Is Fred Finally Running?

I don’t know, but this seems a great start.

Captain Ed, yesterday:

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director, won’t keep many friends in the blogosphere after this interview in Texas Monthly. When asked about the relationship between the Bush White House and conservative bloggers, Bartlett responded that, in the words of Forrest Gump, the two were just like peas and carrots. Bartlett bragged that bloggers allowed the message to get through unfiltered — very unfiltered (via TPM):

What about the blogs?We had to set up a whole new apparatus to deal with the challenges they pose. Are they real journalists? The Washington Post, for example, has journalists who are now bloggers. Do you treat them as bloggers? Do they get credentials?

Let’s think of it as a practical matter. If one of those journalists-turned-bloggers, Chris Cillizza, e-mails you to say he needs an interview, and at the same time one of the Post’s print reporters—say, Dan Balz—e-mails you and says he needs an interview, and you can do only one . . .

Balz.

Because the print edition of the Post has more of an impact?

Because Balz is on multiple platforms. He’s booked more easily on television. He’s read by more people. He influences people a bit more. Now, the question might not be as much Chris versus Dan as maybe, “Is it Dan Balz or one of the guys at [the conservative blog] Power Line?”

Yeah, or what if [conservative blogger] Hugh Hewitt called?

That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because they do reach people who are influential.

Well, they reach the president’s base.

That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

First off, Texas Monthly doesn’t know much if they think Hugh Hewitt is just a conservative blogger. He’s a syndicated talk show host on Salem Radio with an audience of millions — which is why the White House engages Hugh, not because of his blog. If Bartlett doesn’t know that much (he doesn’t correct TM), then it begins to explain why the Bush administration has failed so miserably at getting their message out to anyone, let alone the blogosphere.

Well, exactly.  But you know what?  A while ago, I attributed to Bill Clinton, the ability to jump in front of a lynch mob… one that was after him, and convince them it was a parade…. one he was leading. Well, that’s what Bartlett’s trying to do here.  Of that point, I take this as confirmation, that Ed’s seeing this, too;

As far as regurgitation and efficiencies of communication, we all wish Bartlett would have succeeded as well as he apparently thinks he did. Most of us have begged for more interaction at the White House, and have received little more than e-mails with speech transcripts.

Well, most of us didn’t even get that. Certainly not the second and third line blogs, such as BitsBlog through those years.  So, that being the level of communications, how does Bartlett justify his claim that, essentially, the white house was leading the right side of the sphere around by the snout? All of the first circle I’ve spoken with on the subject tell me their access to the WH has been limited at best… and Ed confirms it in his piece, here.

The only logical conclusion as to the conformity of the right side of the web to what the WH was selling was that what the WH was doing was the right thing, and the right side identified their actions as such… and simply spoke their mind… not because the WH was selling them anything and certainly not because the WH told the right side to sell a given point to their readership. Sorry, that story simply doesn’t wash with the facts, nor does it mesh with any empirical evidence that I’ve seen or heard of.

Bartlett in recent days strikes me as someone in self-justification mode… and certainly one who wants to sell books. I suppose he’ll be selling a chunk of them to the left…. Who, it should be noted, have been making a lot of noise about how the right siders were in Bush’s vest pocket… all based on Bartlett’s comments… and a situation he takes credit for. Ppppfffffttt.  Nonsense.

He may have had a couple such bloggers, but I should think I’d have heard about such increased access he speaks of, years ago, and from the bloggers themselves.  But, no. Nary a peep.

I’m forced by that to consider Bartlett’s position suspect. And that means, also, that the crowing that the left siders are doing, based on Bartlett’s self-justification is MORE than suspect.

(Edit: Bit repaired broken link)

I really like Alf   However I would never vote for Alf.   Likewise Mike Huckabee might be a likable person, but his most definitely not qualified to be President.    We live in a dangerous world and Huckabee is simply too naive to ever be President.

Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, finds streaks of Jimmy Carter and B.J. Clinton in Huckabee:

These statements, to my mind, reflect that at heart Mr. Huckabee, likeable as he is, is a man too swayed by squishy sentiment and emotion to be determined wartime leader.

But beyond the Carteresque hints in his foreign policy — hugging intractable enemies won’t change their minds — I see more troublesome signs of a Clintonesque quality in  him.

