Roger Clemens Fires Brushback

Roger Clemens compiled a life time record of 354 wins to 184 losses.  You don’t win that many ballgames without being competitive.  Well Clemens may be retired, but he is still competitive.  Clemens have filed a defamation lawsuit against his accuser Brian McNamee, and by extension George Mitchell.  Lester Munson, ESPN:

The lawsuit also accuses McNamee in dramatic terms of changing his story to federal investigators and to Mitchell. Clemens calls McNamee’s decision to tell what he thinks is the truth a “recantation,” and suggests that it came only after threats of jail and a “cold war era interrogation.”

Roger can still bring the heat, and he is.

Hat Tip photo: Boston.com.

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After many weeks on hold, I’m re-starting the Nightly Ramble. Reasons are many but the bottom line is that there are a lot of subjects I want to touch on but don’t want to write it all out… I’d rather just touch on the points and let you do some research. The Ramble is a great platform for that stuff.  So….

• Reynolds has been spending time at the CES. Great fun, but who has the money for all this stuff? Ummm… besides Glenn, of course.
• Lt Good over at Jawa asks “What Happened To All The Global Warming?”Maybe the trick was getting Gore out of the area of Washington.
• In the same place, he notes The Creeping Totalitarianism of Environmentalism Well, yeah.
• Hawkins has On The Nature Of John McCain. About time someone did. Remember “Shamnasty”? With McCain in the WH it won’t be a memory.
• Speaking of John, if there was ever any doubt in your mind that liberals are anti-human, check this quote from Err America by way of RWN
• Speaking of “Shamnasty”, Michelle points out that the study groups are pointing to that and “Washington is broken” as the memes the conservatives should be going with… both memes which are being rejected by McCain, the current front-running in NH.
• As if to link to my comments earlier this morning as regards “Change” Michelle says: “I’d like to see what happens to the doo-hickey ratings whenever one of the candidates-GOP or Dem-says “Change.””. Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath, Michelle. Remember where Luntz is getting his money from.
• Have you checked out Page Nine of late? You should.
• One reason we love Thompson, from KJL at The Corner: (Talking about Romney, while he and Huck argued over who was the most Reaganesque)“In 2003, the Governor refused to endorse the Bush tax cuts, earning the praise of Massachusetts liberal congressman Barney Frank.” Huckabee didn’t get off Scot free, either; Rich Lowry: ‘“You Make Up Facts Faster Than You Talk”Nice Romney line, and he asks—firmly, but not unpleasantly—a question that Huck couldn’t answer about the $500 million net tax increase in Arkansas.’
  
• You know, at some point Republicans…. real Republicans, are going to get the idea that the front runners, aren’t.

Mrs. Clinton, as quoted by Ben Smith, Politico:

“It’s not easy.”

Did B.J. ever promise you it would be easy?

Funny Mrs. Clinton, just a mere week ago, you tried to sell Iowa a bill of goods promising all these easy sounding changes all as of “Day One:”

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Now this what a President should sound like:

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Fred not promising anybody a Rose Garden, nor is he expecting one.

Hat Tips: Hot Air, Memeorandum

Addendum:

Seperate bedrooms, separate homes and maybe even separate planets.  Jake Tapper, ABC News is attributing this to B.J. Clinton:

“I go to Nelson Mandela’s birthday party every year and we’re still very close. I believe if Yitzhak Rabin had not been murdered in 1995 we would have peace in the Middle East. I loved him as much as anyone I’ve ever known.

“But if you said to me today, ‘I’m gonna give you one last job for your country — go and do this — but it’s hazardous and you may not get out with life and limb intact and you have to do it alone except I’ll let you take one other person,’ and I had to pick one person whom I knew who would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions under pressure and would never forget what the purpose of being there was, I would pick Hillary of the people I’ve known and I would never even think about it. It would be an easy choice.”

Mrs. Clinton is on the verge of tears and her husband is telling how tough she is.  Sure B.J.  It has gotten to the point that B.J. doesn’t even know enough about his own wife to be able to tell a plausible lie.

I’m not sure what to make of this:

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was her own fault, the country’s president, Pervez Musharraf, said in an interview that aired Sunday on U.S. television.

“For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone — nobody else. Responsibility is hers,” the former general told CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Bhutto was killed December 27 in Rawalpindi, south of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, while she was standing in an armored moving car after rallying supporters for now-postponed parliamentary elections. Her head was above the roof and unprotected at the time of the attack.

The cause of her death is not clear: a bomber blew himself up near Bhutto’s limousine and videotape showed a gunman present, though no autopsy has been carried out.

