Snark of the Day: Scarlet O’Clinton

White liberals can be such condescending phonies.

La Shawn Barber

Mrs. Clinton was groveling for votes in Selma on Sunday.  For the occassion Mrs. Clinton adopted an utterly horrid southern accent.   You can listen to the target of La Shawn condescention, via Mike’s Noise.  

Mrs. Clinton lacks class.  About all she was missing Sunday was the black face.

Don Surber has posted his box score.

Allahpundit, has posted on Hot Air, a video revealing the true inlellectual depth, or lack thereof same, of the pro surrender movment.

Mrs. Sheehan doesn’t know much but she is darn sure of what she believes to true.

In the meantime in Wasington, reporters, or lack thereof same, make much the same kind of statement.  The House pro-surrender caucus holds a press conference and wonders where are all the reporters?

WASHINGTON, March 2 — About a dozen members of the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus gathered on a sunny day last summer on the terrace outside the Capitol for a news conference. The only problem: no reporters showed up.

(H/T: McQ, QandO)

Mrs. Sheehan and Congressman Waters both have the same problem, nothing to say.

I’ve added, to the footers on individual posts, ‘related links’.

In house note; Guys, note the aded link selections at the foot of your graphic editor. I tend to stick to Technorati links, myself.

Bit blogged about the MSM interest, or lack thereof same, in Charles Rust-Tierney.   Bit wrote:

[I]f you figured the press had any integrity

To expand from Rust-Tierney to a general principle, I suggest, with the press when it comes to integrity, agenda wins ever time.  While not the same order of magnitude as Rust-Tierney, Jay Tea, at Wizbang, offers yet another illustration of agenda over integrity.

The Boston Herald and  Jessica Fargen write a piece long on agenda but rift with factual error. 

A national rights group for the blind is vowing action after a vision-impaired South Boston man was denied a visit on the historic USS John F. Kennedy yesterday after Navy officers told him it was too perilous for the blind. 

“When it happens, it’s a very traumatic experience to be denied the right to participate in something,” said Mika Pyyhkala, 34, who unlike 30,000 other people, did not get a chance to walk the deck of the USS JFK yesterday.

Marc Maurer, an attorney and president of the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, said the Navy’s denial violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act as well as a state law providing for equal access.

One the John F. Kennedy is not an historic ship.   She is a commissioned US Navy warship.   Nobody has a right to board a commissioned Navy warship.   The Kennedy is not a place of public accomadation, at least not yet.   The Americans with Disabilities Act is totally non applicable.

Maybe, just maybe, if the Herald had sent a military affairs rather than  a health and medical reporter they might have known the keel from the masthead of warship.  Or would that being asking too much?

In all likelyhood, the incident with Mika Pyyhkala was staged.  In  a zest to promote a poltical agenda, the Herald sent a reporter to cover a story on which she was not competent.  Agenda over integrity.

A number of thoughts occur, with regards to the fiasco at Walter Reed.

The Democrats would be wise not to hit this one too hard. First, because this stuff has been going on since the last time they were on watch, and secondly….. well… somehow, I don’t think of them as being that smart, as to be able to argue against that fact.

But mostly, is the thought that Walter Reed is the operational example of government health care. Thereby, to keep this argument going , for whatever reason, would seem to me to put their push for government owning health care in a bit of a bind.

Addendum: (Bit)

Should we take the expressions of shock surprise and amazement about the conditions at Walter Reed, currently being displayed before the hearing cameras, by various Congress -critters , to mean that they honestly didn’t know what the situation was there?  And reflecting on this, I don’t see how that could be true.

If conditions there were as bad as we’ve been led to believe, one would think they’d been told about this by their constituents. Not once, but repeatedly.

If conditions there were as bad as we’ve been led to believe, you would think that the Congress people, who of course are very interested in the well being of the returning, injured, war veteran , would have been visiting the hospital and those people and seen those conditions, firsthand.  Not once, but repeatedly.

Oh, wait; In both cases, these are military types, and Politicians tend to ignore them.

So how is it, that they’re suddenly so interested now in the conditions there?  Well, let’s observe, who is on the front line of the stories, today. They end up being exactly the same people who have been the loudest in their antiwar capitulation.  Can you see things a little clearer from here?

