Breaking: Scooter’s Out.

WASHINGTON —AP- President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case Monday, stepping into a criminal case with heavy political overtones on grounds that the sentence was just too harsh.

Bush’s move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby’s allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”

Certainly not surprising, and certainly justified.

I’m quite sure we’re going to see the usual suspects complaining about this, but screw them.

Here’s a message for Democrats: If your need for a pound of flesh extends so far as to include conviction over a “crime” that had nothing to do with the original allegations which started that multi billion dollar investigation /fiasco /witch hunt…  you remember, the one you never got any convictions on…then you have larger problems than sticking an old man in jail for 30 months is going to solve… a man who, it should be pointed out, who has served his country faithfully for longer than most of you have been wasting air.

Particularly after I watched the majority of you defending the crimes of Bill Clinton.

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around…  per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

perhaps it’s a little late to be looking at this, now, but Amity Shales in today’s Wall Street Journal as, as the byline says “reconsidering our reverence for FDR.”

It’s about bloody time.

The real question about the 1930s is not whether it is wrong to scrutinize the New Deal. Rather, the question is why it has taken us all so long. Roosevelt did famously well by one measure, the political poll. He flunked by two other meters that we today know are critically important: the unemployment rate and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt spoke of a primary goal: “to put people to work.” Unemployment stood at 20% in 1937, five years into the New Deal. As for the Dow, it did not come back to its 1929 level until the 1950s. International factors and monetary errors cannot entirely account for these abysmal showings.

…

The premier line in the standard history is that Herbert Hoover was a right-winger whose laissez-faire politics helped convert the 1929 Crash into the Great Depression. But a review of the new president’s actions reveals him to be a control freak, an interventionist in spite of himself. Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which worsened a global downturn, even though he had long lived in London and understood better than almost anyone the interconnectedness of markets. He also bullied companies into maintaining high wages and keeping employees on their payrolls when they could ill afford to do so. Perhaps worst of all, he berated the stock market as a speculative sinner even though he knew better. For example, Hoover opposed shorting as a practice, a policy that frightened markets at an especially vulnerable time.

So much for blaming the 29 crash of conservatves. Hoover wasn’t. That aside, what FDR did, didn’t help:

A think tank produced a report of 900 pages in 1935 concluding the NRA “on the whole retarded recovery” (that think tank was the Brookings Institution). Some of the great heroes of the period were the Schechter brothers, kosher butchers who fought the NRA all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Their case was not only jurisprudential but also based on common sense--management from above was killing recovery.

(Emph is mine)

A worthy look back, if a little late. But the conclusion, here, is unmistakable; the farther left our leadership leaned, the more power people went wanting.

Sadly, that’s a lesson the Democrats of today, still haven’t learned.  They are completely unwilling, and possibly mentally unable to critically examine their own history, and come to a factually correct conclusion.

Has anyone else noticed that since the predicted “scorching hot summer” has turned into a very damp squib, “global warming” has suddenly become “climate change”?

Terry Wogan, via Tim Blair.
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Brits get pratriotic, Enjoy.

Bash a couple stories together and you come up with interesting results.
Captain Ed, this morning says

What are the causes of terrorism? Many would have them as poverty, a lack of education, and little exposure to Western values. It’s rather interesting, then, that two of the five terror suspects rounded up by the UK in the wake of three mostly failed attacks are doctors working in their National Health System

So, over at the Corner,along comes Mark Steyn, who says:

Now that Dr Mohammed Asha has been arrested in the Glasgow/London terrorist investigation, several readers have noticed that this artfully combines Michael Moore’s two most recent enthusiasms, “insurgents” and socialized health care:

The doctors who have risen up against the illegitimate government of the United Kingdom are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow.

Oh, come on, be fair. Mr Moore has yet to call these medico-jihadists “Minutemen”. And, in fact, given the waiting lists at British hospitals, they’re more like Eighteenmonthmen.

Well, yes, and no.

Actually, the statement he made about the minutemen was all inclusive, and was intended, apparently, to include such people as we solve the weekend in their Jeep.  But all of this does make an interesting tie in to his recent ranting about Healthcare, and extolling the virtues of government health care.

One really must wonder, though, forgetting the aspect of praise from the Great Rotundo for the moment, whether or not he would interview these doctors on the glories of socialized health care, since they had to put up with it for a few years, preparatory to their attack.  And should we point out, that with their arrests, the waiting lists in British hospitals just got longer?

And should we seriously trust their work?  Ed makes a great point, when he says about the two doctors arrested:

The British may want to check on their work in the hospital system, too. It seems like terrorists who really wanted to frighten Brits would have a field day by killing patients with just enough plausibility towards seeming like natural deaths. It certainly will give patients a new reason to feel uncomfortable about going to hospital.

