Mukasey Confirmed; Democrats Fuming? Well, Not Really.

WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed retired judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general Thursday night to replace Alberto Gonzales, who was forced from office in a scandal over his handling of the Justice Department.

So at the end of the day, and dispite the Democrats election year stunt, Michael Mukasey makes it through the gauntlet.  Rest assured, my friends, water boarding is going to come up as an issue in this election, once we get beyond the primaries. In the end, that’s what the objection to Mukasey was all about.  The Democrats don’t have a great deal of force behind their arguments, so they use showboating, instead.

Michelle has the vote list, and more.

Memeorandum has lots of links on the topic this morning, though not as many as you’d think, given the conditions.

Since the Congress could have passed a law against Waterboarding, this is all just posturing. The Democrats among us are saving this topic for later, and don’t want it hit too hard, just now.  In short, they are accepting this appointment as a tactical defeat… to create a weakness for later. That supposed weakness…. “torture”.

They had best tread carefully.  The American people in my experience, do not regard that as a weakness.  The tactic will backfire on them.

ABC News- A federal grand jury has voted to indict former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on charges stemming from the acceptance of free rent and apartment renovations, tax evasion and lying on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security, two federal sources and a source involved in the defense told ABC News.As news of the indictment spread, police in suburban White Plains, N.Y., prepared for an expected onslaught of media by setting up police barricades in front of the courthouse and a parking area for television trucks directly across from it, police officials said. And several of Kerik’s closest supporters planned to spend the evening with their friend before he turned himself into the government, sources said.

The indictment caps a wide-ranging federal probe into Kerik’s affairs that has spanned about a year. While it was not immediately clear what the specific charges were, the government’s case as it has been presented to the grand jury has multiple components that would be reflected in a multiple count indictment.

OK, Several points. First of all, this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned Kerik in these spaces. The reason being, I never really knew a whole bunch about him.  Most certainly however, I wasn’t buying into the hype surrounding the guy.  Then, or now.  As the story above would seem to indicate, the democrats and the press would seem to be making an awful lot of noise about this one.  Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

Well, here we go. Nothing against Rudy, but people had better get used to it.

…

Rudy was a Big City Mayor in the Blue Northeast and, unfortunately, that often equals corruption. I’m not suggesting Rudy is, or was, corrupt. But just like in New Jersey, New York politics are notoriously corrupt. And you know what they say about laying down with dogs. The Democrat controlled government of the city will be more than happy to unearth everything they can from the past to come to Hillary’s aid.

This is not being defensive as regards Kerik’s past… as I say, I’ve never been totally comfortable with the guy.  But let’s remember that the New York City government is Democrat nominated, and even what Republicans exist there, are Liberal in the extreme.  As Dan points out;

The Democrat controlled government of the city will be more than happy to unearth everything they can from the past to come to Hillary’s aid.

And you know, between the timing , and the force with which the news media seems to be applying in covering this little affair, something does seem rather obvious… the only reason that Bernie Kerik’s being pilloried (Hillary’ed?) now is because he is associated with the Republican frontrunner… and the Democrat front runner is Hillary Clinton… someone who decidedly needs her own scandalous past to be mitigated by scandals amongst her opponents.

Given the scandals and Hillary Clinton’s past, even her recent past, doesn’t it stretch credibility beyond the breaking point that this indictment against Kerik comes down just now, while Hillary Clinton’s scandal filled past gets ignored? the timing, in particular, would seem questionable.

The long arm of the Clintons….

More at Memeorandum

So, McGehee decieded to put up a new photo of himself.

As you can see, my countenance is as uproariously joyful as always.

Yeah.

Looks like one of the dudes in the original version of “The Great Train Robbery”.

(Ducking)

Oh, speaking of photos, I won a third place this week, in Rodney’s Caption contest at OTB.

Putting these two together….  I wonder if we can’t convince McGehee to put that shot in a caption contest. I’ve got one:

* “But I AM… I AM smiling!”

The Daily Mail is reporting that the eastern coast of England is in for a tidal wave.

