2007 March for Life

(H/T photo:  Townhall )

Mary Katherine Ham has more photos, here and here.

Fresh doubt was cast yesterday on a magazine’s allegation that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) attended a madrassah, or religious school that teaches a fundamentalist version of Islam. 

Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school in Indonesia, told CNN that his institution — which Obama attended four decades ago, beginning when he was 6 — is not a madrassah.

“This is a public school,” Priyono told CNN correspondent John Vause in Jakarta. “We don’t focus on religion.” Classes in Islam are offered to the predominantly Muslim students at the school, CNN reported.

That’s Howard Kurtz, this morning.

There’s a several problems with this rather thin denial. Among them:

* The Schoolmaster doesn’t mention what the school was 40 years ago.

* While the schoolmaster allows that Muslim classes are taught, “to the predominantly Muslim students at the school,” he doesn’t mention if Obama took part in them. 

*We’re forced by logic to assume he did in fact take part in them; Why, I ask, would Obama’s father enroll him there, were it not for such classes being offered?

* Let’s remember, this charge comes from Hillary Clinton, not from some supposedly right-wing smear campaign. Democrats, if you can’t trust one of your brightest stars, what have you got?

 Finally, the question: Has CNN taken sides, here?

Appendum: (David L)   It is hard to treat CNN as if it were a reliable source.   Still there are questions about Barack Obama that deserve a serious answer, CNN need not  apply.  Don Riehl, Riehl World View poses one:

Googling around, his Father was said to have been a non-practicing Muslim and his Mother an atheist or secularist. So why four or five years in two religious schools? There were, I believe, a few fine International schools available in Jakarta at the time.

You read Don’s entire article here.

Here’s my question, from Don’s article:

In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I’d pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.

If while in school according to Obama, “nothing happened” when he prayed, and today he claims to be a Christian, at what point in his life did something happen?   Where is Obama’s Come to Jesus moment?   As Obama describes himself, he dd not believe in Christ as child, to wit nothing.  Now he professes to believe in Christ.   So when did the transformation take place?

Irony abounds; Hillary Clinton may ahve just killed off public financing of presidential campaigns… and thereby much of the limitations attached to that financing.

Or, so suggests an article in the WaPo this morning.

Though she will doubtless sell it this way at some point during the next two years, she most certainly did not do this because of any conviction about not spending federal money. She simply doesn’t want to deal with the limitations imposed by it, during what is going to be the most expensive presidential campaign in history.

Do you think this man look like a twelve year old?   Well neither do I

Neil Havens Rodreick II, pictured, is registered sex offender in Oklahoma.  Rodreick tried to enroll in school posing as a twelve year old.  Yavapai County, Arizona, sheriff’s office, spokeswoman Susan Quayle said, “This is the weirdest case I’ve seen in 18 years.”

Bob Christie, reports:

PHOENIX -(AP)-A charter school alerted authorities to a 29-year-old sex offender who tried to enroll there, pretending he was just 12, in what sheriff’s officials said Friday may have been an attempt to lure children into sexual abuse.

If you take the article at fact value, Lonnie Stiffler and Robert James Snow are utter morons.   I don’t believe that Stiffler and Snow are that dumb.

NAMBLA got free pass in Missouri.   Will it get one in Arizona as well?

McQ at Q&O:

One of the talking heads I’ve found to be among the most balanced, rational and knowledgeable is US News and World’s Michael Barone.

Today Barone takes on a subject we touched on in our podcast with Capt. Ed of CQ yesterday: Presidential primaries. Or to be succinct about it, how badly the primary process is really serving us.

… But Barone has a point about the primaries starting too early (and one reason I predicted it isn’t at all out of the realm of possibility that the next president of the US will have spent 1 billion trying to secure the office). And because they do, they force potential candidates to make decision well before they’d probably prefer to do so: Some candidates have been busy running most of last year, and now they’re busy announcing their exploratory committees. So anyone who doesn’t want to devote two or three years to nonstop fundraising and campaigning is ruled out. That would have eliminated past candidates like Dwight Eisenhower. His last point about Eisenhower is an important point. If, for instance, you are a Colin Powell fan and if Powell actually had the desire to run, I don’t think anyone would expect him to consider doing so in the time frame now considered necessary in order to have a chance to win. It also forces into the race those such as Obama and Edwards who really should be concentrating on building the experience necessary to appeal to voters by fulfilling the duties of the national office they’d just won.

I dunno. I’m not convinced we’re not blaming the wrong thing, for the problem here. Ike wouldn’t get nominated these days, by either party. Nor, I fear would a JFK, even. However, I don’t see that as a function of flaws in the primary process, as much as it is the rise of extremism.

