Kennedy, the Tumor, And the Brutal Truth

I’ve been considering what to write about Kennedy, for most of the afternoon. With one thing and another, my thoughts ended up being interrupted frequently enough to make writing extended thoughts impossible. So I jotted down a bunch of smaller notes, as I often do, thinking to make one larger post out of it with a little editing and polish. in looking at it, however, there is no real way to separate out some of these thoughts into one smooth post.  So I’ll just put the shorter pieces in the points and let it go at that.

• Based on the reports, he’s got at best 5 years, more likely, six months.  I’ve seen people go through brain conditions in their downward spiral.  Acquaintances, good friends, on a couple of occasions.  They were Alzheimer’s patients, and I suppose they prospect of losing your mind in that way is as daunting as the senator is dealing with just now.
• Already I think I can guarantee you that whoever gets the Democrat nomination is going to be playing to the sympathy vote come November.  I suspect and suppose that speeches are already being written to that effect. (Oh, wait… too late. -Bit) We are going to see the name Kennedy invoked more times between now and November than it has been in the last several years combined.
• Already, the usual leftist sites are making noises about how there is a lot of ugly comment making going on as regards the senator.  I’ve seen some of it, and I will tell you that the vast majority of it is so mild as to be unnoticeable, particularly when held in comparative light with what passes for free speech on the Democrat Underground, Kos, and so on.  Funny thing; we heard all of it, when Reagan died, not so many years ago. Why so sensitive, now, I wonder?  Of course, I know why.  It’s one of theirs. A telling point.
• I can’t help but wonder what Senator Kennedy thinks about his private health insurance, now.  of course, what is private health insurance doesn’t pick up the federal government will, meaning you and I will be paying for it regardless.  I suspect, however, that one comment that you won’t hear from the left is how only the rich get the kind of health care that Senator Kennedy is getting, between now and whenever.
• Of course nobody will mention that the man has overseen the downfall of the Kennedy political legacy, starting with getting his butt kicked out of Harvard back in ’51, and then ramping it up a few notches with the death of MaryJo Kopekne, and then losing to political lightweight Jimmy Carter of all people, then backing John Kerry.  (Seems to be a pattern with the Democrats, doesn’t it?)
• Nobody will mention that while Ted Kennedy proclaimed leadership in the green movement in America on the floor of the U.S. Senate.  And that while wanting to be remembered as a force in getting the country off foreign oil, I’m willing to bet there is no one of them was going to mention anything about the number of votes that Ted Kennedy made against n domestic drilling. ANWR, for example. I’m willing to bet that nobody is going to make mention of the wind farm that Ted Kennedy was instrumental in defeating off Cape Cod.  Nobody’s going to remember the diesel fuel dumping incident into those same waters, waters which he told everyone were pristine and sacred to him. one can understand why Kennedy is so revered; he’s a better liar than most of them.  Including Bill Clinton.
• Of course, there have been signs for some time that Kennedy has been losing it, bit by bit for some time. I’m sure will discover more as time goes on.  I really haven’t had a chance to look around much through the archives of stuff I’ve kept on hand for just this purpose.  Big waste of space, if I don’t use it now, I suppose.
• Make no mistake; I wish him well in his current physical troubles.  I would do so for anyone alive.  But do not expect me to mouth platitudes about how much good Ted Kennedy did for this country.  He didn’t.

The Sister is tracking the Kentucy and Oregon primaries.

There is no tactic to which Mrs. Clinton will not stoop.   Her use of plants is legendary.   Yet BO has surpassed even Mrs. Clinton.  Rather than planting a few ringers in the crowd, the BO campaigan planted the entire crowd.

