Centcom Post 11/26/07

COALITION FORCES RESCUE KIDNAP VICTIM; DISRUPT FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, AL-QAEDA FINANCIERS; ONE KILLED, 10 DETAINED

Posted: 24 Nov 2007 10:01 AM CST

COALITION FORCES RESCUE KIDNAP VICTIM; DISRUPT FOREIGN TERRORIST FACILITATORS, AL-QAEDA FINANCIERS; ONE KILLED, 10 DETAINED

TALIBAN WEAPONS SMUGGLING OPERATIONS DISRUPTED

Posted: 24 Nov 2007 09:59 AM CST

TALIBAN WEAPONS SMUGGLING OPERATIONS DISRUPTED

Over at Right Wing News, our Fellow Swamp Stopmer, Sister Toldjah, notes the Eco-Nazis are at it again:

—- The SF Chronicle reported earlier this month that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is considering a ban on the use of … residential fireplaces:

It would be illegal to use residential fireplaces on nights with poor air quality under a rule being considered by Bay Area air regulators.Over the next three weeks, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District will hold workshops to gauge public opinion on the proposal, which would follow similar bans in Sacramento County, the San Joaquin Valley, and such Bay Area cities as Mill Valley, where people who disobey the city’s wood-burning law are already subject to stiff fines.

Spurred by growing evidence that shows smoke from wood-burning is as bad or worse than smoke from cigarettes, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is trying to reduce the amount of harmful particulate matter that people breathe. Children, the elderly and those with respiratory illnesses are particularly susceptible to smoke particles that emanate from wood-burning fireplaces.

The minute particles, which enter nasal passages and lungs, can cause asthma, bronchitis, lung disease and heart disease, according to health experts.

The workshops, which start Wednesday in Oakland, are designed to solicit comments and explain the proposed regulation, which would cover wood-burning stoves as well as indoor and outdoor fireplaces. On days in the Bay Area when particulate matter is at its worst, wood-burning is the greatest contributing factor, accounting for 33 percent of the pollution, according to the air district. The problem is especially acute in winter, when fire-place use is high.

[…]

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency strengthened its particulate standards, reducing by almost half the amount of such particles that can be released into the air. In the past 10 years, a growing number of Bay Area cities – including Oakland, Union City, Fremont and Los Gatos – have limited wood-burning devices. In Mill Valley, first-time violators are warned before facing a $150 fine.

[Air district spokesman Karen] Schkolnick said the Bay Area district’s wood-burning law would mirror the regulations used in Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. During the 2006-07 winter, the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District – which covers San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties as well as part of Kern County – issued 192 tickets to residents. The first fine is $50. Repeated violations can lead to fines of between $100 and $1,000, district spokeswoman Jaime Holt said.

In lieu of paying a fine, first-time violators can attend a two-hour “residential wood-burning compliance school,” where they learn about the pollution hazards of wood-burning, Holt said.

Most violators in the San Joaquin Valley are initially reported by concerned neighbors, Holt said.

I swear, you cannot make this stuff up. Most people burn their wood-burning fireplaces as either their sole source of heat or as an additional source of heat so as not to have a sky-high electric bill. So you’d think that it would be a good thing that people are utilizing wood-burning fireplaces, because using gas and/or electricity as a source of heat supposedly increases the size of your “carbon footprint.”

That should be the first indication, that no matter how far you bend over, you’re not going to be left off the hook, much less win a round. IN the end, this is not about sensible alternatives, this is about the power to decide who gets to use energy.  And indeed; that’s all this ever was about.

Another example; the environmentally whacko left likes talking about reducing dependency on foreign oil.  Yet, raised the possibility of drilling for our own, domestically, and that’s off limits too.  Again; this is not about viable alternatives, this is about their power.

The faster we learn this lesson, the faster we can get to drilling our own oil.

Word from MSNBC this morning, is that Trent Lott is going to resign very shortly.

Personally, I couldn’t be more pleased.  Here’s the guy that came out in support of Shamnesty, and when the people, including those in his own district, were quite vocal in their opposition.

In response, Lott complained about how Talk Radio was causing him problems, and “Ruining the country”.  In short, instead of representing the people, he represented his own wishes.  The people want nothing to do with the illegal aliens game that he was helping to foist off on us.  Yet, he continued to push it.  I call that a breach of trust.  I also call it a corruption that is second to very few.