ST. LOUIS —AP- Thomas F. Eagleton, a three-term Democratic senator from Missouri who resigned as George McGovern’s vice presidential nominee in 1972 after it was revealed he had been hospitalized for depression, died Sunday in St. Louis, said a spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Eagleton, 77, had suffered from a variety of illnesses and ailments in recent years. A cause of death was not disclosed.

In Eagleton, we had one of the few politicians in the country other than Dennis KuKu Kucinich, who could be considered to be to the left of George McGovern. of course, we’ll be told that his politics had nothing to do with the state of his mental health.

Yeah, right.

By in large Americans believe that a family should consist of a husband, his wife and their children.   Mrs. Clinton does not.  Redstate has the video of Mrs. Clinton’s pandering to the so-called Human Right Campaign, here. 

Mrs. Clinton never was a moderate, and never wil be.

An interesting post from Riehl, updating the story DavidL ran a few days ago, regarding Charles Rust-Tierney. Apparently, this slimeball…. well, go and read. I’m not even going to bother. Remember, gang, this guy is an ACLU bigwig… the same guy who is the one fighting for free access to porn at government-owned libraries.

Bill O’Reilly, who occasionally serves a purpose, performs admirably, here:

One of the images Tierney was in possession of showed a little girl tied up and screaming while being violently raped.

This shocking case received little media attention even though Tierney, 51, is a well-known figure in the Washington, D.C. area and strenuously fought against limits on Internet access in libraries.

On Dec. 1, 1998, Tierney issued this statement: “Recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet.”

And included among those “resources” is child porn. The ACLU in Virginia successfully blocked any filtering of objectionable material in Loudon County libraries.

This is off-the-chart disturbing, and you would think the media would be all over it.

Well, yeah, I suppose you would, if you figured the press had any integrity. Longtime readers well know well that I do not. Nor does O’Reilly:

The truth is the committed left press in America is no longer interested in reporting the news. Anything that hinders a favorable view of the far left will be ignored; anything that advances liberal causes will be celebrated. News reporting today is largely about ideology and shaping the culture, not about informing the public.

Just so. And, of course such bias… such corruption is hardly limited to this case, involving the ACLU. What have I been saying about the coverage in Iraq, for example?

* Musical Pick: One actually that came from the randomizer, this evening..

Fine Young Cannibals “The Raw and the Cooked” from February of 1989. When this album first came out Donna and myself were just getting started… we got engaged. It became a hit for them about late summer of the year… and happened to be the tape… yes, I still use lots of cassette tape, to this day… we had in the player as we drove off on our honeymoon.  As it happened, it was cued up to side 2 cut one, “Don’t look back”… a song about a couple just starting out. So, you can imagine, it’s an old favorite for both of us. For us, it’s a great reminder of those days. Musically speaking, they sound to me to have a lot of skiffle but with a harder edge. Vocally, Roland Gift reminds me more of the Invictus label days… groups like Chairmen of the Board, and so on, than anything else. Of course, “She Drives Me Crazy”, is perhaps a single woman opening Ref with a recognized Billy factor on a scale with Iron Butterfly’s “InnaGoddaDavida”.  Definitely in the top 50 of the albums of the entire decade of the ’80’s. Sadly, the balance of the group’s output… there are other problems for the IRS label, didn’t come up to this one.  They never could match it.  all too often, the first effort of a group constitutes the pinnacle of their record of work.  Boston, for example.  Such is life in the music world.  (Shrug)

I told you these musical picks were gonna be a little eccentric….
* Idiocy in wing-tips himself, Jonathan Chait in the LA times asks:

Why so threatened by a union card?

A look at the U.S. auto industry, versus the auto industries which are not unionized, ought to give you the answer.  That is, assuming you have the intelligence to understand those circumstances.  Based on this and past writings, I rather doubt you do.

* To those asking, Alex is doing much better, thanks, and is to return to school come Monday. There’s always the Nervous mother syndrome… worries about how Al’s going to adapt is situation to the school. I’m not all that worried, but I admit that part of me is glad that she is.  In some ways, I think I’d think less of her, if she wasn’t.