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• I use Firefox here at Casa de Bit; there’s a copy on every computer I have online. I particularly like the web development tools and the plugins for WordPress. I gather from the rumor mill that Firefox is about ready to release version 3, assuming the reviews on the candidate go well. V3RC1 is on the site ready for download. There’s a few caveats for installing the RC, as there always is at the beta level, so be careful. By the way… if you’re a Firefox fan, as I am, you’ll love the wallpaper here.
• Doing some musical exploring? Got questions about a particular artist or group? Pandora seems a fair enough place to start your exploration. I’ve only had a few minutes with it, and am already impressed.
• Ever tried Freeware Planet? Do. It’s an arrow that has been in my quiver forever. So has Onlyfreewares.com
• President Bush’s message about how we have no problem with the people of Iran, just with it’s government, may be falling on ears that don’t understand. Something on the order of nine million Iranians can’t read or write.
• A third place at OTB’s Caption Contest
• Conservatism is ALWAYS and invariably facing an uphill battle, Sis. That’s because cowardice is easier than being brave, saying yes, so long as someone else is paying for it is easier than saying no, being a victim is far easier than being a leader, and it’s been 20 years since we had a party that understands that.
• One of the biggest problems in the online chat world, supposedly, is pedophiles. Enforcement involving these has taken a weird twist, however, as the authorities have discovered there are a large number of people besides themselves claiming online to be young girls. Mostly, these are men, trying to attract younger girls, but who end up unwittingly talking to other men claiming to be young girls. So, if you see a cop with a dazed look on his face, you now understand why.  Either that, or they were trying to figure out the Democrat primary system, by the numbers.
• Did you know that if we all started driving the Prius, we’d use more energy than before?
• You guys need to read this from Walter Williams on the Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax.
• For some reason I didn’t look at the hitcount totals for last weekend until today. Usually the traffic drops off a bit on weekends around here. Last weekend, it actually went UP. More people spending time at home?
• The one point that the Democrats who cite approval ratings seem to miss:
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• Pat Casey at RCP asks a question I’ve been asking here… well, forever… If McCain wants to govern like a Democrat, why have two parties?
• With Memorial day coming up, Scott Fybush reminds us of a bit of a celebration that’s been happening the last several years at what was once the single most important music radio station in the world… 77/WABC.  They did top 40 radio for 22 years, there, and no single radio station in the country ever had more listnership. And as Fybush points out, it’s unlikely there ever will be again, with digital delivery, satalite radio and whatnot. They’ve now been on talk radio for 25 years… (has it really been that long?) Apparently, WABC plans to drop it’s talk format for the weekend, doing airchecks and whatnot.  Check Scott’s site for some of the scheduling details.  Two more points, here; first of all, the new Harris DX50 transmitters they’ve got in down there in Lodi New Jersey for WBAC are cleaner and louder than ever, and as a result their signal has lost none of it’s potency.  ( Still, they lack some of the ‘personality’ the mighty GE BT50 had back in the day…. including the old spring reverb…  That GE was a cantankerous beast by comparison …Or even the personality of the old MW50, which is pretty much what I worked with back in the 80’s) Back in the day, the old tube type GE would take $5500/mo to power, even in early 60’s dollars.  By comparison, the newer MW50 they just replaced a couple years ago, would take under half that same power, even without allowing for inflation… and the newer systems, even less, for what amounts to a better signal each time.  Oh, well.) Anyway… Night time, you should be able to get them about anywhere in the northeast, .  and they’re streaming online, too, of course, if you’re out of the area. Alas, that most of their scheduled events are daytime, and their signal here… 400 miles away… is marginal during the day, and in my area gets covered by little WTOR… a little 1kw daytimer at Lewiston, NY, pointed at Toronto.  Still, WABC does run live oldies every Saturday night… and they sound just fabulous.
• Do you do work with IP networks? I do frequently enough to make subnetmask.info a worthwhile arrow in my quiver.

Desperate people do despite things. Mrs. Clinton is desperate. She craves the presidency but her campaign is running out time, money and primaries.  Mrs. Clinton is losing and she knows it.

Hence Clinton operative, Larry Johnson is attempting to convince Barack Obama that an explosive video tape of his Bitter Half, Michelle, exists.   Johnson is trying to spin two yarns.  One that this imaginary video exists, and two, that the evil Karl Rove has it:

But the real reason for Obama’s extraordinary freakout is that he fears the release of the videotape, reported here, of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church railing against “whitey.” And we don’t mean Whitey Ford. Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I’ve also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I’m told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It’s a ticking time bomb.

Jim Geraghty, National Review, is skeptical of the tape:

Also, if this speech really occurred and this video really existed, wouldn‘t the chain of custody of that tape make it more likely to end up in the hands of a Hillary supporter than a Republican? Presumably, whoever has the tape knows how devastating it could be to Obama‘s chances. Would whoever recorded it or archived it give it to the Republicans, but not to Hillary‘s people? Again, this doesn‘t completely rule out the rumor being true, but it‘s a reason for skepticism.