But, it gets more personal, than that.

This blog and most others on the right stuck up for Trent Lott when everyone, and I mean everyone, was screaming for his political neck, over that Strom Thurmond thing. So, too were the Talk Radio people he now castigates, back in the day. I’m telling you, dear reader, he owes the fact that he is still in the United States Senate today to talk radio and to the right side blogs. I defended him at the time, as did many other people, because he was getting a raw deal, there.  I still think so.  It’s that simple. Yet, Lott betrayed that trust, as well, ending up in the end sounding like a Democrat, and gave the Democrats a weapon in their push to silence Talk radio ala the “Fairness doctrine” again.

He won’t be missed.

More from Memeorandum

Sandy Levinson, of Balkinization :

According to a blog published by the New York Times, Hillary Clinton has told Iowa voters, â??I believe in the Second Amendment, and I donâ??t see any contradiction between the Second Amendment and laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals.â? The irony in this statement is that her husband did a great service to the Republican takeover in 1994 by relentlessly pushing his symbolic “assault weapons ban.” According to Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina, it probably cost the Democrats at least six seats in the House (including Speaker Tom Foley from Eastern Washington and Jack Brooks, the long-time Texan head of the House Judiciary Committee) . . . So I take Sen. Clinton’s declaration of support for the Second Amendment–the next question, of course, is what precisely she “believes” the Second Amendment means in 2007–is the best evidence possible for the new-found respect it gathers, at least rhetorically, across the political spectrum.

I suppose this back and forth to be the product of attributing convenient values to words and phrases, rather than the actual meetings of those words and phrases.  This is something the Clintons have been doing since day one, and I have no reason to believe that’s going to change anytime soon.

That Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge that there is an inherent contradiction between the position that she takes as regards the second amendment, and what the second amendment actually says, and what it meant in context when it was written, tells me she’s worked with a set of definitions quite unlike the definitions used by those who actually believe in the second amendment.

But consider what I said yesterday about John Howard’s successor in Australia.  He had to act like something he was not… a centrist… to gain office. We should not be surprised if Hillary Clinton’s doing precisely the same thing.

As to the matter of convenience, the fastest way to explain the position that Hillary Clinton has taken here, particularly given her a long held anti- second amendment views, is that Rudy Giuliani… the person she sees as her most likely competition, has a record of being somewhat less than fully comfortable with the second amendment, and citizens owning… and using…  firearms.  It doesn’t take a genius to understand that she would not take her current position under any other circumstances.

Curt, Flopping Aces, notes:  

The religion of peace strikes again in France.  This time a couple kids killed themselves by riding stolen mopeds into a police car and the Muslims riot:

A cynic such as myself might think the Moslem are trying to exempt themselves from the consequences of the law,  much like some American blacks.    I mean I haven’t heard any reports of the Reverend Al Sharpton visiting France, but it sure does seem that way.

More, Memeorandum.

Fellow Swamp Stomper, McGehee:

Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too.

Damned SUVs.

The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang.

But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years.

They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably Schrödinger’s cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.)

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

» Mankind ‘shortening the universe’s life’

I’ve always considered these notions to be artifacts of the very uncertainty that quantum theory supposedly reveals. There’s a point where math as presently constructed simply begins to lose its ability to describe what’s going on, but rather than simply admit they can’t look any deeper into the looking glass, our theorists keep trying to make the numbers work.

True, my friend…. very true But let’s make this a little bit simpler, shall we?

In poker, when your bluff is about to get called, the response for some players, is to raise the bet, on the idea that the rest of the table, will think you’re not bluffing, after all.  And what, after all, can you raise the bet to, beyond the known universe?

Dale Franks:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former US military commander in Iraq, has given the Democratic response to the President’s weekly radio address. Apparently, the general doesn’t much like the president.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who led coalition forces through the first critical year of Iraq’s insurgency, said Saturday in a nationally broadcast radio address that President Bush had failed to “devise a strategy for victory” and that the time had come to withdraw U.S. troops.

