Barack Obama — Oboo-boo

“If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Howard said, “I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”

So sayeth John Howard, Prime Minister of Austrailia.   Video here.

To which Barack Obama, playboy from Chicago and supposed democrat canidate for president said:

“If he’s ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric.”

To which the liberal blogosphere say – not much.

Obama response shows couple of thing.  One, Obama is mathmatically challenged.  The population of the United States is circa three hundred million, Australian twenty million. The level of troop commitments is about proportional.

Two, Obama is still wet behind the ears and not ready for prime time.

As to the left stream blogosphere’s lack of response,  the lefties have utterlly no problem with left  wing wack jobs who go to foreign nations to criticize our president.   Howard might have figured what was good enough for  Bill Nelson was good enough for him.

(H/T video:  Tom DeLay )

REDFIELD, N.Y. —(AP)- A historic snowfall of more than 11 feet is nothing to get excited about in this hardy upstate New York village that thrives on snowmobilers and cross-country skiers. “It’s snow. We get a lot of it. So what?” said Allan Babcock, a lifelong resident who owns Shar’s Country Diner, a popular eatery in this village of 650 people.

As a rule, they tend to get something less for snowfall up there, but not MUCH less…

(Singing to the tune of “If I were a rich man”)

“If I had a snowplow…..

All day long I’d push the snow around… then I’d be a wealthy man””

This story was all too predictable.   As New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer operated as an arrogant jerk.   Spitzer’s M.O. was to file civil law suits against citizens for no violation of the law, and coherse a out court settlement.

Spitzer legal extortion tactics won  him media praise, election to governor in landslide and stratospheric approval ratings.

Now Spitzer’s high handed arrogance has run right smack into reality.  Spitzer has managed antagonize the democrat controlled state assembly and has his base, the media.   A sample from the New York Times: 

ALBANY — Gov. Eliot Spitzer waited all of 39 days before turning on his fellow Democrats and attacking legislators in their home districts.

Next question: Will he try to take out Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver?

Spitzer’s ego is simply too big to fit into Albany.  His personality too abrasive with which to work.  The only good thing I can say about Spitzer is that is making George Pataki look good, and that is quite a feat.

( Arizona Republic)- Oh, for the days when Arizona’s high school students could roll pizza dough, sweep up sticky floors in theaters or scoop ice cream without worrying about ballot initiatives affecting their earning power.

That’s certainly not the case under the state’s new minimum-wage law that went into effect last month.

Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they’re cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees.

And teens are among the first workers to go.

And it’s not like the Democrats weren’t told about this. What kind of lessons are we teaching these kids?

For years, ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith has used her title to sell TV shows, diet books and herbal sex pills. Now the Advertising Standards Authority has stepped in. Yet the real problem is not what she calls herself, but the mumbo-jumbo she dresses up as scientific fact, says Ben Goldacre

That the Guardian, this morning

Now if only we had something similar as regards the hucksters pushing the “global warming” myth..

* Billy:

You can blame this on site registrations.  I’ve noticed the same problem.  However, I have also noticed that when that occurs, it is invariably a site that requires external registration to come in on page one of the story.  Page two, for some reason, is not similarly protected on these sites.  The Washington Post would be one such site.  (Now, mind you, I said that before I went to check; it is a Washington Post article he’s linking to.

*Closed circuit;

No, Jim… I think the biggest thing in my mind at the time I said he’d lost his sanity, back when he started sounding increasingly like a liberal, was Andrew Sullivan’s transformation, which was remarkably similar in appearance… at least, initially.  My guess is saying Sullivan is insane, would have elicited something less in the way of ire from you.  Though, as I say, that’s just a guess.

* We’re back to expecting 15° highs on Tuesday, around here.  I’ve been desperately wishing for a somewhat warmer days so I could wash the salt of the car.  No such luck.

*Flash: Kate Hudson goes topless. Nobody notices.

Well, OK, not really. But it’s not far off. I mean, poor Kate… When Jennifer Aniston recently had her boob job, (I gather she’s got a nude scene in a movie that hasn’t been released yet, and thought she needed a little help for the scene God knows why…) they were large enough to begin with, to the point where people actually to this day are arguing she hadn’t had one done. That’s a situation I can’t imagine happening with Kate Hudson, ya know?

* Ace nails it, here
* I hate Mondays.

