Dollar Up As EU Loses

The WaTi is reporting today that the France and the Dutch voting against the EU constitution, is having an interesting effect on the US Dollar;

The euro dipped below $1.22 in New York trading yesterday, an eight-month low. The currency has lost more than 10 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the year.
Perhaps even more significant than the regained purchasing power, analysts say, is the renewed luster of the dollar as the world's reigning currency.

Slant Point points up something going on down in Ithaca, NY… at the Wal-Mart… Apparently someone set up a home-made bomb in the place.

And yes, I’d call it Domestic Terrorism.

Peggy Noonan has a new one up this morning. She’s always worth a read, of course, but today she hits on a topic I’ve been thinking about the last few days:

Mark Felt. Was he the hero the press is making him out to be?
Well, Peg doesn’t seem to think so.

No one wants to be hard on an ailing 91-year-old man. Mr. Felt no doubt operated in some perceived jeopardy and judged himself brave. He had every right to disapprove of and wish to stop what he saw as new moves to politicized the FBI. But a hero would have come forward, resigned his position, declared his reasons, and exposed himself to public scrutiny. He would have taken the blows and the kudos. (Knowing both Nixon and the media, there would have been plenty of both.) Heroes pay the price. Mr. Felt simply leaked information gained from his position in government to damage those who were doing what he didn't want done. Then he retired with a government pension. This does not appear to have been heroism, and he appears to have known it. Thus, perhaps, the great silence.

So why, then, is the press lauding him as such?
I think I touched on this when I first commented on Felt a few days ago…

Imagine with me the howling, had this occurred with a Democrat, instead of Nixon.

Rush Limbaugh, yesterday, came out in agreement:

Could you imagine, folks, let's go back to the Lewinsky and the impeachment era of the Clinton administration. Can you imagine if the FBI director or the number two in command at the FBI had leaked stuff from the Clinton investigations to the Washington Times? Can you imagine what would happen to that guy today, Louis Freeh or the number two man at the FBI at that time? If they had leaked stuff to the Washington Times or some other conservative newspaper, the mainstream press would call this a constitutional crisis and they would set out to destroy the leaker.

Let’s expand on that a bit further:

The press considers Mark Felt a hero not because of what he did but because of who he did it TO. Ben Stein in his American Spectator piece yesterday. points out, and rightly, that it was Nixon who brought down the American left’s fair-haired boy, Alger Hiss, and proved Hiss was in fact a traitor. The left.. and the press who is naught but a part of the left… never forgave Nixon that sin.

I couldn’t agree more with Stein on this one.

And in the case of Felt, who used his position within the FBI to bring down a sitting President… well, can you imagine the howls from the Democrats had such a person gone after, say, JFK, and brought HIM down?

And let’s get Stein to add some perspective on Nixon, here;

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

This bottom lines at power for the left, and who it is that stands in the way of attaining that power and maintaining it. Centerist Republicans.

Think on the connections here. The biggest hatred from the Democrats over the last 100 years has most demonstrably been aimed at two people; Both centerists, both Republican. George W. Bush, and Richard Nixon. 

And yes, I hear you asking already “What about Ronald Reagan?”.. and yes, I agree they hated him, too.. but there was a personality factor there, that, when combined with the chagrin over the failures of the Carter years, prevented that hate from being quite so demonstrable.

Thus it is that after the biggest failure for the press in many generations… the frustrating inability to remove George W. Bush from office… and they tried everything… fake documents, openly championing John Kerry’s campaign, and all… the press seeks to re-establish itself by celebrating and making a high myth of what they clearly consider their greatest victory… the bringing down of the other subject of voodoo dolls at the DNC; Richard Nixon.

And why would this myth need to be pushed at the moment?  The left is licking it’s wounds, but it’s also a student of history; they know what’s worked for their goals in the past.  They’re THAT pragmatic, at least.

Consider the situation we find ourselves in. It is remarkably similar, in that we have a second term centerist Republican, whom the left has been trying, with everything they have to bring down, and one with another war thrust upon him… one the socialists of the world have stated they’d like to see us lose. 

Thankfully the efforts to bring Mr Bush down have been exposed as the lies they are, so far. At least, they have been exposed so far.

We know what happened when Nixon got brought down. The left is simply trying to re-run that same play.

Now, let’s look at the Stein quote again. What was the result of bringing down Nixon?

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

Perhaps we should be watching the leftist press’s actions toward our current president a bit more closely. Our world’s future apparently depends on it.

But as for Felt, here it is; He is simply a prop in the war for world socialism.  And he’s only a hero, if you want to see the Untied States, lose that war.

Now, perhaps you understand why the press is casting him as a hero, a bit better.

Boing Boing has an example of what happens when you tack too much artwork onto your magazine cover. Just go and see.

Slashdot, which really should be on your daily read list, is reporting that we’re perhaps two years away from the next StarTrek movie. THey’re aiming at a whole new cast, of course.

We’ll see.

