Breakfast Scramble

Illegal alien kills, Fox News:

MINNEAPOLIS – A woman who authorities say is in the country illegally and using an alias was charged Friday with four counts of criminal vehicular homicide and two lesser charges in a school bus crash that killed four children.

A woman who identified herself as Alianiss Nunez Morales, 23, of Minneota, was driving a van that failed to stop at a stop sign Tuesday before hitting a bus carrying 28 students from Lakeview School, Lyon County Attorney Richard Maes said. The accident happened near the small town of Cottonwood, in southwestern Minnesota.

Send them home,  Keep them there.

Bio-Insanity:

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) — U.S. plans to replace 15 percent of gasoline consumption with crop-based fuels including ethanol are already leading to some unintended consequences as food prices and fertilizer costs increase.

Common sense tells us that ww should drill our oil and eat our food stuffs.    Using food stuffs for motor fuel is utterly insane.

John McCain on Fidel Castro, Reuters:

“I hope he has the opportunity to meet Karl Marx very soon,”

Sobeit, John.

• I’m going to have to post a really good quip someday. Meanwhile, your humble webmaster got himself another Honorable Mention at the OTB Caption Contest.
• I said it last night; I had my doubts that Sadr was going to break the suppsoed ‘cease fire’. First, he hasn’t the troops, and anyway, it’s not to his advantage to move now, anyway. Bruce points out that sources are saying he’s giving it another 6 months. I’ve no doubt that, too, will be extended, assuming he lives so long.
• Billy, sometimes, the obvious being said is what’s needed. And you did a fair enough job with it; I’ve no complaints.  And of course they’re more prone to offense. The problem is you’re pointing out fact to them. Their hero worship isn’t BASED on fact, but on pure emotion, and thereby when told they’re wrong, they will have a tendency to become more emotional. This case would seem to have been made rather well by Chris Matthews of all people, the other night, as Chronicled by ,John Hawkins. I mean, when even Chris Matthews, no bastion of logic, he…….(Chuckle) OK, now I’m slipping into the obvious.  Never mind.
• So, Hillary Clinton got booed off the stage again last night in Texas. You don’t suppose she got the message, do you? IN any event this stuff is getting predictable enough that I could pre-write it. Peraps it’s why I ahve no interest at Live-Blogging it. God bless the people who do… they perform a service.  Still, I find it a problem to type when I’m yawning. Hillary Did manage to get in a zinger at the end… but these came from the 92 campaign. Somehow, I doubt that’s going to sway many Democrat voters. They’re tryiong to attract younger voters… and most of the supporters they’re trying to gather up, were not out of diapers in 92 yet. I remember a ‘Trek TNG episode, where some folks who had died, been put through the cryogenic freezing process were found, repaired and revived. One of them, a music type, remakred as how he had new audiences to play for now, hundreds of years after his life supposedly ended… because nobody had ever heard his stuff before.  Is that what HillBilly is doing here repeating lines from 20 years gone? I dunno, but I do’t think it’s going to work, in any case. For one thing, the first time round, she didn’t have a national history. Now she does and the lines she’s spouting, good as they were then, arenot enough to overcome her negatives.
• Henke writes a post about writing a post about someone who wrote a blog post about someone who wrote a blog post about people who wrote blog posts about last nights debate. The odd part is, aside from having discovered a new source of power.. (The perpetual blog Posting machine)  he likely has stirred more interest in this mobius loop post, than the original debate did.

Heh… Check out Bob Geldoff…. Here”s Hume last night:

Rock singer and noted social activist Bob Geldof is praising President Bush for his work in delivering bills of dollars to fight disease and poverty in Africa – and ripping the media for ignoring it. The Washington Times reports Geldof has joined the president during his African trip, and is interviewing him for TIME Magazine.He says Mr. Bush – “has done more than any other president so far.”

He adds – “This is the triumph of American policy really. It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion. What’s in it for him? Absolutely nothing.”

This goes to what I said about John McCain last night… and it’s a point I’m quite sure will be made here repeatedly until November…  Bush was obviously doing the right thing, but it was also a calculated move to try and swing some of the centrist voters over to his side, and gather him some favorable press. It did neither. Like McCain is now finding out, the bottom line is, no matter what anyone does, the left is not going to be swayed by mere facts. Their devotion to particular people, and heir hatred for other particular people, is itself not based in facts, therefore such cannot be defeated by mere facts.