A.J. Strata, Strata-sphere,  is rather sleptical of Johnson:

Larry Johnson is wild with conspiracy theories, but he also may be on to something (though I seriously doubt his version of things – the man is a professional liar for hire).  Recently he hinted at a GOP held tape of Michelle Obama railing askepticalgainst Whitey inside Rev Wright’s Trinity Church (something believable I guess).  Today he notes Obama’s run to defend his wife against the GOP attack machine is because Obama knows about the tape and its contents

I suspect that Johnson has about as many contacts to Karl Rove as I do.

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Well, it’s not a stroke, because……

BOSTON -(AP)- A cancerous brain tumor caused the seizure Sen. Edward M. Kennedy suffered over the weekend, doctors said Tuesday in a grim diagnosis for one of American politics’ most enduring figures.

Yeah, I kinda figured it would come to something like this, once they ruled out a stroke, but refused to say what it WAS. If I’m not much mistaken, an examiniation of the brain incidental to a stroke would have revealed indications of other brain abnormalities, and certainly the tumor.

I’ll withhold comment on this for a while. But don’t ask me to be overly filled with symapthy.

For every action, there’s someone trying to make you feel guilty about it.

What do you know… the study shows us the science does not link urricanes to man-made ‘global warming’. (Bolding is my own-Bit)

WASHINGTON -(AP)- Global warming isn’t to blame for the recent jump in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.

In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

 Yeah, if the story isn’t simply ignored.  Why would they do that? Becaise it doesn’t mesh with the meme that provides the enviro-whack-jobs their power over us.

Paul Krugman (Idiot, first order) travels to Berlin and notes that there are some differences between Berlin and Atlanta:

To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping. It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

[…]

Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.

Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

And that of course is Krugman’s most fervent hope, that the socialism that so dominates that region of the world will soemhow become the way of life here.  There are of course a few differences that Krugman doesn’t bother telling us about in his peice:

1. Berlin had the distinct advanatge, at least from Krugman’s view, of having the snot bombed out of it by Allied bombers in the 1940’s. Now, of course balancing that is the idea that if Krugman gets his way, and Barack Obama manages to attain the White House, there’s quite a number of Ilamic terrorists who will gladly accomidate Krugman’s wishes.  Leveling places like Atlanta won’t be the problem Berlin was for the Allies, given the addtional power of the atom.
2. Because of that bombing, Germans were able to forced to rebuild quite literally from their underground up. 
3. Nor was was the ecoonomy ready to support personal transportation at that stage… Germany back in those days amounted to a nation of serfs. Sorry, but there it is.  So, the only option was what the poor have invariably relied on; Governmentally provided mass transport. Such has beocme engrained in their culture. I don’t see this as a good ting.
4. Has Krugman noticed the number of people leaving Germany the last 20 years or so? Biggest reasons listed for voting with their feet? Taxes, and regulations. Such as are required for example to keep people living in the cities. Were are they moving?  Stats indicate they’re moving to American metros… like Atlanta, for example.
5. The link between higher density living and personal danger is far less of fantasy than Krugman makes it. It is in fact why crime rates in the cities remain as high as they do all over the world, not just in the non-socialist west.  And Krugman’s hinting at racism not withstanding, race isn’t the issue, if we are to take the population demograohic data at face value, in a comparison of the burbs to the cities. Blacks have been flying out of the cities as well. Hasn’t he noticed? Maybe something other than racism is at work?  Like, crime created , for example.
6. Funny how the world Krugman aspires to is the world that was set as a target by the UN not so very long back… one where everyone lives in the cities where they are easily controled, and Americans owning personal transportation is a rarity, reserved for the rich and politically powerful. Like, for example, Krugman. (Ever note how they never actually live in the misbegotten world they insist on for us peons?)
7. There’s an issue of scale, here. Comparing Germany and the United States in terms of scale is like comparing a Pomeranian with a Blue Whale.

All this is, is Krugman engaging in something we’ve seen enough from him before to make it totally predictable; Socialist Utopianism.  Make no mistake; this bit of Krugman’s is of a peice with Obama:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

I’m telling you, folks; these people are going to subject us to every ‘international body’ under the sun, to make sure what used to be our own individual chocies to Europian socialist sensibilities. Questions like Where will I live, what will I eat, what do I drive, how warm or cold should my house be, will all be answered by the world government.  What a wonderful world these people have planned fo us.

