Harvey Korman: RIP

One of the great comic minds in American history has passed away. Blue Crab Blvd has the details.

Does MSNBC provide Keith Olbermann with a research staff and if so is Olbermann smart enough to use it?  Evidently not.  On Saturday I blogged about whether Rachel Ray was wearing a keffiyeh, Based on Rusty Shackleford’s, Jawa Report, post, I believe she was not.  Yet while I believe Ray was not wearing a keffiyeh, I know such scarfs do exist.  They have a name and are worn by supporters of terrorism.  Apparenty such knowledge has yet to seep into the halls of MSNBC.  Is Olbermann even allowed access to the Internet?

Olbermann scoffed at the notions that anybody should be concerned if Ray was wearing a symbol of terrorism He was painfully unaware that such a scarf even existed, or that it even had a name.  Allahpundit, Hot Air, links to the the Olbermann video.  For a person who is endlessy comparing consevatives to terrorists, Olbermann does not know much about real terrorists.  Maybe that is why Olbermann thinks Michelle Malkin is a terrorist?

Hat tip photo: Wikipedia.

Mark I, Redstate, has BO’s newest line on Iraq:

The real story here is that Obama has no interest in what is really happening in Iraq, unless it fits his predetermined view that the war is lost. The message from the Obama campaign is clear. Sen. Obama would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without pre-conditions and without pre-judging the agenda items, but he won’t go meet with the troops in Iraq unless it is on his terms. He would go to make sure America lost if it would help him win

Note that BO offers to meet with our nation’s enemies without precondition.  On the other hand, he will only meet with our troops with conditions.   Like I said yesterday, Ike went to Korea to end the war, and he did.   On the other hand, BO could care less if the war in Iraq ever ends.

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• I see where Nancy Pelosi is vowing to make sure there’s no infighting in Denver’s upcoming Democrat convention. I’ll tell you… if her management of House Democrats is of any indicatino of her management ability, the resulting fighting among Democrats in Denver will require a response from the National Guard to quell it.
• Just in case you were not aware of the deep problems inside the head of Keith Olberman…
• Funny thing… since the Soros connection to McClellen’s book came up, the left-o-shpere has been deadly quiet. Perhaps they’re beginning to understand?
• With the rail accidents as I mentioned yesterday and this monring, I have to wonder if this story was timed for these conditions. For the record, I don’t see this as a problem for the near term. And while it may be a problem for the later term, I see the railraods reacting with building as needed… always assuming the government isn’t treating them like they do the oil companies, and their capacity problems. There’s a clue there, to the real problem, I think.
• And Sweetness and Light, as David noted eariler today, is apparently taking the lion’s share of heat for asking questions abut another of Obama’s questionable statements. David’s doing a good job of following that, so I won’t get into it here, too much, except to say that kind of panic hits whenever there’s a serious question about a liberals story line. It shows me, how desperate Obama and his supporters are to establish a link, if only a secondary one, to the Military. And Mega-Kudos to S&L for their work on this.
• An interesting point from Boortz, today:
  

  Right on Barack Obama’s very own webpage he has written the following statement: “We have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting the Iranian threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization.”

  However, it took the Wall Street Journal to point out how ridiculous this “incentive” truly is … Amir Taheri writes, “Perhaps Mr. Obama is unaware that one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first acts was to freeze Tehran’s efforts for securing WTO membership because he regards the outfit as ‘a nest of conspiracies by Zionists and Americans.'”

  So it looks like these “talks” and “incentives” to join with America are really going to work for a mad dictator. But this is what we can expect from a Barack Obama presidency.

  Yet another case of ‘If it sounds good, say it, because nobody knows anything about this crap anyway”. Obama is being exposed , here people. Like what you see?

• Good to see the Oil companies fighting back. About bloody time.
• Interesting how people are just starting to figure out that Hillry Clinton is in it for the money.

I remarked yesterday here about the supposed death of journalism and how I’m not all wrapped up in it. I decided that perhaps a personal perspective is required to exaplin myself;

Me at OTB yesterday:

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You may or may not know I used to work in radio, from the early 70’s to about 1987. Certainly, there was a mystique, an aura of ‘public service’ etc to the profession. And on air folks used to get huge amounts of money for their services.

