Nightly Ramble:New Baby, New Job, New Attitude on Energy From the Democrats

• Congrats to the Confederate Yankee Bob Owens, and his wife Christine on the birth of a daughter on Thursday. By the way, guys… after some serious research, we now know what causes things like this: Beer.
• A nice Valentine’s day gift, for us here at Casa de Bit… A new job for me which I start Monday. Well, OK, Tuesday, since Monday’s a holiday.
• Glenn notes that some sanity is starting to creep into the mindset of the Democrats on Energy; Do I hear ANWR? About time. Now, tell me… where the heck were these proposals when the Republicans were trying to push ANWR through a few years ago for the same reasons? Once again Politics as usual.

•  

  Oh, speaking of Glenn and Energy….  Exactly so, Glenn. Verifrank has it right. What annoys me is you missed it. I’ll take it a step farther; The Volt is a response to government pressure, which has nothing to do with the marketplace. Indeed, government edicts usually fly in the face of the market, and against the interests of both the makers and consumers. The SUV was the automakers responding.. and correctly… to the market. The Volt is responding to government coercion. The latter, for all the effort and money being expended, won’t sell. And for the record, Man made Global warming IS a crock.

• You heard about the disruption of the Lantos memorial. But I’m willing to bet you don’t know what really happened. Michelle does. Does does Captain Ed who has some links you’ll want to look at… Blogging from folks who were there. Hindrocket says Congress isn’t serious about National Security. Well, it’s clear the Democrats aren’t, anyway. As for the rest, it’s a mixed bag, as usual. Hiding behind the memorial is lower than low, Democrats. But we’ve come to expect this.
• WLS/890 is reporting that there’s now 6 dead in that shooting in DeKalb. 16 wounded. (MSNBC now has it 7 and 15 and I’d not be shocked to see those numbers change for the worse again) Now, if one… just one… of the victims had a gun, there’d be a lot less victims. But then, you knew that, right? Our gun phobic society in action… in a never ending circle, our gun phobias themselves are responsible for more victims .
• OK, so Hillary Clinton wins New Mexico, in a squeaker. And that’s the state where a Clintonite is Governor. How close was it? Well, you tell ME… how long ago was New Mexico’s voting? It took this long? Not a particularly impressive situation.
• In all the complaints about Hillary Clinton… rather effective ones, given she’s looking like she’s going down in flames, a lot of folks have never come to grips with the idea that Barrack Obama isn’t any more or less qualified for the office of POTUS than SHE is.  Neither one has accomplished a damn thing for the country, in reality, and thereby any claims of being ‘experienced’ are lies at best. Neither one has a business history. So, in turn, that’s why the Democrats are now screaming about “Change”… Trust me… if they had an ounce of experience between them they’d still be screaming ‘experience”. But think about it; Neither has run a business.  Neither has accomplished anything in the world of politics that’s worth mentioning… except possibly for Hillary Clinton and then only if she’s been lying to us about the degree of involvement in the scandals of her Husband’s administration. Both of them want to grow government. So what have we got with a Clinton or Obama Presidency? Other than a disaster for America, I mean, of course… A Republican Romp at the mid-term elections for one thing, and most certainly a Democrat Presidency limited to one term.
• As predicted here the day after he quit the race, a week ago, Mitt Romney endorsed McCain, yesterday. Not much else he cold do, really, it was a matter of when. That’s particularly true if he’s planning a 2012 run. Captain Ed points out that:
  

  It’s good news for McCain. The people who wanted to rally around Romney as the alternative to McCain may feel more than a little betrayed, however. After the speech, there was a little rumbling about Mitt’s decision to clear the way for McCain, especially after Laura Ingraham gave him such a rousing introduction. Those will be few, though, especially if Romney winds up working with McCain on his general-election campaign as a voice for conservative policies.

