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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
 
The Dumbest Things "Right" Wing Bloggers Did in 2008

The Village Voice has a recap. Of course for the more sensational stories, they rely on blogs I never heard of. The "Obama murdered his grandma" story? Comes from the ever popular Liberty Lounge, a forum and not a blog. Among others, the Village Voice mentions Jeff Jarvis (a liberal), No Quarter (headquarters for the Hillary-supporting PUMAs), Bill Bradley (not that Bill Bradley, but still a liberal).

No mention of the birth certificate madness, or the desperate attempt by the conservatives to derail the McCain nomination, two legitimate bits of nuttiness from the starboard.
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Monday, December 29, 2008
 
Who's The NFL MVP?

Here's how I rate the quarterbacks. Rivers looks like he's head and shoulders above the rest of the league:

1 Philip Rivers 9,407
2 Kurt Warner 6,626
3 Drew Brees 6,591
4 Chad Pennington 5,512
5 Peyton Manning 5,095
6 Aaron Rodgers 4,277
7 Matt Schaub 2,614
8 Tony Romo 2,511
9 Matt Cassel 1,847
10 Jeff Garcia 1,647
11 Matt Ryan 816
12 Shaun Hill 484
13 Donovan McNabb 331
14 Seneca Wallace 286
15 Eli Manning 278
16 Jay Cutler 111
17 Trent Edwards (157)
18 Jake Delhomme (464)
19 Jason Campbell (769)
20 David Garrard (2,204)
21 Kerry Collins (2,332)
22 Joe Flacco (2,363)
23 Brett Favre (2,516)
24 Ben Roethlisberger (2,683)
25 Kyle Orton (2,892)
26 JaMarcus Russell (3,209)
27 Dan Orlovsky (3,371)
28 Gus Frerotte (3,648)
29 Tyler Thigpen (4,124)
30 Derek Anderson (5,468)
31 Ryan Fitzpatrick (5,885)
32 Marc Bulger (6,345)

It amazes me that an 8-8 team has the best player in the league at the QB position, but then San Diego is not exactly a typical 8-8 team, with a net point differential of +92. The Chargers did score more points than any other team in the league. Philip Rivers should be (and probably will be) the NFL's MVP this season.

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Reflexive Critism of Israel

From folks who seldom criticize Hamas, like Ezra Klein:

No deaths and few injuries. "Deeply disturbing." Hamas lacks the technology to aim its rockets. They're taking potshots. In response, the Israeli government launched air strikes that have now killed more than 280 Palestinians, injured hundreds beyond that, and further radicalized thousands in the Occupied Territories and millions in the region.


That encapsulates much of the commentary from the portside. Hamas fires these random rockets, accidentally killing some Israelis (and some Palestinians). And mean old Israel responds with precision munitions.

Note as well that Israel is, as Ralph Peters puts it today, damned if they do, dead if they don't. Ezra is concerned about the cycle of violence, but what does he suggest instead? That the Israelis turn the other cheek? He notes that the response will come in the future:

It will come in months, or even in years, when an angry orphan detonates a belt filled with shrapnel, killing himself and 25 Israelis.


Good thing the Israelis have the checkpoints and the wall, huh? Um, not according to Klein:

The rocket attacks were undoubtedly "deeply disturbing" to Israelis. But so too are the checkpoints, the road closures, the restricted movement, the terrible joblessness, the unflinching oppression, the daily humiliations, the illegal settlement -- I'm sorry, "outpost" -- construction, "deeply disturbing" to the Palestinians, and far more injurious. And the 300 dead Palestinians should be disturbing to us all.


When a young child touches a hot oven, it learns a lesson: Don't touch the oven when it's hot. Liberals apparently think that the child should begin plotting its revenge against the oven.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
 
Who Is Stephen Spoonamore?

His name pops up a lot on the conspiracy theory websites regarding Mike Connell's death. For example, nutty professor Mark Crispin Miller:

That is a highly censored version of the deposition, leaving out such details as Connell’s early willingness to talk; his quick reversal after Karl Rove threatened him (threats that came up in his deposition, in a section that’s now sealed); the fact that he was pointedly stonewalling on Nov. 3; and the affidavits of Stephen Spoonamore, who knew Connell well, and had worked with him, and formally attested Connell’s eyebrow-deep involvement in the “vote fraud” in Ohio (among other places), and Connell’s close working relationship with Karl Rove.


He's frequently described as a Republican:

First, Steven Spoonamore is a Republican and a expert in electronic data security and digital network architecture.


And the nutty professor again:

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter and a very prominent expert at the detection of computer fraud. He’s the star witness in the Ohio lawsuit, right, in which Connell was involved. He has done extensive work of this kind, involving computer security, and had therefore worked with Connell, knew Connell personally and knew a lot of the people who were involved in the sort of cyber-security end of the Bush operation.


Well, let's see if Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, shall we? And the first place to check is Open Secrets, which maintains lists of donors to political candidates. And what do we see, but that Stephen Spoonamore donated $1,750 to Howard Dean in 2003.

Ah, one of those conservative Republicans. He did donate $500 to John Sweeney (R) in 2004.

I will continue to dig into this in the next few days. But as with everything the Connell conspiracy theorists come up with, there's a lot that they appear to be lying about.

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Saturday, December 27, 2008
 
Krauthammer's Gas Tax Proposal

He's generally a sharp thinker, but this is fuzzy:

A tax that suppresses U.S. gas consumption can have a major effect on reducing world oil prices.