I have not fully fleshed out this thought, yet, but it occurrs to me that the primary process itself is not flawed, so much as the politics that are driving them to the extremes we’ve seen the past few decades. Had the politics not drifted so far toward socialsm, over the period, then to now, our primary system would be working just fine… as it seems to have done then.

As I indicated in a previous post, to Billy, it seems to me that we’ve drifted away from the ability to think critically. Thus do we have the headlong march into socilaism in all it’s forms, and the unprecidented radicalism of it’s pursuit, and on the opposing side, radicalism in reaction to it. The political environment is more to blame, I think for the failure of the primary system.

Would changing the primary system to adapt to the exremism we see today, serve to bring some sanity back to the primary process, I wonder, or would it intstead simply cast in stone the extremism?

Perhaps, Billy.

Sadly, however, it bottom lines at this: the ‘choice’ between Obama and Clinton merely highlights the fact that most are devoid of even surface level thoughts, much less something deeper.

I suppose we’ll have a workable measurement of that phenom in somewhat less than 2 years’ time.

On Saturday Bit wrote:

My wife has been complaining for several weeks now, that it’s too warm here in Rochester. “There’s no snow”, she complains, Telling me repeatedly that she likes winter she likes the snow and so on. She’s been getting our wish the last couple of days, current temperature outside in Rochester is 14°, it’s supposed to be getting no higher than 26 tomorrow. At the moment we have perhaps 2in. of snow on the ground.

So, of course, for the last couple of days I’ve been told about how it’s too cold. (Shrug)

Well that was Saturday this was Sunday. Matthew Danerman writes Rochester, “Families cheer winter:”

January 22, 2007) — MENDON — See Spencer Green.

See Spencer go fast. Really fast.

Go, Spencer, go!

The Honeoye Falls boy squealed with excitement as he, his young cousin and his dad — all crowded onto an inflatable sled — quickly started picking up speed down a slope of hard-packed snow in Mendon Ponds Park.

Spencer, 8, likes sledding. A lot.

I don’t profess to do crowd estimates,   There were seven events venues at Mendon yesterday,.and all the parking lots were filled.   Then the major event was not the Winterfest but rather the sledding hills. ?

(H/T photo:  Moonbattery )

Both Lady Thatcher and Ronald Reagan proved that national leaders can both be amiable and tough.

Now Mrs. Clinton, shown kissing Suha Aratfat, is trying to reverse that proposition and infer that because she is cold that somehow she should be percieved as if she were tough.  Nobody is more unlikable than Mrs. Clinton.   So given that Mrs. Clinton can never get the voters to like her, she is trying to play her coldness as if it were toughness.  Witness her stooge’s, Terry McAuliffe, silly attempt not make an analogy between Mrs. Clinton and Lady Thatcher.

If have any doubt that Mrs. Clinton can be cold hearted and mean, just has the former staff of the White House travel office. and any of B.J.’s bimbos.   Yet a woman who will not defend the sancity of her own marriage can not depended on to defend her country from  nutcases like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Mark Steyn, via Nation Review Online has more.:

There’s a world of difference between the politics of personal destruction and the geostrategic kind. Beating up breast-cancer survivors is no indication you’ll do the same to Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il. 

(H/T:  Paul, Powerline.)

Former DNC chairman, and full time Clinton stooge, Terry McAuliffe dared to compare Mrs. Clinton to Maggie Thatcher.

“Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough,” said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman. “She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe.”  

To which I say  Bullocks!

Iron Pants Thatcher is a lady of fortitude.  Maggie would never announce she was standing for office via an off-line gimmick.   Lady Thatcher would call a press conference and make intentions known in front of the full world, with a live microphone and room full of reporters.

Mrs. Clinton is afraid to announce via a live news conference.  Yet she dares to suggest she as the fortitude to lead the nation.

Mrs. Clinton touts herself as tough.   Yes Mrs. Clinton is tough, on America’s children, both unborn and born, and on B.J.’s many girl friends.  On the other hand, Usama bin Laden need never worrry about Mrs. Clinton.

More: Ace, Ace of Spades

But now she’s running the same campaign template again. Does she really need to “listen,” at age 90 or whatever she is, to understand the problems of Americans? Is this a concession that she knows as little about Americans as she knew about New York Staters in 2000?

Will Ross Perot come out of the wood work cnce again to save the Clinton’s electorial bacon? 