Ironic story of the day, Allah Pundit, Hot Air:

Helicopters carrying three senior U.S. senators made emergency landings Thursday in the mountains of Afghanistan because of a snowstorm.

Sens. John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel were aboard the aircraft. No one was injured, according a statement from Kerry’s office. The senators and their delegation returned to Bagram Air Base in a motor convoy, and have left for Turkey

Gee Senator Carry, do you think think are troops are rapists and losers?

Woman of the Year,  Maggie Brooks

Are the ‘rats as tired of the Clintons as the VSWR, Lorie Byrd:

Hillary Clinton’s recent primary losses to Barack Obama may say as much about Democrats’ desires to be done with the Clintons as they do about the cult of personality that is Obama.

Some say Hillary is now paying for the sins of her husband. I agree that may be true to some degree, but in many cases she was an accomplice to those sins and has only herself to blame. I have wondered for some time whether or not Americans would want another soap opera presidency and I think we are seeing the answer in the most recent primary vote counts. There are many reasons Democrats have to send the Clintons packing. Here are a few:

Barack Obama, not ready for prime time.    Obama made two unforced errors debating a person who can think on her feet,  Micheal Graham, National Review:

I can’t wait until Ralph Peters and the milblogs get ahold of Sen. Obama’s claim that American forces in Afghanistan are forced to capture the ammo they need to fight.

It’s the kind of ludicrous claim one expects to hear from a caller on late night talk radio, not from a potential president of the US.  Does Sen. Obama have ANYTHING to back this up?

Say what you will about anybody willing to land a fighter at night on an aircraft carrier, they have to able to think on their feet to merely survive.

Is our long national nightmare almost over?   Are the Clintons ready exit the stage and take the train back to Arkansas, via CNN:

Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about.

The Clintons have have traumatizing the nation since 1992 and Arkansas long before that.   It time Mrs. Clinton to resign from the Senate, and for both Clintons to retire back to Arkansas.

Word must have gone out that Harry Reid is in trouble in Washington and in his home state. The ground started moving out there yesterday. A fairly substantial 6.3 Richter. Some problems, but no deaths or major injuries to report.

“Xerox” isn’t a noun.

Addendum: (David L)

How can do many media sources get a one line quote so wrong?  Lots of practice I quess, via CNN:

And, you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox. And I just don’t think…

Xerox is a brand name, and a proper noun.  It has also become a common noun: to make a xerox.  However in the quote above, Mrs. Clinton used the word xerox as a verb.

Mrs. Clinton would have had a point had she pushed it.  Barack Obama does use words that don’t reflex his ideas.  For example, Obama quoted Martin Luther King, “I have a dream” with no evidence that he would ever support a color-blind America, one without affirmative action.

Update ][: (Bit) I suppose the word and it’s proper use to depend on those who invented it.  I erred in my original comments, the dictionary describes it as a verb. However, Xerox themselves go to great lengths to discourage this use, particularly of their employees.  Apparently, this has much to do with seeking to maintain control the use of the trademark. The verbification  of the word would seem to limt their ability to do so, since it becomes increasingly diffucult to maintain such control once it falls into common use, implying use of anyone’s similar system. I find on a grammar site:

I work in a legal department and here’s some information from my company’s intranet site: Trademarks are adjectives (part of speech that modifies a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying [from The American Heritage Dictionary]). NEVER use a trademark as a noun or verb. Also, don’t pluralize it, or use it in the possessive form. Improper use of a trademark can, over time, result in a finding of unintentional abandonment of the term — even if it is the public, rather than a trademark owner, who uses the trademark as a generic term. One way to ensure a trademark is used properly, is to follow each use with the generic noun for the product identified. Examples of proper use: Coke® soft drink, Kleenex® facial tissue, Xerox® photocopier, and FedEx® overnight courier service. Using these terms after the trademarks, makes the trademarks adjectives rather than nouns. The Xerox® company illustrates the proper use of their trademarked term in some of their ads: “When you use ‘Xerox’ the way you use ‘aspirin,’ we get a headache. There’s a new way to look at it. Boy, what a headache! And all because some of you may be using our name in a generic manner. Which could cause it to lose its trademark status the way the name ‘aspirin’ did years ago. So when you do use our name, please use it as an adjective to identify our products and services, e.g., Xerox copiers. Never as a verb: ‘to Xerox’ in place of ‘to copy,’ or as a noun: ‘Xeroxes’ in place of ‘copies.’ Thank you. Now, could you excuse us, we’ve got to lie down for a few minutes.” (advertisement, ABA Journal May 2004)

Boortz makes an interesting historical point yesterday:

You might find it interesting to know what our founding fathers thought of the idea of a democracy. There’s an incredible book out there titled “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Here’s your link if you might like to get a copy. The author, historian Joseph Ellis, tells us at the very beginning of this book just what our founding fathers thought of the idea of democracy. Here’s what they thought of democrats:

“… the term “democrat” originated as an epithet and referred to ‘one who
panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.'”