 Abraham Lincoln, A House Divided:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Barack Obama: A Way Forward:

2,867 Americans have now died in this war. Thousands more have suffered wounds that will last a lifetime. Iraq is descending into chaos based on ethnic divisions that were around long before American troops arrived. The conflict has left us distracted from containing the world’s growing threats – in North Korea, in Iran, and in Afghanistan. And a report by our own intelligence agencies has concluded that al Qaeda is successfully using the war in Iraq to recruit a new generation of terrorists for its war on America.

Washington Post:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 10 — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama formally opened his campaign for president here Saturday, invoking memories of Abraham Lincoln and challenging a new generation to help him transform the nation.

Standing on the grounds of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech against slavery in 1858, the Democratic first-term senator began a bid for the White House that barely seemed possible just a few months ago but could make him the first black president. “I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness — a certain audacity — to this announcement,” he said. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

Bil Kristol:

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol attacked Obama’s Iraq policy, saying he wants to appease terrorists like pro-slavery politician Stephen Douglas tried to appease slave-owners. Kristol said, “Obama’s speech is a ‘can’t we get along’ speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858.”

Bottom line, Lincoln said that evil must be confronted.  Obama wants to appease evil.   Obama uses Lincoln as a prop while repudiating the courage for which Lincoln stood.  Mr. Obama have you no shame?

John McCain is on record as saying that money in politics corrupts.  A year ago, McCain went to court to prevent what he said were ends runs around his anti free speech, McCain-Feingold.  Today, McCain makes the same end run.

By McCain’s own standards, such as they are, McCain is corrupt.

(H/T photo:  Buffalo Guardian )

Richard Gray, the Science Correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph:

Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research.

Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth’s climate than global warming experts previously thought.

In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.

Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

But even when confronted with this, Gray can’t seem to get by his own bias, even in an ostensibly ‘news’ article…

He claims carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity are having a smaller impact on climate change than scientists think. If he is correct, it could mean that mankind has more time to reduce our effect on the climate.

Notice, please, the possibility that Grey completely ignores; that being the man has no responsibility for global warming, that carbon dioxide emissions due to fossil fuel burning and other human activity have no serious connection to any climate change. It’s a measure of how far the “global warming” myth has advanced, I suppose, and just how far left the press has tilted itself.

But in any event, So much for the myth of “consensus” .

McQ notes Mona getting back into the act.

Of particular note to me, was a rather interesting claim of hers;

I was at my “own site,” a group blog owned by Jon Henke, and I was one of Jon’s recruits.

Interesting…Mona apparently doesn’t do irony, or she’d have busted a screen with that one.

That said though, she’s apparently talking about a couple of guest posts that she had put up over there at Q&O a while ago… or more correctly, Jon had put up. I gather he was trying to give her a legitimate voice for reasons that I still don’t understand.

It was, in fact those posts, that led me to question not only Hanke’s sincerity about his political positions, but his sanity, as well.  One of the concerns that I had with the gent while he was posting over there was that he frequently leaned way too far left, and I was of the opinion at the time that that would eventually backfire.  I was hardly alone in that perception.  Then, as if to confirm all of that, he starts posting the ravings of a left wing nut case… Mona… and signing onto it.  As Bruce now says… you don’t do that with just anyone. And so, I proceeded to argue with him ,on an idea by idea basis.  I have always said this place is about ideas.

And in a funny kind of way, it would appear Mona thought the guy was leaning left, too.

Look, granted, Mona is a rubber room case.  I think some of the stuff she pulls would even give the likes of Willis the heebeejeebies. This most recent example being prime on my list that the moment.  But hard as I have been on Henke, I don’t think him the leftist that Mona obviously does. She thinks he agrees with her on this stuff; and after the exalted treatment she got, who could blame her?

This does speak rather loudly to the concept of being careful about who your friends are. that line takes a special quality, in the world of political blogdom. As I believe I said at the time…. Though I suspect that they still don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about over there, on these points. (Sigh) Oh, well.
Where is she posting now?

Unqualified Offerings, that’s where.

McQ notes that Jim Henley’s blog was once highly regarded. He’s kind enough not to say so, but I’m not; that place is gonna come crashing to the ground very quickly, with her blatherings being posted there.  Which, was precisely my fear for Q&O… a blog I personally still hold in high regard. Though I expect to Henley’s hit rate will go up , the credibility of that site will continue it’s downward spiral.

For my part, and for that reason, I took that site off my check sheet a little over a year ago.  As such, I will admit to a bit of surprise to her being there, as I haven’t seen the place in a while.

