Belmont Club: Says They’ve Got Technical Problems, Too

So says Wretchard, anyway.

I was having all KINDS of problems yesterday… I couldn’t get through, and when I did it ended up with 7 copies of one post, which I’d then have to clean up. A little frustrating. I was ready to blame the internal network I’m on here at work, until I tried bypassing it, and got pretty much the same problem.

Today, it’s the best it’s been in months. (Shrug) I dunno. We’ll go through today and see what we get.

Soccer Dad: Carnival of the Vanities #126

“Nuff Said.

Why do I never get one of these?
(Chuckle)

This write up of Billy’s this morning has me pondering again why George Patton got canned.

“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it’s something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can’t be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.”

Let’s be clear about this; Maher, lost the best job he ever had because he got just plain STUPID, and this is yet another example of that same stupidity.

But it’s not unexpected given his support for Democrats… they of the cry of “They didn’t vote for us because they’re backward hicks” as we discussed yesterday.

An AP report suggests that Alanis Morissette isn’t among those looking to move to Canada. Rather the reverse, actually.
Ironic, isn’t it?

Confederate Yankee says the conenction between Boxer, Howard Dean and Lynne Stewart has been confirmed. Seems that connection is George Soros.

Steve Minarik was right, after all.
I await the usual suspetcs to wiggle and whine about how all this isn’t being fair.

Now, I’ve been told several times over that the mainstream Democrats don’t think much of Mynne Stewart, that there’s no conneciton and so on.

So imagine my amaze to find this over on NRO a few hours ago from Byron York: “According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.”

Stewart’s website mentions support form OSI, as well.

Now, will we see objections from rank and file Democrats on this, or not?

H/T: Bitsblog reader Serpent

Yes, gang, I did note that a few of you took me to task for not mentioning the passing of Arthur Miller the other day.

I’ll be honest, here; I actually had a few drafts up, but never posted them… I was struggling a bit with it; I wasn’t sure how to put into words what I was thinking… I was distinctly uncomfortable with putting any kind of ‘attaboy’ in these spaces for the man’s work.

I’ve always been less than happy about the way educators pushed this idiot as some kind of bloody genius. I suppose I looked at his stuff as a well-written morality play, along the lines of what one might find in Maoist China as offiical entertainment. (The kind of morlaity, of course that only a communist would find valid.)

Colby Cosh says it well….

When I think about the man who wrote plays about how capitalism thwarts human aspirations, and then got married to Marilyn Monroe, I’m afraid about all I can do is giggle.”

Yeah, well, you wouldn’t want the moraity he preaches to actually APPLY to him, would ya?

Tip of Bit’s Ballcap to Billy Beck.

The Braden Files posts today a number of things you should know about what’s going on in Iraq, but won’t because those charged with telling you about the news don’t want anything or anyone to get in the way of their projection of Iraq as a failure.

Ed at the Captain’s Quarters asks if Peg Noonan’s latest about Bloggers and their recent weight in public opinion circles, is a Love Note, or an Olive Branch.

Given the reaction to her previous writings, where she referred to Bush’s SOTU speech as ‘over the top’, I’d say it’s an Olive Branch.
I can’t imagine my reaction was singular in nature… she must have gotten clobbered for that positio of hers, and with some justification.

She’s writing about the power of Bloggers now, because she’s felt part of it directed at her.

I like Peg, I really do… but she got outta line on that one and got called on it… and my estimation is this latest column is the direct result.

Yes, I’m just getting cught up on my reading… Hospitals tend to foul my timing bigtime, since I can’t hit the net from inside them.

In today’s catch-up reading, I find a blubr that backs everything I’ve said about this issue:
MSNBC’s National affairs writer Tom Curry writes on Tuesday::

“Last June, in the immediate aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee, “If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, ‘Do what you have to do.'”

Schumer added, “It’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.”

Just so. Of course political pressure form the other Democrats like Levin have silenced this rare rational response from Schumer. But this quote makes the very same argument I’ve always made…  And I hasten to point up that the lack of reality in the Democrat’s response to this issue exemplifies why the Democrats are losing favor with the voters. Given the terror war being waged against us, the voters, rightly so… see themselves as being the foxhole occupants… and so, do not see Democrats as representing their interests.

Wow…. Reality…. a concept!

OxBlog notes Krugman (…who, I admit, I don’t read, anymore) … making the case that Howard Dean is at the center of the Democratic party.

This is actually the first time he and I have agreed on anything in about two years. But this bit of info is likely the worst thing anyone could have said if getting Democrats elected is at all on the minds of the leftist punditry. It clearly demonstrates that the Democrats are well too far left of the American voter.