Yes, but doesn't that end up resulting in lowered gas prices which brings about more driving, thus increasing world oil prices?
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More Mike Connell Conspiracy Theorizing

It took years for the 9-11 Truthers to get to the stage where the idiot Left is on the Mike Connell plane crash. Get Mark Crispin Miller on
Amy Goodman's Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: Now, he had asked the Attorney General Mukasey for protective custody, because of threats to him and his wife?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: He reported threats to his lawyer, Cliff Arnebeck....


When dealing with 9-11 Truth books and documentaries, we've developed a little metric called TTFLOM, which stands for Time To First Lie Or Mistake, and that's gotta be some sort of a record. Goodman is wrong when she says that Mike Connell asked Mukasey for protective custody, and Miller is wrong when he says that Arnebeck was Connell's lawyer.

In fact, Arnebeck is the fruitcake lawyer who was bringing a lawsuit claiming that Bush did not win Ohio in 2004. Arnebeck had subpoenaed Connell in the case and then claimed in a letter that "sources" had told him that Rove had threatened Connell and his wife. Obviously if Arnebeck represented Connell he would have simply said that his client had told him that he'd received threats.

But Miller gets even nuttier:

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, that’s a good question. We can’t ask him, unfortunately. I mean, this is kind of a grisly thought, but, I mean, I think we should be asking where the body is? We’re told that a trooper on the scene immediately identified Connell. But then we read elsewhere that there was nothing left but debris and that the fireball was enormous. So maybe he wasn’t on the plane. I mean, who knows, when you’re dealing with people as deep as these?


Good lord, what a nut!

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Friday, December 26, 2008
 
Liberals Love America

That's the theme of an LA Times column this morning. Although you can probably guess the punchline: What they love about America is that they can criticize how awful it is:

Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws.


And:

Fox News' Sean Hannity loves this country so much, he did an entire episode of "Hannity's America" titled "The Greatest Nation on Earth." In that one hour he said, several times, "the U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." One of the surest signs of love is it makes you talk stupid.


Because, you know, there are oodles of better countries than the United States, like Cuba, for example or the ones he goes on to name:

Conservatives feel personally blessed to have been born in the only country worth living in. I, on the other hand, just feel lucky to have grown up in a wealthy democracy. If it had been Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Israel or one of those Scandinavian countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too.


Yeah, France was a heckuva place to live in in the early 1940s. And Ireland has only recently qualified as a wealthy Democracy; it was only 30 years ago that the US had to restrict immigration from the Emerald Isle.
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Steve Benon: I Not a Conspiracy Nutbar

But it's an interesting story and people are talking about it, but I remember the nuts on the right talking about Vince Foster, so I'm not going to indulge myself in conspiracy theorizing but here's a post where somebody does exactly that.

Edsall, who has a reputation for credible, quality journalism, spoke to a "close friend" of Connell, who worked "extensively" with the consultant before his death, and who believes Connell "was more involved in that than a lot of people were let to believe." The friend added that Connell "may have been 'developing second thoughts' after years of being convinced that 'working for the Republican cause was doing God's work.'" Edsall added, "As it stands now, whatever Connell knew about the activities of Karl Rove and other Republican operatives will go with him to his grave."

The implication, I suppose, is that Connell had damaging information, may have been prepared to share it, and his plane crash was the possible result of foul play.


The Edsall piece is here. The scum-sucking bottom feeder had the stones to call his grieving wife:

In a telephone interview, Connell's wife Heather adamantly declared "he was a good man. He did nothing wrong. He wasn't about to talk, because there was nothing to talk about. Nobody did anything wrong. We won the elction fair and square. Deal with it." Asked if he ever spoke about the disputed emails, Heather Connell said "I have no clue about that. I just know it's not him."


Merchant of sleaze, Tom Edsall.
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Thursday, December 25, 2008
 
Merry Christmas, Everybody!
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
 
Quick Hits

The Left should love this story as it combines religion bashing with Global Warming:

CSIRO researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.


Robert Stacy McCain computes the cost to Texas taxpayers of the raid on the polygamous community where girls were getting married and concludes it was a bad idea:

The cost to taxpayers of the raid and investigation was more than $12 million -- a million per underage marriage. Twenty-six mothers originally suspected of being underage were eventually determined to be adults.


Left unsaid is what level of expense per underage marriage the "Other" McCain would accept as reasonable.

The greatest conspiracy theory ever, as my buddy James B put it:



Longtime blog buddy Satire and Theology has some interesting photos of himself demonstrating various martial arts moves and a pretty good joke at the end.

Our longtime blog-buddy Gayle has a nice thought for all this holiday season. I have to admit, I have not exactly been the most Christian of people this year, battling the Right in January and February, the Left until election day, and now the Right again over the Birth Certificate stuff. My New Year's Resolution should be to keep my mouth shut when I think the Right is off the track.
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
 
Let It Go, Kenneth!

Dan Rather is still insisting that the memos he showed on Bush's TANG service were never proven to be fakes:

"Nobody has ever proven the documents to be anything but what they purported to be," Rather says. "What the documents stated has never been denied — by the president or anyone around him."


What an idjit. It is not up to everybody else to prove the documents were false (although clearly they were phony). It's up to Rather to prove the documents were valid.
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Shoe-Lobber Update

He claims to have been tortured for 36 consecutive hours:

One of Zaidi's brothers, Uday, told AFP he had been able to visit him in custody for the first time on Sunday and charged that the journalist had been tortured by his captors to force him to sign a statement.