In the Democratic rebuttal to Bush’s weekly radio address, Sanchez offered conditional support to a House war funding bill that requires combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2008…

As the coalition commander, Sanchez said in Saturday’s broadcast, he personally witnessed “the administration’s failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States. That failure continues today.”

The thing is, as the coalition commander in Iraq, Gen. Sanchez was the primary officer for providing military advice to the president about Iraq, and assisting in formulating a winning strategy there.

So, where was the “strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States” created by General Sanchez, that he proposed to the president? What objections did Gen. Sanchez raise to the Bush Administration policy? Where is the record of Gen. Sanchez’s efforts to create such a strategy?

Correct.  Further:

Gen Sanchez wasn’t some innocent bystander to the policy process re Iraq. He wasn’t some middle-of-the-pack battalion commander, following the orders he was given. He was the senior military commander on the ground. It was his responsibility to propose a strategy to the president that contained his best military advice. It was his responsibility to plan the strategy, obtain approval for it, and then execute it.

Once again, correct.  It is also worth noting, the General Sanchez was replaced. That the current leadership on the ground in Iraq, is far more successful than General Sanchez was, would seem a reasonable indication of just why Sanchez was replaced.  Which, in turn, would also seem to get some rather solid indication of why Sanchez chooses to play this line, now.

Update: (Bit)

Via Memeorandum, I note Victor Davis Hanson coming to basically the same conclusion:

In all these cases, there is dismal pattern: a mediocre functionary keeps quiet about the mess around him, muddles through, senses that things aren’t going right, finds himself on the losing end of political infighting, is forced out or quits, seethes that his genius wasn’t recognized, takes no responsibility for his own failures, worries he might be scape-goated, and at last senses that either a New York publisher or the anti-war Left, or both, will be willing to offer him cash or notoriety — but only if he serves their needs by trashing his former colleagues in a manner he never would while on the job.

Dan Riehl observes:

The DesMoines Register discusses the pros and cons of Bill Clinton’s role in Hillary’s campaign. What Brazile alludes to warrants fleshing out. It may set the stage for some real fun, provided Hillary gains the nomination.

“I think it’s going to come down to: Do you really want Bill Clinton back in the White House?” said Donna Brazile, who ran Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

Held at arm’s length by Gore in 2000 and embraced by the Democratic field in 2004, Bill Clinton’s record is the subject of both credit and critique in the 2008 campaign.

Helping Hillary in the Democrat Primary is one thing. However, Brazile knows, because she obviously saw the Gore polling, that those polls told Gore to stay away from Bill Clinton. Heck, he picked Lieberman, the first and one of only a few Democrats to denounce then President Clinton on the Senate floor, as his VP.

Well, I’m not sure this affects anything but the short term.  While it’s true that the centrists, and independents were steering clear of the Clintons and what was oozing down their legacy, back in 00, the hard core Democrats were not.  It’s the hardcore Democrat you have to convince, to attain a nomination.

So what this really boils down to is not a question of whether not she’s going to make the nomination; (she will.) The question becomes whether not she’s going to be electable to the general voting public; (she won’t be). That’s true, even if, as Dan suggests, Hillary ends up shoving Bill under the bus, as seems likely, past the primary hurdle.

The sharper among you will wonder why I’m even bothering to mention this, given that will turn some Democrat primary voters off of voting for HRC in the first place.

Untrue.  You’re making an unwarranted assumption… that the Democrat voter is at all worried about their choice not actually being electable.  To that point, I gave you George McGovern, and Jimmy Carter as a second termer. I give you Michael Dukakis.  I give you Walter Mondale.  And so, here’s the quick version of what happens to Democrats after the nomination:

Any questions?

Well, if Andrew Sullivan doesn’t don’t know who Bilal Hussain is, maybe he should STFU? 

Rusty Shackleford, Jawa Report.

I note Gauis at Blue Crab Blvd, noting a story on the AP wire…

The Associated Press is quick to clear Paul Bunyan of the dirty deed, but Babe the Blue Ox has been decapitated.

KLAMATH, Calif. – Babe the Blue Ox has lost his head. Ax-wielding Paul Bunyan is not a suspect. The head fell off the 35-foot-tall statue of giant lumberjack Bunyan’s mythical sidekick Tuesday, landing snout down on the pavement in the northern California town of Klamath.