Maybe Clarice spent too much time in the law libracy instead of watching old sitcoms?

A bloody mess, quite literally, in Nebraska yesterday. The Jawa Report did a great job with tracking the story.

And no, don’t start with me about gun control.

One armed citizen …as opposed to a store full of sheep….would have ended the situation with a lot less loss of life. And yes, that would have been preferable.

Billy observes….

The question: what the hell on earth happened to this person’s values, and how?

The answer is alarmingly simple.

He was on anti-depressants. Long time readers will remember that I’ve seen a few of these cases. One in particular, I wrote about, back in ’02 was far less outwardly violent… and that’s the way it usually goes down. Still, the common thread among a great deal of suicide cases… which this appears to be, seems to be the anti-depressants. I must say I’m concerned. What are we shoving into people in the interests of keeping them ‘sane’? I caution those making judgments about the shooter and his relative worth, to consider the number of these cases where prescribed anti-depressants play a role.

Addendum:  (David L)

I agree with Bit, as far as he goes.   Sadly it seems in every shootings, the perp was given psychotropic drugs.  Surely it is time to stop  drugging our children.

Howver the problem isn’t so much the drugs which we give to children which amplifies their rage, the problem is our basic sociai values.  Rather than emphasis being good, i.e, that old fashioned idea of the Golden Rule, we emphasis feeling good.   We have elevated the meme of fifteen minutes of fame into some blasted right.   We have youths who believe it is better to be famous than it is to be good.   They would rather be famaus but dead, than to be alive.

Suffice to say that in a nation of some three hundred million people there simply is not enough time to allot everybody their promised fifteen minutes of time.   On the other hand, we do have our entire lifetimes to be devote to being good.

Rich Lowry…. who I have some stout dispute on in terms of the Fair Tax issue (It’d help if Rich actually did some research on the matter) gets it pretty much spot on here, as regards the rise of social conservatives:

Remember how evangelicals had “matured”? Remember how the war on terror had replaced social issues? It shouldn’t be hard, since all those things were being said a couple of weeks ago (heck, still being said maybe even a few days ago). Part of what seems to be going on with the Huckabee surge is evangelicals sticking their thumbs in the eyes of the chattering class—we’re still here, we still matter, and we still care about our signature issues. Remember the lack of excitement in the Republican race, especially among dispirited social conservatives? Well, now there is some excitement, and it isn’t over free market economics or the war on terror, but a candidate who doesn’t speak compellingly about either of those things but instead about social issues. As a friend I was talking to a little earlier points out, the most important moment of the campaign so far came when a social conservative excited a social conservative audience—Huckabee with his “I come from you” speech at the “values summit.”

Maybe, Rich, but I’d be a whole lot happier about it if the social conservatives that have floated up to the top of this brew were not so abysmal on other matters… such has limited government, terrorism, foreign policy and so on.  Huckabee is certainly lacking is most of these, and so too, frankly is Romney. Those two, along with Ron Paul, demonstrate the frailty of candidates with such a narrow focus. They bring some good ideas to the table, but taken as a whole, (even including their strong points within that narrow focus) they’re downright pathetic.

As are, it should be pointed out, the people backing them. These are voters whose issues have been largely ignored for 30 years, and are now being energized by someone paying attention to them at last…. to the point where they’re willing to put up with about anything to get that issue addressed.

Personally, I’m not so far gone in my desire for limited government, that I’m going to support a Ron Paul, with all the baggage he represents. Nor am I, in the name of social conservatism, going to support a man who, his denials not withstanding, had a large hand in releasing the killer of Carol Sue Shields from prison. Huckabee’s professed ideas about social conservative ideas seem to lack in their application, particularly in that case.  And don’t even start with me on his foreign policy creds… (“What’s an NIE Report?”… !!DOINK!!!!) Etc., Etc., Etc.

Now, Fred Thompson would seem to have a bit better balance across all those issues, which is why he gained our support early on. But there’s going to need to be a rather large swing for that to happen.