  Well, I’m less than impressed with what amounts to politics as usual; Politics over Principle. That’s not how to change minds and unify the party. And that’s only the short term. The thing about Elephants is, they never forget. 2012 ain’t all that far off. There’s a price to be paid for this, and it’ll happen eventually, most likely in the form of rank and file mistrust between now and 2012.

• Look, Ann, I’ve never been impressed, except in the negative, with Eric Alterman, in any event. I have no particular interest in this pissing match, but I have to tell you that his name continuing to come up in these things does nothing but confirm my low opinion of the man. As I noted after his arrest last June, his trigger needs adjusting, for one thing. I gather that rapidly increasing paranoia is one of the symptoms of the use of a particular product.  Maybe?  Then again, the left IS getting more desperate as a whole, these days. Perhaps Alterman’s increasingly fragile temper is part of that, I dunno.
• Now, you”ll recall I took some heat a few days ago for suggesting that the followers of Che supported Obama for a reason…. that being they see Obama as advancing socialism. Apparently, now Daniel Ortega has given Obama his stamp of approval, as well. An odd confirmation of my original accusation, but it does ring very true.

“At a minimum, a head of state should have a head.”

Vladimir Putin, in reference to Mrs. Clinton, via Ben Smith, Politico.

Mark Halperin apparently is either engaged in pandering or is losing his ability to chose the correct words for a given situation.

Lewis is a universally respected, historic figure who is the first prominent Democrat to go from squarely in Clinton’s camp to Obama’s. The rationale he seemed to give to the New York Times strikes at the heart of the argument that has been circulating among many wavering, undecided superdelegates, and among those now in Clinton’s camp who are feeling pressure to switch. Floodgates could open. The timing could not be worse for Clinton. And those in the party and the press who want to write off her chances would be able to make a big deal about such a move. If Lewis breaks away, take whatever you thought Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination before and divide that number by as much as two – those would be the odds of her winning now.

First of all, I balk at the phrase “universally respected”. Indeed, I reject it outright. The way this is worded can only be the result of someone engaging in something other than fact. There may be whale droppings that are higher in the food chain than Lewis, but I doubt it. Which, to put some perspective on it, would place him just above the level of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The neighborhood I just placed Lewis, labels him clearly as just another race baiting huckster. And yes, the left likes that kind of individual, and arguably, Lewis does it well. But spare me the pretense of assuming any respect at all for the individual on my part or that of most of America.

Secondly, as regards his ability to pull people from the Clinton camp to the Obama camp, as he goes, there are those who will likely make an excuse for their desertion of Clinton involving Lewis’s name, but ultimately the reason that such people are leaving the Clinton camp is that Clinton is losing in her bid for the White House. This is pragmatism on multiple levels. Here’s two of them;

1: Nobody, in any situation, for the sake of their own image, likes to back a loser. Even Cubs fans. That’s number one.

2: Let’s be honest enough to suggest that the people who are currently leaving the Clinton camp would have left a long time ago, if they actually felt they had some place else to go.  The vindictive nature of Hillary Clinton and her long memory are legendary, particularly among Democratic Party circles. Supporting somebody other than Clinton, standing between Hillary Clinton and governmental power, when she stands any chance whatsoever of winning and thereby BEING empowered, can be fatal to one’s political career, or to one’s person as the number of bodies with mysterious deaths behind the Clintons will attest to..  Mrs. Clinton maintained her support amongst the Democrat players, until recently for that reason.; Fear. Once it started to look like she was losing, those players have nothing more to fear from retribution from an empowered Hillary Clinton.  As a direct result, Mr. Lewis is only one of several to have jumped ship recently, when the lead changed to Obama.

Suggesting that Lewis had a direct impact on that situation is little more than genuflecting to the race hucksters, a long-standing tradition amongst the American left these days.  Lewis really has nothing to do with the situation, but it serves the interest of party unity and pandering to black identity politics to say that he was empowered to bring people with him when he finally got off the stump.

Hoplophobes in Space:   Liberty Papers, reports on hoplophobia:

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station apparently have access to a gun.