"I met my brother for around an hour. He has been tortured while in detention for 36 hours continuously. He has been hit with iron rods and cables," the brother said.


I'm shocked! Surely they could have given him a five-minute break! The judge is denying it:

"Muntazer's brother is lying, because there are only bruises on Muntazer's face that he received during the arrest and they are small ones," Kenani told AFP.

"Even if it were true that he had been tortured with electric shocks, it would leave burns on his body, and you will see Muntazer during the trial, so you can judge for yourself.

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Moron Bill Ayers

An FBI informant tried to write an oped for the Times on the real Bill Ayers after the former domestic terrorist published a self-serving column in that declining rag. You can read the informant's piece at PJ Media.

Billy goes on about how the Weather Underground came into existence because “peaceful protests had failed” and “after an accidental explosion killed three comrades.” The explosion of the townhouse in Greenwich Village was the result of a bomb factory which was preparing bombs containing roofing nails for use at a Fort Dix enlisted club. The inclusion of roofing nails can have but one purpose and that’s to injure or kill people. Prior to this event Bill’s wife, Bernardine Dorhn, placed a bomb of the same design at the Park Police Station in San Francisco and killed Officer McDonnell. Additionally, I was still inside the Weather Underground when the townhouse blew up and the commitment to sabotage and terrorism had already been established and the purpose was the overthrow of the United States government.

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Monday, December 22, 2008
 
Now don't get me wrong, I think Matt Yglesias is an awesome blogger. But very plausibly he could be an even awesomer blogger if he were allowed to speak his little mind.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum

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More on the Connell Death

Well, the fruitloops are off to the races. Larisa writes at OpEd News:

White House consultant who rigged 2004 election dies suspiciously


So much for her not being a conspiracy nutbar. One of the commenters over there chips in with this bit of fruitcakery:

The list of the conveniently dead and 'suicided' of those who threaten the fascist empire grows by the day.

Someone really should do a thorough project absent any partisan politics of just how many people who have met their premature demise over the last few decades.


They have, it was called the Clinton Death List and it was nutty. I'm sure there's a Bush Death List out there as well.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman check in with their usual caution:

Michael Connell, the crucial techno- lynch pin in the theft of the 2004 election, and much more, is dead at the age of 45. His unnatural, suspicious death raises serious questions about the corruption of the American electoral process that now may never be answered.


Unnatural? And note that this detail raises some suspicions about Larissa the Loon's claim that he was a "source" for her:

Connell recently wrote the following in his New Media Communications newsletter, regarding Barack Obama's election: "In our 230 year history, our democracy has suffered worse fates. It's just that none come to mind right now."


Anybody who wrote that would not likely be furnishing information to Raw Story, which is a fruitcake lefty site. Fitrakis is still harping on the idiotic exit polls:

At 12:20 am on the night of the 2004 election exit polls and initial vote counts showed John Kerry the clear winner of Ohio's presidential campaign. The Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the presidency.

But from then until around 2am, the flow of information mysteriously ceased. After that, the vote count shifted dramatically to George W. Bush, ultimately giving him a second term. In the end there was a 6.7 percent diversion---in Bush's favor---between highly professional, nationally funded exit polls and the final official vote count as tabulated by Blackwell and Connell.


Never mind that the exit pollsters themselves admitted they got it wrong.

Like all conspiracy loons, Fitrakis overemphasizes the unlikeliness of the crash:

An accomplished pilot, flying in unremarkable weather...


But the Akron Beacon Journal gets an expert opinion:

Charles Starkey, a former Navy pilot and director of safety for a Cleveland-area private jet company, said Friday night's cloud cover and misty, cold conditions presented challenges for even the most experienced pilots.

In a 30-minute time frame around the crash, the weather deteriorated quickly as visibility around the airport diminished from nine miles to a little over one mile with a low ceiling.

In such cases, pilots typically are forced to rely on the plane's instruments rather than their own vision, which can contribute to crashes, Starkey said.


There are reports of the usual "warnings":

Without getting into specific details, 19 Action News reporter Blake Renault reported Sunday evening that 45-year-old Republican operative and experienced pilot had been warned not to fly his plane in the days before the crash.

"Connell...was apparently told by a close friend not to fly his plane because his plane might be sabotaged," Renault said. "And twice in the last two months Connell, who is an experienced pilot, cancelled two flights because of suspicious problems with his plane."


The "close friend" goes unnamed, of course.

Let me add here my sympathies to the Connell family. He sounds like a fine man and he leaves behind a wife and four children, and does not deserve to be maligned by conspiracy nutters after his death as the man "who rigged [the] 2004 election".

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Sunday, December 21, 2008
 
Say Yes to Yes Man

My sister suggested that we take in a movie this evening, and I could have said no, but I knew it would be good for her to get away from the kids for a couple of hours. The movie we saw was Yes Man, featuring Jim Carrey.

Terrific film, very funny with great characters. The plot is fairly similar to Liar, Liar; Carrey plays a lowly loan officer at a bank whose wife has divorced him and who habitually says "No" to everything. A friend coaxes him to come to a seminar that advertises "Yes is the New No", with a revival-type spirit. Carrey gets singled out for some one-on-one treatment and agrees to say "Yes" to everything.