Tens of thousands of householders are today preparing for some of the worst coastal floods in decades.

Sea levels could rise up to 9ft this morning along part of the East Coast, putting lives at risk.

Sea defences in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft could be breached around 7am, sending a torrent of salt water into the towns.

Yes, I know, the East Coast?

Apparently, it has to do with the way the surge is coming out of the North sea, interact with the land masses on the East Coast.  That, and some stonger than normal winds… like, say, 60mph or so.. Based on the reports I’m getting from sky, fox, and some of the papers in the UK, this is a very big deal.

Sky News –A teenage schoolboy was pulled around his classroom on a lead and spanked by a stripper after a birthday surprise blunder. The pupil’s mum had ordered an agency to give her son a “surprise” on his 16th birthday – and the teacher had even agreed to film the prank.

But it all went wrong when the unnamed company sent a stripper dressed as a policewoman instead of a “gorillagram” – in what it called a booking error.

One witness told reporters: “She asked the lad to stand up, which he did, and told him he had been a very naughty boy because he hadn’t been doing his homework.

“Then she put on some Britney Spears music and got out a collar and lead from her bag and told him to put them on.”
After walking the boy round the classroom and spanking him with a whip – the action turned even more blue.

“She took off some clothes until she was down to her bra and pants, pulled out some cream, put it on her buttocks and told him to rub it in,” the source said.

Can you imagine the conversation around the dinner table that night? Such an event would probably make him a hero with the rest of the guys in his class.  The girls, perhaps, are another matter.  Still; I doubt he’s going to have much trouble getting a date from here on.  After all; girls do like experienced men.  Or, so the saying goes.

And look; I’m not even going to get into  how many places that someone could have said “no ” up to that point where the schoolteacher finally stepped in.

Bruce at Q&O:

  A and an week or so ago, I stated:

We read that polls are telling the Democrats that the mood of the people has swung toward being receptive to more and bigger government. Some argue it’s a cyclic phenomenon in which the country accepts and then rejects big government. Yet the rejection phase never seems to lead to smaller or less intrusive government. At best it seems it is simply a moratorium on expansion until the next growth cycle comes along.

Billy Hollis expanded on that thought here.

And today, in the WSJ, William Voegeli points out that while conservatism has talked the talk about smaller government, in reality, it has never walked the walk despite the fact that Republicans occupied the White House for 18 of 26 years after 1980 not to mention the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 in the House. Result? Not much:

Republicans abandoned their promises to abolish the departments of Energy and Education. Efforts to zero out smaller and supposedly vulnerable agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts accomplished nothing. The only important victory here was the 1996 law abolishing Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a victory that may turn out to be hollow. The New Republic celebrated rather than lamented the 10th anniversary of AFDC’s demise, arguing that because of the law, “welfare-bashing has lost its political resonance . . . [and] welfare reform has expanded the constituency for activist government. Democrats now have more political room to fight Republican austerity—and to propose, in its place, a stronger safety net.”

As I see it, that’s precisely what is in the offing, given the talk about national health care and a myriad of other social programs. Or said another way, all Republicans have managed in these 26 years is another lull in the increase in the size of government (and, in fact, been party to increasing it through such programs as No Child Left Behind and Medicare D), and because they’ve done nothing to demonstrate that we can indeed get along just fine without government, momentum has again built to expand it.

Sorry, Bruce, I’m going to take a rare position in opposition to you on this one.  You seem to me to have missed something in your analysis.

The reason things are moving currently in that direction is exactly the same reason that the Democrats are screaming bloody murder just now…  opposition within Congress.  Congress, after all, is where the appropriations are made; they’re the ones with the money, at least, after the IRS does its thing.    While it does help someone to have a conservative in the White House, it is unfortunately not the only requirement.  (Bush isn’t a conservative… I’ll get to that point)

Let’s go one step further with that; during the vast majority of the time from 1984 forward the democrats were either in direct control of Congress are headed least as close to a 50/50 Democrat to Republican balance  as no matter.  Which, given the Rinos that invariably show up, means that the balance has been overwhelmingly Liberal.