Oh the horror! Then comes the letdown:

Religion of Peace:  Gateway Pundit, via Hot Air, reports on rioting in Denmark.

Another College Shooting:   Six dead in campus shooting.

A Reverend Al Shartpon protest march I’d pay to see:   Sharpton to march on DNC?   Go Al, go!

‘Rats flee Mrs. Clinton’s shinking ship:  David Espo:

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a fresh sign of trouble for Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of the former first lady’s congressional black supporters intends to vote for Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, and a second, more prominent lawmaker is openly discussing a possible switch.

Yes but what happens when you call AAA?    Submersable car.

James Joyner:

Between RealClearPolitics and Memeorandum, there must be a dozen articles this morning wondering if Barack Obama’s nomination is now a foregone conclusion, how Hillary Clinton managed to blow what seemed a sure thing, and how long Obama can get away with being the inspiring candidate of “hope” and “change.”

Perhaps the most novel observations come from Earl Ofari Hutchinson (via InstaPundit), who argues Obama looks so good only in comparison to Clinton.

The biggest beneficiary of the Hillary loathe has been Obama. Her campaign has been sufficiently subverted and sabotaged by the legions of Hillary haters to the point that it’s listing. If her campaign goes down, so will Obama’s Hillary firewall. The gloves will be off and it won’t be pretty.

[…]

His votes and views during his days in the Illinois Senate on taxes, abortion, civil liberties, civil rights, law enforcement and capital punishment have so far drawn little public attention, because of the media and a big chunk of the public’s obsession with nailing Hillary. But in a head to head match up with the likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Republicans and conservative interest groups will surgically dissect his state Senate votes and they will find much there to pound him on.

[…]

McCain and the GOP hit squads will go for the political jugular and lambaste him as an anti-police, anti-business, pro abortion, pro labor, pro-gun control, tax and spend liberal Democrat. Conservative interest groups will tar him as a liberal Democrat who will bend way over to pander to labor, minorities, and women. Obama’s record on civil liberties, civil rights, abortion, and spending will endear him to millions of voters, but not in the South and the heartland states.

Then there’s the personal dirty stuff. They’ll hammer him for his dealings with an indicted Chicago financier, for possible conflicts of interest in other financial dealings and legislative votes, and for his fuzzy, oftentimes contradictory, statements and actions on the Iraq War and terrorism. Then there’s the ultimate ploy: the race card. The GOP hit squads will dig, sift and comb through every inch of his personal life and poke through his voting record to find any hint of personal or political muck.

There’s much to this. Unlike the Republican race, which has been an ideological fight among different factions of the conservative coalition, the Clinton-Obama contest has been between people who largely agree with one another and the contrasts have been on style, experience, and differing visions of the 1990s Clinton legacy.

First of all James,I tend to agree with Charles Krauthammer on this one. I suspect that Obama’s appeal will outlast that of Hillary. he will manage to maintain the illusion until just past election Day, which is all the Democrats are ever interested in anyway.

The reason is simple, this entire contest between these two is a clash of cults of personality,  and Hillary Clinton’s personality is approximately as welcome as your average skunk, even by those who think she’s better qualified. There is those negatives, again.
I also tend to agree with Dr. Krauthammer that we’re in for a rude awakening if that day ever comes that we have Obama as President.

I am struck by the Earl Hutchinson comment that you reference that Obama only looks good in reference to Clinton.  I say that because it was just a couple of days ago that I was suggesting that John McCain only look good in reference and in comparison to the Democrats.  I suppose that this all boils down to the lesser of the evils, again.  Certainly, to some degree, it is always that.  Every election is selecting amongst a list of evils, since government itself is best considered as a necessary evil.  What disturbs me, is that our choices are becoming increasingly evil.  Even, unfortunately, the best remaining choices available to us.  And I wonder if we will ever ba able to stem that trend.

Coalition forces disrupt Special Groups criminal networks, detain two suspects

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 07:38 AM CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Feb. 12, 2008) â?? Coalition forces detained two suspected Special Groups criminals early today during operations in the Suwayrah area, south of Baghdad.

