May 09, 2008
May 08, 2008
Stuff White People Like
Not the website, it's Hillary!:
Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
Imagine the hue and cry if that last sentence had come out of the mouth of, oh, I don't know, Karl Rove? Regarding the Democrats' promotion of identity politics for so long, I am reminded of Macbeth's comment:
“We still have judgment here, that we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’ inventor.”
Anyway, Hillary! needs to listen to some Boz Scaggs:
Best of friends,
Never part,
Best of fools has loved forever
From the bottom of his heart.
So why pretend?
This is the end.
You'll have to find out for yourself,
Go on ask somebody else.
Why can't you just get it through your head?
It's over, it's over now.
Yes, you heard me clearly now I said,
"It's over, it's over now."
I'm not really over you,
You might say that,
"I can't take it, I can't take it,
Lord, I swear I just can't take it no more."
Now, who else can tie stuff that white people like, Macbeth and Boz Scaggs together all in the space of 30 seconds reading?
May 06, 2008
Huevos
Just when you think it can't get any weirder:
And James Carville, the Clintons' ubiquitous former aide, booster, and informal adviser made the point even more vividly, giving Clinton a two-gonad edge on her primary rival, Senator Barack Obama. "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two," Carville said.
So she has three now? Anyway, shouldn't Ol' Snakehead already know that every woman has two gonads? And I'm not referring to the ones Mary keep in a jar by the bed.
Of Course He Did
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming
And here I thought it was the curse of the lepidoptera.
Tulip Mania
Oil nears $123 on $200 oil prediction
My first thought is that somebody has trouble with simple math if this is even remotely close to being true. But then I started thinking... anybody want to take bets on when we'll be asked to respond to the crisis of falling oil prices and have to bail out all the speculators? I mean, the entire economic system might collapse if we don't rescue the financiers and commodity traders who were only trying to efficiently channel resources towards getting more oil, except when they weren't.
Of course, depending on the timing of the fall in crude and its proximity to the election, there'll be a significant clamor from some quarters to use taxation to keep the cost of gasoline where it is. For The Environment™, of course. And The Children™.
An Emblem of Conformity and Hypocrisy
According to Richard Cohen. Eek, wish I had time for a well-earned Scourge.
DOWNDATE: I picture Richard Cohen stammering and spitting like Niedermayer saying, "Is that a flag pin on your uniform?"
May 05, 2008
More 70's Music for Monday
Jackson Browne doing Fountain of Sorrow. As if I needed it, this still depresses me.
Little Feat doing Fat Man In the Bathtub. Well that's happier. Except for the story in the song. And the fact the Lowell is high as a kite, which led to his early death.
Neil Young doing The Needle and the Damage Done. Well, is there a theme developing here?
The Grateful Dead doing Werewolves of London. Ah, good times. Great encore back in 1978.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing Karn Evil 9. I worked a show after they had sent the orchestra home because it had become too expensive. Carl Palmer fell backwards off the stage at the end of the show and broke a couple of ribs. After about twenty minutes they came back out and played an encore and then departed.
And, of course, The Boomtown Rats doing I Don't Like Mondays. 'Nuff said.
Evil!
Well, to some people:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women's medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.
SPECTRE and KAOS Are Next
Hillary! is going to smash OPEC:
"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months" at a hotel in "some plush place in the world" to set prices, she told a crowd a volunteer fire house in Merrillville.
Well, at least we know Mark Penn didn't put her up to this.
April 30, 2008
In a Perfect World
Would have been the complete headline instead of having this appended to it: ... in presidential vote, says government source
April 29, 2008
Brilliance
For the record, Antonin Scalia is so much smarter than most people it isn't funny. I can understand that people have different judicial philosophies and temperaments, but anyone who thinks he doesn't belong on the US Supreme Court is not to be taken seriously.
May? That's Still Two Days Away
Newt Gingrich has a vice like grip on the short and curlies of the bleeding obvious:
Gingrich: Wright May Be Deliberately Trying to Hurt Obama
A little OT, but I respect Senator Obama more now. He could have embraced Rev. Wright and written off the presidency but made a fortune and completely displaced Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson, not to mention Rev. Wright, who's burnishing his image at the expense of tarnishing Senator Obama's. This is a shameful episode on Rev. Wright's part.
Three Wright Turns Equals One Left Turn
With apologies to Three Dog Night, here's a .., um ..., transcript of Senator Obama's press conference today:
Jeremiah's left my agog,
Was a good friend of mine.
I never understood a single word he said,
But I helped him a-think his whine.
And he always had some mighty fine whine.
Singing, joy to the world!
All the boys and girls, now,
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea,
Joy to you and me!
If I were the King of the world,
Tell you what I'd do.
I'd throw away the cars, the dollars and the wars,
And demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. [I] will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
Sorry, Michele Obama sort of took over at the end there.
I like Senator Obama, though I'll never vote for anyone quite as statist or as immersed and gullible concerning Marxist policy prescriptions as I believe him to be. While I remain convinced he is just another politician, especially one out of Chicago, he does seem less slimy and substantially more decent than most. I'd actually like having him as a neighbor, which isn't true of most politicians I've ever met.
