine County, and convention delegate pledged to Clinton.

Joe Wineke, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, reacted with disbelief when first told Friday afternoon that one of his state party delegates is now a McCain supporter.

“Not a delegate? To the national convention?” said Wineke, who was getting ready for the start of the Wisconsin state party convention Friday in Stevens Point.

“We have a Clinton national (convention) delegate who says she’s voting for John McCain?” Wineke repeated, for clarification. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

There’s more of the article, of course.

It’s a measure of the level of dissatisfaction with Obama, that Democrats are moving to the exists to the degree they are. Which is not to say that there isn’t equal unease with McCain, among Republicans.  This is going to be a very muddled election.

Boy Scout Oath:

Courtesy Boy Scouts of  America.

Des Moines Register:

Of the four Boy Scouts who died in last night’s western Iowa tornado, one is from Iowa and three are from Omaha, officials said this morning.

The reprobate Fred Phelps has held that adverse outcomes can be taken as an indication of God’s wrath.  Therefore that must explain this note which was pulled from the dumpster in the back of the Westboro Baptist Church::

Holy shit, God must hate good samSamaritans.

Don’t worry Fred, if God really does hate good Samaritans, you and your flock are safe.

Center for American Progress is blaming the Scouts’ deaths on so-called anthropogenic gloval warming, Canada Free Press:

Excerpt: The evidence for the consequences of global warming is appearing with alarming frequency. This morning’s headlines are filled with tales of deadly weather: “At least four people were killed and about 40 injured when a tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa on Wednesday night”; “two people are dead in northern Kansas after tornadoes cut a diagonal path across the state”; “[t]wo Maryland men with heart conditions died this week” from the East Coast heat wave. These eight deaths come on top of reports earlier this week that the heat wave “claimed the lives of 17 people” and the wave of deadly storms killed 11 more: “six in Michigan, two in Indiana and one each in Iowa and Connecticut,” as well as one man in New York

Well nut jobs do come in various flavors.

?

A story showing up in the Huffpoop this morning peaked my interest a little… for incredulity, if for nothing else.

Headline:

Dems Not Backing Obama? Rahm Will Deal With It

What’s he planning on doing, having their legs broken? He’s not the Clintons, after all.  On the other hand, he IS high up in Chicago politics.

BLANCHARD, Mich. -AP- BreAnna Helsel escaped serious injury after being struck by lightning while inside her house.

The teenager’s good fortune continued the next day, in the form of a winning lottery ticket.

Helsel, 16, was at her home in Blanchard, about 48 miles northeast of Grand Rapids, watching thunderstorms roll by on June 6 when she noticed rain entering an open kitchen window.

“She went to close the window and the lightning came through and hit her,” her mother, Linda Johnson, told The Daily News of Greenville. “We think it must have hit the house or something.”

Helsel, a student at Montabella High School, struggled to describe the sensation she felt as the electricity passed through her body.

“It felt like when your foot falls asleep,” she said.
…

“Everyone said I’m really lucky,” she said.

Hospital employees suggested that Helsel was on such a lucky streak, she should immediately play the lottery. She’s too young, so her mother went out the next day and bought a Michigan lottery ticket for her.

“And we won $20,” Johnson said, laughing. “What a way to start the summer.”

OK, maybe $20 isn’t any great shakes. Still, it makes for a great story, and likely enough to keep that little berg about 60 miles north east of Grand Rapids, chattering for a long time.

• We’ve already mentioned Russert, but I wonder if this will push NBC further left than it already has been.
• Excellent article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday from Dan Henninger. He reminds us that Brazil found out it has vast oil resources off their coast.
  

  When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio’s beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields?

  Of course it didn’t. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, “It’s an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in.” Indeed it is.

  At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back.

  But not us. We won’t drill.

  California won’t drill for the estimated 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast because of bad memories of the Santa Barbara oil spill – in 1969.

  We won’t drill for the estimated 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil in the moonscape known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because of – the caribou.

  In our case what we have is a failure of leadership. The Republicans in Congress have started to catch on, but John McCain remains oblivious.  A leader would have provided for our energy future, allowing us to also deal more effectively with thugs whose only resource is oil. The Democrats have not, and McCain is making noises like he will not, either. Congressional Republicans have started to tsep into that void of leadership, but I wonder if it’s enough.