The only combination that’s never been tried is an overwhelming majority of conservatives in the Congress.  Or, for that matter an overwhelming majority of republicans, where the Republicans wouldn’t be quite so dependent on their left flank.   As an example; How often have risen in this space, that President Bush is not a conservative, but is a centrist?  Yet we still see him labeled in growth of government arguments as  ostensibly conservative.  Usually, this mislabeling tends to occur by those arguing against conservatives taking power.

Now look; I don’t disagree in the least that that’s the direction we’ve been going.  But I think there is some mislabeling going on as to the cause of the problem.  The problem is liberalism.  The tests that I propose, may or may not be made.  But, here it is; get an overwhelming number of republicans and office, take your measurements, and then give me a call.  Until then, I consider mislabeling , to blame the Republicans for the problem.

Kevin Drum tells us about as much about Democrats as he is about Republicans with this one… and much about his own inability, as well…

“THANK GOD FOR TALK RADIO!”....Why is Tom Tancredo such a monomaniac on the subject of illegal immigration? In an interview on our radio show with Markos Kounalakis and Peter Laufer, he explains that a lot of it isn’t about winning, it’s about redefining the playing field:

What happens is, you provide people with some space to get into where they can say, “That guy is a racist xenophobe. That guy is just so crazy that we can take a more moderate stance.”

….I have to set the bar as high as I can. I’m being completely candid with you. If I had actually set out to become president, then of course it would be ludicrous for me to do it in the way I’m doing it. I don’t have that as my goal; I never have. The only way I can get on that plane and go to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend night after night in hotels in places you’ve never even heard of is by saying, “Think about why you’re doing this, Tom. It is because the issue is important. You are the person that is advancing it.” I have the luxury of saying, “I will set the goalposts as far as I can down the field because then I will have a better chance of getting the game played on my side.”

So: Politics 101. Stake out an ultra-extreme position so that when the rest of your party endorses a merely extreme position it looks like it’s a moderate compromise.

Question: why don’t liberals do this?  The stock answer is that we’re wimps, but I don’t think that’s it.

Emph is my own. He goes on to try and construct his own answer.  Trouble is, he’s missed something kind of crucial.

I mean… they DON’T do this?

Does Drum’s suggestion mean that Charlie Rangle MEANT to cause the largest tax increase in history with a proposal of his the other day? I’m not sure which scares me more, frankly.  Come to think of it, it seems reasonable to suggest that Eliot Spitzer did the same thing with the driver’s licenses for illegals.

His missing that whole situation tells us more about Kevin Drum his lack of perceptive ability, as anything else he’s ever written.  He obviously figures the left to be as clean as the driven snow on the matter .  You and I both know better.  If he’d start reading something other than MOVEON publications and listen to something other than Err America, he would too.

I confess that Andy McCarthy is not one of my regular reads, unless he happens to come up in The Corner.  But I have to say, that this is a GEM.. of both for the news it contains,  and the b____ slap it contains, as well:

SSSSHHHHHHH … Don’t Tell Anyone: Al Qaeda Has Been Routed in Baghdad

The Newspaper of Record has the story today … on page A-19.

… And even there, the Times can’t bring itself to say we won.  The report is headlined, “Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, U.S. Says.”  They left — not we kicked their ass out.

… And neither can the Gray Lady acknowledge whom we’ve beaten:  “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led.”  Right — the “homegrown” group started by a Jordanian who was reporting to bin Laden and operating in Iraq during Saddam’s reign.  The group to which all those Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and other Arabs report after they pour in over the Syrian border.  The group that is al Qaeda.

Perhaps I have underestimated the Andy’s smarts in the matter; Does here really expect that the New York Times is actually going to be fair and balanced?

Other commentary: Memeorandum

Heh.

I noted earlier today, that Bruce at Q&O noted the site and ran the test.

It advised him they’re writing over there at the College Undergraduate level.