NY Metro.com. this morning::

“After Iraq’s vote, New York liberals are in a serious moral-ideological-emotional bind. And the only way out is to root for Bush’s victory.
…

Seriously: The success of the elections poses a major intellectual-moral-political problem for people in this city. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.

New Yorkers think we are smarter than other Americans, that the richness and difficulty of life here give our intelligence a kind of hard-won depth and nuance and sensitivity to contradictions and ambiguity. We feel we are practically French. Most New Yorkers are also liberals. And most liberals, wherever they live, believe that they are smarter than most conservatives (particularly George W. Bush).

And finally, most liberals and New Yorkers suspect that we may be too smart for our own good. It is a form of self-flattery as self-criticism. During these past few years, I have heard it said again and again that liberals’ ineffectiveness derives from their inability to see the world in the simple blacks and whites of the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Bushes. (Why else, the argument goes, did John Kerry lose?)

Maybe. But now our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might—might, possibly—have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq. ”

Now of course this situation is not limited to NYC; Leftists in all the usual blue pockets across the country are finding themselves in the same dilemma, and faced with the same (to them) less than attractive solution…. George W. Bush was and remains, right. And that by extention, they were and are, wrong. Certainly, Delong, for example can’t deal with it, and is in one of the worst cases of denial I think I’ve ever read about, much less seen first hand.  DU(h) is downright comical o this stuff.. or would be if it were not so tragic.

Since Ronald Reagan was in office, and on point after point, the left is being proven to be dead wrong, and in many cases is being caught in outright lies to support it’s position… take for example the forged TANG documents that CBS tried to seel the country 50 days before an election. IN watching the DNC today, you can almost feel the confusion deepening, as the left digs itself in.

Is anyone tracking the suicide rates?

You may not have noticed… There’s a picture of a van along the right-side column in my static links. It’s new… I just put it up the last day or so. It’s for a CarDomain site I’ve had for a few months, now, dedicated to my custom van.

Summer isn’t all that far away, and with it comes the new additions I plan for it. I’ll be keeping the page on my labor of love updated with both photos and verbage as I go though adding the new stuff.

You may well ask… Why a van?

Well, you’re right, it wasn’t my first choice, either. When I bought my first van several years ago, I traded in my red Firebird for it. Annoyed me no end.

But with two boys… And my wife and I both being 6ft’ers… plus our family vices being camping and traveling, a van was called for. And I figure what the heck.. if I’m had to trade my little red sportscar for a schoolbus, I’m gonna have FUN with it.  Look at the options list and the projects I’ve already done and what I plan and you can see I’m doing just that.

After having a 95 Astro conversion for a few years, I decided to upgrade… top of the line across the board… in the Astro/Safari frame. and I got the one pictured.

I like the idea that the platform isn’t the full-sized rig… Gas milage is better than the bigger rig and the towcap is big enough for us… plus it’s a blast to drive. It’s a great match for us.

Ticks off the enviro-wackos no end, but I guess frankly, that’s part of the fun.
And when I tell them that I’m getting 21mpg with it, they blow a fuse.  They’re expecting 10-15mpg overall. There is nothing quite so entertaining as someone being forced to reconsider their position… and that’s somehting that happens frequently with this thing.

Enough. Run down the right side a bit and click on the van pic, and enjoy.
Might look around in the listings of other vehicles, too.. some really wild stuff there.

Neil Cavuto ;

“Let me ask you something, do you think you’re stupid?

The reason I ask is that I head a caller on a radio show blasting this whole private account thing on Social Security.He said Americans couldn’t handle it, because they don’t know anything about stocks and will only end up getting bamboozled.

And I’m thinking to myself, what an imbecile. The guy’s all but saying, “Keep the stupid lemmings in the system they’re in. They can’t handle anything else.””

Well, why should that amaze anyone?
Think on this a few seconds… what has been the deal with the Democrats all along? Protect tyhe people from themselves… All those who voted Republican in the last election were stupid, etc, etc, etc.

The fear of Dmeocrats today of course is that the American people will find out, once government programs start getting lowered in impact, such as allowing some re-routing of SS money…that not only does the world not end, but people actually start doing better.

So the reaction from the nanny-state Democrats?
“The people can’t handle it”,a nd they fight tooth and nail to retain power.

Odd thing, this; isn’t this exactly the reaction in the USSR when things started getting out of THEIR control?

Why, one could almost see similar motivation here, huh?