I’ve been watching a goodly chunk of the hype coming out of Microsoft, of late, over the next generation operating system called “Vista”.  Given the flea circus at the first couple of generations of betas generally are, I haven’t been watching all that closely.  I simply haven’t the time.

However, one discussion that’s come up has been with regards to digital rights management, and the implications for general usage of audio and video.  As you may know, I have an entire server dedicated to MP3 based music.  This is stuff that I have collected over the years, and converted to an 83, from both final, and CD.

The WindowsVistaBlog:

Over the holidays, a paper was distributed that raised questions about the content protection features in Windows Vista.  The paper draws sharp conclusions about the implications of those features for our customers.  As one of the Lead Program Managers for the technologies in question, I would like to share our views on these questions.

Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs.  In many cases this content has policies associated with its use that must be enforced by playback devices.  The policies associated with such content are applicable to all types of devices including Windows Vista PCs, computers running non-Windows operating systems, and standalone consumer electronics devices such as DVD players.  If the policies required protections that Windows Vista couldn’t support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs.  Clearly that isn’t a good scenario for consumers who are looking to enjoy great next generation content experiences on their PCs.

Associating usage policies with commercial content is not new to Windows Vista, or to the industry.

No, that’s true.. it is not new, anymore than the bugs associated with it, are.

It’s important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC.  For example, if a user were viewing medical imagery concurrently with playback of video which required image constraint, only the commercial video would be constrained — not the medical image or other things on the user’s desktop.  Similarly, if someone was listening to commercial audio content while viewing medical imagery, none of the video protection mechanisms would be activated and the displayed images would again be unaffected.

Great. So, what happens in the case of the hundreds of hours that I have put into converting and organizing the large audio and video collection that I have here?

The paper implies that Microsoft decides which protections should be active at any given time.  This is not the case.  The content protection infrastructure in Windows Vista provides a range of à la carte options that allows applications playing back protected content to properly enable the protections required by the policies established for such content by the content owner or service provider.  In this way, the PC functions the same as any other consumer electronics device.

Yes, well, that’s the issue, then, isn’t it? We all have horror stories of not being able to play backup copies of various media, because of some half-baked ‘protection’ or another. I am fully within my rights to have such media.  Indeed, it is standard operating practices around Casa de Bit to not directly play CD audio, or, for that matter, video on consumer grade machines.  Rather, the habit is, to upon arrival at home, make a working copy of said media, storing the original as a master copy.  In this way the working life of the disk gets extended to near permanency.

But the protection schemes that Microsoft is apparently signed onto, negate all of that.  In the Microsoft implementation, the quality of playback, even of original disks, is limited to 520k per frame, Which under no condition, can be considered high definition.

So, along comes this stuff.  And Microsoft patiently explains, that vista does not arbitrarily make decisions about what can and cannot be played on it.  Rather, we are led to believe, if indirectly, by implication, that such choices are being made by the RIAA. Gee, that’s a help.

NOT.
The problem started with the content makers (such as RIAA) and their insistence on DRM… a system faulty and anti-consumer at it’s root… and it being adopted at the hardware level in the first place. That Microsoft sold out to the RIAA, strikes me as counterproductive for both organizations.  And, to me.  Given the automatic nature of Windows updates, and the idea that divers enabling such playback can be crippled at a whim by Redmond and the RIAA, that is exactly what we sign onto, when we install Windows Vista on a machine.  This is by definition anti-consumer.

I find that totally unacceptable.
It’s enough to make one consider moving to another operating system, or simply not bothering to upgrade to whatever Redmond says is the latest and greatest. As a matter of fact, such attitudes may explain why there is such a large population still running Windows 2000, today. And why the RIAA is about as popular as a guy in a headscarf yelling ‘Allah is great”. People know there’s going to be an explosion eventually, and want to be nowhere near it.
They each, (MS and RIAA) apparently, have trouble understanding the damage that they’re doing to their own industry.  Eventually, consumer anger is going to spill over.  And I suggest, that anger has thusfar been muted somewhat, and turned into a lack of sales.  Thusfar, anyway. But what it turns into later? Doesn’t take much to guess.
Ever heard of the Boston Tea Party?

Understand me clearly; my objection here is not to Microsoft’s implementation of this, but that it is being foisted off at all by such as the RIAA. Once that happened, Microsoft’s adoption of it, was inevitable, given the power of the lawsuit.  Inevitably the “protections”, are hurting the consumer.  Certainly, it has already cost Microsoft, given the development time involved. And of course, the consumer ends up paying for that, too.

At least those who continue to pay for this nonsense. For my part, I will not buy disks crippled with ‘protection’. If that means I don’t buy new music or video, so be it.