* As a treat we did some railfanning, as I suggested we would, yesterday. However, 35 to 40 mile an hour winds of the west, along with a driving snow, did little to aid us in getting some presentable pics. Still, Alex loved it; It’s his first time out in a few weeks.

* If the far left thinks that we’re not going to be at war, if a Democrat goes into the White House, they’d better think again.  Or perhaps a better think for the first time. Dave Newbart at the Chicago Sun Times is reporting that Barrack Obama is now on record as saying the military option shouldn’t be taken off the table with Iran. to my mind, all this proves is that the democrats know what a threat we are under.  However, they are so bent on regaining power, that they are using their positions to enforce failure in Iraq. which, I think I should point out, is going to ensure that we are at war for a long, long time. that’s something that could have been avoided if they had been Americans first, instead of Democrats first.

Nicole Belle:

All you really needed to do was to read in context the actual statement that he made. And you know what? He’s right, even in this little out of context clip that you made. The bottom line here is that once again we see democrats playing up the part of the victim, just like I mentioned with Al Sharpton, the other day.

“I’m a victim” is the theme that ties the Democratic party together, and all liberal politics for that matter. Once again, the left panders to “the victim” instead of encouraging as Newt is trying to do, individual responsibility. That such things are so far outside your realm as to be incomprehensible in a situation like this, proves my point.

There is also something to be said to the point of electing such incompetence to the state and local level in New Orleans and Louise yen at large. There again is where the people in that state and in that area fell down in their responsibility as citizens. The incompetency of the Democratic governor of Louisiana, and the Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, and William Jefferson, (he of $90,000.00 in his freezer ) etc., etc., cannot be blamed on the Federal government or on president George W. Bush. It can only be blamed on the people in the voting booths pulling the wrong levers. That failure of responsibility is compounded, when said voters continue to support such incompetence in office.

The reason the Democratic party can rely so heavily on the victims is because they make so many of them… and New Orleans is merely the most graphic and startlingly clear example of that

Glenn and Don are all lit up about Compact Fluorescent Lighting… (CFL).

Don links the argument to the overall global warming scare:

Only 2 percent of India is air-conditioned versus 71 percent of the United States. India not only is further south but it has nearly four times the U.S. population.

Now would be a good time to make sure India gets its air-conditioning right to protect the planet.

Instead, we are worrying about what kind of light bulbs Wal-Mart sells.

More than 40 percent of the world’s population lives in China or India. Exempting them reveals the global warming crowd has another purpose.

Those of us who doubt them are “global warming deniers,” to quote Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

I prefer Doubting Thomas. It is more fitting. Global warmers believe without proof. I want proof. But believers claim if we wait until there is proof, it will be too late. How convenient.

Global warming is a faith-based initiative. Upon reflection, the religiosity of the environmental movement is to be expected.

Socialism is secularist, even anti-religion. But man needs religion. Global warming fills that need for some.

Don, of course, is quite correct here.  However, I am nothing if not a pragmatist. With regards to automobiles and trucks and what not, I’ve said repeatedly that if you have an automobile/truck that will seat six comfortably, carry all their stuff, performs reasonably well, and yet will get 60 MPG, and also pulls a 6000lb. trailer without getting into trouble, bringing out on the open market, and let the market decide. Meanwhile, leave what I have alone.  I have what I have because it works. Keep government out of the equation … in other words don’t force us, by means of law, into such vehicles, because it’ll never work that way. We killed off our own auto industry, trying to regulate ourselves into fuel efficiency.  It doesn’t work.  People simply don’t want to buy the results.  Let the market decide.  I believe in what works.  So does the marketplace.

So let’s examine all this CFL business, from a practical perspective and leave the attachments to the religion of global warming to one side:

The costs, both monetary and environmental, are about a wash… the lower power costs are not quite covered by the increased initial cost, though the initial costs are starting to come down as production ramps up.

Also, there are some situations which CFL’s simply don’t work well.  For example outside lighting which is required, on all at once is out of the question.  I do have a couple CFL’s in positions around the house where static lighting… stuff that’s on all the time. But in the cold around here they generally take 10 minutes to come up to full brightness. Of course, in one such situation that actually works to our advantage; I’ve installed a four bulb fixture in the bathroom, just recently… and that much light, coming on all once, at 3:00 AM when you stumble into the bathroom, would likely blind you at least temporarily.  As it is, these bulbs, come on at approximately a quarter of their full brightness initially and then slowly ramp up to full brightness.  So there are situations in which that works ideally.  The less than ideal spots we can work our way around, given the chance.