I know … it truly is amazing how that phrase pretty much describes the Democrats of the day.

Ouch.

Well, yeah… and Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and a few self-described populists, as well.  And that combo of people should tell us something…. assuming we’re paying attention.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen to thinly veiled a hit piece, as what the New York Times has unleased on John McCain. Since, in fact, the TANG forged documents.  No shock for this; I predicted that there would be some of this stuff showing up the momement he had the nomination locked up.  But there’s a part of this story that nobody seems to be addressing:

The myth that because McCain’s been busy licking the buttocks of Democrats for the last several years, they’re going to make nice around him, seems to have exploded and sunk off the coast of Electiondom. . And that’s really what’s happening, here… the very same people who McCain has been so intent on courting, are the same who are currently dumping this mound of feces on him, through the front page of the DNC house organ, the New York Times.

Now, remember, this is not going to be the last such incident. Trust me, they have more or they’d have held this story longer than they did…. and sprung it more toward election day.

In the meantime, the conservative base of the Republican party which McCain has spared no effort in alternatly insulting or ignoring, is silent on the whole deal as you might expect. That’s going to loom large in election return numbers, I think.

Good new from, Michelle Malkin:

The Duke lacrosse players are seeking justice. They deserve it:

Duke University will be sued by 38 members of the 2006 men’s lacrosse team who claim they suffered emotional distress when school officials failed to support them during a rape investigation, a spokesman for the players said.

In a perfect world, both Mike Nifong and Crystal Gail Mangum would be listed as defendents.

• Billy
  

  “I’ve always believed that he’s the easier candidate to beat in the Fall.”

  (McPhillips: “Are The Clintons Over?”)

  I think his general position is correct: these people won’t be “over” until we see their boxes getting dropped into the ground. She’ll be back as long as she can get someone to point a teevee camera at her.

  Yea, I do, too, really. And you’re right about Clinton being wherever there’s a camera…. but then again, that’s standard issue for any pol, isn’t it? I mean, look at Ron Paul as an example. The man’s been over since the first week of primaries. Yet he always manages to find a camera.

  I think it would be a toss-up whether McCain could be elected against Rodham.

  Well, again, agreed. Then again, as I’ve been saying here for weeks now, I consider the question of one being better than the other an open one, as well. Which, perhaps, is why the whole thing is so close in the first place; the American voter can’t very well tell the difference. Oh… and Billy, on another topic, who gets to decide what is a ‘real crime”? You? Or, Wendy? Or, BinLaden, perhaps? There’s the problem, you see. There seems a wide area of interpretation, even among those who think the government ill equipped to make such choices.

• Limbaugh makes a point I’ve been making right along; How the beep can John McCain complain about the liberalism of the Democratsm when he’s so liberal, himself?
  

  Senator McCain not piling up massive majorities over Huckabee, even though Huckabee is no longer in the race. Well, he’s not a serious candidate, anyway, cannot win the nomination. It appears to me, it seems that what Senator McCain has decided to do is forswear conservatives if he must and go after blue state voters. I mean those are the voters who helped secure him the nomination in the first place, and those are the voters that he feels loyal to. One thing, I was talking, I think it was last week, remember when the FISA bill came up in the Senate and McCain went and voted for the new restrictions and the immunity for the telecommunications companies, then made the point that Obama showed up and voted against it. Hillary didn’t show up. I said this is a golden opportunity for McCain to drive home the point that he’s the national security guy and they’re not. Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, found out why. When the whole thing was originally proposed, McCain sided with the Democrats on it. So he’s vulnerable to being charged with being a hypocrite.

  Precisely so. If he’s being warm and fuzzy with the liberals that brought him to the dance, he’s not going to be a popular boy among them come November, if he ever really was, in the first place.