• As an example of Congressional Republicans steppig up… I commented a while ago… and it still shows up in the “Snark of the Moment” once in a while… “Who is to blame? Here you are… When Democrats took over the Congress, gas was slightly more than $2 per gallon, food costs were low and supplies were plentiful, the housing market was booming. Since then, our food and fuel are both double the price and in shortages, taxes are up, housing is tight, as is credit.”  Well, Republican Whip Roy Blunt passes along, by way of the Powerline Guys, a chart to drive that point home. (Drill the pic for a larger, clearer version) Go ahead, gang, tell me how the Democrats have our interests in mind.
• I see Rich Lowry has come on board:
  

  McCain should use the $4-a-gallon gas prices to pivot in favor of more drilling. Then, his people might have something more meaty to offer during these kind of calls.

  That’s exactly correct, Rich. And as I said yesterday I think we as Republcians…. and as Americans… should be putting the heaviest pressure possible on McCain to move in that direction, since it’s clear that the Democrats have a snowball’s chance of doing so.  I think the idea of the Congressional Republicans taking the lead on this for now a fair enough idea, given the lack of anything better. Like for example a leader in the top role. We might be able to shame McCain into actual leadership on this issue, but I don’t know…. And in any event, I’m annoyed that we should need to.

• You know, this kind of thing is enough to put me off getting involved in any “homeowners association”. But what amuses me perhaps the most about this is most of them wouldn’t have allowed a ham radio tower. I’m willing to bet the ones who do now, won’t shortly.]

Local Buffalo native gone big time, Tim Russsert managing editor of NBC’s Washington bureau and host of Meet the Press has died suddenly at age 58, NBC News:

WASHINGTON – Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after being stricken at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Wikipedia:

Timothy John Russert, Jr. (May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008)[1] was an American journalist who hosted NBC’s Meet the Press. He was NBC News’ Washington Bureau Chief and hosted a weekly interview program on MSNBC Tim Russert. He was a frequent correspondent and guest on NBC’s The Today Show and Hardball. He co-hosted the network’s presidential Election Night coverage and presented the polling results of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey on the NBC Nightly News. Russert collapsed and died at his office in Washington on June 13, 2008.[2]

More: Internatinal Movie Dasa Base..

While I don’t consider Russert to have had consistent heat, to ask consistently probing questions, Rusert did have the best hard high inside fastball in the business when he cared to bring it.  When Russert played hardball, nobody did it better.  Russert’s untimely departure leaves a massive void at NBC News.

Addendum: (Bit)

There is a lot to be said for the respect of your peers, and certainly, Russert had that. One thing that was noted about him by just about everyone, was his constant smile. It was one that was not painted on, like so many I’ve seen in that business. Russert was a rare one, in many ways, and one of the few in the MSM that had any degree at all of my respect. Longtime readers will understand that takes some doing.

It appears that John McCain has decided there’s a problem with the SCOTUS ruling yesterday on Gitmo. Michael Scherer at Time:

Yesterday, it was not clear if McCain would make the court decision an election year issue. Today, there is no doubt it will be. Will update this later.

UPDATE: Here is the McCain statement at length:

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn’t torture any prisoners, that we didn’t mistreat them, that we abided by the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all prisoners. But we also made it perfectly clear, and I won’t go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have. And my friends there are some bad people down there. There are some bad people. So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases. By the way, 30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.

Then he went on to quote from Justice Roberts’ dissent, a passage that included the phrase “unaccountable judges.”

I called the ruling damaging to the US before the echo died from it’s being released. Granted, in the blog you tend to shoot frm the hip a bit more. Still…. Why’d it take so long for Mr McCain to come to the same conclusion? Perhaps his finger gauge is not resolving fast enough?

Or perhaps it took a while to craft all the fancy chatter, that preceded the real bottom line:

30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that

Someone that busy trying not to annoy people, that it gets in the way of speaking the plain truth… and places the plain truth as the last thing said… I have some serious doubts about. Again, since Obama seemingly supoprts this ruling, McCain is still the better choice of the two, but only marginally so.

Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees, and company borrowing rules for prominent people.

Senators Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, refinanced properties through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program in 2003 and 2004, according to company documents and emails and a former employee familiar with the loans.

Thta’s from Portfolio, today. Bolding is mine.

There does seem to be a pattern developing here, that I can’t quite put my finger on.
[/snark]

Other participants in the V.I.P. program included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and former U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke

Lemme see now… Countrywide is he group that Obama was complaining about, and the reason Obama had to dump his VP serach advisor under the bus. The remainder, well, they fit the pattern rather well, also.

Kinda gives you pause about electing Democrats again, doesn’t it?