All that said though, the current state of the legislation surrounding mercury, leaves me wondering what I’m gonna do with them once they start burning out.  The law of unintended consequences would seem to apply here.  Given that situation, CFL’s are not exactly an environmentalist’s panacea.  But you may notice that they are selling rather well, even outside of California who was stupid enough to issue mandates about incandescent bulbs.

Why is that stupid?  Because it’s simply not practical.

Let’s imagine that we actually turn the free market loose to invent as they see fit.  Let’s imagine that as a result of that somebody comes along with a more efficient technology in terms of lighting.  How would we get it past the barrier of the existing laws?

Government, you see, cannot create, it can merely limit.  Do we really want a limit on our ability to invent?  Further, in the case of California, there is the additional factor of mercury being tagged as a hazardous waste.  Thereby rendering all CFL’s as such, as well, since they contain it as a matter of design. Yet more unintended consequences. Further, given the state of light emitting diode technology I don’t know as we can consider CFL’s to be anything but a stepping stone. The issue for the intrusive government, thereby, becomes how to deal with legislating for whatever possibility comes.  The answer, of course is, they cannot.

Thereby the best policy is to get the government to stay out of the way of technology, and invention.
As to Walmart, and their move as regards CFL’s, I wonder about the motivations, there.  Certainly, they have the right to sell whatever they feel will sell. That’s up to them. But to attach such sales to some “enlightened environmentalism” seems misguided at best, given the mercury contained in the bulbs.  I also wonder about the total effect of Wal-Mart bending over forward for the environmentalist religion.  Now I will grant you, that there is very little in the brain of a leftie environmentalist.  But I’m actually seeing comments about how using such bulbs will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  I find an amusing on several points, among them

1. I know very few oil fired electricity plants.
2. Since plastic is not a design factor in incandescent lighting, but is a major factor in fluorescent lighting, I should think if anything increased oil usage would be the role, not a lessening of it.

Bottom line:

There are situations where that CFL’s work quite well. There are others where they do not work well. But that is for the individual, and the market, collectively, to decide. That process is a place where government has no place…

And, spare me the platitudes about how you’re saving the environment by using them.  You’re not.

And we see our hero, are running out of the building, slamming the door behind him running across the parking lot and jumping behind any large truck just before the building blows up.  Says our hero, “Gee, I guess I just got out in time”.

I can’t help but feel something like that this morning as I read this from Matt Hicks over at EWEEK.COM:

Dozens of blogs hosted by Google Inc.’s Blogger service can install programs that are widely considered to be spyware and adware onto visitors’ computers, warn users and spyware researchers. In many cases, users are discovering the offending sites as they browse among blogs through Blogger’s navigation bar.

The offending blogs typically prompt visitors to accept downloads through misleading pop-up windows, said Ben Edelman, a vocal spyware critic and Harvard University researcher. While a user typically must accept the download before the software installs, the prompts often attempt to trick users by disguising the download as a necessary Windows or Internet Explorer upgrade.

Edelman, who on Tuesday posted the results of his tests, discovered dozens of Blogger-hosted blogs spreading spyware and adware programs such as Elitetoolbar, Crazywinnings and DirectRevenue. For example, security vendors such as Symantec Corp. classify Elitetoolbar, or EliteBar, as adware because it installs an Internet Explorer tool bar, redirects search queries and initiates pop-up ads.

It looks from here like the majority of the affected sites are linked via java to IWEBTUNES.COM, so I’m unconvinced that we can blame Blogger or Google specifically.

Still, because of the amount of black box stuff going on within Blogger… (one of the reasons I took BitsBlog off that service) it’s nearly impossible to tell how much of this stuff Google or Blogger has an actual hand in. Truth to tell, I had a love/hate relationship with that “Next Blog” pop bar, anyway. I got a substantial number of hits off that thing, but I always worried about what was on the other side of it.  Turns out my suspicions were correct. not that my current hosting service is without problems, but at least they’re not injecting stuff on my pages.