The Democrats, too, have noted the trend, and have reacted to it, with typical hazy mumbling on the subject, and with a lack of understanding that gets revealed every time they run into someone in the press who actually knows the Bible  and presses them on an issue or two. But they talk a good game about how important religion is to them, of late don’t they? And look at Dionne’s new book.. where  he basically argues that the left should start to capitalize on those issues… which is a little hard to do given how they’ve taken themselves out of the social mainstream with ther pro-abortion positions. Rather hard to mesh the crowd Dionne would have the left courting, and the positions they’ve spent the last 30 years promoting.

Barring their being able to do that, it comes down to Rudy Giulliani and his ability to sell himself on the points his current competition seems to have a corner on…. and frankly I’m not convinced he can do it.

Ruffini tells us the Ronmey ‘Religion” speech (I don’t think it’ll be focused on that quite as much as is being billed)  is going to be on this morning at 10:30 EST.

I’ll hold off on commenting until I get home tonight, and have  a chance to read the text.  With all the traffic their stuff is going to be dealing with, I’ll be interested to see if the UStream TV server farm doesn’t melt under the load.

Canada.com:

Last month, an EKOS Research study for Transport Canada found seven out of 10 Canadians freely admit to exceeding speed limits from time to time, with another 11 per cent copping to speeding “only on highways.” Average speeding margins were 12 kilometres per hour over the limit on highways, 10 km/h on two-lane highways/country roads and seven km/h on residential streets.

The report contends speeders underestimate their true speed and “delude themselves” into thinking their behaviour really isn’t that bad – acknowledging they are technically breaking the law, but not in a way that endangers either themselves or others.

Perhaps the delusion is that moderate speeding poses a serious and unacceptable risk, and the real “problem” is that Canadian speed limits are too low, which 51 per cent of survey respondents said they are, and a good reason why most Canadians frequently exceed them.

Well, there might be something to this. As someone who lives about an hour off the border, dealing with the Canadian driver, both here in the states and on their own highways is something we do frequently enough. It’s my empirical observation that I’ve very seldom passed a Canadian driver who was going slower. I observe further that on those occasions I really get blown into the weeds by a Canadian driver, the car has Quebec plates on it. Doesn’t matter what they’re driving… Mom van, sports car, SUV, skateboard, whatever.

Here’s the kicker, though:

Following the 1973 oil crisis and the U.S. government’s imposition of a national 55 mph (88 km/h) limit, statistical analyses indicate highway safety worsened. And when Congress finally repealed federal speed limits in November 1995, to much caterwauling from the “speed-kills” crowd, with dire predictions of 6,400 increased deaths and a million additional injuries, the actual effect was diametrically opposite. Traffic deaths dropped to a record low by 1997, including in the 33 states that had immediately raised their speed limits. Meanwhile, Americans saved about 200 million person-hours in terms of less time spent on the road, with a reported net economic benefit of higher speed limits of $2 billion to $3 billion a year. A U.S. National Research Council panel pegged the cost of the 55-mph limit at about one billion person-hours per year.

Likewise, a study by the U.S. National Motorists Association found the safest period on Montana’s Interstate highways was when there were no daytime speed limits or enforceable speed laws at all. When Montana implemented a new “safety program,” imposing speed limits and enforcement, the state’s fatal accident rate didn’t just increase, it doubled, according to NMA statistics.

Other interesting findings of the Montana study were that vehicles traveling faster than average had the lowest accident rates, and there was no positive correlation between speed enforcement and accident rates on rural highways. If anything, the highways became less safe with enforcement.

It’s as I’ve said often enough; Speed laws have nothing to do with a safer public, and everything to do with making money for the state.

Is anthropogenic global warming a real problem or just an excuse to party?   Robin McDowell, Associated Press: 

BALI, Indonesia — Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.

Lest you think that the Ball in Bali was the exception,   Jimmi, Sundries Shack, has details of future UN parties, err conferences:

Let’s not forget. They’re going to be holding another conference int he very near future in Valencia, Spain. I wonder why they never seem to hold these things in the poor countries their suggested policies will destroy?

Is anthropongenic global warming a real or just an imaginary problem?   Judging by the lack of seriousness on the part of the United Nations, the problem is purely imaginary.

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum.

Comedy Central is running a caption contest. Here’s the topic:

Yes, those are Romney stickers they’re wearing.

Hey, CC; If I sent you a mailnote would you advertise my site for me?

Yeah, right.

We’re still looking for you and your blog to become Swamp Stompers.