Coming out of the seminar a homeless man asks him for a lift, then borrows his cellphone. Carrey drops him off in a park and discovers that he's run out of gas and his cellphone battery is dead, so he has to hoof it to the nearest gas station. Sounds like Yes isn't working for him, right?

But at the gas station he meets a pretty girl who offers him a ride back to the park on her scooter, and before you know it, he's got a girlfriend again. He starts approving loans he would never have allowed before, and the top management promotes him for his excellent production. He takes up guitar lessons and ends up coaxing a guy down from the ledge by playing him a song.

Of course, not everything goes smoothly; in a key scene the Feds have noticed that he's learning Korean, and how to fly and he has also signed up for an Iranian bride, so they arrest him on suspicion of being a terrorist. And in the end he does have to learn to say no to some things.

But it's all great fun, with Carrey's usual terrific physical comedy and sense of timing hitting on all cylinders. Highly recommended!

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Larisa Alexandrovna Is Not A Conspiracy Nutbar

Nope, not her.

I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully.


Nope, she's not a crackpot:

Just to be very clear and state again, I am not claiming conspiracy theory or direct relation to Karl Rove or the White House in any of these events. What I am saying, however, is that these possible relationships cannot and should not be overlooked by investigators. There are far too many serious and reasonable questions that must be answered for the public.


Not a tinfoil hatter:

Okay children - because that is what I am going to call adults who willfully mis-read information. I will say this AGAIN (as I have twice in the above entry and also used bold case so that no one would miss the caveat), I am NOT - I repeat NOT - saying this was a). a murder, b). that it was in any way connected to the White House or to Karl Rove, and c). that I am convinced of any of the above three.


Well, except that she has dabbled her toes in the 9-11 nutbar swamp:

At least this might finally explain a nagging problem I have had with the FBI's most wanted poster of OBL, which makes no mention of September 11, 2001 among the crimes OBL is wanted for....


This of course is one of the things that the conspiracy kooks always bring up. But the fact of the matter is that the FBI's most wanted posters list crimes that the perp has actually been indicted for. The Feds have not yet indicted Osama for 9-11 because they already have enough to hold him for on the 1998 embassy bombings, for which he has been indicted.

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Saturday, December 20, 2008
 
Moron the Shoe Lobber

From the Guardian, which sounds pretty sympathetic:

One police officer, who accompanied him to prison, said the journalist, a Baghdad correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Baghdadia TV, had been subjected to violence throughout the journey. The officer, who asked not to be named, said he witnessed security forces beating Zaidi in the car with such force that his ribs were broken. "I felt sorry when I saw them beating him. His mouth was badly injured and he did not utter a single word throughout until one of the guards hit him in his left eye with a gun. Then he cried out that he couldn't see, and I saw blood inside his eye. I am a police officer but even I have to say I felt proud of what he did."


Me too. That guy who got him with the gun to the eye is a hero. Maybe somebody could come up with flash video game where we smack him around a bit?

Don't expect his shoes to pop up on ebay anytime soon:

The originals, however, have been destroyed by investigators trying to determine whether they had contained explosives, which may come as a blow to Zaidi when he learns that Saudi Arabian Mohamed Makhafa had, reportedly, offered $10m for his 'shoes of dignity' and their 'high moral value'.
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Probably Doesn't Matter Anymore

Michelle Malkin has a post up about the initial denial of the Change.Gov domain name to the Obama Campaign, and the subsequent reversal.

The day after the election, on Nov. 5, GSA Chief Information Officer Casey Coleman overruled Alterman after apparently receiving a waiver from Chris Lu, Executive Director of Obama’s Transition Project. As reader Lance discovered through his FOIA request, Ms. Coleman did not elaborate on the granting of this waiver except to say that she had “determined that it is in the best interest of the Federal Government to register the subject domain name.”


It's fair to point out that since "change" was a mantra of the Obama campaign that it would have been inappropriate to grant the domain name to the campaign prior to the election. On the other hand, Obama will presumably not be running on that slogan in 2012.
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Friday, December 19, 2008
 
Jews Need Not Apply

Matt Yglesias notices a dearth of Hebrews in the Obama cabinet.

It seems Barack Obama is giving us a cabinet with no Jewish members. Plenty of Jews in non-cabinet top spots (Axelrod, Summers, Orszag) so I guess we’ll have to just run things from behind the scenes.


I don't know that it really matters, except to the bean counters. But liberals obsess over these things--how many gays, how many women, how many blacks, etc.
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Almost Time to Stop Counting

That's the conclusion I suspect the media will reach pretty soon in the Coleman/Franken recount:

Two votes are all that stands between Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, according to the Associated Press tally in the state’s still-unresolved Senate race.

Coleman’s shrinking lead, combined with a state Supreme Court decision handed down Thursday, has suddenly heightened the prospects that Franken, who has trailed in every count since Election Night, could end up winning the seat after all the votes are counted.


Can't stop counting yet, because the Democrat hasn't yet taken the lead. But soon, very soon.

Update: Stop the clock!

ABC News’ Rick Klein and Teddy Davis Report: Despite trailing by a narrow but consistent margin since Election Day, Democrat Al Franken has pulled ahead of Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., in the seemingly never-ending recount in Minnesota, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.

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Thursday, December 18, 2008
 
The Warren Pick

To give the invocation at Obama's inauguration is causing some delightful heartburn on the Left.