Sister Toldjah does a nice compare and contrast between the MSM handling of Mrs. Clinton’s announcement and that of Sam Brownback’s:

The mediots are in full support mode today after Hillary Clinton’s announcement that she will seek the Democratic nomination for president, on the same day that Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback announced that he would be running. New Mexico gov. Bill Richardson (D) is set to announce his presidential intentions tomorrow.

With the power of Google, the DNC can find this post as soon as I put it up.  It my objective to have Bitsblog in DNC’s favorites.

* My wife has been complaining for several weeks now, that it’s too warm here in Rochester.  “There’s no snow”, she complains, Telling me repeatedly that she likes winter she likes the snow and so on.  She’s been getting our wish the last couple of days, current temperature outside in Rochester is 14°, it’s supposed to be getting no higher than 26 tomorrow.  At the moment we have perhaps 2in. of snow on the ground.

So, of course, for the last couple of days I’ve been told about how it’s too cold.  (Shrug)

* Many thanks to John Hawkins for using HIS blog to direct attention at BitsBlog.

*The other day I noted a hit from the Senate Sgt at arms office.  In truth, I’ve been noting an increase in traffic from both houses of Congress , and the occasional hit from the DNC.

Bruce noticed similar hits and made mention of it this morning.

I know that OTB has gotten similar hits, because a couple of them came from this site.  Bruce also reports similar hits today.  He also says he’s not suggesting anything sinister by it.

I’m not ready to suggest anything sinister yet, either, but there is enough of a pattern here to raise some eyebrows.  I’ve noticed a serious increase since November of traffic from such sources .  My take is they’re watching, and watching closely what goes on in the world of blogs.  As I said to Bruce today:

My thought is that one indicator already leans that way…. that being the timing of the increase in traffic coming from those networks…. so soon after the Democrat takeover, and almost in phase with talk of blog regulation, ala ‘Fairness Doctrine’…

The other is that they show up at MY place at ALL.

Look… Not that Bitsblog isn’t good and all, and does OK for hits, and has it’s moments… but let’s be honest…I’m not getting a daily hit rate near to what this place or some others… OTB, or RWN,for example, get.

The sudden interest in my little place, and an even number of hist elsewhere… your place, for one… from such sources… is suggestive to my mind of someone being quite comprehensive in their examinations of what is going on in blogdom. AS such, I cannot believe that we’d be alone in this. It seems clear to me that there’s a comprehensive effort going on. At the least, it would explain quite a bit.

I don’t know what the next indicators would be, but I’ll know them when I see them.

And why what all this be a concern?  Mostly because I wouldn’t put it past the democrats to make such a move as to limit free speech on blogs, any more than I would put it past them to limit free speech anywhere else, for example, talk radio.

Something of a history there.

–
* You will recall the I had ordered some memory for my new camera phone.  It is absolutely amazing to me that we are fitting a full gigabyte of memory onto so small a footprint. It’s about half the size of a penny.  Actually, they are now selling that small with 2GB on it. However, other developments have overtaken the situation.

My wife in her wisdom decided that I was to have a replacement for my trusty Palm 505.I’m apparently getting disorganized and my old age, ignoring the fact that I’ve never been overly organized in the first place.  It makes one wonder how I managed to get by what programming tasks I have, programming being a talent that outright requires an organized mind.  In any event the old one needed replacement because of the tragic event; it got fried by a faulty power supply.  Oh, well… 6 years old and all… and I bought it used in the first place.

What she got to replace it, is actually quite a machine.  She got me another Palm, this time a Tungsten E2. Yes, I know there are more capable machines out there, but I have a rather substantial investment in Palm software and what not that runs on the Palm, and I really prefer sticking with something that’ll use what I already have.

Anyway; The same day as she got me this new Palm, the memory for the telephone showed up.  Interesting; Inside the package with the memory was an adapter to allow the micro SD chip (which the phone takes) to fit into a regular SD slot which the Palm uses. This allows me the flexibility of walking the huge chunk of memory between the Palm pilot and the phone.  I’ll leave it to your imagination, the flexibility that gives me.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the 2gb CompactFlash memory that we ordered for the Cannon Sureshot A95 .

Something tells me this is going to be a fun summer.