• Which brings us to an example of how the left is going to dump on this guy, in spite of all the buttock licking he’s been doing for them. Here comes the Democrat Party house organ, the New York Times, bringing up Vicki Iseman…  a story they’ve been holding for just such an occasion as him winning the nomination. And of course, the leftie blogs are going viral with it. Are you getting the picture, yet?
• At American Thinker, Rick Moan is thinking that the oncoming deadline of the ceasefire called by Anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is going to create attacks on US troops. Sorry, Rick, I see nothing in the status of anything that suggests it would be to his advantage to start attacking us again.
• I’m getting really tired of this. God knows this blog has typos in it; I speak fluent typo. But Neal (And Web Wench) Moblie is what your car is. Mobil is what it eats. Get it right….
• Ya know, after such effort was displayed by the Democrats to keep Jesse Jackson out of the Democratic nomination, (As has been described here often enough) one wonders why he gives them the time of day, now.
• The Military is saying they got that errant spy satelite, yesterday. . They seem to be expending an awful lot of effort on something that stands less chance than Skylab of actually landing anywhere it’s going to cause any harm.  I figure that the toxic fuel story may or may not be correct, but in any event the bigger reason why it was so urgent to destroy this bird before it landed was possibility that the thing would fall into unfriendly hands and give up it’s secrets, both in terms of actual intel, and in terms of revealing what the thing could do. This thought would seem to be confirmed by China’s attitude… which is not unlike the growl of a dog slapped on the nose will a rolled up newspaper.  Now, for the record, I don’t disagree that the shoot down was a bad thing, in light of that kind of concern. But there is a bit more; If the thing had been missed by the rocket, would they tell us so? I think they might just want folks to think the thing had been destroyed so there’d be less effort in looking for it.  I dunno, maybe it’s the work of the bird itself that has me thinking cloak and dagger…. but it does fit. Oh… and about the debris causing problems with the Shuttle… a good concern… but do we have any info on the tracking of the debris? How much of it remains a concern, now, I wonder?

Bullseye:

HONOLULU (AP) – A U.S. Navy cruiser blasted a disabled spy satellite with a pinpoint missile strike that achieved the main mission of exploding a tank of toxic fuel 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean, defense officials said.

Children have rights to,  Maggie Gallagher:

If children have a right to know their own biological parents — a claim recognized in international human rights law and one to which I am deeply sympathetic — there is no good reason to limit this claim to the small number of women who accept the agonizing burden of giving life to children they cannot raise.

Far more children these days are deprived of knowledge of their origins by a totally difference process: artificial insemination. How can we possibly countenance placing burdens exclusively on women who give life and excuse totally the men whose sole contribution to their child was to “donate” into a little cup, usually for money?

The high cost of feel good laws  Dr. Walter E. Williams:

As of 2005, there were 90,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list that is expected to grow to 150,000 by 2015. The authors estimate that since 1990, close to 100,000 people have already died waiting for an organ and they estimate that by 2015, that number will have grown to 196,000. Such a toll doesn’t include all the pain and suffering of the waiting patient and his family.

Just say no, Citizen Link:

Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government has collected enough signatures to let voters decide on a law that provides special rights to people with gender-identity confusion and essentially creates co-ed bathrooms.

Enacted by the Montgomery County Council, the controversial law originally included an exemption for facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms. However, the wording was removed from the law because officials didn’t think it was necessary, a county spokesman told WorldNetDaily.

Alter is saying Obama is going to win because Hillary Clinton ran the worst campaign in history. Which of course, ignores that what was being sold was simply unsellable. I suspect she ran the best campaign she could.  People know her too well to build up any level of trust.

Mrs. Clinton’s last stand, via Byron York, National Review:

On a conference call, top strategist Mark Penn just told reporters that in the next two weeks Hillary Clinton will go after Barack Obama on the issue of who is better qualified to be commander-in-chief – and Penn suggested that Clinton would be a better commander of the nation’s armed forces than both Obama and John McCain. “She is the only person in this race who is both ready to be commander-in-chief and would end the Iraq war and start to bring troops home within 60 days, compared to both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain,” Penn told reporters.
 

John McCain, via Don Surber:

“The most important obligation of the next President is to protect Americans from the threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity itself. They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic zeal, which celebrates murder, has access to science, technology and mass communications, and is determined to acquire and use against us weapons of mass destruction. The institutions and doctrines we relied on in the Cold War are no longer adequate to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might obtain the world’s most terrifying weapons.”