When I was growing up, and getting my chops together, there was a bunch of people I later on in life got to work with, who I greatly respected; they were the local greats around these parts. I was honored to work along side these people who I grew up listening to. I won’t bother mentioning their names, you wouldn’t know most of them, and this thing’s going to get too long as it is. One of them even got to be one of the best freinds I ever had in the world, and I miss him terribly today.

They all told the same story.. In their day, time was you could make a comfortable living behind a mike, but that those days, at least for most of us, were coming to a close. I got on the train just as it was slowing down, if you will, and managed to ride the thing for 15 years or so. I was lucky; I had the skills and my voice wasn’t bad at all… I made it into that comfortable inner circle around here, for that time. I made a fair buck, and was never out of work for longer than I wanted to be. In those days for everyone who ‘made it’ there were perhaps 20 or 30 who didn’t. I worked (among other things) full service tations and busted my bump to make sure our listners were informed and entertained, and took what I saw as my job very seriously. Gained a lot of respect from my peers, and those folks I spoke of that I admired.

Now, all that’s changed. With satalite delivery (Both direct and indiriect through terrestrial stations) as well as automation, only one station in 10 has any live people running the place anymore, and that means there’s now 200 or 300 hangers on for every person who’s ‘made it’.. and the ones left are not making all that much, trust me.

And what I did all those years, running a hot control board manually, is an art that is all but lost.

But you know what? It wasn’t till near I dropped out of radio that it started occurring to me more frequenly that this was all about selling ads, and the content as automation and ‘da bird’ took over, meant less and less to owners. I was in the advertising business all those years… and here I thought I was in the radio personality business.

And the reason for the changes? The costs of the old model were far too high. Someone doing a local radio show manually, and taking care to do it right, will get more listeners, perhaps, but will never be able to make enough money for the station to justify his being there, on most stations today. The owners can make as much money, or more,  letting the machine do all the work… and most, alas, do.

A lot of the reason for the shift was lower listenership across the board. Television.

I’m sure the reader will see enough of the parallels I’m playing to to suit their own vision of the thing.

Old radio, (And old radio PEOPLE) like old newspapers/old newspaper people, I think, hastened their own ‘death’ by way of their own image of themselves and what they were doing. In short, they over-valued their own importance to the effectiveness of the finished product… remembering, again, that the finished product was advertsising.

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So tell me again, how much a tragedy it is for the American public that newspapers are in a downward spiral. Seems to me a little focus on reality there would benefit us all. It’s not a higher calling. It was an important job, certainly, but no more so than what I was doing… and certainly not nearly as important as your average Jschool grad will tell you.

In his attempt to chase down BO’s claim that his uncle liberated Auschwitz, Steve Gilbert, Sweetness & LIght, has stirred up a hornet’s nest.   I think Steve has gotten too close to exposing yet another one of BO’s lies and the leftards are in panic.  

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I see by way of Billy and a few other sources (Martin McPhillips,for one)  that J. Orlin Grabbe may or may not have passed on.  One could never be sure with him. He may be just playing with us, still.

OK, I know… you have no freakin’ clue what I’m talking about.  Grabbe was a regular on the political Usenet groups back in the day. Frankly, I had the guy labeled as a kook and pretty much ignored him, at least as far as talking to him. But I was reading his stuff, always hoping for signs of something I could latch onto. Trouble was, I never knew when to take him seriously or not, and as such it was hard to engage the man on any topic.  He was either a stone cold kook, or was simply having fun with us all.  Since I’ve never considered that not many people are that kooky and live quite so long, I tend to think the latter. (Yet, couldn’t that kind of gamesmanship be considered an indication of koodom all by itself?) He was certainly part of the scene that McPhillips describes:

Beck liked Grabbe and I did not, but if he is indeed dead it is a sad note of passing of one of the frontiersmen of the Wild West of the Internet, that now oddly eclipsed and seldom remembered (except by those who were there) corner of cyberspace called Usenet (home to a gazillion newsgroups but where the most blazing action centered around alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater throughout the second half of the ’90s in a tragedy of the commons setting often referred to by me as “the Usenet sewers”).