Joyner has more.

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In the United States, a pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes. Yet there is no congressional investigation into this obscene profit margin. Apparently, there are more taxes to be made on oil refiners than with potato chips.

I’ve been telling you for months, now, that the Democrat primary was a contest between racism and sexism. Well, the racists are winning, and the sexists are pissed…

Last week’s endorsement of Obama by the abortion rights group NARAL has prompted a flurry of criticism by feminists upset with the organization for turning its back on Hillary Clinton. Particularly upset are leaders of the state chapters who were not consulted before the national board’s announcement.

New York NARAL chapter head Kelli Conlin tells The Politico newspaper the move created a firestorm, mystifying everyone — and prompting concerns about alienating NARAL’s donor base. At one point there were more than 3,000 comments on NARAL’s Web site — most negative. Even Obama supporters profess unhappiness with the endorsement.

Conlin says, “The supporters of Obama that I know on our board and in our membership thought it was ill-timed and ill-advised and really antithetical to people coming together in common purpose to beat John McCain.”

That’s Britt Hume last night.

Leaving aside the ethics involving abortion, (On which David and I agree, and on which we can doubtless both expound for quite a while)… does NARAL really consider that Obama will be less of a supporter of abortion than Hillary Clinton?  No? Then why all the upset among them? Can it be that it’s as I said earlier… that they are sexist?

Yesterday, I pointed out that there was a major shift in Democrat talking points over Iran and it’s threat to the west.

Today, I note something else… that perhaps even the Democrats have not noted.

For years, now, we’ve been told that we should be talking to Iran… negotiating.

Well, first, I echo what John Bolton said over the weekend:

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the “what can we lose?” mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.

When the U.S. negotiates with “terrorists and radicals,” it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.

Moreover, negotiations – especially those “without precondition” as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush’s reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.

There’s an aspect here which Bolton passes by a little too quickly, in the first para of the clip… the concept that negotiation is a tool.

Think, now; To what end are we using that tool? What would we seek?  Iran is making no bones about what it wants; The destruction of the ‘stinking corpse” of Israel, and the establishment of a world-wide caliphate.  Since both those goals are totally unacceptable, will someone please tell me what the hell we’re supposed to negotiate?  What could we possibly negotiate away so as to move Iran (And lest we forget, others) off that often stated goal? Is what we might (Or might not) gain, worth the risk of giving Iran’s Islamic regime, legitimacy, toward their stated goal?

That point made, let’s also point out that our Iran policy has almost exactly been what former presidential candidate John Kerry promised he would do back in ’04. containment. Bush’s answer to Iraq and in Afghanistan, was to go in, and deal with the situation. The Democrats, universally want containment and negotiation to be the policy, (Though just what we are to negotiate is as I say, undefined, at best) So we have done with Iran thusfar.  So it is that Iraq’s situation even by Nancy Pelosi’s lights over the weekend, is improving by leaps and bounds, and Iran is by Obama’s lights, still a serious threat.