Atrios:

I don't actually think it was a good step politically, even though I agree that often punching hippies in the face is, sadly, politically smart. But it would be nice if someone like, say, EJ Dionne, would confront Warren's bigotry and suggest it isn't the change we can believe in. But I assume it'll just be the dirty f*cking hippies and Teh Gay. Because anti-gay bigotry is very centrist!


Echidne:

Here's where I see the task of the future for us dirty f*cking hippies and feminazis and such: To teach politicians that 'social issues' is not about what we eat for Thanksgiving or how we arrange flowers. Those issues are about freedom, justice, economics, dignity and respect.


Apparently this dirty effing hippies thing is some sort of term of self-endearment that the lefty bloggers use amongst themselves. I don't know how accurate it is.

Think Progress:

Pastor Rick Warren, President-elect Obama’s choice to deliver the inaugurual invocation, has espoused far-right views on gay rights, including likening same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest.


Well, it is certainly arguably like polygamy and incestuous marriage; if you buy the argument that the government should not be in the business of telling people who can marry whom, then clearly there is no rationale for banning polygamy and (arguably) incestuous marriages. I'm not saying gays are polygamists or incestuous; just that the same argument applies in either case.

I always try to add here that I do recognize that there are a lot of problems that gay couples face which marriage would solve. Those are the things they should be focusing on rather than getting marriage.
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Matt Yglesias Does Economics

No surprise, he does it badly, probably because he's reading Krugman and Brad (Gutless Punk) DeLong.

I’ve heard some economists argue that we’re pursuing some kind of misguided strong dollar policy that’s responsible for our currency’s refusal to devalue, but I don’t actually see what policy that might be. We appear to be doing everything you would do to shake investor confidence in U.S. public finances and spark a decline in our currency.


Interest rates are very low in the US right now, which would ordinarily signal a declining currency. But you can't just look at interest rates or else everybody would invest in a country which had high interest rates (which are offset by high inflation). With inflation almost certainly to be negligible or even negative over the next year or two, investors are happy to take the low interest rates in the US as part of a "flight to quality" that quite commonly occurs during times of economic recession.

In addition, the countries we've been running a trade deficit with (notably China) are keeping their dollars in the US in an effort to prop up the currency. They saw what happened to Japan in the early 1990s when the yen rose spectacularly against the dollar, resulting in a decade and a half of no growth for the Rising Sun.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
 
Reading the Tea Leaves

Caroline Kennedy will be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. It makes no sense at all, except as a "fairy tale" ending. Hence it is what will happen. Heck, I thought it was absurd that Hillary got to run in the first place, so why should we expect logic to enter into it at all.
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Shoe-Thrower Beaten in Custody?

Sniff. I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

Muntadar al-Zaidi was detained after hurling his shoes at Bush and calling him a "dog" during a press conference on Sunday in Baghdad.

His older brother, Dargham, told the BBC today that al-Zaidi had suffered a broken hand, ribs, suffered internal bleeding and sustained an eye injury.
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The Gay Penguins Story

I couldn't resist linking this:

A pair of gay penguins thrown out of their zoo colony for repeatedly stealing eggs have been given some of their own to look after following a protest by animal rights groups.

Last month the birds were segregated after they were caught placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs.

But angry visitors to Polar Land in Harbin, northern China, complained it wasn't fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.

In response, zookeepers gave the pair two eggs laid by an inexperienced first-time mother.

'We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they've turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,' said one of the keepers.

'It's very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.'


Good lord.
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Monday, December 15, 2008
 
How the Republicans Can Win in San Francisco

It's certainly not by following this prescription--err, description:

Who is he: Rob the Custom Bicycle Store Owner.

Rob Wong is a second generation Korean American whose parents immigrated here in the 1950's during the War. He is married and has three children. Growing up in San Francisco, he was the first person in his family to go to college, graduating with honors from Cal in 1991. That fall, he enrolled at a Masters Program at Stanford only to drop out six months later to join a Silicon Valley start-up. After 5 1/2 years of 90 hour weeks, the company went public and Rob became wealthy beyond his wildest dreams.

Rob survived the dot com bubble intact but shaken. He decided to return to work only to learn that steady work is less available. He accepted several consulting jobs and continued with his life.


If you read it, basically what the poster has done is create a biography that sells the candidate. But biography seldom trumps party ideology, absent other factors. Barring some huge scandal that brings down the Democrats, the idea that Republicans can win in San Francisco is absurd. Look at the last election; Nancy Pelosi got 72% of the vote; her nearest competitor was Cindy Sheehan with 16%. After that came the Republican Dana Walsh with 10%.

So how in the world do the Republicans win in San Francisco? Answer: They really can't, and it's ridiculous to try. A gay Korean Medal-of-Honor winner custom bike shop owner who's very liberal on social issues but hates taxes would probably be lucky to get 25% in SF.

So why the exercise? Why is Next Right highlighting this post?

Because they are stuck on this ridiculous idea that the Republican Party has to compete in all 435 congressional districts. It's the whole "50-state strategy" from Howard Dean and the nutroots, but flipped around to the GOP.

Look, the 50-state strategy is moronic, as I've pointed out numerous times:

Let me get this straight. You're going to push money to candidates that have no chance of winning in the hopes that this will force the Republicans to send money to candidates that have no chance of losing?


The 50-state strategy is a recipe for failure. That's not to say that the Democrats shouldn't work on developing the party in all the states, but sooner or later you've gotta concentrate on where you can get the best bang for the buck. There is no sense in a Democratic presidential candidate campaigning in Massachusetts, or in Idaho. They have to focus their efforts on the swing states--Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio for example.