Ariel Alexovich, New York Times reports that Mrs. Clinton long ordeal is finally over: 

Hillary Rodham Clinton has been declared the winner of the New Mexico caucuses, nine days after the event. Mrs. Clinton edged out Barack Obama by 1,709 votes, party officials announced.
The delay in naming a winner was due to organizational difficulties at some precincts. Long lines and a ballot shortage forced some 17,000 voters to cast provisional ballots, which had to be hand counted.
Mrs. Clinton gains 14 delegates from New Mexico, compared to 12 for Mr. Obama.

At this rate, Mrs. Clinton should over take Mr. Obama, some time in the middle of his second term.
?

• So, now we see that Mike Huckabee has been eliminated from the race, numerically. The result of the Patomic Runoffs is exactly that; Huckabee has no chance.  Byron York wrote about this yesterday at NRO:
  

  The time is coming — probably just after the March 4 primary in Texas — when Huckabee, if he cannot produce any more victories, will leave the Republican presidential race.

  Even Huckabee isn’t THAT prideful. He’s admitted publicly he can’t make 1191. There can be only one reason he’s still in, at this point, and that’s leverage to position himself for a VP slot, or perhaps some other position in a possible John McCain cabinet, or as a 2012 runner. Of course, now that McCain has won the thing, the spineless Republicans in the House have endorsed John McCain. Their finger gauge is a little lacking, apparently. Pathetic.

• By the same token, Hillary Clinton is in serious trouble, and looks to be losing the Democrat runoff.  And the ‘rats have already started deserting the sinking ship. Word was hot and heavy on the wires yesterday that David Wilhelm, former Clinton advisor in the 92 campaign, had ‘gone over’ to Obama’s camp, and has now started persuading the Superdelegates (Of which he himself is one) toward Obama. In looking at the remaining states, and looking at the number of Delegates she’s going to need to win, it does not look good from Hillary Clinton’s perspective. She would need to get 70% of the votes in each of the remaining states, and she’s simply not polling that high.  Further, her poll numbers are dropping nationally. So, in reality, it’s all over but Hillary singing.
• Apparently, John Hawkins is with David on this kid in Colorado.  Frankly, I am, as well. Dumb.
• As David mentions earlier today, Maureen Dowd, whom nobody should take seriously anymore, argues yesterday that you can’t use Hillary Clinton as a test of how a woman would do in a presidential election because they’re too much Bill in her. She may have a point, but I would rather be focused on the reasons having nothing whatever to do with Bill. And frankly, I wonder how much of Bill was Hillary back in 92. Parting shot… Can you imagine MoDo making this argument if Obama wasn’t beating HRC today? I can’t either.
• They’ve ID’d the woman responsible for the Che flag in the Obama HQ. Got pictures of her with Obama, too.
• The President at William and Mary, isn’t President anymore. Good.  And, look… I do understand this stuff takes time, but the guy SHOULD have been history a year ago.
• To those of you who’ve written to say I oughta pick up Jonah‘s new book… you’re right, I should. I see by way of Glenn, that Doctor Sowell thinks so, too. And tha’s as good a reccomendation as any book can get, in my view. I think highly of the good Doctor, as long time readers of this blog will know.

An amusing article at Captain’s Quarters, today….

Susan Estrich either wants to build credibility as a satirist, or her latest column provides a long-overdue look in the mirror for Democrats. Detecting more a whiff of the so-called Bradley Effect in primaries where Barack Obama holds solid polling leads only to mysteriously fall short of Hillary Clinton, Estrich diagnoses a latent racism in her party.

No kidding!

But, the fact is that there is a long pattern of what we in California call the “Bradley problem” in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost at the ballot box. Did I mention that he was African-American?That was, according to the pollsters, the problem: about 10 percent of the electorate claimed that they were going to vote for him, and in many cases even told pollsters that they did, but they lied. …

Doug Wilder, who wasn’t elected to the Senate from Virginia, faced the same problem. We who are Democrats would like to believe that race is not a factor in the polling of our party members, but maybe we’re wrong.