So why, comment at all? A fair question.
I guess when you come down to it, I didn’t quite have the words, in my anger, to say what was making me so uneasy about that situation, back in the day….  and I guess in the end, I’m not quite sure I have the proper words for it now; I’m sure there’s going to be some people who will misunderstand what I say here.  So be it.

But this kind of event was precisely why I was angry at the time; My vision keeps coming back to Bush 41 compromising with the Democrats and then getting beat up in the election of 92 over that compromise by those selfsame Democrats. No connection, other than the concept involved; It comes down to a matter of judgment about who you sign on with , and who you compromise with.

And in the end, I’m glad that the Mona bit didn’t come down quite as badly as I had the feeling it was going to, at the time.

For whatever good thoughts are worth, anymore.

Can Mrs. Pelosi handle the pressure of breaking the marble ceiling?   Judge for  yourself, view video here, read about it here.

In this one video clip, Mrs. Pelosi, plays the dumb blonde card, “I don’t even know the numbers of the planes”; the poor victim card, “That the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, which I have been a constant critic of the war in Iraq”, the blame Rummy card, “Rumsfeld still has a desk” and the sex card, “Now, as a woman, as a woman” (twice).

This woman is clearly in over her head.

Jules Crittenden:

I’ve been ignoring the big talk about Pentagon intel before this because, to put in bluntly, it doesn’t mean anything nor does it change anything.  Then or now.  It is simply a stick, and not a very impressive one, for people who want to beat the administration and try to make it look like they are doing something useful. Take Carl Levin … please:

… while the actions of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy “were not illegal or unauthorized,” they “did not provide the most accurate analysis of intelligence to senior decision makers” at a time when the White House was moving toward war with Iraq.

“I can’t think of a more devastating commentary,” said Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Well, I can. I’m looking at one attack after another in the 1990s, and nothing in reaction but a few missiles lobbed.

And then the key line, here:

Levin’s doing the best he can with the commentary he has to work with.  It needs to be devastating, so he’ll think it’s as devastating as he possibly can.

In short, what Levin and for that matter the remainder of the democrats are doing, is nothing more than political wishful thinking , along with the dosage of witch hunting thrown in.

Here’s more from Levin. He’s on a tear:

He cited Gimble’s findings that Feith’s office was, despite doubts expressed by the intelligence community, pushing conclusions that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague five months before the attack, and that there were “multiple areas of cooperation” between Iraq and al-Qaida, including shared pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

“That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war,” Levin said in an interview Thursday. He said the Pentagon’s work, “which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate … is something which is highly disturbing.”

Actually, that was an argument, one of many.  For Levin to suggest otherwise is wrong … distorted … inappropriate …. in fact, it’s highly disturbing.

But, highly predictable.  And you know this stuff is being massaged for maximum political impact when you see the Democrat party house organ, otherwise known as the Washington Post, playing this kind of nonsense with the story.

So whatever happened to Democrats being honest?  Oh, that’s right, they never were.  Never mind.

When President Ronald Reagan called the former Soviet Union, the “Evil Empire”, the leftiests soiled their dippers. Now in Poland private citizens want to erect a monument to Reagan:

Opponents of Poland’s former communist regime reportedly want to pay a posthumous homage to US President Ronald Reagan by erecting his statue in the place of a Soviet-era monument.

In an open letter to the mayor of the southwestern city of Katowice, the former anti-regime activists said that the staunchly anti-communist Reagan had been a “symbol of liberty,” the Polish news agency PAP reported

Reagan resonates. Because, he spoke the language of freedom. Reagan saw in the hearts of all men the yearning to be free. Freedom is something the lefiests like Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter and the Clintons will just never understand.

(H/T photo: Between the Coasts )

Update I: (Bit)

Mark Levin  says in part, this monring:

There will be an effort to avoid conservative scrutiny of candidates by demeaning Reagan and his accomplishments. They argument will go like this: Reagan wasn’t all that conservative, or that those who worked for or supported Reagan weren’t happy with his presidency, or that conservatives are demanding purity when there never has been a pure conservative candidate or president, and so forth. Of course, there’s always some of this, i.e., whining about any candidate or president. In Reagan’s case it was the exception, not the rule. But this argument attempts to gloss over the real issues, if not problems, with those currently seeking the Republican nomination. It diverts attention from seriously attempting to discern their core beliefs and the legitimate reaction to their candidacies, including by many of those in “this group” who worked closest with Reagan in his campaigns and administration. It’s a mistake for anyone to snidely dismiss those for whom these issues and questions matter. To their credit, the three leading GOP candidates have not and are reaching out to “this group” and people like them.