Jeff LaForest, manager of the gift shop where the statue stands, says water was seeping inside the statue. That weakened the wood inside the structure and caused the collapse.

But was it really dry rot or did Paul Bunyan finally have enough of Babe’s constant kibitzing? After all, the pair has stood in the same spot for more than 50 years.

Funny this should come up. I was just thinking about a Paul Bunyan display at the supposed birthplace of Paul Bunyan, in Ossineke, Mich, as I was writing the post of the other night. (It should be noted that Oscoda, also along M23 in Mich, also claims to be the birthplace of Paul Bunyan…)

In that previous post, you’ll recall I mentioned driving to Alpena about every six months or so as I was growing up.  Well, one of the places we used to drive by was this one, pictured here.

To me, the pair always served as a landmark, and told me we were not too far away from our destination.  They stood on a fairly tall hill (Called “Lookout Hill”) overlooking the right of way, and so looked even larger than the 25ft and 10ft they they actually were. You can almost imagine the eleven year old boy looking, with big, wondering eyes, out the back seat of the ’62 Chevy, and up the hill, at these huge statues.

Apparently, they’ve been moved within the last year or so, down the street a ways (About a mile, I’d say) to the corner of M23 and Nicholson Hill Road. From what the satellite photos show, it’s no longer on a hill, but down at street level. Apparently, the locals have put up a roadside park around the pair. A nice idea, but they really did work better on the hill, in with the trees.

I’ve spoken to locals up there, and local legend has it that there used to be a tavern across the road, and that some drunk shot off Babe’s balls in the late 1950’s.  The gun, I’m told was later used in a murder, so they didn’t even get to keep that. (Shrug)

One of the things about M23 you need to know to understand this whole thing, is that it used to be the main north-south passage, before I75 got completed. The road had a particular charm about it, because it was a shoreline route, running alongside lake Huron for almost its entire length from the Detroit area to Mackinac. Lots of lake houses, campsites, and parks, along with the odd schoolhouse.

In the early 80’s, the official path of US23 was moved to be alongside I75 for most of the way to Mackinac.  This left the old main route to be demoted to a state route, much the same as portions of US66 are, today, after I40 went in. That left quite a bit in the way of highway tourist trappy type stuff, such as the Dinosaur Gardens, at the former location of Paul and the Babe…  Oh… and the Paul Bunyan made of scrap car parts up at Alpena, and so on.  I also recall a 57 “White ” tractor mounted on a pole to advertise a truck repair and sales place out along I75 just out of Frankenmuth somewhere. Yeah, the whole truck.

You so seldom see that kind of highway weird, anymore. But that kind of thing made the trip for me, back in the day.

Speaking of Frankenmuth, there used to be a chicken place there, Zehnder’s.

It’s still there, and it’s grown some, and now includes a hotel, and a huge water park. We stopped there exactly once, in the mid-60’s… when it was just a restaurant… mostly because we’d driven by it a few dozen times, and there was always highway ads for it, upwards of an hour away from the place, and I always wondered what the place was like.  For all of the asking I must have done and how important the stop was to me at the time, I don’t recall much about the place, but that the chicken was pretty good. Typical 11 year old.

Zehnder’s is actually doing pretty well, in the era of freeways and is one of the few old style roadside marvels who has thrived in it. Mostly by chance… I75 went right by the place… only a mile or so off the beaten path..

But as much of America that died out with the era of the freeway, I can’t help but wonder how much more of it is going to perish with a higher price of fuel.  The places I mentioned here, are part of my personal history, and so, perhaps, I would be more likely to drive up to see them again, spending a few hundred dollars for fuel, than would someone who hadn’t seen them for the first time, yet. I suppose in the age of computers, that kind of quaint doesn’t sell, anymore.

I’ve been wanting to go back up that way, for a long time.  In fact, I’d planned on doing that last summer, but the financial conditions prevented it.  And now the cost of fuel has doubled.  I may never get that chance.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of things, but there it is.