• My irony meter is melting. Kos is screaming about hate being directed at him. Amazing proof of what I’ve said in these spaces for years now; It’s not that you hate someone, but whom you hate that they object to. Think about it; What he’s complaining about is that someone’s using Kos-like tactics on Kos himself.
• For added heat on the Irony meter, consider the picture of that drooling moron, Tom Harkin, suggesting McCain is ‘too military’. Apparently, he wants us to think he slept through John Kerry‘s “Reporting for Duty” shtick, and that he didn’t notice the paperwork where Kerry had his middle name changed to “Served in Vietnam”.
• Heh. Ya know, I’ve really got to get Photoshop cranked up.
• Got CLOBBERED with traffic from StumbleUpon.com on Friday. Someone apparently found my take on Obama interesting, and clicked on it, resulting in several hundred hits here. Nice when it happens, but I’ll tell you that it’s been so long since I even tried that site, I’d forgotten I had a membership there.
• In watching Obama and Clinton these days, one gets the decided impression that liberal politics in general means spending millions of dollars of your own money, along with millions of dollars of other people’s money as well, trying to create the impression that the rich are evil, and that you’re going to tax the snot out of those evil rich people, and money is not what you’re about. That obvious conflict being ignored, you then need to add to it by projecting the image from the back of your limo or in your chartered jet, that you’re just another copy of Joe Average, and that you share the pain of the working man, even though you’ve never held a real job in your life…  For the most part, they get away with it because for the most part their supporters have not clue one about money, or irony, or history… or much of anything else, for that matter.  It’s a little discouraging to those of us out here in the real world.
• Many congrats to radio buddy Scott Fybush, over at NERW, who reports another baby in the house. Mother and baby doing fine, father a ittle freaked. (Sitrep normal) He’s posted a cute photo.
• Obviously, I think there’s too much being made of Kevin James, and his video foulup of the other night. I would expect the ironically named “Think Progress” to be trying to make what it can out of it. (Ironic because “Think Progress” is neither_) Trust me; I’ve been there… and even after 20 years behind a mike on the radio and in public speaking, the Cameras and the lights are enough to screw with anyone’s mind. I have seen a lot of the most talented and smart people I’ve ever known, freeze up under those conditions. I’ll also point out that some of the biggest idiots I’ve ever met are some of the smoothest behind the mike I’ve ever seen.  Let’s get some of the “think Progress” numbnuts on the tube, and watch ’em freeze up like pudding pops. Maybe then after they make their excuses that they froze up, we can get to something real.
• A White valedictorian at Morehouse? There’s a lot to be said for this as an indicator of the lack of racial progress. We’ve had black valedictorians at ostensibly WHITE schools for literally hundreds of years.
• Look, Ron, the problem you write of here was, and remains, far deeper than the AP. That’s why the AP disappearing didn’t help. it took the demise of the AP for us to scratch the surface of the thing. The problem is socialism, disguised as liberalism.
• Speaking of socialism, disguised as liberalism… Has anyone noticed what the Canadians are doing with the internet? They’ve always been the canary in the coal mine. I hate to tell you this, but that canary isn’t looking too healthy just now.
• Why is Goldman trying to drive up the price of oil with it’s over-hyped projections? Could it have something to do with their involvement with Soros? Bet on it.
• After being caught, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick suddenly values his own employees privacy. Essentially, he’s trying to stop evidence against him from being admitted. Funny, how that works. Why is this guy still in office? Why is he not in jail? One question, however seems to have been answered; How Detroit has devolved into the open-trench sewer that it has.
• New server here over the weekend. Put up web server, internal here at Casa de Bit. Hope it’ll help with design considerations for the blog. Not much of a server, really. 1GHz,1GB, a couple 80 GB drives. Still, it gives me the development space I’ve been lacking so it’s a positive move.
• Here’s a clue you morons… when you steal cables, make sure they’re not ‘live’. What would they have gotten for the wire at a scrap dealer? $10 bucks? I’m willing to bet the fillings they melted were worth a bit more. Guess who they voted for in 06? (Shake of the head)
• Rain over the weekend so my work on the truck was a little limited. Did manage to get it clean, but that got fouled by my driving into work this morning. Figures.
• OK, despite the Microsoft buyout not going through, Yahoo is now making noises about an alliance with Google? It gets better; too. Apparently Microsoft is still milling over a buyout.
• Ya know this case of the Olympian sprinter double leg amputee is amazingly similar to the Casey Martin case. One wonders just how the ADA comes into play with the IOC. Make for an interesting court case, that would.
• Have I mentioned how much I miss SacredCowBurgers.com? Strange Cosmos has apparently picked up all the stuff from that site. A timely example:

Obama also said that Kentucky Democrats are fools who let themselves get pumped full of false rumors by Fox News, or words to that effect. But he’ll rally them in the fall

Mickey Kaus:Salon,.

Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg, National Review.

BO artfully blends the bad ideas of the last to ‘rat moninees, Al Gore and John Kerry.   First BO buys into Gore’s stupid theory of anthropogenic gobal warming,  AFP:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times”

There is a name for not having enough food to eat.  It is called hunger.  Yet in this land of plentiful food and highly productive famers, BO proposes national hunger as policy.

Further, taking a page from John Kerry, BO suggests that our American lifestyle needs to pass some sort Kerry like global test:

“[A]nd then just expect that other countries are going to say Ok.

Millionaires who live in mansions should not be telling the American voter that has to turn down his thermostat and have his children go hungry.   This nation has plenty of food and  oil reserves.  Yet for some strange reason, BO does want the American people to have ample access to either. 

Senator Obama, national hunger is not an acceptable policy.    

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