I found Grabbe a tiresome bullshitter and he found me a tiresome conservative, and so it all came out even on that score. His tendency to step over into conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories to feed the conspiracy hobbyists was something I found exceedingly annoying. If I’m remembering correctly he had it that Vince Foster was murdered by Mossad for reasons that I forget and based on no evidence that I can remember. I do recall that this made fertile territory for some to blame all of the variety of Clinton scandals on the plotting of “Israeli agents” inside the Clinton White House. I surmised that this was part of Grabbe’s intent, if he ever had any intent.

Them days is gone. What’s left over there is the sad spectacle of an online insane asylum where a few stoical orderlies seek to quell rantings from the occupants of well-padded cyber cells. But it was a place where, once upon a time, one got high-speed rigorous training in making and countering arguments, if one could either ignore the constant bar fights or merge one’s arguments into them.

And yes, I was there for most of that, and it was all that Martin describes, and more. I had cut my political argument teeth on the BBS’s myself, and am still active in the current incarnations of those groups as I have the time, these days.  That gave me an advantage in the Usenet sewer as Martin correctly calls it.  Billy agrees:

It was an intellectual and rhetorical crucible

Wasn’t it, though? A place where your ability to both wear flame proof underwear, and weild a flamethower of your own, in a political sense, was a requirement.

Now, perhaps you better understand why I’ve always kept the red carpet out for Billy and Martin… that shared experience.  Each of us came through that sewer, being more formidable for it. And for better or worse, Grabbe was a part of that experience.

I guess I shoudl have figured on this. Much is explained. It’s just that Stop the ACLU got to it first:

I neglected to mention the traitor McClellan’s Bush bashing book cuz I had nothing to say that so many others hadn’t already covered, but now there may be a new twist. Tipster John Mark Williams of Frisco, TX did some research:

Here’s a great tip for you. The company that published McClellan’s new book is Public Affairs Books, and their Editor at Large is a guy named Osnos. He’s had a lot of lefty causes in his background (stuff like Director of Human Rights Watch). His bio is here.

But it gets better. The owner of Public Affairs Books is a company called
Perseus Book Group. Here’s their ownership tree.

I researched the firm and it’s owned by Perseus Funds Group, (holding company Perseus LLC) a capital management firm that grew from about $20 million in 1995 to over $2 billion now. Big infusions of cash seemed to help it grow exponentially and it closed funds almost as fast as it opened
them. The board has tons of liberals from the Clinton and Carter Administrations with credentials that almost put Osnos’ to shame as far as far left causes go. Their website is here.

Well, I went to the NY Secretary of State office (Perseus is a NY Corp)
and found the following on the second page:

PERSEUS, L.L.C.
PERSEUS-SOROS BIOPHARMACEUTICAL FUND, LP
PERSEUS-SOROS BIOPHARMACEUTICAL INVESTORS, LP
PERSEUS-SOROS MANAGEMENT, LLC

Well, I guess the question I asked last night about who got to him with a checkbook, has been answered. Now, we also would seem to have answered the question of why the talking points in the book so closely match that of the Soros worker bees.  NewsBusters also have a writeup on this very point this morning:

Peter Osnos, who wrote Wednesday that he “worked very closely” with Scott McClellan on McClellan’s new book published by PublicAffairs which Osnos founded, is a liberal whose publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and the publisher of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. PublicAffairs has a roster of authors who are nearly all liberals and/or liberal-leaning mainstream media figures, including six books by far-left bank-roller George Soros. On Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, Ari Fleischer related that “Scott told me that his editor did ‘tweak,’ in Scott’s word, a lot of the writing, especially in the last few months.” In an “Eat the Press” blog entry Wednesday, Rachel Sklar asked Osnos: “Did you work directly on the book with McClellan? (Who was his editor?)” Osnos replied: “The editor was Lisa Kaufman and yes, I worked very closely with them.”

The obvious question now becomes, how much of this book is Soros and his worker bees and how much of this is McClellen. My take is most of it is the former, particularly given the interview I saw him on this morning, (NBC/Today). The man certainly appeared to be massively conflicted to me. I think based on what I saw, that he’s started to understand he’s made a deal with the devil, who got to him with big dollar signs.  Frankly, I have no sympathy for him.

Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.

His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

“We’ve taken Mark off the air pursuant to our contractual rights,” said Josh Krulewitz, the vice president for public relations at ESPN.

The decision comes less than a year after Madden signed a long-term contract. No decision has been made on who will fill Madden’s time slot.

At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:

“I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.

“I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”

So says the Post Gazette.

I want you to consider something….

Replace the name Kennedy with the name George W Bush, and recalculate.

If you still don’t think, deep in your heart, that ESPN’s response was the proper one, then you need to seriously consider why … on what basis… you think the punishment was just, or unjust. Trouble of course is, that ESPN’s reaction in such a situation would seem to be a large question mark in that scenario.

I’ve already remarked on two crashes yesterday. Apparently there was a third, while I was out of pocket:

NEWTON, Mass. -AP- Two commuter trains collided and derailed during the evening rush hour outside Boston on Wednesday, hurting several passengers and trapping and killing the operator of one train, according to published reports.

The father of Terrese Edmonds, an operator of one train, told the Boston Globe that his daughter died during the collision.

The crash came just hours after an elevated train derailed in Chicago, sending several people to hospitals in a wreck that officials quickly blamed on operator error.

Yeah, well that one in Chicago I have my doubts about, as I said yesterday.

But you know, I just got into it over at OTB the last few days with someone over the usual liberal mantra of small vehicles, mass transit, etc. I wonder how he’d react to my bringing this stuff up?

1952, Dwight David Eisenhower:

“I will go to Korea,”

Ike went to Korea.  The fighting stopped.

2008, Barack Hussien Obama, rejects John McCain’s proposal that they both go to Iran, From the BO campaign, via Jim Geraghty, National Review.

“John McCain’s proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer

As Geraghty notes, while BO is perfectly willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is not willing to meet with General David Petraeus.

Of course there is a difference between Ike and BO.  Ike wanted to end the Korean war, and he did.  In contrast, BO just wants to quit Iraq.  Ike wanted to know how to end the war.  BO doesn’t care if the war in Iraq ends or not.

Only two problems;

Courtesy Michele Malkin:

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he (Richard Clarke) had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book

Good question Scott.  Got an answer?

Addendum:(Bit)

An excellent  bit of digging by Michelle. It occurred to me earlier this evening as I read some of the reports that the press was busy ginning this thing up rather like the Clarke case back in 2004.  I think the answers are rather clear about why he’s decided to push this nonsense, now;

1. He’s looking at the rest of his life not going very far politically, and so decides to cash in on his experience. It’s all he has left.
2. If you’re going to sell a political book, the way to make the biggest splash is to tell the looney left exactly what they want to hear, which is they’ve been correct all along. It’s a surefire method to get it in the press, thereby maximizing sales.

One really must wonder; who got to him with the checkbook?

• Boeing is saying they expect the Oil Bubble to burst soon… basically echoing what I’ve been saying for several weeks. The Austrailians are saying it,Jordan Khan is saying it (And proving it with his charting) The Arabs are saying it… This bubble is about to burst. The only question is, how many will be hurt when it does? Mostly, the ones who weren’t selling oil short.
• I know I mentioned this one the other day, but this one just broke my heart. Personally, I won’t be praying too intensively for Maria. As Steinbeck once remarked, her path is already laid out for her. She’s got her job to do. She’ll be fine. This is a view not incompatible with those of us who believe that mortality is not the end… But what can be said about her brother who was driving the truck? What kind of personal hell must he be going through? It’s my guess that he can use all the good thoughts and prayers and support that he can get right now.
• I note with some amusement Karl at Protien Wisdom and George Packer,  over at The New Yorker, each in their turn flaying St Andrew the  Incontinent  What the Excitable one can’t figure out is he’s suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Well, perhaps he does know it, but can’t bring himself to admit it. Karl notes, and correctly:
  

  Careful readers — as opposed to those who take Andy seriously — will have noted that Sully “can’t see how domestic policy could become more statist and less responsible,” but “find[s] so much of Obama’s substance domestically to be anathema” that he “ha[s]n’t sat through a single Obama speech without ideologically wincing at something.”Sully “want[s] to see such a record punished with electoral defeat for fear they still don’t know what they did wrong.” Of course, George W. Bush is not up for punishment this year. Rather, it is Americans who do rather less well than Bush who will be on the receiving end of the policies that make Sully wince. And that’s before you consider that the crime of statist policies is to be punished with… more statist policies.