Correct.  But more; should concern that be limited to these two? seems to me the definition of a sleeper cell is that you don’t know who the members are.  You don’t know what their activities are.   I share Ed’s questioning:the

I wonder what Michael Moore would make of this?

Likely, he will discounted and ignored as much as possible, since it runs afoul of both his pro-socialist, and anti-war narratives.

Michelle Malkin passes a message along, which I will do here as well.

I  hope you can take a few moments out of your day to add Matthew Rager to your thoughts and prayers. Reader Eric e-mails

Our son Matthew was just diagnosed with a brain tumor and surgery is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday July 3rd. He’s 5 years old (he’ll be 6 in July).

We are strong believers in the sovereignty of God and his use of prayer in His plan. Our hope is that over 1000 people will pray for him specifically on his day of surgery.

A friend helped us set up a website with updates on Matthew’s situation here.

I saw this post from Michael Yon, earlier today, and had no words for it. It is, the reality of what we’re up against.  Cold, hard, brutal.  It’s a reality that many in our country don’t want to face.
KJL at the Corner, however, does have words, bless her.

Michael Yon was the only reporter on the scene when Coalition and Iraqi soldiers discovered a mass grave in a village just outside of Baqubah. In the grave were the bodies of murdered women and men and the beheaded corpses of children. Along the road into the abandoned village, the mutilated remains of slaughtered stock animals. All the gruesome mark of al Qaeda.

Go and see.  And the next time you hear jihadist apologists, like Kos and Larry Johnson, and the DU(h) crowd, keep the photos in Yon’s post, in mind. That’s what they’re defending.

Update: McQ over at Q&O notes the same post.

No surprise for that, everybody else  in the sphere has noted that today also.  But check one of the mindless twits in the comments:

Very interesting. This reinforces the fact that we should not have attacked Iraq in the first place — this wouldn’t have been happening. However, it makes it difficult to know what to do now given the complexities of the situation.

The writer, of course, is none other than Scott Erb.  I don’t know whether to consider myself more frightened by the idea that he is out on the streets and free and not under heavy sedation, or that he’s actually teaching this crap to our young people, at the University of Maine.

I respond, somewhat incredulously:

All together now : “It’s all BUSH’S FAULT.”

OK now the way sung the obligatory Liberal mantra, let’s look at the facts…

I suppose your comments would make sense if it wasn’t for the Kurds. You remember them, don’t you, Scott?

One major reason we went in was because it was already happening, and in more places, than just Iraq. Funny how quickly you forget.

Even totally absent those points, what your comment amounts to is “had we only appeased these people”…. etc etc.

I don’t suppose the name Chamberlain rings any bells with you, either.

Ladies and gentlemen, I gave you a Class A example of why Educational system is broken : Scott Erb.

Here’s the thing about Erb; every time I figure he can’t possibly sink any lower, the exceeds my expectations.  I suppose, that what we have here, is a contest for who wants to be the next Ward Churchill.

Meantime, Billy, where are you, man?

The Sunday Telegraph is heralding what it says could be the death of Rap music.

Confronted with haemorrhaging sales, the most assertive popular music movement since the Sex Pistols has lost its swagger and is suffering a crisis of confidence.

This year rap and hip-hop sales are down 33 per cent, double the decline of the CD album market overall….

…

Rap has been deserted by many white fans and middle-class blacks, apparently tiring of the “gangsta” attitude to women, racism, violence and bling – the gold rings and medallions that have made hip-hop a byword for -vulgarity.

“The public has made a choice. They’re saying, ‘We do not want the nonsense that we see and hear on radio, and we are not putting our money there’,” said KRS-One, a rap legend from the Bronx. “Rap music is being boycotted by the American public because of the images that we are putting forward.”

James over at OTB comments:

While I’d like to think moral outrage is the main cause of declining sales, I’m skeptical. Former record industry talent evaluator Tom Vickers observes that, “Rap has gradually degenerated from an art form into a ring tone. That’s why we’re seeing this backlash. There’s only so much bling the public can take.”

I, too, would like to think that moral outrage was involved.  But, like James, I doubt it.

(By the way, how in the world do you take the spoken word, and make a ring tone of it?)

I think what’s really going on , here, is more along the lines of self preservation from the ‘Gangsta” nonsense, while never identifying it as a ‘moral issue”.  (Morals, you see, aren’t ‘cool”)

The kind of attitudes that have been part and parcel of rap since shortly after the style came on the scene years back, eventually lose their attraction, after having been identified as self-destructive by an increasing majority both inside and outside of black culture. …even absent the moral consideration… as that style’s body count rises, and as they become ostracized from even mainstream black society, much less society as a whole. One can only put up with so much drug abuse, one can only put up with so much murder, etc., before one realizes that maybe the Rap artists once held as special, really don’t deserve the distinction. As Jules Crittenden says:

You know. The murder. The drug dealing. The siring of as many children as possible by as many women as possible and abandonment of same.