I ran the thing myself on BitsBlog, and came up a bit lower:

Well, as you can imagine, I was feeling a little bit put off by this. Something certainly didn’t add up. That is, until such time as I noticed that James Joyner over an Outside The Beltway came up with exactly the same level: High school. Said he:

Cnsidering that all the site authors have graduate degrees, that was a bit disconcerting. Out of curiosity, though, I decided to run our celebrity gossip site, Gone Hollywood, through the tester:

Without intending any insult the James, (who, it must be said, can’t figure that one out, either)… I must say I’m baffled by their judgment on the matter. If I were Bruce, I think I might be insulted. In any event, I now take the “high school” business about as seriously as I take Democrat presidential candidates, and for the same reason.

Addendum:  (David L)

High school is good.   I believe that newspapers aim for the eight grade.   The Air Force I believe was tenth grade.   The aim of communication to be understood.   To that end, simplier is better.

As I understand that algorhythm for computing reading level relies a lot on sentence length.  I like short sentences.   Short sentences are used to make points.   Long sentences are used to obfucate.   Leave the long sentences to Mrs. Clinton.  That is all.

I said it once,  twice, and thrice,  and now By Kenneth Blackwell, New York Sun, says it:

Margaret Thatcher was an unflinching and principled world leader. During an uncertain and dangerous time in history, she stood strong with Ronald Reagan and together they defeated Communism. Hillary Clinton is a two-term New York senator and a former first lady who survived the scandals of her husband’s tumultuous presidency. Whenever challenged or outmaneuvered, she typically plays the victim. They are two very different women, indeed.

Lady Thatcher never played the victim card.   She never had to have her husband pull her skirt out of the fire.

Hat Tip:  Lucianne.com

Did you notice this from Limbaugh, yesterday? He was talking about Hillary Clinton:

HILLARY: I think the fact that governors are being forced into this position is really unfortunate.  They should not be making immigration policy.  The federal government should be making immigration policy.  And that’s what I’m going to try to do as president again.

Now Rush is correct, of course, in observing  that this is very revealing about what’s going on in the mind of Mrs. Clinton.  It also, however is revealing of what has always been going on in the woman’s mind.  It’s something I’ve already alluded to.

So now, the question becomes; issue by her own words ineligible to run for president after by her own words she’s already been president for eight years?

Now, I’m willing to grant that this is a constitutional issue, and most people that are supporting Hillary Clinton don’t give a damn about constitution and the following thereof , unless it’s something that they can hit the Republicans over the head with.   But that, seems to me a major point here.

Sorry, Finally found the clock control to adjust to EST. The time date stamps will be a little weird for the morning.

• I’ve spent the last several days, beating up on Panther, which is my main desktop computer, as well as doing upgrade work on the other systems here at Casa de Bit. I’ve managed to work through the problems surrounding my voice dictation unit.  Since my hands are sore today, from hauling equipment over the last several days, this is a blessing .  It makes my maintaining this site, much easier.
• I’ve also been doing some serious work to reorganize my mp3 collection into something a little more portable.  I’ve seen radio stations with smaller music collections, so you can imagine the amount of data flying around my routers the last couple of days.
• One major technological advance that I have made, just recently, is I have succeeded in retiring , or at least demoting to spot service, my trusty 3com “super stack” 24 port hub.  It’s not a full switch, just a hub.  Therefore it was a bit of a bottleneck around here.  Interestingly enough, it was the mp3 collection moves that finally pushed me over the edge with that one.  I now have two Cisco gigabit switches in place, instead. Makes quite a difference, even though most of the net is still running 100mb. The backplane efficiencies alone….
• As to the blog website, the system seems to be working well, following the adjustments in the cache values that I made. Those of you who understand something of HTML but do not understand how WordPress works will find this of interest;  WordPress is database driven, and the web page that you see in front of you, is actually built, brand new, every time someone calls the page.  This allows for a great deal of flexibility, but also causes some serious slowdowns, when the server is under significant load, as it has been of late.  So, what I have done is to create a situation where the pages that ostensibly get constructed fresh every time, now live , fully constructed, on the servers disk drives, ready to be called.  This allows for a much faster response.  The numbers suggest that I’m saving upwards of five or six seconds per page load because the server doesn’t have to reconstruct the page every time.  It’s a bit more complex, but I think it’s worth it.
• The Swamp Stompers ring, continues its slow growth.  I was very pleased to see Sister Toldjah come on board. I’m amazed to see the quality of the work being done on the blogs that are joining us.
• Speaking of quality of work, I should take a moment to recognize the efforts of DavidL, who has essentially been writing his ass off.  I knew, when I invited him to come on board that he had some writing talent, and some thoughts that needed saying.  But even I didn’t anticipate the quality and quantity of his output.
• For those of you who don’t know, there is a standing offer here at BitsBlog, for a display ad swap.  The purpose, is blog promotion. You put an ad on your blog that I create, advertising BitsBlog, and I do the same for you, for an agreed upon period.  Drop some feedback, if you’re interested.