That statue going up in Poland… which has been pretty much ignored by the Domestic press… is a lesson for those who would seek the Republican nomination.

Update II:  (David L)   Pejman Yousefzadeh, Red State, remembers the Gipper as well:

Although certain quarters in the United States may have forgotten, the Polish people–and many others in Eastern Europe–remember what Ronald Reagan did for them. Some Americans may be ungrateful for Reagan’s accomplishments but those who are enjoying the taste of freedom after decades in captivity will long venerate the 40th President’s legacy.

Unlike Ellen Goodman, I can not speak with an absolute sense of certainty.  I am but mortal.   However I feel confident that no free people in any foreign land will ever offer their own money to erect a statute to Jimmy Carter.  Reagan is warmly remembered abroad because he suipported free men and freedom.   Carter has spent a life time supporting dictators and tyrants.

With respect to canidates and presidents Reagan never thought himself as better than any other man.   In Reagan’s White House farewell, pictured above, he was waving to his friends.  Reagan had a sense of modesty shared by no democrat canidate since Harry Trumen.   

The current crop of democrat contender’s view of America is is through the tinted glass of limosine.  We don’t need any more limosine canidates

Bruce McQuain at Q&O passes along an interesting note:

Sean Brodrick lays out a schedule for us:

On April 17, the Chinese are blasting off an unmanned lunar orbiter.

Next year, they will send astronauts up to orbit the Earth .

Two years later (2010), they’ll aim to put a rover on the moon …

And by 2020 – 13 years from now – China plans to bring back lunar samples.

Unlike our moonshot of 1969, the Chinese aren’t undertaking their trips to the moon for purely nationalistic pride, flag planting and a round of golf.

Nope, they have bigger plans than that.  They’re looking for Helium-3 a potential fuel for nuclear fusion:

Helium-3 is constantly spit out by the sun. It bounces off the Earth’s magnetic field, but the moon – which has no magnetic field – soaks it up. This is why the moon’s crust is saturated with helium-3.

Used in a fusion reactor – which China says it tested successfully last year – helium-3 will produce a clean, potentially limitless source of power. And at least in theory, just 40 tons of helium-3 could keep on all the lights in the U.S. for a year.

And 40 tons of coal?  Just snap your finger … yeah, about that long.

Let’s digress a minute.  You remember my post about the elephant in the global warming room? China has a growing economy which is going to require tremendous future output of power generation – generation which to this point doesn’t exist. In fact, on the drawing board there are 2,200 new coal fired plants. Can you say pollution central?

It’s an ambitious project.  However it also makes some serious sense, given their situation.  But I’d like you to consider something: The Chinese seem far more willing than we to put up with some short term pollution problems, in order to allow some economic growth, which in turn funds projects like this, which in its turn, fuels more economic expansion, and so on. They seem to understand, more clearly than we lately, that such economic expansion will benefit the environment, and not hurt it.  Whereas we on the other hand are so concerned about pollution that we spend all of our time fighting over the best way to cripple our own economy so as not to destroy the environment. As an example; look at this note Rich Lowry got today from a reader:

I am glad to hear that you don’t mind switching to florescent lights.  California may mandate them.  By the way, a few years ago California declared florescent tubes to be a hazardous waste because they contain mercury As of this year, you can be fined if they are found to be in your garbage.

Forgive me, but it seems to me the priorities here are somewhat skewed; aren’t we supposed to be a capitalist society? Aren’t they supposed to be a socialist society?

At what point did this situation get turned upside down like this?

As David Warren suggests today:

If you want some real science, check out for instance the next issue of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. An important article by Robert Erlich will expound the link between solar resonant thermal diffusion waves, and terrestrial climate change. They give a fairly precise overlay for climatic variations through the last 5.3 million years, and appear to explain the sudden emergence in time of the already-known 100,000-year “Milankovitch cycle”, while eliminating many of the problems previously associated with it.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then why would you have an opinion on global climate change?

Eliminate the entire human population and, for all we know, a cooling trend might result. But the idea of crimping Western economic activity by a few market-crashing percentage points, while China, India, Russia and the rest of the Third World are allowed to continue gunning up their carbon furnaces on a truly unprecedented scale — which is to say, the basic idea of Kyoto — would not be the solution.

The solution, to this possibly non-existent problem, would be the positive introduction of more efficient energy sources that do not require oil, gas, coal, or firewood. Now, strange to say, global capitalism is working on this night and day, for there is big money to be had from a breakthrough. And nobody else is working on it. Killing the global capitalist goose will not lay the golden egg.