Malibu-(LA Times)-The most destructive fire in Malibu in nearly 15 years raced through parched canyons Saturday, consuming 49 homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents.The so-called Corral fire burned 4,700 acres before the fierce Santa Ana winds died down, allowing firefighters to make a stand. By evening, the blaze, which investigators said was started by “human activity,” was 25% contained. Six firefighters sustained minor injuries, authorities said.
(Photo also from the LA TIMES)

You know, eventually, someone is going to make the connection, and figure out that there are some areas of the country we shouldn’t be building in… and one of those places is Malibu.

Think about this;

The rich and famous have campaigned loudly and forcefully, against us building, developing, drilling for oil in other parts of the planet to ‘save the environment’.  But have you ever noticed the places where liberals live aren’t subject to those kind of judgements?

Take New Orleans, as an example.  The place is below sea level, and yet it’s government’s fault, when water comes in, as a natural occurrence.  It’s part of nature.    Instead of simply acknowledging that this is probably not a good place to be building, the blame game gets played, and more government money gets spent.  (As in, more of your money and mine)  Further, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of chatter about saving the environment, incidental to our meddling in the river basin, there, to say nothing of the selfishness and the waste…. You know, the kind of preaching you hear from liberals about everybody else?    You’d think you’d hear a little of it, at least. But not a peep.

Then, of course, there’s the place under discussion this morning, in the news… Malibu. After the first few dozen fires, most people would take the hint.  This is a natural occurrence, there.  Certainly, our messing with the landscape of that region, and adding multi million dollar homes to the neighborhood, has got to be affecting the environment in the neighborhood.  Funny how the rich liberals who live there never quite make it to that point in their logic. I was given to believe that rich liberals generally speaking were committed environmentalists.  Yet, I’ve been to Malibu.  I’ve even been to the location of this most recent fire, Corral canyon. I’ve seen what goes on there.  as usual, the hype doesn’t match the reality.

Further, let’s consider the financial impact on the poor of these Malibu fires, burning up multi-million dollar homes.  You would think that kind of impact to be an impossibility, until you consider homeowners insurance and how it works.  Believe me when I tell you, Joe and Jane Average, living in their modest little farmhouse and Pigs Knuckle, Iowa, are partially paying for the lifestyles of the rich and famous, out in Malibu, by way of their homeowners insurance policy.  The premiums that the rich and famous are paying out and mail above, don’t nearly cover the kind of reconstruction costs incurred on the insurance companies.  No, those rates are spread amongst all the policyholders across the country.  Does that sound you like these people are interested in helping the poor? And of course, the taxes involved in supporting such a neighborhood, against the natural occurrence like wildfires in southern California.  You don’t really think that that operation is entirely funded by those rich folks within the canyon, do you?

Now, don’t worry, I haven’t gone over to the dark side.  I’s merely pointing out once again, the hype doesn’t match the reality of the situation.

Think about that.

Most seriously, think about it when you go into the voting booth, and you consider the words of these animals and their opinions of who we should and should not vote for.

These people are not your friends. Nor, despite the hype, do they have your best interest at heart.

You might be interested in learning that I’ve done some very significant work in the area of speeding up performance on site.

Mostly, it has to do with optimization of the database that drives the site.  The database is now approximately 25% smaller than it was in terms of total content… (None of what I stripped is being used anymore) and about a quarter of this size that was in terms of the number of tables…. most of this from add-ons I’m not using, anymore.

Translation: you should notice a pretty fair difference in the way the thing handles. Think of it as stripping down a car… shedding a lot of excess weight, for racing. Searches and crosslinks particularly should be far faster.

As usual, let me know if you see any issues.

Billy notes:

Rich Nikoley is barely hinting at the depth of my contempt for anyone entertaining the least infatuation with Barak Obama.

I actually have more respect for Rodham’s troops. At the very least: they’re committed ideologues and they’re not all dreamy-eyed over paper-thin bromides about “change” and “bringing the country together”. I mean; at that point, people might as well vote for the color of his skin instead the content of his mind, and say so right out loud.

I have only minor quibbles with this.  One of them is wondering what makes Billy really think in the end, that people aren’t simply voting for the color of his skin.  I would suggest you that a number of them are, already.
There is, however, more to this story.  Let’s face it; the last two times the Democrat party got into the White House they got there on little more than paper thin bromides about change and bringing the country together, right?  For that matter, that’s true about any number of lesser roles than the presidency.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Obama made it as far as he has with an entire campaign…  indeed, several campaigns, since he is a Senator, after all, based on nothing but fluff.  That’s their strong suit.