Exactly! By furnishing resources to candidates who are going to lose by 20 points or more, you are denying them to candidates who are going to lose by 5 points or less. This is Poly Sci 101 stuff. Dean (along with much of the left wing of the Democrats), apparently believes in what I like to call "The Lost Tribe" theory, which is that there is an untapped group of radicals around the country who would vote Democratic, but nobody's speaking to them, so instead of voting they stay home.

This seems quite dubious at best, but let's assume they're right, and there's another 5% of non-voters who would be energized by a more Leftist policy from the Democrats. Where do you put your money then? Quite obviously in the closest races; the ones where an additional 5% could put you over the top. Dean and the bozos over at Swing State Project are leading the Democrats to disaster.


Now, you know how it is, the Democrats did win in 2006 and 2008, but they won in the places where they were already close; the problem was that the ground shifted out from under the Republicans with the Iraq War being the problem in the former year and the economy in the latter.

So having scorched the 50-state strategy, I can hard turn around and endorse the even more absurd 435-district strategy.

This post is an attempt to claim that Republicans can win anywhere without sacrificing any conservative "principles"; that is, without being one of those dreaded RINOs. Note that there is no discussion of Rob's positions, other than generally being upset about the homeless and heh, the omnipresent problem of public fornication. And this must be a mistake:

At the same time, this Gay Marriage stuff has gotten under Rob's skin. While he has gay friends, and doesn't really have a problem with Gay Marriage, he was appalled by the arrogance of the CA supreme court decision and quietly voted against Prop 8.


First, No on 8 was the pro-gay marriage position, so either Rob was inconsistent or the writer's botched the argument. If gay marriage has gotten under his skin and he opposes it, he's going to lose in SF by a large margin.
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Will Palin Be the Nominee in 2012?

Personally I doubt it, and that has nothing to do with her. I respect Sarah Palin and thought she got jobbed by the media during the campaign. That said, VP nominees on losing tickets their first go-round have a terrible record when it comes to the next time:

2004 Edwards: Nope
2000 Lieberman: No
1996 Kemp: Negative
1988 Bentsen: No
1984 Ferraro: Nope
1976 Dole: No, but did become the nominee 20 years later
1972 Shriver: No
1968 Muskie: Nope
1964 Miller: No
1960 Lodge: Negative
1956 Kefauver: No
1952 Sparkman: Who?
1948 Warren: No
1944 Bricker: Nope
1940 McNary: Nein
1936 Knox: No

Of course, VP nominees who actually became VP have a much better track record, with Gore, Bush Sr., Mondale, Humphrey, LBJ (special case obviously), Nixon and Truman (special case) all getting the endorsement of their respective parties at the next possible convention.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008
 
Cindy Sheehan Calls for Revolution

Good lord, what a fruitcake:

What if the shrinking working class all decided to stop paying our Federal taxes? What if we organized in every Congressional district and state to overthrow our Robber class government by huge electoral majorities?

What if we organized to throw monkey wrenches in the cogs of the US war machine by sustained actions against military recruitment centers, ports and bases all over the country like activists did in the Port of Seattle and active duty soldiers did during Vietnam?

Millions of jobs have been lost and off-shored since George took office. What if this Revolution of Values organized to support one another in these sustained actions for true change? What if the workers took over every plant and started on the path to clean, renewable and sustainable forms of energy, farming, and transportation?

We can do it, in reality, but it will take millions of us committed to the Revolution like the millions of people in Cuba have been for decades.


Yet more proof that Cindy was a loony lefty well before her son's heroism in Iraq.
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Saturday, December 13, 2008
 
Che Sera, Sera

Back in the 1970s, National Lampoon had an issue dedicated to the question, "Is Nothing Sacred"? The idea was that NatLamp's writers and artists were not above lampooning anything, no matter how much it might offend some people. And the cover image?



A new film is coming out about Che's life and death, and you can probably tell from the resume of the director what it's going to be like:

Steven Soderbergh is no stranger to political material, directing tough films about the war on drugs (“Traffic”) and environmental laws (“Erin Brockovich”), as well as executive producing the Middle East drama “Syriana” and co-creating the HBO lobbyist miniseries “K Street.”


Ugh. Here's the "relevance" of Che today:

Why make “Che”? What relevance does it have to 2008?

“We’re certainly seeing the result of what happens when you make profit the point of everything, where money that’s being earned doesn’t represent any particular product or labor on anybody’s part. That can’t sustain, because it’s magical thinking. It can’t go on indefinitely, because eventually it crashes. Che’s dream of a classless society, a society that isn’t built on the profit motive, is still relevant. The arguments still going on are about his methodology. “


His dream was noble, but his methods left something to be desired? One could say the same about Stalin, I suppose.

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Friday, December 12, 2008
 
Blagojevich Updates at Marathon Pundit

I apologize for the light posting lately; none of the hot stories has inspired me to have a take. But over at Marathon Pundit, my longtime blog-buddy John Ruberry has been all over the Rod Blagojevich story. John's an Illinois resident and has been tracking Obama and Blago for years, so you know you'll get more insight over there. Check it out!