Certainly, those can be called moral issues.  But those also are issues involving simply surviving. After a couple of decades of examples of such behavior, and such violent deaths, and the destruction of even those that remain alive, the association of rap to those kind of “lifestyle choices” and their negative consequences is set in stone.  Attention, at that point, starts getting paid to other things. People find other places to hang their metaphorical hat, given the self evident self destruction of those making those lifestyle choices.
I suspect to a large degree that’s what’s going on, here, in the overall.

Some of the other elements involved, certainly are part of what’s been troubling the music industry overall these last several years.  But as the news story itself indicates Rap is going down like a stone, even in comparison to the remainder of the already failing industry.

Frankly, Rap started as, and always has been, driven by what’s coming up from the street…

The record companies, and the government, share a common consideration; the government can’t create, all it can do is tax and regulate.

In a similar vein, the record companies can’t create talent, all they can do is record it when it shows up, and try to ‘regulate’ it…(edit it?) into something salable. That’s precisely what happened to rap in its early days.

However, the feed of salable talent from the street has dried up, for lack of interest at the talent end. To borrow a phrase, the street has grown quiet.

Why? One reason, is the link of rap music to vulgarity.  Certainly, vulgarity has been one of the calling cards of rap for the last decade or so.  One can only attract more attention to oneself by being more vulgar, both in word and meaning, and in having more “bling”, etc. When sales started going down, it was precisely because rap music devolved into a contest of who could be more vulgar.  Clearly, that’s no longer working as a sales tool. There’s only so vulgar you can get, particularly if you’re interested in selling the product,a nd tha limit has been reached and surpassed. Forced to rely on talent, rather than vulgarity to win sales, rap is failing in terms of sales, and popularity.

As an aside…

Much has been said about the reasons behind the attitude of rappers (anti women, me first, etc. ) but I suspect that the biggest reasons are the dissolution of the black family, specifically the lessening of the role of black fathers, as a direct result of “the great society”. Add to that, what many have called the “feminization of America” and one begins to see that much of what rap has been about these last several years is a reaction to that situation… An attitude in complete opposition to the diminishment of the role of male blacks. (Which could account for why you see so few female rap artists…)

I guess I bring all this up, because I’m wondering; how much of what is under discussion here the results of people discovering that the opposite extreme is just as destructive?

I suppose if I poured my second cuppa, I could find better words, but I think you see where I’m going with this.

Personally, I doubt it’s absolute death of the style, but if it is, it didn’t come fast enough.

A final note: It strikes me as interesting, but the story should come from a British newspaper.  The indications of been there for quite some time, now, but apparently newspapers here in the states don’t possess the testicular mass required to print the story here, possibly for fear of being targeted by the Sharpton / Jackson race huckster cabal.

A slow day out there. Been looking around at some of the things on my “todo” list. ONe of hem was the comment some weeks ago about Fred Thompson being a legislative lightweight.

First of all, even if he was not of putting a great deal of law, the libertarian side of the wonders if that can seriously be considered as a negative.  But as it turns out, he’s been anything but a sluggard in terms of generating the law, during his time as a senator.

Here’s the list of his output, below the fold, courtesy of Thomas. Careful, it’s quite long.
Read the rest of this entry »

Kos is broke:

I’m not accustomed to flat-out begging, but I’m going to do it out of necessity.

Please give to Kos,what you think he deserves. 

Hat Tip: Don Surber

Bit wrote about one bloviarting blowhard, Larry Johnson,   I write of another, Al Gore.  

In the Chicago Sun-Times, James M. Taylor, pleads for Gore to acknowledge sciience:

Many of the assertions [Al] Gore makes in his movie, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

The fact is that Gore is a politician and not a scientist.  Gore’s claims are political.

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As events unfold I’m simply asking that folks take a big deep breath and try to keep things in perspective.  Are there jihadist extremists in the world who are willing to kill innocents?  Absolutely.  Are they amenable to negotiation?  No.  I am not in the, “have you hugged a terrorist today” camp.  However, we need to stop equating their hatred with actual capability.

If today’s events at Glasgow prove to be linked to the two non-events yesterday in London, then we should heave a sigh of relief.  We may be witnessing the implosion of takfiri jihadists–religious fanatics who are incredibly inept.

You know, Larry, if I ever needed proof you are blathering idiot, we’ve just found it.  The above quoted paragraph is tantamount to saying,

“Yeah, the train bridge over Main street bridge shakes a bit and looks like it’s having some trouble holding the train up, but it ain’t fallen over yet, so there’s no danger at all, no need to stop the trains from running over it, no need to shut off the car traffic under it.”