Now, the suggestion has been made that the whole thing is Google’s fault because they allow JavaScript to be sent in to CSS on each site. of course the problem with removing Java ability within Blogger templates, is there are a number of services, including SiteMeter and Technorati, that use Java.  Bitsblog made some fairly heavy use of it while hosted there. If I recall, I had 4 scripts running. So, I can certainly understand the reluctance to remove that ability.  That would end crippling the majority of the Blogger hosted sites.  Which, in turn, would create a mass exodus.  Of course, if this issue isn’t addressed their going to have that, anyway.  The question now becomes which is going to create the larger losses for Blogger.

Either way, I’m just as happy I bailed when I did.

John McCain has spent six years working diligently to offend the conservatives whose support he now needs. Right now he trails Giuliani by 20 points. That may well represent the high point of his campaign.

Hugh Hewitt.   Read Hugh’s column, here.

The first law of holes is to stop digging   The John Kerry/John Edwards campaign evidently not gotten the memo.

Elizabeth Edwards has issued the following statement: 

When Miss Coulter spoke about John at the conservative convention in Washington yesterday, she used a word that she intended as a nasty and derogatory suggestion. John and I have long ago shrugged off the vile words of this person. When she made a joke about the exact moment of death of Charlie Dean (Howard’s brother and a schoolmate of mine), and when she attacked the courageous 9-11 widows, she told you all you need to know about what she is made of: her compassion — or lack thereof.  Now we need to find out about you.  

Mrs. Edwards in a snit because Ann Coulter said a word which casts homosexuals in a negative light.  Awe!

The Edwards campaign hired a blogmaster who regularly, as matter of habit, impugned, insulted and belittled Christians.    The Edwards camgaign is in no position to preach on hate.

* First, tonight’s music: Russ Freeman & Craig Chaquico, their “From The Redwoods To The Rockies” album.  I’ve liked Freeman since my Jazz radio days, when he was just getting started… This one’s from 1998, and features David Benoit (Pro: Ben-Wa) on Keyboards… Benoit is a star in his own right. Recorded at the Cheyenne Ranch in Colorado, this disk is what we used to call a ‘needle dropper’, meaning, you’ll be happy with any track on the disk. Here’s some of the best in their fields, playing together. The disk is a real joy. It’s not out of press, so far as I know, but…

* Ann Coulter… second pass: Yes, I have seen a good deal of the commentary coming from the right.  I’m not impressed with most of it, anymore than I was impressed with the cries of pain coming from the left. Look, gang, the leftists have been acting like a bull in a China shop for the last twenty years, basically tearing down any sacred cows that they had the wit to make fun of. But now suddenly when the tables get turned, their own weaponry gets used against them, and we’re supposed to be apologetic?  I don’t think so. After so many years of the Democrats being offensive, in my view they have no room to complain when they get offended.  And I will be damned if I’m going to let them define what I can and cannot say in any given situation. Those who are going after Ann at this point over this, would do well to consider that’s precisely what they’re doing… letting the left define the battle. it should be fairly well known by now, that when you let the enemy define the battle, you’ve already lost. The honest truth is, that Coulter’s comments cut a little too close to home for their comfort.  Well, tough beans.  Personally, I don’t like losing.

And let’s face it, if Howard Dean is so worried, so offended… maybe it’s because he figures the John Edwards isn’t much as a candidate, either.

Final comment on this point; does anybody remember the number of comments that were filtering out from the left in places like Mother Jones and the left side of the ‘sphere about Coulter being the product of a sex change operation gone bad? That’s precisely what I meant what I said the Democrats are getting what they gave, and have no room for complaint now.

* Maher, again

Go and see. The man is a slimeball of the first order. and ABC was right to can his butt. HBO should as well. But here’s a mark of how out of whack the left is… and indeed, a goodly chunk of the right.  Noel Sheppard says:

As of 1:30 PM EST, there are 504 articles at Google News concerning Ann Coulter’s comments yesterday at CPAC about John Edwards. Regardless of your opinion of those comments, how can they be close to as offensive as someone voicing regrets over a failed assassination attempt on a sitting Vice President?

Indeed, how?

* Railfanning, tommrow. With luck, pictures. Not sure where, yet…