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
 
Truthers and Birthers

This came up on a conservative email list I belong to, where a bunch of people are still insisting that Barack Obama has not proven that he is a natural born citizen of the United States. There are a fair amount of similarities between 9-11 "Truthers" and "Birthers":

1. Insistence that the missing document is the key. Folks who debate creationists frequently refer to this as "the god of the holes"; wherever there's a hole in evolutionary theory, this is where god resides. For a long time, Truthers insisted that WTC-7 was the key, because the government (in the form of NIST) had not provided an explanation for its collapse. Of course, NIST released its report on WTC-7 this summer, and so the "Truthers" are back to pointing at other holes and/or trying to prove NIST wrong. So it is with "Birthers"; the missing birth certificate is the smoking gun.

2. Unwillingness to accept other forms of evidence. There were numerous eyewitness accounts of the damage to WTC-7, and abundant evidence that the Fire Department was well-aware of the possibility of collapse of the building hours before it fell. Similarly, the "Birthers" are unwilling to accept the Certificate of Live Birth. They are unwilling to accept the Honolulu Advertiser birth announcement from 1961. They are unwilling to accept the word of a Hawaii state official that Obama was born there.

3. Multiple, contradictory theories are embraced. The "Truthers" say that a refueling tanker hit WTC-2, or maybe it was a missile, or a fighter plane, or that nothing hit the Tower, it was all done with computer graphics. "Birthers" claim that Obama might have been born in Kenya. Or maybe he was born in Hawaii, but his Indonesian stepfather changed his citizenship to Indonesian. Or maybe he was born in Hawaii but because his father was British, he has dual citizenship and is not a natural-born US citizen.

4. Conspiracy theorists often believe in multiple theories. Phil Berg and Alex Jones, who are pushing the "Birther" crap, also push 9-11 Troof. Jerome Corsi, who's a "Birther" also peddled the North American Union nonsense as well.
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Monday, December 08, 2008
 
Kenya Believe Obama's An American?

You've gotta love the Birth Certificate Troofers, just like the Trig Troofers. They've been shot down again at the Supreme Court. Actually this isn't a Birth Certificate case, this is an even odder one, where the plaintiff claimed that Obama isn't a natural born citizen even though he was born in the USA because his father was a British subject. That's even nuttier than the Birth Certificate one.

As pointed out by Charles at LGF, the Birth Certicate Troofers all claim they are defending the constitution. Simple question: How many of these constitution defenders have seen President Bush's birth certificate?

This is Sore Loserman territory, as David Horowitz points out:

It is not conservatism; it is sore loserism and quite radical in its intent. Respect for election results is one of the most durable bulwarks of our unity as a nation. Conservatives need to accept the fact that we lost the election, and get over it; and get on with the important business of reviving our country’s economy and defending its citizens, and — by the way — its Constitution.


If anything, Horowitz is too kind to the Birthers by granting them their premise. Look, if there were any real evidence that Obama was born outside the USA, I'd say that the constitution has to be upheld. But there is no such evidence, and there is plenty of evidence that he was born in Hawaii.

Michelle Malkin, Captain Ed Morrissey, and many other conservative bloggers have pointed out how nutty all this is. But we're all in on the plot, or have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.
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Sunday, December 07, 2008
 
On Heroes and Heroism

Here's an interesting article on the topic that this blog probably focuses on more than any other.

Do you see a pattern? Back when my father -- who joined the Army at the age of 16 and was in Pearl City 67 years ago today -- was island-hopping with his artillery unit across the Pacific, some medals went to men who selflessly died for their country, but more often to those who made the enemy die for theirs.

Sacrifice was important, but winning was paramount.

This is no denigration of our brave soldiers in Iraq, but an observation about what the people awarding medals are thinking now vs. then.


Of course, there have been medals awarded to those who made the other poor bastard die for his country; Brian R. Chontosh and Leigh Ann Hester come to mind. But it's still a valid argument that those two should be more celebrated for their accomplishments than they are.
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Saturday, December 06, 2008
 
The Peter Principle At Work

Gail Collins used to be one of the regular OpEd writers at the New York Times before she was kicked upstairs to be the editor of the editorial page. It's clear why they did it, because she was the worst of the OpEd writers, and on a page that features Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert, that's pretty bad.

Consider today's offering from her feeble brain. She bashes Saxby Chambliss:

Anyhow, the Georgia runoff was more important than you might imagine. Certainly more significant than anything Chambliss has done since he skipped a closed-door Senate session on Iraq intelligence data to go golfing with Tiger Woods. His victory means that the Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate when Barack Obama becomes president. (This is actually going to happen eventually. I promise.)


Never mind that most of the Democrats didn't study the Iraq prewar intelligence either.

The article mostly gripes about how unfair it is that the Democrats won't have 60 seats in the Senate. Inevitably she hops on the Joe Lieberman-bashing bandwagon:

Besides, if the Democrats did get the 60 seats, one of them would belong to Joe Lieberman. You may recall that although Lieberman spent the last year campaigning for John McCain (and, as it turns out, donating money to Republican candidates for the senate), the Democrats were so desperate to keep him in their caucus that they caved in to his demands to keep his committee chairmanship. If Lieberman had turned out to be Mr. 60, he would not only have wanted the committee, he would have insisted on being carried to all its meetings on a litter, borne by the fellow senators who failed to appreciate him, with Lindsey Graham running ahead, clashing cymbals.


Jeez, Gail, leave the humor to Mo Dowd, who is at least capable of being funny.
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Wednesday, December 03, 2008
 
Franken-Klein

Interesting portrait of Naomi Klein, leftist nutbar in the New Yorker.