No one doubts, or at least no one who is honest does, that both racism and sexism come into play as people decide between Clinton and Obama, but could it be that people are more willing to admit that they won’t vote for the woman than that they won’t vote for the black?

If this is happening even among us good Democrats, what does that say about Obama’s strength in a general election? Not pretty questions. Not a fair world.

I’m not sure why this comes as such a surprise. This is the party, after all, that routinely creates new victim classes along ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and income lines. Their candidates spend entire campaigns talking about “two Americas” — heck, on bad days, it could be fourteen or fifteen Americas.

Republicans argue for equality of treatment rather than creation of victim classes. The GOP’s factions may be pulling it apart, but the factions exist along policy lines, not ethnic divisions.

And there’s the meat of it; The sexual and racial identity politics that the Democrats have been making votes with for the last three generations, are both fostering and using the bigotry inherent among Democrats.  If they ever solved racism and sexism, they’d lose their power over voters. If they ever overcame those negatives among their voters, by actually changing minds, they’d not have the election power they once did… and they can’t afford to lose that power.

Do you suppose those groups will eventually wake up and recognize the fools they’ve been played for all these years, and recognize that the party that’s anti-minority is in fact the Democrats?

Nah.

Frankly, I don’t either.  At the least, though, we will have the joy of watching the cognitive dissonance and the resulting dance routines. The irony of all this is that it took Hillary Clinton and her excesses to reveal all of this.  Sadly, Susan Estrich and her discovery will be forgotten by day after tomorrow. Unless of course the Clintons start a smear campaign against her…. the content of which would be further revealing of this racism/sexism.

From Lanny Davis’s article in the Puffington Post:

We were also reminded that before these reforms, the “smoke-filled rooms” of Democratic Party leaders had led to the nomination and election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. Not bad.

And:

Mr. Davis, a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, served as a Maryland Democratic National Committeeman from 1980-1992, and served as Special Counsel to President Clinton from 1996-98.

President Stephenson, indeed!  So much for reality based politics.

Joyner has started to note what I predicted…

When I saw the headline “McCain Adviser Won’t Fight Obama,” I surmised that a challenge to duel was being declined. The real story is actually even more bizarre.

A top adviser to John McCain said Wednesday that he will step down from the Arizona senator’s presidential campaign if the presumed GOP nominee faces Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the general election.

“I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama,” said McCain adviser Mark McKinnon in an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered.” “I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign.”

McKinnon, who was a Democrat before serving as President Bush’s ad maker in 2000 and 2004, said that he plans to be behind McCain “100 percent” no matter who the Democratic nominee is. He explained, however, that if the Democrats nominate Obama, he will be supporting McCain “from the sidelines.”

It turns out, though, that McKinnon had gone on the record with this position repeatedly, giving interviews to this effec at least as early as last June so, presumably, McCain knew this already. Which, really, makes it even more strange.

Not really. Those of us who have been questioning the wisdom of McCain being the nominee… this is part of what we’ve been judging McCain’s candidacy on, all along. Arguments that have been rejected… but are now a bit harder to reject.

A few days ago, I made a point about the Obama Campaign worker, who posted a Che flag…. I said that she’d likely not be associating herself with such things if she figured Obama and Che were working opposite ends of the political spectrum.

I would point out that the same thing applies here; Clearly, McKinnon feels McCain and Obama are working in the same general neighborhood, or at least are not at odds with each other. Seems logical to aver also that he only came on with McCain for the purpose of defeating Clinton. Now that Clinton isn’t a threat, he goes back to his first choice.

I wonder how many supposedly Indy McCain followers were on McCain’s bandwagon because he was seen as the best deal liberals were going to get, assuming a Clinton nomination. How many will follow McKinnon’s suit?