 Mark Finkelstein, Newsbusters:

DICK DURBIN: Well, I know Michelle, she’s been my friend, a friend of my wife, for many, many years. She can take it. She can handle herself. She’s a very accomplished person. But I will tell you this: the hottest ring in hell is reserved for those in politics who attack their opponents’ families. And if there are some Republican strategists who think that’t the way to win the election, I think they’re wrong.

I am sure glad I am agnostic, because Dickie Durbin has one strange god.    I can think of several people who Durbin might want to see in the innermost and hottest ring  of Hell. names like Steven Kazmierczak, Laurie Dann, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and oH yes Al Capone.   Yet for some strange reason, Durbin professes to worship a god who considers the feeling of (liberal) politician’s wives to be more precious that human life itself.

More:  Michelle Malkin

Addendum: (Bit)

All very true, But I have to say, I’m with Limbaugh, here:

The hottest ring in hell is reserved for people like you who attempt to criminalize members of the United States military trying to save your butt from foreign attack. 

And look at the people he might have named in that position, but didn’t. Shows you something of his values, and in turn that of most Democrats.

Now, note in Senator Turban’s world for whom the hottest ring in hell is reserved for.  It’s not reserved for Adolf Hitler.  The hottest ring in hell is not reserved for Bin Laden nor other terrorists who have killed thousands of Americans.  The hottest ring in hell is not reserved for child molesters and murderers and so forth.  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.  The hottest ring in hell is reserved for people who would dare attack a politician.  The hottest ring in hell is reserved for anyone who would attack a politician’s wife.  Dick Durbin: hubris, arrogance, conceit, and stupidity.  This is who we’re dealing with, my friends.

 
Well, I hate to crrect Rush, but in this case I think he’d agree… it’s clear from even Durbin’s own history that the filter being applied is not just those that disagree with politicians in general, but rather who disagree publicly with LIBERAL pols that Durbin reserves that special hell for.
Everything, you see, comes down to their path to power, and what blocks it.

Boortz today looks in some detail and the back and forth over Chiana drilling in the gulf… and goes doumentation heavy on us.  Go and read.

The bottom line: They’re not drilling there now, but could be, because all the agreements are in place and there’s nothing to stop them.

In our case, we have a Congress, dominated by the Democrat party.

(With apologies to Freddie Mercury)

Barack says “I’m not a Muslim”
And points to Trinity
He’s the one to unite, they say
But what of the racist spree?
Are you ready, Are you ready for this
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat
Out of the internet Wright’s voice rings
Turning up the heat… ouch…
(Hold on tight)

Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another goes under the bus
Hey… He’s gonna dump you, too
Another goes under the bus

How do you think I’m going to get along,
Without you, when you’re gone
You took me for everything that I had,
And kicked me out on my own

Are you happy, are you satisfied
How long can you stand the heat
Out of the blogs Trinity questions fly
And here we go again

Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another goes under the bus
Hey… He’s gonna dump you, too
Another goes under the bus

There’s lots of ways you can judge a man
But none more to the point
Than the people and the groups
That he hangs around
And calls them all his own.
But now he’s ready.
Yes, he’s ready for power
He’s standing on his own two feet.
Out of the news Jim Johnson comes
Once again Barack retreats

Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
Bump
Bump
Bump
Another goes under the bus
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another goes under the bus
Hey… He’s gonna dump you, too
Another goes under the bus

(Look out)

Let’s free all Gitmo detainees…on a vast, deserted, open and contested Afghan battlefield. C-130 gunship circling overhead for security. Give them all a two minute running head start

Via Andy McCarthy, National Review

Works for me.  Any you?

.

Floodwaters are raging through the state of Iowa, major roads are closing, cities are being destroyed, politics is at a standstill while people’s lives are being diverted by lost homes, or volunteering to help others.

As the crisis continues, The Conservative Reader is right in the middle of it.  As major changes in the disaster occur, you’ll find updates and perspective there from Art Smith who is located in Des Moines.

After the downright stupid USSC ruling of earlier today, there was something that didn’t sit quite right with me about the ruling from a historical perspective, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I’d already written something to this type of case, but I couldn’t remember what it was, my searching here on the blog produced nothing.

Took me a few hours, but by way of some good search code here at Casa De Bit, and some just plain luck, I was able to come up with it. Turns out, I had written the bones to the post, but had never polished it or submitted it to the blog.  (One of the ‘features’ of having a terrabyte of server at your disposal… the amount of flotsam you eventually collect gets hard to manage. Turns out my memory was somewhat better than my filing system.)

I think it important for me to post it now, however, because there is much in the way of precedent that the ruling earlier today seems to ignore. One can only wonder what is driving the USSC to reverse the earlier ruling.