It confirms much of what we've long known about the far Left; that it runs in families. Klein's parents and grandparents were left-wing agitators; her grandfather's brother moved to the USSR after the communist revolution there. So in that sense, it's not surprising. But I did enjoy a few bits, including this:

Because Klein doesn’t expect much from any politician, she doesn’t spend time wishing Obama were more progressive. “I don’t want to appear too cynical, but when I first saw the ‘Yes We Can’ rock video that Will.I.Am made, my first response was ‘Wow, finally a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike’s,’ ” she says. “The ‘Yes We Can’ slogan means whatever you want it to mean. It’s very ‘Just Do It.’ When you hear it, you catch yourself thinking, Yeah! We’re gonna end torture and shut down Guantánamo and get out of Iraq! And then you think, Wait a minute, is he really saying that? He’s not really saying that, is he? He’s saying we’re going to send more troops to Afghanistan. He’s telling regular people what they want to hear, and then in the back rooms he’s making deals and signing on to the status quo. But if people don’t like where Obama is they should move the center.” To this end, Klein has been taking every opportunity to call for the nationalization of the oil companies. “It’s the job of the left to move the center,” she says. “Get out there and say some crazy stuff! And then, suddenly, it’ll seem more reasonable for politicians to take riskier positions.”


Yes, let's propose something really crazy so that then something only mildly crazy can get accomplished. And get this discussion of a leftist group:

The evening was sponsored in part by the Platypus Affiliated Society—a student-teacher reading group that focusses on the Frankfurt School and the Second International period of Marxism—and a few of Platypus’s members, tall, thin, pale young men, had set up a table out front. Platypus was founded on the idea that the left didn’t have a proper sense of its own history, especially the bad bits, and that a study of that history would help it emerge from the troubled state in which it found itself. (“Protest has devolved into an insular subculture of self-hatred, frustration, and anxiety derived from a pathological attitude towards social integration,” a typically morose editorial in the Platypus Review declares.) Given its emphasis on self-criticism, Platypus was not a natural constituency for Klein’s work, but because she was coming to the campus the group read “The Shock Doctrine,” and also Hayek and Friedman. “The conservatives engage the questions of freedom and utopia directly,” Ian Morrison, the editor of Platypus’s newsletter, said. “We were very struck that Klein seemed to back away from utopianism, because we feel that the left has liquidated itself in part because it’s conceded talk about freedom to someone like Bush.” Platypus’s interrogation of the past has led it in a variety of directions. Several of its members also belonged to the new Students for a Democratic Society, a revival of the new-left group from the sixties. In August, Platypus participated in a historical reënactment, in Grant Park, of the 1968 Democratic Convention, minus the police. “As a group of young, largely inexperienced activists it was the only organizing framework we could find which emphasized active participation,” read a writeup of the event in the Platypus Review. “Other forms seemed linguistically and ideologically flaccid. . . . We didn’t want to view our history—our radical history—as if from a riverbank, we wanted to jump in and splash around in it. . . . We debated, for instance, the ethics of nominating a live pig for the presidency: what should we feed it, and where would it stay?”


LOL! Of course, these Platypus guys didn't realize they'd just be imitating the TV show Green Acres from the 1960s, which had a pig named Arnold Ziffel running for President.

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Tuesday, December 02, 2008
 
Deborah Lawrence's "Art"

This gal attracted some attention by putting a message of impeachment on a Christmas tree ornament that will be hung in the White House:

The nine-inch ball is covered with swirly red and white stripes -- and, in tiny glued-on text, salutes the Democratic congressman's support for a resolution to impeach President Bush. (Also showcased: Washington state's 1919 labor strike, its suffrage movement and the violent anti-World Trade Organization riots of 1999.) Lawrence sent it off to D.C. in September and was very surprised it was accepted for the tree -- and that she was invited to this afternoon's White House reception for the artists, which she flew to D.C. to attend.


Well, the part there that immediately caught my eye was the bit about "glued-on text". My theory is that the quality of art is inversely proportional to the number of words incorporated into the art. Sure enough, it looks like Lawrence is more of an aspiring editorial cartoonist than an artist. Check out some other examples:







Mrs M is reminded of crank letter writers:

I occasionally get hate mail written in the teeniest, tiniest scrawl that will go on and on for pages. I’m always fascinated by the painstaking script — and the amount of time that must have gone into working out whatever strange pathologies gripped the writer.
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More Heroism In Mumbai

Gripping story here:

After that near-miss, my wife and I decided we should hide in different rooms. While we hoped to be together at the end, our primary obligation was to our children. We wanted to keep one parent alive. Because I am American and my wife is Indian, and news reports said the terrorists were targeting U.S. and U.K. nationals, I believed I would further endanger her life if we were together in a hostage situation.


Imagine having to make that kind of decision. Excellent article, great writing.
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Monday, December 01, 2008
 
Heroic Female Medic Awarded Silver Star

Check out this terrific story:

Brown's instincts kicked in with bullets whizzing by and mortars exploding around her. This young woman, who was not even supposed to be in front line combat, threw her body over the wounded paratroopers to protect them. "It was an uncontrollable situation," she remembers. "And I just dove over Spray, 'cause Spray can't defend himself. It's not like he can go anywhere to take cover. So, I dove over him. Make sure he didn't get any shrapnel or anything from it."

Then, while still under fire, Santos and Brown dragged the injured men into a pick-up truck. Brown once again covered them with her body as Santos drove them to an area where they could be treated.


Not all war heroes are men. Kudos to Private Brown!
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