Which, as I say, the Chinese appear to be learning faster than we are. Do you understand what I’m telling you?  These people are going for the brass ring, stretching their arms out as far as they possibly can to get it, and while we’re riding this merry go round with both hands solidly on the pole of our painted wooden horse.

Whatever happened to the America the use to reach for the brass ring?  Whatever happened to the America that supported capitalism , and capitalism in turn made it the greatest nation in the world?

My one word answer is “Democrats”.

* Well, what do you know… More cold and snow for our area. Global warming, of course. A little town about 60 miles to the west of here called Oswego… just north of Syracuse… has gotten something like 100in. of snow in the last week.  That on top of what they already have on the ground.  Too bad there’s no mountains in the neighborhood… they could make a killing in skiing.  ANd of course it’s so stupid COLD around here I don’t dare wash the salt off BitsBox for fear of freezing the poor thing shut. Personally, I could go for a little global warming right now.  My feet are freezing.

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* Michelle Mauldin is apparently noticed that having the title of “newsman” or “newswoman” doesn’t make one more accurate, necessarily.  She’s founded glaring blooper in this morning’s Washington shaft Post.  Clearly, they’re in a position of power, that is getting abused, here.

* Speaking of abusing power, I see by way of Powerline that Nifong is in trouble…

The North Carolina bar filed charges today against Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong in connection with the Duke lacrosse prosecution. Nifong apparently has been under investigation since last March. He is charged with making inflammatory comments to the media about the defendants in the case, and with “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation” in connection with the exculpatory DNA evidence that he apparently tried to conceal. Nifong faces penalties ranging up to disbarment.

His being disbarred is a mere slap on the wrist as compared to what he should be getting.  What he should be getting a serious jail time.  As Powerline suggests:

Our criminal justice system reposes a tremendous amount of discretion in prosecutors. When prosecutors are corrupt, like Nifong or Ronnie Earle of Travis County, Texas, who ruined Tom DeLay’s public career, the consequences can be devastating.

Quite so.

As such, the penalties for abusing that office should be even higher than the average Joe or Jane would suffer for abusing their position. Further, those kids should have a full written and public apology from the D. A’s office as well as whatever monetary values are brought up.

Understand… Normally, I would be strongly against the taxpayers paying the burden for Nifong’s misdeeds.  But let’s face it, gang, everybody on the planet knew this guy was as dirty as the inside of a septic truck and yet the people of the county are reelected him, anyway.  The people of that county should thereby share the burden of making restitution to those college kids.

*Going to be a slow weekend; I have a number of things to do around the house, and it’s too blinking cold, anyway… though I may have some photography to pass along by Sunday sometime. The boys are bugging me to go railfanning… and I’m thinking Frontier Yard over in Buffalo would be good for the purpose.

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* Final note for tonight;
In the interest of being fully honest with you, I’m going to admit to you that some of these things that I write in the Nightly Ramble, I put into the can, and save for a rainy day.  Yeah, I know, shocking revelation.

Tonight isn’t one of those nights…. but if I’m running slow on things that I think are worthy of the Ramble, I reach into the stuff that I’ve put in the can, and post it. The reason that a few times this week I haven’t put forward a nightly ramble, is because I no longer have anything in the can to post, nor do I have anything fresh to post, on those nights. An intolerable situation, which hopefully will be short lived.  I’m building up more of a reserve these last couple of days, and we should be in better shape.

The stuff that goes into the can, is worth mentioning, usually in conjunction with something else, but most likely not worthy of a post all its own.  That’s pretty much how I envisioned these nightly rambles, anyway.  I usually try to tie a series of topics together in ways you might not have thought of, and often in ways I hadn’t thought of, either.  This stuff will all balance out eventually.

The website Think Progress did the blogospheric equivilent of cleaning latrines.   The site counted cable network references to the Anna Nicole Smith.    The count:  MSNBC; 170 references; CNN. 141 and Fox 112.  

My question, which count would you consider indicative of victory?  I’d be inclined to say, Fox.   Smith’s accomplishments in her own right, were limited.  She was a celebrity, but not a talent.  She certainly was no president. 

Smith achieved both fame and riches, but not happiness.  She was a failure.    We as a society have an undue and unhealthful obesssion with  celebrity.   I, for one, sure hope that MSNBC lost the rating battle yesterday.  What say you?

More:  Foreign Policy, BuzzMachine.

(H/T photo:  MSNBC )