AP is moving a story today about a couple celebrating their 80th wedding anniversary. These two have been married longer than most people have been alive, for pity’s sake. In a world where people make wedding vows that don’t last 80 minutes, 80 years, is to be viewed as an accomplishment.

And, celebrated. Not that if you’re still alive at 105, you’re going to be hitting the singles bars again, but still…

I am somehow reminded of the first episode of TNG, where Doctor McCoy is being escorted around the ship by Data, and remarks: “What’s so damned diffucult about not having died?”

Today is the day.
Frankly, it’s a day I never thought about getting to, much less planned for.
When I started this blog, it was as an experiment… an add-on to a weekly-updated website I’d been running for two years, which in turn was an outgrowth of the weekly column I ran on many BBS’s back in the 80’s.
But apparently, the experiment’s been working.
Two years, already, now.
After 2900 posts and change,
After well over a million words typed,
After around 100,000 site hits
After 3 major site re-designs,
I can honestly say..
It’s been interesting, and fun, these last two years.

I only hope you, my readers have gotten nearly as much out of this as I have.

If you’re curious, have a look down the right column… there’s all the stuff I’ve posted to Bit’sBlog, these last two years, in archive form.

David Limbaugh makes what to some will be an astonishing statement:

Famed Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg is, I think, correct, but for the wrong reasons when he says that Democrats have lost major elections in recent years because they have not "run with conviction."

It's true that they haven't run with conviction, but it's not because they lack convictions...

The problem, says Limbaugh is they can’t be honest about their convictions… they’ll lose voters if they’re honest about them.

RTWT

Once again, it’s not just having principles, people. We’ve had this discussion before.

Boortz suggests one of the reasons the French decidd against the EU was because it wasn’t socialist enough.

one of the reasons the amazing French rejected the European Union Constitution was their fear of capitalism.  They were afraid of a free market economy.  They were frightened that the new EU Constitution might result in the loss of some of their precious "workplace protections."  To the French, and to all-too-many Europeans, a "workplace protection" is some government rule or regulations that protects them from actually having to work.  The hard-working French are still having a rough time getting over the loss of their 35-hour work week

Sad to say, the boy’s got a point.

Update:
Eternity Road has comments too.. and they seem to run along the same if somewhat expanded line.

I wrote a bit some years ago, and have reposted it here occasionally, that dove right in to examination of the weird warnings we as consumers are provided by the various companes… and their lawyers.

Here’s one a reader sent along, the guy’s wife apparently… (now that I think of it, I HOPE it was his wife)… found on a box of Tampons:

Remove used tampon before inserting a new one.

Ummmm… Yeah. There’s an image I didn’t need.

Now, keep in mind… it’s as I said in that original posting… If you have a warning about it, it’s because some yahoo tried doing it, sued the company, and a jury of the plaintiff’s peers… by that I mean fellow idiots…. decided the suit had merit… apparently, there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t have thought that two at once would be an issue. It’s enough to cause you and I to be casting suspicious glances at the driver next to us.

Austin Bay reminds me of a story I saw over the weekend, with a link to the Telegraph:

Two men claiming to be World War II Japanese soldiers have been found hiding on a Philippine island.

Japan is sending embassy officials to Mindanao to meet them.

"Embassy officials will check whether they were truly former soldiers" of the now defunct army, Japan foreign ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said.

Japanese media said the two men had been living in guerilla-controlled mountains until late this month.

It is not known if they knew of Japan's surrender in August 1945 to Allied forces.

Well, the Telegraph is now posting a story suggesting the whole thing could be a lie…

While Japanese diplomats tried for a fourth day to establish the veracity of the reports, suspicion grew today that kidnapping gangs on the island might have invented the rumours as a scam to lure foreigners into the region.

Newspaper reports that unidentified rebels were asking for money for the two Japanese soldiers were a sign the whole thing could be simply a "money-making scheme", warned a regional police intelligence chief.

Well, we’ll see how this develops.

ABC News: Who Is W. Mark Felt?

Well, for one thing, he claims to have been “Deep Throat”.

He was also the number 2 man in the FBI during the 70’s. Which means, dear reader, that the FBI had a more than a small involvement in bringing down a president.

Imagine with me the howling, had this occurred with a Democrat, instead of Nixon.

Cathy’s Worldpoints out that Oliver stone was arrested for DWI over the weekend, and brings up a recent encounter with StonedStone.

Look let’s be honest, this is no shock at all from this clown.

Little Green Footballs points up reports from Yala, in southern Thailand. Apparently the citizens there are fleeing the so-called city of peace… because of the “Religion of peace”

Doctor Implication, call your office.

I took a large bit of backside off of Orson Scott Card a few weeks wgo becase frankly he deserved it.

In this week’s column, he’s equally deserving of praise:

Personally, I think there should be legal consequences for editors and publishers and reporters so abysmally selfish and stupid that they would run with a story that they knew would provoke outrage in Muslim lands, without first making sure it was true.

Just so.
But what I find interesting just now is the implications about those who argue against the actions of our troops on false pretext.