Mrs. Clinton has no military experience.  No understanding of the military.   No respect for anything military, and in the eight years of the Clinton adminstraton they never once used our military to protect our nation’s vital national security interests.    Instead the Clintons attacked places like Haiti, Yugoslavia, Somalia and the Koresh compound.

• Honorable Mention in the OTB Caption Contest.
• No, folks… Now is not the time for The Cuban embargo to be removed. Not until Fidel Casto‘s POLICIES are. This is not about one man, however infamous. This is about the inflcition of the worst system of government ever to see light of day; Socialism. No wonder the left here in the states is so all fired up about the downfall of the embargo. Can’t be dissing socialism…
• No, Bruce, it’s decidedly not good news. And they’re not going to be able to keep the islamic radicals out of their government.
• Been doing smoe looking around as promised. There’s apparently quite a bit in the way of computers equipped with Blu-Ray drives already. Of course game systems already have them. You can even buy stand-alones to install in your current PC. Gonna have to wait a while though for Read-write disks in that format.  Here’s a blank that they want $37 for.  I mean, yeah, it’s got 50 gb of capacity, but yikes… $40? (And by the way, Amazon, I see you’re selling ‘used’ disks that are clearly labeled “Write Once”. How’s THAT work?
• When I made the comments the other night about how long Barrack Obama would last, based on the story of all the fainting going on at his rallies, I was being a little touge in cheek…suggesting that there’s something in the air. But you know the more I think about it, the more I understand that what’s really in the air is impossibly high expectations… expectations that simply cannot live up to the hype. What’s going to happen when his devoted followers, come to understand that?  Boortz yesterday had another view… suggesting that…
  

  I would love to get one of these fainting females and, after they’ve had a nice meal and a few deep breaths, ask them a few questions:

  • What does Obama stand for? And don’t say “hope and change.” Those are non-answers.
  • Can you tell me two specific policy initiatives Obama has proposed? See if you can get past national health care and higher taxes on the evil rich.
  • Name three Obama accomplishments — and being elected Senator doesn’t count .. there are 99 others in office right now who pulled that one off.

  What would you get from the fainters? They would sit there like brook trout, their mouths hanging open and gills gently flapping in the current while they tried to figure out an answer that wouldn’t make them appear more ignorant than they already do.

  And you know, he’s got something there. Still, one simply doesn’t get that wrapped up in a candidate without expecting some significant changes to occur based on government, either being reduced, or increased, both dramatically. In the case of Ronald Reagan (Who it should be noted was wildly popular but never had anyone faint at his rallies far as I know) it was the Reduction of government, because as he said “Government is the problem”. In the case of Obama, since tehse are Democrats we’re talking about, clearly we’d be talking also about the increase of governmet, and the attendant reduction of human rights, including the right of property… IE; increased taxes to pay for all that gets proposed to buy these votes. And by the way, Neal… You do know ‘Deram” is a old British Record Label, don’t you? (Chuckle)

• No real shocks in the Primary states, last night.  This one’s over, folks, in both parties. John McCain is essentially untouchable, now. So is Obama. How will Hillary act when she loses? We’re about to find out. She’s lost 10 states in a row,  now, and I suppose it’s going to be problematic to win enough delegates to even come close, even assuming she had a 50/50 chance ion each state. She doesn’t, which makes Obama the winner, save a miracle, or a few hanging chads.
• The ACLU’s challange to the Wiretap power lost in it’s bid to go to the Surpreme Court. The court rejected the ACLU’s challange to a lower court ruling that upheld the power. ACLU; What part of “NO” do you not understand?

Noted at the Babalu Blog this morning:

Michael Graham, blogging at The Natural Truth, brings us this disgusting but not surprising story about how CNN coached its anchors to treat the subject of fidel castro in an early morning email today.

I can now confirm independently that not only did such an email go out, here it is in its entirety:

From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance

Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Allison

The sender of this email is Allison Flexner whose current position at CNN is unknown. She was a producer and has been in Cuba according to this transcript from 2000.

Well, isn’t that special? It’s as I said last night; American socialists simply cannot stand any questioning of Castro’s status as a warm and wonderful human being. And of course it should be no shock that such “open mindedness ” prevails at CNN. Can’t let mere fact get in the way of our march toward socialism.

I’d say, given that CNN is at nearly the bottom of the ratings pile, being beaten to the bottom only by MSNBC, that most Americans understand that CNN is slanted left as this letter demonstrates quite well. But the point needs to be continuously hammered home.  And so, this post.