Alternately, saying…

“Yeah, I know there’s a lightning storm coming up.  But I wanna play golf, damn it…

You know, the chances of your getting struck by lightning while standing up the middle of a thunderstorm, in the middle of a field with very few trees, and an aluminum stick in your hand, is very small.

I’ve done this several times before.  Lightning is stupid.  It’s tried several times but it’s never managed to hit me.  Let’s get another hole of golf or two in, before the storm gets really bad. ”

.
Larry, let’s try the real world, huh? All they have to do is get it right once.  Granted, that they seem to be having a little trouble doing that, recently. (And by the way, Larry, why is that, do you suppose? Is it possible that our enforcement in the middle east is helping some? Nah, you’d never admit that.)

However that may be, I want you to take a close look at southern Manhattan, Larry, and take a look in the history books as regards planes being flown in two buildings down there.  Take a look at some of the history books as regards a plane being flown into the Pentagon.  I think that can be taken as an indication of what happens when they get it right.  Folks DIE.

You, apparently, are not bothered by that prospect.  Which is exactly what I mean when I say you’re a blathering IDIOT.

You folks keep chattering about how you don’t want this unending war, as you call the conflict in Iraq.  And, more recently now, Afghanistan.  And yet what you’re asking us to do in this case is to put up with precisely that.. and on OUR turf, no less. Explain this dichotomy to me.  If you can.

My main beef remains that much of the cable news media reacts to this nonsense like a fifty year old guy on Viagra or Cialis–they pop major wood.

Perhaps that’s because they, unlike you, recognize the danger involved.They think our country’s being attacked is a serious thing.  Regardless of its degree of success or failure.

And you know what Larry? They’re right.

I mean, really, Larry, how many people have to die before you take the issue seriously?

Or is it just that there’s a republican in the White House, and our reacting to the threat under a Republican leader, would make would make him look good, and the lefties look bad?
Like I said….  and again, just so we’re clear about this…You’re an idiot, Larry.

If you thought that the democrat leaders’ imaginary friends retired, when Dck Gephardt went back to Missouri you are badly mistaken.

Dirty Harry Reid has taken up where Gephardt left off, inventing imaginary friends, who just so happen to agree with them.  Wow.

Allah Pundit, Hot Air, has the audio as Laura Ingram asks Dirty Harry, “Where’s Tommy?” 

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HotAir is tracking a story out of the UK. Go and read.

It’s interesting to watch the story as far as AP is concerned, be sent as a mere car crash, when everyone else on the planet was calling it a deliberate act of terrorism. Watch, in the updates:

Update: An eyewitness now tells the Beeb that the car didn’t actually explode, but was merely giving off “pops and bangs” which he suspects was burning gasoline. Another eyewitness reports hearing what sounded like an explosion.

Update: Maybe it’s the greatest coincidence in history.

Another witness told the BBC that the vehicle was a Land Rover and that there was a heavy stench of petrol after the car crashed. He said he did not believe the vehicle was a car bomb, saying that the explosion was relatively small.

That could simply be due to the car burning, but the powerful smell of gasoline is what tipped off bystanders to the second car bomb found yesterday in Park Lane.

The AP is still the only news agency to report this as a car crash.

Update: More from Sky.  It seems safe to say that this was deliberate.

[T]here are reports the men were trying to fling petrol onto the flames.

Scott Gleeson said he saw the jeep speed up and swerve towards the terminal at an angle to hit the door.

Update: Some of the bystanders claimed to have tackled the Jeep’s passengers after they got out even though at least one of those passengers was on fire. If this was a car accident like the AP claims, why did people in the area react by attacking the “victims”?

Update: The AP appears to be backing off the collision scenario: “Amid fears of further attacks, a burning sport utility vehicle crashed at full speed into the terminal building at Glasgow airport in Scotland, police and witnesses said.”

Update: “Some people who were close by shouted ‘let him burn.'” More: “There was a lot of anger – if the crowds had got hold of this gentleman it would have been the end of him.”

Well, clearly, what’s going on here, is that the AP is resisting reality at all costs until there’s no escape… and I suspect it’s because it doesn’t match with someone’s world view.  As I asked, earlier this morning; when are we actually going to admit that we have a terrorist threat on our hands?

Oh… and people getting ticked and reacting, correctly in my view to the threat, is encoruaging… they have a better handle on the reality of the situation… the real world.. than the anti-war left… and the idiot apologists for the Jihad.

Rusty Shackelford looks at the reports, and says in what has to be a candidate for “Snark of the Day”…

Must be those damn rightwing Christians again. Perhaps even the Jooooos.

Update: Noted David had a post going up on the topic same time I did. I’ll leave them both online.