Asked if Bhutto could have been shot, Musharraf said, “Yes, absolutely, yes. Possibility.” He has said he welcomes an international investigation.

Even my wife, a non-political person if there ever was one, noted that the action was kinda stupid. Still, that’s the way those seeking support work,They maintain visibility in crowds… and it was a vulnerability that the bombers depended on.

As to  Pervez Musharraf having any connection to her death, frankly I highly doubt it. I suspect his protests of innocence are genuine. Were they otherwise, they would certainly be more concrete. Liars, in my experience, usually have the best excuses…. and these are not particularly good.

Byran Preston, Hot Air, posts a most interesting video.

Point of interest one, Morris assets the Clinton’s, B.J. and Mrs. use race to win elections, but somehow neither is racist.  Sure.  Your check is in the mail.

Point two, after Morris talks of B.J.’s Sister Souljah moment, Alan Colmes expressed the opinion that B.J.’s attack was just spontaneous.  Yeah And I’ll still respect you in the morning.

I asked earlier this morning, when we might see some of the expectation lowering dance being done by Hillary Clinton. The answer to that question came somewhat faster than I expected, if the rumor mill is any guide… and with her, it can never be discounted out of hand. Blue Crab Blvd says:

Drudge has the big, raging headline: TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGNS. I rather suspect that this is a ploy – likely by the Clinton campaign itself.

Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!

“She can’t take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. “If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn’t want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats.”

Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary “could soon be out.”

“Her money is going to dry up,” Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.

That’s twice the money problems rumor has surfaced just today. But James Carville is mentioned in the story as well. This story reeks of Carville and his media manipulation.

(Chuckle)

Yeah, I can see his fine hand in this, too. But think; Carville wouldn’t pull something this outlandish unless there was a serious need. Is this expectation control gone wild, I wonder?

More, Memeorandum

John Hawkins, Right Wing News, has his list of the most annoying liberals of the year, and Mrs. Pelosi is only number four.    John’s list is studded wth quotes and videos, including my favorite Fred video.

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum.

You’ll forgive me, but I find it hard to take seriously, calls for sanity from someone flying the flag of John Edwards…. or just about any Democrat these days, for that matter.

Here is a reminder of why Bob Shrum is a highly paid political advisor, from the New York Daily-News:

The Clinton industry, encrusted with the beneficiaries and acolytes of the first and probably only Clinton presidency, has turned Hillary into a product whose sell-by date has passed. In a year of change, she has been positioned as the establishment candidate. The relentless appeal to “experience” reinforces that – and too often elides into a dubious attempt to take credit for some of Bill’s accomplishments

Here is evidence of why Shrum’s has s history is backing losers:

So it’s a long shot, with one and only one possible road to recovery: Let Hillary be Hillary. Throw away the product packaging – those poll-tested small-bites of policy – and set out a big case about what she wants to do in the next four years, not what she has done for the past 35

Mrs. Clinton’s thirty-five years of experience have yielded zero accomplishments, aside from a one time run in cattle futures and a long term run managing bimbo eruptions.   Sure let Shrillary be Shrillary. 

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum

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I’m going to pass along some extended quotes that caught my eye over the weekend.

During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today nobody can find in them any “social values” whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influence. There are such “social values” today in Europe, America, and Australia only because during those thousand years the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do – that is, to beat back the Moslem invader. — Teddy Roosevelt.

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The Belgian scholar, Henri Pirenne, attempted to explain the reasons for this decline. In his book, “Mohammed and Charlemagne,” Pirenne says it was not the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire that brought civilization to a halt by the late seventh century. According to Pirenne, “the Germanic invasions destroyed neither the Mediterranean unity of the ancient world, nor what may be regarded as the essential features of the Roman culture as it still existed in the 5th century. …” The destruction, he argued, came from another direction — from Islam, which emerged out of Arabia in the seventh century, stopping European trade in its tracks by suddenly taking control of the Mediterranean. This disruption resulted in near-total economic collapse in the West. “The West was blockaded,” wrote Pirenne, “and forced to live upon its own resources.”

As history records, Western Europe fought back against Islam and eventually recovered control of the Mediterranean.

Looking back on 10 centuries of progress, we need to realize that no law of history guaranteed that Charles Martel would stem the Islamic Juggernaut in 732, stabilizing the defensive position of the West. If the soldiers of the Frankish kingdom had failed at the crucial moment, the West might have ceased to exist. —J.R Nyquist

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The point of my talk — based on my new book, “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization” — was to explain why perpetual adolescence is not just a cultural drag, but also dangerous to our way of life. I argued that the leveling of adult authority over the past half century or so was accompanied by a leveling of cultural authority. This brought on the age of multiculturalism, a time when Western Civ (like the adult) no longer occupies its old pinnacle atop the hierarchy of cultures. The multiculti conception of equally valuable cultures (except for the West, which is deemed the pits) depends on a strenuous non-judgmentalism. This non-judgmentalism expresses itself in a self-censoring adherence to political correctness. Such non-judgmentalism, such PC self-censorship, is infantilizing because it requires us to suppress our faculties of analysis and judgment.