By the way, Billy, your reference to Saint Andrew the incontinent, lends itself very nicely to that point.  He’s not been very long on substance lately, either, anymore than Erb has of late.  And I think there’s a point to be had there; if they ever actually got into the meat of the thing, their arguments would never survive.  They know that, which is why they never do get into anything heavier.

In Erb’s case, it’s what caused me to simply give up on trying to make a dent in that facade of his. Break out the heavy facts, and the guy ducks faster than the average mortal can blink. You know as well as I know you’re never gonna change his mind based on facts, because his arguments were never based on fact.  Bromides, that’s all. Pure bromides.  I’m not playing that game with him anymore, and the fact is I have precious little patience for it in anybody else, anymore, either.

That’s why, in all candor, I haven’t addressed Obama very much at all here. He’s been pulling the same stunts, on a much larger scale.  My suspicion is, ultimately, is that I won’t have to deal with him, anyway, because regardless of whatever OS happens the Democrats simply don’t have the courage to drop Hillary Clinton, since you broached her name…
Which of itself raises an interesting point. Think; here we have a woman being billed as the world’s smartest woman… yet, she’s being shown up as a complete idiot every time she opens her mouth… Still, she continues to be lauded as being so very smart.  How can this be?  It’s a matter of comparison.  She comes off looking a quark more weighty than those around her, and so gets the ‘world’s smartest woman’ billing. To illustrate the problem little differently, imagine a barn full of Turkeys, marveling at the flying ability of the common sparrow.

Anyway, yeah, I know…Obama. I’m wandering, I know, but there’s a point with it. Watch:

The truth is, the reason he’s making headway with his shtick, is not because it’s anything new, but because it’s not new. It’s what the Democrats have been pulling for decades.  As little substance, and as much emotion, as possible.  The only difference, in fact, is the color of his skin.

The San Francisco Chronicle has recently activated a devious system by which it deceives commenters on its website, SFGate.com. Here’s how it works:If you make a comment on an article posted at SFGate, and if the site moderators then subsequently delete your comment for whatever reason, it will only appear as deleted to the other readers. HOWEVER, your comment will NOT appear to be deleted if viewed from your own computer! The Chronicle‘s goal is to trick deleted commenters into not knowing their comments were in fact deleted. I’ll give evidence below showing how they do this.

That’s Investigate the Media… who then goes on in great detail to do exactly what he says.

Why would SFGate do such a thing? Because ever since public input was first allowed at SFGate, many commenters who had their comments deleted would come back onto the comment thread and point out that they had been silenced for ideological reasons — i.e. they weren’t sufficiently “progressive” — or because they had pointed out ethical lapses at SFGate and the Chronicle. Or any number of other reasons that the Chronicle did not want known.

Well, don’t figure the SF Chron is alone in this. Says LGF:

Surprise! George Soros-funded pseudo-blog Think Progress is pulling the same trick to censor critics. Konservo has screen shots to prove it.

That’s going on at the rate is, shouldn’t surprise anybody. After all, Manual deletions of people you don’t agree with, has been happening for some time now.  As a matter of fact, I would suggest that we start checking all left wing sources for the same kind of deception. We’re going to find, I suspect, that it’s far more prevalent than anyone understood.

But there’s something else I want you to do: I’d like you to consider that kind of individual who would put together that kind of coding.  Who among us would consider it necessary?  Someone… or a group of someones desperate to win an election, perhaps? What does this say about the left wing, that it uses what I would refer to as intellectual fraud, to this degree? …. and yes, when I talk about the left, I’m talking about the press.

Update:(Bit) I note Chuckie had a comment on his blog about this post, but for some reason, it got deleted.  Irony abounds….

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally. Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez’s proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers, compared with 39 percent in favor, a survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed.

Something tells me that this is going to be an interesting time.

For example; the American left was screaming bloody murder of a Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and our government’s support for him,  despite his having suspended the constitution, there.  I wonder how many of them are going to be screaming for Crazy Uncle Hugo  to resign, once he suspends the constitution to remain in power, as we both know he will…