Why Senator Obama needs to do anything with Rev. Wright other than disassociating himself from him is beyond me. "Disowning" Rev. Wright is a rather odd turn of phrase since he never owned him or his words before. But Senator Obama has kept some strange company and that must be a consideration in how he is judged when it comes to electing him as President.
While I'm on point, I heard Cult of Personality by Living Colour yesterday and Senator Obama was all I could think of as it played. The cult of personality being built up around Senator Obama ought to make everyone squirm just a little, given the rather sordid history of the those who haved formed the basis of cults of personality.
Enough rambling. Regardless, I'd rather see a President Obama than a President Clinton. The goodwill generated internationally by a President Obama, however unfair or misplaced, would have some value, whereas all we'd get from a President Clinton is four, or eight, more years of people like Paul Begala and James Carville in the halls of power. I can't say I'm happy to get a President McCain, but what are you gonna do?
Too bad the Democrat's convention isn't in Chicago this summer. We could all relive the Summer of Love one more time. After all, it's been literally a few days since someone has wanted to relive the 60's all over again, man.
April 24, 2008
The Angostura-American
If I had been posting much a week ago I'm sure this would have been in a post somewhere. As it is, it's kind of old news, meaning that it is about as current as the last issue of Newsweek or Time, but I wanted to commit it to the ether before I forgot about it. I'm sure I'll be able to resurrect it if Obama doesn't win the Democrat's nomination. There'll be a lot of Angostura-Americans then.
That's Why We Call Them ...
"They will do so at their own risk of damaging the Republican Party forever,'' he said, because "people are always ahead of leaders.''
Famous leader Doug Wilder talking about something or other.
Question: How Do I Get Declared Persona Non Grata?
Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, Rafael Quintero Curiel, served as the lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation and was responsible for handling logistics and guiding the Mexican media around at the conference. He took six or seven of the handheld devices from a table outside a special room in the hotel where the Mexican delegation was meeting with President Bush earlier this week.
Everyone entering the room was required to leave his or her cell phone, BlackBerry and other such devices on the table, a common practice when high-level meetings are held. American officials discovered their missing belongings when they were leaving the session.
It didn't take long before Secret Service officials reviewed videotape taken by a surveillance camera and found footage showing Quintero Curiel absconding with the BlackBerries.
Sources said Quintero Curiel made it all the way to the airport before Secret Service officers caught up with him. He initially denied taking the devices, but after agents showed him the DVD, Quintero Curiel said it was purely accidental, gave them back, claimed diplomatic immunity and left New Orleans with the Mexican delegation.
You gotta love it. I didn't do it! I mean, it was an accident! Diplomatic Immunity! Obviously, the devil (i.e., Bush) made him do it.
The John McCain Making It As Hard As Possible For Me To Vote For Him National Tour, Stop 1
Believe it or not, not everyone thinks the federal government should be responsible for replacing every bird that falls out of a tree:
John McCain toured still hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed his plane at the nearest Air Force base. The Republican presidential candidate is campaigning this week in what he calls forgotten areas of the country. He offered a pledge Thursday to New Orleans residents that their situation will not be forgotten and that such a botched disaster response will never happen again. McCain was unsparing in his criticism of the Bush administration. He said Congress must share some of the blame, too. Drawing a sharp contrast to President Bush, McCain said he would have landed his plane "at the nearest Air Force Base and come over personally."
Uh, ok. I understand using President Bush as a whipping boy and sucking up to the press, but wasn't somebody besides the President and the Congress responsible for, say, maintaining the levees and getting the people of New Orleans out? Even just a little? I'm curious as to when Senator McCain would have landed his plane at the nearest Air Force base. Is it worth the effort to remind Senator McCain and the lapdog press that Katrina wasn't Katrina until the day after Katrina when the levees gave way?
Senator McCain seems to be promoting the idea that the federal government can, and should, involve itself with every single aspect of American life. Sorry, I'd rather you leave this kind of village building to your opponents, but that's just me.
Dispatch From the Echo Chamber
Enjoy as Anatole Kaletsky sets out to lecture Americans concerning our next presidential election:
The 2008 US election has all the makings of a Greek tragedy, in which noble heroes and heroines are forced to follow a course to catastrophe, divinely preordained as punishment for sins and blunders committed by their forefathers in the dim and distant past. In acting out their ineluctable doom, the eloquent protagonists do not just destroy themselves but also their cities, their nations and even their entire civilisations.
Speaking of Greek tragedies, the word hubris comes to mind. But it is nice to see that he agrees with many of us that the election of Senator Clinton or Senator Obama would lead to end of Western Civilization.
If this description sounds too grandiose, consider yesterday's results from the Pennsylvania primary.
If?
The outcome seemed to be precisely calibrated by the gods to maximise the agony of the Democrats. It gave Hillary Clinton just the support she needed to stay firmly in contention, but not quite enough to turn the tide in her favour.
She's no Cnut, that's for sure.
Worse still, this result underlined the fear that senior Democrats have long been aware of, but have never dared to express in public: America may not yet be ready to elect a black President.