Anyway, the post at the time was with regards to a July 1942 ruling of the USSC, Ex Parte Quirin.

Remember the time frame in which Quirin got handed down… this was more or less seven months following the attack at Pearl Harbor.  Eight German spies had been captured on US soil, Ernest Peter Burger, George John Dasch, Herbert Hans Haupt, Heinrich Heinck, Edward Keiling, Herman Neubauer, Richard Quirin and Werner Thiel, Burger and Haupt being US citizens.

The case was brought to the court, because the defendants in the case claimed,

…the President is without any statutory or constitutional authority to order the petitioners to be tried by military tribunal for offenses with which they are charged; that in consequence they are entitled to be tried in the civil courts with the safeguards, including trial by jury, which the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee to all persons charged in such courts with criminal offenses. In any case it is urged that the President’s Order, in prescribing the procedure of the Commission and the method for review of its findings and sentence, and the proceedings of the Commission under the Order, conflict with Articles of War adopted by Congress-particularly Articles 38, 43, 46, 50 1/2 and 70-and are illegal and void.

Odd… sounds almost exactly like our current situation, doesn’t it?  Only, Quirin had a different outcome. The court found that military tribunals… not civilian courts… were the appropriate venue for enemies who had “entered or after entry remained in our territory without uniform”, intended to attack the United States.

The ruling reads in part:

…the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.

Now, remember, please, that unlike the more current case, the eight were only interested in attacking military targets.

The court ruled unanimously, and with unusual speed, in fact…in less than 24hrs. A few days later, five of the eight were electrocuted, one after the other… and two others, Haupt, and Dasch were jailed, instead, since they had aided the government in it’s case…. a choice made by FDR himself, if I’m not much mistaken. THey were released and deported to Germany in 1948.  I don’t have the documents on this to hand, but I have some memory of Dasch in particular trying repeatedly to get a Visa back to the US after his release. J Edgar Hoover turned him down, right to the day he died.

Interestingly, Citizenship provided no shelter,in the Quirin ruling.

Please don’t rely on my memory of the thing; I’d urge you to read the ruling in Findlaw, which I’ve linked above. I’ll be interested to read the ruling when I can get my hands on the thing… likely this weekend. One of the big questions I’ll be looking at is what has changed before Quirin and now.

I suspect that all that’s happened is we have judges, now, who are less sympathetic to America and it’s causes.

• Headlines read: “Two charged with giving Amy Winehouse Drugs” Only two? She must be slipping.
• Sad to see this report of at least 4 dying at the Boy Scout camp last night, on two fronts; The people who were there, the hurt, the dead, and the unhurt, who will doubtless bear the emotional scars… but also from the standppoint of government and insurance, who will in a well-meaning effort, try to ‘do something’ so it won’t happen again,  as if they have some ability to control it.
• So James “the snake head” Carville is floating Al Gore as VP again? Yeah, THAT will fly, huh?
• Oh, speaking of Gore and his hot air; If you want some basic framework for the accuracy  of ‘global warming’ theories, take a look at this 1993 article in the New York Times.
• The really sad part of John Kerry’s charge about how ‘out of touch’ John McCain is, is that most folks still remember the other-worldly look and feel of Kerry’s own campaign in 2004. And does this kind of attack represent Obama’s “new politics?”
• Well, look, this kind of development is both expected and expected to repeat itself throughout the election process. Given the conditons set by Obama himself, one could hardly expect otherwise.What are those conditions? We cannot discuss questions of his character. We cannot discuss the character of those with whom he has had long and influential associations. We cannot discuss his most closely held belief systems. We cannot examine his past actions. We can, however, discuss his race… And I note Willis taking full advantage of this.So much for the post racial society.
• So, Johnson is now gone from Obama’s VP Team?  Gotta write a song for Obama called “Under the Bus” sung to the tune of Carole King’s “Up On The Roof”. The laughable irony is she’s likley an Obama supporter. And spare me the Clintonian ‘they do it too’ defense… How does that make the argument against Obama any weaker, or the argument against McCain, any stronger? Rmember, please, that there are a number of us out here who aren’t all that happy with either one of ’em.
•  Obama wants higher gasoline prices. Did you get that? Read it again.  Democrats are not on your side, America.
• And finally with Obama, he’s moved DNC operations to Chicago. Well, that fits. The DNC goes where the corruption is. Or is that the other way around? I keep forgetting.
• Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you. Most women that would wear such a shirt wouldn’t even get a second glance from me.  For one thing, you don’t know where it’s been.

¼/p>