We’re also looking for additional writers for BitsBlog. Traffic at BitsBlog has been growing at a rapid pace of late. Drop feedback, and let’s talk.

Seanna Adcox accuses Mrs. Cliuton’s campaign, in effect, of lying:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support from South Carolina’s black religious leaders may not be quite as extensive as her campaign suggests.

Mean while, the New York Times also accused Mrs. Clinton of lying:

But while Mrs. Clinton is right that Mr. Obama’s plan would leave out millions, she is being misleading in implying that her own plan covers everyone. Mandates rarely achieve 100 percent compliance. In addition, they are almost impossible to enforce.

While Mrs. Clinton’s stooges talk inevitability, the only appearance Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has taken on is that of a loser.

More, Memeorandum.

Addendum I: (Bit)

Notice how when the Democrat races heat up it comes down to who can promise to give away more of other people’s money that ends up leading their race?

Addendum I:  (David L)

The only power given to the federal goverment to mandate anything of the individual citizen is the income tax.   If Mrs. Clinton,  Messers Obama and Edwards think they have any power to enforce their silly  health insurance mandate scheme, they are in for a rude shock   Hell no, we won’t buy.

Jason says today:

NRO symposium on the Teddy-bear Intifada has some modest proposals but they don’t go far enough. In response to the alleged insult, we should deliberately and emphatically insult Islam: it is a vicious supremacist ideology that has brought 14 centuries of oppression. As I once explained, what we need and what is missing is a moral condemnation. We should not be intimidated into silence; we should speak the truth, loud and clear.

Yeah, I’m with that. Well….

Ahem… Yo Mamma is so fat…..  her Burka is made of Canvas.

Hmmm. Guess that doesn’t quite have the impact we’re looking for.

Taliban strip poker… lose a hand, and you REALLY lose a hand!

Hmm. Closer, but not much.

It must be raining Islamic radicals… I just stepped in Shiite

Ya know, I don’t think I’m very good at this.

Maybe I should just speak the truth… That’s insulting enough.

The truth?
The only thing the Muslim terrorists need to win… Is for everyone else to be “tolerant” of them! It’s time for the rest of the world to start pushing back against these 14th century wannabes.

Via Memeorandum, I see Jules Critenden suggesting that while Bush Bashing is fun, the Democrats are missing out on what they claim to want… Political progress in Iraq.

In fact, progress, there, is….

 …Incremental, though significantly more progress than, say, Congress has made lately. On anything.

And so, the best solution, says Crittenden is for Mr. Bush to tie…

… any withdrawal funding to progress in Congress.

Ouch.

I’m quite certain you’ll have seen this house:

(A nod to the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Scott Shaw who took this photo… and that oughta be a clue, actually.) Yes, that’s the house in “A Christmas Story” which will doubtless being on a gazillion times again this year. The house has actually been restored, and is open for tours. According to their (Somewhat dated) website,  there was a Christmas story Convention of all things, late last month….

 The first annual “A Christmas Story” House Convention will take place on Friday and Saturday, November 23 & 24 in Cleveland, Ohio. Actors from “A Christmas Story” who played Randy, Flick, Scut Farkus, Grover Dill, Miss Shields, and the evil elves will be on hand to meet and greet fans. Convention events includes a Chinese Turkey Dinner, tours of A Christmas Story House and Museum, a BB gun range in the back yard, a Ralphie look-a-like contest, screenings of the movie, Winterfest fireworks and parade and much more.

The house, though, is open year round. I suppose if you’re going to go to Cleveland….

This is rich….

A blog on a site promoting Al Gore’s climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has been hacked by penis pill-promoting spammers.

Links on the blog portion of the climatecrisis.net site point to websites hawking online pharmaceuticals in an apparent bid by miscreants to promote their search engine rankings. The links, not apparent to a casual observer but clearly visible in the page source, promote drugs including Viagra and Xanax.+

There’s a number of directions I could take this.  A Wise-ass paradise.

(Shrug)  Since I feel generous, today, let’s say this is a target rich environment, though, and leave it at that.

These folks are like water… they’ll pour in anywhere there’s a chance to. Pain in the butt, from a webmaster’s perspective, I can say from first hand experience.

Yet, I must admit a certain envy and amusement at this particular site being hacked.

(Snicker)