Addendum: (Bit) John Hawkins has some thoughts on this

Hat tips: Zombietimes; Sister Toldjah.

Gee how did I ever live with Maureen Dowd behind the New York Times’s firewall?    How bad is Mrs. Clinton’s campaign going?    Even MoDo, NY Times, is distancing herself from Mrs. Clinton.

Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.

Funny if a conservative male  were to say that he for a woman president, but not for Mrs. Clinton as president, he would be, and has been, condemned a sexist.

Hat tip: Lucianne.

After action report, Rochester, NY:  WHEC-TV

“An extraordinary situation” and “something we’ve never seen before” – those just some of the comments from first responders to Sunday’s deadly 36-car pile-up on 390 near the airport.
 

Ladies and gentlemen:  well done.

Local hero:  The person whis actions prevented an even worse acccident has been identied.   The hero’s name is Chris Playford, Irondequoit, WHEC-TV:

What many people don’t know about the 36 car pile-up could have been worse, if not for the action of a good samaritan.Chris Playford of Irondequoit was headed southbound behind two tour busses when the crash happened.He then pulled over, got out of his car and began waving his arms frantically to warn other vehicles to slow down.

Playford:

.”I’m not a hero, I had to do what had to be done.”

Non-concur, doing what has to be done, at the risk to one’s own life, is simply what defines a hero.   A hero is a person who risks his life for a noble cause.   Chris Playford is such a hero.   Well done Chris.

New York State of mind:  Bob Ellis, ABC(AU)_ disses New York, via Mark Steyn, National Review:

Heath Ledger at 28, Dylan Thomas at 39, died of drugs mis-prescribed by New York doctors; John Hargreaves at 50, Peter Allen at 48 of AIDS caught in New York’s bath-houses; Peter Finch at 60 of heart-strain making a New York film. John Lennon was shot dead there; Russell Crowe, booked and shamed for throwing a phone at a clerk, all but lost his stardom there.

What is it about New York?

Because we can and should do better.

Mrs. Clinton:   She keeps telling us how tough she is and  how ready to lead she is.    Yet she whimps out o the tough issues, Andy McCarthy, National Review. 

Hillary Clinton was even worse.  She didn’t show up to vote.  This was the most important national security vote in her Senate career.  And, even though the campaign would not excuse her from doing her job in any event, the Potomac Primary was in the DC area.  McCain and Obama managed to get to the Hill without difficulty.  Not Clinton.  She has no excuse.  The craven decision not to vote – not to be accountable – was calculated … and this from the candidate who slammed Obama for ducking the tough votes as an Illinois legislator.

Mrs. Clinton wants us to believe that being nasty is synomous with being tough.   It is not.   Chris Playford isn’t nasty and Mrs. Clinton isn’t tough.

Gender Feminism:   Susan Faludi asks “Did 9/11 set back women’s progress?”   Ms Faludi, your answer is no.   Nine-Eleven set back the cause of gender feminism.   That what remained of gender feminism in the wake of Nina Burleigh.    Faludi needs to rid herself of the notion that gender feminists speak for all feminists, much less all women.

The United States Senate is working again, against the interests of the American people.

By a vote of 51 to 45, the Senate, while passing the authorization for intel gathering, added section 327 to the bill. Of course, 327 is all about ‘torture’.  This stuff is so far out of feild that even John McCain, who was making a lot of noise about this a couple years ago, voted against the bill.

THe Senate needs to grow a spine, here. It’s as I said the other night:

 Under the best of conditions, war isn’t pretty, it certainly isn’t compassionate, except by quick result. Therefore, the best war is won quickly. We can try to water it down by refusing to torture our enemies, as McCain wants us to do, but if we aren’t willing to do certain things to our enemies, especially when our enemies are willing to do those very things to us, then we as a nation are not ready for war. Sorry, we’re just not.

There are a lot of Americans who are alive today because of these activities. Do we we really want to trade the lives of these same Americans for the purpose of allowing pols to dance on the head of an interrogation law for political purposes?