Is Mr. Kaletsky aware that these are Democrat primaries? Heh, at least by inference we are over our sexism.
Worst of all, it has created conditions for the possible election victory of a militarily belligerent and economically unqualified Republican candidate who supports many of President Bush's worst policies. Given the Bush Administration's domestic and foreign failures, the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan and, most recently, the slump in the economy, the possibility of a Republican victory in November would seem to overturn every principle of proper democracy - and also the hope of America and its system of government being rehabilitated in the eyes of the world after the Bush years.
Wow, the election of John McCain would seem to overturn every principle of democracy? Really? Every one?
The fact that Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are both such impressive candidates, intelligent, sincere, articulate and in command of the issues, while John McCain does not qualify on any of these criteria only makes matters worse.
Too bad Mr. Kaletsky lacks the nous to name the forefathers whose misdeeds have led to the suffering of these two impressive candidates.
... The certainty of a no-holds-barred attacks by the Republicans brings us to the potentially most tragic aspect of this election. If ever there was an election the Democrats ought to win this is the one. Yet on the basis of the primary results so far, they are all too likely to lose it. Mr Obama may be marginally ahead of Mrs Clinton in the popular vote but the Democrats seem to have forgotten that all the votes cast so far have been by their own supporters. In the general election their candidate will have to win over Republicans and right-leaning floating voters. Most of the evidence so far suggests that the Repulicans will find it much easier to frighten voters about the prospect of a President Obama than a President Clinton.
Cue Cardinal Ximinez, "Our chief weapon is fear. Fear and November surprise. Two! Our two chief weapons are fear, November surprise and our flashy red states. Three! Our three chief weapons are..."
Professional Democratic politicians now have the casting vote in their party's nomination and could yet force the two candidates into a “dream ticket” led by Mrs Clinton with Mr Obama as Vice President which would sweep all before it and would probably make Mr Obama unbeatable as a presidential candidate in 2012 or 2016. Yet the Democratic superdelegates who could now secure years of hegemony for their party seem to consider it “unfair” to use their professional judgment to overturn the “democratic” verdict of primary voters.
Must be some of that good old fashioned Democrat compunction about not overturing every priniciple of "democracy." Hmm..., but isn't hegemony supposed to be bad?
The Republicans will have no such compunctions about the fairness of launching personal attacks against a potentially vulnerable Democratic candidate. In this respect this Presidential contest may again manifest the tragedy of left-wing politics through the ages. Parties which care more about fairness than about power, end up achieving neither.
Those poor, fair Democrats. If only they would value power more then they could get what they deserve. Or should that be what we deserve?
April 23, 2008
Crisis? What Crisis?
Via Instapundit, we get Roger Kimball, who asks:
Why do politicians of whatever party love a crisis?
If I may, I will embellish Professor Reynolds answer by quoting Governor William J. LePetomaine:
"We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Hurumph! Hurumph! Hurumph!"
DOWNDATE: A concurrent e-mail yields a sort of Instalanche.
Global Warming Climate Change
Is there anything it can't do?
Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned.
Is there anything besides spending money on think tanks that can save us?
The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.
Guess not, but there appears to be more hot air in the think tanks than the atmosphere:
Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.
April 22, 2008
Can It Possibly Be True?
The fate of our nation was decided today by fans of the Philadelphia Eagles?
I Need a Drink
No, really, I do. As my foursome walked off the course last week and found our way to the Ryder Cup Bar at the Carolina in Pinehurst, it suddenly occurred to us that any golfer should be able to walk up to any decent bar in the world and say, "Give me a Golf Swing or "I need a Golf Swing." Alas, I have no particular talent for inventing a new drink, hence this request. About all I drink is red wine, Bombay Sapphire and single malts -- and they do not mix well together.
Your suggestions for a tasty adult beverage called the Golf Swing are hereby requested. Nothing goofy, sweet or involving open flames, just something that most of us could savor as we belly up to the bar to brag about the one shot we hit that day that was as good as anything Tiger could hit. You know, the one shot that keeps you coming back.
And if you should find yourself in the Ryder Cup Bar, y'all be sure to say hi to CC and Carolyn, and ask them for a Golf Swing. A picture of their reaction would be most appreciated.
April 21, 2008
What Could I Possibly Add To This?
CHELSEA STOPS TRAFFIC ON GAY BAR CRAWL
Except to note the following from the article:
Rendell appeared to be in his element.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
All I Want is A Frickin' Shark With a Laser On Its Head
No problem. Get yourself one of these Boeing ABL 747s (videos here):
and paint it like a vintage WWII P-51 Mustang:
That will ruin any ICBM-launching lunatics day.
Fear the Subjectivity
Al Gore speaks:
He answers: “Yes. I have to confess that I’ve recently begun to fear that I’m losing my objectivity on President Bush."
You can stop laughing now.
Virgin Space
I got a rocket in my pocket:
Virgin Galactic boss Sir Richard Branson is planning to set yet another record – by becoming the first man to marry a couple in space. The 58-year-old billionaire intends to conduct a ceremony 70 miles above the Earth on the first Galactic sub-orbital flight next year.
This is no little feat.