Eliot Spitzer has become the third rail of politics.

Michelle Malkin notes:

Lonely. He’s Mr. Lonely. He has nobody to call his ooown:

Democratic members of Congress, having watched Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stumble on the question of whether states should give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, are growing increasingly agitated over Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to do so and are calling for him to shelve the idea.

The opposition is especially strong among Democrats bracing for the prospect of tough re-election battles next year in politically moderate and conservative regions of New York; they have begun to speak out on the issue and, in many cases, have disavowed the plan.

“It’s hugely unpopular,” said Representative Michael Arcuri, a first-term Democrat from central New York whom Republicans hope to defeat next year. “I don’t think it would be wise to move forward with it at this point.”

The governor’s aides have been quietly working to mollify lawmakers, and Mr. Spitzer will meet behind closed doors with members of New York’s Congressional delegation next week, according to staff workers on Capitol Hill and in Albany.

The reaction among some Democrats underscores how Mr. Spitzer, who just a year ago was viewed as a rising star nationally, has become isolated within his own party.

I wonder where all these people have been as illegal alien driver’s licenses plans have taken hold across the country.

The bottom line, here, is that until it became a major issue here in New York, on the wings of a comment or two from Rush Limbaugh Neal Boortz as well as local talk show hosts across the country… and until it started showing up here on the ‘sphere, nobody had ever bother questioning the policy before.  Nobody in the news media, at least.  When the questions finally came about, they were solely and completely the movement of the the new media.  This is not triumphalism, but a mere recognition of fact.

The Democrats are pack animals.  They will go wherever the lead dog goes, because their vision never seems to get beyond the backside of the dog in front of them. (Lick, lick)

They never quite get to the point where they think about where they’re going; where they’ve been, or the wisdom of it all.  So, you have to wonder what’s driving their reaction, now. They are backing off this idea the way a crowd will back off from someone in a bed sheet standing in the middle of a market square who is yelling “Allah is Great”..  But…are they backing off this idea, because they finally see, with the remainder of the American people, that driver’s licenses for illegals is a bad idea ?  Or are they simply seeing the political cost to their own careers for supporting what their leaders dragged them into?  Are they backing off because like the people in the market, they see their own swift destruction is at hand if they don’t run like hell?  I think it more properly the latter of the two.  As I say, Pack animals. Independent thought does not seem to be a sought after commodity within the democrat party today.

There is so much that the American people have learned about the democrats in this little exercise, that I wonder about the damage inflicted on them… if it’s going to be recoverable in a year.

Did Hugo Chavez give the World a preview of the Clinton adminstration redux?    Like Chavez, the Clinton’s can not abide dissent.  Matthew Walter and Steven Bodzin:

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan student protesters were fired on, resulting in two gun-shot injuries, when they returned to campus today from a march opposing President Hugo Chavez’s plan to rewrite the nation’s constitution.

Seven more victims suffered other injuries, according to university official. Local television station Globovision broadcast images of protesters running for cover during the incident on the campus of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. One image showed a man in a black leather jacket firing a pistol twice. Interior Minister Pedro Carreno said at 7:10 p.m. New York time that the situation was under control.

Aside to Keith Olbermann, look at the bright side, at least Chavez did not water board the protesters.