* Oh, speaking of summer, we’re in the process of planning our summer trips.  Assuming that we don’t see $5.00 gallon gasoline were going to be taking the camper out at least a few times this season.  Where, remains to be seen as yet.  Among the possible destinations is West Virginia, Cape Hatteras, Indiana and Illinois, and Nashville. my wife is one that doesn’t like to plan these things too far in advance, whereas I mean time already have the mileage and cost matrix nailed down for each possibility.  So, while I have a pretty good idea what it’s going to cost us, I still have no idea what we’re going, nor will I until the time comes.  Perhaps it’s just as well, if I knew or we were going this far in advance, I’d probably are researching to death and by the time we got there I’d know the place well enough that I’d be bored with it.  I really am looking forward, however, to getting the trailer back and getting out and about.

* I see Mark Finkelstein over at Newsbusters has some serious questions about the video I mentioned earlier this morning.  Now mind, I hadn’t seen the video.  Frankly I don’t have the stomach to watch the woman at all, much less declaring for the presidency.  But Mark has put up the video, and notes that the world outside the window where she taped her announcement, is looking remarkably Summer- like.  So, right from the get go, the woman is lying to us. She had this announcement in the can for months.  I guess that’s no surprise. I mean, who would have thought that Hillary Clinton would lie to us?

Mrs Clinton wants to have a conversation.

Why?

Why?

From Mark Finkelstien, NewsBusters, when and where?   Submit your question for Mrs. Clinton.

Let us hear some answers.

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. Jan 20, 2007 (AP)—(via ABC) Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like “California Dreamin'” and “Monday, Monday,” died Friday at 66.  His sister Frances Arnold said the singer-songwriter died at his home in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, after a short illness. He had suffered kidney problems following surgery last month and had been put on dialysis, Arnold said.

…

Doherty made a solo album in 1974 and achieved a bit of immortality by both playing the Harbormaster and voicing all the characters for the children’s TV series “Theodore Tugboat.”

I am taken, momentarily, with the idea that so many from the sixties have died early. hard living, perhaps, I don’t know.

Musically speaking, I am convinced that Bones Howe was as much an influence on the sound of the Mama’s and the Papas, as anything else.  Consider the sound of the other groups that Howe famously produced, which were so similar in terms of harmonic content etc..  The Fifth Dimension, The Association, The Turtles, Jan and Dean, Don and Phil Everly, and so on.  That’s not intended as a slight on the talents of such as Doherty, but rather a recognition of them. Howe had a tendency to collect the brightest and the best talent to him. That the Mamas and the Papas were on that list strikes me as placing them as peers with the brightest and the best of the time.

And by the way, I wasn’t aware he lived so close to me here in Rochester.  In terms of radio, Mississauga is very nicely within earshot.

The wire services, most notably in my reading list the Associated Press, that Hillary Clinton has jumped into the race.  Surely, somewhere in America, someone is saying “damn, I never saw that coming”.  Likely, it would be somebody that would vote for … ummm… her.

I noted last evening, Barak Obama’s bid for the Presidency… or at least, that’s what he calls it, and in those notes on a made mention of the idea that he would likely end up as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.

I notice that Captain Ed is linking the same story, albeit from different sources, and notices that right off the bat her people are just sounding too stupid for words:

“I’m not just starting a campaign, though, I’m beginning a conversation with you, with America,” she said. “Let’s talk. Let’s chat. The conversation in Washington has been just a little one-sided lately, don’t you think?”

Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do think it’s been a little one sided.  All to your side. As Ed points out;

The Democrats have hardly been silent during Bush’s six years in office. They have been shrill, hysterical, and well-covered by the press and bloggers on both sides of the partisan divide. What they haven’t been, until the last midterms, is convincing.

True. Moreover, it can fairly be said they were not tremendously convincing this time, either.

You see, here’s the problem: The Democrats have, since 1992, had a serious hatred problem. Not so much with the Republicans, but with each other. The only means by which they have been able to marshal their forces is to put them all under the banner of hatred for George W. Bush. Thus do we have the automatic rejection of whatever Bush says, even if the Democrats had said it themselves less than two years before…

As an example:

The escalation of troops in Iraq.  Two years ago the Democrats were screaming for it.  Now the president wants to increase the number of troops as the Democrats counseled two years ago but the Democrats are a solidly against it.  Why?  Simple; because Bush wants it that way. They can at no time be seemed to agree with their nemesis, even if what their nemesis is suggesting is unquestionably the correct thing to do.

I submit to you, that hatred is the only are reason they managed to win at all in this most recent election. It worked for Hitler; Name and demonize a common enemy.
However, without that lightning rod, they are going to be falling back into their hatred for each other. One need only read sites like the Democratic underground to know this for certain; The people within the Democratic party are dramatically split .. far more so than they would have you believe. The cause of a goodly amount of that hatred were Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Her running for office now, is going to recreate that split.

With predictable results, in ’08