  Thing is, Sulivan doesn’t much care about additional statist policy so long as he can feel himself and his prejudice… his hatred… vindicated. This is what Sullivan, in the end (pardon the unintentional pun) has always been about; Personal vindication. This is critical to understanding Sullivan and his writings.

•  Yes, I’ve seen Mike Allen’s bit about Scott McClellan over at The Politico. Too early to comment much about it, past saying it’s a book clearly designed to cash in. You can always sell books by telling people what they want to hear…. particularly leftists.
• Radio Equalizer is reporting that Evan Montvel-Cohen, co-founder of Err America has finaly been arrested for his involvement Money laundering, theft, fraud, and more. A true leading leftist. Amsuing; Franken is portraying himself a victom of Cohen. Yeah, right, Al. Apparently in a choice between being labeled a moron or a crook, Franken chose ‘moron’.
• Obama’s gaffe the other day as regards Aushwitz strikes me as a clear-cut case of needing to be seen as someone not isolated from the Military, and it’s history. Oh, and of course he’s trying to establish a sympathetic angle with the Jewish vote.  It’s telling, though that the attempt ended as such a dismal failure, on both counts. First, and clearly, he can’t make a military connection at all. Secondly, if that’s the best he’s got for the Jews he’s in very serious trouble indeed. As a bonus, it becomes very clear that when he moves away from the prepared script, and tries to think for himself, he comes up with gems like this one. This is hardly the only time; we have a very well established pattern, that continues to develop in the same direction… He’s been giving the same speech with minor adjustments since day one, giving talks several times per day. Being in practice for public speaking, isn’t an issue…. not even close. Yet even minor divergence from the prepared script so as to play to the crowd, he reveals a scatterbrained side.
  Every.
  Single.
  Time.    Doesn’t that give anyone pause over what constitutes his thinking ability… his ability to think on his feet and keep his thoughts in line, while under pressure? If he can’t keep his act together under the relatively minor pressure of a freindly crowd who came to hear him, how will he fare under the pressure of the office of POTUS?

Hume, last night:

The group that spearheaded the successful effort to have polar bears listed as a threatened species has a blueprint for further action that could create ripples throughout the U.S. economy.

The Arizona Daily Star reports the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity wants to use the polar bear designation as a springboard to challenge offshore oil and gas leasing in Alaska, launch challenges to the licensing of coal-fired power plants all across the U.S. and oppose local government development plans in major cities.

How can they do this?

The endangered species act requires that all actions carried out by federal agencies be considered in light of their ramifications for habitat of threatened animals.

Meanwhile, Alaska Republican Governor Sarah Palin says she will sue to block the Bush administration from listing the polar bears as threatened. Palin points out that the bear population has dramatically increased over the past 30 years because of conservation.

If you will recall, I told you that crippling the US was what this was about… that the Polar bear was in fact the Camel’s nose. So now, just when we need the increased domestic output from our oil fields, along comes the global warming/animal rights crowd, to put a stop to it. Gee, what great Americans these are. And what can be said of the Administration for signing off on this nonsense?

Not a good day for Mass Transit, today.

Chicago’s Channel 5/WMAQ  is reporting there’s been a derailment on the elevated Green line. From the look of the pictures, it appears the second of four cars on this particular train ‘caught a point’ on a switch, one end of the car going one way, and the other, the other way, thus missing a turn. All cars are upright, but some two dozen passenger injuries are reported.

Update:(Bit) CBS is now reporting that the operator ran a light, and had over-ridden the saftey on the train. That and the physical evdience together suggest that the switch wasn’t locked into place correctly, which would explain both the red light the operator ran through, and the result. That scenario speaks to me of known problems with that switch.