Case in point: Our society’s refusal to analyze and judge the anti-Western teachings of mainstream Islam for fear of giving offense to the grandees of PC, or to Muslims, or both. This refusal, I maintained, is a brewing civilizational crisis.

Having made ourselves into a self-censoring society, I explained to the students at tea, we now find ourselves confronting an Islamic system that demands such censorship as a point of law. Look what happened to Silvio Berlusconi when, as prime minister of Italy after 9/11, he mounted a heartfelt defense of Western civilization for having enshrined liberty, freedom of conscience, equality before the law and the like — which, he also pointed out, Islam most certainly did not.

The voluble Italian was dumped upon by the world, Western and Islamic. He swiftly recanted to satisfy both the censoring dictates of PC, which outlaws non-Western critiques, and the censoring dictates of Islam, which outlaws criticism of Islam. Berlusconi’s example shows how easily an adolescent, PC society can slip under Islamic law into the hush of dhimmitude.— Diana West

The Politico is saying that Mitt Romney is “Dialing down expecations…. hard”.

Mitt Romney, a dominant favorite in New Hampshire just weeks ago, said Sunday that a “close second” to Arizona Sen. John McCain would be a significant feat on Tuesday.

The almost frantic downsizing of expectations for the former Massachusetts governor came as the candidate and his staff are publicly and privately preparing to explain away what would be a disheartening loss and shift to a last-ditch strategy predicated on his ability to outlast and outspend his rivals, according to sources inside the campaign.

That’s as good an early admission  of defeat as I’ve ever seen. If only it wasn’t to McCain.

One wonders when that same dance isn’t going to be played by Hillary Clinton, who now shows around 13 points behind Obama in NH.

Yeah, that’s what I said.  Weird collection. It’s from an outfit called “World Wide Fred”

No, I’m not getting anything for the mention; it just struck me as interesting.  BBCT: SimpleBits.

I gather they’re all made from recycled truck tires…

I strongly disagree with the Fox All-Star panel.  “They all” did not do well tonight.  Huckabee demonstrated why he should not be the GOP nominee.  He lost.  He did badly.  He was rambling at times.  He was dissembling at times.  There, I said it.  Good night.

Mark R. Levin, National Review.

In kicking around the blogs today, particularly the leftie blogs, I’m seeing a word that is often used and usually misunderstood, or at least ill-defined in context.

The word is “Change”.  There seems to be an almost universal cry for it, that seems to run independent of party lines.  Amongst those who truly do not represent change, but rather represent more of the same, such as Hillary Clinton, (who after all was with us back in 1992, the cry for change seems the loudest. ) Perhaps this is an indication as good as any were going to get that the cry for change is not a genuine one, or at least is being misrepresented in some quarters.

When so many people and groups of so vastly different a political and social point of view are all screaming for change, it’s a sure bet that they are each defining change differently.  And why would that not be so, given the nearly 50/50 polarization in our political system just now? Each side is asking for change, but each side is regarding change as the removal of the other side from the equation. For truly meaningful change to occur, it seems to me that we first must agree on what constitutes change within the context. Given the 50-50 split, I spoke of that agreement does not seem likely to occur.  indeed, it seems to me that the only change that is guaranteed to occur is that President Bush will no longer be in the White House as of this time next year.  The question of whether or not that change will be a positive one is yet to be seen.

There seems a great deal of historical misunderstanding about the word change.  As an example.  Most of the cries for change seem to assume that change is always a positive when it happens.  Yet historical fact remains that change, particularly when made for it’s own sake is around half the time, not a positive thing.

And perhaps before the cries for change get much louder, we should take a quick assessment of where we are today. after all, if things are in fairly decent shape just now, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to change, other than to quiet someone’s call for political power.  The economies in fairly decent shape; The press’ misrepresentation of the facts notwithstanding our image in the world has been doing rather nicely, thank you; our standard of living is second to none in the world today, as is our health care; seems to me that any change of those situations would be a negative.

Forgive my skepticism, but I’ve seen this happen too often before.  I would prefer to know where the engine of change is going to before I climb on board this particular bandwagon.

John Edwards,  via Ben Smith, Politico:

The Clinton campaign has no conscience

No shat John.  What took so long to figure that out?

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum.